Disney Acquires Marvel

Well, I was cruising around on the internet and saw an article that I found interesting. It seems that Disney has recently bought Marvel for $4 billion. So, some of your may be wondering what is going to happen now that Disney owns Marvel. Are we going to see Mickey Mouse dressed up as Wolverine? I don't think we will see anything like that, at least I would hope so. This does mean that Marvel will be getting bigger budget movies.

Though Disney has bought Marvel, this does not mean that they have the rights for everything right now. Marvel has been in contracts with many different companies. For instance Fox has the rights to Fantastic Four and Paramount owns the rights to Iron Man still. So we aren't going to see an Iron Man movie coming from Disney anytime soon. We will have to wait and see what will happen between Marvel and Disney. I am a little interested in what will happen in the future for Marvel. Here is a link to and article from Disney.

Amasing Way to Find New Music...Better than Pandora

http://www.last.fm/

I know in class we began to speak about the music discovery site known as Pandora. When I had discovered that site I was on it all the time. However, I began to hear the same stuff and wanted to skip some of the songs really bad, but I couldn't due to their copywrite rules.

One day I found a website called last.fm. I had heard of it before but was never interested. However, they have recently added a radio just like Pandora's, but even better. On their site you can rate songs and artists so that the site can get a grip on what kind of music you might like just like Pandora. However, on last.fm you can skip as many songs as you like, so no wonder I would switch to this site. It is also a bit more visually stimulating as well. While listening to their radio they have a picture slide show of the band or artist while their music is playing, perfect to set up at a party or something like that.

This is yet another example of how we can use technology and the internet to discover new and great things, that would have taken us years before.

Radiohead's Sales Strategy

I don't really listen to Radiohead, or keep up with music that much, so I hadn't heard about what the band did when they released their album, In Rainbows, in October 2007. A video I found on YouTube was a news report from Reuters that talked about the way that Radiohead distributed the album. The video says that "CD sales dropped 19%, but digital album sales increased 60% from the previous year," implying that it is important now, more than ever, for bands to come up with inexpensive and effective ways to distribute their music, but still make money. Radiohead did this by selling their album only online, and asking their fans how much they were willing to pay for the album. Reuters interviewed people, and some said $10, while one man said he'd pay $5 or $6, but not $15. I think that this strategy was good because a lot of fans understand that in order to keep making money, a band needs monetary support, so they have to charge for their CDs. But CDs are often overpriced so much that listeners would rather turn to illegal sources of getting music than actually paying for the albums. What Radiohead did ensured that they got paid for their work, but also kept the listeners happy by providing their product at a price that the consumers deemed reasonable. This is a good idea for bands that already have a well-established fan base, but newer bands probably wouldn't be able to use this strategy because new fans may not be willing to pay much for bands that they aren't familiar with. Check out the video here!

Media Giants Against Piracy

While browsing the internet to find something interesting to write this post about, I came across an article about illegal file sharing and how "The Digital Generation" feels about it. The four founders of the popular site The Pirate Bay have been taken to court by major entertainment company's such as Sony and Warner Brothers. Their site allows free access to hundreds of thousands of free movies, games, music, and so on. If they are found guilty, each could be sued for up to $180,000. The article then goes on to claim that these "media giants" are fighting nothing but an uphill battle against today's youth. Young people today have grown up constantly sharing videos, music, and so on whether it be legally or illegally. Basically, our generation has grown up with so much digital sharing that it will be nearly impossible to stop it at this point. I believe this relates to our class because it shows that we do have passion about movies, music, and other cultured works. Being able to find the newest movie or album from a computer desk also shows how well educated young people are today about technology. I'm not saying illegal file sharing is right or wrong, it has just progressed to the point of no return.

The article can be viewed at TNI

Burt Out Kids

Who would of guessed that one of the "Time" writers agrees with us. The topic is homework. The article "The Homework Ate My Family" poses the question what is the effect that too much homework has on not only the kids, but also the family? The effects have destroyed the child's love of learning, of school, and of education itself. What the article stares, is that instead of the large amount of homework helping the children become better student, the effects were actually negative. More schoolwork caused the children to look past their homework, physically and emotionally get sick and sometimes destroyed the families whose children recieved the massive amounts of homework. As I read the article, I realized that even then, the kids are already sick of schoolwork. Why would they ever want to read or do anything that would remind them of school. Instead of creating a "love" for education, the massive amounts of homework made school intolerable. The kids, now regreting school, want nothing to do with it. Its only natural for the kids to find excuses to get out of homework. Kids may not be taking advantage of the privilege of reading or studying, but maybe its because they already feel overwelmed from the stress of school life. So kids are reading books less and less in America, but if the amount of homework continues to pile up, kids will find other outlets to vent their stress. And i feel that reading and seeking more education isn't one of them.

Unique New Gadgets

I was on my Yahoo last night about to check my email when I found this article about new technology from around the world that I thought looked very interesting and also related to class. It listed several pretty amazing gadgets which aren't currently available in the US but with our global society, could possibly be very soon. Some of the gadgets included a camera about the size and shape of a toothbrush that you could stick in the back of a refrigerator or even a crack in a floorboard, a super tiny "watch phone" with tons of advanced features, a toothpaste-free toothbrush that works by absorbing light and transmitting electrons via a "titanium oxide semiconductor" which makes plaque easily removable, and also several other unique inventions. This article can be related to class because even though many intrest may be falling in many categories of history and fine arts, intrest is definitely rising in technology and ways to be more efficient. I think it shows people are really trying hard to be creative and come up with "the next big thing."

You can read this article for yourself on Yahoo!

Katelyn

Music labels fighting Digital Generation

So I was searching the web and came across this video which I think relates to our class. The music companies are suing this guy named Joel Tenenbaum. He apparently downloaded and distributed 30 tracks over the internet, and they want him to pay $675,000 in fines. I beleive that it is wrong to illegaly download music, because you are ripping off the artists who make this awesome music that you love so much that you want to download it. If you really do love it download it legally on itunes for $.99! But there is a problem with this lawsuit. First of all $675,00 is a hell of a lot of money for anyone to pay much less a 25 year old college student like Joel. But even if the fines were lowered, there is still a second issue with the lawsuit. The music companies are taking all of these fines because the think you should buy the music to support the artists, but the money they collect in fines is never seen by the artists. The companies kepp the money for themselves, now tell me THAT"S the right thing to do! I don't think so!

Please watch the video it is really interesting!

Tyler J. Immethun

Only Indians win Spelling Bees

According to the book The Digital Generation by Bauerlein, Americans between the age of 17-24 are stupid. I found a video about an Indian girl who has just won the spelling bee. This video made me think about how Bauerlein can bring any test or survey into his book and somehow make it sound like the 17-24 year age group is dumb. So in this video they say that this Indian girl has been in this spelling bee four other times and all of those times she has been in the top twelve. Well they also say that Indians have made the spelling bee into a cultural thing, so they have to at least enter enough Indians so they are bound to win the spelling bee. The announcer tells you that kids who make it to the top 212 out of 215 are Indians.
Even when the spelling bee is just suppose to be a fun and challenging thing for kids and teens to do, Bauerlein would make it a main point to show that non-Indians are too stupid to win or even try. Now if Bauerlein used the information from this news clip in his book he would have left out a lot of information. Some examples are the fact that it was a cultural thing for Indians and that they enter so many bees so that they are bound to have an Indian person win. Also, this one girl had to enter the spelling bee three times in order to win once. So really Bauerlein can use any information and take out some information here and there and make any age group sound dumb.