Evaluating amv's

I recently checked out the website animemusicvideos.org, it’s a website dedicated to the creation and sharing of AMV’s. For those of you who don’t know, and AMV is an anime music video. In an amv cut scenes from the featured anime are spliced together to go with a certain music track. AMV’s are a popular type of video among the online anime watching community. On animemusicvideos.com the community talks about more than just how to make amv’s. Members discuss trends within the amv making community as well as their views on legal and copyright issues pertaining to amv’s. AMV’s are often made using whatever song the artist likes but the problem is many times the song used is under copyright and places like youtube where many amv’s are shared often take them down shortly after their posted. This is a problem similar to the one facing mash up artists like girl talk, because amv’s are very similar, sort of a mash up of their own, just a mash up of music and shows. The animemusicvideos.org community shares the belief that copyright laws for music and videos are out of date and need to be changed. I understand their frustrations and agree with them, it is both complicated and frustrating to tell every artist looking to use certain materials that they must first obtain copyrights to use it. If a writer only needs to cite their source when using it in a paper, then why can’t an amv artist do the same? What are your thoughts?

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/index.php

Twitter chides the chinese government

You have probably heard, but China doesn't exactly have the best relationship with social networking sites, especially twitter. Last month the Chinese government arrested a woman, Cheng Jianping for her actions on the site. She was sentenced to one year in a labor camp for re-tweeting a comment that mocked Chinese citizens who supported their government in protesting Japanese products. China has also banned twitter, among other websites, in the past during special days like the anniversary of the Tianamen Square protest. Twitter mentioned the recent arrest in their message to china saying: "Year-long detentions for sending a sarcastic tweet are neither the way forward nor the future of your great people". Their message had over a hundred re-tweets shortly after, and continues to be passed on. Chinese government officials apparently haven't made a statement on the message.
How would you feel if popular websites like facebook and twitter were banned in the U.S.? would you use them anyway despite punishments like a year of hard labor?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/11/19/twitter.china/index.html

cell phones: worse than first thought?

If you have a cell phone today, you probably remember a couple years ago when they really took off in popularity, the big controversy over whether they can cause health problems. Legal departments of cellphone manufacturers slip a warning about holding the phone against your head or body into the fine print. The United States has over 292 million cell phones using 2.26 trillion minutes annually. While people seemed to have forgotten about the potential health risks the industry has not. As cell phones become more widely used among younger crowds the chance of major health risks increases. Brain cancer has been one of the more major concerns, and while average rates of brain cancer have not changed, there has been a change in certain trends, mostly an increase in 20-29 years and a decrease in older cases. Some scientists attribute this to the increase in cell phone use for younger generations, because children are more susceptible to radiation from cell phones than adults. A rise in cell phone related health issues would mean bad news for an industry that has embedded itself into our everyday lifestyle. We cannot dismiss the potential risks of cell phones simply because everybody else is using one.

Do you think that this is something that could cause a serious issue in the future? or are cell phones so instrumental in our everyday lives that we might as well take the bad with the good? What are your thoughts?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/business/14digi.html?adxnnl=1&ref=general&src=me&adxnnlx=1289798234-AMvkSFaWwyIErg94oA7DZA

A little creativity goes to a long franchise

Todays technology has opened the doors for so many people to express their creativity to a large audience. Some people even take this to the next step, when they gain enough of a fan following, they go on to turn their creativity for a profit. This happens often in the world of videogames and machinima. People use videogames in remixed videos similar to the way artists make mashups with different songs to create a new product from the old. In addition to being very entertaining some people make a name for themselves releasing videos like this regularly, some people have even made entire shows based on this. Some cases of this are franchises like red vs. blue which started out as a couple videos where people take characters from installments of the popular shoot em' up game Halo and turn it into a comedic short show. The the franchise now has various merchandising rights and a major fan following and the creators have managed to start a career with it. Then there are other less established channels, which are run by individuals who simply want to show off their creativity. One such player would be M.A.L.R. who runs a youtube channel with a significant fan following. Both are examples of the same genre of videogame machinima at work and the ease in which anyone now has to promote themselves through technology.

Germany Plans Limits on Facebook Use in Hiring

Recently the German government proposed placing restrictions on employers use of facebook in their recruiting activities. The bill is intended to keep employers from considering information on purely social networking sites like facebook when evaluating potential employees. Basically, it means you don't have to worry about not getting a job just because of some embarassing pictures your friends posted on your facebook page. The bill, which could be in effect as soon as this year would prohibit managers from secretely videotaping employees, which was becoming an issue of increasing concern among other incidents of companies violating their employees privacy rights. The proposal is meant to establish guidelines for courts handling social networking cases. The number of cases is expected to rise as social networking becomes more incorporated into our lives. Establishing a clear set of rules should help the issue from becoming a major problem for the courts. Isn't it amazing how something like facebook finds its way into every aspect of our lives? Wouldn't it be nice to never worry about your social life impacting your professional career? what are your thoughts on this?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/business/global/26fbook.html?_r=1&ref=facebook_inc

Organize your digital life!

The internet has made it so that students like ourselves no longer have to be simply consumers of media, we are also creators, and manipulators of it. Well, that's great and all, but when you have millions of people with similar access to the internet your gonna have problems. As author Sarah J. Wachter writes in the New York Times article "Beaming to the Cloud All the Mess That is Our Digital Life" our "digital closets" are overflowing with info as well. We may make use of the unlimited space of the internet, but the digital info we store is scattered across a range of devices like phones, computers, and mp3 players. One answer to this problem is the rapidly growing business www.sugarsync.com which allows users to store, back up, sync, share and collaborate on data, music and photos and reach that information from any device, anywhere. In fact they offer a 2 gigabyte service for free, and offer up to 60 gigabytes for $9.99 a month. While sugarsync.com is not the only digital content management service it is one of the largest names in the business right now, and a free 2 gigabyte service is an offer that will make you find a good use for the service. I recommend you all to give the service a chance and see if you can't come up with a good use for a service that is expected to be a $4 billion industry by 2012.

Ive linked the service website and the article below for you to check them out:

https://www.sugarsync.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/technology/25iht-clutter25.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Google and facebook

Arguably the two most widely used websites on the internet would have to be Google and Facebook. Google, one website known for always being on top of the new most popular thing on the internet, is apparently falling behind with its inability to connect to the social networking site. Many websites have a high facebook connectivity which allows audiences to post their activities from the website on their facebook page. Surprisingly enough google hasn't had any social networking capabilities until recently, and even those are lacking in popularity among googles users. This has proven to be a growing problem for google, because the audience which used to seek out information through google is now finding that some info by asking their facebook friends. In fact, more people spent time on facebook than google for the first time last August. Is there a chance that the google we known and loved for years now may be replaced by some facebook application in the future? Personally I doubt it, but I can't say for sure, only time will tell

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/technology/18google.html?_r=1&ref=facebook_inc