Advice.

Overall, this has been a good experience. I learned a lot of new skills, like creating websites, using advanced powerpoint skills and etc. Just do your homework everytime you are given and review the tutorials that Ms. Belisle puts up. They are really helpful! Good luck, everyone!

Favorite Websites

Looking at all of the cool websites that we did, my favorites are Andrea's, Morgan's and Arielle's.

Andrea's Website: It's just very original. I love the background, the font and the overall theme. I think the black and white colors really work well with the content. The photos are nice too!
Morgan's Website: I love the homepage and the background that all her pages have. Looking at the cute converse shoes, it makes me want to wear and collect them as a hobby or something. I also like the design of the navigation bar.
Arielle's Website: I love jazz, too! I really appreciate her love for jazz, and that she showed it very well in her webpage. I also like it that the personal music website is linked.

Website

Please visit my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~mtha. Making a website on my own was not that hard as I expected, probably for the main reason that I used Microsoft Expression Web instead of just handcoding. Now, that would have been extremely hard if it's handcoding. I think I'm most proud of my homepage. I spent a lot of time on it since it was my first page and I was trying out new stuff for the first time. It has my background information, my favorites/interests and basic information and links about my country Burma. For changes, I would have added more pictures and information about my social life at Trinity on the webpage Trintiy Experience. But then, I have some pictures of APO events at Trinty, so I guess they are enough. My biggest technical challenge was putting in pictures for the galleries. Not only did I have to resize them and make them to be thumbnails, but also I had to create tables in a way that they all look organized. Making tables and creating thumbnails took up a lot of time, too. My biggest design challenge was making the tabs on the top of every webpages. I used Adobe Photoshop to do that. In addition, my Photoshop was expiring, so it was a bit of a rush. Also, getting everything, like the colors, borders, and fonts aligned with the overall theme took time.
I will show my site to my friends and even family members because it is addressed to them basically. And I'm sure I will make another website for another class in the future because it can be a great way to showcase your portfolio or other projects. Websites are easy to follow and very accessible, and also you can show off your utmost creativity!

Computer Hardware

Last thursday, when Larry Hechler visited us and talked about computer hardwares, I learned some new things I should know. Probably the most important thing is the hardware backup. He said that 'the cloud' is where the information is stored and backed up; it is not physically attached to the computer itself, instead it is 'somewhere in the clouds'. Mr. Hechler emphasized the sad truth that people tend to forget to back their computers, so if they lose the data unexpectedly because the hardware dies, then the memories and everything inside are gone forever. Just gone. He ended his lecture on this depressing note, but I know this is something we need to be very careful of. Data back-up needs to be taken care of as soon as possible! In addition to that, I learned some things about the nature of laptop battery life. It's bad to recharge the battery after letting it off for like 15, 20 minutes. You either keep charging the battery or you let it use all of the energy at once before you recharge it all over again.

PowerPoint Presentations

I chose radio hosting as my area of interest for my Communication major, and I presented about it with a slide show. In the presentation, I included my experience at KRTU because it is the reason that I've started considering it as an area of interest in study. Also, I learned about the new advances in the radio world and how it is producing new career opportunities for those who are interested in it. I added the radio-personality icon, Howard Stern, to give as an inspiration because he is such an important person in the radio realm. I guess the thing I could have improved is the technical part. I could have made it more exciting with lively graphics and maybe music because it's all about the radio.
As for my favorite slide shows, I would say Katie's and Vedanti's. Katie's presentation is about sushi. The pictures looked all so yummy, and the effects really worked well on them. Including the recipes for different types of sushi was quite intriguing. Another one is Vedanti's presentation about a strange case in neuroscience history. It was interesting and fascinating how a person could survive strangely after that much of a trauma. The graphics and the intro music worked well with the content, with all their spookiness.

Photo that Lies

"...[M]ost studies approach photo manipulation as a breach of a singular code of ethics reflecting the traditional norms of journalistic objectivity.....greater protection of the essential shared values of journalists: accuracy, balance, relevance, and completeness. Technology has been viewed as the culprit......"
Photo manipulation is like a security breach, but a breach of ethics and integrity that has been breaking down the norms of journalism. Nowadays, as online journalism and magazines become prevalent, photo editing and manipulation have come down to as part of the norm for most people.There is less "accuracy, balance, relevance, and completeness" than the old times. You are used to seeing perfect-looking people on billboards on the streets and in magazines too where models look glistening in lipstick advertisements. The article discusses about how the newsrooms have changed in terms of values and norms in photojournalism. Their authenticity and ethics somehow become controversial. Also, it suggests that the "decision to manipulate a photo or to violate the norms in general" has come down to the fact that it is not an individual effort, but rather a group/organization effort, "making an error in judgement", and letting the individuals to take part in it.

Lowrey, Wilson. "Normative Conflict in the Newsroom: The Case of Digital Photo Manipulation."

Journal of Mass Media Ethics; 2003, Vol. 18 Issue 2, p123, 20p.

I chose my own picture because I wanted it to be more personal, and I think it's just more fun to play around with own pictures and laugh about it. This picture was taken at a Google office in New York City during spring break. This is an example of violating certain ethics and norms from the article above, but it is quite subjunctive and not obvious if you are not any of the people in the picture. I totally got rid of the Google sign and placed Yahoo! instead. I showed this to my friend who is one of the people in the picture. He said that people from Google will be really mad when they see this. What's worse, Yahoo! is one of Google's main rivals, so there could be real friction if our tour guides (who are Trinity alumni workin in Google) find out. Another fakery is the lady who appears to be sitting down behind the sign. I put her there because it helped me fill the space and it is interesting that she is also a Trinty alum but who works in MTV. So I'm hoping this to be controversial for the sake of this assignment about photo fakery, not because I want it to be. To answer the question, the manipulation is pretty harmful because it violates some ethics of being true and accurate.

Blog about Chris Nolan's Search Engines

Last Thursday, Chris Nolan, an assistant university librarian, came to our class and enlightened us about the nature of search engines, like Google. The new and interesting thing I found out was that Google changed its algorithm when certain websites that show up on the first page are not as professional or reliable. According to Chris Nolan, Google demoted ehow.com because the information contained was not necessarily reliable or trustworthy. I guess the most shocking thing that he told was the Martin Luther King website. It shows the lack of explicit censorship for profanity, obscenity and racist content in some radical websites, therefore it is extremely unconventional.