1. It was reading week , a time for me to catch up on essays and make notes.
2. The second and most important reason that i had Glandular fever that had developed from my tonsilitus , therefore i was reduced to a vegetable for two weeks.
This week i was unable to really doing anything after it turned out i had tonsilitus so i put everything on hold until i got better. i did manage to hand in my Media Making Coursework on the deadline.
This week we went over Microsoft Powerpoint and how to create an efficent powerpoint. what seemed like quite a pointless and obvious tutorial on how to use powerpoint but just as began to doubt we were shown how easy it is to forget the simpliest detail which can effect the slideshow. These were points that would aid me throughout my university life.
Data Technology We only had the lecture this week in Datatech and it was on PHP. i did not have foggiest idea what PHP so it was definatly all new to me. As i was introduced to PHP script writing i was concerned at how i was meant to keep up with all the various codes but as i progressed through the workbooklets i began to understand it more.
Media Making
I was begginning to grow wearing of Media Making and this was the last session before the photography images deadline. This week pop art was the subject and we looked at the different influences of pop art such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. that night i attempted the pop art image using photoshop and it was an effort which took most of the night and i wont be attempting it anytime soon.
The Network Society
This week the TNS lecture was about government data , this was of personal interest to me because I'am always interested in how countries are run and what information the government has access too.
Technology, Comms and Media
Ownership , advertisements and the problems and solutions were just some of topics discussed into this weeks lecture. It was mainly information that is going to be beneficial when revising for my exams so i took note and made sure they would be revisable.
Management, Information Systems and Organisations
MISO was begginning to become abit of a choir as it meant i had to get up at 8am for it and most of our group never bothered to turn up. But this week the two of us powered through the group work on Business levels. it was probably a little rushed but i felt we had done the work to a good standard.
This week the topic and program we were using was Microsoft word and we were shown how to use it in the correct way. I was sceptical but after being shown I felt in the past I had not used Microsoft Word to its fullest potential as I discovered uses such as the Microsoft Reference Tab which I have used ever since.
Data Technology
Now I was coming to the end of my work booklets I was told to install Prestashop which is a program I would learn more about as I worked on my coursework. Prestashop was easy to install and the instructions made it simple to get started up.
Media Making
This weeks Media Making consisted of more photography , this time we looked at photographing objects in more detail. We looked at how important the lighting is when taking photographs. The seminar continued what we discussed in the lecture and using photoshop to enhance photographs of objects. i also played around with the light settings on the camera which i used when taking my photographs for my Coursework.
The Network Society
This weeks lecture looked at copyright and the effect is has on the world today. we also discussed intellectual property rights (IPR) which is where peoples ideas in most cases lead to profit. The example of copyright issues were interesting as we looked at 'The Gray Album' by 'DJ Dangermouse' which was a remix album full of samples of Jay-Z and The Beatles that he did not have permission to use which created issues with EMI.
Technology, Comms and Media
Media Regulations was the topic this week as we looked at legal terms such as Defamation and Libel and case studies relating to these terms. Press complaints relating to Max Mosely was one of the case studies , we looked at how journalism can cause press complaints such as account of invading privacy.
Management, Information Systems and Organisations
As usual in recent times in our MISO sessions we only ever had three of our group members at the most which made MISO Sessions increasingly difficuly. We eventually got the task on business processing done but it wasnt without some struggle or an ever increasingly recently talking too but one of the MISO lecturers.
This week was based around the use of Microsoft Excel and using it to create formulas and graphs , it was fairly straight forward work but it took a while as I hadn't used Excel since school so it took some getting used to. The aim of the task was to get us used to analysing graphs and formulas to help and benefit us when working with data and information.
Data Technology
This week consisted of carrying on with the work booklets , using xampp is fairly straight forward but I had did have a few problems making relationships between my database and the tables. Aside from this minor obstacle which I resolved after Chris Dawson helped me with my database and finished the booklet with time to spare.
Media Making This weeks lecture was similar to last weeks as we continued to look in detail at different uses of the camera. the subject was looking at how to take good and effective pictures of objects and landscapes and how to edit them to how you wish.
The Networked Society Mark Stubbs , who is the Head of Learning & Research Technologies at MMU was the guest lecturer this week. A lot of the lecture centred around Webct and its current situation and what the plans for Webct in future were. Also in the lecture we were given our essays questions and the questions were explained in a good amount of detail.
Technology , Comms and Media This week we had a new lecturer who taught the topic of Media bias well , The influence and power the media has is a very interesting subject to me personally and I was very keen to learn how authority use the media to help them gain influence over the public. We were also set our essay questions.
MISO Decision making in a managerial position was the main topic today and how it can benefit or harm how a business operates. Our group found this particular task difficult and struggled to find any appropriate answers for the questions. we left it for a later date when we had the notes required to help understand the task.
This week in Digicomms there was just a seminar and no lecture. During the seminar we continued with the blog task where we were introduced into “Writing activities in a range of media" where we able to create our own headlines and reviews on certain videos and newspaper articles. I enjoyed writing article headlines as it enabled me to be creative and find words which summed up the article. The reviewing of the video i enjoyed in parts but i found it to be abit repetitive in places , but overal reviewing is something i enjoy as i spent some of my spare time looking at others reviews of music.
Data Technology
In Data Technology i attended the breif on our next portfolio. we recieved everything we needed in a good amount of detail and i felt confident when looking at the information given. I quickly began to catch up on the work booklets using xampp which made this particular seminar one of the more productive seminar I've had in recent times.
Media Making
Again in Media Making we Continued with Photography as the lecture consisted of looking at the various techniques when taking photographs and also the numerous settings available on a camera. The seminar concentrated more on portraits photographs and how to execute a good portrait photograph. We also used Photo-shop to edit the picture which will benefit us when using photo-shop in the future.
The Networked Society
In the lecture this week the topic was 'Digital Britain' and the progression and current issues surrounding it. The lecture opened my eyes as I'am part of this progression and any changes in Britain will consequently effect me so I took a strong interest in this particular topic. This is the area of Digital Media that I find most comfortable and wish to pursue it further.
Technology , Comms and Media
This week we were looking at the different of media and the audiences it attracts and also how it represent the information it is reporting on. This was a key lecture which aided me in my essay.
MISO
Sources of information , techniques of communication , the maintenance of information and managerial roles were the key areas for this weeks seminar and they all based around the subject of organisational information.
The Football Association is likely to launch an inquiry after the Newcastle United goalkeeper, Steve Harper, was attacked by a Sunderland fan in the 1-1 draw
New Sitcom To Coincide With 3 Top UK Drama's US Debut
BBC2's new sitcom, Episodes, could not have been more impeccably timed. The Matt LeBlanc comedy about the travails of a pair of British writers taking their hit show to America coincided with US adaptations of three of the most acclaimed UK dramas of recent years – Shameless, which launched on pay cable network Showtime last week, Skins and Being Human, which both make their Stateside debuts tonight.
The next series of another homegrown drama hit, the BBC's Torchwood, is being co-produced with US cable channel Starz – adding American stars including Bill Pullman – while Episodes is itself a co-production between Showtime and the corporation.
It may also not have escaped your attention that Piers Morgan will launch his CNN talkshow tonight, promising a different sort of TV drama.
No wonder the New York Times's TV critic Alessandra Stanley referred to the "Britishification" – hardly the buzziest of buzzwords, but it'll have to do – of American television.
Nearly 30 years after Chariots of Fire Oscar winner Colin Welland famously announced "The British are coming!", it really does seem to be boomtime for British TV drama across the Atlantic.
The Impact Of WikiLeaks
1. WikiLeaks "changes everything". So says Christian Caryl in the latest New York Review of Books, as the media, technology and foreign policy worlds ponder the effect of the industrial dumping of US government cables. For several years American analysts in particular have been trying to make sense of the information free-for-all facilitated by the internet. Julian Assange's perhaps inadvertent contribution is to have brought a previously arcane debate into the forefront of global politics.
So what exactly has the WikiLeaks affair changed? It is just over a month since the third and by far the largest tranche of State Department documents was sprayed into the public domain by a curious mix of techno-anarchist geeks and some of the world's most prestigious newspapers, including this one.
The tensions between WikiLeaks and the Guardian were set out in painful detail in a Vanity Fair article that juxtaposed the values of traditional journalists with those of Assange and his crew.
Assange's personality has been much trawled over and is, in the long term for journalism and democracy, irrelevant. What matters is what he has done, and what his pursuers are doing, to the related issues of freedom of expression, freedom of information, confidentiality and accountability.
Review of trailer for The Green Hornet :
The Green Hornet is a 2011 action comedy film starring Seth Rogan and Jay Chou who potray pulp hero and masked vigilante The Green Hornet and his Side-kick Kato. The trailer is 2:00 of hilarious action where Seth Rogan is at his comedy best with a superhero twist, which is bound to attract long term fans of his work although original fans of the Green Hornet will probably not take to the Action-Comedy.
Review of 'Websites That Suck' video :
An amusing review of the obviously outdated website 'Scene-Clean'. The heavy use of sarcasm used while zooming in on the 'Marvellous' factors make this review an entertaining look at how this particular website is thought out of into todays ever-advancing technological culture.
Review of 'Good Website Design'
This is simple Point of View style video by Christopher Mellor. The video consists of helpful and informative tips on simple website design. He also looks and the basic guidelines and rules needed to create a successful but basic website.
Record Labels Plan Strategy To Beat Music Piracy
Ten years after piracy first began to ravage the music industry, Britain's two biggest record labels will finally try to play their part in stopping it, by making new singles available for sale on the day they first hit the airwaves.
Universal and Sony Music – home to Take That and Matt Cardle, respectively – hope the effort will encourage the impatient X Factor generation to buy songs they can listen to immediately rather than copying from radio broadcasts online.
David Joseph, the chief executive of Universal Music, said: "Wait is not a word in the vocabulary of the current generation. It's out of date to think that you can build up demand for a song by playing it for several weeks on radio in advance."
Songs used to receive up to six weeks radio airplay before they were released for sale – a practice known as "setting up" a record. But the success of selling the winner's single immediately after the X Factor final has made record bosses think again.
"What we were finding under the old system was the searches for songs on Google or iTunes were peaking two weeks before they actually became available to buy, meaning that the public was bored of – or had already pirated – new singles," Joseph added.
Sony, which will start the "on air, on sale" policy simultaneously with Universal next month, agreed that the old approach was no longer relevant in an age where, according to a spokesman for the music major, "people want instant gratification".
Cardle, who signed to Sony via an agreement with Simon Cowell, sold 439,000 copies of When we Collide when it made the Christmas number one, the track having gone on sale just as the X Factor final ended on television.
Industry insiders believe instant sales will make it easier for records to climb the charts as excitement about a new song builds, developing a trend first seen when download sales joined the mainstream.
In the past, heavy pre-release marketing had tended to mean a new single crash-landed at its peak position on its first week of release – making the top 40 a dull narrative of short-lived new entries leavened by falling songs and fading glamour.
Jessie J's Do it Like a Dude went on sale and on radio at the beginning of December, and the 22-year-old's R&B single climbed steadily to reach number 5 last week. As more singles follow suit, the charts will briefly become uneven as songs adopting the old and the new marketing policies mix.
Piracy remains a crippling problem for the British music business, where the overall market fell by nearly 6% in 2010 and album sales slumped 7%, despite the success surrounding Robbie Williams's rejoining Take That and Simon Cowell's television-fuelled hits factory.
Although pirating songs from the radio is as old as tape recorders, the record companies believe the move will show ministers that they are playing their part in fighting copyright theft.
Universal and Sony have both notified Ed Vaizey, the minister for culture and the creative industries, of their plans.
250 Word Summary
Twoof Music biggest record labels are going to spearhead the attack on music piracy. Sony and Universal are to combat the ever-increasing theft of music by releasing their latest singles the second it hits our radios. It a move that will hopefully encourage listeners to purchase the single instead of downloading it illegally. In a generation where ‘Wait is not a word’, Sony will start their “on air, on sale” policy next month, at the same time as Universal. Those on the inside believe that as the buzz around the new single builds so will the chances for albums to climb the charts. The music industry has been crying out for some internal changes that will aid record labels and ultimately the artists themselves as the past have proven that relentless pre-release marketing has resulting in a promising first week position but then an inevitable slump throughout the following weeks. This has made the charts a show of short-lived releases and one week wonders. The overall market dropped by almost 6% in 2010 and album sales fell 7%. Although piracy is as old as tape recording off the radio and as technology advances so will methods to access music and this shows a promising step in battling music piracy.
50 Word Review
Two of musics biggest record labels has taken a promising step in stopping music piracy by making their latest singles avaliable for purchase the second they hit the airwaves. The battle to encourage listeners to purchase music instead of downloading illegally starts this month.
