An interesting piece of multimedia: Flickr THE REVIEW…

While there is much garbage out there on the internet you occasionally come across things that are very useful and well presented; Flickr is one of those rare exceptions. I like Flickr, I like it a lot, and the main reason for this is its accessibility and content. In my opinion Google image search is the benchmark for accessible image search standards, and Flickr is probably up there with it. It’s one of the easiest sites I’ve used to search images on, easily rivalling that of Google image search for simplicity and ease of use. Simply type something in and the search will instantly display pages and pages of relevant images. However if you want to narrow it down further you can, because Flickr has a flattering array of advanced options to make your search more specific.

Where Flickr excels most is in free distribution images. In the world of media there is a lot of legal matter to attend to, so it’s nice to use an image for your site and know you’re not going to get sued for using it. Flickr answers that call. It allows you to search for images that are completely free to use, with the results actually being surprisingly useful. A lot of the free images on Flickr are actually good quality pictures that are most definitely usable on blogs and websites, so it’s nice having a free legal source you can rely on.

I have to admit that after reviewing Flickr simply for university purposes I now find myself using it a lot more than I first expected. Its vast array of images in one place is fantastic, and I love the fact they host images free of distribution rights that aspiring journalists like myself can use freely in our articles without fear of being sued.

Oh and just in case you want proof that the free images on Flickr are worth using, here’s one I found in little more than a few seconds that is perfectly relevant to my article. Now tell me that wasn’t easy?

Credit to the photographer Poolie for this one!

Google News: who knew it could be this easy?

Okay so i’ve just realised that i am in fact missing a Google news blog despite the fact i used it for a week a while ago and most enjoyed it. So where do i start… Google news is a service that basically lets you personalise the news you want to see. Upon signing up to Google news you’re given a very nice playpen in which to mess about with and make your own. There are various categories to choose from or you can create your own, and they all link to the latest news on that particular subject.

The convenience of this service soon meant that my wall was  full of categories linking to all sorts of crazy types of garbage, such was my excitement of this rapid access to on demand news getting out of control. However it was there that i realised Google News major flaw. It needs to be used responsibly.

Sure its fine to put about 30 different categories linking to all concievable topics that you’re interested in… but then youre no better off. You end up having to scroll for ever to reach the bottom of the page where your lost categories are relagated into the dark depths. You forget about half of the categories because you only look at the first 8 anyway, meaning that category in position 27th will never get viewed. To be sure it’s a quality service and i most definitely like Google News, but it needs to be used in the right way to be effective. Rather than spewing up catergories into your profile, narrow your choices down to what youre REALLY interested in and then use Google News properly.

Suddenly if you do that, viola! It becomes an excellent one stop, convenient source for your news. Theres no scrolling to find the article you want, no browsing the internet. Just click your category and bam – all the news you could want on that category. It’s the simplicity of it that makes it so charming and useable, this really is a great tool. The only thing is now i no longer browse the internet for my news, i just Google News it… Which kind of takes the fun out of the internet… hmmm.

Reflective Analysis: Multimedia Journalism

Multimedia journalism has been a very inciteful module for me that has shown me a great deal about the world of new media. We looked at various forms of new media in lesson and we were given the ability to learn and write about each one our own personal blog using WordPress. We were taught how web based writing works, and the need to keep things short and snappy with links pointing to more information. However at no point were the blogs purely academic, which meant we could customize them and change them to suit our taste. Having a bit of flexibility and freedom in what we did with it made it quite fun, and also gave us the ability to be creative and unique. I enjoyed the lessons and some of the things we had to do, such as being able to completely slate some of the various websites out there that are so poorly designed they may as well be deemed useless.

In terms of the audio and video assessments it was more a case of refining my skills than learning them, as i had done film and t.v. prior to this in college and knew how to handle video/ audio equipment. Never the less it was still a learning curve trying to find the right approach to interview people – something i have never done before. I liked the fact the module was mainly practical based because i think when it comes to multimedia you really need the hands on apporach to get the best learning exerience from it. Also its far more fun to be doing it yourself rather than watch somebody else do it for you!

The biggest learning point for me was just the eye opener to the world of new media that this module had. I never realised there were such a wealth of useful things out there on the internet. All of them related to journalism and while i didn’t like all the things we had to trial and test it was still and eye-opener none the less. This was a great practical module with plenty of hands of stuff to do that i like and enjoy, it was good fun!

Evaluation: Audio/Video work

With my audio and video pieces now handed in an can safely say i am happy with them. I had to produce two short pieces of multimedia journalism in the form of an video vox pop and an audio podcast. Each had to have a relevant topic that was both interesting and informative but could be condensed into a short time frame of two to three minutes.

For the video project i chose to ask people how they thought the university could be improved and record their various responses. The answers varied from clever to just plain weird, but most of my interviews were acceptable enough to go in the final cut. Though interviewing people was scary at first it was a great confidence builder that im glad i did. I made sure to frame shots correctly and to check for bad sound – however on two of my clips the sound was a slight worse than i had hoped. With that said i did my best to fix and adjust the bad sound in order for it to sound natural in the final edit, but for a couple of clips the result still wasn’t the perfect one i wanted. I can’t say i didn’t try my best however, which is why even though it could have been better im still happy with the result. I will indeed learn for next time.

For the audio podcast i chose to create a piece on the pressures of moving to university for parents and how it affected them. I managed to persuade my dad to be an interviewee and planned on interviewing one of my friends at university. However once i had finished my dads interview it became apparent how short two minutes actually was and i realised i only needed him as an interview. I was very happy with the technical side of the podcast, as i managed to clean up and perfect the sound to my liking. There was no popping whatsoever and i cut the speech so that there were no “errrs” or “umms” to slow the pace. I thoroughly enjoyed doing the podcast and the results were just as i wanted them to be!

Evaluation: Group Blog

With the group blogs now at an end i am happy to say that overall i am very pleased. The result was that of a very high standard, and something that as a group i think we all contributed to rather well. The basic idea for the blog was to provide an insight into the Illuminati and how it worked, and to see if the theories surround the conspiracy could be justified. Needless to say i had a lot of fun doing it, and it helped that my group were as keen as i was. At our first meeting we decided who was researching what area, and then we agreed upon a rough timetable to which we could all follow. We then arranged regular meetings after this to keep each other up to date on proceedings and always made sure to help each other if somebody was unclear via a facebook group we made.

In terms of group communication i think we all knew what we had to do and how to do it, which was helped by our pre-preperation. Having a timetable set in stone that we had to each follow meant that we all knew what we were doing and there was no room for slip ups. The fact everyone in the group was very friendly towards each other also helped on the communication side because there were no fights or people getting annoyed. It was laid back but at the same time very proffesional – these were most comfortable conditions to work under.

The blog itself came out brilliant, everyone filled their roles perfectly and followed each others advice. I was assigned as the designer and the writer, but also ended up taking the role of technical supervisor. I had to keep a check on postings and make sure that things like categorising and authors had been sorted, which i wasn’t too bothered about.

Overall i think the group were great, we all cooperated really well, and we created a really great informative conspiracy blog!

Twittering twits that twitter tweets

So I’ve recently being attempting to use Twitter for a week, and finally come to the assumption that I must not ever use it again for the goodness of my own health. So much so that I have in fact actually deleted my account completely and had that part of my memory permanently wiped.

The basis of Twitter is that it’s a social networking site with a friendly twist. While things like Facebook and MySpace focus on bringing groups together through the masses of intuitive ideas and wide spanning interfaces, Twitter relies solely on the simplicity of sending a 140 word limited message from peer to peer. It’s an interesting flipside on the usual depth and complexities of the other networking sites, and I can honestly see its charm and appeal.

For one it’s extremely quick and easy to update which is the prime reason for its success; it really couldn’t be any more user friendly. Create an account, follow some people and you’re ready to start telling the world what you’re having for tea. Whereas Facebook and MySpace rely on you inputting massive amounts of personal data on yourself in order to find others, Twitter just lets you get straight to the point: tweeting. There’s no menus to trawl through and no endless pages of people joining random groups (I’m looking at you Facebook), you simply, create, follow and tweet.

To put Twitters success down to this alone is of course a little silly, because as most Twitter users inevitably admit it’s the celebrity following that is responsible for its massive popularity. People can’t wait to jump on the bandwagon and see what these celebrities are ‘thinking’, and by following their profile you supposedly do just that. Lily Allen is a major player on the Twitter forefront, with some of her tweets getting some serious cyberspace arguments brewing. This of course is all the more reason for people to join, because then they too can see the argument unfold first hand through the wonderful world of cyberspace Twittering slander!

The celebrity culture doesn’t stop there however, it gets even crazier. This celebrity tweeting culture has actually reached such an extent that it has managed to become the new place for some celebrity related news stories to be released first. A recent example would of course be Cheryl Cole who broke the news of her break up with Ashley through none other than Twitter! Was this some weird viral PR scheme gone mad, whereby the public were used to distribute her news? One can only wonder these days…

Though this point alone was a subject of a query to me: for something that relies solely on user generated content how can the majority of it be trusted? Even in the event the sources are indeed accurate where is the professional level of editing and code-keeping that applies to true news reporting practices? Well like all user generated content it’s noticeably absent; the only omissions to this being a few feeds who funnily enough are bi-products of news reporting corporations anyway. For the rest however what we get is an unregulated, potentially untrue service whereby what is being said may not be creditable information.

Case aside however the problem I personally found with Twitter was that the limit has many constraining factors. Everything on Twitter is condensed, and while that may be fine for the simplicities of what somebody is cooking for dinner I much prefer the hearty, deep, well written article. It seems to detract from what people are writing when they are forced into writing short snippets. By applying this limit many Twitter updates become news that nobody really cares about. However I can completely understand why some people will like the short, almost bulletin-like snippets because it’s less to read and keeps everything brief and to the point. I suppose the choice is a double edged sword, some people will like it and others won’t. I much prefer the blogging culture over this, because personally I think it gives the writer more freedom to express their views and more depth for their article rather than being constrained to a set amount of words. To put it into context I like reading the articles in a newspaper rather than just glancing at the headlines for the story.

This is why this last paragraph hurts me so much to write… because I myself was knowingly becoming one of the many tweeting fans I had hatred for. I found myself tweeting things unnecessarily – without control or thought, to such an extent where I felt like the rest. At one point i even deemed tweeting to be quite enjoyable, before realising the majority of the site contained people just like me who told the dismissing public snippets of their own sad lives. It was then when i wrestled out of the hold it had on me and forced myself to delete my account forever, for fear of becoming a true tweet addict. To fall victim to Twitters success unfortunately shows what a fantastically simple and addictive tool it is; to which I didn’t want to be a part of. There’s something satisfying to write pointless jargon about yourself, regardless of whether anybody in the world will read it. Imagine it like a digital diary for yourself; it’s just nice to write your thoughts down and let things out regardless of what people think. I wish I could’ve ended on something much more negative, I wish I could’ve took the site to pieces… but I became my own worst enemy and for that I commend you Twitter. Just too bad my bird lost his voice and decided to take up a life instead.

All of the above is of course nitpicking and personal opinion, and even though i dont like Twitter i must admit it does have its uses to the market its aimed at. For one its extemely quick and easy to update which is the prime reason for its success, and two it has something of a insane celebrity following. This goes to such an extent that it has managed to actually become the new place for celebrity news stories to be first broke – such is the rate at which slightly sad individuals update their statuses with the latest celebrity related tat.  Though this point alone was a subject of a query to me: for smething that relies soley on user generated content how can the majority of it be trusted? Even in the event the sources are indeed accurate where is the proffesional level of editing and code-keeping that applies to true news reporting practices? This only applies to a select of twitter updates, who focus on the news and such. For the majority however the useless garbage that nobody wants to hear about is what usually emintates from them.

Sky News – how does it handle video?

Sky news is a traditional news website. It does as you would expect, reports news in various forms – and it does it well. It has all the video content you would expect from a news website; and all is conveniently and easily accessible. The main menu is intuitive and it only takes one click on the videos section to be transported to the wealth of video content the site offers. They have even recently taken advantage of sky player, of which the front page now houses a live feed of the news currently being broadcast on TV at that time.

The footage comes direct from a traditional broadcaster which in turn is reported from individual journalists. However it differs from broadcast in the sense that the videos are greatly cut down from TV. The videos are a lot more to the point and summarize the story rather than giving an in depth report. The video is there to be integrated into articles rather than to be a standalone thing. The videos are meant to be watched with the accompanying article as opposed to by themselves. However with that said there are some video articles that are much longer and act as a standalone, they’re just a lot rarer.