October 2007 Archives

No verbose opening on this one folks - today Stub is bringing you news. And this is big. I'm talking Penn State beats Ohio State big.... ok nothing would be that big =)

There is a new app on the street known as CourseFeed. I'm spinning around in circles so I'm not gonna go readers digest style. Here is the word, straight from the CourseFeed page within facebook.

CourseFeed connects you with your classmates and connects you to Blackboard® (see availability*). Browse your courses, post messages to the class, share notes – all without ever leaving Facebook. CourseFeed also alerts you when your professor posts announcements, tests, or content to Blackboard®. And you’ll get alerts when classmates post to the course wall and share notes.

Privacy policy is here.

If your school doesn’t have Blackboard® don’t worry - use CourseFeed to hook-up with classmates, collaborate, and share. See features below!

Features Without Blackboard® Connection:

* Course Wall
* File storage for Course Notes, etc.
* Course feed display of what's new posted by others.
* Connect with others in the course.
* Profile display to let friends know when you're in class.

Additional Features With Blackboard® Connection:

* See everyone in your course – guaranteed accurate course roster.
* View all Blackboard® course materials without leaving Facebook
* Course feed shows when professor posts announcements, files, etc. to Blackboard®.
* View all announcements, new or old, in the announcements area.
* One-click access into Blackboard® and auto-navigation that takes you right to the item. No hunting!

As you can imagine, this is an awesome undertaking. Please report any problems using the discussion board area and we'll do our best to resolve them.

Please share this with your friends and classmates.

*jaw drops*

I've been watching the steady stream of educational apps start to make their way onto the Facebook scene, but total integration with Blackboard? Surely you jest! I would have imagined something like this to be months away if not further...

Its a whole new ballgame now ladies and gents, and we've got a whole new set of rules on the table. But one thing is for sure... if you work for Penn State and you're not paying attention to Facebook yet, now would be a pretty good time to start.

Generally my stance on technology follows the old adage of not knocking something until you've tried it - which is the complete opposite of my stance on vegetables. Most of the people I associate with professionally and socially on a day to day basis would agree with that stance to some degree or another (the tech part, not the veggies). One of the results of that kind of thinking is a lot of creative, outside the box discussions, which, obviously, leads to some great ideas. But another side effect, which is all too easy to forget, is that it drops you smack dab in the middle a giant bubble. If you're reading this post, then you most likely live inside this bubble with me. Anyone for Trivial Pursuit?

But a lot of people, in fact I'd probably go as far as to say most people who use technology (Im referring to computers and the internet) live outside our little snow globe. For these people technology isnt necessarily a way of life, its just the Ford Pinto that gets you from point A to point B. Writing that sentence made me die a little inside.

In my own experience, one of the best secret handshakes to determine if you are allowed into the bubble club or not is RSS. If you've got a zip code in Bubbleville, then RSS makes really simple sense. If your a so called "normy", then RSS usually invokes the "what the deuce?" response. To me, RSS is the greatest thing since televisions split to let you play video games and watch football at the same time. Having such a mindset, its very difficult to understand how anyone could not be using it. Most people who sit down and give it a chance tend to feel the same way. That mentality of course, is part of being a bubble boy. The acceptance of new technologies is part of my lifestyle. And so its easy to be blinded to the fact that for the average person, new technologies (like Indiana Jones movies) requires taking a leap of faith to find the holy grail. Taking that leap is something that many people do very sparingly or with a great degree of hesitation.

Of course, its not as though using RSS is the perfect solution to all your wisdom woes, as it creates new issues of its own. RSS readers can get your news for you but not until you tell them where to look for it. The sheer volume of sites available on the internet, coupled with the web's perpetual expansion, the need to find things the fit your own interests and the fact that you can't browse websites 24 hours a day makes discovering new content one of, if not the biggest challenge for a seasoned web veteran. Just yesterday, Kevin was seeking advice on how to discover new blogs within our own Penn State blog-o-sphere. His plight is a familiar one. This week, through sheer coincidence, I came across 2 blogs of co-workers who sit no more than 50 feet from me, and yet whose writing had sat outside of my field of vision for months. The Penn State Blog Directory is a fantastic initiative, but unfortunately there are far more Penn State blogs out there then there are entries in the index.

Back to the real point of this post, there are 2 different challenges here at Penn State as far as blogging and RSS go(at least in the mind of the Stub). For the RSS novices, how do you drive understanding and acceptance of syndication technology? For we the nerds in the bubble, the question is how do you discover the Penn State content that is hiding right right under your nose?

Feel free to begin betting on whether or not I'll claim that a) video games b) Facebook or c) chocolate cake is the answer... If you selected option b, then you can have some option c while enjoying option a because you win.

How could Facebook help overcome these challenges? Lets walk...

The RSS Rookie
Don't go getting all used to this, but I'm gonna throw some numbers at you. In TLT's Fall 2006 FACAC survey (which assesses student technology use across the Penn State campuses), 76% of students said they DO NOT use RSS. By comparison, a Student Affairs Net Behavior study in November of '06 revealed that 93% of students here at University Park DO use Facebook (83% across all campuses). This fact alone warrants considering Facebook as a medium to do any number of things when it comes to students. This probably isnt news to most of you.

Now if you were going to try and use Facebook to teach students about, oh, I don't know... RSS you wouldnt need to teach for very long. Why? Because Facebook's homepage is basically a social RSS reader. Instead of delivering you the latest from TechCrunch, its delivering you status updates, newly uploaded pictures, and the general happenings of anyone on your friends list. And just like traditional RSS its a find and forget system - you add a friend like you add a feed and then you let the updates start coming. More students then you probably realize are well aware of the power of RSS - they just know it by an entirely different name. There you go - RSS for undergrads in 3 minutes. Just send me a fruit basket or something if you use that in class ;-)

So now you've made RSS something students can relate to, but how do you get them to use it? Beat that same old drum and bring it to them where they live. And where do they live? *broken record... record... record*

I've spent a little time recently playing around with some of the Facebook blogging apps, which admittedly are a bit raw at the moment. But, depending on the application, there is still quite a bit of potential functionality. You can create a blog and write posts, pull your outside blog posts into Facebook, and even set up an internal RSS reader, to bring your news right to your profile page. It's most certainly up for discussion why exactly students dont use RSS, but I'd be willing to stake that overcoming the initial hurdle of assimilating it into one's daily life, as well as a lack of exposure are two of the biggest reasons. So if you bring RSS to Facebook, you solve both problems. Btw, for the curious, I'm currently toying around with the Flog Blog Facebook application. An ideal goal would be to shoot for Cole's idea of providing a Facebook interface that would allow you to publish to your Penn State blog directly from the social networking site. There are a few potential hurdles (namely PSU authentication) but never say never. And that would be big pimping Jay Z style. Dream big =)

The RSS Veteran
Now all of this talk of tricking novices into loving RSS stuff is well and good but, as we've already established, if you are reading this post then you more than likely already know something about RSS. What you need is content - more specifically, you, like myself, Kevin, and many others, are probably wondering how to find new content thats coming from right here at home, via the blogs at Penn State initiative.

Well take a step back for a moment and ask yourself how you found most of the content you already have. Regardless of what your RSS reader is pulling, it has to start somewhere. Maybe you started with your circle of friends. Maybe you heard a few sites mentioned on CNN. Maybe you saw that "I am Gilbert Arenas" commercial a few hundred too many times and you decided to find out if he had a blog to pay homage to mass media's stranglehold over your existence. Anyway... If you are anything like me, your own blog universe has grown virally from its inauspicious start. A link on your best friend's blog leads to a new source, which may yield 3 other sources, each of which yields a new source, and on and on and on. Viral and social are the names of the Web 2.0 game. And viral and social are two things Facebook does very well.

Check this scenario. You make a post on your Penn State blog. In the background, Facebook pulls teaser content from your post onto your profile and tosses out a notification to all of your friends. When your friends log in, they can see that you've written a new blog post and have the opportunity to check it out if they want. Sounds like normal RSS right? But keep in mind that up until this notification hits, none of your friends even need to know you can type, much less have your own blog. You don't need to tell them you're blogging. They don't need to remember your URL. Because they are your friend, your blog will find them. Hmm... From there, maybe a handful of your friends like your post enough to comment on it, or add it to their own reader, which sends notifications to all of their friends. Now people you have never met are turned on to the presence of your blog and it has the opportunity to spread like wildfire.

This morning, Facebook pinged me to let me know that Pink Floyd was the top music group in the Penn State network. If setup properly, why couldnt it tell me about the most popular blogs - not just in my friends of friends of friends circle, but throughout all of Penn State. And eventually Facebook could wash your dishes and balance your checkbook and rule the world!!! *falls off soap-box*

All notions of universal domination aside, do you see where I'm going with all of this? Some of the ideas might be pie in the sky, and whose to say we'd even want Facebook spamming us with the 5 most popular Penn State blogs. Not to mention, Facebook does'nt necessarily provide some sort of revolutionary way to proliferate content just because it is what it is. We can share our feeds with GReader, our bookmarks with Del.icio.us, our quick notes on new posts with Twitter, email eachother about new blog discoveries, or link to each other from our own blogs. All of these things are happening today and all of it works with varying degrees of success. But how many different tools... how many different sites did I just list out? And its probably worth noting that Del.icio.us, Twitter, and email have all found a home within Facebook. Hmmm x2.

Whether or not this sounds like genius, madness, or something in between, the point is that Facebook offers another medium for communication. Another medium for sharing. In this case, another medium for discovery. And depending on who you ask, it might just be THE medium for all three.

Or maybe the Sobe Adrenaline Rush has gone to my head. Either way, let the experiment begin. Sorry for the wall of text ;-)

Image from http://www.bbspot.com

Back in August, I posted a ridiculous and wonderfully Stubstyle idea about a way to shake up the presidential candidate debates that we've all come to know and love. Feel free to check out the post if you're interested, but the long and short was that a layer of audience participation (real participation mind you) and a degree of candidate accountability would go a long way towards improving the process. Well it turns out that MTV and MySpace not only read my blog, but they decided to take my idea and run with it. At least thats what I'm going to tell myself =)

MTV and MySpace (M&M) doing politics? Oh this should be rich. I'm willing to bet at least 20% of you just started thinking about a new Real World season with Dennis Kucinich or Spring Break Dance party with Rudy Guiliani. Ok fine... it was just me.

But in all seriousness (DISCLAIMER: Im never actually serious), MTV and MySpace have put together an interesting format for political discussion - one that in my opinion is leaps and bounds ahead of the status quo. The idea is simple. A presidential candidate shows up on a college campus and is asked questions by a student audience. Questions can also be asked from afar by using M&M's websites, IMs, and cell phones and it obviously goes without saying that there are moderators to filter student and internet questions. Though I should probably mention that if you are over the age of 13, the two MTV-VJish moderators will probably irritate you... a lot. Anyway...

But here is where the real giddyup comes in.

As a candidate responds to questions, you have the opportunity to vote on how good a response you think they've given - 3 variations of "good" and 3 variations of "bad" that encompass feelings like "dodged response" or "understands reality" to name a few. At the end of the response, MTV then cuts over to Washington Post staffer Chris Cillizza, who reviews the publics feelings on the response, and if need be, allows for clarification and further discussion. Public opinion is also tracked, in more general terms, throughout the course of the event. As is typically the case, my blathering is never as good as seeing an example of the real deal, so here is a little 2 minute clip from the first and only such dialogue (with John Edwards) to help you make sense of the process.

To my knowledge, not every candidate has agreed to participate in the MTV-MySpace discussion, but several candidates from both parties are expected to jam before things get real in '08.

This isnt a post about party politics, so that stays at the door. And obviously this format, like any, is not without its flaws. But having watched the Edwards event, I highly recommend trying to find some time to check out one of the future dialogues in the MTV/Space format even if politics isnt you bag.

The opportunity to witness technologies like MySpace, cell phones, and instant messenger programs working together to impact the student political experience was really amazing. And as a side, its the first time I've watched a political event and not felt agitated afterwards. The entire feel of the event was unlike any political discussion I have ever witnessed. And I mean that in a good way.

On a broader level, this is a great example of how the connectivity of todays young people has the potential to shape our society. During the 2000 elections, MySpace didnt even exist. In 2004, it was in its infancy. Today there are over 200 million accounts and candidates for President of the United States of America are taking it seriously enough to use it as a forum to speak to young people. And if students are demanding this sort of interaction with presidential candidates, whose to say they won't expect the same from the educational institutions?

The dialogues are streamed over MySpace's '08 election page as well as MTV.com and seem to be repeated during the evening on MTV's television network. The next event will be Monday, October 29th at 1:30pm (eastern) from Coe College in Iowa, with Barack Obama. Check it out... for the kids.

Video from Youtube.com

Since I subscribe to the theory that there is nothing wrong with a little shameless self promotion, here is a little Monday morning.... shameless self promotion! *insert Kazoo sound*

The white paper for the Library-ETS Facebook hot team has hit the streets. Its a quick read, but it is chock full 'o good stuff, including the "7 Things You Need To Know About Facebook", some opportunities for future development, and delicious walnuts. A special thanks to Binky Lush, Emily Rimland, Brad Kozlek, and Yvonne Clark for all their efforts, both in writing the paper and on the hot team in general.

I don't think any of us really knew what sort of reception the Library Facebook app would receive when we started this process, but with more than 1,100 users currently, its fair to say that its usership has shattered my own expectations. Its been fantastic to work with such great people in such an exciting space. The development team will be getting together next week to start discussing version 2 of the app, and I don't think I would be remiss in using the word "giddy" to describe my excitement. Stay tuned for what should be some very cool additions in the near future =)

If you've ever played an Xbox for any extended period of time, then odds are you've seen something very similar to this pop up on your tv screen. For all the folks in the crowd who don't worship the Xbox gods, what you are looking at is the message you are given for successfully completing an "Xbox Achievement". Next question please? What is an Xbox achievement? Thanks for asking =)

Every Xbox game comes with a series of pre-built achievements, which can be unlocked by accomplishing certain tasks within a game. Each task has a point value associated with it, and each game has a total task value of something like 1200, I believe. So for example I might earn 20 points for returning a punt for a touchdown in NCAA '08, 30 points for completing a level in Halo, and 15 points for absolutely crushing Freebird in Guitar Hero 2 (I "rock" by the way). All the points you earn, accomplishments you complete, and games you play are then stored on your "Gamertag" - a snazzy way of referring to the profile that you log into games with. If your Xbox is hooked up to the web, your gamertag, scores, accomplishments, etc can then also be viewed by your friends giving the whole shibang an interesting social dynamic as well.

On the outside, the idea of achievements and gamertags probably seems a little silly to non-gamers - its just a way for ultra-looser nerds to compare gaming egos, right? Well not only is this concept insanely popular among Xbox gamers (only some of which are nerds), but a new report says that these achievements actually improve satisfaction with and sales of video games O'rly? Ya'rly!

Two points I'd like to make here - first the major then the minor. A lot of time at our university has gone into thinking about ways to encourage students to develop their ePortfolio - a place to highlight and publicly display the accomplishments they've made during their time here. Sound familiar? Hmmm...

The second point is that the achievement model can push people to explore and try things that they might not otherwise have done. On her own, my girlfriend never would have had any interest in trying to beat Zone 1 of Sonic the Hedgehog in 60 seconds. But a little box dared her to try. Bam. And all this says nothing of the competitive factor that can occur when friends try to out-do eachother's accomplishments.

Now hold on there you cheeky little Stub. You've already said Penn State has an ePortfolio initiative. And courses have had learning objectives associated with them since the advent of the chalkboard. So whats the big deal?

The seamless integration of the experience my dear friends. When you play an Xbox game, your accomplishments get tracked and logged for you and its all hassle free. All you need to do is create a profile once, and then login (you don't even have to remember to login - games will almost always either autoload or prompt you). And any time you want to review the things you've done in games at a glance - bam. There you have it. This level of integration is available for games. Video games. Not something actually significant like oh... I don't know... an $80,000 college education.

In 10 seconds I can pull up every major accomplishment for every video game I've ever played on my Xbox. Do you know what I have to do if I want to review the major objectives of my ONE college Crusades class? Pull out a 200 page binder full of my own hand written chicken scratch notes and start flipping. If it was a less "traditional" class, maybe I can dig up the 25 power point presentations, and if I'm REALLY lucky, there was a single syllabus that outlined every objective for the course. But the odds I can find the hard copy of such a syllabus or the class URL (assuming its even still up) are slim. Now imagine this process times the 50 something classes I took as an undergrad. Yea, I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense either.

So switch tracks a bit, and think about if college objectives were tied together like Xbox games are. I can pull up a copy of my transcript today to see what classes I took - but what if that transcript also contained all the objectives for each class I'd ever been a part of. With no effort above and beyond taking classes, every student leaves the school with an easily accessible overview of every major learning objective during their tenure. Zero effort. And of course, students could then customize this information by adding in their own blog posts, podcasts, or coursework that they were particularly proud of.

Just like that you've changed the entire dynamic of student self reflection. The process ceases to be "what they heck did I learn in polysci" and allows mental energy to be spent thinking deeper. What you learned is presented to you to jog your memory so you can focus on why it mattered. Or maybe you can just spend more time playing Halo ;-) What do I know.

This isnt world changing stuff here. I'm not suggesting that students will start comparing their "EduTags", that posting some objectives on a website will redefine what it means to go to college, or that a few achievements will make a biology class as fun as Sonic the Hedgehog. Hell, maybe 95% of students who graduate would never even care that they even had easy access to such information. Who can say.

But if we're serious about self reflection, why shouldn't we be serious about making it easier? Or at least make reflecting on our education as easy as it is to reflect on our video games?

Image from www.thebbps.com/blog

A few days ago as we were on our way home from the store, I decided to try my hand at talking my girlfriend into starting her own blog. But after proposing the idea she hit me with an entirely unexpected question - why should I blog?

Well, as I'm sure you can imagine, I was caught quite off-guard by such a response. Why? Well... because... obviously! I mean what kind of silly question is that? Psha! I said something, who can say what. My mental monkey was fixated on this idea of why. And I realized it was a very good question to ask =)

So, today's $7.56 question - why do you blog? What motivates you to do it? What inspires your topics? What keeps you posting? Or, if you are someone who has had no desire to blog, or have tried but lost interest, what pushed you away?

Since it wouldn't really be fair of me to ask this of others without providing my own thoughts, I guess I'll go first. The intricacies of the space time continuum also sort of mandate that the first post is... the first post. Stupid universe ;-)

"The Voices in My Head" isnt my first attempt at blogging as I've had personal and professional blogs before. None of them really amounted to much of anything, and if you want the honest truth, I'd have to say its because almost everything I wrote was done with a very conscious eye towards what other people were going to think about it. I wanted to sound intelligent, or insightful, or have some sort of deep inner meaning to everything I said, and the result was a perpetual unhappiness with anything I wrote - I constantly felt like it wasnt good enough to be public, and so the writing trailed off. I'm not really one to be overly self conscious, so I'm not really sure what inspired self doubt to that degree, but the result was that I couldnt keep a blog going for any length of time, nor did I have any interest in doing so. So if you're one of the people that has tried blogging only to let is slip to the wayside, I feel your pain *chest bump*.

At some point though, something changed, and since we're in the tree of trust, the change was likely inspired by my own personal frustration. I had stopped feeling like I was creative. I had stopped feeling like I was innovative. I had stopped feeling like... well... to be honest, I had any good ideas about anything at all. I started thinking back on the previous weeks and months and asked myself "what did you do that was of any interest to you" and all I could come back with was a shrug. Well that just wouldn't do now would it?

So when Penn State launched the blogs at PSU project, it was the perfect opportunity to dig myself out of my little mental rut and just say screw it. So I started writing again, but this time it was for me. I wasnt worried about who was reading, or what they'd think about it, because, quite frankly that hadnt gotten me much of anywhere. Obviously I hoped people would read and I hoped that people would enjoy what I had to say, but if not, I was going to do it anyway. And I wasnt going to hide my ridiculous humor, or stress out about the fact that my grammar is about as good as a confused third graders or that I can't spell "the" without spell check. I just let the words fly. Thats not to say I've had any good ideas within this virtual fortress of public solitude but the entire process has been a satisfying one. And besides, the way I see it, the only thing better than one post filled with nonsense is 40 posts filled with nonsense! Would it be cliche to say blogging makes me a better person? Probably - but I'd wear the t-shirt anyway.

So improving my happiness is probably a good enough explanation for why I blog, but its not the only one. Though blogging is not a required part of employment where I work, it is most certainly encouraged and supported. And if you hear the word blog enough you're either going to start one, or end up in a mental institution... or both *nervous laugh*. So there was that elemental of positive workplace peer pressure too.

But what keeps it all going? I mean its one thing to start a blog, but its another thing to keep posting to it. Only a few short sentences ago, I admitted that I've let other blogs slide before, yet I've been pretty active with this one. Whats different?

Well the therapeutic properties most certainly come into play again. I've come to enjoy writing, but just as importantly, I've come to enjoy the thought process behind finding things to write about. Its a very... invigorating experience for a lack of a better word. (As a side, I started thinking about that Seinfeld episode where Elaine reveals the little kicks - "'But I really enjoy [blogging]'. 'And thats not helping... Please. Not in my home'"). Ha!

There was also the "unexpected" side effect of stimulating the so called "conversation". Dave had a very thought provoking post a few weeks back that really got me to thinking about this in a way I hadnt before, but the blogging process has me talking to people I may never have talked with about things that we may never had a chance to talk about. I know, its sort of ridiculous that any self respecting IT person could have found the social aspect of blogging to be some sort of unexpected side effect. But thems the berries. People talking to me about my blog. I talk to others about theirs. And once those conversations start occuring, some really fantastic things can happen. Plus it makes you want to keep coming back for more =)

Anyway, that was all a typically Stubstyle verbose glimpse into why I blog and what keeps me coming back for more. No need to be as long winded as me, but you've got this cat curious.

Why do you blog? Or why do you not? Anonymous responses accepted =)

Images from www.britfilms.tv, newmoonjournal.blogs.com, and wikipedia.com

I attended a private boarding school during my 4 years of highschool, which is a very interesting experience to say the least. Though far more regulated (for obvious reasons), it is in many ways a lot like going to college 4 years early. My grandparents lived in the same town as the school, so "officially" I lived with them, but I was on campus from 7-7 (or later) every day of the week and usually on Saturday's, so for all intents and purposes I lived on campus.

My freshman year, one of the things that spread through the student population like wildfire was ...(you think I'm going to say mono don't you? Dont lie) a game called You Don't Know Jack. Effectively, Jack is a spoofed trivia game that asks a series of odd questions, most of which pair something about pop culture with some sort of actual trivia. Meanwhile the host has an endless stream of absurd commentary, reinforcement of correct answers, and a bit of amusing verbal abuse for wrong ones which give the game a ton of character. The best part of Jack, however, is the multi player element. Each player had a "buzzer" key on the keyboard, letting up to three friends cram in together and play this game for hours, until my Grandmother would show up and ask why I had made her wait for me for 45 minutes downstairs. Whoops =)

Actually... I'll tell you what. In keeping with my semi-regular (ie totally irregular) tradition of posting ridiculous things on Friday afternoons, why don't I just show you what Jack is all about? No multi player I'm afraid, which really adds a huge dimension to the game, but something is better than nothing right?

Disclaimer: don't worry, this is legal =) Some adult language. Also, I'm not sure if the game will transfer through RSS readers, so you may need to browse to the actual website to check it out.

Like I said, without the multi player element, you miss out on the hair trigger factor that goes with every question, especially the jack attack. But you get the idea.

So thats it right? Class dismissed and have a good weekend? You thought you'd just get to play games and run did you? Sadly there is actually a point to this trip down memory lane. Can't you just hear Admiral Ackbar saying "It's a trap!" in that wonderfully squid-like way he does? That was the most egregious use of embedded media ever. And you loved it ;-)

...*awkward silence*...

There are a few things that make Jack such a great game. Its social. Its humorous. Its very easy to play. And it spins its content in such a way that it can be relevant to a lot of different people. Its pretty much the definition of a casual game.

So whats to say this format couldn't be used for book-learning instead of just for fun? The idea of playing Jeopardy for in class reviews has been around since roughly the Middle Ages, so think of this as a new trick for an old dog - but with a much more hip, fun, social twist. A study group could have a "Jackified version" of course content to play through together before a big exam or something like that. Its a simple trivia game with a few jokes and jabs - but the experience it could create could help make an irrelevant piece of trivia something you keep with you for a long time.

Anyway, thats enough thinking for a friday. Enjoy the weekend. And remember the Jack.

This You Don't Know Jack Demo as well as others are available at http://www.youdontknowjack.com/

A few days ago I was talking to a colleague at work when I made an offhand reference to Red vs Blue. In response, I received a puzzled smile and an utterly blank stair. Now its worth mentioning that I get utterly blank stairs after about 90% of the things I say. I bit a thermometer in half and swallowed some mercury when I was young. That explanation usually suffices....

But on this particular occasion, I wasnt getting the "thats so great that he can feed and dress himself" look, rather one of genuine confusion. This person had no idea what in the world I was talking about with this whole Red vs Blue thing. And thats when I realized I had gone off into my little gamer bubble again, and that most people probably have no idea what Red vs Blue is. Whooops!

Well for starters, it has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans, so put your mind at ease. In the simplest terms possible, Red vs Blue is an online show made by using in game footage from the Halo game series. The "filming" is then overdubbed with voices, and wa-la - a show is born. An example can, I'm sure, explain far better than my mercury laden words can.

Disclaimer: There might be a few obscenities in these movies - while not to the South Park degree of excessiveness, my lawlyers (get it?) insisted I post this disclaimer. =)

The entire process is known as Machinima (machine cinema), a subculture of film that was really brought into the limelight in America by the Red vs Blue series. All said and done, RvB ran for nearly 5 years, with more than 100 episodes before the creators called it quits - though they had a bit of a comeback tour with the release of Halo 3.

With its unprecedented popularity, the World of Warcraft universe has sparked hundreds of these sort of movies, though few have been more popular than the "Jimmy" series - the first episode (shown below) of which has gotten almost 3 million hits on youtube.

Now if havent played either Warcraft or Halo, then those movies will likely leave you on the outside looking in at a whole lot of inside jokes and references. And thus you have unmasked my secret plan to lower the self esteem of all non gamers ;-) No, not really.

The original purpose of this post was educational - to try and explain a part of the gaming/ film subculture that most "outsiders" don't know about. But I also think its worth noting that Machinima is just another way of talking about user created content - something that should mean more to the educators in the crowd than some film game hybrid word. RvB and Jimmy are popular in large part because of their humor, but thats not to say that humor is the only practical application for this sort of content.

Take it as you will =)

Both videos taken from youtube.com

I had a chance to peruse an interesting article today from the New York Times, care of Bryan Alexander's blog. The article is talking about facebook, and the shadowy subculture of "stalking" that it encourages us all to participate in. In case you don't have time to read the article, I've cut nearly the entire thing out and tossed it in a block quote ;-)

My generation has long been bizarrely comfortable with being looked at, and as performers on the Facebook stage, we upload pictures of ourselves cooking dinner for our parents or doing keg stands at last night’s party; we are reckless with our personal information. But there is one area of privacy that we won’t surrender: the secrecy of how and whom we search.

A friend of mine was recently in a panic over rumors of a hacker application that would allow Facebook users to see who’s been visiting their profiles. She’d spent the day ogling a love interest’s page and was horrified at the idea that he knew she’d been looking at him. But there’s no way Facebook would allow such a program to exist: the site is popular largely because it enables us to indulge our gazes anonymously. (We might feel invulnerable in the spotlight, but we don’t want to be caught sitting in someone else’s audience.) If our ability to privately search is ever jeopardized, Facebook will turn into a ghost town.

Facebook purports to be a place for human connectivity, but it’s made us more wary of real human confrontation. When I was in college, people always warned against the dangers of “Facebook stalking” at a library computer — the person whose profile you’re perusing might be right behind you. Dwelling online is a cowardly and utterly enjoyable alternative to real interaction.

So even though Facebook offers an elaborate menu of privacy settings, many of my friends admit that the only setting they use is the one that prevents people from seeing that they are Currently Logged In. Perhaps we fear that the Currently Logged In feature advertises to everyone else that we (too!) are Currently Bored, Lustful, Socially Unfulfilled or Generally Avoiding Real Life.

There are, as I can see it, two sides to this coin. On the one hand, Facebook allows you to meet people that you may have never otherwise come in contact with, to enable conversations that may never otherwise have occurred, to help you get to know people in ways that previously would have been impossible. But on the other hand, I have also experienced what my girlfriend calls the "relationship life support" effect - where Facebook serves as an intermediary between friends that I may not have seen or spoken to in years, preserving relationships that may otherwise have fallen into oblivion. Not because of any animosity or ill will, but rather because there is something easier, something more accessible about the wall post as compared to picking up a phone and actually calling someone. And by logical extension, it enables the stalker effect that the Op refers to - the anonymous ability to watch the lives of others from the shadows, no participation or interaction required. It is pretty weird when you sit down and think about it.

In the end, I think its a good thing - not the stalker-web syndrome, but rather any communication tool that aids in supporting relationships. I don't mind knowing that people can sit and stair at my profile if they choose to, and I for one, wouldnt mind someone knowing I was looking at theirs. And as someone who is notoriously bad at staying in touch, I also appreciate that way Facebook has helped to revitalize some relationships with good friends of old that may otherwise evaporated.

But at the very least, it does inspire a moment of pause. Is there something cowardly and shadowy in all of our newfound asynchronous communication? Or is it just part of the ever evolving way that a perpetually connected society stays in touch? Whatever that means...

What do you guys think?

Image from Wikipedia.com

One of the hotter topics in the social networking realm, particularly among younger people, is the importance of using discretion when adding comments, pictures or pretty much anything to sites like facebook or myspace. Even as privacy options improve, it is safe to assume that if you post something to a social networking site, it will find itself in the hands of someone you may never have expected.

Case in point - at a breakfast a few weeks ago my co-workers and I shared a good laugh at a highschool picture of a much younger and thiner me that had been pulled up on facebook. The picture was posted by a high school friend, as a token of remembrance to some good times back in the day - though to the casual onlooker, this snapshot of me getting ready to rip an undershirt apart is rather ridiculous. Obviously I knew the picture was a part of my profile and thus accessible to others, but when it had first been posted, I'd never really considered the possibility that it would show up on the iphone of my supervisor several years later. I don't mind of course - though unexpected and amusingly embarrassing, viewing it with two colleagues invoked a lot of happy memories. It also made me remember why I'm going to start going back to the gym ;-)

But most of the stories popular media locks onto are not nearly as innocuous as mine. Employers finding pictures of new hires swinging naked from a chandelier, parents finding pictures of their kids doing drugs - heck our very own Penn State University Police actually used Facebook to help find students who had been involved on some post game "extracurricular activities" downtown a few years back. In situations like these, the results are far more serious than a few chuckles - sometimes as significant as jail, the loss of your job, or expulsion from school. But in addition to the heavy hitting responses that can come from putting too much of yourself out there, there is also a much more subtle effect of showing too much of yourself - it can change the way people perceive you.

My girlfriend refuses to use facebook. Not because she has any objection to social networking itself, but rather because in her sales/marketing profession, she does'nt want to blend her social life with her professional one. She doesnt do anything scandalous, but pictures of casual drinking, or goofing off with friends are not images she would ever want potential partners to have access too. Most certainly a responsible stance, and in our day in age a reasonably valid one too.

My outlook on the idea is arguably a lot more naive and would probably best be described as indifferent. I am who I am, and I don't feel any need to hide that from anyone who has any interest in associating with me on any level. I could censor out every picture where I'm holding a beer bottle or looking less than professional, but then its not really "myspace" is it? And for what? To present some sort of stale, vanilla-Stub package to someone whos looking to judge me? Sorry ladies and gents, with this cat you get what you pay for =) Thats not to say I'm some sort of martyr for opening all of our lives up to the universe. But if its all the same to you, I don't mind telling you that I enjoy a frosty woodchuck cider from time to time =)

Now on the outside, thats probably a pretty stupid attitude to take, and more than that its hypocritical. My dress, my diction, my humor - it all changes depending on who I'm speaking to in the real world, at least to a certain degree. I wear suits to job interviews. I mind my Ps and Qs when I speak to my Grandparents. I allow high school pictures of me shredding t-shirts to be up on my facebook profile. Huh? Bit of a contradiction isnt it? Yes it is, and one that would probably take me longer to rationalize than you have to read =) Perhaps another day...

But it makes me wonder if there is a change brewing in our culture. If you're 40 today, chances are your childhood was different in a lot of ways than mine was (being 25). And the difference between my childhood and the young whipper snappers of today is just as different. When I was younger, I was connected to the relatively infantile internet, but not perpetually, by that wonderful dial up 14.4 modem. Today, kids are omni-connected at speeds that would have blown my 13 year old mind, from any and everywhere their little lives (and cellphones) take them. When I was young, the boundaries between school and work and home, between personal and private were a lot more clear. Today, things are a lot different.

Today, someone who never grew up with facebook might use it to decide that an applicant just "isnt quite professional enough" because they were tagged in a picture where they had a bit too much to drink. Whether its fair or not is another story entirely - it does happen, whether you like it or not.

But will it be that way forever? What happens when the myspace generation is in a position to do the hiring? What happens when the people who grew up in a world where everyone you knew had everything they did tagged and bagged for public consumption rises into positions of power? Do the rules change? Do we become more accepting of the blurred line between who we are and who we want people to see? Or will the "social internet" just provide endless fuel to the fires of those who seek to judge? Or maybe the divide between the young and old will always exist, regardless of the medium it takes, be it Disco, MTV, or Facebook. I'm not sure I know the answer, but somehow I feel like something is going to change...

I'll leave this overly philosophical post with a quote I've always liked from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

It's an interesting time to be young =)

Image from www.sausage-fest.com