Comparisons Blog

For those of you who do not know, these were the 4 news sites/blogs I reviewed over the course of this class:

http://abcnews.go.com/ (national)

http://new.northcountrynow.com/ (local)

http://blog.flickr.net/en (blog) I got hooked on flickr last semester with digital photojournalism

http://hawtymcbloggy.com/ (specialty) video game news, blog, fun

I chose these 4 sites for several reasons. I wanted great diversity in all of the sites/blogs and I also didn't want them all to be immediately recognized by everyone. They are also sites/blogs I regularly scope out, so I have background knowledge of the content, what their general purposes are and who their target audience is.

The first site; http://abcnews.go.com/ is my main news source I chose since I feel it has less of an agenda than some other news sites out there. I also chose it for its simple and effective layout. In this day and age with the internet there is no excuse for major company's of any type to have a lousy website. ABC news has a great layout where there are several options to navigate to what news you want to know about. The top navigation bar has broad categories including world news, money, health, entertainment, travel and tech. If you scroll to the bottom of the page these sections are shown again, but with mini headlines to choose from. This makes their website super easy to find whatever you want to know. Of course it also has a search option and links to their news programs on tv. Another thing major websites are doing is having quick links to social networking sites such as twitter, facebook and blogs. The simplicity of being able to link content from their site to one of your own is effortless. The actual news is solid as well. It is almost impossible to surf this page and not be satisfied with anything in the stories national or world wide. The video page also makes it easy to watch the news if one doesn't have time to read huge articles.

The second news site (local) I chose was north country's own http://new.northcountrynow.com/. This site has its share of layout issues but isn't all that bad if you decide to take some time and search for what you are looking for. The layout problems I noticed are the following; there are way too many ads on the top and side of the page. I understand that St. Lawrence county may not be the richest place in the world but all the ads distract the eyes and take away from the overall experience. The site also struggles with font issues since they make headlines random colors and sometimes make a lot of them red which is a color of warning or panic when talking about news. They should stick with simple black or a soothing blue. Another issue is the way headlines and stories are found. Much of the news is just in order from when the site decided to post them, so there is a lot of vertical scrolling up and down the site to try and find exactly what you are looking for. There is a vertical navigation bar on the left side of the page but it could be bigger and look a little more professional. The way they present the headlines is actually one of the better features of the site. They have a small blurb of what the story is about, so readers can decide to read the full article or not without just basing their knowledge on headlines alone. There is a search feature which works fine and also gives you an option to search for local news outside of northcountrynow.com which is good. The main drawback to this site has to be the video section. When you click the video link all it gives you is an alphabetical list of videos with no date or preview. It is really frustrating, since I feel it should be arranged by date and topic rather than just name.

http://blog.flickr.net/en is the blog I decided to follow since I'm big into photography and flickr is a very effective tool for photographers to post pictures and share ideas. The best thing about this blog is that there is very little text. It is primarily images posted from users that fit into specific categories. This is how a photo website should look in my opinion. It is very easy to look at the blog for the day and be inspired to take photos yourself and get great ideas or think differently. When I go on their blog I am either blown away or think to myself 'wow, I wish I would have thought of that'. The benefit of this layout is that it is how visual people want there information; with visuals. I sometimes go to other photo websites with lots of articles and information but it is pictures I really want to look at. I sometimes go to flickrs blog and create my own photoshop actions based on what I see. For someone like myself who uses photoshop a lot, flickr is the perfect place to get feedback on what is and what isn't working with your own art. The people on flickr are also very nice and always willing to help someone with questions. My photostream is of course http://www.flickr.com/photos/nckf55/

My final specialty news/blog is http://hawtymcbloggy.com/. This site is primarily used for entertainment in the video game world, but also includes news on upcoming games and events. For someone looking for a timeout to work or stress, it is nice to have a place to just laugh and be entertained. Let's face it, some news can be fun! Just because this site doesn't have real world politics or talk about life issues doesn't mean it has no value. People need to be engaged by something that isn't depressing like much of the news today. I go to this site and smile. I also get useful information about things I like as hobbies rather than school or work. People watch television and movies to escape reality from time to time and I prefer to play video games. This blog keeps me wrapped up in the areas of life that aren't so serious which is great.

As far as all of these sites go, I feel that they all have specific audiences. Some are for hardcore news while others are for art or play. Just because a blog doesn't talk about Obama 24/7 does not mean it should be ignored. Of the top websites visited in the US, the only one that is primarily news is CNN.com. CNN.com barely broke the top 20 and is at number 18. Sites like youtube, facebook and wikipedia are all in the top 10. What does this say about new media journalism? It says that although most people say traditional styles are dying, many people ignore that and still get their news from other sources besides the internet.

Fall Classes

So after about a month of panic, I've finally paid my fall bill and unfortunately am only taking 9 credits this coming semester. I was hoping to graduate this fall, but 2 courses I need are on ly offered in the spring. These are the three classes I'm taking in case any of you gmmd 409 students are in the same class as I am; Visual Programing & Dev Tools (CITA 342), Digital Illustration and Typography (GMMD 395), and Experimental Digital Video (GMMD 412). I'm looking forward to the gmmd classes since they are right up my alley, but the cita class sounds like more computer programming stuff which I'm not all that familiar with. The benefit of my schedule is that it opens up time for me to look for a job and do more art in my free time. I was hoping to take a lot of photos and do illustrations this summer but things haven't panned out as planned. This New Media Journalism class is coming to and end and I kind of liked doing this blog. I don't think it will be something I will do regularly after this class is over but in the future I could see myself working on a blog that is art/photo related. I already own nickfinger.blogspot.com but it is empty. I hope to use it sometime once I have a massive portfolio and consistent work. The one thing I did notice while taking this class is that a lot of the information I get online is in fact in blog form. Much of the content online that I'm interested uses some sort of blog to present their news or media. I think it is a good format because it is so simple to follow.

-Nick

(comic is from http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/ )

New Camera

I got a new camera today and am pretty psyched to use it. It is a Nikon D200 and it should be the last camera I will own for quite some time. It came with a bottom mount for extra battery use and vertical shooting which is nice. The only thing that I don't like, is the size with the mount attached but that's ok. I suppose having a flash that is actually compatible with this camera counteracts that previous negative note. No more rubber banding white paper over the light to compensate the maximum flash it always gave out. I downloaded a video guide and smart guide to get me started with the new features, but I have a feeling I will get used it quick. I've previously used the D1, and D70 which have similar layouts and menus. Apparently one of the cool features on the D200 is that a lot of old things that were only accessible through the menus are now just on dials or buttons to make it easier than constantly having to look at the mini lcd. Hopefully later this week I will take it on the road and capture some good images.

-Nick

http://ifocus.fr/annonces/images/media_0.807916001253473532.jpg

(this pictures doesn't show the bottom mount)

Gas Leak

So last night I thought my apartment had a gas leak. I was in my room playing some Halo, when I noticed a horrible smell. I walked out to the living room and something was downright putrid. I went upstairs and the odor was lingering there as well. I decided I was just freaking out and went back to internet stuff. About half an hour later I noticed the smell was still around and very strong. I didn't want to panic, but I did remember a few months ago when an old roommates mother commented how the apartment smelled like it may have a leak. So I googled what I should do and I decided to call the fire department. They immediately rushed over with a fire truck and 2 other support vehicles. I must have pissed the neighbors off pretty good since this was all at 1 am. Flashing lights, bright signal lights and a crew of firefighters outside that late on a Sunday can't be fun for anyone. After about half an hour they decided there was no leak and that it was most likely a brutal war amongst skunks. They even thought I had a skunk inside the house since the odor was that repugnant. Boy did I feel like an asshole. I suppose it is better to be safe than sorry but I really did want to bury my head in the ground. I talked to the St. Lawrence Gas official who came over and he said that about 1/3 of the gas leak calls they receive are in fact dangerous, and that I indeed did the right thing by calling. Plus he said he was on some board of directors for a program at SUNY Canton which was interesting. That was the only real highlight of yesterday. Tomorrow I'm going to start editing more pictures for a client who wants some real pizazz done to the images.

Bye for now, Nick

Oh Photoshop, When Will You Learn?

http://www.aish.com/v/is/91361839.html

I find more and more of this everyday and it really starts to eat away at me. How can legitimate news sources be doing this so abundantly. The morals of these people must not exist. It seems I'm discovering at an alarming rate that news is purely pointless BS and that it is hard to believe anything you hear on the news anymore. Hell, who knows if the BP crisis was done intentionally to avert eyes away from Obama or North Korea or something. We believe what we see but that isn't good enough. Being skeptical is how I live my life constantly and that is pretty sad. All these big cooperations (yes news networks and newpapers, etc) only care about ratings and money. They will do anything in their power to just get a reader or someone to watch a video online. At least that way the viewer gets to watch some bogus swiffer sweeper ad before the news.

You'd better get some Old Glory Insurance

That's right, robots are taking over the world and here is proof.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfPkHU_36Cs

This 'smart' asimo seems even a bit primitive to what I thought it would be able to do. Soon the computers vision will become much more integrated and allow it to become more receptive of people and objects. If you can program this robot to see, then showing it emotions is simply the first step of 'understanding' emotion. Also if this asimo is designed to think and make decisions, how far into the future are we just living through brainwaves and having a device do things for us. The video does mention how scientists might be able to give a non living thing an imagination. How fast would an artificial imagination grow and out think us?

Texture

Adam Gardam commented how I shouldn't be bored with a new computer a CS5 so I decided to agree with him and play with some new textures. I'm not totally happy with the outcome but it was still only something to play with rather than make perfect. I'm still experimenting with features and layer blending to accomplish what I really desire. This is what I came up with. It is a bit grungy but I think that it works.

Eatin' Dust

Besides work and school this summer, things are is still a bit bland. There are a limited amount of people in the area I know who are here for the summer and having no computer for the longest time has made me stagnant. To counteract this idling of activity I hop on my bike and hit the trails. I've been trying to mountain bike the single track trails at Clarkson every day that the weather is nice. In case people didn't know, Clarkson has an extensive trail system behind its campus. They are moderately challenging with some fast to technical single track. There are also some man made jumps and obstacles along the way. I also sometimes ride to Hannawa falls to use their trail system. I still use a tattered old mongoose I've had since I was like 14, but its trustworthy shocks and custom parts keep me zooming. Riding my bike gives me time to think about life and my art as well as keep me in shape. Some of the pictures on my flickr page were things I discovered while on rides. I'm currently working on some photos I took Wednesday. Fiddling with textures to compliment the image will hopefully bring nice results.

Weddings

I'm editing another album for a client and this one should be a breeze. 30 pages of easy layouts and enhancing. Life has been pretty boring in Potsdam this July but the internet has been keeping me busy. Trying to find ways to optimize my new computer and cs5. I have so many floating files here and there that either need to be moved or just trashed. There is a program for all you mac users that removes the caches of browsers and files called 'cache out'. Here is the link http://www.trilateralsystems.com/cacheoutx/ . If anyone was wondering what my old computer did I finally have pictures.

this was the initial crash

this means the computer is fried and dead

Breaking News! Hail in the North Country (News Assignment)

Windshields beware! Hail has come pounding down from the sky as big as one inch in diameter. This massive storm has knocked down trees and flooded streets all across the region. Lawns are littered with ice in chilling display of mother nature. There is a severe thunderstorm warning in all of St. Lawrence County so drive only if necessary. Conditions are terrible with very limited visibility. National Grid customers have reported several power outages in the region and all of western New York. When the storm began around 4 pm EST the warm temperature dropped several degrees. Hail still remains on some lawns and it almost looks like winter weather. Below are some pictures I took of the storm as it progressed.

BP Photo Fun!

http://www.americablog.com/2010/07/bp-photoshops-fake-photo-of-command.html

This article from another blog is disturbing and thought provoking. It reminds me of another photo I saw a few days ago of Obama on the cover of The Economist which photoshoped other people out.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/06/economist-defends-photosh_n_636034.html

There is also a hilarious video from Stephen Colbert about the topic here:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/340907/july-07-2010/the-economist-photoshops-obama-s-picture

Although I use photoshop regularly to make my images stronger or more visually appealing, do it for art, not news. It is hard to think about how many images we perceive to be real when in in fact they are manipulated to make viewers think something else. If major news or content providers change what we see and think then who is to say they aren't just changing the news entirely. The truth is hard sometimes, but actions like this go on every day. If cooperations are lying about news, then why not just make everything up. Just sugar coat all crappy news so we can go back to watching double rainbow videos.

It is pretty cool that all the links I just posted aren't really blogs but have the same format. Most good websites are storing archives of content for repeat viewings and their own online encyclopedia. I've been able to check out the flickr blog http://blog.flickr.net/en lately to get some inspiration. The last month I've been pretty stagnant about posting new things to my photostream mostly because I haven't had time to take pictures. Hopefully that is something I will do this week. Their site is trying to update as well so it's kind of annoying beta testing the new design while it changes features. Oh well, it will probably be more universal in style or something. Time to edit another wedding album for a client.

Till we meet again, Nick

Tinkering

I've been playing with the templates and design features of blogspot. Although the features are limited I've managed to make my site a nice blue with custom colors. There are so many simple things this site could do to totally dominate the blogging traffic but for some reason they went for the yahoo customs approach rather than the well... anything better. How come I can't easily change my background or add more fonts. Oh well, for now I'm satisfied. At least I'm not using impact for a font.

Popcorn

I recently watched a few movies while I was away with a friend of mine and his girlfriend. The flicks on the list were 'Funny People', 'Blood Diamond', 'The Men Who Stare at Goats', and 'The Gangs of New York'. I enjoyed them all but 'Funny People' was my favorite of the bunch for some reason. The movie seemed very real and the casting was flawless. I also liked the comradery between the characters, It really made them develop fully. The other thing I noticed during these viewings was that my friends girlfriend made popcorn every single night. And not just like a little bit of popcorn. I'm talking huge bowl of popcorn made in a giant caldron. She only eats half of it and every night heaps of buttered goodness gets thrown out. Back home I've been watching videos online since I don't have cable. Youtube, hulu, dailymotion, news networks, streaming videos, etc all have advertising. You can't watch anything online anymore without some sort of 15 second ad. Yet the one thing that is never advertised is popcorn. Think about it.

Sayonara

Back Home

I've been away from St. Lawrence Country for a while and I'm finally home. Hours of driving has ended and I can finally do daily posts to this blog. It was quite a burden when the only real access I had to the internet was my friends phone. I was at a friends wedding on Friday and it was great seeing old friends and partying in style. The only drawback was living at friends places and driving countless hours to various cities in and around NY. I was so happy to pull into my parking lot last night and plug in my new Intel Core 2 Duo Mac and surf the net with ease. Unfortunately, something had mysteriously broke with my netgear, and I talked on the phone with customer service from time warner and netgear. After about 3 hours I finally have ridiculously fast internet on this computer and my xbox. It was worth the wait. I've been wanting to edit photos, update my flickr page and write in this blog, but summer time is always frantic. I've already been to 2 bachelor parties and one wedding. In early August I'm going to another. I probably have lots of stories of madness and mayhem but this blog isn't about cocktail stories. During my time without a computer I actually wrote down some thoughts I had about this class and new media journalism in general. It mainly covers my opinions on the internet completely taking over, and what it means to those who can't regularly use a computer.

The internet is probably one of the greatest tools on earth. You can do work, art, video, music, taxes, planning, etc. and this of course is even before one is hooked up with sweet sweet internet. If you have the internet, you can literally find out anything you need to know about... well ANYTHING. It is almost impossible to have a problem you can't resolve yourself with information you can gain online. Many people can work from home or on the road just because they have an internet connection. But do bloggers and internet media journalists lack the traditional setting? I was writing one post for this class at a friends house and I'm sure it could have been longer and more detailed if it weren't for one thing. His dog was climbing on my lap and jumping on my leg the whole time. Does this mean that one without an actual office is more likely to find distractions while working? I find that working at a library is easier and more efficient than working at home sometimes.

I also previously talked about auto spell check with this site and others. Does this make students smarter or lazier? I thought about it for a bit and I have to say it makes students smarter only if the word isn't changed for them. If you consistently spell a word wrong, you are forced to google it and find the actual spelling. I do that from time to time and have learned to spell tricky words properly.

The other major thing I noticed while writing in my little pad was that my hand writing is horrendous. I never hand write anything long anymore and I think I'm not alone. All school papers are to be handed in printed out or submitted in email. That requires zero hand writing. I look at older generations hand writing and there is almost a subtle art in the grace of pen on paper. I can barely even read what I write myself.

My news story will come early this week since I've been away for so long. Expect daily or semi daily posts from here on out.

Ssshh *points to the no talking sign*

I'm at the library again so I can use the internet. I am really starting to pull my hair out about not having the net, but I need to be patient. Sunday will come soon enough. I've been working non stop lately on an album for a client (I make wedding albums) and finished the 40 pager in 24 hours. I was already behind because of my lack of internet and ability to get the files. The one thing I do like is my new computer and photoshop CS5!!! I really like the new bridge and the new photoshop. My only beef so far was its lack of the pdf presentation making. Adobe completely removed that feature from photoshop and made it disgustingly annoying to use in bridge. They really needed to keep the simple format of the old one and perhaps just added an 'advanced' option for those who want to tinker with templates. Besides that and some other moved tools I really like the new features. Tools such as smart sharpen and shadow/highlight are more reliable and don't blow things out of wack like they used to. I'm going to a Jewish wedding on Friday in LI which should be fun. Hopefully I will be able to reach a computer tommorow and continue blogging. If not, expect SUNDAY to be bloggin FUNDAY.

-later losers (jk), Nick

Comparison Assignment

For this assignment, you will need to pick one current news story. Follow coverage of this story in a print newspaper, a television news program, and an online news site. In a blog entry, critique each medium's coverage and offer a summary of the strengths and weaknesses.

I've decided to talk about the Gulf oil spill since it is so easy to find news about it. I personally haven't followed much of the disaster since it's so frustrating to me. It has been like month and still nothing is getting done. I noticed on cnn.com there is a whole front page section that leads to various news stories about the subject. People want to know about the spill and know about it right away. CNN is cleary smart by placing this area on their home page. Other obvious front page articles were about the World Cup. On tv I've noticed that it is still major talk but doesn't take the leading story as I feel it shouldn't. More current events should take the first story. For an online news site I decided to go against the grain and search google for 'online news' instead of like abc.com or foxnews.com or something. On the second page I found http://breakingnewsonline.net/ which might be the most bogus site I've been on since like 2004. It has a horrible layout and terrible pictures. I honestly couldn't even find anything about the spill on the front page which has like 50 articles about current news. I then decided to check the world page and nothing came up. Also, you can only search for something on the homepage as well which is a bad layout decision. This is page it gave me when I finally did do a search for 'gulf oil spill'... http://www.google.com/custom?domains=www.breakingnewsonline.net&q=gulf+oil+spill&sa=Search&sitesearch=www.breakingnewsonline.net&client=pub-6677911189251509&forid=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&safe=active&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23336699%3BVLC%3A663399%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3A336699%3BALC%3A0000FF%3BLC%3A0000FF%3BT%3AF8FAFB%3BGFNT%3A0000FF%3BGIMP%3A0000FF%3BFORID%3A1&hl=en
See for yourself how lousy this site is. It is amzing that this site even exists and there is definately a reason people stick to the more common news sites. Till tommorow, Adios!

Sunday 7.11.10

I'm sitting here writing this at my friends computer in Glenmont, NY. The house that I'm staying at still has no internet and the town library here is closed on Sundays for whatever reason. On Friday I brought my dead computer to the Apple store and they can salvage my hard drive which was a great sigh of relief. Limited internet access is truely annoying as I was so used to it for every bit of information. I don't have a phonebook so even the most simple task of looking up numbers has become difficult. I will try to keep blogging as much as I can but once I get my new computer things will be much better. Cheers, Nick.

Bloggin about Blogger

This is the first time I've used this site to create a blog yet millions do it (I assume millions). I do have some complaints about the site though. How is it that a major website that has been used for years still has basic problems. Let me tell you about some. First off you can't click hyperlinks unless they have www. in front of it. You can only copy and paste things in your post with the 'Edit Html' feature. There is no auto spell check in the posts. These three things are so standard on the internet these days it is amazing this site has not implimentdd (oops I mispelled that last word, time to use google I guess...) them. That is my only real complaint today because if people are going to make a transition to new media outlets, the sites should be up to date and use features that make sense.

Fun times with my old friend

It has been a week without blogging for GMMD409 but with good reason. My friend has finally passed on. Don't cry yet though, it is just my old imac G4 that has kicked the bucket. I've had the same 21" computer for 6 years now and it has brought my countless hours of joy, work, movies, etc, etc. This is also the reason I haven't been able to update this site or any others such as my flickr account. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nckf55/ It is funny how I've become so dependent on the internet and my computer. I feel completely lost without the ability to surf anywhere, anytime. I'm writing this post from the Potsdam library (which was closed all weekend and Monday which is why this posting is late) and realizing that a lot of people still don't have regular internet access. Everyone is talking about how new medias are changing the world and will completely dominate old media. I am looking around at people reading the newspaper, magazines and using the internet here for whatever the reason, and I ask myself, how long will this transition take? How can one read blogs, twitter or usatoday online if their computer is busted or can't afford internet? (more on this to come)

I figure I should explain what happened to my computer incase any of you out their are wondering what exactly occured. My computer has suffered the dreaded 'grey screen of death' which is also known as a kernel panic. Fun stuff! Well not really since it essentially means my hard drive has crashed and burned and I need professionals to recover my files. About a week and half ago I was out of town with my computer and I noticed the screen went funky (like when you press the screen on a calculator) but thought nothing of it. I restarted and the problem went away. Then on friday my monitor went crazy for no reason and a black box told me to restart my computer or ELSE! I did... it did not turn back on... I tried again with simliar failure and a perminant grey screen which never goes away... ever. I will finally have a new computer friday, but until then expect somewhat slow response times and infrequent posts.

The four online news sources I am going to follow are;

http://abcnews.go.com/ (national)

http://new.northcountrynow.com/ (local)

http://blog.flickr.net/en (blog) I got hooked on flickr last semester with digital photojournalism

http://hawtymcbloggy.com/ (specialty) video game news, blog, fun

..and of course check out my websites;

www.nickfinger.weebly.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nckf55/

till next time

-Nick