Arranged Delirium

I’ve been using Gmail since it was a private beta. It’s basically been my most heavily used email account aside from my college account. In those early days of Gmail there were a number of folks ranting about privacy concerns since Gmail effectively maintains an index of all your messages. I never really cared too much because I don’t really conduct a lot of private discourse via email and I didn’t think there was anything there that I cared about others accessing.

I’ve been annoyed though by Google Buzz. In part, I was annoyed because I didn’t even know about it - these “social features” were simply added to my Gmail account. One reason I didn’t know about though, is because I never check my Gmail account via a web browser - I just use a separate email client because I have multiple accounts I’m checking all the time and its easier to do in one place. My major criticism is with the Buzz features that are enabled by default. I think these significantly impinge upon my privacy, and I think it should be my choice to enter into the Buzz. In essence, before you could change your settings settings, someone could see the people you most frequently email (or chat with). I know I don’t really have any privacy on Facebook, but I’ve always thought of my email as relatively private. Secondly (and an annoyance more than a privacy concern), the overall noise generated by this tool is too great and simply creates more unnecessary information to cull through. Its useless like Twitter.

In Google’s defense, they have made some immediate changes - and fast. But I expect such amateur behavior from Facebook - not from Google. Google is smart enough to have known better before implementing. Here’s a decent article from Silicon Alley Insider that has been following the story as it develops. Here’s a link to an update that covers the changes Google has made. The timeline toward the ned is helpful in learning how the story developed.

So am I abandoning all Google services? No - there are still many Google tools that work for me. Nonetheless, Buzz makes my Gmail account one more thing that I need to worry about in terms of maintenance. So, Goodbye Gmail. I didn’t really need you anyway…

As I continue to reflect on our computer game course from last month, I’ve also continued to work a bit with GameSalad a tool designed to help you develop iPhone games, without taking the time to program them exclusively with Objective-C. Conveniently, Creative Mac has recently published a short review.

In some ways, it similar to AppMakr and it’s ilk of programming assistants, but GameSalad is much more robust. Most of the tools like AppMakr, simply coalesce RSS feeds into one convenient tool and let you change up some text and add some images. I could easily make a SamFee app for the iPhone with AppMakr, but then again, why? GameSalad on the other hand, would actually let me make a decent game. Now, if I only had a creative idea…

As a follow up to my last post which referenced the V Magazine size issue, here is a link to a recent interview with Crystal Renn (the plus-size model featured) which ran recently in the New YorkTimes. If you continue on and search a bit online, you’ll find a good amount of interesting commentary regarding the issue of body image and how it is represented to us via media.

I think we’re finally starting to see some of the lash-back against some of the more extreme photo editing that was so prevalent during the mid-2000’s. You know what I mean: the cover or story images that looked like some kind of 3D game characters rather than photos of real people. The New York Time ran a story relatively recently entitled Smile and Say ‘No Photoshop’ - if you can’t access it, do a search and you can get around the NYT required registration. In many ways, there’s nothing new to this - photographers have been re-touching images for decades - but digital technology has made this easier, faster, and more pervasive. And given the prevalence of our media immersion in the modern era, I’d say that makes things a bit different than it was a few decades ago. Check out the comments form the article too, as I think it helps us understand how many different ways there are of thinking about this. It’s a good discussion topic for class!

And as a continuation of the discussion regarding body image, take a look at these comparison shots from models.com and V Magazine’s Size Issue. You can find a ton of information on this story with a quick search online…

For those of you transitioning from old HTML knowledge to our work with XHTML in ITL 370 , you may find this Quick Primer on XHTML Markup to be a handy quick reference for translating what you already know into what we’ll be working with this term. Actually, I think its likely useful for folks learning it the first time too - at least as a reminder of some of the materials we’re going through here at the beginning of class…