audio and video podcasts!

audio

I have began to listen to the podcasts that are available on iTunes. The 2 that have really caught my interest, are 'No Agenda' and 'The Current from CBC'. 'The Current from CBC' is in the news and politics category, and reviews the highlights from the radio. This podcast has very high ratings and listeners are happy with how level headed and insightful it is. It is worthy of 4 stars, "I really love this radio show. It tells of all the recent headlines, debates and all other things news wise. I listen to it every time I have a chance." This podcast is convenient for the people who missed the news and want a quick recap on what is going on. 'No Agenda' is the second podcast that i listened too. The category is places and travel, however the more you listen, the more off topic they get, so it covers a lot of area. This podcast was rated a 4 1/2 stars. "Love it that be blend technology, economic issues to which wine to get! Very entertaining podcast!", it allows people to look at many different issues at once. Important topics come up, but so do funny ones. It is as entertaining podcast.

-> Personal Podcast Evaluation: For my first time listening to a podcast, I enjoyed it. It was easy enough to find and subscribe, best part was, it was good for a university student's budget, FREE! I enjoyed listening to it because it raised questions and allowed me to stay connected, but i was able to do it whenever or wherever i wanted. I synched the podcasts to my iPod, and when i was walking around campus, or even in my room working on homework, I would listen to it. It is always there so I will never miss it, and it keeps me in the loop. It is a good experience if you find something you like.

-> This method of sharing information is easier than getting it off of blogs or magazines because you can multi task better. It is easier to listen to something while doing other things. It is a lot more convenient and can be done from wherever. It is not a very formal way, but now a days, our society wants convenient over what is proper. Podcasts are appropriate for what our society expects today.

-> Pros: convenient, easy availability, public access, interesting, entertainment, mobile, diversity

Cons: need the technology, may not like it, listening may not take the information in

** it is personal preference

video

so since i was new to the whole podcast thing, im sure you can guess im also new to the whole vidcast thing too. its pretty much the same, but you can watch stuff too. The first one i watched was "The Stuff They Don't Tell you" and this was off of iTunes. It was really interesting, and it is about pretty important things too. This podcast was not very successful, it had 3 stars, but most people found that it was not as informative as the description led it to be. The reviews were not very impressed and were very disappointed with it. Another video cast I watched was from YouTube. My friend was the one who actually made it, and it is really fun and just cute. If you are bored its something to look at. Again, mixed reviews, but most of the reviews are just conversations based on something that was said in the video.

->I found that video casts are informative as well, but mainly something to enjoy looking at. It is not formal at all. YouTube is mainly for funny videos, not informative. I prefer podcasts to video casts. But I did enjoy watching video casts- some are very comedic.

-> again this is a personal choice, it is not a formal way of retrieving information. It is just a different way of taking in material. Personally, it is worse then audio casts for me.

What has made YouTube successful?

-> FREE entertainment!

CVChamo:

Google Reader

So google has come up with another new innovation to it's site.. google reader.

With google reader you can have subscriptions to different sites based on criteria that you are looking for. It is, in simple terms, an aggregator. You can go to one site, which will pull information from other sites and put them in one place. As simple as that.

In order to add feeds to your google reader account, you can 1) subscribe them. Meaning click the subscribe button, type in the information you want and then click add. 2) copying the URL of a blog you want to read, and 3) browse by username. All of these are as easy as they sound too! There are also other ways that you can find feeds and add them to your google reader account.

As I used google reader for a week, it was hard to get used to at first, however in the end, it saved me a lot of time. Instead of visiting every single website, one after another. I conveniently go to my google reader account, which also has my mail, my documents, and is a search engine, and then I can read all the information on one page. At first, I just wanted to go to all of my sites, but this creates a whole new feeling. It brings everything together for me. It also takes up a lot less time. It is easy, and allows me to share interesting articles I find. I also really like the fact that I can see what people find interesting. It broadens my information by a lot. Before google reader I would stick to the same sites and leave it at that. Now, I get different opinions, and a lot more information, but all in one place. The best part is, I don't have to search for it. It is all right there. It makes things a lot easier. This is for sure technology that I will use daily because it is easy and effective. It brings everything together instead of having me try to find it all.

first blog

So, as you can probably tell, I am new to this whole blogging experience. Before I created this one, I visited many others to try to grasp the concept. I visited twitter, google blogs and technorati. All these different blogging sites had the same idea, but all had different layouts. And as I went from page to page, that differed too. I learned that a blog is a website that can be made personal. The originator of the blog can put information about events, or the news or even about their life, the content can be up to the person who is writing it. I think that blogging is a new and interesting way to put information out for people to see. The media plays a big role in getting people's attention, but now that technology has become dominant, especially the internet, a blog is the perfect way to get things known.

Blogging is a very new concept, most people know about it, however they do not have it. But has it gets more popular and more well known, I think that a lot of people will start to make their own blogs. It could even become more popular than facebook which is known world wide. With the way that new sites come and go, blogging will be 'in' soon enough. I think that the world will be effected by the popularity of blogging, however not greatly. The amount of communication devices that are out there has already made the greatest impact. Blogging is just another way to communicate ideas. I think that it could make an effect with news companies because people blog about events and different news.

Blogger.com is, in my opinion an excellent site. I like how the person creating the blog is able to change the templates and make it very personal. Also, it is easy and quick to create. A blog should be able to give a person the chance to express anything they want; from events to something that happened in their day. Blogger.com is perfect for that, and is easy enough to do it quickly. It also allows the people reading the blogs to find things easy. But with that, it also keeps the originators personal information (email and address) in private, the public can not see it. Therefore it still keeps security. Blogger.com is fun and allows a person to be an individual... :)

I found that twitter is a website that is more about updating quickly what is new and what a person is up to. Where a blog is where a person can take the time and talk about their life or anything they want to. Twitter is well known through the celebrities. They are able to keep in contact with each other, and allows fans to keep up with the new gossip. Twitter is popular for celebrities, and I think that many people have it just because they play a huge role in our society.

Twitter is more useful for quickly updating where and what you are doing, where blogging is a more in depth look at different situations and events. Twitter is usually downloaded onto cell phones where people can up date their status on the go, while a blog takes time. I think that people get more out of blogging then they do off of twitter accounts, however twitter is more popular due to the amount of celebrities that have it.

thanks for reading,

alex prowse

live, love, laugh.