Day: February 19, 2008

google maps

I am continually amazed at how advanced our mapping technology is via the internet. It seems like every time I pay a visit to google maps, they have developed a new and closer way of getting directions.

There are now five different subcategories you can click on: map, street view, satellite, terrain, and traffic. I could spend hours typing in addresses and finding my house or neighborhood, or other familiar places. Especially with the new street view option which literally allows you to do a 360 from the address you entered. Incredible!

When I went to Belgium with my boyfriend for Christmas break, we used his iPhone religiously to get around the city and the country. iPhone has the google map icon which is just a click away and then you can do the same things as you would on the computer. Had we not had the iPhone, the trip could have been a disaster. Especially in a foreign country where we weren’t exactly fluent in French…

Podcast examples

Here are some examples of the podcast assignments done by last year’s class.

Our esteemed technology tutor Aaron did this project:

[audio:http://muskrat.middlebury.edu/lt/cr/faculty/jmittell-lt/fmmc0246a-s07-distribution/AshmittyPodcast.mp3]

Graduated student Astri von Arbin Ahlander did this one:

[audio:http://muskrat.middlebury.edu/lt/cr/faculty/jmittell-lt/fmmc0246a-s07-distribution/Astri/AstrisPodcast.mp3]

And here’s the clip of the This American Life show on the viral voicemail:

[audio:http://muskrat.middlebury.edu/lt/cr/faculty/jmittell-lt/TAL_Voicemail.mp3]

Thompson’s technobiography

This past summer my best friend decided that he was going to become a fashionista and started a blog to track new street fashions in Miami. Despite the fact that I had no prior experience with fashion or blogs, he enlisted me to write commentary and accompany him on his scouting missions. I forgot to mention: central to the blog was “scouting” or hunting the streets of Miami for well dressed people and then asking them to pose for the camera. This was definitely awkward for all parties involved. People were always concerned about the legitimacy of the site and of course, who the hell we were. People were well aware of their “digital identity” and were worried for good reason. Luckily for them, our intentions were strictly professional.

A few weeks into the process, we received a call from a reporter at the Miami Herald; they wanted to run a full page story on us! The reporter accompanied us on a scouting mission and took photos of us taking pictures (kind of blew my mind). Then the paper sent a professional photographer to take glamor shots of us. It was awesome. We were so excited we even purchased a URL for the site . Finally, the story ran and we felt like minor celebrities.

But all good things must come to an end. We both had to go back to school so we left the website in the hands of a cool but irresponsible girl. She took absolutely horrid photos and couldn’t write to save her life. Unfortunately the whole project went down the tubes once we both left for college.

If you got to the site please look at the older entries.

Audio Checklist

Have you ever sat down at a computer, put on your headphones and heard nothing? You swear you turned up the volume the last time you used them, yet now there isn’t even a hint of static.

Now imagine you are sitting at a computer that is being used continuously by many people, and you are left to the mercies of the last person who sat in the chair. Public computers take every challenge and multiply it exponentially.

Here is a checklist to help you figure out how to get your sound back if nothing is coming through:

From the Computer

  • Click on the Increase Volume Key, speaker with three lines, and make sure the volume is at sufficient level. This will also turn the sound back on if it has been muted.
  • In System Preferences choose Sound -> Output tab and test Line Out and Digital Out. The line that works depends on which audio port your headphones are connected to.

Application

  • Turn up sound in volume slider.
  • [Application Name] -> Preferences, make sure any sound settings are set to Line Out or Digital Out, whichever you have selected in the System Preferences.
  • In iMovie HD -> Preferences -> Playback, make sure “Play DV project through to DV camera is NOT checked.”

Headphones

  • If the headphones have an ON/OFF switch, turn headphones on.
  • The box is connected to the computer.
  • Headphones are connected to the box.
  • Master volume is turned up.
  • Volume is turned up on the channel where the headphones are plugged in.

Welcome to the Cladagram Room

Dinosaur Safari. This was my very first computer game, and it came out in 1994. The goal is to take the best pictures of all of the dinosaurs, from common and innocuous to rare and mostly instant-death. We ran it on my dad’s two-inch thick laptop, which could go for about an hour on its battery in the car, at which point it would be too hot to keep in your lap. This is exactly the version I had, which originally ran on a Windows I don’t remember the name of, and I have no idea why anyone would make it available for XP. I encourage all of you who are able to download it, which took about six minutes on my machine, and give it a whirl or just click on the link and look at the screencaps. It has no music, the graphics are exactly as shown, and it has the weirdest voiceover I’ve ever heard. That Ichthyosaursus swimming around down there used to scare the crap out of me, but look at the poor thing now. But someone has written an article about it and detailed the odd processes one must go through to get the poor little game to run on a contemporary operating system. Thank you, but WHY?

I think it just goes to show that, as technology evolves, so do our expectations of it. I was six and loved this game, my dad was thirty-six and loved it too. We still reference it with much fondness. Now I’m making fun of it. Having fought dinosaurs in the gorgeously-rendered Final Fantasy XII, seeing them move in real time with fancy things like a shadow and music and sound effects and individually moving body parts, this old game seems like something a six-year-old should be making, not playing. It makes me wonder where we go from “gorgeously-rendered” with all the fancy new trappings.

It also makes me wonder at the huge amount of mostly-useless stuff archived on the internet. Who would bother making this available twelve years after it was a good game? And why? I suppose it supports the concept of this (for me) newly-discovered “abandonia.com.” Abandoned games for the people who like them, and advertising for people with that target audience. I guess that’s me then…

Excuse me as I go try to make this tiny speck of nineties run on my machine.

Dinosaur Safari

Welcome to the Cladagram Room.

Laria’s techno-bio

Well, there’s not much to say here. Technology and I have met, say hi when we pass each other in the halls, and share a few laughs once in a while. I can use plenty of technology as a basic consumer; I’m clearly on a computer right now, but I don’t know how any of it works and I’m probably the poster-child for user error. I can’t even figure out where to upload my shiny new Facebook badge to that… place, with… the other badges… yeah. I’m probably the vaccine to viral media simply because I can’t find my way around. But I’m hoping that will change.

I use the basics like my cell phone, ipod, email, facebook (who am I kidding, I never check that thing), forums, DeviantArt, Fanfiction.net, digital cameras, eBay, and TextTwist. I can use wikipedia but I’ve never edited a wiki before this class. I don’t even comment on blogs. I play some video games, but only the ones where you can trade monumental amounts of time for skill. I haven’t played video games since my last bouts of Riven, Oregon Trail II, and Starcraft. I use YouTube, but mostly only what other people show me first. I can program a VCR, but that skill seems so obsolete now. I only hope I can survive this class.

Oh yeah, I run Windows and will be running Internet Explorer until I finish posting because I’ll probably mess it up and lose my browsing capability when I do it. Mac illiteracy hurts more than I expected at Midd.

Uploading to Dubai

So as I am sitting here trying thinking about my reading response to McLuhan’s article, about how print media is becoming “obsolete”, I can’t help but think about my experiences over this past seven or so months. Starting this past July I started working for Boat International, a media group that publishes various magazines, books and other supplements for the superyacht industry. For months I worked laboriously on editing and designing features for their monthly magazine (Boat International USA) and for their pièce de résistance – the annual Megayachts book. What amazed me the most from this experience was how integrated electronic media had been in the creation of these pieces of print media. The two were interdependent upon each other. Every day articles and photographs were uploaded to the server from writers and photographers who were aboard yachts in the middle of the ocean. Hourly emails were exchanged between the various other Boat International offices. And finally, when all was said and done, the features were uploaded directly to the printer in Dubai. Without the use of electronic media, the Boat International USA magazine or the perfect coffee table book Megayachts would not have been possible.