Well my Avatar and me are pretty much similar, i made her look like me with the same eyes, not so much on the hair but at least its the same color, and the height is the same. Even her clothes look alot like the clothes i would wear. I mostly used Second life to talk to the friends that i already had and to explore the "globe. " I also did not want to pretend to be someone else because i feel that would take too much time and thought. I really do not like talking to complete strangers on the internet. Even if its my avatar talking i just dont like it. So i was just going to go on when i knew one of my friends would be on then i could chat and explore and play with the random things with someone.

p.412 ex. 2

Television in my house was always seen as a kind of family time or a 'pleasant diversion'. We always watch the news together and shows like Big Brother and Survivor. I never had much of rules with television i just had to make sure that homeowork was finished before i could watch tv with them. Most people that that watching tv will make you stupid or something like that but i think that if you watch it in periods and get work done nothing will be wrong with you. People that watch tv everynight at a certain time freak out when they are out past that time and have to scurry home to watch their favorite show. Television is in a way taking over peoples time, noe they have toget home eat dinner and watch their shows.

HEY AUNT MARY!!!

So Aunt Mary, Social networks are pretty fun things that allows you to communcate to people all over the world based off of your common interests. The best network for you to join now would be Facebook. Facebook lets you connect to people from your old high school and college, if you become friends with some one you can look at who you are connected to via 'friends you may know' . You can also see friends that you might know on the homepage because of the links you are connected to on your page. Facebook is also a place for older people and kids, so this would be the best place for you Aunt Mary. This site is pretty easy to use and navigate, your best bet is FACEBOOK.
You are welcome,
Love Paige

wiki discussion

I chose Tara Lipinski, who was a gold medalist in 1998 at age 15.

The biggest controversy is Tara Lipinski's age and why she went pro so fast. One comment read, "Lipinski's retirement from competitive skating was controversial for two main reasons: first, because she was so young and had such a short career at the elite level, and second, because so many of her statements (and/or those of her agent) about her motivations for turning pro were more or less immediately contradicted by her own actions. And then later on she changed her whole story and said she turned pro because of her hip injury, which she had never previously mentioned as being a factor at all. Personally, I don't know what to think the true story might be, or why she felt it necessary to make excuses for her decision at all. And, FWIW, I don't really blame Lipinski herself for any of this, and actually feel quite sorry for her. She was just a kid at the time, and I think she and her parents were getting a lot of bad advice from her agent, Mike Burg, who was more concerned about making a quick buck off Lipinski's Olympic medal rather than what was in the best interests of his client's long-term career."

People kept adding in that this really wasnt all that important, and how some people who dont know much about Tara wont understand anything about this.

Exercise 2. Defining the NEWS.

Defining the word News seems like a pretty broad answer. News today is only there for the facts. You only hear about what has happen or whats going to happen. When i watch the news i never hear anything about the newcasters have to say about the topic. Not hearing their opinions, and just the facts, help you to assume that these are the real facts. If you wanted to find some opinions the interenet would be you best guess. Blogs are usually full of the writers opinions and not the most reliable facts but they are pretty close. I personally do not go on the internet for my news because i like to hear it more that read it so i just watch channel 2 or channel 4. Both of these news channels are very reliable because they give you the local news fast and pretty detailed. That is a major qualification for a good new source. These channels have to compete with others to get the news out first and these two channels are pretty good at beating the crowd. They also give you alot of good statistics many different stories. Everything from the upcoming election to who has the best food in town, they have the winners from what the polls say.

All in all the news is a place where people can get the facts fast.

Class Wiki.

It would be great for our wiki to have all of the same standards and Wikipedia. The most important areas are what our wiki is and is not, and manual of style. We need to say that this wiki is not just a silly place to write what ever we are feeling like"so and so is cool" it is not important to what out wiki is trying to help out with. There also should not be our own opinions, we should try to make them at least some what true like when we were talkikng about the parking sucking out front in the certain time range is still our opinion but it helps more giving the time range than just how bad it sucks.

The manual style is also very important for our wiki. Since we are college students we should at least write, and use the proper grammar like we know what we're doing. When writing about different subjects we should find a common ground where we all know what to call our campus like is it should be UMD or UM-D or all spelled out. This will keep it more professional, and well respected.

Questions one & two.

Q1:
The message in my ad is that Starbucks is too costly for todays economy. Even if i love Starbucks i still feel that five dollars for a little cup of coffee is a bit much. So i decided that i would just let everyone else know that their money will dissapear from the cost of this coffee. The design i chose for this ad was the teamwork posters, with a simple picture and saying underneath. Although it may be plain, the message gets across through the picture. Seeing your money sitting there in a Starbucks sleeve, sends the "hey! you are getting ripped off" idea for just one cup of coffee. A problem that came up was that i didnt know what little saying i wanted to say. i had tons of little thoughts that sounded good but when they were written down, seemed a bit lame. i also didnt know exactly who i wanted to write this for. Did i want to choose teenagers or the steady adults that constantly need their Starbucks coffee.

Q2:
Doing this ad i've learned that making one takes some hard thinking. Who do you want to target? How should you put the ad together? What colors would work best here? all these questions and more had to be answered. You really have to have a great idea to have your ad become successful. There are no real ethics of advertising, the more vulgar and crazy the ad is the more response you get on it.

social networks & the politics

Myspace and facebook have helped so much in the years political campaigns. These two sites promote each party equally, with the pages of the parties and even group dedicated to them. The sites also allow young voters learn more about who they are voting for, and what each candidate stands for. On facebook itself you can join so many groups for just Obama or just McCain, or you can even join proposals. You can watch live video feeds on each candidates pages, and find new updates on where their next campaign stop is. Its much easy to get teenagers to follow these pages and site than to have them sit through a debate if they dont really know anything about politics. Having them learn the basics that each candidate stands for they will become more interested and want to watch the debates and support a candidate.

Since Mivote is connected to UMD and PBS, our voices get to be heard. Like Tom Murphy told us hundreds of kids go on the site and post videos and things that matter to them in the is election. Being able to hear what most people are talking about and understanding their views would help other make their decisions or agrue with the others opinions. This sites techniques to target the undecided voters, works so much better then wanting to have a town meeting. Instead of hearing people that cant really relate to the college students, telling us what they think that we are worried about, we can hear from peers and share our own opinions with this site.

Most if my friends on facebook have joined a group for their candidate or one bombing the other. Either way they are all pretty much showing some sort of support to one candidate and staying loyal. It is so much easier to share your ideas on the election with these sites available, and you also get feed back from your friends. With the connections between joining these goups and the comments from your peers, these site help out in many ways to get voters ready to make the right decision at the polls.

ADVERTISING

Advertising is all around us. I spend most of my time in my room, at work and in my car. Being in these three places i experience alot of advertising. In my room you can see all sorts of advertising from books, to shoes with the nike swooshes on them. Some of my clothes have the name on them and my jeans too. Everything from Aeropostale to American Eagle, but then i also have things from Kohl's and JCpenney's. At my job you see Pepsi signs EVERYWHERE, and having the "it's more fun at MJR" song playing before every movie i think we are trying to get something across. i know myself that when i get out of the movies i sing that song, so it must work and bring people in to the theaters. Then in my car i hear tons of commercials saying that so and so is better than the rest. So of course you want to go and check out the places that they recommend. I always remember the little jingles that companies use like the "Red Robin...Yumm!"

and the free credit report songs.
So those really work at getting stuck in your head and remembering the names of the companies. Every where you look, you see logos or advertisments. Whether it's the clothes people are wearing, billboards you see while driving, or commercials that get suck in your head. There is no way to escape the comapnies advertisments/

BLOGS

The blog that I would like to return to about the fall election would have to be huffingtonpost.com. This blog has alot of video's and pictures that deal directly with the topic I am interested in. This Blog site seems very reliable because most of the blogs come from places like New York Times and you can find out what celebrities think too. There are probably going to be more blogs that will challenge me and I would talk about with my parents. I am very involved with this election and care very much about the outcome. This blog has everything from blogs about McCain to Obama to The War and hot new cars. Huffingtonpost would be my top place to search for political or even something far from that like celebrities and their lives. The one blog that i just hated was "Bush secretly approves US Special Ops raids inside Pakistan." just hearing that he is sending more soldiers into these dangerous places makes me so angery. I know that these soldiers want to fight but this has really gone on to long. We need to bring our soldiers home, were they are safe and with the ones that they love.

Question 3

Students these days do want to be more hands on and involved in the arts. Rather than standing on the outside waiting to see what new designs comes out, they are the ones themselves creating the designs and games that will make millions. More and more students are interestesd in Photography and Computer design than teaching careers. Students want to make something of themselves and be famous. With all of the technology that students these days have access to are much more higher that ever before so creating your own arts is realistic now to students then it eve was. I myself,do not want to do these things in my career but in my spare time I like to do photography and wear the clothes that I want, in styles that I like.

Conner and Florida should not include everybody as a whole but they should say a majority of students today want the arts experience. Some people are not that creative and can not comprehend the technology that most of the students these days are capable of. Conner should also state the various arts that are the most popular among students today. I would like to know which are the top arts that student want to experience to see if I share the same wants. Those are really the only suggestions I would make because I agreee with the statements that the two authors have made.

Personal cultural inventory

My day starts off just like any other typical college student. Not wanting to wake up to the sound of my father yelling for me. After I wake up and eat my Wheaties, I decide to start my morning ritual. My shower consists of washing the hair with Herbal Essence, shaving with my Intuition razor and washing my face with Clean & Clear face scrub. After all that is said and done I brush my teeth and head for my room. Deciding what I want to wear is always fun, I usually change my outfit on average of 3 times, then finally when I DO decide on what I do want to wear it usually consists of a comfortable pair of Arizona or American Eagle blue jeans, and a t-shirt from my high school or a fun colored shirt from Target. When I finally like what I am wearing I blow dry and straighten out my hair. Now I am ready for my day.

I grab my books and start up my car for my adventure to campus. My Taurus does not suck the gas which is a good thing so my tank does not need filling every week. but when it does it is only about $45.00 to fill up from E. I get to campus about a half hour to hour early, from my 10 minute drive, so I go to the UC and get some food. I buy some Naked juice from the Mckinley cafe and a Poptart from the Bookstore. After class I go to work out in the fitness center for about an hour, listening to my Ipod and the many songs that it holds. When I finally start to head home for the evening, thats were all the real fun happens. At my house I change in to some very comfortable Aeropostle sweat pants and start to do the reading I have been assigned. When I get done reading the manditory chapters from school I open up my Breaking Dawn book (the final book in the Twilight series) after reading that for about a hour and a half. I try to call a friend to see what plans they have for this weekend then I put on a movie, Happy Gilmore is the current movie, turn on the sleep mode of my television and start to drift off to sleep.

Writing this blog I have realized that you cannot get away from the pressures of buy, buy, buy. The constant advertisements of new and improved products, my Ipod is a newer model itself that I bought because my old Ipod could not hold enough music. So I went from 1GB to 8 GB, major improvement for just a little price change. I have also learned that people are always looking for the better deal on things, like gas or clothing sales. You always see more people in the places where you can get more for less. Being a consumer these days is a big thing.