Parsing The Future

For this assignment, I read a blog post by Ryan Sholin about Links that Redefine News. This post was asking if anyone knew any innovative websites that were the future of journalism and mass communications. 

At first, I looked at the sites and thought that most of them weren't anything special. The  New York Times and such were all websites I regularly visited to get my fix of the news while procrastinating. However, I looked a little deeper and realized that some of these websites were a lot more creative than I thought. I pressed a couple links or buttons, got redirected, and found more fun things to do while reading articles. 

For the Las Vegas Sun, I used the flight tracker and ended up following some random airline and knowing when it was landing, if it was delayed and what airport it had departed. I was hooked at first, and I actually kept reading about which cities in the country had the most flight delays and such. Very crafty of them.

The City Block website was also very interesting. Although it is just getting on its feet and has not been fully developed, it has a very different perspective. The website tells you what is happening on your block, city and county. Yes, there are only a couple of cities that are on the website so far, but when it is fully completed and has much more included, I think that it will do well.

The website I enjoyed the most was Global Voices Online. This website was purely directed towards the audiences instead of other writers and journalists. This website has news from every country, and all the information is written by people in other countries. It gave me a sense of how everyone can now be connected to each other no matter what. It really made it seem like it is a small world after all. 

This assignment made me think about the new media world we experience everyday. We The Media by Dan Gillmor describes it perfectly. The world of mass media is now focused on consumers, and it more of a conversation than it is a lecture so to speak. People can voice their opinions and thoughts about each issue and article. Mostly, it shows how much the earth has evolved into such a technological world. It seems that every website now has ways for the reader to respond and have a community forum so that everyone is involved in every aspect of the news. Journalists are now in each and every one of us, some are just better than others :).

SUPERBOWL!

So this year was the first year I have EVER watched the superbowl. Odd, I know. Well I had never seen the commercials that were aired during the superbowl and I actually found them quite amusing. There were many hilarious advertisements, I must admit, but there were a few that my stone-faced sister even laughed about after. 

First, I hope you all got to enjoy the HILARIOUS commercial made by Diet Pepsi Max. It was all these people and celebrities in different situations falling to sleep while doing whatever it is they were doing. All of their heads were bobbing back and forth to that one song "What is Love." Well, if you didn't get to see that one, I hope you do. It was amazingly creative.

The second commercial was for BridgeStone Tires. A squirrel went out into the middle of the road and starts screaming because a car was coming towards him. Then the commercial cuts to a montage of all these different animals screaming and scared for the squirrels life. The next thing you know, the passenger in the car is screaming and the driver swerves quickly to avoid the squirrel. Everything goes quiet. I thought this was a much better tire commercial than all the other ones I see, which just show you the tires driving on different terrains. What a creative idea huh? It surely got my heart racing:)

The last one that my sister and I both laughed over was the baby  on a web cam talking in an adult voice about E-Trade. In the background there is this creepy clown, and in the end the baby talks about how he got himself a clown and wasn't expecting it to be as weird as it had turned out to be. Well, I don't know about you, but any baby talking makes me laugh. I do not know why, do not even try to ask me. 

 For this being the first time I've watched the superbowl commercials I must admit I was impressed.  Have a good day:)

PhotoShop #2

I removed dust molecules, cropped it, made it black and white, and did some saving from TIF to JPEG