Wednesday, 23 September 2015

Blog Reviews

http://mediawritingbyyasmine.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/week-8-using-pinterest.html#comment-form



https://elvisgonzonotes.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/week-7-practical/comment-page-1/#comment-6



https://laurenalycedigitalmedia.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/different-purposedifferent-writing/comment-page-1/#comment-1



https://tandersoncomm11007.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/week-5-inquiry-find-an-article-that-has-impact-on-you-because-of-the-sources-speech-and-reporting-and-discuss-why-it-is-an-example-of-good-journalism-or-media-writing/comment-page-1/#comment-2




http://mediawritingitj.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/week-three-blog-post-part-one-social.html?showComment=1442929048698




https://zaclalorcqublog.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/week-6-blog-activity-2-press-kit-review/comment-page-1/#comment-7





https://byronkiernan.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/week-10-inquiry-website-review/comment-page-1/#comment-6




https://michellecqu.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/week-8-inquiry-think-about-your-interests/comment-page-1/#comment-1



http://gracetaylormediawriting.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/week-7-blog-activity.html?showComment=1442999495624#c7022508505066364389





https://kaylaskrinnikoff.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/introduction/comment-page-1/#comment-3




https://jordaneedwards.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/10-week-4-practical/comment-page-1/#comment-11





Tuesday, 22 September 2015

Week 10 Review

The layout of this blog is an easy flowing, vertically aligned page. This kind of layout makes it easy for a reader to find every single post that was made. Because the entire site is aligned by date, it makes it easy to find specific posts, so long as the user knows the rough date in which the post was published.
When looking at the headings, honestly, I have not done a great job about trying to draw the reader into the stories, I just have a simple heading that displays the week in which the post was assigned and the topic on which each article is based on.

By the looks of this assessment, All the tasks have been completed, and are ready to be submitted for marking.

Personally, I feel that the Blog activity was pointless, while yes, it provides a suitable working environment in which a person who is marking the assessment can mark a students work and it also provides a platform where a person can see the evolution of the students work throughout the term. I just feel that the amount of work is grossly over whelming to a student who has to balance  a working life and university life. The raw amount of work that has needed to go into this assessment is just so astronomically large that it is difficult to do whilst a person has multiple assessments and several other commitments, working on such a large assignment is almost impossible.

On the whole, this assessment, while it has made me look at my writing style in a different way, has not improved my writing in any form of constructive way, all it has done is change the format in which I can write, the difference between Academic and News writing, while subtle changes are simply jarring.

Monday, 21 September 2015

Week 9 Storify Peer Review

When reviewing this Storify Article, it is not apparently clear who this article is aimed at, while it deals with an event that is targeted at people in the middle twenties to late thirties, there is a lot of content that has imagery that is more catered towards children or teenagers, this article is very confusing to me, while on one side there is this more mature and subtle aspect, on the other there is this fluffy, immature and, quite frankly, a little silly theme. Perhaps it could be aimed at the entire family, but i feel that they have missed that mark somewhat.

During this article, the author goes on to mention that it is an event to signify the end of Mackay's $18.6 million "center piece of the city" city rejuvenation campaign.while this article informs me of why the city of Mackay did this, it did little explanation of what they did or why they did it.

If I were to try and make this article, I'm not too sure of what I would do different. Trying to cover an all ages/family event is very difficult to do and it becomes even harder when the event itself is not well targeted, I feel that the author, given the difficulties, made what they had work.

However, my own personal opinions aside for a moment, this article is exceptionally well written considering that the event seemed a touch on the lackluster side, in terms of attendee engagement, the story was written fabulously with lots of detail while still being easy to read and simple to comprehend.







ARTICLE:
https://storify.com/Heidi_Petith/twilight-street-party-a-bittersweet-celebration

Week 8 Tech Review

The Linus Tech Tips Forum was originally made by a team of technology and computer review persons from YouTube, as a means of communicating with a small group of likeminded individuals who share the same interest, Technology.

A few short years later and that small group of likeminded people has grown into hundreds and thousands of unique users who are all fans of the YouTube channel and also users who can also be very knowledgeable in computers and other forms of tech.

In terms of lay out, the Linus Tech Tips Forum is very similar to a large portion of other forum websites. Each section of the site is broken up into Threads. These threads are the first thing that the user will see upon entering the site. It holds topics such as ‘General Discussion’, ‘Forum News’, ‘Troubleshooting’ and a few other pages. The ‘General Discussion’ Thread is filled with various posts on a wide range of topics related to just technology and computers (they do provide an ‘Off Topic’ thread also for those of you who don’t want to talk tech all day) The ‘Forum News’ thread is all about new things coming to the forums or actual tech news stories sourced from various places around the internet. While the ‘Troubleshooting’ thread is all about users helping each other with their own computer problems or other tech related issues.

One thing that the Linus Tech Tips Forum has that many other online forums don’t have, is the community, the sense of camaraderie on this site is immense, everyone is treated as a friend or colleague and even if you have a computer issue that you personally don’t know how to fix, generally speaking the users on the forum will be able to help, no matter what level of computer skill you may or may not have, even if your problem is a program crashing on your laptop or an entire server not accepting your RJ45 ethernet cable into your new fancy networking switch, the community is always there to listen and to help in any way they can.


In conclusion, If you are looking for a Technology themed community and would like to further your prowess in the field, then the Linus Tech Tips Forum is the right place, Sign up is Free, after that, you then become a part of this ever growing community of like-minded folk who have had the same idea.

Week 7 Assessment 1

When looking at what I am going to submit for Assessment 1 subjectively, it becomes clear that in the submission, I found that there were maybe a few breaks in the flow of the Press Release. such breaks made the release rather jarring to read as it would go into the proper style of writing, but in the middle of  a sentence or the middle of a point, the piece would change styles to a more academic style of writing which would have completely thrown off the reader and may convey a different message than the one intended. I also found that i kept dropping in and out of Past and Present tenses, this was a serious issue that was quickly addressed and fixed.
However, on the whole there were not too many issues that I had found, perhaps two or three different problems within the Press Release with these issues that I have now fixed through simple grammatical changes.
Honestly, having a checklist was not the best thing for me, instead of having a list of things that I need to do, I find it easier to just go through the entire piece and fix what needs fixing and repeat that method a few times as needed. I know its in-efficient, but it works for me.
In terms of my final result, I'm really not too worried about the whole thing, I have done what i have done, it seems to make sense and it also seems to make my point. Realistically, i'll take what I'm given, I do not know enough to make judgement about what I think I should have, so, I'll leave it in the hands of the people who mark the assessments.

Week 6 Image Captions

A Day in the life of a University Student.


Waking up to a dead computer, have to eat Breakfast while I fix it.


Graphics Card (lower right) is broken, lucky i have a spare
CrossFire bridge (top left) i'm not sure about condition, but I'm leaving it out.




Finally back and working, now to finish up last nights work.


Beginning of University Assessments... 


 Finally Finished, Time for some TV to relax

Assessments all done, I now spend my day playing games.

Week 5 Interviews.

Today, Daniel Vernon has confirmed that the video game series, Pokemon, is one of the greatest passions of his life.

In this exclusive interview, he mentioned a few reasons about why the game has had such a large impact on his life.
Pokemon, is a video game series in which the player collects creatures of various shapes, sizes and abilities, called Pokemon, and pitches those creatures against the Pokemon of other players.

While the game itself has sometimes been lead into controversy. The overarching theme of Pokemon has become a Pop Culture phenomenon, the likes of which has never been seen before, and is not likely to be stopped any time soon. The first Pokemon video game, released in 1998, featured 151 different creatures to capture and train, this has now grown into a single game now holding over 700 of these unique, fictional creatures and has also expanded into other forms of media, such as into an animated television series and a soon to be released mobile app, called "Pokemon GO"

"I always had an interest in the series from a young age, but was never able to purchase the game until I went to university. It was a fun sort of topic that I was able to talk to my friends about and our shared love of the series kept us close."

With the games popularity on the rise, the games developer, Game Freak, in partnership with The Pokemon Company International, had to increase the competitive aspect of the game, by endorsing several national and international e-sports tournaments around the world, the most notorious of which is called Video Game Championships (VGC).

"VGC is a very competitive tournament, my friends and I try to think of different combinations and variations to test out, but the real test is actually competing in the regional matches. Then it is all about outwitting the opponent."

With Pokemon becoming a more prevalent game throughout popular culture due to its ever expanding social and competitive community, Players such as Daniel are now in a better position than ever because of the games simplicity and deeper combat strategies.






Earlier today, Bethany Vernon told us that her greatest passion in life is the reading and classification of books.
In this interview, She explains why she loves books and what she does with them, and why she is so passionate about it.

Bethany Vernon is a budding Library Technician, soon to graduate from TAFE, she possesses the skills and abilities necessary to catalog and archive any book into the library's computer systems and also how to manage the way that these systems operate to the public.

"I have used books as a form of escapism for many years, keeping hold of my favorites and carting them all over the country and treating them as treasured friends. Books have always been there, they are the one constant in my life aside from my family."

After finding that she had a love for books, she decided to take a Diploma in Library and Information Services at TAFE to become a fully qualified Library Technician, going on to say that.
"I decided to pursue libraries as a career so that I can help other kids with their own escapism and to foster a love of books and reading in the next generation. I get scarily excited about new ways of connecting with books, their content and their dissemination."

With libraries becoming more and more important as the need for information grows, the world needs more people like Bethany to properly store and catalog all types of information, whether is be in print or any type of physical media or even online digital information, it all needs to be protected and archived in the same manner. The world needs more people as passionate as Bethany, to keep our newly expanding frontier of information alive.

Monday, 14 September 2015

Week 3 Storify Article

Storify is a social media platform that allows its users to collate several mediums of social media and make their own stories based around those posts on other platforms.

Personally, I feel that Storify is a confusing platform. Whilst it provides an easy to use service to perform the tasks that a user may wish to perform, my issue with Storify is its existence. Why do we need yet another social media platform for random people and citizen journalists to essentially re-post other peoples hard work and to take credit for potentially hours or days of someone else's work for their own personal gain.

However, my own feelings aside, Storify does open up a whole new platform of information delivery, and whilst looking at the trending stories, it appears that the most common type of story that makes the featured list is sporting events or other public events that are extremely popular such as music festivals or appearances of particular people of interest such as celebrities or politicians.

Whilst Storify is a convenient place to collate a huge number of sources for virtually any story that a user may wish to produce. I just don't feel that it is going to be used in any form of serious media as it only seems to operate in soft news stories that really do not have much of a place in any form of serious media.

Friday, 31 July 2015

Week 2 Trending

Today, with the increasing usage of the internet and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, it is not hard to imagine that certain trends would catch on, similar to how they do in real life. For example, the width of mens neck ties are frequently widening and thinning throughout the years. Whilst the width of neck ties is a slow trend, items that are trending online are a vastly changing the whole landscape of trends in terms of how rapidly items begin trending and how they stop.

Right now, (As of the writing of this post) according to www.trendsmap.com there are no trends happening in the city of Rockhampton and as such, I will be using the Brisbane trends. Currently, in Brisbane, the trends are as follows:

evans
@612brisbane 
#cookingforcopyright
shark
#brisbane
@queenslandrail
bronwyn
bishop
racist
racism
auspol
ipswich
#adamgoodes
@abcnews



Now, to analyze these online trends, it is a touch difficult to say if any of these stories are connected to any local stories, however it would not be too hard to assume that larger stories on a national scale would lead into a more local story. The fact that the ABC news has its own Twitter handle shows us that the people who use social media are also consuming news at regular basis, the way that the ABC news delivers its self to the consumer at a time that is instant as the news breaks and updates to breaking events can be delivered in almost an instant. Twitter is now being used by corporations to and organizations to raise awareness to a new event or issue. recently, the computer parts company Intel recently posted a tweet that advertised their Intel Developers Forum, a meeting dedicated to hardware and software developers so that they can find out what new technologies they can utilize with Intel hardware. This simple tweet sent news about their event to over 4 million followers, making it more seen and advertised than the older styles of getting their event published to such an extent.



With social media platforms becoming more and more popular among most age groups, more and more social trends are being thrown around faster and easier with the aid of technology. people can be more informed about events, news or what people are up to in a few short clicks. Put simply, technology has enhanced the way that people are embracing social media platforms and consuming media faster than ever. 

Tuesday, 28 July 2015

Week 1 Rugby

On the 24th of Feburary 2015, the National Rugby League club; the Gold Coast Titans, were taken over by the National Rugby League its self, meaning that the only shareholder in the team was the governing body of the sport and not a private investor or shareholder as the club was set to fold a few short weeks due to a serious lack of funding.

Many news sources picked up on this significant story as it had unfolded. Sources such as: The ABC, The Gold Coast Bulletin and the NRL's own news page. Clearly, each of these sources covered the event in their own different way. The three sources mentioned earlier shall be compared with each other and will be contrasted from one another.

The National Rugby League news page on their website, while a little disorganized, displays the story clearly and presents its self in its own way. Realistically, the story is written for fans of NRL as a sport and those who understand whom certain people are; the beginning of the statement starts with an indirect quote from the CEO Dave Smith, as an objective third party with no prior knowledge about the National Rugby League, I have no idea who Mr Smith is or which organisation (The NRL or the Gold Coast Titans) he is the CEO of. When trying to see if the statement contains a particular angle to the story, it is difficult for me to ascertain as the piece feels more like someones notes on a transcript from a press release than a full and in depth statement from the company responsible of this action. The key messages presented in this particular article seems more to say that everyone should know that the club is fine and that nothing is going to happen to the team in the immediate future, rather than what sort of agreement the club and the board had come to.

LINK: http://www.nrl.com/nrl-takes-control-of-goldcoasttitans/tabid/10871/newsid/84020/default.aspx

The Gold Coast Bulletin has a webpage that is more easily laid out and a touch easier to use, (This, from an Interactive Design student) however, this article seems a little more inquisitive in nature and seems to try to pull the reader deeper into the article the further along that you read. however, this article seems to be written for a person who might live in the Gold Coast and again, have a mild understanding about the NRL as a sport. This article presents more of an angle towards the fact that this story could have proven devastating towards the fans and sponsors of the team, and that the club was saved because some people lost some money on trying to save the team. When looking for any key points addressed in this particular article, it is clear that the Gold Coast Bulletin has gotten a few more key points of the media release than the NRL web page did, however it does go into more detail around the situation also; the Bulletin also goes into some speculative information such is displayed towards the beginning of the article where the author writes:

 "The Bulletin understands the Titans were in danger of folding due to crippling financial commitments and off-field dramas before the NRL launched a bailout bid."

LINK: http://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/sport/nrl/five-year-blueprint-convinced-nrl-boss-to-save-titans-just-weeks-before-gold-coast-nrl-club-would-have-folded/story-fnj9yd9w-1227237781936

The Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) is one of the last bastions of unbiased, un-opinionated and un-influenced information and news in Australia. With a webpage layout that is vastly superior to either of the other news sources, the ABC is fundamentally better from an ease of use basis. Furthermore, the press conference that they had created on this particular subject was comprehensive enough to get more information than either of the other two entries, the ABC article was quick to tell us that  CEO David Smith works as the head of the board in the NRL and is exemplary in providing informative facts and all around more information to the reader than other sources as the ABC article is written to an audience that may not know all the facts that is assumed knowledge in the other two. This article is more inclined to inform all people about the event in a manner that makes sense and that is clearly to provide information and to get news of this deal out to the public without tainting any information presented. The key messages shown in this Press Conference is that the titans would have fallen through as a club due to a severe lack of funding and that the NRL entered into a deal, letting the general consumer know that nothing will change to anyone else outside of the top-end management.

LINK: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-24/nrl-takes-over-control-of-gold-coast-titans-amid-drugs-scandal/6247574