Reflection

I have mixed feelings about this class. It was way different than other classes I have experienced. I think the hardest thing for me was only meeting one night a week. It was very difficult for me to sometimes stay on top of things when we only met once a week (IF THAT) so that was frustrating for me personally. I also didn’t really know what to expect when taking this class and even now that its coming to an end I’m still a little unsure. I will hopefully never have to tweet again. The only reason I had an account was for this class and I just personally find it very useless. I am sure that will change as time goes on and well see if I will need it in my future job path, and if I do, I at least am familiar with it now. The only assignments done in class that I feel would benefit me in my future line of work would be the facebook fan page. I actually am apart of HDSA, who I did my page for and I really would hope to have it lead to future employment. I kind of wish we would have created a website. I remember us making some sort of online web thing, but now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t remember ever turning it in or what we did with it after that. My favorite assignment again would be the facebook fanpage because it was something close to home for me and I was able to do something that I was passionate about and actually USE it in the real world. Like the majority of classmates, I really enjoyed Kelly Ambrose’s blog. I feel we agreed on almost everything and it was entertaining, she really added personality into it.

Below are some links to my pages
o Blog:
o Facebook:
o PSA: Unavailable
o Youtube:

A New Crime For Xbox Live: Witness Tampering

Kotaku
When I saw this headline, I immediately wanted to check it out because it freaked me out. Apparently sexual predators would use Xbox Live as a means to stalk their prey and threaten the rare school shooting threat made over the Xbox 360 online network. Sadly this doesnt surprise me one bit. How sick can people get? Not only that but I guess now they are tampering with a witnesses.

According to a report from the New Haven Register, Anthony Hayward of Hamden, Connecticut was arrested on charges of "tampering with a witness, intimidating a witness and two counts of second-degree harassment," all based on messages sent via Xbox Live. Those messages include "I wouldn't laugh 2 much U a dead man walking" and "Rats die slow."

The above was taken from the Kotaku article which were acutal threats made to a material witness in a case against Hayward. According to the report, Hayward turned himself into the police but has not posted bail yet on his latest gun and drug possession charges.

This kind of stuff just really upsets me and makes me feel a little weary on what I do online, or anything for that matter.

Comet Branding

Tonight we had the pleasant joy and presence of Sarah Meaney from Comet Branding. Comet Branding is a company that writes blogs and other social media type things for other companies. It isn’t your normal company though, its very small consisting I believe of only 5 employees! Here is a little bit more information of what they do. Her overall presentation was informing us of better ways to write for social media and what the facts are and ways to fix it. Many people who read online compared to print media arnt as focused and tend to do more skimming than anything, I think its safe to say we can all relate to that. Starting at a computer screen is much harder then a newspaper. Here is where less is truly better. People are more likely to stay focused with less text and bigger texts and things that are eye catching and keep things simple! People don’t want to try and guess or figure out what they are reading; it should be fast and easy. I found her static to be very interesting about that only 1/5 of content is read by online articles.

I found her presentation very interesting and helpful and she put things in a whole different perspective from a different standpoint. Lets face it, things are turning more and more to online and social media and we need to learn to deal with it and find ways that can work to our advantage. Another helpful tip I found was that its so important to highlight key points to keep readers on the page. Its harder to keep readers engaged in online reading especially when you have to compete with all the ads and other distractions all on the same page, that and we tend to “scan” more then actually “read”.

I strongly suggest checking out her page if you haven’t already, its actually really informational and very neat and a great example of a simple yet complex website to keep your attention.

New Super Mario Galaxy 2 Trailer Introduces Rock Mario

Kotaku Article

Game Trailor

I think its safe to say that I am a die hard mario fan so every time I see or hear something about Mario I am automatically drawn to it. This particular article/video introduces a new flavor mushroom in Super Mario Galaxy 2! One of the many new power ups shown in the video is the delectable rock 'shroom which gives Mario the ability to turn himself into a boulder and bowl over Bowser's minions.

The familiar Super Mario Bros. staples such as Fire Flowers and Starman join the super powers along with the following
abilities to become:
Bee Mario
Ghost Mario
and Yoshi (who I happened to name my dog after), can now chow down on bulb berries and light platforms previously unseen.

my favorite is probably the Ghost Mario becuase I seriously hate those SOBs in game play. They are are HORRID and really bug me the most out of everything haha. This game hits the Wii in North America on May 23rd.

Nestle

Either I am really oblivious to what has been going on, or this isn’t really that big of a deal. Recently Nestle purchased a small amount of their oil used in their KitKats from a vendor that was harvesting unethically. According to Greenpeace, the methods used was reducing the rainforest and activists from all over are speaking their mind about it. A youtube video was made. And I found it extremely uncalled for disturbing. Social media got out of control and nestles fans reached out to 95000 + fans, many protestors though. Nestle probably would have been fine except for the fact that they lashed back at the fans in a sarcastic rude manor. If I were Nestle I would probably delete the page all together. The damage is done and this could go on forever, everyone will always have their own opinions and will fight. Its only 1.25% of the palm oil that is used and KitKats have been around for a while. I am a little unclear as far as how long this have been going on but I think the whole thing is a little ridiculous I really do.

I think that this was a very unprofessional use of facebook. I really don’t think this is a big deal, call me a tree killer or whatever but I really think this was over the top. I’m not a rainforest killer but I’m not a Greenpeace activist either. I feel Greenpeace was in the wrong, especially in the youtube video. I was extremely disturbed. I don’t think it was right either to have the killer logo being put all over nestles page either. I strongly believe that Nestle has the right to protect their page and respect. I do feel Greenpeace has a right to freedom of speech as well but it was done improperly and could have been handled much more professional. Social media I fear wont be able to be taken seriously anymore at one point…

Below are links to the articles and youtube video:

o All Facebook
o WSJ
o Bnet
o cnet
o Facebook
o You tube Video

What Happens in Vegas, Stays on Facebook

I want to first start off by saying I extremely loved the “What Happens in Vegas stays on Facebook” presentation given this past Tuesday. I had a much better experience and felt I took a lot more out of this then the BMA. Both Katie and Emily were so passionate about their topics and had so much fun energy that kept you intrigued the entire time. I felt it was extremely worth my time and then some.

Katie’s Presentation: Facebook
Most Valuable Information taken: I use facebook quite often already so a lot of it was stuff I already knew but there were some stuff in there that was I shocked by and found extremely valuable. For example the “lists”. I found that to be the most significance, she explained that it’s a way for you to divide and sort through your friends. For example, if you have co-workers, family or friends that you want only certain people to have access to certain information on your page you can do that and set your privacy within each individual list. A good example is for people who add you just for the sake to stalk you because you dated their boyfriend or they heard out you were pregnant etc. I think we have all seen and experienced this and know what I am talking about. Regardless to me I thought that was extremely valuable. Emily even quoted, “Facebook is all about stalking, lets face it”
How it may affect students and professionals: she gave very helpful tips as far as things to watch out for when it comes to professionals. For example, joining useless groups such as, “I don’t get drunk I get awesome”, having embarrassing wall posts. Another good tip she made was to do the test. Ask yourself, would my boss and grandma be ok with this? If you can honestly answer yes to both you are probably fine. Facebook can affect students drastically if they have inappropriate photos or remarks that would later keep them from getting a job. I know someone who got expelled from school for bad posts online about a teacher. So its very important that both parties be always aware because once its on the internet, its on there for ever.

Emily’s Presentation: LinkedIn
Most Valuable Information taken: the most valuable information I got from Emily on Linkedin, is how important is to keep linkedin strickly professional and not to cross it with facebook. You should not be leaving Network updates (similar to facebook status) like going to bed, heading to the dells or whatever it may be. Speak of certain work projects you are working on or proud of or seeking help with, keep it professional. Another very important tip that I learned and did not know was about your name and headline. That is the first thing people see and they give you a good amount of characters so you should make it stand out to impress!
How it may affect students and professionals: How it affects students and professionals are the same as it would be on facebook. If you are inappropriately using Linkedin it could keep you from getting a job if there are things on there very unprofessional. It’s a great way to meet new people and make connections. But on both parties, students and professionals if you want to be connected with someone, be sure to send a nice greeting along with it. Don’t randomly be connected. It could be as simple as “hey my friend so so knows you and said we have a lot in common or to talk about etc etc”

Again I was impressed with both speakers and had a great time there and felt really accomplished and well informed on both issues and actually took all there tips straight to my own pages.

Links
Follow Katie on Twitter
Follow Emily on Twitter
MKE Live
WiredWI

How The PlayStation Move Is NOT A Wii Remote

A Wii Remote Wanna Be?
I chose this article because this is a hot new item soon to be out on the market and I don’t know much about it. I am a wii fan myself, so I was curious to learn more about this new PlayStation Move and how it differs from the wii remote. As most of you know the PlayStation Move is a remote-like motion-sensitive controller with a sphere at the end. The sub-controller is an off-hand controller being offered for some Move games. The Move controller connects to the PS3 with the help of a PlayStation Eye camera, which detects the Move's colored sphere, while tilt sensors in the move transmit their position data to the PS3. So I can see how most people could interpret it as just another wii remote and nunchuk.
The Move is out this fall, price and launch games to be announced.

Here are some fun interesting differences and you can always check out the site for further details.
-Fewer buttons: The Move controller is actually even more streamlined than the Wii Remote. Nintendo's Remote still offers/confuses a new player with a d-pad, plus, A, minus, 1 and 2 buttons as well as a home button and B trigger. The Move has its own home button and underbelly trigger, but just five other points of button input. That makes the controller actually feel a little naked and therefore likely even less daunting to a new player — unless they need their controllers to look like TV remotes.
-No wasted batteries: The Wii remote sucks up AA battery juice. The Move and its companion sub-controller are rechargeable via the same mini-USB connection used to charge the PS3's main controller.
-A smarter controller: Wii games that were controlled with Remote and Nunchuk could be befuddled if the player pointed the Remote away from the screen. But between the combination of camera sensors — the Sony Eyetoy on top of the TV detects the presence of the Move — and a gyroscope prevents games and sensors from getting confused.
-No wire!: The Wii Remote and Nunchuk are tethered by a short cable. The PS3 Move and its subcontroller are not.
-No off-hand gyro: The Wii Nunchuk has a sensor that detects motion, more crudely than does the Remote.
-The colored ball: The colorful sphere at the pointing end of the Move is the thing that the PlayStation Eye uses to detect the presence of the Move and the color changes passed on the software detected and background!
-The Z: Without a Wii MotionPlus, the Wii Remote cannot accurately sense depth. The PS3, however, can detect such movement in the Z-plane. It does this thanks to the sphere at the end of the controller. If the player moves the Move toward themselves, the PlayStation Eye camera sees the sphere shrink and therefore knows the controller has been moved in the Z-plane. Clever.
I’m actually really excited and looking forward to checking this bad boy out for myself!

Is the Customer Always Right?

I am honestly at a loss of words after hearing and reading about this! I am honestly still in shock at not only the immaturity of it all, but how far it has come!? and for what? This is about a women, Sarah, who had a bad experience at her local movie theater and wrote a letter of complaint to the management, VP Steve, and got a response of “go F**K yourself” among other nasty remarks back. I think the whole act is childish, so I think it was a little bit irresponsible using facebook, but look at how it turned out. The fan page supporting Sarah has over 5,000 fans, the fan page supporting Steve has just over 200. Not only does Steve have way less supporters, not all of them are even supporters! Reading the wall comments, more then half of them were insulting him!
Here is the original letters taken from Sarah's fan page discussion for you to read and form your own opinion.
While reading more into both pages I came across a news video that was actually shot about the incident, which makes me really believe that this is all over board and has gone to far.
The following link gives you the exact emails as well, only including a follow up apology letter from Steve which was not included on the fanpage and in my honest opinion I do not believe were written by the same people. In my personal point of view I dont find it sincere or truthful. Its hard to come back from what he said.
Now I am not saying that Sarah is 100% right either. I do feel like her response could have been handled much more professionally and less demanding and rude. On the other hand, listening to her story I can see where she is coming from. Movies are expensive now a days and I would be quite upset myself if that happened to me. However I equally believe that Steve had no right to respond the way he did, especially in the “business world”. This is the first I have heard about this with fanpages. I guess you could say I am a little naïve when it comes to that sort of stuff, but it does not surprise me one bit that something like this formulated.
I’m not too sure how facebook execs would feel about this, as long as it does not really involve them directly I don’t see it being a huge issue. I mean if anything it is giving them more business and publicity. This is a perfect example of how social media can have such a huge impact even on such a small, immature act.

Sony to Launch New Playstation Smart Phone in 2010

Sony Smart Phone

No surprise here! Yet another smart phone is on the rise to compete with Apple's iPhone. Only this time its Sony?! According to the Wall Street Journal, Sony will release a new smart phone capable of downloading and playing PlayStation games! With declining PSP sales, a cool reception to the digital download-only PSPgo, and increasing competition from iPhone and iPod gaming, the timing sounds logical. Also targeted for a 2010 launch is an e-reader and a PlayStation Portable, which is running next to Apples iPad.

Wall Street Article Teaser

I also followed a link embedded in the Kotaku sight taking you straight to the Wall Street Journal which states "Threatened by Apple Inc.'s growing stable of portable devices, Sony Corp. is developing a new lineup of handheld products, including a smart phone capable of downloading and playing PlayStation games, according to people familiar with the matter." I am actually really excited to see these because I love Sony and have been extremely pleased with every Sony product I have ever owned, Tvs, PlayStations, Dvd Players, etc. Now we just wait and see for it to be available to the public!

My Expirence at the BMA Lightening Round

I am going to be totally honest when I say I felt I really got nothing out of the event. I’m sure that is not for everyone, I think maybe I just happened to get not so well informed people who I felt really helped me in no way, minus one Person. I must say the pizza was yummy! We only had time to have our resumes looked at by 2 different people, neither of which had business cards. Only one gave me all her information, the other person refused to, which was quite disappointing. I did learn quite a bit during the resume review, so I shouldn’t say I left with nothing. The one woman who was kind enough to give me all her personal information gave me so many amazing tips that I would normally overlook. It was intresting because I have never really wrote a resume, I just took a template off of office and filled in the blanks. I later learned what things were not necessary to include such as obvious tasks like cleaning, serving people etc. I also learned that education should always come first at the top of your resume. Almost always do you want your resume to be only 1 page long and to include your GPA if its impressionable. The woman constanly kept telling me that I have to sell myself on it.
As far as the lighting round interviews, which I must say were completely stressful! All around I was really disappointed by it because I expected a lot more out of it and felt I left with nothing. I felt the couple people I went to were extremely rude to me and extremely blunt, minus one woman. To me I felt this was supposed to be a learning experience, where instead I felt I was totally judged and critized. For me personally I felt the interview was stressful because the questions I was asked I found hard to answer because I had no idea what job I was interviewing for! So I did not think it was fair to be judged on that because of course my answer was going to be complete crap because I had no idea what position I was “interviewing for”
Of everything, the two people who I met that had the biggest impact on me was Kendra Hill with Alpha Source and Antonia Walzak with Walzak Marketing Communications Inc.
Links:
Walzak
Alpha Source
BMA
Eisner Museum

Our Avatars, Our Projected Selves

Our Avatars, Our Projected Selves
Jezebel


This article kind of jumped out at me with all the social media and networking avatars out there and what it really is symbolizing and what it is doing to us and our society. The question remains “Does a "sexualized" avatar invite disrespectful behavior online?” This article is about a research study conducted to measure human empathy toward human actors compared with digital representations, with the finding of “men judged the avatar pleading for sympathy more harshly than the actress.” It was said that what the avatar was wearing is what triggered a reaction in men. “A specialist in human-computer interaction, Fox published a smaller study in 2009 that confirmed that men responded with sexual stereotypes to avatars coded as being aggressive or sexual, and commented to the New Scientist that the belly baring shirt and more prominent breasts of the avatar sparked the reaction.” 40% of Second Life residents join mainly for sexual activity. There was even a section in the article talking about how a blonde hair blue eyed avatar changed her skin to an attractive African American woman and later faced a great deal of racism being called racial epithets by strangers and even by her own friends. Something I found interesting was this particular passage talking about the lack of race options:
“One of my black female students last semester reported being sexually harassed in Second Life, when she created her avatar to reflect herself (interestingly, she was at first annoyed that she couldn't create an avatar that accurately reflected her skin shade, which already says something about the kind of racial exclusion the "game" already practices), but once she wandered around Second Life as a "black woman," she kept getting sexually harassed. Which, of course, was reason enough to leave the online environment because, you know, we can experience that OFF line. Granted, Second Life offers individuals various opportunities to "escape" their real lives, like creating an avatar that's not even human or even an Earthling, but still...what does it mean to reproduce the same experiences that one encounters offline in cyberspace, especially if someone doesn't want to "escape" their racial and gender identity, in fact wants to represent themselves similarly but in a digitized format?”
after reading this I am extremely turned off to Second Life, I have heard about it before but never really had much intrest in it. I have the sims to satisfy that need! Haha! Regardless I was really disappointed to hear some of the discouraging comments and sexual behavior associated with Second Life. We all have to take this into consideration and just be careful out there on the web. Remember, race and gender bias exists online because it exists in real life, and it manifests itself in various ways, some of which are very hard to measure.

Trends, Lists and How-To's

Trends-School Accused of Secretly Spying on Students Through Laptop Webcams

This article was very disturbing. In Pennsylvania there is a recent case filing in Robbins vs Lower Merion School District on behalf of school issued laptops assigned to students that had webcams on them that were being used to “stalk” them. Certain software was downloaded on each laptop that allowed administrators to activate the webcam. It is just really disturbing to think that someone would spy on their students, the article did not give specifics as of how old the students were (elementary, high school etc) not that it matters. You wonder what goes some people’s minds.

Lists-8 iPhone Apps for the Perfect Valentine’s Day
I thought this was a very fun interesting article. It gave you a list of 8 top iPhone apps for the perfect Valentines Day with a short description of what each one was. So I highly encourage everyone to check out the 8 apps if they have an iphone or ipod and see which is your favorite, it’s a little late seeing how valentines day is over but they are still neat.
1. iWrite: Love Poems
2. Valentine ~ Postage
3. Creative Romantic Ideas
4. 20 Minute Means – Jamie Oliver
5. Be Mine Hearts
6. Send e Flowers
7. iFlirt
8. iXplode – Valentine’s Day
of the eight I would have to say my favorite one was the creative romantic ideas because I am cheesy and fun that way haha.

How-To: Create and Distribute Effective Online Coupons
This one caught my attention because I used to make coupons working at Harley and I was curious to what this all entailed and what I could learn from it to use for future references. This whole started when the economy went to crap and they were looking at the high increase in numbers of people printing online coupons. The site even gives you tips on how to market and target your audience as well as how to successfully distribute them. I found this site very useful and actually plan to share it with my manager and see what he thinks and if we might use it.

Mario and Sonics Isnt Quite What it Used to Be...also Sonic Smoking?!

Kotaku

I could not help myself, this really is not a full article as much as a video but I could not help myself so I had to do it:) especially because I am a huge mario and sonic fan.

The posting is saying how the one well matched adversaries, sonic and mario, the last 15 or so years have not worked out as nicely for Sonic as they have for Mario. So below is a video someone created as of what a confrontation would be of the two. The video is about Mario and the gang all high and mighty out for lunch and their waiter turns out to be sonic. So they get to talking and Mario has this huge stuck up personality where poor Sonic is trying to be friendly and hang out and talk and Mario is having non of it. Kind of made me like Sonic more in the end haha. Regardless it was just a cute clip showing the two and it had a nice dr. robotnic in the end

my favorite is when Sonic says "Times are tough man if you dont play a fake guitar or bang prostitutes"

Enjoy
Sonic vs Mario



Sonic on Cigs

Here is another tid bit I found and found repulsive actually. Its an image of Sega's iconic hedgehog advertising smokes in a Russian store. again I found this be extremely horrifying because Sonic was like my child hood character and I loved him and to think that little kids are seeing this. it is going to increase the likely hood of children smoking early on when they seen a child icon such as Sonic doing it.

Is Love Plus Better Then Love?

Is Love Plus Better Than Love?

a Bakery in Tokyo had a line stretched across all waiting in line to buy a cake for Christmas, but its not nearly the type of cake you and I would imagine. Christmas is Japan is more of a "Party" holiday, times to spend with your love and friends and eat cake!

Ironically this type of cake was part of a promotion for Konami's Nintendo DS game, Love Plus. These cakes featured characters from the game and were sold in only 3 different bakeries in Tokyo. Even more ironically as of to why these poeple wanted these cakes for Christmas is, there is proud history in Japan in which folks take pictures of Christmas cake in front of a computer screen displaying some sort of dating sim.

Love Plus, by Kanomi was released last September. It is unlike Kanomi's other game, its a dating type game that in the end leaves you with the following question "You've got the girl, so now what are you going to do?" This game allows the player to "talk, Caress, and send emails" via the DS touch screen and mic. I have never heard of this game before but after reading this article makes me a little skeptical about it.

I found the following statement a little disturbing haha, "As columnist Tim Rogers pointed out, there was a stink about male players getting "too" in to Love Plus. This certainly could have been a publicity stunt. Konami even polled 500 Japanese men if they wanted to fall in love with a video game character. (Sixty-four percent said "yes"!) Likewise, the one about the guy who "married" a Love Plus character was a publicity stunt or performance art or both."

Konami is releasing a new game called Love Plus+ (Plus) and running a campaign to try and collect names so the Love Plus girls will have a larger vocabulary to draw from. Its basically saying we all want as humans someone to love us and not feel alone and be with and that this game gives us just that. I again however find this very strange and disturbing, but I have not ever played the game so I can not really make a decision about it until I fully have experienced it and seen for myself what the game really is.

Give Me My Chuck

My Case Anyalisis was on the NBC Sitcom tv series Chuck. Last year after only two short seasons, NBC’s "Chuck" was faced cancellation It was not getting nearly as much viewership as it needed to and NBC was pulling the plug. Chuck aired every Monday night at 8pm, 7 central. This is is a great example of a not so well known TV show that was faced with an unfortunate cancellation that would later bring social media in frenzy. Just a few years ago, your only option of hope to save a TV show was organizing a massive letter writing campaign. Though that tactic is still around today, it is not as effective as some other tactics. We now have blogs, social networks such as facebook and twitter, micro blogging and more, where we can now quickly and effectively organize, protest and even some times guilt network executives into brining back your show. I thought this case study was extremely successful because in the end it did give Chuck season three! The following link is found from Give Me My Remote, a major contributor to the case study.

Another big part of the study was using subway to try and get under NBC’s skin, the following article goes into more detail

Ironincally I just started watching chuck this third season, not having seen any of the previous seasons or even knew about the campaign, but I absolutely love the show. It is one of those shows that my boyfriend and I can both sit and enjoy together, it has your perfect blend of comedy with a fun spy story plot so I think everyone should check it out every Monday night 8/7 on NBC! J

Give Me My Remote
http://www.givememyremote.com/remote/2009/04/06/be-a-nerdjoin-the-herd-save-chuck/


Buy A Sub Save Chuck
http://www.buddytv.com/articles/chuck/buy-a-sandwich-save-chuck-camp-28138.aspx

Strategies
http://www.extratextual.tv/2009/05/the-strategies-of-the-save-chuck-campaign/

GTTV!

Nintendo!

Chapter 3: The Man Behind the Myth

I decided to do this video from GTTV because again its something I am interested in. I love nintendo and am an especially big fan of the new Mario that is out for the Wii.

The Wii was reduced from $249 to $199 and was selling amazing! not as big as PS3 though. In nintendo's defense, the PS3 had a 5 week reduction frame where as Nintendo only had 1 week.

This video went into detail with new games to come out, some including super mario brothers for the wii that came out this past November and Zelda DS which was released this past december. I may be biased, but I have the new Mario game and I love it! Its so addicting I play it every day. What is neat about Mario is its competitive and it appeals to all ages! no matter how young or how old you enjoy it all the same. No matter what your skill level is as well!

supermario: is said to be the next great mario game. it has all the things you want in a mario game, new worlds, new suits and the multiplayer aspect. you can either play together with friends or against each other. This new games takes your mario experience to a whole new level. he says it will sell out modern warfare 2. you can add up to 4 players and join them in anytime anyplace in the game. Something that I learned from this video, that I did not know from playing is that you will get a super guide "tutorial" sort of speak if you die up to 8 times in a level! i did not know this and am tempted to die numerous times just to check it out.

they also showed a short trailer clip of the game, skate 3. they did not talk about the game, just showed the trailer. The Zelda ds game is said to have all classic elements plus more. they hit the new mario game much more in this clip, but there was very detailed information given about all.

Project Needlemouse is...Sonic 4, Episode 1

Kotaku

Yay sonic is BACK! I gotta say I am a huge sonic the hedgehog fan so when I read this and saw that it was coming out for the wii this summer I was pretty stoked. Sega has finally announced a 2D downloadable game with 3D visuals that is part of the Project Needlemouse buildup that they have been pushing since last September. For those of you who do not know "Needlemouse" refers to Sonic's codename when it was being pitched. From what is sounds like, it looks like Sonic will be the only playable character and it will have all the same original Sonic roots and traditional mechanisms. This game is a whole new story arc, though it is taking place after Sonic & Knuckles left off. Here is a quote by Ken Balough, associate brand manager,"As mentioned, I think the best way to view it is as a first part in a much larger adventure. When Sega released Sonic 3, ultimately it was the part 1 of a story that saw its conclusion in Sonic & Knuckles. In that same spirit, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 is a bigger story, and this is that first chapter. I think it's also safe to say that by the end of the episode one, fans will be very excited to see what's in store for episode two!" Regardless I am super pumped and looking forward to playing this game, as I have every single sonic game known to man :)

Sneak Peak Trailor!

iPad Doubts: A Gamer's Problems With Apple's Wonder Machine

http://kotaku.com/5458360/ipad-doubts-a-gamers-problems-with-apples-wonder-machine?skyline=true&s=i


I decided to read into and comment on the new launched iPad for many reasons. One, it just launched today and a lot of the articles were on it! so it had to be good! I have heard many good things about the iPad and know many people who want it. However, the people I know that want it are not gamers, they are non other then Apple Mac fanatics. The article basically takes a blow at apple saying how its basically an over sized iPod Touch. I agree, however it does more then what an iPod touch does, this is a computer tablet, so the one thing I did not like about this article is that it focused on all the negatives about the tablet and only related it to gaming, when I think in all fairness it should have brought to attention the other aspects of it. I have yet to personally try the iPad. I am an iPod owner and I love my touch. I think the article did make very good points though, a couple of them being "no room for the little guys" which basically states that on the iPod touch it allowed even the smallest developers into the AP marketplace. The down fall with the new iPad is with it being much much bigger then the iPod it requires more expectations for the quality of the graphics. All in all it comes down to the iPad is not essential for gaming. On a personal level I own a psp, xbox, playstation 1-3, wii, you name it, i love video games, been around them my whole life and love to play them. I also love apple products and have intrest in the new tablet but for every other reason BUT gaming. I did find myself learning a lot in this article and recommend all you gamers and apple lovers out there :)

Check this out!! :)

Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil's video was very intresting and very kind of scary at the same time to think that we will have reverse-engineered the human brain and nanobots will be operating us. I felt he spoke very intelligently and it sounded like he really knew what he was talking about, although i personally had no idea half of what he was saying haha! regardless I am against the whole nanobot idea for MANY reasons. I dont want anyone to control how I live my life or have robots around doing things because there are freaks out there who think its funny and could reprogram or hack or whatever and next thing you know we are having a war on ourselves from our nano bots gone bad. Its so easy now a days for people to hack into things and have all sorts of attacks. I love technology dont get me wrong, its great, but I feel its wrong for us to totally rely on them because they are not always right. I think we should continue with technology but we can not rely on them, I fear we will all be desensitized to the world and everyone around it. We wont be able to do anything for ourselves anymore. Regardless it will be very intresting to see where things are in the future.

Who Am I?

Hey everyone! Bare with me here because this is my very first time blogging so it might take me a little bit here to get used to it. I want to start off by saying my name is Rachel Strong and I am a junior in college and loving every minute of it! I think I am one of the very few who acutally like going to school. It gives me such a thrill of accomplishment and I know my parents are proud of me and that is the best feeling in the world. As of right now I am double majoring in Advertising and Multimedia Design. I might even take on a minor, either Pubic Relations or Marketing. I am a little confused on what exactly public relations is though. I would like to get a better understanding on what exactly it is. I have been writing for as long as I can remember, it was always my "escape" growing up. My family has and currently is dealing with the disease Huntington's and I would always write because it made me feel better and stay strong. I do not like to judge people because everyone is different in our own ways and just because it isnt in our "norm," to them it could be. I am a strong believer in everything happens for a reason, even if we dont understand those reasons right now, someday it will all make sense and things will fall in to place the way they are supposed to. I am looking forward to this blog and I hope I can continue with it, and I love getting constructive criticism or even just feedback or advice because I think we all feel alone sometime and its nice to be able to vent it out and have someone assure you, your not alone :)