Ben Heine’s Pencil vs. Camera art collection is unlike any other piece of art I’ve seen. When I see photography, I don’t immeditely think art, but it reality photography is just a form of art. The way Heine includes drawings over photographs makes the images scream art. Each image is innovative, interesting, unique and overall a masterpiece of the digital form in art.

While I’m still in debate whether or not these are photoshoped or actual demonstrations, this does not take away from the creativeness and quality of the collection. The use of hand drawn paper over a photograph doesn’t seem like a innovative idea, but the way Heine creates this work makes the collection pop. The uniqueness of each image and the quality of each drawing is at the top of the charts.

Most pictures are accompanied with a poem that adds to the work as well. Also each image has a tag box that provides poems or relevant information that adds to the work and informs the viewer about the piece.

My favorite image is number 12, the image with the two donkeys with sunglasses and wild faces. This image draws me into it for some reason. Donkeys are fun animals that often show some type of emotion when around people. The addition of faces to these donkeys as a brilliant device to add personality and charm to these visually simple animals.

Another favorite image of mine is number 4. The image is quite and alone, but the quality of the work and how the lines match up are magnificent. This image seems almost real life just without color.

Image 26, I believe, makes the collection whole. The image flips the collection by putting an image over a drawing. This great piece that seemingly makes the collection pop and brings a lot to the collection as a whole.

Overall, this collection bridges the analog and digital in an amazing way. It forms new and old forms of media in an almost seamless and natural way. Bravo to Ben Heine for creating such a magnificent collection.

To find the full collection of this art collection by Ben Heine, visit here.

To find more information about Ben visit his website here.

Our plans for Trans-Media uses for The Nature Conservancy from class is as follows:

Photos – Before and After photos about restoration, clean up, sustainability.

• Before and After photos can demonstrate the work and effort of the Conservancy group. Showing that their efforts are actually impacting the places their working instead of words just describing the work. Visual imagery impacts people more than words.

Video – Spotlight different campaigns that a single photo or map couldn’t sustain.

• Video’s create an emotional attachment through sound, sight, and a complete emotional draw. The combination of words, images and sounds creates pictures and scene unlike any other media type can create.

Maps – Locations of work, map wildlife corridors, and weather patterns

• Maps physically show the location of impacted area. Words can tell and describe a location, but maps give a real world connection to the viewer. When somebody reads about a problem, the physical location doesn’t create an image in their mind. By showing how close it is to them, or people they care about, a larger impact could be made on them.

Website – Interactive to show ways and locations for a user to get involved with the program.

• By drawing all of the above together, the website can provide a platform where everything comes together. By putting all of this content on a single place, people can see everything easily and efficiently. A website also incorporates forms of feedback and interaction for the viewer. Hosting all of these media types from above, then creating feedback and interaction forums, the dynamic between the Conservancy and other supporters is endless. 

However, there is a threat unlike any other coming to the plate. The web.

The web has been around a while and has only impacted printed media sales in a minute manner. But now is the scariest times for analog print. Before the revolution of the smart phone, netbook, and tablet computer, the only way to access the web was through a personal computer. The adoption rate of computers in homes was relatively low until roughly five years ago. Although a majority of the population had web enabled cell phones, the adoption of smartphones and smart phone prices were still at a point to where only the rich and elite had them.

Now that almost every home has immediate access to some form of the web, print media is facing the toughest challenge. The free access to news and content that is found on the web has made some people walk away from their newspaper and magazine subscriptions. Now that tablet computers are being introduced into mainstream consumer electronics, the form of magazine and newspaper is being replicated. Users are now able to replicate the feeling of holding newspapers or magazines with iPads and Kindles.

Analog print media for the first time in its history is facing a direct competition. It should be very interesting how analog media conforms to the new competition. The bigger question is will newspapers still be around in ten years.

Not only did Obama want to create a more open and accountable government, a big issue was creating avenues to share government data and information easily with the general public. This was to be done on the web with the aid of web 2.0 technologies. One of the most visible changes since the Obama administration is the redesign of the White House homepage. Efforts have also included easy access websites that track government spending, using new technologies to make the public more aware about the government actions that directly affect their lives and issuing the Open Government Directive which requires all governmental organizations to share information and data on a regular basis on a centralized website.

All of these efforts are in the public view and people can see direct effects of these initiatives. However, what I find more interesting and what David Eaves and other political activists push for is a more internally open government. A lot of what Eaves talks about is seeing government as a platform or network. He uses the term E – Gov. which is the idea of how to get government online and interact within itself and people. In todays current form of operation, there is a very slim chance or even zero chance the government organizations are working with each other. The reason is because there is no channel of communication established between organizations. Organizations seem to operate without knowledge of the other organizations around them. If government can’t communicate with its self, then why should we expect the government to easily communicate with the public?

Internal communication is the key for a more efficient and open government. With the government being able to source its self for overlapping task that involve multiple organizations a better functioning government is created. The implementation of a government “Facebook” could aid in the effort to open the government up publicly. For public openness to happen, internal openness must occur first.

Government 2.o is already underway but has a very long way to go. For more information about Gov. 2.o, visit the Gov. 2.0 summit website here. For more information about E-Gov, visit the Wikipedia article found here. To find out more about open and transparent government efforts visit the Sunlight Foundation here.

In the movie “The Social Network,” Mark Zuckerberg says that he is “taking the entire social experience online.” When I first heard this, I realized he saw Facebook as an extension of the social interaction we experience everyday. Even though Facebook has become more than that now, this concept is still evident on the site.

When I log on to Facebook, I see three levels of friends on my friends list. The first level are the friends that I physically interact with everyday. On the second level are the friends I have a deeper relationship with but don’t see on a regular basis. For me, they’re friends from Austin where I recently moved from. On the third level are friends from childhood or high school that have found me on Facebook. This is the largest group of friends that I have on the site.

During the five days I went without Facebook, the amount of distance I felt from these three distinct groups of friends was extraordinary. I experienced a different level of separation from each level of friends.

I felt the least amount of disconnect with the first level of friends, the ones with who I had daily interaction. I saw this group of people either everyday or more than three of the five days of the experiment. I had my regular social interactions with this group by talking in person or through texting. We didn’t really miss the Facebook aspect of our relationship or our ability to like each other’s statuses or comment on each other’s pictures.

I felt slightly more separated from my lowest level of friends, my friends from the past. These friends are the ones whose status updates and pictures show up in my news feed, but we don’t comment on each other’s posts very often. I don’t interact with them on a daily basis, and during my experiment, I didn’t feel too distant from them or feel a need to connect with them.

I felt the most disconnected from my second level of friends, my closest friends that interact with through channels other than Facebook or social networks. This small group of people is made up of my former roommates, co-workers and other very good friends. My interaction with these friends outside of social networks is through SMS and phone calls as well as face-to-face communication. However, social platforms on the web have made my contact with these friends easy and simple. The social web brings down the barriers of time and space and allows us to communicate in ways that physical interaction and even some forms of digital interaction don’t allow.

I began to wonder why I felt the way I did about the levels of friends I have. Unknowingly, I placed people in groups according to the level of interaction I have with them and the depth of relationship I have with them. I found that even though I have less interaction with the second level of friends, the level with the least amount of people, I felt the most disconnect from them because Facebook is the largest channel we use to communicate with each other. Our social interaction depends on Facebook and without Facebook our level of physical interaction is pushed down to the third level of friends. The reason I felt the most disconnect with these friends is because without Facebook I don’t interact with them as much as I need or want to. They are pushed to the third level of friends.

I concluded that when we go on a Facebook fast, our level of discomfort and disconnect from our friends depends on our level of friendship and our amount of physical and digital interaction. When people cross into other friendship levels when we go without Facebook or any other online tool, we feel as if we are missing something.

Going without Facebook for five days wasn’t that difficult. You should try it and see what kinds of relationships you really have with the people that make up your friend list. I was once told that you don’t really know what you have until it is taken away from you. This experiment really made that statement true and showed me the true level of friendship I have with my friends list.

So I didn’t really think much of this when I started. The reading was not very eventful. But what happened after the reading was. I had been away from Internet and social networks for roughly an hour and the strange thing was I didn’t really have an urge to go back to the social world on the internet. I then tried to accomplish some homework and other tasks while I wasn’t being drawn back to the internet.

As soon as I started in on the homework, without even knowing what I was doing, within five minutes, I was on Facebook. I didn’t have the intention or want, I was just browsing the Internet for the homework assignment, and Facebook used it’s “gravity” and pulled me in.

It’s amazing how I didn’t even think about going to Facebook, it just happened. After Facebook, also without thinking, I was on Twitter. I was scanning through my feed and started to fall away from homework to just wasteful time on the Internet. The ability to just find things in my Twitter feed that I wouldn’t normally find on the Internet fascinates me.

Not being connected wasn’t a problem, I didn’t even realize it, but as soon as I was able to be connected, my web browser somehow ended up on the social web.

The next class assignment is one week without Facebook, I know I won’t be able to stay away from Facebook my self because it is on every device I own, so I will have a friend change my password so that I stay away from Facebook.

Note – never write a blog post on an iPad, it’s a horrible experience!

Story on Mashable!!!

The article gives three example websites that have “transformed” to the iPad design style. The examples are Me.com, Apple’s web app for its Mobile Me service. The next example is the Twitter, and the design change that Twitter.com is currently undergoing. Lastly, she shows the New York Times website compared to its current iPad app.

The reason I find these examples inadequate is because they are either Apple branded sites, or organizations that are known to work closely with Apple on apps and mobile development. These company’s are known to be on the cutting edge of Apple technology and are always the first to have Apple ready sites. Of course Apple is going to design its own apps to be complaint with their products, and company’s that work closely will always want to satisfy Apple’s demands so that the company will keep them in close arms.

Although I agree that the web is taking a shift toward sites that are mobile compliant and have the Web 2.0 look and feel, I don’t believe this is the result of one product. The ability to create Web 2.0 applications and websites on the web and offer them over broadband to more and more users everyday is what is creating this shift. Also the technology that’s found on the web, is now being shifted over to the mobile devices such as HTML 5 on the iOS system.

It will be a while until we see the majority of websites that operate and have this look and feel to them. The majority of the web is still not up to speed with Web 2.0 and until that shift occurs, the web will still be viewed from a computer browser mainly. Also, until tablets like the iPad, as well as the iPad, gain more market share and penetrate the laptop market more, companies will not focus on tablet development of websites and apps as their main focus. They will sick to creating sites and apps for the PC.

Being an iPad owner, I hope the “iPadification of the web” occurs. As Steve Jobs said at the iPad unveiling, “It’s like holding the web in your hand.” Like I said before, until tablets gain enough market share and development is targeted at the tablet market more than the PC market, my opinion is that the iPad is like “holding a nice window that looks out onto the web and surf’s it with cool hand gestures.”

My first introduction to Wikipedia was my freshman year of high school. At my high school, every student was issued a laptop and had access to the web without limits. I remember one of my friends walking into my computer science class carrying his laptop and saying “Look what I changed on Wikipedia!!! I put [Teacher's Name] picture under dictator!!!” Everybody in the class was amazed that our English teachers picture was the main picture for the dictator article on Wikipedia. After a forty-five minute rampage of students editing articles and changing pictures, our school’s IP address was blocked from editing. The picture for dictator as well as some other major changes that we had made lasted on the site all of ten minutes. Some minor changes, like misspelling words lasted a couple of days, but overall, the rampage was deleted off of Wikipedia altogether.

This little story took place late in 2003 and as you can see, even then Wikipedia was on top of our little attack. For my most of my high school life, teachers would not let us use Wikipedia even to a point that it was blocked for about a week because of the abuse of the technology from the student body. But as Wikipedia progressed and expanded teachers slowly let the use of Wikipedia into the classroom.

Todays Wikipedia has even more official editors as well as more peer review editing. This is benefiting the site because the accuracy and the level of the content is getting better everyday. Wikipedia has established guidelines that guide the editing and who and who can’t edit articles. For high profile articles, only certain people can edit, but for smaller articles, almost anybody can edit articles.

Part of class this week was to find an article that I knew a lot about the subject matter. Then to search through it and either add or edit the article. I picked the article about the Dallas Stars. I noticed that the information about where their minor league team was located was rather vague. I edited the article so it more accurately described where the team was located. This isn’t a big change, but I enhanced the accuracy of the article just a little.

If everybody can just further make little parts on articles more accurate all the time, Wikipedia could end up just as well respected as book encyclopedias. If the community keeps this trend, the amount and accuracy on the site will be great. It will turn in to a great tool for future generations to use and to further add and change.

It’s neat that Wikipedia seems to be always progressing and that it contains fresh and new material. When you go to an article, you know you are getting the most up to date information about the subject matter.

What is really interesting, is where this technology could take active participation in the television market. A couple of years ago, one of the sports websites (I can not remember for the life of me) had an interactive tool online during football games that let you guess the next play that the team would run. You could follow along to see who correctly picked the most plays during the corse of game. But this is when laptops were still quite expensive and so most people could not sit on their couch and participate. Now with this technology, participation during a show could rise very high.

I love sports, and love watching them on TV, but I feel as if what I can get out of the experience is limited to what the broadcast company wants to provide. Baseball fans love their stats. Often during the game, the broadcast uses graphics to display players stats and biographical information. But what if you are watching one evening and a new player that is playing in his first Major League game comes up to bat. The only information that can be provided is the little information that the announcers and graphics can display during the off moments of the game.

In steps in the sync app. The app can notice that a new player is up to bat, and display biographical information, previous teams, earlier stats, and people’s opinions in real-time. There are already apps that accomplish this task, but not synced with the game that is being presented live, the apps are always lagging behind.

Although ABC is implementing this technology into a show, not a sporting event, I believe this is a start. I would love to sit on my couch and watch a sports broadcast with an app that gave me real-time stats and information about the game. This would enhance the TV broadcasts greatly.

There are many ways to implement this technology, from sports, television shows, and to shows like American Idol where voting is a key part of the show. Imagine voting during the show and being able to see real-time results. It would create a whole new experience for the show and its viewers.

Active participation seems to be the way the television market is headed. Moving to 3D televisions that put viewers “in the screen.” This can only lead to good things for the market.

Not long ago Steve Jobs stood on a stage at Apple headquarters and announced Ping!. Many claim it is Apple’s first real dive into the social networking scene. But even before that, Jobs spoke at an Apple Special Event just after the iPad launch to introduce iOS 4. Included in that launch was Game Center.

Game Center is Apple’s online gaming service. It is a mobile version of what Xbox Live is on the Xbox 360, or what Playstation Network is for Playstation 3. It’s a hub for players to meet up and play games with and against each other. If you still don’t understand, this is what Apple says it is -

Game Center lets friends — and soon-to-be-friends — in on the action. Invite someone to join, then get a game going. Or go up against people you don’t know, from anywhere in the world, in a multiplayer game. It’s your world. Everyone else is just playing in it.

The real difference between Ping, and Game Center is the function of the services. Ping allows you to do the normal social network activities like following friends, liking music and commenting on posts. Game Center does not have these options. Game Center is there to pair gamers up so that multiplayer games across the internet can take place. It serves as a center to see what people are playing and what achievements they have accomplished in the games.

Another difference is how the services are accessible. Ping is aviable to iOS devices as well as in the iTunes application on Mac or PC. However Game Center is only on the iOS devices, making it a mobile only application.

What confuses me is why the two are not combined into one. Apple could very well have plans to merge the two into one product in the future, but as for now they come as stand alone networks. Would putting Game Center under the Ping umbrella be beneficial?

I believe one day Apple will incorporate Game Center into Ping. It would be cool if users could like games, and comment on peoples scores all within Ping, like they are with music and video now.

Apple’s App Store is thriving with thousands of games on it already, and it will only continue to grow. As they sell more iOS devices, the ability for Game Center to become a major social gaming network only grows.

The future for Game Center looks bright. Even if it is folded into the Ping umbrella, I believe that it won’t hurt Game Center, but help Apple’s social network in general. Apple has built such a large advantage with the number of iOS devices on the market, it will take a large mistake on Apple’s part for Game Center to fail. As for Ping, my post about it explains what I believe will come of that.

Image/Quote Source: Game Center