Over the last semester I have learned several things in this course. One of the most important ones was covered in the first day of the class, and that is that globalization is not a new idea, and that in the form of the ancient globalized empires i.e. Rome and Persia, globalization was actually the first way of government aside from small, localized kingdoms mostly centered around city-states. I definitely learned the most in the class when I was working on the group project, which does make sense as the project was, essentially, over the course of the entire semester. I realized quite a bit about the history of viral video and viral marketing, and again saw that it was less of a new idea than a new way of looking at an old idea, in this case that the viral phenomenon is just the digital incarnation of word-of-mouth advertising, which is actually the oldest form of advertising. Everything old is new again is something I heard somewhere, maybe in this class but I’m not sure, either way it really demonstrates what the New Media and Globalization really represent. It doesnt mean that everyone starts over from the beginning, it just means that in order to do the same thing you were doing before, you have to do something different.
YouTube
The final project seemed to come across pretty well, though obviously there seemed to be some difficulty in the actual uploading of a video that long to youtube.com, though fortunately this has since been fixed and the links to our project are on Will’s tumblr at the moment. I guess the biggest difficulty we had is that we uploaded the video files as MOV, which meant that youtube had to convert them to FLV on their own, which took so long that we were unable to show the actual videos off of youtube to the class. The second attempt at uploading them was after Will converted them to FLV on his computer, which went off fairly well.
I found the presentations this week to be interesting. I think that it must have been partially blind luck that 4 groups all studying the same basic topic would actually end up presenting on such different groups. I thought that the obama campaign was a pretty interesting topic, but that is a little biaed on my part, not only as an American, but also because I actually worked on the campaign. It was pretty fun watching them go on about my.barackobama.com, though admittedly that was more for volunteers as the campaign staff used votebuilder.org to look up their information and organize their canvassing and etc.
Campaign: Project Chanology, the online protest by the decentralized, anarchistic organization, the Anonymous.
The campaign is a protest of Scientology, that originally started as an online protest, involving the posting of Youtube videos and the spreading of information about the church, but has moved in to the real world the as time has gone on. The campaign began in Jan. 2008 as a response to attempted electronic censorship on the behalf of the church.
Though originally the campaign was one of questionable legality, involving attacks on websites, the protest has since moved on to more legal methods. What people can do to help currently is to join one of the protests that the Anonymous have organized.
The general membership of the Anonymous is younger people, usually with some sort of interest in the hacker subculture.
The scope of this campaign is primarily in the U.S., as the current goal is to remove the CoS’s tax-exempt status from the U.S. Government. The CoS is also headquartered and most active in the states.
Topic: Hulu.com
Who:
Ownership is a venture between 3 of the 4 major media US media providers, Hulu is a joint venture of NBC Universal (GE) 27%, Fox Entertainment Group (News Corp) 27% and ABC Inc. (The Walt Disney Company) 27%, with funding by Providence Equity Partners, which holds a 19% stake.
Its CEO is Jason Kilar
It has 100 employees (according to linkedin)
What:
Its business is in providing online content for major media providers from a single source. It provides free content through support from advertising.
As a joint venture, it has no assets of its own.
When:
Founded in 2007, it was originally only including NBC and Fox as media companies, with Providence helping to fund, but then in April of 2009, ABC purchased a 27% share, adding ABC content to the website.
It has also recently released a beta of Hulu Desktop, which allows users to play videos straight from a desktop application instead of using a web browser.
Where:
Hulu is headquartered in Los Angeles, California
Hulu currently only serves the US, but has announced plans to launch in the UK in September, 2009
Upon graduation the position I would realistically expect to find would be that of a video/film editor. This is a field with a wide variety of salaries, and in my research I found that of the positions advertised (which almost certainly the top tier of the field is not) there is a range of $14.50/hr (US) to £28,000/yr (UK). The positions were for various agencies, and depending on their level of media involvement they required permanent, staff editors, and part-time workers for only 3 weeks. In television there are usually staff editors that work on the series, and in film, though a studio can have permanent editors, they often only hire freelancers for the duration of the project. Editing is usually done daily as the episode/movie is filmed, so if there is extensive on-location shooting the job requires some flexibility in travel, but not for extended periods of time. In order to get any editing position, I would require a reel of some of my work, which is something that begins in the work done as a student and grows after every job that I have.
Staff Editor, Environmental Justice Foundation, Islington, London, £24,000 - £28,000/yr, Permanent Position.
Freelance Video Editor, Luxury Lifestyle Magazine, London, £50 per video but more if impressed. Freelance Position, time span unspecified.
Creative Film Editor & Camera Man, tellallmyfriends.com, UK. Pay unspecified, permanent position.
Video Editor, Campus Crusade for Christ, Orlando, Florida, $14.50/hr, part-time, time span unspecified.
Video Editor (Freelance), Creative Circle (on behalf of a brand of liquor), Manhattan, NY, $30/hr, over 3 weeks
I guess itll be a little odd this week that everyone’s probably gonna be using the word labor a lot, what with the spelling difference and all
For the product that I was focusing on this week, I chose to look at the Digital Quran MP4 manufactured by Quran Makka Ltd. (http://www.manufacturer.com/product/m6434341-Digital+Quran+Player+MP4.html), whom I was able to locate at 504, NO.6 Bld, WangTang Industrial Zone, Xinwei Village, Xili Town, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. I was however unable find it on Google Maps. The product has a delivery lead time of 10 days and a minimum order of 100 units, with a maximum capacity of 10000 per month. The payment process, as listed on the site, involves a Western Union money transfer. I sent an enquiry for a price quote and shipping time estimate of 500 units, and will edit in any details as they arrive.
Either detail the process of shipping something from the manufacturer, or write up the history of container shipping.