What I remember from 2006...

So after the small discussion we had on Monday about Net Neutrality and what Im assuming is going to be a larger discussion tomorrow, I remembered a video I actually posted to my myspace account when it came out in 2006. Its a funny video, not super informative but I think the point was just to get people to participate more.

Machinima

So I was sitting around trying to think of something to write when I remembered talking about machinima in class. I'm a fairly avid gamer and so I know of and have seen some fairly good ones, mostly using WoW as the game with which the video is made. There are two in particular that i believe i should share with you all. the first is called Illegal Danish Super Snacks. This video is really funny... if you played vanilla, or pre-bc wow, but it has some funny stuff that anyone could atleast get a chuckle out of. the other video is MMOvie. This one is more general in its comedy and has references to many movies that most people have seen. Both of these are made using WoW and, to me atleast, are pretty funny. Its pretty cool how videos like these can be made for next to no cost but be pretty good. within the WoW community illegal danish was widly popular and hundreds of thousands of people have seen it. MMOvie was also quite popular but wasnt as talked about as illegal danish was. I hope you enjoy the videos.

Squidoo: I make money (and so can you)

It's the internet, and quite frankly no one wants to pay for any of the content they receive. Hey, it's all digital, right? It's not like there is a physical product or anything.

But I've just made this absolutely fantastic blankity-blank that I put more effort into than an entire semester's worth of work and it already has an insane amount of page views and if it were from some company, I would be getting so much money. Seriously, if this came in physical form, people would pay for it! But since I have no other method of distribution other than the internet, there's no way I could ever give it to people free, and still get paid...right?

Entirely wrong, my dear passer-by that I am now ranting at from my soapbox! Gather 'round and I shall tell you a tale that is both fantastical and will- wait, you say this sounds like a crackpot idea, a scam, snakeoil sold by a quack?! But there is logic to this madness!

See, as we learned in class, the product is The Consumer, NOT what was created. So, Squidoo decided work with the produsage concept to use consumer-created content to sell The Consumer over the internet as well, and neither creating a thing themselves nor charging The Consumer for a thing, just the way The Consumer wants it.

How it works:

You make an account. You link your account with a PayPal account. (Leaving issues of security for another debate, PayPal.com is generally considered the most popular user-to-random-user method of payment over the internet. If you're looking to generate revenue over the internet as an individual, probability is, you have a PayPal account.) Now, having done that, you make a webpage on their site. On whatever you want. Denver, How To Pick Your Nose, Effects of Large Companies on Global Warming, How to Knit a Klein Bottle.....anything.

Now, your part is finished. As far as you care, people search for some info, they find your site, visit it....and you get paid for the amount of traffic you have on your site. More visitors, more money, all very good.

How does Squidoo get the money to pay you, and why do they care that you have visitors? Becasuse when you post your page, they place on your webpage...ADS! And since when you post your webpage, you give it categories and information to make it findable, it also allows them to place ad-content into your page that is more consumer-relevant than random ads on a random pages. The advertisers pay Squidoo, Squidoo pays you....and the consumer doesn't pay a thing. Well, not unless they're tempted by one of those ads. Then the advertiser is sucessful, and the consumer gets something beyond just your webpage.

Example: Screenshot of Lens on Denver

Example: Diverse "Lensography" to a Niche Market

The more people aware of the site, the more people who post, the greater a repository for information and content it becomes. Thus, a more mutualistic relationship between creater, distributor and consumer can be formed. The current model is rather parasitic, no?

 I YouTubed "collective intelligence internet" and i found this video of a discussion pale talking about how web 2.0 is effecting the creative class. This video is a little older only by about a year and a half, but it talks about both sides of the issues that has arose from it but also the good that comes from such sights. One of the guys talks about Wikipedia and how it is taking jobs away from other people by being such an open sight, but it was interesting to see his view points compared to what was talked about in class. That it is more accurate and free to the public and since our economy is moving towards a more knowledge based society that Wikipedia is enabling that transition. He also discusses Google and YouTube stating that no one is awarded for their creativity and only advertisers  are  gaining the benefits. It is an interesting interview that argues both points of the progression of web 2.0.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPZnUQdy8gQ

Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom?

Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom? A question posed in an article posted a couple of weeks ago on the MIT Technology Review website. They say new research says no: "Researchers say online recommendation systems can be distorted by a minority of users."

When searching online for a new gadget to buy or a movie to rent, many people pay close attention to the number of stars awarded by customer-reviewers on popular websites. But new research confirms what some may already suspect: those ratings can easily be swayed by a small group of highly active users.

Vassilis Kostakos, an assistant professor at the University of Madeira in Portugal and an adjunct assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), says that rating systems can tap into the "wisdom of the crowd" to offer useful insights, but they can also paint a distorted picture of a product if a small number of users do most of the voting. "It turns out people have very different voting patterns," he says, varying both among individuals and among communities of users.

The article is not that great in my opinion. They want you to think that there is a problem with only a few people voting when the research is really discussing the fact that a small fraction of the user base accounts for the majority of total votes at places like IMDb. Movies made recently like Up and Inglorious Basterds rate respectfully at #39 and #43 while movies like Braveheart and Yojimbo rate in at #100 and #129. The problem is 18 year old kids with limited knowledge of cinema history rating a movie as a ten the same night they see it. While people over 40 are less likely to weigh in on a movie they saw years ago. For arguments' sake, lets say IMDb has a ratio of 75/20 That is 75 percent of all votes are cast by 20 percent of voters. Is this a problem? Does it invalidate the voting system?
The original paper which was presented at the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Social Computing and is posted on Kostakos's website here[PDF] is not about the unreliablity of crowd wisdom or collective intelligence at all. It examined three different voting systems and the accessibility and barriers to cast a vote. It did not even contain the word "distort" as suggested by the article. It mentions that the results are unreliable if the item only has a couple of votes and it does not seem to say anything on reliablity with respects to large numbers of votes or reviews. It considers the voting and rating system of Amazon.com but does not include the recomendation system, you know - that ability to rate other users comments, nor does it consider the feature by which it recommends other products people have bought or looked at.
So in my opinion, the research is just OK and the article about it sucks.

How Secure is Your Information on the Internet?

This is a question I often ask myself. Do you ever think about how much personal information you place on the internet through out multiple sites? I mean someone with enough motivation and hacking skills could possibly piece together this information and steal your identity. I guess the scariest thing is credit card information. I really never thought twice about putting my credit card information on the internet when buying products, I mean so many people do it that it must be safe right? I have been working for an information security company, Accuvant, based here in downtown Denver for the past few months now. I was able to attend one of their recent seminars on different vulnerabilities company's must be aware of to secure their company and customer information on the web. It really opened my eyes to how easily someone with basic coding and hacking skills can get information of websites. In this demo, a man was able to hack a popular book retail site to manipulate and obtain database information. He also talked about how hackers can reproduce websites that aren't real, and prompt you to put your information in. It is pretty amazing how vulnerable the internet really is! Just a few months ago, my debit card was used in Florida for multiple purchases that I didn't do. I can only think that someone was able to get my credit card information off a retail site that I had purchased from in the past. I think this is something that consumers need to be more cautious about. It is scary to think how much information you have put out there on the web, and how it is just stored in all these databases that people could potentially hack into. Here is an article that relates to this issue.

ALSO, can anyone else not post comments? It won't even let me copy or past anything in the comments box. Does anyone know a solution for this issue? Thanks

Photography in today's world

So this week I'm choosing to share an art forum website:
Imagekind
This site is designed to share, discuss, and sell art. What is so incredible in today's world of technology convergence is that you don't have to be a "professional" any more to make money off of your work. The internet allows us to connect to thousands upon thousands more constumers, and in turn it creates a market for those who are not quite so professional.

I myself have a membership to this forum and would like to share my work with all of you.
Right here.