Again With the Copy Right Bull $h!t

I do believe that the lawsuit on Shepard Fairey is a fair case on AP’s side. Shepard Fairey used an image that was copy righted by AP (Associate Press) without any sort of permission. I believe that it ended up working out for both sides in the end, both of which ended up profiting from it. But never the less, AP copy righted the picture and covered their side. Shepard Fairey used this photo and altered it without their permission and violated copyright laws, and in turn should have been punished for it. 

Present HUT!!!

I really liked Hans Rosling’s presentation. It was very interactive and it caught your attention through the whole thing. There was a ton of information in it and he seemed very knowledgeable about all of the material. I used two different presentation tools to create rough drafts for this class. I first used Lotus Symphony by IBM and it was very hard to navigate for me. I am not quite sure if it because I am not familiar with IBM software or what but it took me forever to create a simple four page slide show. I then used a Google program called Google Drive that seemed to be very useful. It took me a quarter of the time to crate the same slide show with a lot more effects being utilized. I could not however add an animation without upgrading the program which it kind of disappointing, but that is how it goes. My presentations are on my ePorfolio and can be viewed there thanks to Box.com, I used Box.com to embed my presentations to my ePorfolio.

Screencast Who'd A Thunk It?

Screencasting can be a very useful tool to the right people. I believe it is easy to use and the program I used for the assignment was very user friendly. I used Jing to do my assignment, and it only took me between 15 to 20 minutes to do my screencast and upload it to sceencast.com. I do believe that I will use this tool again especially when I get to do a more office oriented job. I think take more companies should use this type of software to help people solve problems with things such as, computer problems and presentations. This is one of the better tools that I can see becoming more popular in the feature. It is this kind of stuff that makes you wonder what is next. Can they improve on this or is this as god as it gets? I can’t imagine that it could be improved but I'm sure someone somewhere is working on it as I am typing this. 

Vlog not so easy!!!

EZ-Readers

            I used Top Ten Reviews to compare the Nook Color and Kindle Fire. I chose these two to compare because they both came out around the same time and seemed to compare well to each other when they came out. This site is hard to use to compare two different eReaders, but is manageable. I do like how all of the technical data is written under a floating picture of the device.

            Both eReaders are rated as excellent all scored over a 9 in their rating. Both of these ereaders are 7in touch screens and the nook is slightly larger for overall size. The Nook is not setup to read blogs as the Kindle is. Other data that could be compared is the Nook has over 2.5million books, 160 magazine titles, and 36 newspaper titles available. The Kindle has 1.6million ebooks, 272 magazine titles, and 9 newspapers available at the bookstore. These are the important facts to someone who might be worried about the availability of not so mainstream books. The Nook does have quite a bit more expandable memory up to 32GB the Kindle Fire only goes to 6GB. And as far as software they both seem to compare some different formats.

            As my closing comments my wife has a Nook Color and I really enjoy reading on it. I do not think that eReaders will become useless but I do think that they will end up being like cell phones. As soon as one comes out the next best thing will be in Research and Development. I also really feel that the only other place eReaders could go is Books on Audio File!?!? Sounds good to me.

Obama-ize YOURSELF!!!

This photo I pulled off of my computer it is a picture of me with the little mushroom from Mario Brother’s video game. I used http://www.lunapic.com/editor/ to create the photo above. It was taken while in western Parwan Province in Afghanistan. Anyway back to the reason for this blog, I believe that since the photo was copyrighted by Associated Press that they were completely within their means to take legal action. Mr. Fairey was using, yes an altered version of the photo but sill, someone else’s photo to make a profit without permission. Without even an attempt to get permission, he stated “You know, I actually don't know who the photographer is...but, whoever you are, thank you..." this I took from an article from the Phillynews.com blog, no longer on the internet. This is just outrageous to me. I know that I am kind of jumping around but I am just trying to make one point, which is no matter what you should always have permission to use someone else’s work. Most defiantly if you are going to use it to possibly end up turning a profit. Well that is enough of my rant, hope you enjoyed as always.

Time to Dream of Clouds!

This week while using photo editing tools I did not use the cloud except to download the new toll that I really do like. I downloaded Picasa, from Google.com after that I only used the cloud to upload these photos to the class Wiki. I think that these sorts of tools that are free to use will help the art world. Why you may ask? Well because being that they are free I believe that these tools give, younger and maybe financially unstable people, a way to easily express their ideas and an easy way to do it. After all art is a way to express yourself. I think that these tools are awesome and if you had better knowledge of what each thing does it could be awesome for someone to use them to turn a buck or two. I heard that on TV once… anyway I do not think these kinds of tools will just “create more ‘noise” in the art community; it may just create more competition. I like them and don't consider myself an artist, but do like to use them. Well that is my blurt for the week see you all on Tuesday night.