Being that I am not one to want to play online games all day I found that there are a couple interesting games that keep my attention. I choose to check out the online site Kongregate.com. There are many games on this particular site. The thing I enjoyed about this site also was the vase amount of variety of games it had to offer. Since I love strategy games I chose to play 3D Logic. I found myself playing this game for hours upon hours. The game looks like a rubbix cube with different colors and patterns. There are 30 levels and I found 1 through 18 to be easy. It wasn’t until I reached level 21 to where I was stuck for what I believe to be 30 minutes or so. I finally passed that, but the object of the game was to get one color cube back to another color cube. The tricky part was that there was also about four other color trails that would get in the way. I made it to level 27 and had to stop. I also did another game called Don’t tip it over and I found that to be a boring game with not much to it.So I guess I cant say that I am not one to enjoy online games.
Crowdsourcing May 8, 2009
Crowdsourcing is essentially an outsource of user generated content. There are many components to this that can be found on the web. Many of which begin with a main idea. There are many different ways to look at crowdsourcing. The simplest way to think of it is to take a largely conceptualized idea or product and use advertisement on popular avenues such as Twitter and Facebook. This outsourcing of content allows people to get an idea out there and hopefully whoever sees the outsource it will draw them back to the original sight of reference. An example of this could be a person who loves to be updated on news and decides to follow The Dallas Morning News. They get a on Tweet from Twitter about a fatal car crash that happened and they would send a link back to their site to draw people in so they would want to research the event more. The term crowdsourcing originated from Jeff Howe. He defines it as “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.” I believe through his definition you can see what I mean by normally paying or doing extra work to get The Dallas Morning News circulated to using easier platforms such as Twitter. There are many other types of social media that is used for crowdsourcing as well such as Secong Life, facebook and even Youtube. Here is an example from Jeff Howe
Here is Jeff Howe’s crowdsourcing blog page.http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/
MASH-UPS
Mashups have been around for a long time, but weren’t recognized because everyone just categorized them as movie trailers.A mashup simply is something that combines two or more data sources to make a single source. Mashups are just another type of transmedia because they are used to create a following of consumers to different products. I know this term sounds a little foreign and seems like it would never apply to you, but when has there ever been a time when you said to yourself I love this show, but wish that I could just cut out the boring parts. If you are completely in love with everything your favorite television shows have to offer then possibly you asked yourself how can I make my business slideshows get to the point and gather a larger consumer basis? Mashups are just quick interrogations of a much larger complex component. The idea of a mashup is to get rid of the excess materials and make a product that is eye catching and make the viewer not want to miss a second of it. Even though entertainment and music mashups are wonderful and progressively growing the most famous of the mashup are produced for business and product consumption. These types of mashups are aimed at the general public . Inc. Technology has a great article on how to construct a web 2.0 trend business mashup. http://technology.inc.com/internet/articles/200708/mashups.html
Or here is a great instructional video.
Mashups have been around for a while, but recently took flight in the age of the web 2.0 trends. Mashups took over the sort of portal venue because a ‘portal’ was only available on local server to server access. Mashups can be posted almost anywhere and viewed by anyone. A mashup can be made a numerous amount of ways depending upon what type of one you are doing and what software is readily available. Entertainment mashups seem to be the most popular ones lately. Let’s say you choose to take your favorite parts of a film and make it one concise piece. I typically work on Mac’s so I will give instructions according to a Mac developed mashup. First if you would need to download a program called handbrake. http://handbrake.fr/
Next you would rip the DVD and have in a format that will allow the easiest access to your favorite clips. Another piece of software you would need is Final cut. There isn’t anywhere to download this for free so a trip to the apple store would be your best bet. Bring the clips you choose from handbrake to final cut. You can play with sound and slicing tools to make an amazing mashup. You could even add a song to the mashup. Once all of that is finished you can share it with people online in youtube if you like. Here is an example of a mashup from Donnie Darko.
A recent wave in mashups have been with music and music videos. People have been posting up combinations of their favorite music artist. Here is a great one.
A lot of artist weren’t okay with people mashing up their videos, but recently have found a way to add advertisement pop-ups while the video is playing. Typically when I watch mashups with music I see a VISA advertisement at the bottom and a link to itunes to purchase the song.
Here is an extra site to see the benefits of mashups and how they can help the products grow through advertisements within them.http://news.cnet.com/Mashups-for-fun–and-profit/2100-1032_3-6062563.html
Transmedia
Transmedia is an ever-growing story telling process. It is told through many different platforms. The platforms are made up of different outlets such as websites, games and has even gone as far as mobile connectivity. This multi-platform way of connecting people through product placement different avenues is genius. Each story has its own complex world throughout the media. The way it works is lets say there is a film coming and the producers wish to get a following of fans even before the film is released they will begin a transmedia project. First, they could make different websites and come out with a game to get everyone excited. If that was successful then they may go as far as sending invitations for a meet up in a certain spot. Whoever was there to witness the meet would more than likely go and find what all the commotion was about that incident. Some television shows are using this to get viewers even more interested and to feel apart of the show. The Dark Knight was a great example of this because they had websites like http://whysoserious.com/ up way before the movie was even out. Also, there became a following of people because The Dark Knight placed the Jokers number up in the sky and when people would call it they would send them to a place to meet.
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