Blog Assignment #4

Fair use is a tricky subject. When it comes to music, who gets to use it? And if so, how much can you use? Unfortunately there really isn't a clear answer to these questions. Using samples of copyrighted music can get someone into quite a bit of trouble very quickly. Even for using a few seconds of a song can get someone in a lot of trouble. This is because record labels are continuing to get more greedy by the day. All they care about is the money, how much money a song can get them. Since the introduction of the illegal downloading of music, sales for the music industry have steadily declined. Streaming sites like Pandora and Spotify have helped mitigate this decline in sales but only by a little. Because of this labels are using illegal downloading as an excuse to charge someone up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to make up for the money lost in torrents. I think this is a bad reason to make money. Sure people shouldn't illegally download, but even if you download one song or twenty songs, labels have no right to charge you thousands of dollars for it. I feel that if labels loosened up their grip on copyright for music, and let the usage of samples roam free in the internet, then more creativity could come about from it. Music is all about creative freedom right? If everyone has that in the palm of their hands then maybe we could truly achieve it.

Blog Assignment #3

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/importance-of-web-interactivity-tips-and-examples/

This is the article I chose, I chose it because I think it perfectly defines and describes what interactivity on the Internet is like. This article is related to Internet Communication because communication on the Internet is key and a way to communicate is through interacting, and understand what that can mean is crucial for communicating. We can measure web interactivity in many ways, the most simple being measuring clicks and views of a web page or certain parts of a web page. You can measure how long someone stays on the page or how many times they visit the page. Popularity can be measured through these ways and is a crucial part of advertising on the Internet. Creating more ways to interact with a site helps create more measurements and more data on something. Overall I think this article does a great job describing these aspects of communication and interactivity for websites.

Blog Assignment #2

I would say I agree with Sarnoff's law the most, because of how simple it is. It states that "the value of a network increases with the number of people on it". For me that sounds like something that is hard to disagree with. The more people on a network the more popular it becomes thus increasing its value. I think the other laws rely too much on possible numbers and leave open the door for too many possibilities while Sarnoff's law is very basic and easy to understand.
I think people are going to be getting their information in very similar ways to now five years from now. How different was it in 2011? Not that different from today I'd say with the exception of more advanced technologies. Smart watches will become prominent in society which will be the biggest change five years from now. Maybe even smart glasses (like Google Glass) might start to hit the market affecting the way we get information. Virtual Reality will also be a game changer to have a much wider popularity. I think the biggest factor though is the realities of the unknown and that we have no real clue what five years from now will be like. We have predictions and ideas but no one can travel in time to see what it will be like so therefore we don't know what it will be like. It could be just like it is today or it could be completely different beyond our own imagination. Five years from now is not too far into the future so it will more likely be the former than the latter, but anything is possible. I think the only real guarantee is the dominance of the Internet for getting information as it will be even more widely used than it is today.

Blog Assignment #1

Social media plays a very important in role when it comes to developing and maintaining an online identity. With a range of options from Facebook and Twitter, to mobile apps like Snapchat and Instagram, we have so many options for building an online presence today than ever before. Social Media is perhaps the most important aspect of building an online identity. It spreads awareness of your presence rapidly and and is the best way to connect with fans of your work.

I believe authenticity is more important than anonymity. I believe those with the most loyal followings are the ones that are also the most authentic. While with anonymity, it doesn't matter as much whether or not you are anonymous, but being authentic is one way to get you to the top.