Final Project: Ted Talk

For our final, we are going to be giving a five minute TED talk. I am still not 100% sure what I am going to do yet but I think I am going to talk about how the webcam and programs like Skype are helping people to communicate with each other and how they are changing communications practices.

People usually stay in touch via phone, cell phone, chats, texts, emails, and social networking sites. While some of the aforementioned practices allow people to communicate in real time it is only the webcam that allows for both real time conversation and visualization. It is as if two people are standing in a room together having a conversation when in reality they could be on two different sides of the world.

In my speech I will talk about the benefits of the webcam, how it is different from the way people currently communicate, and how it could possibly be used it the future.

Communications Case Study

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Communications Case Study

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Case-Study: Twitter

Above is my case study on social media. Topic of choice: Twitter.
For those of you that don't know, Twitter is a social media website that allows for constant status updates written in 140 characters or less.
Some of the social objects on the website include: Tweets, Profiles, Videos, Lists, Followers, Trending Topics, Status Updates, Links, Pictures, Replies, Direct Messages, Favorites, Settings.
The relational practices include: creating, linking, following, building, messaging, doing, tagging, sharing, directing, trending, updating, searching, connecting, finding, requesting, adding.


Users make knowledge and meaning by providing constant status updates written in 140 characters or less. The micro-blog allows users to keep their followers informed about what they are doing as well as staying informed with what friends, celebrities, and businesses are doing. It provides news relevant to each particular person's life. Twitter users are then able to share information with each other. Some people get their news from Twitter. Trending topics is a great way to find out what people are tweeting about and have some common knowledge with other users. People can follow different businesses or people in a particular business can use twitter for career related information. Friends/followers can also direct tweets to each other creating a short micro-blogging conversations. People can post links in their tweet, introducing people to new websites or directing people to funny videos or informative web-pages. People can also put up pictures and videos.
I was able to determine this because Twitter users give and receive knowledge to each other through their status updates. The information means something because if somebody was not interested, they would just not follow a particular person or business.


Users attribute value through their interaction with social objects on the site by simply using the site. If a person did not attribute any value to the site, then the person would simply not use twitter. Staying informed about what friends or other people are doing also has sentimental value to people. The direct messages allow friends to have small conversations through tweets. Twitter allows for news that is relevant to each individual person. It is personal news, so that also adds value.


I think the site is successful at bringing people together. Friends can now constantly know what others are up to and it allows for mini-conversations in which you direct a tweet @ somebody. It is how some people get their news and it allows for people to have something in common by sharing the trending topics.

Jyri Engestrom and Social Media

In class on Friday, we watched a video of Jyri Engestrom talking about social objects and social media. He works for google and is unbelievably smart, he even came up with his own social media called Jaiku.

At one point in his talk he says that people are going to want a constant media that they are always connected to. I agree with him. I believe that social media has become such a big part of our lives that people won't know what to do with themselves without it. While admittedly, I am a lazy facebook user (I have one but don't really write on anyones wall or anything) I still check it everyday in the hopes of getting a friend request or seeing if anyone has posted something on my wall. So even if you do not use social media all the time, it is still there and you are most likely a part of it in some way.

Even if people don't realize it, social media plays a part in all of our lives with websites such as Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, and Twitter.

Social Media/Objects in Our Lives

In class we have started talking about social media in our lives. Social media does play a role in my life. The dominating websites are facebook and youtube.

The object of facebook is to keep in touch with friends and family. It is also status updates and chats. There are many different applications to take quizzes, play games, etc. You can post comments, videos, and sounds on each others walls.

The objective of youtube is to share videos. People can share videos with each other, post comments, and rate the videos.

Not About Love

Here is our project!! Finally finished. YAY!!!

We presented our own interpretation of a Fiona Apple song. The lyrics are spoken and the story is told through pictures.

Hope you like it : )

Group Project

Today, my digital video group was finally able to meet to discuss our project. We met for about 2 hours and brainstormed ideas. We were able to come up with a plan to complete the video. We will be telling a story based on a song.

Once we decided on a specific song, we went through the lyrics stanza by stanza and came up with different ideas to represent the images presented in the song. The song is very poetic.

Now it is a matter of gathering the images for the project. That may prove to be more time consuming or difficult than we originally thought, but now that we have a specific plan it should be easier to get things done.