Linking out to gain a profile

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Tim Chapman

I have learned a lot in Networked Media, but probably the one thing that stands out is the hyperlink. I would see these used all the time on websites and blogs, yet I never looked into how to actually create them! I know, I should’ve just googled it. But in this course I have not only learned about hyperlinks, but I’ve also learned more about hypertext and how to best use it, how to link one site to a another site in order to increase you visibility on the net.

In the future I would like to work in the TV or radio scene, and I can see how these principles could be utilised in order to gain valuable results. For example, if I was in charge of promotions at a local radio station, understanding how to make our video page optimised for search engines, how to use hyperlinks to link to not only another page but also to many of our pages, or even just knowing how networks operate and grow would all be vital information and help me do my job to the best of my ability.

Obviously I’ve got a lot more to learn in that area, but I really feel that Networked Media has given me a good platform to move forward from. A bit of a launching pad I guess you could call it…

Also, check out another reflection on the Networked Media course by Jake Farfoud.

Time and Passion

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Tim Chapman

I wish media projects wouldn’t take so much time to complete! I am keen to make more short clips and interesting content in the future for my Church and other places, but the obstacle I always come up against is time! It’s like, ‘Oh I’ve got a great idea for my next project!’ And then as the excitement resides a little it’s then that I remember… ‘Dang, that’s gonna take ages to make.’

But, I think I’m finding that the more I do it, the better I become, and also the quicker that I get at producing, editing, and completing. I guess it’s similar to so much in life, practice makes you better. The more familiar you come to your equipment and editing techniques, the easier each project will become.

I reckon it all comes down to passion. Passion is where your project begins and ends. If you don’t have passion for what you are doing, it’s gonna be a chore. But if you do have passion, you will put in the work to get the result you are after. We need passion to persevere! Steve Jobs talks about passion in the realm of internet companies, and I think it relates to media production too:

It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.

Very true.

Week 3.2 Symposium on Hypertext Narrative

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Tim Chapman

The Wednesday workshop of week 3.2 felt a little bit of a hump day of sorts for me. After this class, we would have a full week off due to the Australia Day holiday on the Monday, and we would also be exactly half-way through the Summer Semester!

But let’s not get too carried away.

In this symposium we were tackling the topic of hypertext narratives. It was mentioned that hypertext is quite a unique technology, and therefore cannot be compared to print media. The hypertext narrative must be treated as its own entity.

A question was then raised about why we need or would want a text with no clear meaning? And I must say that I struggle with this notion as well. If we direct the meaning of a text, then what’s the point of us reading it? If I’m the one designing or determining the storyline, then it kinda loses the significance in my eyes. I may as well be the author of the book, writing it for another’s enjoyment. When I’m reading a book, I’d probably rather that someone else has placed the contents together in a way that they feel would be best for me.

I dunno, maybe we’re just so used to books, magazines, newspapers and print media in general. Or is it just human nature to want something definite, rather than having a choice of how a narrative might end? Maybe we’ve been trained to just be passive readers, and therefore we have trouble adapting into the active reader mindset?

I guess it comes back to viewing print media and hypertext in a different light to each other. Hypertext is fluid, whilst print text is stationary. They do differ, so there must be a place for both these days. We just need to learn to enjoy and value the unique qualities of both.

You should also read Jake’s enlightening post, Reconfiguring Narrative.

The Long Tail of Online Sales

Posted on January 25, 2014 by Tim Chapman

What if the top hits of the entertainment scene were not the biggest revenue raisers? In the Long Tail reading for this week, Chris Anderson suggests that this may well be the case for many online sellers.

Websites such as Amazon, eBay, and iTunes have discovered that there is strong demand for not only the hits, but also for the many lesser-known items, alternative music, and second-hand products. The hits might only make up a small portion of total choices out there, but the rest of the market goes on for a long, long way – thus Anderson speaks of it as ‘The Long Tail’.

A great example of the Long Tail sales making up a large portion of online purchases is on the huge online site, Amazon.com. As Anderson points out:

More than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles.

Anderson shares a 3 point guide to how online entities are seeking to gain the most out of the Long Tail:

1. Make Everything Available

2. Cut the price in half. Now lower it.

3. Help me find it

A music streaming site that has really put these three rules into action very well would be Spotify.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/abulhussain/4349671648/

To begin with, Spotify has made many tracks available to the music fan. In fact, there are countless artists and genres to choose from! And best of all, it’s free! They have followed the rule of keeping the Long Tail as cheap as possible, gaining their revenue from the advertising that airs between songs. And lastly, they do their best to ensure that listeners can find the lesser-known music by suggesting various artists that they may also enjoy.

Spotify boasts a Discover page which shows various artists that you have listened to lately, and for each artist it suggests lesser-known artists that you might like based on their similar sound or genre. This is a great way of plugging the Long Tail, and giving some of the not-so-famous music some airtime and followers.

Just one cog in the chain…

Posted on January 21, 2014 by Tim Chapman

Week 3.1 Symposium

You may think of writing as an individual task that we do on our own. If this is the case, think again!

Monday’s symposium made me think again. We discussed how through the rise of hypertext, we now need to write with the awareness that we are writing as part of a larger discourse. It’s not just the content that I’m creating, because my content is just one chunk of many other texts on the internet that can all be related, linked, and read together.

The little network we have amongst our class is a great example of this. We are all writing our own posts and creating our own work, yet we are constantly linking to each other’s posts. We read one post then follow the link to another post and read what they have to say. In this way, we are encountering a larger discourse, not just each individual article that we read.

And through hypertext and hypermedia, we as readers can become active readers not just passive. We can direct our own reading, choose which link we will click on, and have an endless reading experience if we so desire.

Another topic that came up in the symposium was that creative discourse is a collaborative task. Our input joins up with other online contributions to form the discourse.

And I feel that a great example of this in our course would be our wiki pages. We are working in groups of three or four people to create a creative, informative wiki page about the topic we have been given. We each contribute our own work onto the wiki, and as we do this the finished product is achieved.

It is an interesting process to work with others to achieve the desired outcome, but it is an activity that we are involved in every time we post onto our blogs. We are part of a much larger discourse than we may imagine, and our input adds to the rich, diverse, range of opinions and perspectives that floats around the World Wide Web.

Wednesday Symposium week 2.2

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Tim Chapman

The temperature hit 41 degrees on Wednesday for our Networked Media workshop, but inside RMIT it was a very comfortable 20 degrees. In fact, I almost had to grab a jumper it was that cool! The attendance was a little light on due to the weather, but for me uni was the best place to be on a day like that.

The symposium was a useful time of discussion as we looked into the readings and other topics that came up. We spoke about how the readings were relating to how to store knowledge and information in a useful and practical way. And then delving into how accurate that information is anyway.

We also looked at hypertext, and understanding how it can be used to include information that links to other information. Nelson wasn’t fully sold on the idea of hypertext because at that time it was fully textual. However, nowadays hypertext has been broadened to include ‘hypermedia’, for audio/visual media can also be linked in this way.

The symposium then took a bit of a random tangent off in the direction of web search engines. Elliot brought up an interesting point, saying that large Internet providers are currently debating how much search engine results should be tailored based upon the individual’s past web history, browsing interests etc. They are worried that having the results focused too heavily to match the individual’s characteristics, they may in fact be limiting the individual from accessing areas of the Internet. It’s complex, I know!

Finally, we were introduced to two types of determinisms – technical and social. These terms are used to describe society’s relationship with technology, or how technology relates to us.

Technical determinism is the idea that the advent of new technologies determines the way that society and cultures operate. And then the social determining of technology is the idea that if society wants a particular technology, they’ll probably find a way to achieve it.

Personally, I feel that both ideas can be true at times. Technology has definitely changed the way that we operate, and I believe that if society wants and needs a certain type of technology, they’ll work to either achieve it or find something that would do a similar job.

Over and out.

Writing has its place – week 3.1 readings

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Tim Chapman

Is writing a waste of time?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinni/4048982287/

This is a thought I’ve encountered whilst working through my first year of Professional Communication studies. Jay Bolton understands my concern, and through his reading for this week I now more fully appreciate writing as a craft on its own.

Bolton explains that writing is a technology that is not as obviously productive at first as farming or carpentry, yet as time passes we can see that writing is the great preserver of culture, history, and other technologies. Indeed, writing is just as much a craft as other trades are, it is just using a completely different skill set.

Bolton continues by noting an important difference between writing and other crafts such as construction or architecture. In most fields, craftsmen can put down their tools and head home after their work is done. However for writers, detaching themselves from their work is not so easy. For some reason, writing seems to constantly play around in your mental thoughts. You might turn off your computer and finish writing that essay, but then throughout the day it’s like you are still writing in your head.

“Walter Ong and Jacques Derrida have insisted that writing exercises this constant influence upon our mental life.” Bolton reading

It is for this reason that I don’t think I could ever be a journalist. I don’t think I would be able to switch off from ‘work mode’ because I would forever be thinking about, and listening out for potential new stories. Obviously some people would thrive on it, but I’m feeling exhausted just thinking about it!

I feel that one reason why blogging has grown so popular recently may be because it is a great way of getting thoughts down on paper as soon as you think of it. You don’t have to work to a deadline like journalism. Instead, when bloggers get an idea, they can simply go straight to their computer and write it down.

Also, people often feel more comfortable sharing their private lives on a blog than through face to face means. Janet Murray shares about this in the Landow reading:

“Some people put things on their home page . . . that they have not told their closest friends. The enchantment of the computer creates for us a public space that also feels very private and intimate.”

George Landow goes on to describe how bloggers can use hypertext to then link individual blog posts to each other. By doing this, the writers are…

“allowing readers to put events in context and get the whole story without the diarist to have to explain again.”

And then also through hypertext, the blog reader becomes a more active reader, one that can add text or link to another site at any time. They are empowered to become a creative, more interactive reader.

Thanks for reading. You should check out Esther’s informative post about navigating hypertext.

Gadgets to drive us into the future

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Tim Chapman

I was reading the Herald Sun this week when I came across an interesting article about futuristic inventions that could change the way we use our cars. These were just some of the thousands of products on show at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas last week.

What are we talking here…how about when we are stuck in a traffic jam (think Hoddle Street at 5pm), we have a car that can switch into autopilot whilst you sit back and relax? Or, a car that could park itself, by itself, while you are already in the supermarket buying your groceries?

Not bad, huh? I must say I do enjoy hearing about new and exciting devices with radical abilities, and these new products were no exception! Take the Traffic Jam autopilot for example. All you need to do is make sure the car is pointing the right direction, and it then it will choose the optimal speed and start and stop without you lifting a finger. And in the last year, this technology has shrunk from taking up all the boot space, to fitting inside the glove box!

The self-parking technology is equally impressive . Not only does it park the car park itself, but when you are finished shopping, you open an app and tell the car to come and get you!

This is just one example of how our smartphones will become more and more connected with our cars as time rolls on. In fact the article points to research that has found that by the year 2020, many of our cars, appliances, and houses will all be connected to our phones.

Just imagine the possibilities this could afford us! It’s a little scary, actually.

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You can read the Herald Sun article here.

Thank God You’re Here

Posted on January 14, 2014 by Tim Chapman

“Your world awaits… good luck!”

You remember that line, right? It’s the quote that the host would say on popular television show Thank God You’re Here just before the well-known celebrity would walk through the door into an unknown situation. You know the drill, the actor would then have to interact with others on that set, but everyone else knows the script except them!

I must say, it’s one of my favourite shows because I feel it really showed the skill of the comedians that went on the show. Some of the lines that they come up with just on the spot is amazing! It’s no wonder that they can make a career out of the funnies when you see them at work under that kind of pressure!

Some of my favourite performances on the show would have to be Hamish Blake, Merrick Watts, Tony Martin, Matthew Newton, and Ahn Do. Speaking of Ahn Do, there’s quite a funny one of him acting at the launch of a brand new futuristic car, so it kinda fits with the course too 😉

Ahn Do… the man who laughs at his own jokes before he says them! Here it is, enjoy.

Ponderings on Week 2.1 Workshop

Posted on January 14, 2014 by Tim Chapman

Well another Monday has come and gone, along with another Networked Media workshop. This time we were focusing on Design Fiction, and we can think of fictional situations to envisage a possible future.

The three students on the symposium panel along with our lecturer Elliot, all did well at further explaining the readings. We learned that design theory provokes and inspires our thinking, and helps us imagine future realities. We test with the goal of proving or finding something.

In the symposium, I remember someone mentioning how throughout the last hundred years many of technological advances were based upon the older technologies they were replacing. I feel we could put it this way: we need the old to guide us towards ideas that might become the new.

A great example of new technologies coming about based on older technologies would have to be video editing software. As some might not have thought about before, video editing software is actually designed to replicate the manual practice of editing film… you know, actually cutting and trimming film in your fingers.

The old way…

The new way…

You may notice that many of the terms used in video editing software directly relate back to the manual editing practice. For instance, Final Cut Pro has bins to keep the clips in, just like how old-school editors had physical bins that held the film. Or you can trim clips down to a desired length, just like you would trim the film back in the day.

There are lots of other terms such as sequences, razor tool, jump cuts, rough cuts, filters, storyboard, timeline… and the list goes on. All of these software functions relate back to the old way of editing actual, physical tape. Amazing huh?

Thanks for reading, also make sure you check out Kim Lai’s thoughts on double-loop learning here.

Tim Chapman

Media of the Networked Variety

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