How does the IT environment contribute to the success or lack of success in systems development processes?

I think it is obvious that a group or office that focuses on strong communication - both in sharing ideas and listening to those ideas - as well as having a focused and organized project leader are both huge benefits. There are a lot of good programmers out there and a lot of good designers, but not a lot of people that can easily communicate ideas, needs, goals, and other parts of the development process. Making sure that people are included in the plan, encouraging support within the group, and pushing communication are the ways I see it helping drive success. The same is true for the opposite  - a project can easily crash and burn if people aren't communicating or if the project manager isn't organized and can't keep track of what people are doing. I can also see how members of a development team who want their ideas done and don't listen to others can also be a huge hindrance in projects.

What aspects of the workplace might motivate people's acceptance of change

There are a lot of factors involved in motivating acceptance of change. Effective communication is key. The team needs to understand what is changing, why it is changing, and how it will impact them and the things they are doing. If there are unanswered questions or vague answers are given, it can cause unneeded stress/panic/confusion/frustration/anger/etc. Things such as office politics, as previously discussed, can play a huge part as well. By this I mean that people need to understand that this is a policy for the greater good, not to benefit one person or one group, and if it is - why.

I think most people don't want to work harder than they need to, so it's safe to say that implementing changes that will make people's jobs easier or more efficient are likely to be safe. The problems that I have witnessed have generally been due to changes that make people's jobs harder and less efficient with no real benefits other than to the person making the changes.

How often and in what ways might internal politics factor into project success?

Internal politics can factor into project success in many ways.

Examples: Competition within a project or with other groups can cause a lot of conflicts within an office, for example. Access to resources such as money, hardware, software, etc. for a certain project. Gossip and issues with co-workers or management can cause problems with communication, morale, productivity, and more.

Ultimately, office politics is a huge reason for the failure of many projects and can severely impact a work environment if not monitored and dealt with properly.

Chad as a project

For me, college has been a (very) long, ongoing,  "project". As I am a so-called non-traditional student, my goals and needs as a student may be somewhat different than others. Before transferring to Edgewood I spent a lot of time bouncing between programs trying to find pretty much anything I could tolerate not relating to computers, only to realize a long way down the road that computers and technology were my passion and interest. 

So, for now my goals include finding a niche that I enjoy. Developing my skills and knowledge in that niche. Networking with other students and professionals in the field in order to secure internships, learn more about the industry, and figure out a potential career path. Presently I am focusing heavily on finding an internship and figuring out what I am most interested in. 

As far as a timeline goes, I am currently in my 2nd year at Edgewood but I am technically a Junior. My hope is that I will have completed the first of at least 2 internships by the end of this year (2014), and have found a niche to focus on for the future. 

I am planning on graduating in May of 2016, but earlier if possible. As mentioned before, I hope to complete at least 2 internships before then or order to further my experience and skill sets. My goals after graduation would be to find full-time employment in the field and apply to graduate school for library and information science. 

My long-term goal is to work in an academic library as a library technologist, focusing on library websites, integrating technology into the library system, and developing technology related curriculum. 

Reflective Blog #7

"Should SMS be accepted as a new language and taught in schools?"

This blog will likely be a bit more concise than the others. In short, my answer is; no, it should not. 

SMS is not a different language. It is short hand. And at that, it is highly personalized. Very few people have the same way of texting. Different age groups have different styles. Different cultures have different styles. Different cliques have their own words and specialized emoticons. There is just no way to classify this as a real language.

Beyond this, it is also very trend oriented. Every few years it seems to change. Different programs, different hardware, different media influences, etc.

At some point SMS will no longer be a popular mode of communication and we will move on. And some time later that mode of communication will become outdated and something else will take over. 

So, no, I do not think that SMS should be taught in schools or considered a language. 

Reflective Blog #6

 "To what extent do relationships that are formed online and remain virtual differ from ones that are formed as a result of meeting in person?"

This is a very interesting question and one that I have a lot of experience with. The phenomenon of "internet friends" is in no way a new concept, and I would even go so far as to say it is one that is fading away. 

10+ years ago, well before "web 2.0" was a thing, the internet was a much more mysterious and experimental place. People were using web forums, online chat rooms, gaming, using IRC to chat, share files, and share a lot of not-quite-legal information with one-another, and online dating was still in development. The fact that people could connect with someone across the globe and talk about something they had in common was still exciting and new to many people. That glow, I fear, has faded. Today the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, any time is pretty much a given. Social media is the dominant way that we communicate with one another, and most of those people are within our circle of friends. 

This is not to say that people aren't meeting others online anymore. Forums are still active, online dating is huge, and chat rooms still exist. From my experience, however, it is just not the same. 

That being said, I feel that for many people "online friends" and "real life friends" are different for everyone. There are groups of people out there who consider their online friends to be true friends. Taking World of Warcraft as an example, the guilds people create often have very tight bonds and these people sometimes share every detail of their lives with one another. They become very close and in many ways may even be closer than their "real life friends". Some, however, form relationships with people in chat rooms and forums that are strictly professional, or just people that they chat with to have fun and may never think about them otherwise. 

In my own life, I have met many people online who later became my real life friends. I even met girls I dated through the internet when I was younger. Meeting someone through the internet was exciting because it meant you could talk to someone who lived an hour away that you may otherwise never meet in person and then connect in real life. One of my first girlfriends (a girl who lived 45 minutes from me) was met this way, and we still talk to this day even though she now lives across the country. 

I also have had a number of friendships that were maintained solely online through various message boards, games, and things of this nature. I never made that deep connection with these people like some do - it was always just chatting about whatever hobby or game we were interested in. I think that this type of friendship is pretty interesting because it is almost like a specialized friendship or even a business partnership. You serve a mutually beneficial, and quite specific, purpose to one another and that is what maintains your relationship. 

Ultimately I think what I said in the beginning - that this is different for everyone - is the real answer. It is all about how you think about people and how much you let them into your life. Either way, though, it is a very interesting topic and there are surely a million different opinions and likely a ton of research done on it. 

Network Tour

1. Describe, briefly, the overall network design strategy at Edgewood
2. What approach has been used when determining the specific technologies needed to expand the network to match the needs of the organization?
3. What types of technologies have been utilized to integrate the various facilities at Edgewood? 

4. Based on Joe's talk, what types of skills do you think are needed in order to work in the networking area of IT?

1. Joe talked about redundancy and fail safes a lot. He stressed how important it was to make sure the network was always up and if something did happen, the fact that they implemented systems to switch over the network traffic would save them. He also discussed how important their backup system was and the fact that it was updated every night and they even trade tapes between campuses to make sure there is a backup in case of a disaster.

2. It seems that it has all been an upgrade as you go kind of deal. As they have increased demand, they add capacity and work from there He mentioned they just upgraded their connection and are already maxing it out. It seems they are limited by budget, space, and time.

3. Standard cable Ethernet, fiber, and WiFi are all used throughout the campuses. Buildings and classrooms are hard wired, but the network is extended to mobile users through WiFi hotspots all over campus. Ot

4. It is obvious a deep knowledge of hardware, cabling, and the technology available is extremely important. Understanding basic networking theory, problem solving, patience, and solid pc troubleshooting skills are also likely needed. It would also seem that things like video surveillance and and understanding of telephone systems is important. A wide skill set is likely your best bet.

Reflective Blog #5

"Describe how using social networking technologies changes how you communicate with your family and friends."

The ways that social networking has impacted how I communicate with friends is HUGE. There are times where I go weeks or even months without physically talking to friends, yet we will message on Facebook regularly to keep up. The convenience factor is the key here. 

Currently I am planning my 30th birthday party and a scooter rally on Facebook, as well as tracking my attendance at around 10 other events in the next few months. This makes it so I can contact everyone that is going, send reminders, get reminders myself, and search for other events too. 

As far as family goes - I try to avoid them online as much as possible. I have a few family members as friends but I try to keep in touch with them via phone or in person. It is nice, however, to see pictures of my cousins and other family members I don't get to see often.

I feel that the move towards social media and how ingrained in our society it has become is fairly inevitable. I have been a member of various incarnations of social media for nearly 15 years now, and have always known it would be huge. First it was personal home pages, then it was blogs, then it was your Myspace page, now it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and many more that are used every day. 

Reflective Blog #4

"Consider the impact of personal networking devices, in terms of the environment. What do you think are the biggest areas of immediate impact? How about long term impact?"

This is an area I am not hugely familiar with. I think, however, it is easy to see a few potential positives as well as some negatives associated with the environmental impact.

Let's start with the positives -

1. Less wired infrastructure could lead to less large-scale development, construction, and destruction of natural areas.

2. All-in-one digital devices allow access to many things we used to buy individually. Things like newspapers, magazines, books, cameras, video cameras, movies, cds, audio recorders, pdas, etc. are all being combined into singular wireless devices that allow access to most forms of media.

Now, some negatives -

1. Our need as a society to have the newest, fastest, devices often leads to cycling through technology well before it's usefulness has expired. This leads to more production and more waste. Both of which demand natural resources and contribute to pollution.

2. Unknown long-term health impact of large-scale wireless networks and personal devices. Who knows what these wireless signals could end up doing to us and natural over the next 100 years. Maybe nothing, but maybe we will see a huge epidemic of cancer and birth defects.

3. The need to replace old wired infrastructure with wireless infrastructure in buildings will create a large amount of waste when we need to dispose of mountains of old cables and outdated hardware.

4. Increased usage of these services creates more demand for more bandwidth, server space, and more meaning there will be more electricity used, more centers built, and a more impact on the environment. This could potentially be negated by the lowered demand for physical media such as dvds, cds, books, etc., however.

For some additional reading, here are a few interesting articles on the topic of wireless devices and their impact on the environment that I found after writing this up:

http://www.bsr.org/reports/BSR_CTIA_Wireless_and_the_Environment.pdf




http://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/environmobiledevices.pdf

Reflective Blog #3

 "Nothing is really secure - Get over it!"

I think that this statement could be taken a number of different ways, but I am gong to assume that it is meant to tell people to not worry too much about security since everything is so insecure.

This line of thinking is pretty unsafe. Imagine if we applied the same logic to other parts of our lives. "Cars aren't safe so why bother using seat belts?" or "Racism isn't going away - get over it!". It would be a pretty sad fate for us to live out our lives not trying to make things better or improving upon our current systems.

The reality is that nothing is truly secure, true, but that does not mean we shouldn't at least try to make things secure. I'm not going to leave my house unlocked when I leave simply because someone could pick the lock anyway! Doing something as simple as making sure you password protect your WiFi network and choosing the correct security settings for network sharing could be all it takes to prevent someone from accessing your data.

I have a feeling that as wireless technology becomes more and more plastered into our culture, and as people become more tech savvy we will eventually get to the point where people understand the things we need to worry about, but until then I think it is probably a good idea to make every effort to get people to lock their networks down, put passwords or locks on their devices, use passwords that aren't simple, and whatever else they can do without it being a huge issue.

I have a laptop, smart phone, tablet, desktop pc, a wireless network at home, a wireless printer, a hard drive shared on my network, and more that I have to deal with. For me security is a concern, but it is definitely more in the back of my mind. I have passwords set on everything, I make sure that my sharing options are correct, I always put lock screens on my devices, and I try to use different passwords for everything online. I recently started using a password keeper so I could use unique passwords for all websites and not have to worry about forgetting them. Nothing too fancy, and nothing that is very inconvenient.

In the end, however, if someone much smarter than me really wanted to hack into my facebook to read my messages or steal data or get into my network and look at pictures of me hanging out with my dog (how exciting!) they probably could. That doesn't mean I won't try!

Reflective Blog #2

While the price of a acquiring a cell phone and associated service is going down, the cost of using a cell phone and associated service is going up. What do you think is meant by this statement?

I got my first cell phone in 2000 when I was 17 years old. It was a Motorola Startac flip phone with 3 lines of green text. No graphics, no colors, no games. If I remember correctly the phone was free and the service was $35/month for unlimited local service and a 1 year contract. Most people I know got pennies for a penny or around $50. The fees for roaming and long distance were absurd - but the monthly contracts were totally reasonable.

Now, however, we pay hundreds of dollars for our phones (depending on how inclined you are to have the newest/hottest tech), we are locked into 2-year contract, and our service is more expensive than ever. Between our monthly minutes, texting, and internet, it isn't unheard of to pay $100 for a single line of service. That may or may not include unlimited internet, but generally it does not. It also would not include the ability to tether your phone to other devices, to leave the country with your phone (without paying insane costs), and "unlimited" generally comes with a few limiting factors (eg they will throttle your bandwidth if you dare to actually make good use of the service you pay for).

But why? Why are we still paying huge amount of money for a service that is now used by, literally, billions of people worldwide. The best answer I can come up with is that the cell providers A. don't want to eat their infrastructure costs for upgrades such as 4g and new towers so they pass on these costs directly to the consumers in the form of inflated prices for things such as texts (really, 25 cents per text message in 2013?), overpriced internet, and no reduction over time once their costs have been recouped. B. they see the demand for service and lack of many other options so they are able to keep the prices high and C. their is little perceived demand for competition or innovation so the companies can do as they wish.

Infrastructure costs may be high, but I wonder how much longer cell companies are going to have the current hold they have on the market. Between smaller companies offering extremely competitive prices and VOIP services such as Skype, Gchat, and now Facebook, there are many options for those who don't wish to pay for these services.

Staying in Touch

For this post I will be discussing "What technology do you use to 'stay in touch' and why?"

The ways in which we stay in touch are many and include obvious things such as postal mail, telephone (land line and cell), texting, email, Skype,  Facebook, blogs, photo sharing sites, and more. Many of us today use a combination of these to keep in touch with one another. I would wager that the younger generation leans towards using Facebook, texting, and email as their main ways to keeping touch but for many these technologies have not yet taken hold.

As for me, I am almost purely digital. I keep in touch with my family and friends via Facebook, communicate with instructors and classmates via email. I do use the phone to talk to family and friends, but mainly just family these days. I text when I need info, and planning meetups usually involves a Facebook invite and maybe a text as a reminder. Skype has started to become common enough that I do on occasion use that, but it seems as if most people have not yet embraced the idea of video chat.

Looking at how this has evolved over the past 15 years or so of my life is pretty incredible. I am just old enough that cell phones weren't really affordable or widely used until I was a senior in High School and I still remember the days of 32.6 baud modems. I dialed into AOL every day after school from 9th grade until we got cable internet when I was in 11th. This period of my life completely changed my communication style. I went from always having to either call someone or go directly to their house to simply emailing or texting them. No longer did I write notes to friends, I simply sent IMs. And once webcams became available I remember chatting with people across the country for the first time and being amazed.

For me, digital communication is what I am comfortable with. I feel safe and confident behind a keyboard. I feel more able to express myself and I am able to keep track of things as well. I am a very unorganized person "offline", but on my computer I know right where everything is and how to find it if I don't. It is a matter of interest, convenience, and maybe a little because I hate making phone calls. And a lot because my handwriting is terrible.

First post for networking

I have been blogging off and on for 13 years now. I have never really maintained a blog meant for other people to read, I have just always posted things about my life, my interests, photos, etc. So, while I feel comfortable writing blog entries - it is somewhat new for me to write focused blog entries on specific topics for class. 

Two blogs that I love are BoingBoing.net and 2StrokeBuzz.com. BoingBoing is a blog that talks about technology, culture, and almost anything else. They always post really interest things. 2StrokeBuzz is a blog about the scooter scene. I love old Vespa and Lambretta scooters and this blog talks about scooter rallies, new products, and reviews gear and scooters as well. 

Case Study 3

For this assignment we were to review the same news story from 3 different international sources. I chose to cover the release of secret emails detailing Osama Bin Laden's burial at sea.

My sources were as follows:

1. Aljazeera - Secret details of Bin Laden burial revealed

2. New York Daily News - Internal emails offer details on Osama Bin Laden's Burial

3. Daily Mail - Revealed: Military emails show that NO U.S. sailors witnessed Osama Bin Laden's secret burial at sea

The Associated Press were able to successfully invoke the Freedom of Information Act to obtain e-mails about the burial of Osama Bin Laden. These e-mails detailed the delivery of Bin Laden's body as well as the process of the burial such as the fact that they followed Islamic burial practices in preparing his body.

One thing that all three articles pointed out was the fact that while the Obama administration has made the promise to be transparent and open with the public, this is has been one of the most secretive operations in recent history. No photographs or video have been released and even the burial was done secretly. The articles all point out that while it was done on a Navy ship, no naval/military personal that were not high ranking were in attendance or knew about it. The Daily News article even pointed out that the Pentagon has said they have no records of DNA results, a death certificate, or autopsy report.

The differences are few and far between. Stylistically they were all very similar and I felt they seemed fairly balanced and free of much political or social bias, but I did notice that the article from the NY Daily News focused a bit more on the actual capture and killing of Bin Laden, even going so far as ending the article with a fairly graphic quip about his death - "Their target ducked into his bedroom, where SEALs chased and plugged him with one shot to the chest and one to the head." It seems like a fairly strange way to end the article but maybe because it is American, and specifically it is from New York, they know that their demographic likely has a much more personal connection with the story.

As far as where the stories were located, it was fairly easy to find them. For Al Jazeera I simply clicked on the "Americas" link and it was one of the top stories. For NY Daily News, it was listed under News and World. For Daily Mail it was under News and Headlines. So all were fairly visible, but on Al Jazeera it was the easiest to find.

Ultimately I found myself surprised by how similar each of the articles were. I imagine this is due to the fact that the information was (from what I gathered) originally released by the Associated Press and so these journalists were all working from the same source material. I found the Daily Mail article to be slightly more interesting due to the extra photos and a few extra facts given and the Daily News article to the be the least due to the unnecessary inclusion of graphic details about Bin Laden's death, but ultimately they were all pretty similar and reflected the same information.

Alone Together

1.I do on occasion go on mini technology breaks where I will go a few days without getting on my computer or watching television, but rarely do I go more than a few hours without checking my phone, so I wasn't sure how this would work. I decided to do my four hours this morning when I was running errands. I had a doctor's appointment to go to which I knew would leave me with a lot of downtime, a trip to the pharmacy, and a few other things. I usually spend a lot of my time during these times answering e-mails, texting, playing games, and whatever else I can to occupy myself while waiting. Instead I just hung out and waited. And wasn't sure quite what to do with myself. Luckily I had things to do and I wasn't just sitting around at home.

2. Other than being a bit bored and wishing I could answer some e-mails and return a phone call or two I didn't have much of an issue going four hours without technology. If I had thought ahead a bit more then I would have brought a book with me. Regardless, I was just fine. The time I spent without my phone or iPad left me with little to do other than people watch and that is what I did. I noted quite a few people doing what I normally do - playing with their phones. Kids at the doctor's office playing games instead of talking to their parents, adults texting or surfing the internet rather than talking to each other, etc. It is so normal these days that you don't really notice how much time people spend interacting with their phones or tablets rather than each other.

Video Project

For my video project I spent some time at the dog park with my puppy, Radar. He is a pretty awesome little dude and has an incredible amount of energy. I chose the dog park because it is a great place to not only get your dog some exercise, but also to meet people. Every time I go there I end up having interesting conversations and making connections with people who I would possibly never otherwise meet. The music is by an awesome musician by the name of Frank Turner. I thought it was an excellent choice because it is fun, upbeat, and the lyrics go well with the idea of being forever young and enjoying life - just like radar.

A College Student’s Idea of a ‘Well-Branded’ Digital Image.

For my samples I chose to look at Colleen Wainwright's "Communicatrix", Chris Pirillo's site, Kelly Rigotti's "Almost Frugal", Bob Baker's "The Buzz Factor"  and on Linked in, I looked at Thomas Clifford and Jason Alba.

I think the key element to all of these sites is that the owners did a great job of ensuring that we, the viewers, knew what the point of the site is.

These websites and blogs are fairly simple, well laid out, and make it easy to find the information that is needed. A potential employer could easily find out who these people are and what they do that makes them special without a lot of extra work. A great example is Colleen Wainwright's "About" page. She has it laid out like an FAQ where she poses questions and then answers them - often in a humorous way, but always thoughtful and interesting way. This made me want to continue reading and would make it more likely that I would want to pursue this person in business.

On Linkedin, which is essentially a social resume site, the focus lies on a few things: having a complete resume with a lot of relevant experience and insight on those experiences, and good connections. The connections seem to be very important on Linkedin. If, for example, you have your employer, boss, and other industry people as your endorsements it is probably more likely that an employer would want to contact you. Ultimately Linkin sites seem to be much more straight forward than blogs or personal sites. They are focused almost solely on the work you have done and what would make you a good candidate for a job.

Other things I noticed are a strong focus on social media, having a strong and friendly photo of yourself, and focusing on your strengths and interests.

Five Criteria for a well-branded digital presence in college:

1. Clarity - be up front about who you are, what you are interested in, and what your motivations are. This doesn't mean talk about your friends
2. Professionalism - be professional! This doesn't mean you can't have fun or but funny, just make sure that the vulgarity is gone, the photos of you drinking with your buddies aren't visible, and (depending on the goals you have) your political and religious views are not a focus.
3. The future - talk about your long-term goals and what inspires you, both on a daily level and to meet those goals.
4. Resume - let people know what you have already done so they can see your accomplishments. As a college student your grades, clubs, and other non-academic achievements could be important.
5. Visibility - Make sure that your site can be seen and accessed by people! And make sure that if you do you have a personal facebook or journal page that it can NOT be seen by those who shouldn't see it.

My own digital presence is fairly lacking. I have had a lot of visible accounts in the past, but I have tried very hard to lock them down. I have either made most of them completely private or "friends-only" so that my friends and family are the only ones able to view my posts and photos. I also have a number of other blogs that are not connected to my name in any way. The one thing I do have open is my Linkedin profile. I have been meaning to expand that, but have no had much to add to it for a while. I think I will definitely add more information as well as add more contacts. In the future I will create a personal site for my resume and as a way to have sort of a digital business card I can send to people.

Usability Study

Craigslist
http://www.craigslist.org

Communication and Message:
What is the purpose?
To allow people to buy/sell things, find/post jobs, and communicate in community oriented forums.

Intended Audience:
It does not seem to have an intended audience. It seems to be aimed towards anyone (likely adults) who has something to say, buy, sell, or who is looking for a job or employee.

Content:
Is the content organized in an intuitive manner?
Yes, the website is very simple and laid out with almost all content/links on the main page itself. Very little digging is required to get to where you want to go.

Usability & Interface:
The website is very consistent throughout. The three main page styles are the directory page, the pages listing posts under each section, and the posts themselves. All are very consistent in style and presentation and make it easy to get back to where you were before. There are no graphics which makes load time very quick and less confusing. There are also options at the bottom of the main page to choose different styles for mobile, tablet, and regular formatting.

Navigation:
Very consistent throughout the site. It is extremely easy to tell which items are links and which are not due to the color scheme selected. The site is basically a directory of links.

Overall Success:
I don't have any real suggestions for the site. It is extremely basic and effective which is likely one of the reasons it is so successful. Ease of navigation and use are key parts of the site.

Video Review

For this post I will be reviewing 3 Youtube videos and 2 Vimeo videos and comparing/contrasting them based on their quality as well as pointing out the trends I see in the overall content of the sites.

Vimeo - 

Video 1 - "Made on Earth" by Enrique Pacheco

An extremely beautifully shot piece showing many different landscapes, both natural and man made. The shots are time lapsed and sped up and most have a gradual pan over the site. This combination of effects allows sunsets and sunrises to change the natural lighting and reflection in each landscape and is a really wonderful effect. The music is extremely powerful and works great with the imagery. It feels like a highly polished professional production.

Video 2 - "Ordos" by Charles Lanceplaine

A skate video shot in a city in China which is nearly uninhabited, but large and almost new, this video is extremely well done. The shots are well chosen, the angles are great, and the music works well with the piece. The location alone shows that the production is not just that of some random skate kids, but a group of talented people who either have connections or know what they are doing. Very interesting and fun.

Youtube -

Video 1 - "Skweezy and my son Pnut" by ChAinHanGlOw69 aka Skweezy Jibbs

In this video our host, Skweezy Jibbs, rants about a bunch of nothingness and then introduces us to his "son" Pnut. Who is a monkey. A fairly pointless video but I have seen some videos by Skweezy Jibbs in the past and they have been pretty funny, unfortunately this one wasn't. Overall the video and editing quality is pretty low. I think this is part of the appeal though, as it is supposed to be the web show of the character Skweezy Jibbs, and he does it out of his apartment. Other than a few cuts and credits there is little done. The lighting and music have little to no positive impact on the overall product.

Video 2- "Hey It's Pomplamoose - Theme Song" by PomplamooseMusic

A very high quality theme song recorded for the Pomplamoose live webcast. Pomplamoose, for those who are not familiar, is a musical duo who record the creation of their songs and upload them as music videos. The videos show clips of each individual sound being recorded, including the vocal layers. Their music is really quite unique and the videos show a great deal of creative editing techniques to create something that is extremely fun and interesting. The audio quality is high as well.

Video 3- "Deep Dish Fastfood Pizza - Epic Meal Time" by EpicMealTime

Epic Meal Time is a short that has been on youtube for a few years now. Each week or so the Epic Meal Time crew assembles to create some sort of culinary monstrosity. The goal of this is to pack as many calories as possible and include as much meat (usually bacon) as they can into the food. This week was a fast food pizza. The quality of the video is fairly good and it seems that whoever is working the camera knows what they are doing. They combine indoor and outdoor shots, shots during the creation of the food, and a final scene where they eat it. The music helps impact the overall piece by making it seem that much more "epic".

-

Ultimately, it seems that Vimeo caters to a crowd that is significantly different than Youtube. Vimeo's content is generally very high quality - often seeming extremely professional. These videos likely had budgets and crews working on them. Youtube seems to be largely for a crowd that is doing it themselves. People who makes videos in their homes or with friends. While many videos on Youtube are high quality and well made, they still lack that "professional" polish. While Vimeo content seems like something you would see in an indie movie theater, Youtube content is largely content you may see on Comedy Central or MTV.

Podcast Project

For this podcast, Mike Hershberger and I talked about the various elements of VOIP services, specifically Skype, and how they are used.