Donesky…

As we wrap up this crazy summer semester, I look back on all the things discussed, read and blogged.  I thought the topics of the class were well thought out and the readings were great.  The initial readings on the historic background of the Internet, Web and life as we know it, were amazing.  It was information I was not that familiar with.  It definitely brought things into a better focus in my overall understanding of the web and internet.  It is all about perspective when looking at the early struggles and building blocks of such a beast.  Web and internet innovations are accelerating quickly and people seem to forget about how we get from A to B to C.  I enjoyed looking at the historical significance of the work put in place to make the web what it is at this moment.

I struggle to decide which side of things to be on.  Is it the side of big business like Google and Facebook, who make life somewhat better, but collect data on us or is it the side of people against big business and the infringement on our privacy? This class did not necessarily help me pick a side, but it did allow me new ways to think about the issue.  I was surprised to learn that there is very little research done on things such as Twitter and Facebook.  I understand the roadblocks ahead, but it is very discouraging to think that people are turning a blind eye to these new forms of communication.  We are working in an industry that is falling apart and it is time to start looking for solutions.

With the large amount of information, it seems difficult to teach this course in a shortened summer session.  There were avenues of discussion that I think could have been extended, such as the legal side of  the web and internet.  I can see a section like that one being an entire semester.

I do think that with all this talk about data, there needs to be some discussion of how the “everyday” person uses data, metrics and analytics to help make web-based decisions.  Data is not just for the big players like Facebook and Google, but it’s for everyone.  There are some great things to learn just by understanding a personal website’s analytics and use.

Data and the Rise of the Problem Solver

American journalism has stayed constant for the last 300 years. Something happens, someone puts a story about it together and the users read, watch or listen to the story. It’s communication.  It’s simple.

However, over the past 20 years, technology has changed the once stable world of journalism.  There are new ways to tell a story and it is because of the collection and manipulation of data. Data has always been collected for stories, but by allowing people to interact with that once untouchable data, the journalistic relationship changes.  Data allows for the reader or user to change the story into something that means something to them.  That is the amazing thing about it all.  A typical story in a newspaper is narrowly focused.  It gives you the who, what, where, when, how and sometimes the why.  With data, the story can be focused on the user.

Think about a story on global warming and how rising sea levels could change the Oregon Coast line.  It’s a good story, but one that does not totally engage with people who live in Houston, Boston, Hamburg or Dover.  Data focused stories extend the reach of a traditional story.  Maybe the story was set up to talk about the Oregon Coast line, but through the use of data and interactive graphics, the user may have the ability to see how global warming can effect their town and their life.

It’s about making it matter to the reader or user.  It allows the reader to ask – how does this subject effect me?  The story with the data can help to answer that question.  It creates engagement between journalist and user.  It totally changes the journalistic game.  It is no longer a one-sided institution and through the use and presentation of data, a newspaper can open up the possibilities for the user.   It becomes interactive for the journalist and the user.

Because of this shift in the journalist tectonic plates, journalists need to learn to think differently than the status quo.  There is a need to understand that journalism is not only about getting the story correct and out by deadline, but it’s about how can this story interact with readers and users.  I think students need to still learn the basic journalism rules and best practices.  However, it’s time to start moving those students into understanding technology and how it helps them tell the story.  Not every student needs to be an bad-ass programmer, but they need to know how to do it and the basic nuts and bolts of it.  It’s time to stop teaching full semester courses on topics that are no longer employment opportunities such as feature writing and it’s time to start teaching design, programming, social media practices and “think tank” type courses.  The tools have changed and students need to be given the proper tools to succeed.

If this is going to happen, curriculum and teaching practices need to be updated in the college setting.  I understand that the pillars of journalism need to be taught, but they need to reflect the changing journalism environment.  Colleges cannot ignore that the industry is changing.  It does no good to blame anyone for the problems at this point, but courses need to reflect the changes.  The best way to respond to the crisis is to develop students into journalists who can function in the changing world and are taught how to think beyond the traditional framework.    College programs should take this as a challenge and produce journalist/problem solvers.  On the same side, journalism programs and computer science programs need to begin to work together. There needs to be a common bond between the two.  It is providing new employment opportunities to both sets of students.  This is what college is about…right?  Preparing students with the right tools to be successful in new exciting ways.

This is all easy to talk about having been on both sides of this argument.  It is the students fresh out of college who don’t have the skills to even start their career, that is concerning piece of this whole thing.  If the next generation of journalists do not have the pieces to survive and be successful, there is not a ton of hope for the industry.

I am reminded of something a musician once told me.  ”Before every renaissance period, there has to be a dark age.”  Maybe the journalism world needs to enter a complete dark age in order for change and evolution to occur.

Possible Research ?s

I have been brainstorming about possible research articles to write.

1. I really want to do one on Orangebloods.com.  They recently broke the story on the Big 12 realignment and for two weeks “out-scooped” the big dogs of the sports industry including ESPN.  I don’t necessary want to know how they got the scoop, but I want to know the process that was put in place to keep out-doing the competition.

Research Question: What was the process put in place to keep up with the changing information in the Big 12 Missile Crisis?  and What was the thought process behind the heavy use of Twitter and opening up the website for everyone?

I am currently trying to lock down interviews with Geoff Ketchum, publisher of Orangebloods, and Chip Brown, the man behind the story.  I want to ask them the same questions and get an idea of how the whole thing happened.  I think I will use the diffusion of innovation theory to help frame the paper.

2. There is a new company called Spredfast in Austin that is basically developing a one-stop-shop for all social media posting needs.  It is incredibly intriguing to me.

Research Question: What are you hoping to accomplish with this platform in terms of social media use?

I understand they are in their infancy, but they obviously have a bigger view of social media.  That just really intrigues me.  Diffusion of innovation is the obvious choice for this one as well.  I would turn this into a case study and interview the founders and get their views on this new platform and how it will interact with the social media landscape.

3. As a former “real” journalist and now citizen journalist, the effects of technology on journalism are amazing to me.  I think television stations are not necessarily taking advantage of what is available.  I would love to get opinions on new media from News Directors and those hired to be the interactive/new media/ web producers.

Research Question: How have you incorporated new technology into your news product beyond that of the actual broadcast?

I would send separate survey questionnaires to the News Directors and to the people in charge of the web/new media for the stations.  I want to see how close they are in their opinions of what the station is doing, could be doing and the overall concept of working towards something beyond that of the broadcast channel.

4.  Twitter is my friend.  I don’t mean like we hang out and get beers, but Twitter gives me the info I care about, when I care about it.  I don’t think that news organizations really grasp on to it, until they see a definite benefit.

Research Question: When and how did you decide Twitter was relevant for your news organization?

This would be a survey question I would send to numerous news organizations and see what their responses were.  I am interested to see who has real reasons for using it and who just says that the consultant told them to use it.  I would then compare their answers to their actual usage.  My guess is that news orgs that saw a definite benefit to Twitter use actually use Twitter to its fullest.  The Statesman is one org that uses Twitter in a fantastic way.  K-EYE, on the other hand, is terrible.

50K Fans and the Power of Free

The concepts of The Long Tail and “Free” aren’t necessary new, but they have become the new way of thinking about marketing, business and longevity of a career or product.

Frequency distribution has been studied for the past 60 years in statistics, but the Long Tail finally put a term to an idea of selling less for longer compared to selling more for shorter.  Think of the Long Tail like a hockey stick on its side. It isn’t about selling products fast and furious like blockbuster movies or one-hit wonders.  Instead, the Long Tail idea is about cultivating the relationship between the product and the fans of the product.  The idea is to selling small volumes of product over a long amount of time compared to selling large amounts of a limited product in a short time.  A great example is how cult films stay relevant and still sell over many years.  Films like The Big Lebowski or Donnie Darko may not have been box office hits, but they continue to sell because of the Long Tail theory.  There are small groups of people who continue to watch and love those films.  One of the greatest descriptions of this concept is a track from rapper, Bavu Blakes, called 50K.  The point of his track is that all he needs is 50,000 hardcore fans at one time and he needs to just sell to them.  By having a smaller number of fans, he could increase the longevity in his career.  He wouldn’t be spending money on 2-3 million albums that may or may not sell.  Instead, it’s a small volume of product to the fans he “knows” are going to buy the product.   So instead of shotgun marketing, where you spray the marketing material everywhere and you hope it hits, the marketing based off the Long Tail idea is pinpoint and to the people who are the supporters.  If an artist can keep 50,000 fans for 10 years, release 5 albums and make 5 dollars off of every album, the artist can make $1.25 million.  Now that’s just off the album sales! Now, add in the pricing for tour tickets, which your hard-core fans will attend and possibly bring their friends, and merchandise sales and the artist can make even more money. No need to worry about Gold Records…just ask Skee-Lo.

The Long Tail highlights that you can go after smaller populations or sub-cultures and still be successful.  The idea of success where every household would own the same thing goes away with this thinking.  It is more about creating a niche for your product and making your fans/users/owners happy with it.

The Power of Free is something that wasn’t quite understood until technology really allowed things to be “free”.  At a store, there was always “buy one, then get one free.”  However, the new sense of “free” is just that.  Give it away for FREE. The free giving creates users who are “fans” of the products.  Everyone loves something for free.  Now the product might be free and basically create “good blood” between the product and the users.  From that point, other things can be charged for.  With new technology, it is easier and cheaper to send products, make products and market products that won’t be actually sold.

Staying with the music example from earlier, a band can give away an EP of music for free.  A band can’t expect people to buy music they have never heard, so giving it away puts it in the hands of possible fans.  Those fans who love the music may then in turn buy tickets to shows or buy other merchandise from the band.  The free part of the equation helps create money in the long run.  The same example could be used with software or freeware companies who give away free services, but then you can pay to upgrade those services.  Wordpress is an example of that model.  The inital blog is free, but if the blogger wants more bells and whistles, the user can pay for them.

The “free” model is a hook to get the person’s attention and as long as the hook is a good product or experience, the company can hold on to the person and sell them other things.  It is a way to develop trust between the customer and the company.  Marketing is easy when it’s free; it practically sells itself. However, the product has to be really good.  A free piece of junk is still a piece of junk.

Instructional Video

Instructional videos are all over the web.  Some are fantastic and some are horrendous. FreeDrumLessons has been releasing great videos for quite a while now.  The one below demonstrates their new iPhone app and also a taste of the content on their other videos.

I really think instructional videos are amazing.  It’s free lessons about anything you want on the web; be it cooking, drumming or creating something.  Some subjects are better visually, but if the production is well thought out, the subject can be taught. Besides the ability to find whatever you want, the overall interaction with the video is great.  You can pause it, rewind it or skip ahead.  Instructional videos are also a great add-on for further marketing.  Television networks like the Food Network, can put snippets of instructional programming on their website.  It’s a way to re-purpose content that can basically get sponsored twice.  It also builds thought leadership for the channel.  They become “the place” to go when you have food-type questions.

There are a few downsides to web instructional videos.  There isn’t a ton of interaction possible.  A person watching can’t really ask a question and get a response right away. They might be able to post a question in a comment box and possibly wait for an answer. The other issue is that there are bad videos out there.  It takes time to find good videos that really help.  If the user has the time to search for instructional videos, that works out. If you are looking for a great collection of how-to videos on pretty much everything, check out  eHow.

I think instructional web videos are a great tool.  They allow anyone with access to learn about anything they want!  That’s an amazing amount of power to have.

Be Everything to Everyone: Open

So what’s the next step in social media…

1. Turn Padmapper into bar locations that have awesome happy hour specials. (might be the best idea…ever!)

2. Blow up MySpace.  (Needs to be done!)

3. Make everything 3-D.  (It’s coming…like it or not!)

None of those ideas will really shake up the social media world.  It seems the next step in social media is a take on Facebook and Twitter.  How “open” can you get?

Using the social graph of Facebook and extending it by using the Open Stream API, Facebook has basically infiltrated everyone’s website and web presence.  You can’t go anywhere without saying “you like” something and all that data goes back to Facebook to help in their advertising model.

Twitter is “open” with its basic form of conversation.  It’s open for the user to determine which information is important to that person.  For myself, it’s a way to determine a continuous news feed from the people I care to hear from.

Both Twitter and Facebook have taken a natural social tendency of taking one’s social life and putting it on a computer. In generic terms, Facebook is a fancy way of posting pictures, videos and personal news on a bulletin board in the hall. If you want to pass by and look…do so.  Twitter is sharing news and info without making a phone call or sending a link through email to all your friends.  It’s an open conversation that anyone can take part in.

So with that in mind, two ideas…

The first idea takes a little bit from yesterday’s blog, but also adds the push for the advancement of the openness of geosocial networks like Gowalla and Foursquare.  It’s time to open those up! They need to allow for people to design their own badges, patches, pins or whatever.  People need to be able to make their own trips and tours for other people to take part in.  For example, for fans of Coen Brothers‘ films, it would be awesome if you could hit all the locations that were in The Big Lebowski.  It would be a tour regular people can create and others take part in.   Give people the tools so they have the chance to really dive in and make the apps work for them.  Also, the tours need to be part of the system and not disappear.  The geosocial networks could let people search for “movie tours” and it could be a listing of them all.  That search could be sponsored.

Bands could set up tours for fans who travel to numerous shows.  By letting the bands get the Open API and design their own “On Tour” badges, they can reward their fans for the attendance.  It could be much like how Apple let’s people design apps, but they get final approval.   By opening up the tools, Gowalla and Foursquare could really expand their network, but also get away from the “corporate-feeling” sponsored tours.  I understand that makes money for the companies but they can use the new data to their advantage!

The second part is from yesterday’s Great Googleymoogley!

1. So person A, uses Gowalla everyday and checks-in to 20 coffee shops a month. A coffee shop could then buy the “people” who go to coffee shops and through the geosocial network suggest to Person A…”we know you love coffee shops…so, have you tried this place?” It’s basically ambient suggestions for the users of the geosocial networks.

2. This idea might be better and the possibilities are endless. So Person B loves to eat sushi in Los Angeles and does so 20 times a month. Person B is on a business trip or vacation in Boston. The location based app could then figure out that Person B loves sushi in L.A. and then suggests places in Boston to try sushi. Those places suggested are based on the sushi restaurants paying for the advertising or being suggested just like with Google’s “sponsored links.” The businesses could bid on the keywords. iTunes basically does this same kind of advertising using the Genius mode…if you like this, you will like this.

The Facebook advertising model is not much different from this.  However, they do much more with sponsorships dollars than Google does.  It is the same idea of using user data and catering to the user the way Facebook does.

My second idea is from taking a bit from a recent presentation from Google on social networks and combining it with lists from Twitter.  The purpose of social networks is let people know what’s up with you! We all have different levels of friendships on our social networks.  Some are close personal friends, others are people from class or old high school friends.  So while some of my friends want to hear about my music opinions, some of my friends don’t care and only want to hear about my social media thoughts.  As pointed out in the presentation, not everyone cares if you ate an amazing dish in Boston, but maybe your friends who are chefs do!  So there needs to be a way to almost come up with tiers of friends in something like Facebook.  I thought about it using the concept of how Twitter lets you create lists of people.  This way a user’s messaging could be more focused on the right people.  How does this actually work?  I don’t know…yet. However, no one has only one group of friends and maybe that is what needs to evolve.  It isn’t so much a listing of Facebook friends, but actual groups of friends.

Great Googleymoogley!

Google makes the vast majority of its money from advertisement programs.  Eric Schmidt put it quite bluntly by saying…

“Think of it first as an advertising system. Then as an end-user system — Google Apps. A third way to think of Google is as a giant supercomputer. And a fourth way is to think of it as a social phenomenon involving the company, the people, the brand, the mission, the values — all that kind of stuff.”

The programs look at key words that the person uses in emails and searches and the advertisements are tweaked to reflect the recent content the user has provided the Google algorithm.  Along with the ambient suggestions, advertisers can buy Google Adwords.  This creates “sponsored links”.  So when a user searches for something like Ford F150, a sponsored link of a Ford Dealership in your area pops up as a sponsored link.  The Dealership bought the words and then must pay Google if it’s clicked.  Google also uses AdSense.  Website owners can sign up for AdSense and Google places context relevant advertisements on the websites.  Google is almost like an ad firm, placing ads on websites that get traffic that might be interested in the content.  The owners make a super small percentage.   Google also runs the ads on YouTube that pop-up in the player. 

There is no reason this wouldn’t work for the geosocial networks like Gowalla and Foursquare.  I see two ways it could work… 

1. So person A, uses Gowalla everyday and checks-in to 20 coffee shops a month.  A coffee shop could then buy the “people” who go to coffee shops and through the geosocial network suggest to Person A…”we know you love coffee shops…so, have you tried this place?”  It’s basically ambient suggestions for the users of the geosocial networks.

2. This idea might be better and the possibilities are endless.  So Person B loves to eat sushi in Los Angeles and does so 20 times a month.  Person B is on a business trip or vacation in Boston.  The location based app could then figure out that Person B loves sushi in L.A. and then suggests places in Boston to try sushi.  Those places suggested are based on the sushi restaurants paying for the advertising or being suggested just like with Google’s “sponsored links.”  The businesses could bid on the keywords.   iTunes basically does this same kind of advertising using the Genius mode…if you like this, you will like this. 

Traditional media companies could carry out something close to this as well.  It would need to be a site that has diverse content.  MSNBC could provide ”suggestions” on products based on what articles people read.  It is the same as AdSense, but MSNBC basically cuts out the middleman in Google.    

Advertising is going to change dramatically once companies begin to figure out how to drill down through the data that matters.  They are going to find your habits and cater to those habits.  I don’t mean “habits” in a bad a way, but more like each person’s individual trends.  Is it scary?  Yes it is…but if you get what you want without really having to work for it, people won’t care.  It is basically a race to see who can figure out the perfect model to make money, but the way technology evolves the race will be never ending it seems.  There is no silver bullet for making money, getting good leads or converting website visits into sales.  It is a continuing challenge.  The best bet is to figure out a way to use data that is freely given up on the web.  That’s the Google model and it seems to be working a tad better than any of the other models. 

It will be interesting to see if Google can keep up with its work load and what happens if Google gets to big.  Diversity is great, but spreading yourself too thin can be a downfall waiting to happen.  Just as the Hall of Fame, baseball coach Augie Garrido says…”you must play within yourself,” Google should follow that mantra.  Jeff Jarvis pointed out that Google is a brand at this point.  The name on the product says Google and the user expects certain things.  As long as Google is able to keep the products at the same quality, they should be fine.  Buzz wasn’t an incredible success and there has been more and more talk about Google Me, a social network run by Google.  Google has also created a browser (Google Chrome) and is working in the smart phone realm.  With all this stuff going on, I would hope Google is playing within themselves.  Bing seems to be creeping up on Google slowly and doesn’t seem to be changing the game, but maybe it’s creeping at the same speed that IE crept up on Netscape? 

And as I wrote this…Google chases Bing!

The Importance of Being Interactive

The term interactivity does get bounced around quite a bit.  One thing pointed out in Sally McMillan’s article was that interactivity will be constantly evolving within the evolution of the technology.  It is a weird thought, because everything that is interactive today will more than likely be outdated tomorrow.  Today’s interactive technologies only help to progress the next steps in interactivity.  One great example of this are video games.  What was groundbreaking in the 1980s such as Pac-Man or the Atari system, is considered so out-of-date in today’s time of the Wii interactive system and the new XBox Kinetic, where the user is not just mashing buttons, but is controlling game play through actual real-time physics.

One definition breaks the concept of interactivity into two parts.  One being the message and how it is related and the other part is surrounded by the audience.  I never really thought about interactivity being defined by the audience exposure.   I assumed that the audience will always interact with something no matter what it is and I definitely never thought about different levels of audience interaction.  There are high and low levels, that can vary based on the message.  However,I would agree that a third part is needed and that’s the technological side to the interaction.

The technological piece of the definition determines the levels of interaction within the audience.  If you were to have a puppet show, there is a certain level of interaction between the audience watching in real time.  Now put that puppet show on YouTube and allow for the audience to comment or pose questions.  All of a sudden the audience has a voice in something and that is an important part of interactivity.

There needs to be the ability to give the audience a “voice”.  They can choose to engage or participate at any level, but in my mind, interactivity has to allow the audience to have a vested interest and voice in the matter.  Engagement with some product is fine, but the chance to have a two-way conversation between the message and audience AND the technology and the audience is a needed point to the definition.  When I mention voice, I do not only mean a comment page or twitter account.  The audience can make their thoughts heard through other means and can have a conversation amongst themselves as well.

The evolving nature of interactivity makes the notion of a solid, concrete definition hard to put in place.  I would think that the definition of transportation 100 years ago has changed with the change in the actual ability to transport people and things.

So for my definition of interactivity there are 4 pieces…the message, the technology, the audience and the conversation that takes place between the message, the technology and the audience.  Those 3 parts would have the ability to vary and have different levels, but they must all allow for the audience to have a voice.   And for some reason, it makes me think of this Marx Brother’s sketch.

The Trio of Bush, Engelbart and McLuhan

To begin the discussion about New Media, one must go back to the initial literature and look at the first seeds of thought and discovery.  Vannevar Bush, the Patron Saint of American Science, published an article July 1945 titled As We May Think detailing his thoughts on the progression of science and technology.  The basic thought was that science continues to improve, but how people manage new information had not begun to improve.  Within his article, Bush would discuss an idea he started to have in the 1930s.  He wanted a collection of information to be linked together and be an extension of human knowledge.  He wanted it to work like the human brain and not be based on an index, but have the info linked in trails by relationships.  It would be a library of collective knowledge.  It sounds much like what Wikipedia has become.   

Douglas Englebart would read this work while stationed in the Philippines in 1945.  Englebart would continue the vision of Bush and almost 20 years later, wrote a research proposal titled,  Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework.  His work would encompass two major themes:

1) Finding the factors that limit knowledge.
2) Finding the solutions to progress society.

Englebart would work towards making people more effective intellectually.  He would go on to create the computer mouse, the word processor, networked computers and hypertext.

Only a couple of years after Englebart’s piece, Marshall McLuhan published his most famous work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.  The “medium is the message” became the rallying cry from McLuhan’s work.  His thought was that it is the actual medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association.  It’s not the message, but how you get it!  He believed there were personal and social consequences of any medium and it had the effect on the world around it.  His famous example is that a lightbulb is the medium and the lightbulb, with zero content, changed the culture.  People can now do things at night or in the dark that they couldn’t do before.  What would sporting events be without lights? No night games! 

All three literary works hold deep meaning in the literature of technology and the creation of New Media.  Bush and Englebart both were looking for better ways of capturing, recording and accessing knowledge.  They would both agree that inventions should expand the human mind and not physical power.  Bush discusses what he calls “trails” to create relationships between content and Englebart continues that same thought with wanting to define categories by the relationships the data have between each other.  It is that same discussion that Sir Tim Berners-Lee pushes for when he speaks of info needing to be defined by what it is related to.  With Englebart’s continued the vision of Bush’s 1945 article, both pieces mirror each other.  They both believe that technology can be used for the advancement of human intelligence and both are putting out ideas to make it happen.  I do think that Bush may have felt his basic ideas went beyond just “products.” His writing was a little more utopian and was not as “nuts and bolts” as Englebart’s writing.  That may have more to do with the 20 year difference in published works and the 20 year difference in technological advances.

When looking at McLuhan’s work, it holds the central theme of how technology can effect people.  At the time of the writing, all three authors saw that the current changes and future changes in technology would have an effect on society and that effect needed to be understood.  One example from McLuhan shows how a new railway can accelerate the scale of previous human functions by creating new cities and everything that goes along with those new places.  In the example, take away the railway and insert the computer.  McLuhan would see computers being the medium and discuss how they have changed the way the world works.  Bush and Englebart were looking at the exact same thing (maybe with rose-colored glasses), but they could see how computers and networks could change the intellectual culture of a society.  They saw the medium having a massive effect on human knowledge.  McLuhan would see that side, but also see beyond just intelligence and see the medium changing industry, creating work and leisure.   For McLuhan, his discussion was more on how certain things can change the world and society, while Bush and Englebart were looking more at what ideas can change or improve the world.

Hey there & What is New Media?

Great to meet everyone in class on Monday.  Having spent 10 years doing broadcast news from the small market local stuff to national television appearances, grad school has been a good change for me.  I mentioned in class that I host and edit a weekly music interview podcast and blog that focuses on musicians and their creative process.  If you are interested, check out The Backline Show and if you want past episodes they are here on iTunes.  The playlists and random other postings are at my Backline Show blog.

The question posed in our New Media class – what is New Media? – is something I have been playing with in my head for awhile.  Coming from old media and developing a brand in new media, has been an amazing path.  It’s easy to say that “new media” has a technology aspect to it and that is it’s only characterization.  However, I have always felt that new media is media that has to have the ability to evolve and update.  Books, newspapers and television are basically static once the material has been put on paper or on tape.  There is no way for an already printed newspaper or magazine to evolve, unless the Harry Potter newspaper, The Daily Prophet, is published soon.  I don’t need to debate how awesome that would be. 

The quote about New Media having to be “characterized by variability” is a better way of describing that new media has to have the ability to evolve in order to be categorized as being new media.  Television is a medium in which the the conversation is one way.  It’s a one-way message to the viewer with no interaction.  Television is old media, but there are some technologies that helping to progress it towards being at least “semi-new” media. 

There is a new addition to the television experience with the new agreement with Microsoft XBOX and ESPN.  It was recently announced at E3.  Viewers will be able to stream HD sports events and will take advantage of additional features with Microsoft’s upcoming controller-free device Kinect — like pausing/replaying video with voice commands and verbally answering trivia and other onscreen questions while watching ESPN titles.  It’s an ability to interact with a television broadcast and a move away from the label of old media! 

I am excited about this course, because it’s stuff I really love.  And if you have questions about the name of the blog…just ask!