ALJ301

New mobile technologies are taking the world by storm. The recent release of the Nokia N95 and Apple Iphone has begun a new trend in accessing the Internet from phones.

The trend has yet to hit Australia. Countries like the UK and the USA have better speeds and deals available for users. The weekly reading mentioned that ‘In the US, the fee for unlimited data is about $70 a month… Australians pay about $67 a month for 250 Mb of data a month, or about 8Mb a day.’

mobile-phone-sms-alert-1

The N95 has an internal storage capacity of 8GB. The average PC 10 years ago had about 1GB. Australian mobile users should be able to use their phones to the full extent. Even a new but average phone like the Nokia 6220 has is sold with a 1GB memory card, and the option to expand.

Australia needs to catch up with the rest of the world. Websites like Youtube.com or myspace.com – that have millions of visitors each day – take extra time and space to download. The amount of video and graphic information people are consuming is only increasing, and networks like Optus or Telstra need to consider this. They could make a lot of extra money through mobile internet.

After checking out this reading the immediate thought was
‘Youtube’. Youtube contains a lot of peoples’ personal videos, seemingly
because they don’t know how to produce blogs/vblogs.

The MediaShift vblogs were very amusing and slightly. For
anyone who didn’t see this on Mobuzz TV, have a peep: http://www.mobuzz.tv/newsroom/eng/how_to_skip_a_class

Mobuzz TV and Rocket Boom were my favourites because they combined news and humour. For example, Rocket Boom mentioned these new sandwich bags that had green spots on them – when you put a sandwich in the bag made it look mouldy. (http://www.rocketboom.com/rb_08_sep_18/)

It makes the amateur videos made for Youtube look… well…
amateur. I suppose this is where the different definitions of video blogs or
vlogs comes in. For example, this video on Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZOUXfhfdgM
– is done quite tastefully. It is more like what you see on MobuzzTV. It has a
beginning, a middle and an end.

Whereas this video on Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeBbaY8SSuk&feature=related,
is just a random film. I would like to pose the question, if the video doesn’t
have a particular point, what does that make it?

To quote the reading, ‘Are they blogs that incorporate
video? Or video accompanied by blogging? Are they video podcasts?’

If the video is a random clip on Youtube, does that make it
‘less’ a video than say Wine Library TV or Ask a Ninja because they are
regular? Maybe this is just the definition between online TV and a vlog.

Media convergence and citizen journalism allows people to connect around the world, on a convenient platform – the web. The reading stated, ‘Much of Stomp’s content represents a grass-roots kind of reporting. Soh said convergence allowed Stomp to report stories that would not see the light of day in the national newspaper.’

Stomp sounds like a massive organisation in Singapore. There are smaller organisations, but similar, in Australia. The concept of ‘grass-roots’ has evolved into it’s own magazine for farmers – or anyone just interested in growing their own produce and do-it-yourself (DIY). This is Grassroots magazine. After googling it, it actually appears Grassroots does not have a website. This goes against the grain of ALJ301, but it’s a good example.

Grassroots supplies most of regional/farming areas in Australia with a communication outlet. This magazine is citizen journalism, but in a printed form and focusing on farmers. The magazine is full of citizen letters and news, and citizen-written features.

It is a black and white magazine, and its ‘poor’ quality compared with today’s glossies. But most of the letters to Grassroots start with, ‘thanks for producing such a great magazine’. To some people in Australia, it’s a lifeline and link to the outside world.

This week’s reading inspired me to have a go at doing this myself. I compared Flickr and Picasa for ease of use. In this day and age, people like easy-to-use programs.

FLICKR (http://www.flickr.com/)

From my computer Flickr was easy to use. I already had a Yahoo account, so I just had to create a profile name on Flickr.

It took a couple of minutes to upload four pictures. Then I named them and ordered them. It was hard to locate how I could organise them, but it was under another program called ‘Organizr’ or the ‘Batch Organiser’ tab on the main screen.

I then opened Slideflickr and in a few easy steps created an online slideshow, with tags, captions etc.

End result:

PICASA

Picasa was harder to use. I downloaded the program and it took me a while to figure out.

It was the little complications that made it hard to use. It started bringing up a weird little toolbar on the lower right side of my screen that would flash through my pictures; disappear and pop up again. It probably had a good reason to do it, but it was disconcerting.

I had to log into my Google user account to upload some pics and turn them into a slide show.

End result:

Trial

Recommendations:

Use Flickr and Slideflickr for a simple and quick slide show. It’s an easy step by step program.

Picasa was too complicated to produce a quick slide show.