http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200903251136DOWJONESDJONLINE000574_FORTUNE5.htm
This article talks about Blockbuster and Tivo teaming up together to increase both of their sales. This new service would allow people to directly download movies onto their Tivo devices for a fee. Blockbuster stores would in turn sell Tivo machines at their stores to generate profit for both companies. This seems like a great idea to me and would greatly increase my likelihood of paying to rent a movie. With the convenience of netflix and on-demand movies from time warner, blockbuster and Tivo are both suffering and looking for a way to make money.
Everything in life is becoming easier and more convenient, which could make many things obsolete. Movies prices have risen to around $10 for one showing, which is a lot of money to see a movie once. People are starting to opt for more money-conscious ideas of entertainment like movies shown on cable. This is a problem because it could slowly lead to the extinction of the movie industry.
The movie industry isn’t the only media business in trouble with the world’s growing need for accessibility and convenience. Newspapers and journalists everywhere are trying to deal with the low circulation numbers of print newspapers and the growing popularity of online publications. The music industry is struggling with the amount of music being stolen on the internet and the poor sales of CD’s. So this partnership between Blockbuster and Tivo seems like a small step towards the inevitable.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
My Favorite Things
My Favorite Things
I'm going to write some of my favorite things.
- Starbucks coffee
- Snow Days
- OSU football
- sticky rice
- green
- perez hilton
Friday, March 20, 2009
Technology and Physical Fitness
Bailenson, Jeremy, Kayur Patel, Alexia Nielson, Ruzena Bajscy, Sang-Hack Jung, and Gregorji Kurillo. “The Effect of Interactivity on Learning Physical Actions in Virtual Reality.” Media Psychology 11 (2008): 354-376.
My topic for the annotated bibliography was the connection between technology and physical fitness. Although some blame it as the reason for the problem, there are many ways in which technology is helping children fight obesity. Game systems like the Wii and virtual reality are encouraging kids to be active.
This article focuses on the relationship between virtual reality and physical therapy, a type of exercise. It talks specifically about two aspects of virtual reality that are helpful to physical therapy patients: the ability to review what physical behavior and the ability to see one’s avatar in real time from third person points of view. This was a helpful source because the article explores the sub-topic of physical therapy which none of the sources I have found thus far talk about. With the baby boomer generation getting older, physical therapy and technology will become more prominent in society. Technology is used more and more for medical uses. Doctors use microscopic instruments to do surgeries and to diagnose things that you can’t see with the naked eye. As time goes on, I believe technology will become more and more important to exercise. When you go to the rec center at Miami, you can see evidence of technology everywhere. Most people listen to music while working out and track their progress on automated machines. I think this topic is growing and will continue to be prominent in the media.
My topic for the annotated bibliography was the connection between technology and physical fitness. Although some blame it as the reason for the problem, there are many ways in which technology is helping children fight obesity. Game systems like the Wii and virtual reality are encouraging kids to be active.
This article focuses on the relationship between virtual reality and physical therapy, a type of exercise. It talks specifically about two aspects of virtual reality that are helpful to physical therapy patients: the ability to review what physical behavior and the ability to see one’s avatar in real time from third person points of view. This was a helpful source because the article explores the sub-topic of physical therapy which none of the sources I have found thus far talk about. With the baby boomer generation getting older, physical therapy and technology will become more prominent in society. Technology is used more and more for medical uses. Doctors use microscopic instruments to do surgeries and to diagnose things that you can’t see with the naked eye. As time goes on, I believe technology will become more and more important to exercise. When you go to the rec center at Miami, you can see evidence of technology everywhere. Most people listen to music while working out and track their progress on automated machines. I think this topic is growing and will continue to be prominent in the media.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Technology and Lent
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cotown-lent5-2009mar05,0,5041732.story
The pope has put a ban on technology for the 40 days of lent. His reasoning behind this is that people should focus on concrete relationships and less on virtual ones. While this sounds sensible, is it reasonable to ask people to give up their technology? Where is the line drawn? Is just texting not allowed or are cell phone conversations banned too?
The fact that the pope has even taken the time to ban technology shows how important it has become in our current culture. Catholic groups in Italy are calling for a ban on text messaging every Friday of lent. I personally think it’s hilarious that texting is playing a part in religion. There are a lot of people who give up facebook or other social networking sites for lent. This brings up the question as to whether technology is actually something bad that needs to be given up.
Although technology makes our lives much easier in many different ways, there are several who still see it in an unfavorable light. Watching too much TV or playing video games for too long are seen as bad things, and parents often limit their children’s exposure to technology. Poor exercise and diet habits tend to be associated with technology because a lot of times people are immobile when using it. But devices like the Wii fitness have been designed to try to counter the sometimes negative connotation of technology.
The pope has put a ban on technology for the 40 days of lent. His reasoning behind this is that people should focus on concrete relationships and less on virtual ones. While this sounds sensible, is it reasonable to ask people to give up their technology? Where is the line drawn? Is just texting not allowed or are cell phone conversations banned too?
The fact that the pope has even taken the time to ban technology shows how important it has become in our current culture. Catholic groups in Italy are calling for a ban on text messaging every Friday of lent. I personally think it’s hilarious that texting is playing a part in religion. There are a lot of people who give up facebook or other social networking sites for lent. This brings up the question as to whether technology is actually something bad that needs to be given up.
Although technology makes our lives much easier in many different ways, there are several who still see it in an unfavorable light. Watching too much TV or playing video games for too long are seen as bad things, and parents often limit their children’s exposure to technology. Poor exercise and diet habits tend to be associated with technology because a lot of times people are immobile when using it. But devices like the Wii fitness have been designed to try to counter the sometimes negative connotation of technology.
Friday, February 27, 2009
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008782994_milbank25.html
I wasn’t really aware what Congress was doing on Twitter until our last class on Thursday. When our guest speaker showed us the website, I have to say I was suppressing the strong urge to laugh. Some of the “twitterings” of the members of Congress were pretty hilarious. The fact that John McCain is posting things about the sports games he’s watching and his opinions about other members of Congress highly amuses me.
This article talks about Obama’s address on Tuesday night and the fact that his audience was Twittering on their phones instead of listening. This is an example of both the growing prominence technology in our lives and the increasing rudeness of society. We all text in inappropriate places, class, family dinners, church. The politicians present at Obama’s speech are no different then the college students texting their friends in their lecture class. In the days before blackberrys and wireless internet on phones, people would get bored and pass notes or doodle. There’s no way to force our politicians to pay attention when our president speaks, but now hopefully they will be more stealth when twittering.
I think that these members of Congress aren’t familiar with technology and don’t realize who all is reading their Tweets. Because the current young generation has grown up talking on AIM and having facebook and xangas, they seem to be more aware that everyone can and probably is reading what they are posting. By the time kids are in middle school now a days they usually have an awareness of internet privacy and accessibility.
I wasn’t really aware what Congress was doing on Twitter until our last class on Thursday. When our guest speaker showed us the website, I have to say I was suppressing the strong urge to laugh. Some of the “twitterings” of the members of Congress were pretty hilarious. The fact that John McCain is posting things about the sports games he’s watching and his opinions about other members of Congress highly amuses me.
This article talks about Obama’s address on Tuesday night and the fact that his audience was Twittering on their phones instead of listening. This is an example of both the growing prominence technology in our lives and the increasing rudeness of society. We all text in inappropriate places, class, family dinners, church. The politicians present at Obama’s speech are no different then the college students texting their friends in their lecture class. In the days before blackberrys and wireless internet on phones, people would get bored and pass notes or doodle. There’s no way to force our politicians to pay attention when our president speaks, but now hopefully they will be more stealth when twittering.
I think that these members of Congress aren’t familiar with technology and don’t realize who all is reading their Tweets. Because the current young generation has grown up talking on AIM and having facebook and xangas, they seem to be more aware that everyone can and probably is reading what they are posting. By the time kids are in middle school now a days they usually have an awareness of internet privacy and accessibility.
Friday, February 20, 2009
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10168157-92.html
There is a website that has been steadily growing in popularity among college age students in the past 5 years. You might have heard of it, they call it facebook. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t check mine at least once, and I’m sure most Miami Students do the same. The big news about facebook this week was the changes in the terms of use. They changed the terms to say that anything and everything a person posts on facebook belongs to them. While the press release was written in vague language, internet gatekeepers picked up on it. This change caused a huge uproar in the blogosphere. I know I read about the changes on Perez Hilton.com, who was telling his readers to boycott the website. On Tuesday the 17th, Mark Zuckerberg posted a retraction of the new terms of use.
As frequent users of facebook, we have come to expect certain things from the website. The smallest change can incite hundreds of thousands of people joining groups to reverse the change. Earlier in the school year, facebook changed the format to “new facebook” and there were a lot of people unhappy. But in the end, no one really boycotted because how we look at pictures or write out our status’s really isn’t that big of a deal. Privacy is another story though. People take their privacy very seriously, and the new facebook terms interfered. Privacy on facebook is very important for a lot of people. When I was in high school, boys on the basketball team posted pictures of themselves drinking and got in trouble with the school. 10 boys ended up being suspended from the team for 2 weeks and missed the play-offs. There were lawyers and court cases involved and it was very messy. So privacy on facebook is very important and maintaining it for some is very essential.
There is a website that has been steadily growing in popularity among college age students in the past 5 years. You might have heard of it, they call it facebook. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t check mine at least once, and I’m sure most Miami Students do the same. The big news about facebook this week was the changes in the terms of use. They changed the terms to say that anything and everything a person posts on facebook belongs to them. While the press release was written in vague language, internet gatekeepers picked up on it. This change caused a huge uproar in the blogosphere. I know I read about the changes on Perez Hilton.com, who was telling his readers to boycott the website. On Tuesday the 17th, Mark Zuckerberg posted a retraction of the new terms of use.
As frequent users of facebook, we have come to expect certain things from the website. The smallest change can incite hundreds of thousands of people joining groups to reverse the change. Earlier in the school year, facebook changed the format to “new facebook” and there were a lot of people unhappy. But in the end, no one really boycotted because how we look at pictures or write out our status’s really isn’t that big of a deal. Privacy is another story though. People take their privacy very seriously, and the new facebook terms interfered. Privacy on facebook is very important for a lot of people. When I was in high school, boys on the basketball team posted pictures of themselves drinking and got in trouble with the school. 10 boys ended up being suspended from the team for 2 weeks and missed the play-offs. There were lawyers and court cases involved and it was very messy. So privacy on facebook is very important and maintaining it for some is very essential.
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