Thursday, November 8, 2012


The term crowdsourcing is a portmanteau (fusion of two words) of "crowd" and "outsourcing".

Crowdsourcing is when companies and organizations collect ideas from the general public and use them. The earliest example is when the Oxford English Dictionary made an open call to the public to help index words. They received more then six million submissions over seventy years.
Crowdsourcing today is mainly on the internet, which is beneficial because people are more comfortable sharing and more attention is given to the project than communicating with individuals.

Types of crowdsourcing:
  • Crowdvoting
This is when a website gathers a group of people's opinions on a topic or object to ensure accuracy with product sales, politics and the like. For example: 
- has users vote on T-Shirt designs which are then printed and sold, making a totally user controlled product range.
- The Star Wars parody webcomic Blue Milk Special frequently runs polls about the Star Wars universe for its readers and recently decided to parody the spin-off media "Shadows of the Empire" due to a poll they ran.
  • Crowdfunding
This is when individuals get together over the internet and put their funding into efforts commenced by other individuals or organizations and charities. For example:
-Various activities and pursuits benefit from crowdfunding, such as disaster relief, street journalism (bloggers, self-run newspapers), free software development, independent film development and support of artists by their fans on sites like DeviantArt, RedBubble e.t.c. 
- It also refers to companies funding themselves by selling small amounts of equity to investors. This was recently noticed by policymakers, and the JOBS Act, which allows a larger range of investors and lessens restrictions, was signed on by President Obama on April 5 2012.

Sunday, October 28, 2012


1. Transparency/honesty/privacy/bullying/ID theft - Facebook privacy and you
2. Crowd sourcing- History: pre-internet to today 
3. Intellectual property, copyright/copyleft- Future of media and its role in our lives

Proxy server 

Computer-----john, pass123-----ISP---FB
If you don't use an encrypted HTTPS address, a proxy server can easily collect and store your personal information and use it for nefarious purposes.                                           

Access to everything they bring through that door.

When using a wireless wi-fi network in a public place such as a hotel, always check its legitimacy with the staff as it could very easily be set up by a hustler looking to gain your credit card details and spend your money on various objects without your knowledge.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Blogs and Newspapers- Strengths and Weaknesses

Will blogs become the major source of news over traditional journalism?

Will this change the advertising model?

Blog Types:






Vlogs are very popular these days, the dominant place they are found is on YouTube. Quality of vlogs can range considerably, from random teenagers complaining about their issues to actual interesting people making a good video. A couple of examples of quality vloggers would be Charlie McDonnell (charlieissocoollike) and Liam Dryden (littleradge) both members of the Trock band Chameleon Circuit.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

Blogs are fast becoming more used than newspapers, but they do have their weaknesses. Here I will discuss a couple of the strengths and weaknesses of both blogs and newspapers.



Blogs have faster output/input, allowing news to spread more freely and quickly around the world.

Free and easy to use.


Since anyone can create a blog, there is more proliferation of fake news and hoaxes.

They have more trouble getting interviews, because they don't have any sort of official title.




Their staff is trained in journalism, so they are more professional.

They have access to more resources and have more authority.


They have to spend more money on getting the news out there.

Their output/input is slower than that of blogs.

In conclusion, blogs and newspapers both have their benefits and shortcomings and I think that newspapers are not completely dead and still have their uses. For example, blogs may have faster output but newspapers still have more access to resources and find it easier to gain interviews with important people. Maybe the two forms of news can work together in the future, compensating for each others respective strengths and weaknesses. If a blog has faster output and a newspaper has better resources, then if they combine the two and work in tandem with each other then it would take social media to a whole new level.