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How Social Media Changed us


07 Jan

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Posted in Random, Raves, School | 1 Comment »

A few days ago, I wrote about Social Media, and got more comments than I expected, and it gave me a lot to think about and yes I do plan to respond to the comments and discuss social media more.  However, this article

How Social Media Has Changed Us was sent to me, and it brings to light a few things that I haven’t completely considered before.

The article was sent to me, by my good friend tengrrl, who very much has education on her brain, and always looks out for the best interests of me, and everyone else.  What the article discusses is the different aspects of social media in our world. The main part that I like, is that it shows that children that use social media, are writing and reading, and thus then more that we read and write, the better we understand literacy. In an age that we hear more about children using txt chat to write their papers, its awesome to see more positive aspects about literacy.

I hope to have more time to comment about this further, but if you are interested in the social media world as much as I am, it would be a good read to take a peak at.

Thank you again to tengrrl for sending me this link :)

Winter Project and Hosting


06 Jan

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Posted in Random, School | No Comments »

I have a few ideas of what I could do for our winter term project for WDMD 346, I’m thinking that I could do the portfolio, but considering that I can’t find all that much currently that I’d want to put into it, thanks to a timely failure of a thumb drive with my early works on it; I might consider updating a website for a chat network to be Drupal or Joomla.  It would be for my slow work in progress DevilsFreek.  Haven’t had a chance to update its website in ages, and it would be a good way to add the scalability of features that a more powerful CMS offers.   Otherwise I’m going to keep thinking of ideas for this project.  I have a few days to think and get ideas and feedback, so nothing too important to get set into stone right away.

If you can think of  any other ideas that meet these goals. ” Be a portfolio of your own work, offer substantive content and opportunities to interact around a common interest, or provide similar functionally for a non-Profit or other organization of your choosing”  Let me know.

For hosting, it is no surprise that I’ll host it on my current host, ServerBolt.  I’ve been with them for hosting for close to 3 years, and never had any issues.  Even with a hard drive that failed on the server last night (that, and my stupidity, caused my style sheet not to load correctly last night, sorry for anyone that got a really goofy looking site) the amount of downtime is perfect for school projects.  Also, the backup options that are provided and done automatically ensure no data loss.

Social Media


05 Jan

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Posted in Rambles, Random | 8 Comments »

What in the world is all of this social media stuff we keep hearing about?

Social Media is defined as “A category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content.”

Well, that by itself doesn’t really help one understand what social media is, or why its important.  To me, social media is using any user based site (such as facebook, or twitter) to promote yourself and your ideas.

What does it do for us?  This is harder to determine what it really does for the world.  Yes, we have people that send twitter updates about their trips to the bathroom or their lunch menu, but there are also people that use twitter to communicate and spread ideas and have quite the following.   Most of the people that have mastered social media use  a combination of services to bring together a community of followers.

One of the first masters of social media that I can think of is Chris Pirillo. Since the late 1990′s, Chris has been working on a web site called “LockerGnome”.  His site has newsletters and blogs from people ranging from nobody’s to higher up people in the technology world.   In early 2007, Chris went from former TV host (TechTV) to social media master.  He created his live streaming site, Live.Pirillo.com.  He took a few different types of new and old technology to help promote himself in ways that were very new and still are somewhat strange even 3 years later.

Pirillo took live streaming video from Ustream.tv, incorporated irc from GeekShed.net, and twitter into one medium to create a real time social following, somewhat the birth of social media.

While Chris Pirillo is an extreme example of social media, most people do find themselves using social media daily. From Facebook, MySpace, Ustream, twitte,r and even IRC, many users are finding more creative ways to make their online image different and more appealing.  Technology new and old is brought together in different ways to help bridge everything together.  Is this Web2.0? Perhaps; to me, it’s more about finding ways to share ideas with friends.  After all, how many of us have clicked on a link on Facebook of a random web page that someone has found and thought it was the best in the world and shared with it others?  This is social media after all

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Corey's Rants

A Web Developer's rants, raves and randomness.