I am sure that we all were either excited or upset that Barrack Obama became our new president of the United States. Personally, I was ecstatic! Unfortunately, I was not able to watch his acceptance speech. I did, however, find his speech from the Democratic National Convention. It’s a really great speech and i highly recommend you watch it.

We’ve learned these four steps to embedding.

1) Type in text and check it.

2) Publish text and check it.

3) Edit it again, go into code mode (HTML) and paste in your code.

4) Immediately push the save button (it republishes it).

In class, we are learning how to embed a Voicethread into our blog. Below is a Voicethread project that someone else made, but I embedded it into my post.

I love this video. Until now, my day was not what you’d call a happy day. It started out horrific. But this video really picked me up and made me laugh! I guess you could even insert the slang word for laugh out loud. So i will: LOL! Ready for a pick me up? Watch this video!

Step 1: First, you must type in all your text for you post before you even think about embedding your video or your multimedia.

Step 2: You must spellcheck, look it over, etc. then hit publish.

Step 3: Next, you will go copy the embed code for Vuvox.com slide show/movie. You will switch to the HTML mode and paste it in. Then hit save (which is really publishing it).

(below is a video of wartime in the Philippians).

…THAT THE WORLD IS FLAT???

 (click on this image to see it full-size)

I’m just kidding. The world really isn’t flat. You aren’t going to fall off the earth if you go boating out in the ocean. Please don’t take me seriously. However, I’m not totally pulling your leg. The world, in a way, really is flat. What I mean by this is that any obstacle one may be faced with is easier to overcome now. Looking at today’s technology, when faced with a problem, one can simply look it up on the Internet. The Internet has such a vast supply of information and having access to it is becoming more and more common in this day and age. Computers and Internet are, in a way, taking over our daily lives. We rely on them so much that we tend to forget to use our brains to solve our everyday problems. We just turn right to the computer. This video will give you a good idea as to what I’m talking about. (Karl Fisch created this video. Check out his incredible website : Karl Fisch)This new age of Internet and computer access is also hurting this generation’s future and the futures of  upcoming generations. Just take a look. The information can shock you.

The image above isn’t just for pretty decoration. It has a reason. As you can see, everything on that image is stated right from the video above. As you noticed, there is one statement on that image that  blows your mind. Do you see the one that says “Computers that exceed the computation ability of the human brain”? Wow. That is one deep statement to retain. In 2013, it is estimated that there will be a computer that can exceed the computation capability of the human brain. That means that computers will be able to compute things better than we can! What does that mean for our future? Does this mean that there will be no need for mathematical study? I mean, if computers can compute better than we can,  why is there a need for humans to do it? Does this mean that humans will loose their math and computation skills?….to a computer? This is something that can be good, but it is mostly very hurtful!

Watching this video for the first time really shocked me. I looked at some of the statistics and my jaw seriously almost dropped to the floor. The video told me that the Top 10 jobs that will be in demand in 2010 didn’t even exist in 2004. Does that mean that my dream of working in the science field will be diminished? I mean, if jobs that are in demand in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004, does that mean that the jobs in 2004 won’t exist after 2010? Will the world move on and forget about the old jobs? I might have to change my career dreams so that they will become relevant to the new day and age. I’m very afraid about the future. It’s scary knowing that everything is relying on technology now. But on the other hand, technology is very good. I always knew that technology would increase as the years increased, but I never thought it would get to this level. When I watched the Jetsons, I thought a talking robot maid was out of the question. But now, seeing how humans interact with computers, I’m almost convinced I will see something like this in the near future. How do you feel about this? Is this change a bad thing? Will it ruin our future? Or do you believe it will help us? Our world really is flat. Now do you understand?

Flex Your Fotos with FotoFlexer!

If you read my post about Picnik.com you would’ve learned about all the great things it can do to edit your photos. It is a great piece of webware, don’t get me wrong. But I then stumbled across another great photo editing piece of webware. It’s called FotoFlexer (check it out at fotoflexer.com). FotoFlexer gives the photo editors out there even more options to alter their photos than Picnik does. I love Picnik but I especially love FotoFlexer.

FotoFlexer has so many different options. When I first checked out the website, I was welcomed and given a couple of demos so I could get a lesson on the webware before I used it. I was very impressed about how many different options I was given. Get this, I can take one of my very own photos and recolor hair, crop out things I don’t like in a very advanced way, and I can even add animated objects to my photos. When I went into FotoFlexer to flex my own photos for the first time, I was shocked at how I could change my picture to look like a sketch drawing. It was like I was an actual artists, but I only did it with a few clicks. If you were looking to find a great way to cheer someone up, I would consider distorting your photos. It is quite comical. Here are some examples I have created in FotoFlexer.

This photo before was a normal photograph of a family hanging out at the beach. But when I took it into FotoFlexer, I was able to distort their faces and bodies to look like anything I wanted them to. I went into the distort tab and disorted them in different shapes. It’s a great way to create caricatures, plus, it’s a good way to make someone laugh!

In this photo, I was able to color the woman’s hair darker. It used to be a chestnut brown, but using the Smart Recolor option, I could choose the areas I wanted to change color! I was also able to insert text. I could insert any kind of text I wanted! This option allows you to express your feelings about a picture through words. I loved how I could make my photo look believable and not so silly like my last example.

This piece of webware can greatly help one who wants to change their pictures up. Although, it could also improve in some areas. I would love to see this piece of webware have a link that could also create power points. That way, you could alter your photos, make them your own, then go ahead and move them right into a PowerPoint. I think the company of FotoFlexer would get a lot more viewers and members if it created an option like this. This would impress me even more. But that is just my opinion. Many others are talking about FotoFlexer. If you would like to check out what others are saying about FotoFlexer.com check out this link (FotoFlexer Reviews).

There are so many different ways you can make your photos look different with FotoFlexer.com. I was so impressed with this application and how it was set up. I give it a double thumbs up and I highly recommend it to others all over the world. Check out this piece of webware and jump into the experience!

I’m sure all of you out there are addicted in some way to the Internet; obviously since your eyes are glued to your computer screen right now. And I am sure all of you out there that are addicted to the Internet in some way take for granted all the ways that the Internet actually works. Taking a look at  Web 1.0, the ex “cool” version of the web, and the newer even “cooler” version of the web, we can find many differences that will definitely blow your mind.

Web 1.0

1994: the Begining of a virtual world called the Internet. Something new and exciting, something every kid wants to have because it’s SO cool. This Internet craze spanned about 10 years, up to the year 2004. By this time everyone who was anyone had a computer and it wasn’t so cool anymore. All you could do was read other peoples web pages and you couldn’t make your own. You had to have a code that could be pages long, and who wants to memorize that? I know I wouldn’t. Even if you did want to create your own page on the Internet, you had to purchase software which was usually very expensive. So, the people who couldn’t purchace this fancy software were stuck staring at the screen baring the name “consumer”. Someone who couldn’t do anything but read, consume and process what others wrote. Pretty much, during this time of the Internet, there was little or no interactivity. But lo and behold, a new era of the web was created so those consumers could now finally become “producers”.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0. What we live in now. The ability to click and create anything you could possibly imagine on the Internet. And what is really cool is that we no longer need that spiffy old software to function. We now can use something called webware (you can find examples of this at webware.com). These are usually programs or applications that are free and allow anyone to do anything. Some examples of these are: splashup.com and animoto.com. Web 2.0 is so cool that you can even collaberate with others over the computer! How awesome is that? You can interact over the computer using voicethread and GoogleDocs. This whole era of the Internet is expanding so that we all can publish, share and comment with eachother anywhere you are. And if that’s not cool, I don’t know what is.

Check out this video which explains all the cool features of this new internet era!
My Montage 9/5/08