I’ve been keeping my eye for the past few weeks on the new Facebook polls. They have been interesting at best, and utterly ridiculous at worst. However, the latest one was a little different:
“Who do you look up to the most?” (CHOICES: Politicians, athletes, businesspeople, artists, or scientists)
I think part of what makes it interesting is how abstract the question is in relation to former questions. (i.e. “boxers or briefs?” “Is global warming a concern?” “What’s your favorite burger joint?”) What do they mean by “look up to”? Admiration? Respect? …

On Monday, we were all discussing Ashley’s idea of creating a Facebook page for the class. Many ideas were thrown out (see? there’s that phrase again) and I thought I’d recap a couple. These are more thematic than technical, but I think this Facebook thing has huge potential.

Page rather than group, because we want flexibility of content.
This will serve as an online community for the members of this class. Even after the class is over, we can stay in touch and continue to exchange ideas and engage in discussions.
Even …

I think I can finally connect a few thoughts I was having last Thursday.
Web 2.0 is all about connections between people and interaction in the online environment. It involves creation of new content in addition to simple acquisition of available information. But what about the cabinet in the short story we read? It automatically knows what Bishop wants. Right now we input information into a computer and use it to find what we want. The computer does the work for us, but we still have to tell it what we …

I can often be overheard declaring my passionate love for rack focus shots. (Why yes, I am a film geek.) But it wasn’t until recently that I really asked myself why. For those of you reading who may not know exactly what a rack focus shot is, I’ll explain it briefly. It’s basically a shot in which the camera focus shifts from one plane of the frame to another (i.e. foreground to background).

(images found here)
If you think about it, a rack focus actually imitates our natural perception of perspective in …