Memes and Viral Videos

by Billy Thacker

Introduction

Memes are culturally transmitted information, usually of a humorous nature, spread over the internet. Internet memes are usually based on existing media and are simple or relatable enough to have mass appeal. For a meme to succeed, it must have the ability to easily be used and altered by the public so it can still remain fresh when  filtered through chat rooms, blogs, social networking sites, and image boards.

The term “meme” first appeared in 1976 within the biological text, The Selfish Game. In the book, Evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins presents the gene as a unit of biological information that undergoes natural selection. He concludes that all self-replicating information also undergoes the pressures of selection. Dawson labels this social unit of information “meme” from the Greek term for something imitated, “mimema”.

Advice Animals/ Image Macros

Image Macros are the simplest vehicle for memes as they are characterized by a simple, exploitable image that one can simply overlay with text. These images depict an archetypal stock character or scene that has certain traits that are highlighted through captioned text. A popular image macro is “advice dog” which depicts a cute dog against a rainbow pinwheel background but is paired with comically horrible advice. This meme has spawned several other ‘advice animals’

 

List of Popular Advice Animals:

• Courage Wolf   – a wolf that gives advice to achieve      glory
• Philosoraptor  – a Velociraptor that      brings to light perplexing contradictions in life.
• Socially Awkward Penguin– A Penguin that expresses relatable awkward moments
• Rich Raven – a raven with seemingly unlimited wealth

4chan

4chan is an English language image sharing site that generates many memes before they are exported to the rest of the internet. The website consists 56 image boards that are geared to a variety of interest such as video games, animation, comic books, and pop culture. 4chan.org was modeled off the Japanese site 2chan and launched in 2003. While the site has many image boards the /b/ (random) page is the most popular garnering 30% of total traffic to the website.  The page feature many different meme content but also includes pornographic and gore images. 4chan is also a well-known haven for members of Anonymous, an online collective of hackers who have made attacks on various government, corporate, and religious groups.

Viral Videos

Similar to image macro memes, viral videos are content gains popularity on the internet through word of mouth traffic on popular video sharing sites like YouTube, College Humor, Daily Motion.  These websites have elliminated the need for videos to be passed around solely from user to user.



The topic of viral videos brings up various legal implications. Many popular videos that are not made completely of user generated content violate copyright laws and are taken down by content providers such as Viacom and Sony. Sometimes, copyrighted material is allowed under fair use and fair dealing doctrines or licenses. In fear of major legal action, YouTube has made steps to appease content owners by placing ads on the sides of copy written videos and links to iTunes and amazon music for videos that use copy written music.


As viral videos have become more influential in popular culture, the entertainment industry has attempted to harness their marketing power. Several media companies such as CBS and Cartoon Network have uploaded official clips from their programing onto YouTube to gain attention and also traffic on their respective websites. Recently, marketers have sought to make their advertisements possess a viral quality by adopting the conventions of short, relatable humor and a user generated feeling. The idea is for the viewer be entertained without knowing they are being marketed to.

 

Well Designed Websites

By billy thacker

Food Sense

The food sense website uses effective layout. All of the site’s features are visible and the viewer does not need to scroll down very far to see all the content. The page does not have glaring advertisements or other distracting factors. The page is simply designed because all of the elements line up without appearing too boxy and appear clean against the white background. Also, the thumbnails on the left side of the page are both illustrative and attractive. The webpage uses an attractive central image which smoothly transitions from one picture to the next.

HBO

 The HBO website uses flash programing in a fun and non-overwhelming way. One can scroll through the shows and change the central graphic by navigating through the bottom menu. All of the sites features are available to the user without him or her needing to scroll down. Less important features are placed at the top and bottom of the page but still do not fade from the user’s awareness.

Hungarian Wine Society

  This Website has a strong color scheme that is unified within the images and text. It uses several different fonts but still does not overwhelm the user. The scrolling shopping cart on the side is distracting and annoying, though.

 

Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com

By: Billy Thacker

Jeff Bezos is the founder, president, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and chairman of amazon.com

Amazon Logo

Background

Bezos presenting Amazon Kindle

Jeffery Bezos showed an interest in science and engineering during his youth and took classes at the University of Florida during high school. Later, he studied at Princeton University and earned a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. After graduation, he worked on Wall Street and was eventually was employed by Bankers Trust and D.E. Shaw & Co. In 1995, he opened Amazon.com which has become the largest online retail store and made Bezos a Billionaire. In 1999, he was awarded the Time Magazine Person of the Year Award.

Expansion of Amazon.com
On July 16^th, 1995, Bezos opened Amazon.com (at this point, only selling books) and, by September, the website took in sales of over $20,000 a week. The website gain popularity through the innovations of customer reviews, one click shopping, and email order verification. In 1997, the company went public and soon became a major competitor with the traditional booksellers, Borders and Barnes and Noble.

Bezos’ business strategy is based on the principle of “increasing the market share” as quickly as possible and stressing “The Six Core Values”.

• Customer obsession
• Ownership
• Bias for action
• Frugality
• High hiring bar and innovation

Amazon quickly transitioned from exclusively selling books to selling music, electronics, video, and more. In 2002, they formed a clothing department by creating partnerships with major retailers such as the Gap. By 2006, the company boasted sales of over 10.7 billion a year.

New Prospects

2011 Amazon Kindle DX

In 2007, Bezos introduced a handheld e-reading device called the Kindle. Unlike other portable devices, the Kindle is not back lit and uses “E Ink” technology as not to strain the customer’s eyes when reading text over an extended period of time. The device accommodates adjustable text size and wireless internet connectivity so the user can download and store titles. In the related YouTube clip, Bezos explains how the Kindle only plays a small part in his vision of a new reading experience. He institutes a structure in which Amazon will provide content that can be read across a myriad of platforms including cell phones, laptops, tablet computers, and the Kindle to cater to the consumer’s active life.

When introduced, the Kindle took hold of 95 percent of the market for E-books. Now, Kindle faces competition from the iPad and Nook platforms. Bezos responded by competitively cutting the price and adding features such as 3G mobile technology, faster processers, and longer battery life.

Recently, Amazon signed a deal with the Wylie Agengy which gave Amazon direct rights to certain work by their represented authors. This deal bypasses the role of publishers and allows books to be sold and a much lower price. While many argue that this deal undercuts royalty rights for authors, publishers, and copyright holders,
Bezos argues that E-books and E-readers have revitalized the literature industry and the increase in literature sales will compensate.

Amazon.com Controversies

Differential Pricing
In 2000, Amazon was accused of price discrimination when customers received different prices based on the presence of cookies that indicated how frequently they visited the site. Frequent customers received lower prices once they deleted cookies which showed Amazon’s perusal of new customers. Bezos apologized for
the controversy, reimbursed customers, and stated that Amazon would “never… test prices based on customer demographics”.

Sales Tax
Amazon has received criticism for having an advantage over local book and goods sellers by not collecting sales tax from customers who live in territories in which Amazon does not have a physical presence and consequently offering lower prices.

Kindle Remote Content Removal
In 2009, Amazon deleted certain titles violating US copyright law from costumer’s kindles without notification and permission from the customers. The E-books were originally sold by an Australian Publisher (a region in which the titles had fallen into public domain).  However, when the titles were electronically sold in America, the regional copyright did not extend, and had to be taken down. The customers eventually received a rebate but the event brings up the question of if companies can revoke digital material.

Also, Amazon has been known to remove ‘inappropriate’ texts from user’s Kindles. While this decision is usually justified, there have been instances where arguably appropriate texts have been taken away only to be reinstated.

 

Web Design Article Summery

By: Billy Thacker

10 Principles of Effective Web Design: (Friedman Article)

1. Don’t Make the User Think: Web use should be intuitive. The more questions a user has about accomplishing simple tasks, the more likely they will go to another web page for answers. It is the task of the web designer to make the pages as comprehendible as possible.
2. Don’t Squander the User’s Patience: Ideally, a designer should make the content as accessible as possible without a sign in feature. If it is necessary, it should be as easy as possible because a user
   may not want to fill out long forms to try a service they do don’t know about.
3. Manage to Focus the User’s Attention: edges, patterns, and motion are ways of guiding the users’ attention to what is most important in a page.
4. Strive for Feature Exposure: large buttons and easy step outlines can make features more available to the user.
5. Make Use of Effective Writing: large sections of text without bold or italic sections will be ignored. Simple language, short phrases, and “scan-able layout” can retain user’s attention.
6. Strive for Simplicity: simplicity is the key in keeping the user’s attention.
7. Don’t be Afraid of White Space: negative space can allow the viewer to pick out important information or features.
8. Communicate effectively with “Visible Language”: Provide the user with a clear conceptual structure to the text.  Convey the most information with minimum text.  Reduce the amount of fonts and point sizes on a website to three.
9. Conventions are our Friends: design a website along with the user’s expectation of features like a search bar, menu, and other different tools.
10. Test Early Test Often: usability test always yield data that will help one improve a page. A larger test group is always better.

Principles of Beautiful Web Design: (Beaird Text)

• Usability for the viewer of a webpage is just as important as attractive design.
• Each webpage within a website should have the same visual elements as not to confuse the user.
•  The logo of a website is important to institute individuality.
• One should place the most important information on the top of a page and design the page so the user does not need to scroll down very far.
• The grid theory is a way of dividing a webpage into a visually pleasing structure using ratios.
• One should incorporate symmetry and asymmetry in a design.
• Negative space and proximity of visual objects are important in guiding and keeping the user’s attention.
• Most websites use the convention of having the navigation bar on the left side of the page and the advertisements on the right side of the page.

Badly designed website:
http://failblog.org/

This website is badly designed because it has a large amount of advertisements that are often indistinguishable from the content. The ads are in both the left and right columns and the related stories look similar to the ads. There are also unnecessary or confusing links like the “recent failures in communication” tab in the right column that go overlooked.  According to the Friedman article, some badly designed websites are still popular because “users appreciate quality and credibility” often over design.

Well-designed website:
http://www.spd.org

This website succeeds in its use of large visuals and rectilinear formatting. The advertisements
do not compete with the stories. The text is brief and uses effective formatting to signify important information. The images on top of the page have an animation to add interest and significance to the objects.

 

MP3 Codec

By:William Thacker

Overview

MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer III) files fall within the MPEG file compression process and are used in the compression of audio files. MPEGs use lossy compression to minimize the volume of data a computer must process by discarding nonessential information from the file. According to the Fraunhofer Institute, without the data compression of MP3, CD quality audio signals would consume 12 times as much information as files shrunk down with the MPEG coding. MP3 technology revolutionized the entertainment and music industry by allowing large music files to be compressed and transported across the internet without major loss of quality. Currently, MP3s are the most prevalent audio/music format and have superseded analogue technologies such as records and tape.

MP3 logo

As with any data compression, MP3 files have design limitations and must strike a balance between size and quality. Choosing a higher bitrate (how many kilobites used per second of audio) will retain quality but keep the file size high. Low bit rate files will obtain compression artifacts such as ringing and pre-echos.
Constant BitRate encoding is quicker but results in lower quality while
Variable BitRate encoding produces higher quality files on the principle that
certain segments of audio will contain more important information than others.

History

The roots of modern MP3 technology were first developed in the late 1980’s by Karl-Heinz Brandenburg and others while working for the German company Fraunhofer Institute . In 1987, the Fraunhofer Institute began research on digital audio broadcasting for the government sponsored EUREKA project EU147. The research team manufactured several digital signal processors and I/O interface cards using a LC-ATC (Low Complexity Adaptive Transform Coding) algorithm. Later, the team produced OCF (Optimum Coding in (the) Frequency Domain) algorithm which would remove wavelengths inaudible to human hearing from the audio files.

Fraunhofer Institute

In 1992, International Organization
of Standardization divided the MPEG into three codec formats. The MP3 allowed PCs
to store music and their comparatively small hard drives and also transport audio
over the internet. After some difficulty in producing portable MP3 device, Diamond
Multimedia Corporation succeeded in releasing such a device in1999.

MP3 technology is now used in millions of computers and music devices. Since their
creation, they have overtaken records, tape, and most recently CDs as the most
used audio format. This revolution is not surprising since MP3 players can hold
hours of audio and provide information about the music all within a small device.

Growth of MP3 technology as a standard audio format for the consumption of music.
(Digital File in Red)

Timeline – History of MP3

• 1987 – Fraunhofer Institute researches
  digital audio broadcasting in EUREKA project EU147.
• 1988 – MPEG developed  “as a subcommittee of the International
  Standards Organization/International Electrotechnical Commission or ISO/IEC”.
• 1989 – German patent filed for MP3.
• 1992 – Fraunhofer’s and Dieter
  Seitzer’s audio coding algorithm was integrated into MPEG-1.
• 1993 – MPEG-1 (video compression) established.
• 1994 – MPEG-2 established.
• 1996 – Patent issued for MP3 in
  United States.
• 1998 – “Fraunhofer started to
  enforce their patent rights. All developers of MP3 encoders or rippers and
  decoders/players now have to pay a licensing fee to Fraunhofer.”
• 1999 – SubPop record company first distributes
  music tracks in MP3 format.
• 1999 – Portable MP3 devices developed.

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