Review: Youtube

Quote 1
“Environments supporting mass collaboration and social production such as annotated collections (GenBank), media sharing (Flickr, YouTube), wikis (Wikipedia), folksonomies (del.icio.us), and virtual worlds (Second Life) are other examples of social creativity. The diverse and collective stock of scientific content and artistic or stylistic ideas that individuals and communities share, re-interpret, and use as a basis for new ideas and visions constitutes the vital source of invention and creativity.”
(Fischer, G. and Giaccardi, E. (2007) Sustaining Social Creativity, Communications of the ACM, 50:12, pp. 28-29.)

• This quote is quite positive. Just like my feeling towards youtube. Youtube encourage many creative productions. It is a platform for gathering creative videos. We can find how creative the people are. And this became a culture of putting video online throughout the world.

Honda Accod commercial

Have you seen this before?

You must think that this commercial may have some digital effect. But I must tell you that this commercial did not produced with any help of computer. It takes 606 times for four days and nights. Those parts are took from the Accord. Including the crews put in the tire, every parts should be calculated carefully, one small mistake will affect the whole production. After 500 takes of the commercial, the production team called the parts as their friends.

This commercial help me to think that nowadays the technique of computer is so high that it seems all the things can be done by computer. We will ignore many handmade things. Actually, creative idea with human power can also perform well. May be we can consider more about what we can do without using computer technique.

Comments on online films

Youtube is a worldwide website let people to upload video freely. This is a new ability for us to make and widely distribute and respond to online films. There are both positive and negative comments about this.

Positive comments

• everyone can share the videos they made easily
• we can see the production of others online all over the world
• some people put their own film online became famous, it may be a good channel for people who wanted to be famous
• it can encourage creative production
• putting the films online can save the memory of the computer
• people can leave comment freely after watching the video
• making video is another way to express our feelings, upload the video online may help us to find somebody who have the same feeling with you as there are many videos which were made to response to the original one

Negative comments

• although the online video will make people become famous, it may also bring negative effect on people if they had done something bad or acting to be too extreme
• bad information will also be easy to transfer through this online films website
• there may be bad response to the video
• it may become a channel to attack others
• some video may be uploaded without others' permission, this will create the problem of privacy

Bus Uncle

It is a famous video which almost eveyone have heard about it. After the video has been posted on youtube, the rating of the video is high. It is about a conversation between a young man and a 'bus uncle'. The young man want to express his feelings of disturbing by the loud voice of bus uncle when he was talking on phone. After that, the bus uncle had a great response and the two men started an exicting conversation.

Bus uncle became famous among the media and it is a part of his interview:

Proprietary software and open source software

a) Is there any problem with simply using the products that these two companies(Microsoft and Apple) create for us?

• the software is not cheap at all
• the software has to be updated all the time
• we have to follow the rules or guide of the software
• we can do nothing to change the setup of the software
• some software of Microsoft cannot be used by the products of Apple

b) Why do some people choose to use open-source software such as Linux?

• the software is cheaper
• some people have the knowledge to access the code of the software, they can change the program easily because the code of the software is open to the public
• they can update the software by themselves
• they are more willing to share the software with others

c) Who owns the right to modify your digital tools? Does it matter at all? Why of why not?

Both the Microsoft and Apple owns the right to modify my digital tools. I always use the software of Microsoft to do my work. Also, I have use the products of Apple. As they are the proprietary operating system, I cannot change any of the content of the software because the code is not open for the public. Although I have no knowledge to do such changes but I think I am a passive user of those softwares. I must first pay for the software and follow the instructions of the software. I did not have the right to modify the digital tools. Nowadays, I think many products have to coporate with the softwares and many of them were not free. So the users like me were controlled by the software of these proprietary software because we do not have the right to modify the digital tools.

Amazing Sand Painting

What do you think so many digital artists choose open source software and/or operating systems?

Digital artists may have their own reasons for choosing open source softwares. As mentioned before, using open source softwares have more freedom. From my own opinion, artists may want to have more freedom and less restrictions. Because they will not want their art to be limited by many rules. With the open source softwares, they can do and change what they want without restrictions. It is more easy for them to develop thier ideas and works. And the space and range of their creations will be larger and wider. It encourages them to have more creative and outstanding works.

What philosophy is behind the open source movement?

• there is more freedom by using open source software
• people would like to share their work with others
• people did not want to be limited by others
• everyone can have the chance to change the works
• works can be changed to fit many people's preferences

Do you agree?Why or why not?

To some extent, I agree. If I have the knowledge to do such works, I would like to have more freedom to change the software in order to reach my own requirement for the software. And the contents can be changed freely if my preferences have changed. However, I did not have such knowledge and skills to do that. So I will choose to follow the rules of using the software. Although there is less freedom, it is quite good for me because there were already many resources in the software provided for me. I may change my mind if I finally have the skills on changing the data of the softwares.

Who is Steve Jobs?

Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955)

• American businessman
• co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc.
• former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios
• created one of the first commercially successful personal computers with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak
• the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven graphical user interface

• in 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT because of losing the power struggle with the board of directors
• In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division
• early 2004, Jobs announced that the partnership between Pixar and NeXT will end once its contract with Disney expired
• in 1996, Jobs back to Apple Inc.
• the computer produced some famous products like Macintosh computers, OS X operating system, iPods, the iTunes online store, the iPhone

• MacOS X is a “proprietary operating system"

Source from: "Steve Jobs" Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Jobs)

Photoshop