Week 14 - News story

Mobile and the news media's imploding business model

Smartphones will soon be the primary news source for most Americans. That's if anyone can still make money by reporting

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/27/mobile-news-media-imploding

The article was on how new digital media and mobiles have taken over from news and advertising, the article looks at statics and shows how they have had an effect and what changes it will bring. For example, "Pew research has a new survey showing that tablets and smart phones are now 27% of Americans' primary news source. The overwhelming share of this is phones, not tablets; and a reasonable view says this will rise to 50% in three years." from this we can see that mobiles and tablets are slowly starting to take over, and over the next three or so years it will increase even more. 

However this makes sense as news and adverts will move along with the new technology that people are now using, "just as radio became one of the big purveyors of news because it was the medium that travelled with you, so should mobile." with so many people now having smart phones and tablets its become easier for them to access news and other media through one source, this makes it more convenient for them. 

Week 14 - New/digital media story

The Pirate Bay crew 'couldn't care less' about being taken offline

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/16/the-pirate-bay-taken-offline-filesharing

This article is about an online file sharing site called 'The Pirate Bay', from this site people could stream almost anything they wanted, from movies to full program sets and software. The site was taken down by Swedish police after they raided the site. However the one of the admins of TPB said that they weren't suprised and that they didn't really care about what happened as they expected it. The admin said that the raid has allowed them to take a break from the site, they also said, "TPB has become an institution that people just expected to be there. No one willing to take the technology further,” he wrote in the days following the raid. “The site was ugly, full of bugs, old code and old design." This shows that they didn't really care about the site, and people didn't protest when the site was shut down as they have so many other options to choose from, and the other torrent sites are new and they have more of an appeal to its users. 

However another admin of TPB said, " “Will we reboot? We don’t know yet. But if and when we do, it’ll be with a bang. The people behind TPB are like one big collective mind. There are no leaders nor any one in charge. About 30-50 people from all over the world pitch their ideas against each other and whatever comes out of that is what will be the fate of TPB.” From this it shows that TPB may come back, and when they do they will bring something new. 

I choose this article as it shows how technology is changing and how peoples needs are changing, as people now don't only want a site to download files from, they are also looking for an aesthetic appeal. As technology improves institutions such as TPB need to also keep up with it and make sure that they have everything to offer to their users. 

Week 13 - Digital media story

Hackers claim responsibility for Sony PlayStation Network outage

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/08/hackers-claim-responsibility-sony-playstation-network-outage-lizard-squad

This article looks at hackers that have been targeting Play Station Network, they take down the site whenever they want and PSN (Play Station Network) cannot do anything, They have told users that they will address the problem, however they don't know where the problem is coming from. 

Before the hackers do anything, they will tweet post a tweet, for example, "PSN Login #offline #LizardSquad" This is seen by both PSN and the users of Play Station, through this they have been able to gain followers, maybe other hackers and they also are giving PSN a warning of what thy are going to do. However even though are Tweeting what they are going to do, Sony have not been able to find the root cause. 

Sony have been attacked before and they were damaged severely as In 2011, the service was brought down for several days leaking the personal details including credit card numbers, email addresses and passwords of more than 70 million users. Sony was criticised for its handling of the attack, and fined £250,000 by the UK’s data protection watchdog.

Week 13 - New/Digital media

'Mutant giant spider dog' tops YouTube chart

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30399383

This news article looked at the best trending stories on-line and what people like. The first post on the article is about a Youtube video, where a polish film maker filmed his dog in a spider costume, since the video had been uploaded it has had over 113 million views. The next paragraph looked at Katy Perry's Dark horse video, which got 715 million views. 

The article goes on to looking at more stories like this and how many likes they got since they have been released, but then article goes on to what a senior lecturer from social media and communications, and what he thinks about so many people liking videos like the ones above and others. This is what he said, "It's reassuring that the likes of YouTube and Facebook can reconnect us with both the lowest and highest forms of cultural content," ... "Despite that we need caution about relying too much on these platforms," ... "There's a whole debate about algorithms - particularly with news consumption - we have to be careful that we don't let the platforms themselves dictate too much to us what we should and shouldn't be watching."

What he is initially saying is that it is good that through these new media sites people are connecting with one another, however we shouldn't get carried away with what we are shown, especially with news. 

I would agree with what he is saying, as the consumption of new and digital media has increased significantly over the years, and the amount of people that rely on strictly media to get their everyday news has also increased. Thus I think that people should sometimes maybe take a step back. 

Week 12 - News media

Indian sisters filmed fighting back against alleged harassershttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/01/sisters-fight-back-harassment-indian-bus

This is a story of two sisters in India that were caught on camera beating alleged harassers. As they were caught on camera by a passenger on the bus the video was able to be shown across the world. The video was also used by 'NDTV News' which is an Indian news channel. Through the news channel the girls heroic actions were shown all over the world, it only through UGC that the story became so big and made such a big change. 

Through the video being publicized people have been made aware that women will fight back and that men don't have so much power. It is only because of UGC that they people are now aware. Furthermore if this incident hadn't been filmed no body would of known about. 

week 12 - New/digital media

Sony PlayStation TV

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/gaming/sony-playstation-tv-1252871/review

Play Station TV is a new console released by Sony, it allows gamers to play their games on a different TV in the same place. If somebody is using the primary TV in the house, you can still play your games through the PS TV in a different room and different TV. The PS TV has other features that have made it a favourable item to have, such as allowing you to link up your PS Vita to it and also inputting the micro SD card from the Vita in to the PS TV, allowing you to access all the information from the Vita on your PS TV. 

I think the PS TV will be popular amongst hardcore gamers as they will want to be able to play on more than one screen, thus having the PS TV will allow them to do so. And if they have a PS Vita then it will be an addition to them, as they can use a dual shock 3 and dual shock 4 controller, rather than having to fiddle on the PS Vita. 

There are also drawbacks to the PS TV such as the touch screen features don't work very well on the dual shock pad which means that games that have the touch screen feature won't very well decreasing your gaming experience.