Joshua Shalikar's Blog

Final Abstract

jshalika — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:13:56 +0000

This is going to be a group project with Daniel And Joshua Shalikar.

Flashback.com, a social networking website, will provide a comfortable environment for recently graduated collegiate individuals and alumni. This social platform will give all subscribers countless abilities and advantages, making it unintelligent to not be a member.

Becoming a member is simple. All one would need is proof of graduation and an email address. Once logged in, the benefits will unravel themselves. There will be a networking section, allowing employers to post what they are looking for and another area where graduates can learn how to build a resume and then post it to their personal page. Thus gaining the advantage of publishing a professional resume, gaining confidence, and more importantly, being prepared.

What other topics concern newly graduated individuals?

In the social network, one will also be able look for their first home or apartment. In the real estate section, there will be residences according to price, location, size, etc. If one needs to move out quick or relocate due to a new employment (that we hope to establish), a new home should only be a click away. Updated frequently, there will be homes for anyone with any interest.

The social networking website will also include features such as auto insurance, health insurance, car sales, loan management, and graduate school application and management.

Flashback.com will include a team of talented, motivated, and success driven individuals. The team, consisting of 4 or more people, will all have a specific job. Two will be web designers, being required to update and build interface. Another individual will be in charge or marketing/advertising. This entails researching demographics, competitors, and acquiring those who want to post ads onto our site. (We will even help build the advertisements for a fee… our designers will all have the experience to do so). The fourth individual will be required to manage income and make sure our site follows all legal standards. Furthermore, he or another employee will be in charge or monitoring the content posted. (This may be done by establishing filters for certain words or phrases that are offensive, irrelevant, etc.)

FInancial Plan- there is a lot of opportunity with flashback.com. Being that it is a networking site that is made for graduates and alumni, there is an unbelievable amount of opportunity for advertisers to promote their companies on our site. For example, real-estate, job search companies, etc. Unlike facebook, and myspace, this site is not for everyone, as you do need to be a graduate from a college/university. It is a free site, free making flashback dependent on other modes of income. (one being the advertisers). The application feature will be instated allowing for different necessities for each person, creating an individualized atmosphere for each user.
As far as income, Flashback will primarily run based on advertisers on the pages. It’s not going to have irrelevant sites, or ads, but all having to do with what graduates will need. For all the applications available, we will make a cut. For example, if there is a house for sale on the real-estate application, we will make some sort of percentage. This goes a long with providing jobs through job sites.

Josh devised the financial plan, encompassing every way we can make revenue, while Dan created the narrative plan, focusing on services, the “story” and the team. Together we both pooled services that graduated individuals would find beneficial and relevant. In the near future will be be polling students to acquire their input as well.

Media vs. Physical Products

jshalika — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:42:50 +0000

“What is a media product?” This question honestly has a many answers that would seem correct, but there is one that I find gives a true meaning: a product is a practice. In other words, a socially learned experience that ends up being a substantial part of your life.

For example, a television is a media product but also a practice. You learn from childhood what a media product is, and from your youth it becomes a habit, or routine that potentially works as a way of life. This does in fact include TV channels and there programming building the interior infrastructure of the television media product. Although subtle, this allows for recurrence, becoming the enabling experience of our media product.

Another example is a computer. I believe this is an ultimate media product as it offers everything needed for someone to be socially connected the world. We are aware of many different types of media: recognizably, they are internet, television, newspapers, magazines, music, radio, films, advertisements and books. The computer has the ability to give us all of these types successfully. All of the media types can be considered the practice within using a computer. For example, the web is considered as an aggregation of information needing popular aggregates to establish consumer awareness. The Internet is just one practice that the media product (computer) offers to create a complex experience differing this device from any other day to day product.

When creating a media product, there is much to take into consideration. It is not just a matter of inventing the ‘product’ (the devices, the standards, the genres): that is only half the battle. The important aspect of the process is the practice itself: will this object fit in everyday life, how and when it will be used, what role it will play in social life, etc. The two sides are absolutely necessary for each other to thrive and thus will always feed off each other.

Now that I’ve defined a media product, the everyday product needs to be explained. A product is considered a “thing produced by labor or effort”. In other words, it is a think being produced hence it’s term, a product. In the marketing world, a product is anything that can satisfy or that is needed by the consumer market. There is no further meaning, besides it’s simple purpose. Clothing is to wear, as a pen is to write, as a tires is to drive on, etc.

The main difference that I tried to illustrate is that a media product offers so many different solutions to someone’s everyday life. It can offer a deeper meaning, a valuable meaning that can positively or negatively impact someone’s life. There is so much left for interpretation that when looking at a physical product, it almost seems that there should be a different name to a media product as it almost has nothing to do with one another. What does a physical object have to offer than its face meaning, or direct purpose? Nothing…

A tire manufacturing company has a simple purpose. Similarly to it’s product that it manufactures, it has only one purpose without question, to make tires. I’m not robbing it of it’s advancements in technology, or innovativeness, but when comparing it to a film production process, well… It’s like night and day. A film production company is just that much more complex. With the breakup of domination by “the Studios” and the continued incursion of television into the cinematic audience, the major production companies have so much to worry about that it is a continuously evolving industry. They have a similar goal to a tire manufacturing company, put out a product to society. The only difference is that there is so much going into making a successful film in comparison to a tire. It takes many steps: starts from an initial story idea or commission, through scriptwriting, shooting, editing and distribution to an audience. Typically, it involves a large number of people, and takes from a few months to several years to complete. Filmmaking takes place all over the world in a huge range of economic, social, and political contexts, and using a variety of technologies and techniques.

It is important to remember the differences between a media product and a physical product and how that directly compares to a media company and a product manufacturing company with the examples provided earlier. It’s truly fascinating that multiple objects so different are given the same term, a product.

You Decide, We Report- How to put your article on the front page of Google..

jshalika — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:32:52 +0000

Haven’t you ever wondered how a news company gets their news article on the front page of Google? I sure did, and after listening to a segment of On The Media, I have now been informed. The origin of this article came from when Google released a video explaining how it ranks news stories. Brent Payne who is the director of search engine optimization for Tribune Interactive has the responsibility of getting his company’s articles to land on the front page of Google. To better understand where Brent had received his information from, I listened to the Google video, and this is what I have comprehended.

Primarily, Google has three phases when sifting through the articles, Crawl, Group, and Rank. A Google bot starts off with Crawling pages to see your URLs and sitemaps. Sitemaps give Google the understanding of what is deemed as a new article, what they are allowed to show, and what they are excluded from showing. The Group faze involved looking at each individual article and categorize the content based upon individual words found in the text. For example, if the article has New York and Business in it, Google automatically assumes that the article is about business and is about the USA. So it will be categorize in the business section under national news. Ranking comes in two steps to complete Google’s three phases. It starts with Story ranking which is where there is a group of articles where Google decides which goes first, second, etc. This is based according to Aggregate editorial interest. This is based on where it is published, (local or national) and what wires it is seen and read on. Part two is the individual article ranking system. Each article is “interviewed” to see where it is placed on the Google front page. First it is asked if it is Fresh and New, deciding whether or not it is recent, substantial, original, and focused on the topic. Next, it’s duplication and novelty detection where it’s credited on being original or novel. Then it’s “asked” where it resides. This is called local/personal relevancy where each article is weighted by section and story and whether or not more credit is due to local sources. The last category that Google talked about was trusted sources. This is where they deem whether or not the article gets a boost for trusted sources for each edition and section via carious signals.

To bump up your chances on the Video content page, create YouTube Channels; write in depth textual descriptions, and having transcripts are always helpful. (gives description with video).

With the Images page, some rules of thumb include using large size image with good aspect ratios. This includes always having descriptive captions and alt text. Lastly, make sure that the image includes a near title, it is inline, that it is non-clickable, and it’s formatted as a JPG.

As far as a general rules for bumping up page rank, make sure that your article has a unique, permanent URL’s with at least 3 digits. Also, Don’t break up article body, definitely put dates between title and body, your titles matter, and separate original matter from press releases (publish informative unique content).

Having watched Google’s video, when going back to Bob Garfield’s conversation with Brent Payne, I understood the conveyed message much better.

Bob starts off telling the listener how back then, a news article was written with a punchy title to attract the reader’s attention, but now a days, this is the least important factor of an online published article. Brent gives a good example to summarize what Bob said. He states, “If you’re writing a story about Michael Jackson dying, make sure you put “Michael Jackson Dead” somewhere in your headline. Don’t go with “Wacko Jacko” or “King of Pop.” And that helps Google to figure out that, oh, that’s what this story’s about.” This allows Google to generate mass amounts of traffic to generate more readers while giving them what they want to read.

For Brent’s situation, it is very hard on media companies like his to keep competition competitive. Google users on average (70%) don’t go past the first page of results. So the companies all battle to be number one. As far as local papers, this is where the companies have an easier time linking their articles to local news corporations boosting their chances of getting on the top page. It is much more difficult to do so when an event occurs like Michael Jackson dying. Because of the high traffic of articles coming from many different journalists, it is hard to put the article to a name with cutting throats to be the number one wanted publication.

A successful tool is Google itself. Many people like Brent tend to use Google to figure out what people want or choose to read over other articles. That way they can alter their meta-data, URL name, caption information, etc. to have a change in competing. The only tools that these companies have are the people who read the articles on a day-to-day basis. It’s the only way Brent knows what to name his articles, what information to include, and how to help all the journalists have an opportunity. The term is traffic; Brent and people in the same field are the explanation for their success in the competitive world of Google and getting on their front page.

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/10/09/06

http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-news-tips-for-publishers.html

NBC Studios, and the family tree

jshalika — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:50:13 +0000

NBC Universal, Inc. is currently a media and entertainment company. It was originally formed in May 2004 by the combination of General Electric’s NBC with Vivendi Universal Entertainment (part of the French Media Group). The deal excluded the French Canal operations, which were retained by Vivendi. GE owns 80% of NBC Universal with the remaining 20% owned by Vivendi SA.The company develops, produces, and markets entertainment, news, and information to a global customer base. It is headquartered in the Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.

NBC Universal owns and operates:

United States television network

Numerous cable networks
A group of local stations throughout the country
Motion picture companies, a number of television production companies
Multiple theme parks.

Universal Music Group was not included in the 2004 deal and is not part of NBC Universal.

Jeff Zucker was named president and CEO of NBC Universal on February 6, 2007, replacing Bob Wright, who remains chairman of NBC Universal and vice chairman of General Electric. Zucker previously served as chief executive of the company’s television operations. The logo of NBC Universal is a combination of the NBC peacock logo and the Universal Studios globe and text (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nbc_universal).

Jeff Zucker currently is:

Producer of The Today Show
President of NBC Entertainment
President of NBC Entertainment’s News & Cable Group
President of NBC Television Group
Chief Executive Officer of NBC
President & CEO of NBC Universal

In 2007 he was diagnosed with colon cancer, but it continuing to be the president of the preciously stated.

I have seen media trees in the past of Viacom, and other larger companies, but never something as big as this! This company is huge, and is responsible for so much of what we intake from the media. Very interesting if I don’t say myself, and what’s so interesting about this company is that it is relatively young (the ownership and mergers).

Branding

jshalika — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:00:25 +0000

It’s a bit difficult to know where to begin about branding. It’s a complex topic that has completely consumed our society in many different ways. To get a proper insight, I like to think about what I do in an average day, and what I see. Whether it involves walking to class, driving my car, or watching t.v, the honest truth is that advertising/branding is everywhere! The logo on a every piece of clothing, the billboard on the highway, the emblem on a car, the giant decal on the truck driving by you, and the thousands of commercials that you are forced to watch are all directly defining our exposure to both advertising and branding. A brand is the image that a company wants to convey on the public, also considered an identity. It’s that logo that someone thinks of after watching a commercial. The world of branding isn’t a friendly one. Surprisingly only a handful of logos in comparison to the millions that are in existence are actually successful. It might sound odd, but I will explain. Every company usually has an identity that labels their company to society. Although they have a brand, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has successfully spoken itself to the world. It needs to “brand” itself on one’s brain in order for it to be effective. When someone needs to buy a shirt, the Polo logo is what someone remembers because of the commercial, or logo that attracts the person over other brands.

Has branding had an impact on my life? Of course! I’m using my macBook pro, with a mac monitor, accompanied with an IPod touch. So branding definitely does work. I know the type of clothing I wear, the shoes I buy, the technology I prefer, and the brand of food I like to cook with. Everything we spend money on involves some sort of branding to give us the comfort of taking out the green stuff, or the plastic card and making the purchase.

Branding without a doubt has its place in our society. To be honest, I think it is at the top of the consumer market being that it is the sole reason for why we buy buy buy. The interesting fact is that the advertising industry spends an obscene amount of money as well to get their messages out to the public. To spend 400 billion dollars is incredible to get a slogan, or picture our to the market, but this goes along with what I said before. Comfort is what causes us to buy. It is a vast ocean of advertisers that promote every single item on the shelf in a store. For example, in the article “When a Black Tee Shirt Is More than a Black Tee Shirt: Why Brands Aren’t Losing Their Luster” they talk about apple and it’s success. The symbolism with the head phones, and the image that has been portrayed, Before we knew it, almost everyone owned an Ipod showing the success of of their campaign. It’s been stories like this that have been the reason for companies making the impressions that they have. (If this includes rebranding themselves, a company will do that to reidentify themselves with the public)

Branding in my opinion is the trademark of our consumer market and will directly impact the spending of money for as long as they keep imprinting their logos onto the minds of everyone in…
the world?

The wonderful boob tube and the many ways it has impacted society and myself

jshalika — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:21:56 +0000

In my opinion, the television is a device created to transmit many different types of messages to the world. It has grown into a form of addiction, a way for families to “bond” and best of all, an ultimate form of education. It’s an interesting concept, but when applying my definition to my own life, it’s actually very true. I can name at least three shows that are a necessity for myself to watch everyday devoting about two hours out of my day. In addition, most of those shows are watched with my brother or family (when I’m home) as a relationship builder laughing at what some might consider as mindless garbage (but I love it). If family guy did not exist, and video games were never invented, those hours spent interacting with the TV would never exist, and honestly I’m not sure what I would do; maybe play outside?. In all honesty, I’m not sure, but it absolutely has a huge impact on my life. Some of my favorite channels are the History Channel, Science Channel, Discovery, and the Military Channel as well taking the educational aspect into consideration. I’ve read that most immigrants learn to speak English through the thousands of TV shows aired daily. Now I might not have learned English (although Barney and Sesame Street probably did a number on me), I have learned most of my handyman capabilities, history, and many interesting facts that I would normally never have found out in the first place.

As touched upon earlier, I am without a doubt very curious what my life would be without the TV. Off the top of my head, I can definitely see my self being much more active than I currently am. When I was younger, I maybe watched an hour a day due to me always being outside, with friends, or playing sports. Nowadays, I either watch one of “my programs” or take the X Box out for a spin.

My younger brother is apart of the new age of technology involving the TV. It seems as if he would be miserable without a television. Most of his day (after school and homework) consists of at least four hours of Call Of Duty. This of course does not include the many hours spent on watching the boob tube regardless with what he is watching. Overall, I am a bit nervous for what the future has in store. It seems whether if TV or videogames continue to thrive and grow, kids will either stop playing sports all together or play over 6 hours of TV in one sitting.

Overall, the drive for humans to want more from the TV industry will never cease to exist. Whether it’s comedy, history, reality, etc, in the end, the networks are in a constant battle to feed society of their infinite hunger. Regardless, the economics of TV will ultimately end up competing with the Internet being the new media of choice. Who knows, maybe one day Google and Yahoo will have their own TV network to further separate us from our old fashioned way of playing ball or dare I say… Reading a good ol’ book…

Media Consumption

jshalika — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:03:12 +0000

Nowadays, it seems like the vast sea of media is endless. There are so many different types of media that when thinking about my consumption, I have barely scratched the surface. Being that I am a Design and Interactve Media Concentration, I am surrounded by almost every form of modern media on a daily basis. To start off, I have my computer and internet (no kidding..). My life revolves around these two forms of media particularly for many reasons. Number one, computer graphic design and web design wouldn’t really make much sense without it. Secondly, I am always on the Internet. Although I am not much of a “blogger”, I am usually playing games, checking mail, reading news doing homework, or just designing, so when you add all that together, it’s probably around 6-7 hours a day. When thinking about how much I’ve paid, there is much reason for debate. For a designer, spending large sums of money on equipment is essential for my work; after all, you get what you pay for. Overall, I’ve probably spend about $7,500 on everything, and in all honesty, it’s definitely not a steal, but I assure you that it was worth it. On top of the computer, there is the wonderful invention of the television. The television has evolved into another necessity for American life; including mine. I watch on average about three hours a day. It’s a source of advertisement, news, comedy, and a connection to the international world. For what it’s worth, I believe that I got a perfect deal minus the monthly charges for service. On average, it costs about $30 a month, which can be pricey (especially when adding channels and packaes).

“Economic Outlook” on media

jshalika — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:48:47 +0000

Comics, like many other industries are being put out of business from our capability to search the web rather that reading a paper to get our source of news. In my eventual field of work, we are having the same issues. For simple publication design, countless websites like Vista Print allow anyone to design every bit of stationary and business related designs costing them nothing out of pocket. Companies like this take the competition out of the market while leaving the educated designers on the side of the road as we suffer to make money. Don’t get me wrong, the Internet is the absolute future of our industry, and the physical graphic design of publication arts seems to be a dying breed. The online world of communication arts seems to be the only door open, which is kicking many designers out of the market allowing for newer and younger designers (with web design knowledge) to thrive. Unfortunately just as we have a possible chance at survival, we are again stuck in quite the predicament. There are countless free web design sites that people don’t even have to pay for domain names! I could go on and on about this, but in all due respect, we will never have a solid understanding due to it’s never ending cycles of evolution.
In the article “Facebook to Allow Unique User URLs” seems to be overlooked as an issue being that it has now consumed our society with it’s 200 million users. To me, it seems as another catalyst for our society having a false sense of identification. The online world has given people the ability to have an online persona that can be displayed whichever way the user wants. This can be an issue, being that America now can view Facebook, a social networking site as an acceptable place to advertise your business without being criticized for it. In the past, I’m sure this would seem to be unprofessional and downright strange, but as Rafe Needleman states, “It gives Facebook more of a power position as a provider not just of a social network, but of identity that can be used on other sites as well,” only proving the ability that Facebook has when giving the world free advertising space.
The reality is that who knows what lies ahead of me. I’m currently a student of design, all kinds of design. Yes I love it, and have a deep passion for it, but also if for a second the horse blinders come on, and I don’t learn all types of media in the design world, I will be left crippled. It’s evident to see that all media is getting affected from the economy, and the convenience of the online world and what it has to offer; so to stay ahead of the game seems to be the only solution. In “Summer Box Office Isn’t Booming,” they talk about movie ticket sales being down. Understandably this is due to the economy, but in realty it could be directly related to the thousands of websites allowing people to upload illegally taped copies of all the movies currently showing. Again, another Internet related problem that seems to be putting a strain on something.
Don’t get me wrong, I know I sound like I hate the Internet, but I’m just like most of our society, I depend on it. I love the vast and endless parameters of what it has to offer, but listening to the segments of the Market place show got my gears turning, and allowed me to have a second take on it’s economic outlook on Media.

Charlie Chaplin’s Parody “Modern Times”

jshalika — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:57:00 +0000

This is one of my favorite Charlie Chaplin clips. “Modern Times” was a very funny take on the overuse of technology except made in 1936, and is unbelievably true! Charlie was a lab rat for a new experiment being tested for approval. It seemed to be a device that would feed and wipe your mouth after every bite. The second part of the production was about technology and how it has dehumanized our society. He was working a conveyor belt using wrenches to tighten bolts. His job leads him to an eventual breakdown symbolizing very much what we are dealing with today.
As a society, we are 100% dependant on technology. Our need for new invention and innovation seems to never end. Actually, now that I think about it, if America had a machine that would feed us, it might actually be a top seller! But even though we laugh watching Charlie Chaplin make a fool of himself, he still has an accurate perspective of our dependency to devices to take physical labor out of the task. The next part where Charlie is seen as a man struggling to survive yet even compete with the industrialized world. This directly relates to our society in many ways. We are facing a tough job market in our depleting economy, and this movie seems to illustrate the difficulties of the Great Depression. The “Modern” condition is depicted very accurately in this production. We are geared around technology that in my opinion is definitely not benefiting our lives. With technology seeming to make our lives operate faster and more wreck-less (as shown on with the conveyor belt), we are all diseased with this condition that now since our lives are so dependant on technology, it seems impossible to become cured. Maybe we can attempt to put inventing on hold to save some integrity with today’s youth, (like the snuggie) but until then, we will watch a downward spiral of consumerism and addiction to anything that makes our lives easier at all costs. Without cell phones, the internet, computers, the fastest cars, it seems as if our world would stop spinning. We have become small gears of a continuously evolving machine that if one person doesn’t seem to move at the speed needed by our society, our machine can physically shut down.

Media Industry Art & Economics

jshalika — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:07:05 +0000

When I read the course description for this course, I immediately became interested in what it has to offer. To relate art in the modern world with a business twist is very important. Our economy has an important impact on what our future has in store for us. To learn how to understand and comprehend the “micro” and “macro” aspects of art will be definitely beneficial to my future. My ultimate goal is to be a freelance graphic, web, and publication designer.

I am a Communication Arts Major and concentrating in Design and Interactive Media.