Citizen Journalists

I have been rummaging around the internet all day today looking for "citizen journalists" blogs. Seeing as how the Oscars were on last night I have found endless blogs about what went on during the Oscars. One blog I found was very appealing to me, mainly because it is full of sarcasm and wit.

Citizen journalists is actually kind of a good idea due to the fact that the world is constantly changing and there is always news being made everyday and changing right before our own eyes. Everyone sees things differently thus meaning everyone has different thoughts going on through their head while they watch a historic event happen.

Katherine mentioned a blog about someone who witnessed flight 1549 from their office window. It's kind of ridiculous if you really think about how fast something can happen and moments later that person can instantly blog about it using their smart phone or laptop. Many people end up blogging about the same thing, but end up experiencing the event in totally different ways. 

The beauty with being a blogger is the fact that everybody can do it and become a citizen journalist and write about what goes on around them.

Commercials

As I sit in my living room finishing up on some homework a commercial for Jack in the Box came on television and it got me thinking of how brilliant their commercials have been since the Super Bowl. In case you haven't seen the commercial aired during the Super Bowl, check it out. 

I started thinking about their new tactics for advertising and I couldn't help but laugh. It's really extremely genius.  They always have Jack in all of the Jack in the Box commercials, so in hindsight he has become an icon that we all know and maybe even some of us love. I mean if you think about it just about every car around Tempe has a Jack head on their antennas of their cars. So why not make people feel worried about their favorite late night mascot?

They continued to have 2 more commercials and created a website for this whole fiasco. The greatest thing I've noticed about older Jack in the Box commercials that aired after the Super Bowl commercial had small text towards the bottom of the screen that said (shot before Jack's accident).

Jack in the Box wanted to go all out for this one, and you know what...they did. Well done Jack in the Box team, you guys have successfully dominated the advertising industry as of right now.

By the way I think Jack in the Box has always had great commercials, especially this one.

What kind of blogger am I?

After reading what Winer and Blood said about blogging I realized I am a blogger who searches for information. The way I find out about what's going on in the world is usually by searching Digg. Digg is a fascinating website that is linked to many different websites like CNN with random news stories. Digg has stories ranging from the best video games of all time all the way to the infamous picture of super human Michael Phelps smoking weed from a bong.

I think in the long run what I hope to become as a blogger is to stay in touch with family members and friends through telling them about my week or the latest funny video on youtube about being on a boat.

The internet is a wonderful tool that has endless information of what is going on around the world. I just hope I will always be able to stay informed of what's going on in the world.

Arizona Weather.

I have been living in Arizona since 1999, and the weather never ceases to amaze me.

One day in January I can wear a tank top all day and be extremely comfortable, and then the next day it can suddenly be fierce thunderstorms much like it was the past couple of days.

The weather always affects my mood, the good news is that I'm generally always happy to experience the weather. So no matter how much it rains or how windy it is outside I will just be very happy to be able to experience it all. The only weather that kind of upsets me is when it's 115+ degrees outside in the summer.

How could anyone hate this kind of weather?

This is beautiful.

Ethan Zuckerman: History of the Internet

I have seen the video of Ethan Zuckerman many different times and I absolutely love it even though it is quite nerdy. I find this video extremely interesting just to see how the internet used to look (the bottom picture with just text)....and what it can look like now (the top picture) with all the different search engines and internet browsers and how you can even use them all at the same time.

It's also extremely awesome how there was pretty much just a handful of people using the internet when it was created. Now just about everyone uses the internet. It's so fascinating to see how the internet can change so rapidly with my own two eyes.

Examining Blogs

After checking out some of the blogs Katherine had for examples I noticed something...I look at blogs more than I thought. Granted they aren't blogs with a lot of substantial information, but they are blogs nonetheless. 

I frequent the blog Katherine posted called ICanHasCheezburger just because I find pictures of animals in weird situations quite comical. Another blog I go to quite often is failblog.org. Failblog contains tons of hysterical pictures of things that go horribly wrong (resulting to failure).

After reading over Meredith Badger's assertion in Visualblogs I wondered if there were more Visualblogs than regular text blogs. Because let's face it, the generation we live in now is always moving. Not everyone wants to spend their time reading someones thoughts on politics or the latest movie review, but if it's a picture of a pickup truck with flames painted on it that is ironically on fire then the person will take time to look at it, laugh at it, and possibly even "forward it like it's hot".

I made an assumption today about Visualblogs as I was on my way home from work. I was driving from Chandler to Tempe and on the loop of the 101 from the new San Tan Freeway I noticed a car that was pulled off the road as if it broke down. Standing next to the car was what appeared to be a Mother, a daughter, and an infant in his car seat. That all seemed normal to me, this is where it got strange. The mother was holding a camera and taking pictures of not the car, but the girl as traffic passed a mere 6 feet away at 65 miles per hour. All I could think after that was, why are you taking pictures of this young girl next to the broken down car while you could be calling a tow truck or someone for help.

After I thought that I quickly assumed that maybe this was an epic event for these people so they wanted to document it and put it in their blogs for all of their friends to see.

I normally don't make such broad assumptions like that, but the visualblogging idea was fresh in my mind and instantly it jumped to that idea. I actually began laughing quite a bit after the thought when through my mind.