SeatGuru

I was just reading aiwa’s post about airline reviews, and it reminded me of another good site to use when you’re going overseas. It’s SeatGuru (www.seatguru.com) - “your enlightened guide to airline seating”. It’s basically a site that shows you layouts of seating arrangements on planes. I often use this before going away to decide where (and where not) I might like to sit. You just select your airline, and select the aircraft (type of plane) that you will be travelling on. For example, ‘Singapore Airlines’ and then ‘Boeing 747-400’. It comes up with a ‘seatmap’ that highlights good seats, bad seats, exits, loos, and more. If you hover your mouse over a seat then a little box comes up describing that seat! There’s also user comments, and information on seat pitch, entertainment features, etc. Pretty handy indeed, but the site seems to be a tad slow (well on my computer it is). They also recently launched Mobile SeatGuru, where you can access it straight from handheld devices (blackberry, mobile phone, etc.).

There are also some links to other relevant travelling sites and airline resources, such as this one: http://www.airlinemeals.net/ - heaps of random things you might want to know about airline food. You can even browse photos that people have taken of their airline meals - along with a description, comments, and rating… kinda weird!! Here’s an example of a comment made by someone called Ingrid: "The cereal tasted like something from the bottom of the bird cage and the yoghurt was thin, sour and definitely not made from a contented cow! The roll was tasty and still warm and with the butter melting gently on top it was easily the best part of the meal! The fruit had no taste and could have been prepared a week earlier. Not very inspiring Air NZ!!!". Haha... interesting stuff!

I think sites such as SeatGuru, and the one aiwa posted about, are really good examples of how the Internet can make little things in our lives that much easier for us, help us make decisions, and make somewhat trivial things seem more important :)

-Shannon Doherty

The Funnies

One of my very first surprises when I arrived in New Zealand back in July, was that there were no comics in the paper. Coming from a home where reading the comics is a daily standard practice, this was shocking! Knowing that I was going to be here until the end of November, I had to find a solution.

fortunately, I found the solution on the internet. As it turns out there are numerous sources to get my daily laugh. Yahoo for instance, will allow you to choose a few comic strips from a list to place on your own personalized home page. Then, there is always the option to go to each comic's own homepage. For most comic strips this is common practice and you can even read archived strips from the recent past. This is certainly true for one of my favorite strips Fox Trot.

Still, neither of these options was a nice as pulling all of my favorite strips from one section of the paper. It was then that I began searching for online newspapers and I found the answer.

The Houston Chronicle is a Texas newspaper that not only reports on local news from my home, but now through the internet, its providing me with my necessary comics as well. On this page, you can select comics from a vast list and then bookmark the page. You can then come back to this bookmarked page each day and view the next days strips. I love it!

Now, I no longer suffer the pain of being separated from my funnies. The comics are back, thanks to the internet.

Teen Girl Squad

A bit has been said about homestarrunner.com in the course already, but one of its cartoons, “Teen Girl Squad”, is a nice example of digital animation referring to its paper based roots. “Teen Girl Squad” is a cartoon that makes fun of teen angst/high school dramas that appear on television, supposedly written and narrated by one of the sites main characters, Strong Bad. The toons themselves are amusing in their own way, but the interesting thing about them in terms of the course is that they are flash animations done in the style of crude line drawings. The characters are stick figures and the background is ruled refill pad. This kind of lo-fi/no-fi referencing appears throughout the site (Strong Bad occasional uses a ‘light pen’ which is actually a twink pen or vivid marker), but the “Teen Girl Squad” is a nice, clear example of internet nostalgia. You can see the cartoons at www.homestarrunner.com/tgsmenu.html

Airline Reviews

Going on a trip sometime soon? Well check out Airline Quality.com.

They are website set up to carry customer reviews on Airlines. The website covers tips for seat location, customer service reviews, as well as general opinions.

It seems to be one of a kind on the internet (at least, I cant find a site similar) and is well worth perusing if you're heading overseas anytime soon.
One downside to the site though is that since it is user-dependant the quality of the content is reliant on the user to donate reliable, and up-to-date reviews and opinions. This sometimes leads to opinions/reviews on an airline that are over one year old.

Does anybody know of any similar/better sites?

Hackers

I found this week’s lecture to be really interesting. For me I had always thought that hackers were people that broke into secure online websites and stole people’s money or their personal information. And to an extent this is true. But the real definition of a hacker is someone who looks at something technological and sees a different use for it than what it was original designed. When you take that definition then it is not a bad thing to be a hacker. Half of our technological advances in today’s society are due to someone looking at something and seeing different ways to use it. And it amazes me when I typed in Hackers into google (gotta love google it can find you anything) the amount of websites that came up and the amount of information that teaches you how to hack into the internet.
And the idea that hackers are very social was also new for me. I guess I was going on the stereotypical image of the hacker as being someone who sits in their room and has no human contact. And I also found it really amusing that hackers get caught largely because they talk about what they have done. If they kept their mouth shut then a lot of them would never have had to serve prison time.

As the exam looms...

I will build into next week's lecture some time to discuss the format and scope of the forthcoming exam for FTVMS 203. I would also welcome feedback on any issues covered in the course that you would like me to address or re-visit in next week's final class. I still intend to spend time on the advertised topic of 'Web Design and the Politics of Space' but I can be flexible about how we divide up the 2 hour session in response to student feedback. Comment directly on this post or email me...

More on Internet Banking...

I was reading through Alapati's blog entry about 'Internet Banking' and the idea of the site being insecure is a valid point. I don't know how safe these sites are, or how well protected they are against hackers, but I have had a personal internet banking account for quite some time and have never had any problems with it.

The pro's for me, seem to outweigh the con's as it is a fast an effective way of checking account balances, transferring money, paying bills, setting up automatic payments, making IRD payments and so on. The convenience of it all is a bonus and the thought of not having to leave the house would definitely appeal to some.
Although others indeed would deem this as 'lazy' when not having to physically go out to the bank, I personally think the advancing technology and convenience of being able to do the majority of your banking online is a plus!

Blogging and the Work Place

As we have discussed in class, blogging has many purposes. It can help keep friends and families connected or it can be a medium where someone can create a new identity. Overall blogs are viewed as being a personal journal with the complication of being available to the public.

In this NPR Broadcast, a former employee of google is interviewed. He was fired for writing information about the company and his job in his personal blog. He didnt feel as though he was sharing any private information but in the end it didnt matter.

Where should the corporate reach end? Where should the line be drawn? Are people who have blogs not allowed to talk about their jobs? What implications does this have over freedom of speech? Are blogs the equivalent of writing newspaper editorials?

The rights of employees writing blogs as well as some of the implications of blogs are discussed on this NPR broadcast: (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4664476) "Blogging Poses New Workplace Issues".

Joining of Networks

Yahoo! Inc and Microsoft Corp have announced an agreement to connect users of their instant messaging servuces. MSN messanger and Yahoo! messanger users will have the ability to interac. Consumers from both communities will have the ability to exchange instant messages, be able to see thier friends online presence, share select emoticons and add new contacts from either networks. This is planned to be introduced in the second quater of 2006. Another example of the joining of networks is Telecom and Vodafone that have joined together enabling customer to send photo, video and sound messages to each other over their mobile between networks. The joining of networks is allowing more and more people to be connected. Giving more choice and flexiability in how we communicate with family, freinds and colleagues.

Yahoo 360

Hi, yahoo has come out with the new feature call yahoo 360. That let you revamp your yahoo member profile page. . It lets have you own blog site, share photos. And the more interesting part is the friend section. Which show everyone that is on your contact list and you just click on their icon and it takes you to their site. You can click on all these different peoples and see who know who, and how everyone is connected and some time you end up back at the person you started with. It like a digital form of ‘6 degree of separation’


Mana-E

Video I-pod.

I just saw on the net that Apple has just release their new I-pod. This I-pod now has the ability to play video clips on it .It has a 2.5-inch screen and comes with 30 and 60 gigabytes of memory. You are able to watch music video on and other small video clips that you could download form I-tunes. From small film clips from Pixar Animation Studios Inc to some ABC television shows would be available on iTunes a day after broadcast. Interesting how far the lonely I-pod has come from merely being able to listen to music on it. Now you can listen to music, view your pictures and even now viewing music video clips and recoded TV programs on it. I-pod it is becoming a portable media centre that you can fit in your pocket.

Here the web site.

Mana-E

Keeping In touch with People

Awhile back I posted a blog about services like Ringo and Bebo and I've noticed a couple of posts about Hi5 which I have also recieved many emails about but never signed up to. I have however joined one of trademe's sites - oldfriends.co.nz. I was having lunch with a friend from my high school yesterday and she was telling me about how she joined and that a summer job we had both had was on the site. She also said someone there had been looking for my brother, she'd passed on my email but the person had never contacted me. So I decided to join and sign up to my old schools and other things. No-one was looking for me but it was amazing to see some names of people I remember from primary school. Technology really helps bring people together, however I think running into a girl from primary school at Shadows was much more interesting than tracking her down on the internet, there are only certain people you would bother to track down but when you randomly run into people you barely remember it's much more fun as it can unlock old memories.
I do wonder how much the internet really brings people together, there seems to be plenty of oppertunity to bring people together and try an rekindle old bonds, I always feel like my real friends are the ones I am still friends with, the ones who make an effort and you recive emails because you exchanged emails years ago, most of these sites I visit maybe once when I sign up and do a bit of exploring and then simply forget about or just have no use for. Are these connection sites just another gimmick, or are they really adding something to society, I'm not sure - a girl from my intermediate managed to track me down last year (getting my cell number after ringing my parents place) without the use of the internet, and quite frankly I didn't want her to track me down. What happens then, since everyone is so much more connected, will it be harder to get rid of those people?

The New Google RSS Reader Aggregator

Google has finally launched its own Web-based RSS Reader during last week Web 2.0 conference.
The new RSS tool from Google sports a good set of basic features while providing, in my humble opinion, a great interface and user experience.
The interface is all based on the new Web 2.0 paradigm and by using Ajax technology it provides a soothing and pleasing experience to anyone looking to scan, browse and read news content coming from RSS and Atom feeds.
While the new Google RSS Reader has still a few rough edges and bugs, it does provide an excellent way to subscribe to Web sites, news and blog updates in a simple and effective way.
The unique look and feel, the ergonomics and usability of content access, its navigation consistency with the GMail interface standards, and the attention to information design details make this RSS/Atom reader a model of effective user experience for online news reading.

The Google Reader allows the direct import of RSS and Atom feeds as well as of OPML files(containing feed collections).

News items read inside the Google Reader can be "tagged" with unique keywords or keyphrases as to simplify the need to personally categorize and group incoming content in multiple ways.

Content can also be marked with "stars" which can be used as an extra tag marker to identify unique high importance items. A filter function allows to select only feeds that match your preferred keywords (the filter is applied to the title of the feeds only).
The Google Reader integrates also an RSS/blog Search facility that can be effectively used to find relevant RSS sources and feeds on your preferred topics. Once a search is performed all relevant results are displayed with an option to immediately "tag" and subscribe to each and everyone of them.

U2 and The Killers in concert?

This is not very technology related, however I have been hearing rumours that U2 are coming to NZ next year sometime, and The Killers are coming as their supporting act. Has anyone else heard this?All my friends know of this rumour to, but no-one seems to know where and when. Of course I do realise it is a little early for websites such as Ticketek to announce these sorts of things, but would love to know if it is just a rumour or not? And is it at all possible that The Killers will play a seperate gig?? Anyway nothing to do with technology, but if anyone knows any more than I do, would be interested to hear more:) Cheers!

GMAIL: More Evil Than Satan?

While we're on the topic of Google....

A Google search of 'More Evil Than Satan' used to bring up Microsoft's homepage. I cannot confirm if this was a google-bomb or not (see my last post) but it did not work for very long.

However, in a strange turn of fate, shortly afterwards if you searched 'More Evil Than Satan' on MSN search, you guessed it, Google was the top result.

So, the point of my post is what makes Google and Microsoft More Evil Than Satan?

Well Microsoft is pretty obvious really: Million dollar corporation, buys and sells souls... I mean computer software.... everything is closed source, standardised, unstable and generally crap. We all have our opinion of Microsoft so I'll leave it there for them.

GOOGLE however... why would they be considered evil!?!?! Its just a friendly neighbourhood search engine, helping you with your uni work, helping you find ...uhh... images.... and not generally trying to buy your soul.

But on closer inspection it may be a different story...

Let me start with the number one EVIL Google spawn: GMAIL

You might all know that G-Mail is the latest and greatest free email account provider. It offers a huge amount of storage space (2gig last I looked) so you never have to delete your emails. In fact, it takes more clicks to delete an email than it does to archive one. Therefore you'd tend to keep most of your mail, taking advantage of the storage. You never know when you might need to find that hilarious fowarded email you recieved 3 years ago... you know.. the one with the frog.. ring a ding, bo bo, dee dee, etc... didnt that make you laugh?? Doesnt it make you want to kill yourself now that its NUMBER ONE ON THE FREAKIN MUSIC CHARTS??!!!??? Sorry, I digress..

The point is, GMAIL basically encourages you to keep all the emails you recieve/send and even those put in the trash can tend to hang around in their until you delete them.

In short: Google wants to know all about you.

Yes, it's a privacy issue. If the US government wanted to build a database of all those people who had keywords like "assasinate", "nuke", even "bomb" or "box-cutter" in their email accounts, Gmail would be the first place they would look.

GMAIL offers so much storage that it has potential to be one of the greatest consumer databases imaginable. Every account holder and person who emails a gmail account is under their watch. There are a number of examples of innappropriate ad-matching from Gmail users (see http://www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com/ ).



Well, thats Gmail in a nutshell. I realise many of you use Gmail and probably disagree with my points, that's cool. I also realise that my argument probably isn't very well fleshed out here but see http://www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com/ for more information.

And again I apologise if anyone else has posted about his previously, I haven't read all of the blog.

Google 'failure'.. no really, do it....

Have a good laugh:

Go to www.google.com
Type in failure
Click "Im feeling lucky"


This is an example of a 'Google-bomb'. Someone cleverly figured out that most search engines rank their results according to links from other pages. That is - a search of 'apples' will show the top result as the page with the highest number of links to 'apples' from other pages.

A search of 'unelectable' or 'worst president ever' will give the same result as 'failure'. A search for 'waffles' will link to John Kerry's homepage, in reference to his lack of policy. A search for 'stupid spoilt whore' used to bring up Paris Hilton's fan-page until a South Park episode used the same name.

It all started when a fellow named Adam Mathes decided to play a prank on his friend Andy pressman. He made Pressman's website the top Google result for 'talentless hack'.

The easiest and most effective way to achieve a successful 'bomb' is through a Blog like this one. Because Blogs are constantly updated and contain many links, they have a huge influence on Google results.

Of course all this fun is having serious impact on the integrity and accuracy of the everyone's favourite searcher. However, searches like 'DVDs' or 'Books' will still always lead to sites like Amazon or DVD Empire as Google-bombs tend to be more succesfull with less specific terms or uncommon phrases.

To read more see: http://www.answers.com/topic/google-bomb

Hey, maybe we should start a bomb on this blog?? How about 'bunch of crooks' linking to Inland Revenue??? Just a thought :)



***** sorry if anyone has already posted about this topic, I confess I havent read all of the blog

Yahoo Podcast search

I think that Yahoo have come up with a great idea with a podcast search engine. I know that this is not the first but it is the first by a big name internet company to do so.

Yahoo have created a system where you can listen to podcasts on the internet but you can also subscribe to a particular series of podcasts and have them downloaded directly to your media player (ie, iTunes). Most of the subscriptions are free. I haven't found any that you have to pay for yet.

Yahoo believes that in the future there will be more and more people searching for podcasts. This is the reason that Yahoo has decided to be the first big company to create the search engine. Yahoo are hoping that by making it easier for people to find podcasts they will be more willing to access and download the podcasts.

I think that this is an excellent idea from Yahoo as I have tried before to find podcasts on the internet with little success. I will now be more likely to download podcasts as they are easier to find.

Here are a couple of links;

The news release from Yahoo

Yahoo! Podcast search

When technology becomes greater than the price of life?

I suppose most people know about the rule of interfering with nature on the Discovery Channel, that to participate in any way, shape or form in the environment or ecosystem is to subvert the natural process, that it's natural selection and we have no right to interfere. It's mainly taken from a journalist/photojournalist perspective, that they are there only as observers of nature to report it to the world. Millions can sit and watch a young Springbok being hunted by a group of Tigers, see the fear and struggle of it's resistance then eventual demise and not blink an eye. Technological inventions such as the camera have created these rules that has, over time, desensitized us to these events.

But what happens when it's not a Springbok being hunted, but a human? What happens when the picture is deemed more worthy than the price of life itself? Has technology desensitisation advanced so far that even when a human life is on the line, we shouldn't interfere, and are there only as passive observers? Where is the line drawn on these moral issues?


Example 1:
Photographer, Kevin Carter, takes a (pultizer prize winning) photograph of a young Sudanese famine victim crawling towards a UN food shelter, behind her is a vulture waiting for her to die.

This photograph was published around the world to epitomise the extent of the Sudanese famine.

Reaction to this photograph was so strong that the NY Times published an editorial about the fate of the girl and Manic Street Preachers even wrote a song about Kevin Carter, who committed suicide 3 months after receiving the award.

(Photo links to a bigger picture)

Example 2:
Picture power: Tragedy of Omayra Sanchez
Basic story behind the photo:"Omayra was caught in a mud flow that contained a hardening substance that quickly cooled into a rock-like substance sealing in her body up to her shoulders, and her hands. She could not move, deficate, or hardly breathe, and died slowly"

In the article it says that people were appalled because "technology had been able to capture her image for all time and transmit it around the globe, but was unable to save her life. " You could argue that she simply could not be saved at all, but I find the above quote interesting, we may have made such technological advancements in society today, abling to transmit this picture instantaneously around the entire world, yet could not save her at all?

The Uncanny Valley

While trolling through this online animation site I found this article:

http://www.biganimation.com/magazine/news/article-feature.asp?articleid=483

(Sorry I couldn't make link to it, the computer I'm on doesn't seem to want to put the "Link" option on for me, grrr).

Anyway, it's a really cool, easy to read article regarding the theories of this guy called Mori who was working in the 1970's on psycological experiments about how people respond emotionally to robots. Bear in mind that this guy was doing all this before the advent of CGI, and what he essentially discovered was that humans only empathise with a certain degree of "anthropomorphism," which is the preference of imbuing non-human things with human characteristics, like talking animals or toasters with arms and legs.

So the article details how films like "Polar Express" are actually disturbing because of their realism, emotionally humans hit the "uncanny valley" where we no longer emotionally connect with such characters because they are not cartoony enough. Instead, they are too human like, but also not quite human enough, so they give the appearance of being doll-like and we find it difficult to give them a positive emotional response. Rather, characters like those in "The Incredibles," which are more cartoon-like, becuase of their ability to be "stunting bodies" and their often disproportionate bodies, become much easier to empathise with. So it's kind of interesting that companies like Walt Disney are trying harder and harder to achieve this humanism and realism within their animated characters, which is precisely what we as proper humans negatively respond to on an emotional level!

Funny how sometimes what you think you want, you really don't. I suppose the premise is, that if we can see ourselves in the animation we will be able to identify and thus connect emotionally with the characters, similar to tactics employed by live action Hollywood films, but it turns out that it just freaks us out!

Charlotte

Internet Banking

I have just recently activated my own personal internet banking account. However i am worried about the level of security surrounding internet banking, for example registration for my internet banking was processed over the phone. As verification for my identity, I was only asked for my date of birth, my so-called 'password' and my surname. Although a password would be a logical and somewhat advanced way of identifying myself over the internet, who can gurantee secrecy over the phone let alone the internet, both major sources of public communication? New Media: A Critical Introduction explains that "'public sphere' position extends from this specific function of extending the access to media to the construction of the net as a new public sphere capable of representing new subjectiveness" (New Media: A Critical Introduction. P.177.) in saying this, the internet banking, while it confirms the privacy of your account, the very privacy of my password is challenged by the increasingly easy access hackers can make within internet networks - is my privacy online with my banking account vested in a secure setting or are the accessesbilties to the internet far greater than i imagine.

Friend Network

Friend networks are increasingly becoming the new 'fad' with alot of the net users. I know for myself, friend networks are popular particularly amongst my own circle of friends. In response to the blog "hi5", i have to agree with you in that i find the whole "hi5" experience fun. I registered to the network the beginning of this year and i have been reunited and found people who i thought i lost contact with. Who would have thought that a network could reunite you with the local bully at your intermediate school or that girl you see all the time at uni but you do not know her name. Its awkwardly strange, but its addictive. However "hi5" is not alone, there are more and more friend networks popping up here and there - who's aims are almost indentical to each other, connecting friends with each other - networks such as ringo, bebo and zebo are becoming just as popular as "hi5". These sites allow one to post up messages, photos and personal information on their own profile page - almost like a personal website. The emergence and popularity of friend networks are allowing people to create and become part of an elite community with friend contacts. New Media: A Critical Introduction asserts "Internet provided the means for people to communicate not just individually and one to one but as part of a group communication exchanges in which their mode of address was semi-public rather than private" (New Media: A Critical Introduction. P.172). This exchange between people in internet communities allows - a freedom to express whatever it is that one wants to express in a way that maybe considered publically unacceptable.

Grumble grumble

This is mainly just to show my frustrations about some websites. Most sites now are advanced enough or just have smart people running them so that archives or online versions of shows or clips etc, can be accessed. And this is great when you can get them because they usually work great and enable much more information to to accessed and viewed, handy for assignments etc. However it's when they dont have these now that annoys me, and maybe its just because we've been spoiled by these other sites, but it's just irritating. For example, for an assignment I'm working on at the moment I have to watch clips of the presenters from C4, yet unless I sit with video tape and VCR ready to record these at the right moment, and wasting most likely a whole night, I can't access them. I realise copyright and those other things come into play here but if some people want an effective website then they really should keep up with the play. Gahh!

Response to Digital Photos....

In response to the posts about digital photography...Yeah it's a tough call about whether or not deleting the photos is a good or bad thing.

I think you're right about missing out on possible good photos because you think you look bad etc. I mean, digital photography is more posed because you have the opportunity to re-take each photo until you think it's good, but on the off chance that you do happen to get a spontaneous photo that may not look that fab but captures the moment nicely you'll just delete it anyway. That's the thing about digital photography, it just doesn't seem as real as film because you can take as many as you like, whereas with film you have to really use it sparingly, and if the photos get printed and you just look crap, well that's too bad but that's what it was really like! You don't get the chance to re-take until you look perfect (let's face it, life doesn't look perfect). But you could think about it this way - the media etc always airbrush all photos, mag covers etc, nobody EVER looks bad. Maybe ordinary people are appreciating the chance to take their best pictures, in an attempt to look like celebrities and other perfect media images.

I guess with the media and stuff today that always tells people that they need to look perfect etc, people just want to look good, and digital photography allows people the chance to do that. Also, digital photos are used for a lot more things now than they ever were before...like for example it was rare for film photos to go on the internet, but digital photos often go online. So many people see them etc, so maybe people just worry about how they look. Have you ever had a bad film photo of yourself that people laugh at? I have, and I still get teased about it and I really just wish that it had never happened!

Freedom of expression on the Internet

A Paris-based media watchdog has released a handbook to help cyberdissidents and bloggers avoid political censorship. The blog has become a new place for free expression the book offers advice to set up a blog and run it anonymously. "Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure", wrote Julien Pain head of RSF Internet Freedom Desk.
Singapor however has jailed two men for making racist remarks against minority malays on the internet. The judge said that "the right to propogate an opinion on the internet is not and cannot be and unfettered right". Singapore is a country which has the highest internet use in the work but also a country with tough media laws. The government has defended these controls as necessary to maintain ethics and harmony amongst its population, of which about three quaters are ethnic chinese and ethnic indians make up eight percent.
This brings up issues of free expression and wether it should be controlled or not. In both cases the internet is a place in which oridnary people speak up. It shows that there are both positive and negatives to being able to say what you want on the internet.

Grateful for Worldwide Communication

The other morning I woke up to a call from my dear friend who is currently over in Germany. He is in the U.S. army and calls for updates when he is not out in the field for training.
After already serving a few months in Iraq at the beginning of the year, they were recently told that their unit will be deported again soon. On this most recent call to me, he informed me that he will be headed out to Kuwait on the 8th of November. Following about three weeks time, they will be moving into Iraq with supplies and resources for the people and other soldiers.
Being abroad for the semester and having an incredible time meeting new people, forming relationships, traveling around, and experiencing all I can in a foreign land has been an amazing time. Yet, however peaceful New Zealand is, Ryan’s calls keep life’s perspective in check for me. Despite the news reports or various opinions of the turmoil within Iraq, there are still people putting their lives on the line every day in hopes of improving humanitarian conditions.
And it is the simple technology of the telephone that keeps my heart in check. These random phone calls while away from home prove as a reminder to keep in mind your loved ones.

marC's path to infinite knowledge PLEASE READ

hello. since this a a digital media course its seems fitting that i present my idea here, in the meager hopes of starting a revolution and conquering the world.

upon reading jorge luis borges 'the library' (which everyone should read) i came to realize the path to infinite knowledge lies in the cyber realm, and i dont mean 42 for those of u who have seen hitchhikers. it involves a computer programme. a simple one, too. its basic statistics really.

firstly, set a character limit of say, 1000. k? you write a programme to come up with every single possible combination of 1000 characters using the entire alphabet including space. then, using algorithms or whatever the term is, filter out every word in the english dictionary with a space on either side. ideally, you could expand this filter to include grammar and syntax, and then- boom. seems like bullshit but is it? in those results, the freakin huge number of them, you would have the first 1000 characters of the bible, of moby dick, of being and nothingness, even of this blog. obviously most of the pain would come from designing these filters but really, think of the benefits. if you could expand it to 10000, a million characters, a zillion. even to the point of a few pages, that could be the treatment for the greatest novel ever written, the greatest speech ever given, that little piece of random insight to save someones life. does anybody else see the potential here? am i simply a wandering idiot? that is quite pssible. but hey. if it could never work, technically i mean, please let me know so i can start figuring ways around it.

mahalo
marC

edutainment- the status quo

upon playing my 8 year old brothers new birthday present, where in time is carmen sandiego? it struck me.

what the hell happened to edutainment? i remember the first computer my family got had an interactive encyclopedia that had a little video box with patrick stewart giving little speeches here and there. it was definitely a novelty at the time, but it made me want to learn. playing where in time recently made me realise the importance of edutainment in its modern context. for a recent example, i suppose millionaire or the ps2 version of trivial pursuit could apply, but considering how shit they actually sell, its more of a novelty.
people can postulate lots of theories about why this has become somewhat of a lost art, but i would put it as a testament to the growing influence of kids (western) on their parents, or rather their parents wallets. back in the day of kid pix and carmen sandiego, our parents bought us the games and we played them contentedly. nowdays the parents are generally ignorant of what their kids are playing, and are limited to following such requests as 'i want halo 2 for xbox' and either complying or not. im linking censorship with an ignorance of technology here, and the accumulating weakness of parents. but this isnt without its justification- in a free market, what youre willing and able to pay for, you get. so since edutainment seems to have declined, or at leastin the mainstream market, and gamers are not getting too much older it follows my idea that the forced edutainment regimes of parents have declined greatly.
i would personally like to see some more development with computer edutainment, but i seem to be the minority in this case. suck for me. why doesnt anybody like learning anymore? maybe its a lot more fun to steal cars, shoot people and drive around south central in an armoured tank. maybe.
did u know
-the first novel ever written was called tales of genji by Shikibu Murasaki
- the days of the week as we know them are derived from norse (scandinavian) mythology like wodins day, thors day etc.
thats why everbody should play carmen sandiego- really its the shit
marC

The Market

Yesterday I spent an hour writing a really good post, then when I clicked on publish it told me to log on and deleted my work! Tech-bloody-nology eh! (Now I write my blog in Word and just cut and paste)


Has anyone been watching The Market? TV2, Monday, 10.25pm?
The Market is a local drama set in Otara- Which I worked on. It is based around the dramas of a Moari and Polynesian family which work at the market. It is supposed to be a Romeo and Juliet done ‘south side’ style.









If you have make a comment! Or if you want just put a yes or no would be cool.

So how does this relate to technology and the media? Like most other ‘homegrown’ stuff it had a very small budget. To cut costs the Producer decided to shoot on miniDV. This is not exactly broadcast industry standard. Most would shoot on digibeta or DVC pro. You can get camcorders that use miniDV, although we were using professional high end HD miniDv camera.s. My point is it saved a lot of money for a start and I think the development of local programming is finally taking off with constantly cheaper methods of digital technology. Secondly since the cameras used were so light and versatile it meant that changing location was much quicker. I think that digital technology has had a great impact on the form of television. Where once it would have taken more time and thus less shots in one day, in the Market the camera man was able to experiment with what angles he could work. Back in post production the footage was put through high resolution digital filters to get a higher image quality to make up for the low cost format used to film on. It can be said that if it weren’t for the digital age this local drama with many talented actors would not be on the air.
Anyway it has managed to get some quite decent reviews and even a few comments that TV2 cheated us on our time-slot (which everyone thinks stinks). Here's one


"I can only presume The Market's level of salacious language has earned it the ridiculous time-slot. What a bunch of sissies they are at TVNZ. The Market, TV2, Monday, 10.25pm." from
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3407010a1869,00.html

Economy of digitalization...SMS Ticketing

We can now use our cellphones to check flight status and to check the status of airports around the world but I was astounded when I stumbled on an article in an Indian newspaper about SMS Ticketing for airlines. It seems that in an effort to cut costs several Asian and Middle Eastern carriers are seriously considering increasing their direct interactivity with the traveler by making text message bookings available. This is yet another example of corporations continuing their lock-out of the middle man (travel agents) and increasing their focus on direct connectivity between the company (or airlines in this case) and the individual customer. This will obviously eliminate the need for travelcentres that airlines have to pay money to operate and will also eliminate paper ticketing and even paper itineraries altogether. As corporations find ways to use technology to their economic advantage it puts customers at an electronic level, further decreasing direct human contact. You may think this is a good thing that saves time and hassle or you may think it is a bad thing in that our reliance on technology is so great then what happens if that technology fails for some unforeseen reason and renders us helpless without its operation. An interesting demonstration of the political economy of digitalization I guess.

'A' is for Apple.

What ever happend to barbies and GI Joe's huh? It astoundes me to see even pre-teenage kids walking round with white plugs in their ears at times. (Thank-you mummy and daddy!) i was reading the latest Apple news and found an article about kids bringing ipods to kindy with them.The Kindergardens apparently have bought kids the ipods for educational purposes. They come out during class to help master vocabulary for 'English as a second language' students, and are taken home for homework. "They beg for it," one kindergarten teacher says. "They don't think of it as homework. It's a good connection between school and home, taking the classroom home". The ipods propose a number of vobabulary and phonetic benfits. "Phonemic awareness is the No. 1 tool for reading success," a teacher says "Playing with the language is so important, being able to manipulate words, the ipods help do this". I seem to agree with what they are saying. Im presently trying to learn another language, using a tape deck ( yip, one of those ancient things), rewinding, stopping, playing, rewinding again. It gets frustrating. But its the fact that i am hearing the vocab and the pronounciation which really helps me learn. If its easier for me, why cant this be applied to children trying to learn english? i think early education could be heading in the right direction here. ( i also think the benefits of podcasting for educational purposes are heading in that direction too). Anywho, untill i get myself an ipod, im gonna have to keep learning language the traditional way.

Tron Guy

This is a website i came across and thought it was kind of relevant seeing as we've been discussing 'Tron' in class. www.tronguy.net is a self confessed computer geek called Jay Maynard's devotion to the characters in Tron and also General Levaughn Matsui Xinchub from Schlock Mercenary - something I admittedly know nothing about except that it is a web comic strip.
Anyway, im pretty sure he's for real, he goes to large lengths to make his own Tron costume -with even the 'electroluminescent wire'. The website also has Tron asthetics, using black and blue themes. There's a large number of videos and interviews that can be downloaded, and Jay's website goes into fine detail about how he made his costumes - including heaps of pictures. There are also links to his live journal which he writes in almost every day.
Definitely worth a look - he's pretty hard out, and its quite funny.
Although good on him for posting his pics!

A thought on the Digital Divide

I think we can all agree on the fact that in the society in which we live today, it is easy to regard the Internet as essentially the most powerful advancement of democratic practice of the 21st century. In researching the ‘Information divide’ (or Digital Divide as mentioned in our lecture last week) for another subject, I’ve focussed on the Internet and its implications on the growing divide due to the imbalance of usage. With all the utopian dialogue surrounding the net, I think we all easily forget the repercussions of lack of financial means, locational alienation and implications of social constraints ( to name a few) in terms of Internet usage. Do we ever give a thought about the fact that the internet is providing those who already ‘have’ the capability of more information and knowledge and depriving those who ‘have-not’ of the prospect? I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion, that the imbalances and inequalities that exists (due to the digital divide) are increased by the unequal distribution of the Internet and rather than providing a less concentrated flow of knowledge and encouraging democratic practice, the internet is in fact serving the expansion of the Information divide creating a further divide between society. i know not a thought all will agree on! i also know the democratic benefits far out wiegh the negatives, and we are incresingly oberserving that they are infact endless.....but i thought i'd share this anyway.

immediacy hypermediacy immediacy hypermediacy.....

I was just working on the last bit of my essay on the 'immediacy' and 'hypermediacy', it is so confusing that made me spend so many days to understand the relation between them. Finally I figured out what it mean.. but I just missed out the blog time... Anyways, I found out that these two terms are paradoxical because immediacy creates this transparency, so the viewers do not see the media anymore. Like in films, they only see the event and the object, so they get this amazement. On the other hand, hypermediacy makes them realizing the exitant of the media, which if the film. Therefore thats when the views understand the reality. They are two composing logic, but these two logics also exist within each other. Like what Bolter and Grusin mentioned that 'amazement or wonder requires awareness of the medium. If the medium rally disappeared, as is the apparent goal of the logic of transparency, the viewer would not be amazed...'
This topic is so confusin, but I still find it quiet interesting to talk about.

Digital Culture: Where Technology Becomes a Daily Necessity

Throughout 2004 information technology, or IT, has played a pivotal role in shaping diverse cultures. The borders between technology and everyday life were blurred as IT has become irreversibly intertwined with culture. Here are the hottest issues of 2004 brought about by digital culture.

▶ Digital camera phones - versatile entertainers
Sales of camera phones in Korea in 2004 have recorded 13 million units with the ratio of camera phones to the total trade volume of mobile phones soaring to 81 percent. Camera phones have become a necessity. Shortly after 3 million pixel phones were released to the camera phone market, Samsung Electronics developed a 5 million pixel phone, creating another boom in the mobile phone market.

As demand for smarter phones was rising, mobile phones have evolved into versatile entertainers with MP3 and TV functions. Mobile phones are not simply mechanical devices anymore; they are the creators of a new culture. These days, mobile phones are increasingly used as personal computers to exchange messages and surf mini-homepages and blogs.
But as with everything else, there is a downside to this as well. The record industry suffered huge losses in 2004 because of copyright infringements caused by MP3 phones.

▶ Digital camera frenzy: Taking pictures anywhere, anytime
According to recently released data, sales of digital cameras surpassed 1 million units in October 2004, and are likely to reach at least 1.4 million units by the end of this year. Digital cameras, which have become a daily necessity for X-generation users, are not merely a tool for taking pictures anymore ? they are a symbol of fun.
Digital camera fans, or “dica-jok” in Korean, enjoy posting digital pictures on their mini-homepages and in blogs to share with others. What makes these people peculiar is that they take pictures of everything around them ? even when having meals or hanging out with their friends. Taking pictures and posting them on the Internet is fun for them.
Digital camera fans also contribute greatly to capturing and reporting corporate and social irregularities as they always carry digital cameras with them. Thanks to digital pictures posted online in the second half of 2004, food companies learned a harsh lesson for producing substandard products and still do not dare to ease tension.

Online IQ tests

A girl at my work was talking about IQ tests and how she sat an online test. I was already aware that there are thousands of crazy quizzes, IQ and “personality” tests on the internet but its interesting to wonder how many of these online “IQ tests” produce accurate and legitimate results. I did my own Google search and discovered thousands of links, many which were pay sites. However I did find the following sites which you may find interesting or fun:

IQ Online – information on IQ levels and provides links to various online IQ tests.

Smart Cubes – this cute site contains loads of personality, IQ and aptitude tests. You can find tests that range from “Whats your dieting IQ?”, to “Right job?”, to “Are you a female magnet?” and “Are you hot or not?”, even “What’s your parenting style?”!! They also have more serious tests, such as the IQ and aptitude tests. You do have to sign up but it takes about 30 seconds.

They may be insightful, but definitely amusing timewasters

New Technology GAHHHH

So, I was under the misguided impression that new technology was supposed to not only be helpful, but also more efficient. Oh the naievity.

To put it in a bit of context...I was late for class and had just found a sneaky 90min carpark outside the Quad, right in front of a Pay and Display machine no less! Unfortunatley, a girl got to the machine before me and proceeded to study the "Text to Park" instructions very closely...couple of minutes later she readies herself to actually punch in some digits on her phone...and...nothing. She re-reads the instructions, punches in some more numbers, starts yelling to her friend "It's not working" (does the nervous "i feel like a git laugh") and keeps re-reading the instrucitons. At this stage I run to the next machine pump all my shrapnel into the machine, only to watch the Parking Warden (very close to writing Parking Nazi there but did manage to restrain myself)start to eye up my ticketless car!

So, late to class but no ticket, phew. To get to the analytical point of this post, I suppose that new techonologies are more than likely in most instances to have a bit of a slow start in the initial embryonic stages until they become mainstream, like ATM machines. Though it makes an interesting point that to become more efficient we often have to go through a period of blatant inefficiency.

charlotte t

NB: The girl was NOT me, and I'm pretty sure she was competant at texting and was not of diminshed mental capacity!

We all have a magic wand

Arthur C Clark talked about any sufficiently advanced technology appearing to be magic to any significantly less advanced techno-culture. But are we approaching the point where this divide is inside the one culture and applies even to those who think they have a grip on new technology.

Today most of us use remote controls without a clue what we are really doing. They give us power but at a cost. Perhaps it is our version of the magic wand where we are Ron Weasley, the technicians who fix it are Hermione and those people who rule us are Harry Potter (I like the books but not the central character, may have something to do with my first name but I have increasing sympathy for Voldemort). The wand has mysterious inner workings (some feather I think but it could be a few chips), it has constraints on what it controls, it can be lost or broken and we definitely don't understand how it works (well, could you make one), it is a magic wand.

Must be that essay time of the semester I wish I had a magic wand for that.

MCs and mp3s

Reading Dayne's post about Weapon X and Ken Hell's use of mp3 technology to promote themselves made me think of the successes I have seen in our local hip-hop scene thanks to the internet and mp3 technology.

I often go to the forums at www.hiphopnz.com, which contain an Audio section in which aspiring MCs and producers can "post up links to your beats/tracks to show off". The vast majority of the musicians who use this section of the forums use the website www.soundclick.com to host their tracks. Soundclick is good because it caters for both the artist and listeners. It's free to sign up, and when you have done so all you have to do is upload your songs to your personal page and then people are able to listen to them.

The Audio section at hiphopnz.com has seen many MCs and producers over the years, and some of the big names in both the underground and mainstream hip-hop communities have had their starting point there. The artists who post their tracks there are usually referred to as "bedroom MCs" due to the fact that they record and produce their tracks from their home computers, and the majority of them don't do live performances. Once they get their music heard around the local hip-hop community via soundclick.com the better MCs may have gathered enough popularity to release a mix-tape, which, as Dayne has said is a promotional tool for hip-hop artists, and has been since before the internet was in widespread use. The internet community helps out again here, since the initial buyers of these mix-tapes are usually those who have heard and enjoyed the artists songs through Soundclick.

Mp3 technology has certainly proven to be a valuable tool for promotion and distribution, and, as Dayne has mentioned, although some of the corporate parties in the music industry want to limit it, this technolgy has been priceless to many of the bedroom MCs and other aspiring musicians.

Computer Games Is Putting a Great Influence on Other Media

Today, from TVNZ’s news website, I saw a piece of news:

“The Oscar-winning creative team behind the The Lord of the Rings films, including director Peter Jackson, has been named to run the production of the upcoming film based on Microsoft's blockbuster Halo video game.

Jackson and his wife, Fran Walsh, will serve as the executive producers for Halo, which is targeted for worldwide release in mid-2007 by Universal Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox film studios. (Reuters)”

What does this news mean? In my opinion, all kinds of computer games, including video games mentioned here, are putting a great influence on other media.

Before in my thought, I never regard PC games as a cultural phenomenon. In my eyes, they are just a new big-boy tool for entertainment. At some time, I even hate them because they bring about lots of negative effect. For example, I often heard that many youth are indulged in PC games’ world and can not control themselves at all. In fact, I am a victim of them as well. Because playing PC games with plenty of time, my eyesight was harmed very much. Now, when I sit in back-row seat of the lecture room, I have to wear spectacles.

However, when PC games becomes a powerful industry which is worthy millions of dollars, I have to recognize its power. Nonetheless, I still scorn them. I do not think they can have great impacts on human culture. Sometimes, some PC games’stories just copy from other meida, such as Harry Potter. After the novel Harry Potter was published and a film based on a novel of the same name was made, the PC game with same name appeared and benefited from the hot wave of Harry Potter.

However, now, there are more and more media which are influenced by PC games, especially the film industry. Several years ago, the film Lara Croft was made according to the PC game with the same name and succeeded very much. Now, Peter Jackson is also getting involved in it! Is it possible that some time later PC games will sweep across more media? I do think so.

To sum up, it is unavoidable that PC games will put much greater influences on our culture.

reference:Reuters, 9 Oct, retrieved from tvnz website <http://www.tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411419/616596>

Downloadable mixtape

I was reading the latest issue of Disrupt Magazine and came across an advertisement for Aussie hip hop duo Weapon X and Ken Hell. It was advertising their latest mixtape and contained the text "GET YOUR COPY NOW OR DOWNLOAD IT AT www.illflow.com" I was interested in the "OR DOWNLOAD IT" part and decided to check out the site. A simple click on the "Download" section of the website takes you to a page where you can download the entire mixtape, track by track, for free.

While I'm sure this is not a new phenomenon, it was a good example of musicians embracing mp3 technology and recognising its potential benefits. Mixtapes are used as promotional tools to get an artists name out there and what better way of increasing its potential distribution than offering it for free download online. While some factions of the music industry are busy trying to monitor and limit mp3 downloading/sharing, some are accepting that mp3 is here to stay and are discovering ways of using the format for their benefit.

On a related note, I remember a year or 2 ago seeing a TV advert for a NZ band where you could preview the album by calling an 0800 number to listen to snippets of each track on the album. Pretty innovative thinking I thought.

Is it possible that I become an amateur reporter?

As a student of Film, Tv and Media Studies, I am dreaming of becoming a news
reporter although the threshold of becoming a reporter is rather high and
competition among this career is rather fierce. However, now, by means of camera mobile phones or mini-digital
cameras, I think I can become an amateur reporter. In July's London blast and
the last year's Iraq scandal of abusing prisoners, photos taken by camera
mobile phones or mini-digital cameras became the genuine hero. Many reporters
of media giant can not take those first-hand and hot photos, but plenty of
amateurs touched it! I was encouraged by those facts, so now wherever I go I
take a sophisticated Nokia camera mobile phone. I expect that I can take a real
exclusive news through that equipment. Just two weeks ago, I got it! A Green MP
marched with naked body in New Market because he failed in a bet with Rodney
Hide, the Act leader. At that time, I by coincidence passed by the location
where it happened. Therefore, I took a wonderful news photo with my phone
without any hesitation. Then a Christchurch Chinese media publish my photo. How
unbelievable it is! I become an amateur news reporter with a mobile phone.
Haha!

Too right about the digital photography!

I was reading the blog from Rebecca on digital photography, and I totally agree with her. There always seems to be that occassion where you're at someones house having a few drinks (sometimes too many to be handling a digital camera!) and you start snapping away, but end up deleting all the ones that show your double chin, or one of your eyes that's slightly slurred, a lot like your speech. I have a similar situation to Rebecca. I was at a wedding where the alcohol was flowing freely (as it usually does) and started to snap away with the camera. One of my friends had one of the disposable cameras that always take good photo's, and as the night progressed, more photo's of random people came up. But everytime I went to take a snap, I always ended up with something that resembled more of a blur. I tried to put my camera on the motion knob (where people are doing stuff and you get the pic quite clear) but still, no success. It got to the point where I was rather intoxicated and was just not balancing, but my friend who had the disposable cam, got perfect pics! As Rebecca said, I ended up with about 5 photo's of the night that weren't even that great, where as my friend ended up with a whole camera lot of "in the moment" photos. I ended up getting reprints of her negatives, but I was soooo gutted that my flash camera was a dud compared to her $20 beauty from the Warehouse.

Deleting the dud photos I'd taken was dissapointing for me, because my camera couldn't keep up with the play. It is a shame that we're given the opportunity to delete those "in the moments" memories these days, because photos should be spontaneous (is that how you spell it?). Its also dissapointing that technology sometimes isnt all that great. If you get out of focus your photos are all blury, sometimes your camera doesnt give you a lot of zoom action, when your memory gets full you have to choose which ones you want to keep and which ones you dont (at least with a disposable you dont have a choice, when you run out you just run out and roll with whatever you've got). Then there are the benefits about being able to put the pics straight on to your computer, and take them in to get developed straight away (meaning you get them printed right there and then).

Really, in the end, I think I was just gutted I didnt get good photos and she did! And I was gutted that my battery power kept running out on me (especially in the good parts) but thats just because I hadn't charged them enough... my bad. Sometimes I think we concentrate too much to get a good photo, and by the time the moments come and gone, we just end up getting nothing. Maybe if I'm going to a party again, I might just buy a little disposable one. That'll mean it wont get bashed around by all the randoms.

All computers now 'personalized'

The new craze in the United States at the moment is the addition of Flash plugs to classrooms in secondary and tertiary educational institutions. The new chip-sized device can hold electronic resources such as books, notes, references, study guides, plays, individual files and documents and when you are finished with it you can just put it in your wallet and go. For example if you wanted to work on a document at uni and then decide that it's a Friday and you want to go home you can just save the work to your flash plug and then take it to your home and work on another computer but with the same data. In other words this is the next step towards total mobility of digital information. And there are no floppy disks or Cd-Roms involved. In other words its like taking a personal concentina file around with you with all your documents stored into the one place. This is another way of saying "Portable PCs". When you plug your device into the computer it prompts you to enter a username and password and virtually logon to that particular computer through your Flash plug. With a USB interface it can be used on virtually any computer and it will avoid that feeling we get when we need files off our home computers and realise we're at uni, in a net cafe or at someone else's house 50 kms from home. This beats even a laptop in that it's tiny, fully portable, and not heavy or "breakable" in the sense a laptop is. Here's the link to a rather interesting article on the new FLASH technology. By the way, it has a huge 256MB capcity, perfect for most users and sells for around US$100http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9614913/

txt games

i was having lunch with a some friends at uni on friday and one of them mentioned some txt game that 027 mobile owners could enter. although i have an 027 mobile i didnt really think about entering the competition/game thing and didnt think about it anymore until saturday morning when i was in the waiting room at the doctors idly staring at the tv. i saw an ad for some other txt game that you could enter (this one could be played by any mobile phone owner) where girls played against boys or boy characters and boys played against girls or girl characters. i txtd my friend to ask if this was the game she was talking about and then she told me about the Sink F69 game. it was free to enter and paly (i did enter, although i havent played yet) and you have to pick a codename and then send in guesses (numbers on your phone keypad) to locate the F69 and if you do you proceed to the next stage of the competition. it is a process of elimination until finally only one person is remaining. the winner gets to go to wellington to "push the button" that would sink the former F69 which will create an artificial marine reef that will enrich sea life in the area. It will also attract visitors from around the world keen to explore a diving attraction uniquely positioned so close to a major city and airport. i realise i havent explained this game extremely clearly and so heres the website so you can check it out for yourself if youre interested.
http://www.ptb027.co.nz/
i just thought it was interesting that deciding on the person that should perform this task ( i realise its only pressing a button..but still, sinking a ship that has such significant implications for the country..it seems like a big deal) would be done through a txt game. but txt games and so on seem to be becoming really popular...theres the whole voting for contestants on competitions (nz idol etc), the txt games i just mentioned and i've also seen a whole lot of ads for stuff like horoscopes and song titles that can be found out just by txting some number. its amazing how txting has branched out from just a means of communication.

Digital Photography

On Friday night, it was my friend's birthday. A group of our friends went out for dinner and drinks, and a couple of people brought cameras - two digital and one analogue (or film) camera.
We were all getting a little on the drunk side and so the cameras (and the poses) started to come out. The interesting thing was that, because we could see our pictures straightaway on the digital cameras, it was at once more fun and in a way bad, because everyone was deleting the pictures of themselves.
By the end of the night, the analogue camera had run out of a 36-exposure film, but between them the two digital cameras only had about 15-20 photos left. As much as they were snapping away freely, the photos they had left were few and not really that special - everyone looked good, but there were no unposed ones because they'd all been deleted (people thought they looked "ugly").
Have you ever had the experience of thinking a photo of yourself was really bad, and then realising a couple of years later that it's actually okay? I really think that the instantaneous nature of digital photography is making us too frivilous in getting rid of images that we don't like, but that we may like in the future.