What Happened To The Semester???

Wow, I can not believe that next week we will be done! I can honestly say that this flewwww by way too fast!!! I must also admit (with my tail between my legs) that I have not done the greatest at updating my blog! Shame on ME!! However for my last post I wanted to share a few things.
1) As a background for those of  you who read this (Shannon) we are required to do a certain number of assignments in this class and one of the assignments was based on search engines. We had assigned topics to search using multiple search engine. First of all, I would highly recommend continuing this assignment! Secondly I learned that although  I considered it to be rather 'out dated' Ask.com is actually competes considerably with my favorite search engine (Google.com). I found that it works very well when you have a question vs a topic it will actually try to answer your question -- and surprisingly it is quite accurate! So kudos on the assignment topic and I now have an new source for information Thanks COMM 180!!
2) We also spent some time  discussing Media Effects. My nerd comes out because I truly love this topic and considered it as major.  Although we only briefly discussed this topic one of my first courses at Penn State was Media Effects with Mary Beth Oliver. She was amazing as instructor and we learn a little more in depth about this broad subject. However this semester I am taking  COMM 405 (HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMEND)  in this course we specifically discuss the ideology and hegemony of media from the roots of mass media until the present. This was by far one of the most eye opening course I have ever taken in my life! I now view every piece of media I consume in such a different light that I don't even know if words can begin to explain. -- We truly take for granted what we consider entertainment and news to be exactly what it is-- but digging below the face value will show you that ALL major media has not only a specific financially agenda or but also as a tool to help further promote certain central ideologies to help promote a power structure that fuels the inequality between classes we see today. It is both interesting and almost sickening to learn the truth in patterns of history within our media system. I would highly recommend that any student take both COMM 405 and COMM 118 because they are classes that will change the way you thing about something that is such a big part of your life: Media.
3) My final little not has to do with yesterday's lecture. I was DISGUSTED to hear that in certain state your camera phone can be turned on without you knowing it! Talk about BIG BROTHER! Where is the line drawn between protection against terrorism and privacy? All I could think of was the move Eagle Eye.  http://youtu.be/55ps9lf6ZGs Amazing movie if you haven't seen it... the basic premise is that the government has created a super computer to help track 'threats'. This super computer has the ability to connect into almost any medium in the United States from cell phones, to street cameras, you name it -- not much different from our current situation. Any way the computer goes awry and considers all of heads of congress a threat against the Constitution and plans an attack against all of them. It's just very scary that nothing seems sacred any more!

I guess that this will be it for me! I have had fun! Thanks to all my readers (Shannon) for following my blog! And thanks Professor Jackson and Assistants for a great semester!!
.... and no more next time ... this girl is OUT!!!

Phone Industry

I tried to avoid posts like these but I guess sometimes they are inevitable... in class we have been discussing the phone industry and data packages-- I would just like to take a moment to talk about my BEEF so to speak with these processes. We took a look at the chart comparing the big 3 companies and their data packs   , I happen to have Verizon. I have been with them for 5 years now yes 5 years because I am old a independent and such. At any rate I have always had a small addiction with cell phones -- some people have a vice for shoes or video games, mine is cell phones I get a new one every 6 months or so and needless to say Verizon has seen A BOAT LOAD of my money. I had a data pack before they were even necessary. I had family share plan and at one point (way back when) you could pay a flat price for every one on your plan to have unlimited data usage -- when I say way back when I mean before smart phones where the norm. Fast forward to now I still have a family share plan with 3 lines all of them are smart phones all of them require a data pack a few months a go I called Verizon because my bill is outrageous I'm talking 330 a month !!! That's like 100 dollars per line!! So I was talking with the rep and I told her about "way back when" and her response "Yeah we got rid of that right around when we introduced all of our Android phones" -- Imagine that!! Luckily though I was grandfathered into the unlimited data for a flat price.  However--- I recently upgrade my phone for you know like the 2nd time this year to a 4G Droid Bionic -- It almost seems as if my service is lacking!?!?! What is going on in the world!!! They force these things upon you, make you buy the additional packages, and just want more and more and more money?!? Do they realize that even though their prices have shot through the roof the average salaries have not??? ughh till next time...

The Film Industry....

Guest speakers in class.... the concept sounds intriguing... however to be quite frank sometimes this idea is an epic fail!!! Many times as soon as it is announced that there is a guest speaker, the immediate following reaction is for half of the class room to leave. I would have to lie if I said I haven't been guilty of being one of the followers in this movement. This was not the case on Thursday however, I was actually interested in our guest speaker! Not because I have a desire to enter the film industry, but because I like learning more about how it all operates. I am actually an avid movie goer and found his information super interesting. I was in fact pretty surprised to learn that Americans do not make up most of the revenue for films. I thought for sure that it was an Americanized type of tradition like baseball that we owned... so I was shocked to learn that is not the case and that the growing market was really across the seas. Who knew!!! As an example of this phenomenon I found this article 'Real Steel' tops overseas box office" and although this movie did OK in the US, the over seas box office sales accounted for an insane 41% of the total revenue!!! That's almost half!  So it is definitely safe to say that we do not attend as many movies as our friends globally.... maybe we can blame it on the recession... Till Next Time...

The Integration Strikes Again!!!

So I know a few weeks ago I was complaining/ discussing about my COMM classes overlapping in topics-- this can be both helpful at times and quite confusing at other. In this case I happy to report a helpful overlap in topics across the board. As stated a few times before I am currently taking 5 COMM classes in one semester (4 classroom setting and 1 internship = insanity!) But I have struck the pot of gold in luck these past 2 or 3 weeks as we are discussing Radio/TV/Music and Broadcasting/Advertising in 3 of the 4 classes!! By the end of these units I should have a view on all these topics from so many different perspectives -- you may as well hand me my doctorate now lol.
But where this has come in SUPER handy is once again the mix of COMM 100 and COMM 180, in both of those classes we are closely examining the structures of the Music/Radio/TV industry, as well as talking about Advertising across all of these mediums. Even further more in BOTH of these classes we have to do online postings in discussion forums. (This is the part where it gets good, at least for the nerds) As Professor Jackson well knows, in 180 we have to both lead and participate in a class discussion online, of course I had to be the first leader in my group. For my posting I choose an article about Facebook's new integration <--- seems to be a theme going here with online-streaming music companies such as Spotify. The article was found in USA Today and explained the new partnership and how it works: basically these online-streaming companies sell subscriptions and for a flat rate usually 4.99 to 9.99 a month customers can access an extensive database of albums and tracks from various musicians, it's almost like Pandora except YOU create your own playlist. A lot of experts predict that these types of services could surpass even digital downloads, basically because you get more bang for your buck -- so to speak. However, these companies have been having trouble getting subscribers, so in a marketing effort they enabled a special feature that would stream what current subscription listeners were listening to directly into their Facebook newsfeed. They call it a "social" way to listen to music, because you could turn your friends on to certain artists (and conveniently advertise for these companies at the same time). If you would choose to click on the songs that your 'friends' were listening to you would be prompted to sign up for a free trial of the subscription service. This is both genius and quite intrusive, as the article mentioned do you really want all of Facebook to know about some of your more embarrassing music selections? And that was exactly one of my online post discussion questions. Not even 2 days after finishing the assignment, I began to work on the online post for COMM 100. The directions are slightly different, you get a choice of 3 different sites to choose from, you find an article, summarize it, and relate it to current class topics. So I browsed through the website to Billboard magazine, because after all we were learning about music and radio this past week. Scrolling along and what do I find but this lovely headline Spotify Launches 'Private' Mode in Response to Facebook Backlash !!! As if that was not a sign from a higher educational god,  it was practically an answer to my own discussion question in the NEWS. Obviously I was meant to choose this article for my posting and -- I did, the article, as the headline pretty much sums up, there was an almost instant response from users, forcing the companies to also offer a "Private Mode". I don't think that this is going to be very proactive for their original plan to draw in new users-- however it did make an interesting set of posts/blogs for me! So sorry to the streaming companies whose plan was cut short-- but big ups to me for putting all of these things together in a nice little blog post for your enjoyment! Till next time...

Den den den dennn The EXAM!!

So this weeks posting HAS to be extremely short, because apparently I have been doing more work on this blog than studying the material. I most certainly BOMBED the first exam, I got in there and everything looked like a foreign language. It has taken me about a week to get over it but I am slowly recovering. Now I must study COMM 180 of course... and will have more to say next week.  Till next time....

So last week was an A plus this week.... ehhhh ....

So it is bound to happen when you are taking 6 classes.... TWO-A-DAY-EXAMS.... such a dreaded word (yes it should be added to Webster's as one word because after the amount of coffee, espresso, sugar, you intake preparing for them; lots of things begin to sound like one word!)  I find myself in the middle of such a high right (or verge of heart failure) as we speak because in less than 11 hours I will find myself taking one of two COMM exams.... you would think that the similar courses would make life easy... FALSE! Although they are so extremely related that I choose to touch on some of the specifics later on in this post, they are also very different. COMM 100 is more of the basics of our Mass Media and our society, however many times you can find pieces of COMM 180 material throughout the course, COMM 180 focuses much more in-depth on the technically aspects of media. While studying, I find myself blending the two together, and envisioning going in the first exam which of course happens to be for this class (hence the heavy sarcasm in my loving title) -- and only being able to focus on the broader topics from my later COMM 100 class. To someone who has no time for failure and is desperately trying to get what takes most 4 years to do  done in 2 and 1/2  this vision is worse than those bad dreams where you forget to put pants on before you leave the house!! I considered this to be my break from the chaos of finding the distinctions, most important keynotes, and separate terms from each class -- a break, some break huh! (See the afore mentioned chaos in the picture above).
In following with the nerd that I must already seem to be - taking a break from studying to do homework ( extra credit homework at that)- I may as well take this time to share even more homework. In my COMM 100 class we have the assignment of choosing an article from 3 selected websites and summarizing it in an online posting.  Our choices are Billboard Biz Industry News, Variety, and The News Room for Free Press. It is encouraged to find an article that one of the other 370 students did not post on, that said I went straight for the Newsroom for Free Press site and scanned through the first page of articles. And suddenly a rather long dull sounding title pops of the page :Study: Wireless Networks Hamstring Your Smart Phone - followed by a the subtitle Deep PACKET Inspection Crippling one Carrier's Speed by 50%. Light bulbs and bells started going off. I actually know what they are talking about in this article, where as a week ago I had no clue. Even more intriguing I found the article interesting. To try to some it up in a much more condensed version (or compressed if you will): Researches developed an application to study the effectiveness of different cell phone carriers network management. They found that one major carrier is buffering it's own packets, adding extra noise, which slows down delivery of data and drains your battery.  As vain or possible unintelligent as it may make me seem, depending on how you take it, I was beyond impressed with my self for lack of better words I thought I was the sh!t ! Not only did I fully understand what just a month ago would of seemed like techno babble, I was also able to arrive at my own, well informed, and fluent conclusion. I can't really break my professor-student privileges, so only he will get to read such a dynamic piece of work. Sorry. But you get the point, the thrill of education and it's applications has once again brought out the nerd in me. Maybe its time for a real break... Till next week.... Me

Amazingly... I survived!!!

So the last time I posted I was about to embark on an adventure that was completely uncharted territory and its safe to say... I survived!! And I actually had some fun. We left on Saturday afternoon and met a friend at  camp.... of course it was time for the usual camping time activities or rather the only real one--- a fire!!! Accompanied by a few adult beverages it was quite the cozy setting, until it started to rain. But have no fear there was no need for technology... we simply moved inside and had some of the most insane conversation that I have had in a while. My boyfriend, his best friend, and I discussed everything from relationships, to the distribution of wealth in our society, to (I couldn't make this up) technology. We talked about how far and dependent we have become on things like smart phones, and why if we have the most surreal handheld devices -- have we never gone back to the moon? My boyfriend and his friend are big believers in the theory that we have never actually made it to the moon, and I must say after this particular conversation ( and maybe a few more adult beverages) I started to agree. We discussed how the concept version of the iPhone 5 seen here, can do thing holographically, yet we have had not really made manned missions to space for years??? That somehow lead to the theories of Mayans and Aliens-- How did they build such precise and mathematically genius buildings with out machines? Needless to say Day one went smooth and was full of very interesting topics. On to Day 2, with good conversations, great friends, a happy 5 year old, a dog and family breakfast, I can honestly say the only thing that bothered me about not having a media, was my phone for the time. Somehow I became very in tune with time and nature and was always accurate with in half an hour!! On Day 2 we got to really enjoy the good weather, we went hiking, and swimming, of course that had to be followed by another fire! With so much going on, all while nothing was really going on, the last thing on my mind was any form of media.... okay so I did slip up I had to put a movie on for my daughter to go to bed, I was only around the taboo contraband long enough to press play! All and all my 48 hours was rather smooth, and surprisingly extremely relaxing... there was something comforting about having no contact with outside world, all you had was the moment you were in, and the serenity that surrounded you. Looking back I would of loved to used my slip up on a camera, I would have loved to share the view with you!!! It is truly amazing and peaceful.  I never thought I would say this but... I am so glad I choose to actually participate in this assignment rather than lie my way through!!! Thanks COMM 180 for the mini vaca.... Till next time ...