Final Thoughts

There were a few different things I learned in this class that I found useful and interesting. I learned that there are many forms of new media and each new technology has some sort of effect on society, whether that be good or bad, there is always an effect. I found the most useful information was the hands on work we did with the computers. I had never made a power point presentation before this class so I was very technologically challenged. I feel proud that I can create my own web site, blog, and of course put together a power point presentation. I found analyzing the political websites to be really interesting as well. I learned to be critical of the internet and design, something I have never thought about doing before.

I would have like to have more time to develop our web page. I felt designing the web site was challenging but I found it to be really interesting and useful as well. If there were more requirements to what our individual web page needed to include, that would allow us more time to work on it.

The only thing I did not like about the class was how in depth some of the articles went into how technology works. I find this sort of information interesting, but really hard to follow and even though I would read through it, most of the time I still did not understand it.

Week 9 Reading Response

The only thing I knew about VoIP before reading this article was that it was an easy way to make over sea’s calls. My friend’s girlfriend has been in Spain for the past year so he used it all the time to talk to her. It seemed easy enough to use and a lot cheaper than making regular phone calls. Reading this article helped me understand the technology a lot more clearly. I really like how you can bypass the telephone company almost entirely as it said in the article. This will hurt the companies that offer regular telephone access because we will no longer need them to make a call. I am sure they are trying to find a way to get involved with this new technology so they are not left behind.

The negative about VoIP was the inability to call 911. I thought this would present a very big problem for people who needed help in an emergency. The author offered a solution to the problem but this would defiantly need to be fixed before I would consider adopting the technology. I found it interesting to see how the telephone has progressed throughout the years. I had no idea that if you made a ten minute call from Los Angeles to New York you literally owned the wire for ten minutes. No wonder it was so expensive! I think this is going to be an interesting technology but as always there are a few kinks that need to be worked out.

Because we are so accustomed to the old way of using the telephone do you think people will adopt this new technology willingly?

Will the old way of using the telephone become obsolete or do you think there will be a balance of some people using VoIP and others using the traditional telephone?

Would you be willing to sacrifice convenience for a cheaper phone call? How often do the traditional telephone lines go out of service and how often does the cable internet go down?

Week 8 Reading Response

I believe the internet is a public space in which anyone should be allowed to use, but when I think about some people not having access to it, it makes me question why and how in this day and age. Reading the article called "Wireless Revolution and Universal Access" from Trends in Telecommunications Reform 2003 by Michael L. Best opened my eyes to ways in which it would be possible to make internet access possible for people in rural areas. According to Best it would possible to do this and he states it would eventually pay for itself. He says that because new technologies are becoming available and more cost efficient it is now possible to use wireless technology to allow rural people to have access to the internet. He addresses the problem though that computers and the upkeep or maintenance of a computer is expensive and dominated by the English language operating systems.

I really believe in what Best is trying to argue but I do agree that the problem of accessibility to computers is a major one. It really doesn’t mean anything to have a wireless connection when you don’t have a computer to use it. Even so, computers are becoming less and less expensive. When I think about how much my parents paid for our first computer ages ago it makes me cringe. As time goes on and technology becomes more available and cheaper I believe more people will gain access to the internet.

Do you think in all cases having the internet benefits an individual who has never used it before? Why or why not?

What could we do as Americans to make internet access to other countries occur quicker or more easily? What about donating old, out of date computers? Is there something like this already in place?

Do you believe the “lily pad model” is something that will benefit society?

In Class Exercise 2

My first impression of the Cantwell site was that is very plain and simple. It is not distracting to my eyes or overly flashy. It has a nice banner on the top that displays lovely pictures of her, people of the state and some beautiful photos of nature. The left hand side of the site was well organized into different sections, some being; home, about Maria, and a contributions page. My first impression of the McGavick site is that it is not as clear and simple as Cantwell’s site. It is a bit for flashy and the red, white, and blue color scheme is a little too much to handle. The home page has current news about him and I had to search for a while to find out how to volunteer or donate. It was not very well organized. Although a bit harder to find, the McGavick site offers a place where you can enter your email address and zip code in order to receive updates about him and his campaign. I would consider this a nice feature. Of course there is a place where you can donate or volunteer in his campaign. He gives you two options of either mailing in a contribution or contributing online. Cantwell’s site allows the same features McGavick does such as allowing you to receive email updates and allowing you to contribute or volunteer. She too allows you to contribute online or by mailing the contribution in.


I would like to see the positions of both the candidates on the war in Iraq. Unfortunately when I tried to find Cantwell’s position on the war it was no where to be found on her website. I had to refer back to the Seattle Times article in order to find her position on the war. She does support the war in Iraq but says “2006 needs to be a year of transition, and I'm fighting to get the Iraqi people on their feet and get our troops home." She focuses on the future of the occupation rather than how she would have voted in hindsight. It was really hard to find her position on this issue because she does not offer any sort of issue related page on her site. McGavick however, offers a well organized issues dropdown box and the “war on terror.” This page was really simple and upfront with his beliefs being bulleted and with big red explanation marks beside each statement. He believes troops should come home when the job is finished in Iraq as well as monitoring and putting pressure on countries like Iran and North Korea to abandon their plans for nuclear build up. McGavick makes his position on issues easy to find and very upfront and clear to understand. He defiantly provides a more clear explanation of his beliefs. Although I do not agree with some of the positions McGavick holds, I do perceive him to be more trustworthy only because he was so upfront with his beliefs. I feel as if he is not trying to hide anything from voters. I think Cantwell will lose votes if she does not do what McGavick is doing on his website.

Extra Credit Blog for Week 7

I have never noticed how much work goes into web design until I read the extra credit article by Kathy. Every little detail was pointed out and what was so weird was it all made sense! The things she examined are things that make a difference while navigating trough a web site. For example she mentioned the colors on the bush site being harsh on the eyes. There have been times when I am on a site and I leave it because it is hurting my eyes. These are things web page designers need to think about in order to attract and keep eyes on their web site. It never occurred to me that there was a system and order to how web design is done. When she talked about the blogs of the two candidates and the differences about them it occurred to me that Bush may have lost some voters by not allowing people to comment on the anonymous blog. I like that Kerry’s was in a blog format, was written by a real person, and allowed people to comment on the blogs. These are all things that make a difference on web pages, and can be especially important when have a web page trying to persuade people to vote for you in the presidential election.

What advances will the candidates of 2008 make in their personal web pages?

Do you think there will ever be a blog that a presidential candidate actually takes part in?


How many people are influenced by the way candidates set up their web page? Is it enough sway someone’s vote?

Week 7 Reading Reflection

This week’s reading was on a topic that is really new to me. I really do not follow politics but reading about how the internet is used with them was really interesting. I found the first reading to offer some insight into how politicians try to target people that will vote for them. I do not know how they are able to get the information that they use to target voters though. How do they know what voters are looking for? It just seams like such a tedious job. The idea of having unlimited resources in order to capture votes was interesting as well. If a candidate had this would they surely be able to win the election? I had no idea it costs a ton of money for every vote a candidate wins.
The second article examined the sources of news and how people gain political knowledge. I have found that we have been discussing this issue a lot in my other classes. The article confirmed what we have been discussing by saying the internet is becoming more and more prominent as a source for people to gain political knowledge. After talking heavily about the newspaper compared to online information I have come to the conclusion that the internet offers a wider and comprehensive range of information in may fields. I am not surprised the finding of the paper came out to be how they did because I think the internet offers such a diverse spectrum of information especially when trying to gain knowledge about politics

Is using the internet as a main source of information typically a generational thing or to you think it is more for people who want to hear more than just one argument.

Do you think blogs will be influential in the next election? Why or why not?

Do you think the internet simply has more to offer than other sources of information? If so how?

In Class Exercise

Part 1:
1. PBS.org: This site does have an RSS feed, it has 21 individual feeds and some of the stories covered deal with public affairs documentaries that don't shy away from complex stories or controversial issues, other stories offered are insider technology analysis and news from tech guru Robert X. Cringely, science documentaries that show the human story behind the science story and daily, in-depth news and analysis from the Web site of the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. This source sponsors three different blog sites which are ways in which you can create a blog. There is no link to an actual sponsored blog just sites where you can start one if you would like. This site does no require any sort of log in or registration to view the material. It also does not charge anything once you get to a certain point. The archives are free to view in their entirety.
2. ChicagoTribune.com: This site does have an RSS feed with 10 different feeds ranging from travel, opinion, letters to the editor,sports and entertainment. In the local news feed one of the stories headline is "Moussaoui Offers Final Diatribe in Court." This site does also sponsor four different blogs by individuals such as Eric Zorn and Steve Johnson. I was able to read one full story but when I looked in for a past article I was prompted to log in or register as a new user. When I visited bugmenot.com I was able to use one of their username and passwords in order log in and read the story. It worked! There is a way to upgrade to a subscriber advantage where you will have access to a number of perks but for the purpose of reading just one story the bugmenot user name and password worked just fine.
I found that the Chicago tribune site offered a lot of information at a small price. I think the bigger and "more powerful" the source the more you may have to do in order to access it. The RSS feed seems very prominent and I found it to be extremely useful. If I were searching for something it would be much easier to find it through that system.
Part 2:
When searching for Steven Colbert the qoutes helped narrow the search down a bit. When I switched the results to sort by funny stuff it ended up coming up as zero which surprised me. I thought there would be a lot about him that was related to comedy since that is what he does. The same thing happened when I switced the sorting to truthiness.When I changed the authority slider to a lot of authority there were far less results than there were on the any authority side. When I searched for blogs relating to my topic I used the word google first and found over 100,000 blogs were found. I tried to narrow my search by using the words google and privacy and found there to be just over 2,000 results. When I clicked the tag button and a number of related topics came up such as Yahoo, SEO, Internet, Adsense, Online Marketing, Search, and Microsoft. Clicking the blog finder link made the results increase by about 200 more blogs than before. I found a lot of blogs that talked about the issues some people have with google, such as the invasion of privacy and the battle between google and yahoo to be the “best” search engine. When I searched for www.blogcritics.org there were 12,439 results. The number of results seems to indicate that there are a lot of critics that are commenting on blogs today. When I searched for my blog there were no results that came up. This tells me that there is not anyone looking, linking or talking about my blog. When I used google to look for blogcritics there were 5,790,000 results. I think they may be different because of the authority slider. This tool was able to filter out the nonsense links that may not be helpful. I find blogrolls to be helpful because they allow you to find links to other blogs because they are organized into different topics. I also like how they are on the front page of sites.

Week 6 Reading Response

The first reading "From Tom Paine to Blogs and Beyond" was really easy and insightful to read. The first part of the article was really interesting to read because it gave a compressive summary of how journalism developed. I am learning much of the same history of communication in my intro to communication class. I found it especially interesting how the author talks about the news and how America has suffered from a simplistic view of news. Although crime rates are plummeting, local TV constantly displays images of murder and hate as if that is the only thing going on today. I know I have often felt overwhelmed with the amount of terrifying news shown on television and sometimes I think the news is just a way to scare us into being paranoid about every aspect of our lives. I really liked how many of the articles we have read were mentioned in this article. It was a good read because I felt I had a lot of information on the topic already.

The second reading was also very interesting to me because I know very little about podcasting and radio. I was shocked to read about how after NPR started podcasting it only took six days for its “Story of the Day” to reach the most downloaded podcast on itunes. I had no idea there was such a huge demand for radio podcasts. The author talks about advertising and how people who listen to podcasts expect a different kind of advertising but are still open to hearing it. This surprised me because I felt as if everyone would do away with hearing any advertising at all.

Do you think the news today is purposely trying to show only the negative aspects of society? If so, why might they be doing this?

Why is it that people are open to advertising when all I ever hear about it is negative feedback?

Do you find blogs to be useful source of information as the author of the second article described about his experience with September 11th? Could you ever see yourself using them in this way?