Archive for category Technology

My First Amendment to Social Journalism

This post is actually a first draft of a research-based essay that I am writing for English class. Since I didn’t really know how to start off this essay with research, I decided to approach the first draft as though it were one of my blog posts, and would hold off on integrating other sources until later revisions (and some initial feedback from my professor). Certainly if you have any constructive criticism, feel free to comment, as it can only help me to produce a stronger final product. Even then, it’s still nice to get my thoughts on this subject out in the open without being constrained by any requirements whatsoever.

Welcome to the end of another decade in American history. That’s right. With all of this “change” stuff sweeping the country this year, perhaps you forgot that the 2010s will be sweeping in in just a few months’ time. Looking back at the 2000s, the “golden millennial decade” (I actually just made that term up), it’s painstakingly obvious that a whole lot has changed in this country in the past ten years. But probably nothing else has changed as dramatically as the media.

Think about it. When the 2000 presidential election came down to a great big mess in Florida, or when the 9/11 attacks happened, how did those stories spread across the country? You most likely heard about those on the TV news, or if you were a bit on the slower side, you read about them in the newspaper. Nouns such as “blogs,” “podcasts,” or “tweets” weren’t even a part of our consciousness yet. Now fast forward to this year. The January 2009 plane landing in the Hudson River first broke on Twitter. This summer, journalists who were barred from covering the controversy and protests following the Iranian elections turned to the internet and social networks to find news postings and online videos from people who were on the ground in Iran. Newspapers across the country are shutting down every week or converting into online-only reporting. People get their news not just from television, radio, and newspapers, but now they also get their news from blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, aggregated news sources via Google, and a whole host of other sources. Not only can they get their news whenever they want from wherever they are, but they now have the power to choose the news they’ll use, and even make it themselves.

“Traditional” news media has realized this, and has attempted to catch up to the trend by trying to get “hip” to this new social media realm, with CNN arguably leading the charge. In 2006, they introduced their “iReport” feature, inviting anyone to submit videos, photos, or just text that they considered newsworthy. CNN would then identify certain iReports that they deemed newsworthy (and claimed to have “vetted” for factual accuracy) to air on their network. Late in the 2008 presidential campaign, CNN also took the lead in broadening out to incorporating existing social networks as well, most notably Twitter, and to a lesser extent, YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace. These moves have definitely been popular, as CNN’s competitors have also hopped on board with their own iReport-equivalents, along with their own use of blogs and social networks. Many people, especially in the tech world (like in this article from Mashable) have praised the networks for adopting and pushing social media forward. But is this big move to social media really pushing journalism and freedom of speech forward? Or is it just using Web 2.0 as a fad to add entertainment value to the news? Or furthermore, is it trading actual, experienced, vetted journalism for cheap crowd-sourced anecdotes?
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Let the OSCONvasion Begin…

The O’Reilly Open Source Convention, better known as OSCON, comes to San Jose next week. And though I’m not usually one to go to big convention-like events (other than the annual State PTA Convention), my reason for going is actually thanks to my connection with the phpBB community via phpBB Weekly. So why is that?

If you’d asked me three months ago if I was going to OSCON, I would have said, “What’s that?” However, ever since the phpBB teams put together the Londonvasion 2008 conference last July in London, I’ve had a desire to organize some kind of a phpBB users meetup event here in the Bay Area. And so, last December, I started a discussion topic with the idea of putting together a users conference here in the Bay Area–a San Franvasion, if you will. That didn’t go very far, though, due to lack of ideas, resources, and money. What can I say? This is the first event I’ve ever been responsible for organizing. You’ve gotta start small to buld up some experience first.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Why I AM Using Twitter

A friend of mine, Daniel Brusilovsky, wrote a piece for TechCrunch yesterday called Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter. And while it’s definitely a well-written post, a good read, and I’m sure the facts about teens being a relatively small number when it comes to Twitter, I personally fall on a different side of the aisle.

Daniel spends a good portion of his post comparing teens’ opinions on Twitter to those of Facebook and MySpace. And granted, there is no dispute that those sites (mainly Facebook, these days) are more popular in the eyes of high school/college-aged teens. But I just don’t fit in the same category. Facebook still feels very foreign to me when I try to use it, yet Twitter is something I practically can’t live without these days, and I’ve been Twittering for two and a half years now. Heck, I now consider my tweets equal in importance to my blog posts, which is why they get equal billing on the home page of my new site. So in response to Daniel’s article, I wanted to take the opportunity to discuss why I am using Twitter and prefer it over the more traditional social networking sites.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , ,

WWDC Reactions Part 2: Mac Announcements

Two days late, two dollars short, but oh well. I still would be remiss if I didn’t finish my reactions to last Monday’s WWDC keynote, this time looking at the announcements made in the Mac realm.

MacBooks Refresh
Man, even six days later, I’m still trying to reconcile the name “MacBook Pro” with the 13″ label. Nevertheless, I’d say that Apple’s decision to make the 13″ aluminum MacBook a MacBook Pro is smart, and makes a lot more sense. Plus, it gives them an excuse to bring back FireWire (yay), make the backlit keyboard standard (yay), and really unify the whole lineup. And finally, the white MacBook can be the only “MacBook” again, rather than being listed on Apple’s site as the “MacBook White,” thus providing some more significant distinction between the “MacBook” and “MacBook Pro.” Not to mention that the latest refresh of the white MacBook actually made it faster than the aluminum MacBook at a cheaper price. And then Apple brought the prices of all of their laptops down, while bumping specs–again a smart move. So overall, can’t complain. Not that it matters to me, my 2 GHz white MacBook from April 2007 is still doing plenty well and I’ll stick with this thing until it drops. And unless I start doing more intensive tasks on here, that won’t be anytime soon.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , ,

WWDC Reactions Part 1: iPhone Announcements

So, Apple’s WWDC happened this past week, and of course, the only part that any non-developer cares about is the big WWDC Keynote that happens on Monday morning. (And maybe, to a lesser extent, the Apple Design Awards. But I digress.) This year’s delivery from WWDC was quite massive, primarily divided into Mac announcements and iPhone announcements. Today, I’ll dwell with my thoughts on the iPhone announcements; my Mac thoughts will be showing up tomorrow.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Deck the Desktops: NORAD Tracks Santa

Christmas Eve is now here, which means that Santa Claus has now begun his 26-hour journey across the planet, reaching every house around the world at midnight local time. He must be glad that mankind invented timezones so that he could spread his daunting task across 26 hours. But what if you want to keep track of him?

Meet NORAD Tracks Santa. While I have no idea if this is really a NORAD activity or people posing as NORAD, for the sake of this review, I’ll go along with the claim that it is. Essentially, NORAD claims to use 47 radar systems, many orbiting satellites (which detect the infrared signature coming off of Rudolph’s nose), a worldwide network of Santa cams, and when Santa reaches North America, a team of fighter jets to keep track of him. The result? On the NORAD Tracks Santa website, you can stay glued to a live-updating Google map that pinpoints Santa’s location every five minutes. Plus, every hour, NORAD releases a video of Santa from their Santa cams along with commentary from one of NORAD’s Christmas Eve Santa trackers.

Tracking Santa is actually a lot of fun, because you can also learn a bit of geography as you follow Santa on his journey. Many of the videos share a number of interesting facts about the places that Santa visits and mention significant landmarks. You can also click on the gift boxes on the map as Santa travels to see pictures of the various locations he visits or click on a link to read more about that location on Wikipedia.

Finally, if you want to try something really fun, you can track Santa in Google Earth. All you have to do is download and install Google Earth and the NORAD Tracks Santa KML file, open it in Google Earth, and every 10-15 seconds Google Earth will fly you along to follow Santa’s path, and even see him in 3D. Very cool.

So why are you still reading this review? Go check out NORAD Tracks Santa, and have a very Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays)!

Deck the Desktops: XmasBotZ Screensaver

The good folks at SkyRocket Software don’t stop delivering their great screensavers, and this year, they’ve got a new one to boot: a very interesting screensaver called XMasBotZ. This screensaver is like having a virtual 3D Santa bobblehead that talks to you, and can even recognize you when you talk to it.

Sound intriguing? Probably not, but read on anyway. This animated Santa head twists and turns in 3D while snowflakes fall in different directions behind him–some of which even fly right off of your screen. You can either set Santa to say various phrases (using the default OS X system voice) every few seconds, or if your Mac has a built-in or attached microphone, it can detect whenever you speak to the computer and Santa will speak right back.

The additional value comes in when you register the screensaver for $5. When registered, you can replace Santa with a snowman, a reindeer, a tree, a star, or a candy cane. (Don’t ask me if the tree, star, or candy cane talk to you; I haven’t registered this so I haven’t tried it.) Or, you can tell the screensaver to pick a random bot among those six. You can also turn on more decorations to go with the snowflakes, such as lights and/or stars. In addition, you can change the background color or add an image, and completely customize what the characters say by creating your own custom phrases and customizing their timing.

So there you have it, another cool screensaver with a talking Santa. If that sounds interesting to you, check it out.

Deck the Desktops: Virtual Fruitcake

It’s Widget Wednesday once again! And what could be better than a widget that doesn’t do anything? Meet Virtual Fruitcake. Just like the real thing, Virtual Fruitcake just sits there, untouched, uneaten, and forgotten. It doesn’t animate, it doesn’t tell you the time until Christmas, it just sits there in its highly-detailed fruitiness. And that’s all there is to it. It’s become a staple part of my Dashboard, just sitting there on the bottom of my Dashboard over the past few weeks, serving as a reminder for why I don’t like fruitcake at all.

Deck the Desktops: PhotoCard

Are you as upset as I am about how Apple killed the iCards service this past summer? At a loss for how you’re going to send out basic Christmas cards via e-mail this year? Is iPhoto’s holiday cards just a little bit overwhelming to figure out? Well then, I’ve got just the solution for you: PhotoCard, a nifty little freeware app for making simple holiday cards.

Okay, PhotoCard isn’t exactly an app that was intended to replace iCards. It was put together two years ago as part of the Holiday Cocoa Duel, but it lives on as a very nice, very simple way of putting cards together. PhotoCard comes with a small set of card templates that you can choose from, and you can also supposedly create your own templates as well, though I haven’t explored how to do this yet. Each template provides a place for you to add a photo and a place for you to write a text message. All you’ve gotta do is drag in a photo, and then move the photo around to arrange its position. A slider in the toolbar lets you resize the photo as needed. Then, write your message in the text box at the bottom of the window, and use the font drop-down, size sliders, text-color palette, and alignment buttons in the toolbar to edit it as you see fit. That’s all there is to it! Just export your card from the File menu, and PhotoCard will save it as a JPEG, ready for you to e-mail or do whatever you see fit.

Now, PhotoCard is obviously not the most full-featured card-creation app out there, and you could easily make much more sophisticated cards using other programs. But then again, iCards were also really basic, despite the plethora of other eCard sites out there. Yet iCards persisted…why? Because they were simple to use and send, and that’s where PhotoCard fits in. About the only major thing left out was a Media Browser to connect straight with iPhoto, but if you’re using OS X Leopard, you can actually work around that limitation: just go to File->Import Photo, and then choose Photos from under the Media section of the sidebar–that’ll get you access to the photos in your iPhoto library right there.

So if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to get photo cards sent out to your friends and family, give PhotoCard a try. It’s free, after all.

Deck the Desktops: Snowfall Screensaver

When it comes to the holidays, there are plenty of screen savers out there to choose from. And so, when Apple picks a particular screen saver to show off in its retail stores, you can bet that’s a pretty big deal. And that’s just what they did a few years ago with the Snowfall screen saver.

Of all of the falling snow apps that I’ve reviewed, this one definitely takes the cake for having the most beautiful falling snow I’ve seen. Snowfall comes with many different types of flakes in many unique shapes and sizes, and as they fall, the twirl around in 3D, and are semi-transparent as they fall over each other. Quite beautiful and guaranteed to turn heads from onlookers observing the falling snow on your screen.

By default, the snow falls on a striped red background reminiscent of the developer’s website, but there are options that let you set whatever background color you like, and you can turn the stripes on or off. You can also change the speed of the falling snowflakes and the snowflake count (which might not be a bad idea since the default settings did get my processor revving up a bit), or you can even choose to bring in a background image instead. Plus, because this screen saver was constructed using Quartz Composer, if you have the Xcode Developer Tools installed, you can actually pop this screen saver open in Quartz Composer and customize it to your heart’s content.

Snowfall is freeware and a beautiful way to add some winter warmth to your Mac.