Weekly Post

Social media is becoming the "it" thing for our generation. Almost everyone you know has a MySpace or Facebook. I myself have both, I got a MySpace my senior year of high school and a Facebook my freshman year of college. I have come into contact with so many people I haven't seen in a long time, from elementary school to people who were on sports teams with me. I find it a great way to connect with people, those I know and those I have never met. I personally enjoy MySpace much better. Facebook seems to have a lot more pointless items, such as all of the poke, superpokes, and items to buy. My friend told me how it is perfectly when she first signed up, "why do I want to pay a dollar for a picture of a bunny?" Yes, this seems absolutely pointless, and I didn't get it either. Plus everyone is always sending notifications, "join and be a pirate" or "join and see what type of Barbie you are." I always find myself "ignoring" it all. So, my personal opinion is MySpace, it's easier and your page can be simple or if you want you can spice it up. As for other social places I heard of the website Virb and checked it out. I didn't seem to like it and notice very few people have them. Those who did have them didn't have very many friends and they didn't seem to work on their site very much, as if they made it to see what it's about, yet never returned. So I think I will stick to Facebook and MySpace. I also may check out Twitter and see what that has to offer. I haven't really heard of it until these past few weeks, so I plan to check that out at least.

Reflective Writing: Getting Started

Our final projects for class are getting started and I will being doing mine with another girl in my class, Tanja. Our final project includes many different types of media like videos, sound, pictures, blog, podcast, etc. We chose to do ours on the San Jose Sharks. We chose this because we are both hockey fans and have done our previous videos about the Sharks. We got started this past week and have decided to do our website through word press because it will be easier to work on out of class and we can do it from home.

I expect to accomplish a good amount from this project. It will ultimately show if everything we have learned from class has been sketched into our brains and we are able to get good results. I think it is different from other projects in class because we will have more time on our free time, yet we won't have the ability to ask questions right away, we will have to work harder for answers. This can be a good thing, because when exploring the the site and figuring things out, you are also able to see things you might not have seen before and get more information. It also helps that I will be doing this a group. We will both be able to work off of each other and use each other's knowledge. We plan to divvy up the work load with different pages. We also plan to both work on misc parts online when at home. I personally am able to attend all of the Sharks playoff games and am able to gather pieces for our site, from sound to video and pictures. I expect our project to turn out very well and looking forward to it.

Weekly Post

Do bloggers belong in the locker room? That is the question I was given for this weeks post. (www.mcom63.wordpress.com) At first before I even read the article given, I thought, no way! There are a couple ways I look at it. Bloggers can be seen as either fans or average people that just want to share their opinion. The other way bloggers can be seen is a journalists. The average blogger is just an average joe wanting to talk about what they think. So I don't believe bloggers should be let into the locker room. If they are professional journalists that blog on the side, then yes, they should be able to be in the locker room or be on the field. After reading the article, I still feel that bloggers should be left out and watch from the view of an outsider. This view is also the view that will get them popular, if they do so. People like to read about what they see as well and be able to relate with the blogger. Having bloggers in with the media in sports I believe will be like fans and misc. people being in with the players and that will distract the team. As it said in the article, they might as well let fans, kids, tours, etc. in with the media. If bloggers were let in it would make it more difficult to hold people from being let in. Everyone might see themselves as bloggers after they write one entry and there would be more tension. Overall, I believe bloggers should stay out of the locke room and give their perspective from the outside, and grab the attention of their readers with the ability to relate with them.

Weekly Post

I was trying to think about what to write about for my weekly post, whether to write about a hot topic of the week or so forth. But I thought of something better. There is only one month of this semester left and I have learned a great deal of things from this class. Most recently I have learned how much I love making videos. I already knew I enjoyed doing it, but when the final piece was done, that's when I decided how much I enjoyed it. Seeing what I made in the end was exciting. All I can think about now is what other ideas I could turn into a video. Not only do I enjoy learning about how to make a great video, we have learned how to make a website, play with sound, images, make a newspaper, play with photoshop, and last but not least, a blog! This will be a class I will miss taking next semester. But it's not over yet, one month left and I can't wait to put everything we have learned into our final project. I really think it will turn out great!

Video Project

As I had said in previous posts, I went down to Anaheim over spring break and also took a lot of photos and some video. I have put a lot of them together to make a video for my class project. Here it is!! I enjoyed doing this project a lot because it was related with what I did over break and I can use this video to send my friends. I had a couple problems doing the video, such as finding music that won't be in copyright laws. So I wasn't able to get music that I completely enjoyed, but it ended sounding good. I thought the process overall was pretty easy. I was able to change the timing of movies or pictures and add and a couple effects. This project was fun and I am looking forward to doing our final project that includes all of the different types of media that we have learned.

Weekly Post

This post will be covering the website Hoopshype.com and an article written on it that was in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120605508959553157.html?mod=djem_jiewr_JM). Basically, the website is all about the NBA and everything surrounding it. It talks about individual teams, scores, trades, and rumors.

I myself do not follow the NBA very much, but as a sports fan I see how many NBA fans like to get their information from this site everyday. It covers a lot of info and rumors; the rumors is key asset, because many other fan sites don't contain this as much.

The article was pretty interesting, especially since I have never heard of the website before. But hearing how it started and the effort that has been put forth and what it has become, makes me believe that this website is something to check out. The article gave a brief background of the website and its founders. It was very shocking to read the founders have collectively only been to 3 NBA games. It shows that with proper research, one can share and become something more.

Questions:
1. I think Hoopshype has become successful because of the founders persistance of information and they are continuously posting info whenever they can. One may believe that if the players and coaches themselves turn to this website, then it truly must be good.

3. The success of the website shows that sports journalism is growing and growing fast. Journalists no longer have to be part of the game. Also that journalists and companies are banding together to use each others info. Sports journalism may be taking a step in the right direction or even the wrong direction. The personal side is being lost, especially finding out that these writers have not even seen 5 live NBA games.

Weekly Post

We are back from our spring break today, it's always hard to start up school again after a little break! I was definitely needed though! As I said I was heading to Anaheim for the end of break. It was a great trip and we all had fun. I also got great pictures and a couple videos for my next project. I'm looking forward to doing it.

Today I was also able to finish a quick extra credit project of making a postcard for the bay area. Here it is!!