Final Post (for this semester...)

I really like blogging and I had just started my own blog last semester. This semester I was shocked to find that two of my classes had us start blogs so it was a bit overwhelming for me.

I thought it was really cool that as a class we worked with Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others to learn about the concepts we went over in class. Levinson's book talked about "new new media" areas that I was familiar with such as Facebook and Twitter, but they made me realize what I was using them for and maybe change what I was using them for. I found most of the chapters I could relate to. In the second book we used, Jenkin's Convergence Culture, I was not familiar with all of the chapters. For example, (and I have friends who can't believe this) I have never read the Harry Potter series.

The class also worked on a wiki with all of the information learned throughout the class. Looking at the differences between my writing on here and on there, I was very different in my tone of writing. On my blog, I am more personal and free to be creative. On the wiki, I was trying to be more formal and factual based on information in the book. I hope to keep the blog going but I would like to focus more on my personal one that I use to share my writing.

Worlds & Expanding the Boundaries

Today in class we talked about worlds that have been created and the public have expanded on or created sub-worlds. To give you an idea of what we are talking about, start looking up fan fiction or just stories in general: Middle Earth, Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, Eragon, Star Trek. To help you get started look at Eragon and here's some fanfiction for you. I don't know where I found this one story, because it was a few years ago but it had Eragon and Arya getting together and having a daughter who becomes a Dragon Rider as well. With Angela the herbalist becoming a key bad guy in the story. I wish I would have kept the link and read more when more was written because I loved it! And being a romantic, I loved that Arya and Eragon ended up together.

We also mentioned historical worlds like Greek mythology, Valhalla, Yggdrasil, Atlantis, Marvel & DC, Avalon, etc. How many stories have you read or movies watched that have been made using these worlds? Greek mythology particularly interests me because of the Percy Jackson series.

My own story that I have been working on has influences of Christopher Paolini's world as well as Avatar: The Last Airbender series with a twist of morphing into specific animals. A secondary story I have started is influenced by Skyrim, specifically the town of Riften.

Sidenote: When The Last Airbender series was first being aired, I watched them as often as I could. I even discovered on YouTube that fans had created scenarios/drawn scenarios with Zuko and Katara getting together. Which was like a Romeo and Juliet story that I loved. Watching these fan-created videos of pictures of them together, really sucked me in. But then watching the series, it was Aang (rhymes with hang not how they say it in the newer movie) who I wanted to be with Katara. Now that they are onto the second part of Avatar, now called The Legend of Korra, and I'm just as hooked.

What have you written/or noticed that is influenced by certain things? Feel free to share/comment :)

A New, New Media Wiki?

I was browsing the Internet today and I found this website randomly (actually, I was avoiding doing homework and I was looking through my blogs. I got bored of looking so randomly I googled "new new media").

http://newmedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

It was created May 6, 2006 and they say that anyone can help with the Wiki. They even towards the bottom of the page have a "How to contribute to this Wiki" section. Thought I would share this, especially for my Foundations of New Media class, in case anyone was interested in participating in a Wiki!

Smaller Potatoes

Talking about news & music sites mostly.


Ok in terms of music:

I've been using Pandora for a time because it was something I could stream on my phone rather than listen to the radio. The problem I run across is sometimes during my Disney station, I get songs that are not Disney. While I may like the song, I don't want it on my Disney station. Or take my Country station, that's not the place for Rap music. Country mixed with Rap = Crap in my opinion. When I'm in a "country" mood, I just want Country. I also hate running out of skips, so when that happens I switch to a different station.

I looked into Spotify a bit, but I (being a broke college student in thousands of dollars of debt to be able to go to college) do not want to have to pay for not having ads nor do I want to have to pay to be able to use Spotify on multiple systems.

Someone in class (I'm pretty sure it was Laura), mentioned Grooveshark.com that sounded interesting and looks interesting. Definitely something that I will be trying, especially because it looks like I can stream it on my phone as well.

News and "news" sites:

We talked about Reddit, Digg, and news sites like CNN or FoxNews in class today. Reddit at first glance reminded me a lot of Imgur because of upvoting. I'll have to look at Digg a bit more in depth another time. But I think the main difference between Reddit & Digg vs. CNN & FoxNews is that the latter two are run by major news corporations.

Myspace:

I have never made an account on Myspace. I have heard about it for quite a few years but I only joined Facebook in the summer of 2010 after high school. I never really branched to other sites except for Twitter, Pinterest, and Imgur in the past year or two.