Another photo gallery of Egyptian protests

This time from The New York Times. I like how The New York Times organized the photos chronologically so people who have very little knowledge of the protests could all take a glance from the first day to present.

Pictures speak louder than words

Once again, this photo gallery did a good job supplementing a story along with the original reporting in words. Although this slideshow from The Wall Street Journal does not have explicit bloody scenes, it takes us back to Cairo where we see people gathering on street screaming. For people who have no time to read the whole article, this photo gallery provides a shortcut from which people can still grasp what is going on in Egypt.

Facebook made people sad?

When it comes to social media, most people would say it helps them keep in touch with people they don't usually meet face-to-face. I personally love Facebook because I can stay in close contact with my family in Taiwan, and I even reunited with my elementary school friends online. However, this interesting article on Slate took a different approach and questioned if people did become happier after using Facebook.

Before knowing anything about how Facebook altered people's mood, I did feel lonely sometimes because I saw all my friends' pictures and what a good time they had together when I was not around. Realizing how I might become a bitter person, I decided it was time to stop browsing my friends' albums like a crazy Facebook stalker.

In addition to blog about this article in here, I also recommend many friends to take a look at it. One reason I recommend my friends to read this article is because I believe I was not the only one who felt sad when seeing how happy others are in pictures.

I hope people would come to realize that it is so easy to have an illusion that others are happier than us, because all you see is how happy they are in the pictures. People would never post pictures when they have an ugly fight with their dearest friends, or when they felt sad. So next time when you are sitting in front of a computer clicking one after another of your friends' pictures, please keep in mind that it is just one part of their lives. Looking happy in pictures does not mean that they are happier than you in real life. Perhaps they would think you are so much happier than them when seeing your photos online too.

Perhaps people prefer pictures than words?

Since I was little, I noticed something significantly different from my brother, Jackie, and I. I loved reading newspapers and novels, but he preferred reading comic books. My parents always asked him to read more newspapers like me, and their reason was simple: Because one's linguistic competence is positively correlated with the amount he/she reads. Although I was the one to be praised compared to my brother, I did notice that most of my classmates prefer comics, just like Jackie.

The situation hasn't changed much. I still noticed that most of my high school friends would pick up comic books instead of novels when they had a choice. So when I read this article on Columbia Journalism Review, I couldn't help but think of Jackie and my friends.

Since photo galleries started to take up a significant amount of traffic flow in news websites, people responded by asking if photo galleries are helping the industry or killing it. People may blame photo galleries that they ruin the whole point of running a news site, but I don't agree. Journalism has had a very strong bond with photography ever since it was invented, and sometimes photos serve readers better in explaining things that are difficult to present merely by words.

I do understand, though, why some people worry about photo galleries taking over. It is true that photo galleries create this illusion that a specific website generates more "clicks" than others because people would keep clicking for more pictures. However, just like it is mentioned at the end of the Columbia Journalism Review article, advertisers will one day set new rules for news websites and eventually eliminate the false impression made by photo galleries.

Also, not every picture are very self explanatory. So when people see a picture that interests them, they will then seek more information about a certain story. That's when journalism comes in to play.

In general, I don't think photo galleries will ever poisons the journalism industry as much as people worry. Quite the opposite, I see a very powerful attention getter inside the nature of photo galleries. After all, people just love pictures more than words, just like my brother and most of my friends.

Thoughts on my recent podcast

This is the first group podcast that my team completed for this semester. Thanks to last semester, I had a little experience on conducting interviews and editing the audio. However, things did not go smooth at all, and I would like to document the difficulties I went through this time.

Conducting interview was considerably easier to me since I've done a few of them before. One thing I recalled, though, was that there was a lady at University Bookstore who was very concerned about talking with us. Chrystal and I could tell that she was afraid to say something inappropriate or harmful to her workplace. So when we asked her if it's okay to ask her a few questions, she had to get an approval from her manager. And when writing her name down, she refused to give us her last name. I guess it's never harmful to be careful, but I was just a little surprised that she treated us as if we were reporting something controversial.

My main difficulty came when I was editing the podcast for the group. Because Chrystal downloaded all our segments to her career account, I just used the same computer to do the editing. The editing was fine, but not when I tried to export it. For some reason, the computer kept rejecting my request of sending the podcast to iTunes. And without sending to iTunes, I could not find a way to send the podcast as an MP3 file to my teammates. After hours of researching and trying, I finally did it from my own career account, and finally sent out the MP3 file to everyone in my team.

Given that I always planned ahead, and I always turned in my projects at least a day before the due dates, I felt a little frustrated this time. I thought I knew how to use Garageband, but I didn't realize that the differences of software versions could lead to a total different editing experience. I'm very familiar with the iMovies and Garageband on my laptop, but not the one on our iTap computers. One thing I learned from this experience was that I should be more careful and I should get more familiar with different softwares so I can limit the problems I had this time to its minimum.

Well, creating podcast was not completely frustrating and unhappy this time. I learned something new about Garageband too. Thanks to Maura, I played along with the "Jingles" options this time, and I also used two of the effects on our podcast to make it sound like a newscast with opening sounds and closing effects.

I hope you will enjoy our podcast about Purdue campus life, and I look forward to hearing other people's podcasts too.

Podcast: Purdue Campus Life

Class Photo Galleries

I went to some of my classmates' blogs and took a look at their photo galleries. I have to say, I love watching people's photo galleries. Some are very creative, and others took pictures that I've never thought of doing so. I was simply amazed by the beautiful scenes people captured in Purdue.

Among those photo galleries, I particularly like Ty Jepson's. He went to different corners to take pictures of Purdue campus, and he even had the same building from different times in the day. One thing I like about his photos is that you feel like you were having a campus tour with him, especially when he showed you a broken John Purdue umbrella sitting on a bench and a designated smoking spot on campus.

I also like my teammate, Sara's, photo gallery. She took pictures around the campus just like Ty did, but her pictures were more like the reflection of her life at Purdue. She took pictures of the places she liked to hang out with friends, and she even took a picture of a door with six locks. (She said it's because it got broken into before.) I'm really curious of where it is so I can warm my friends who live in the same area. In addition, she made a slideshow for the past Packer-Bears game. By doing so, I believe she's really learning about new media and using what she learns in real time.

Photo Gallery: Purdue Campus Poster Sale

C-SPAN: Korean Peninsula Tensions

I chose this video because North Korea had more aggressions over last year, and as a Taiwanese, the tensions on the Korean Peninsula more or less affect not only our perception to North Korea but also everything else such as everyday business, oil prices and the stock market in Taiwan.

The section I embedded is particular interesting to me because Michael Auslin pointed out that North Korea always knew where the "line" is. In other words, North Korea knows where the bottom line is to show South Korea what they are capable of doing, but at the same time, not so aggressive that the south side has to fight back.

Prior to watching this video, I still remember talking to friends and saying I have no idea why North Korean government would do something that they've been doing for the past few decades. I'm still not en expert on the issue of the Korean Peninsula, but this video gave me a little more analysis and understanding of why North Korea did what they did. I think it's a video that is worth watching.

Taipei101 New Year Fireworks (2011)

This is the video of 2011 New Year fireworks in Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world. I remembered watching the firework on television at home with my parents that night, and for most of Taiwanese people, it's always the highlight of the New Year.

New Semester, and My Last Semester

Time goes so fast. Another semester passed by. After the burnout from last semester, I went home for Christmas. People say home is always the place where you can charge your battery and have the energy to start all over again. I agree~

During the two weeks I stayed in Taiwan, I simply did not bother myself with too much things. No grad school application pressure, no worries from schools, no nothing. I just enjoyed my time with family and had a lot of great food.

The picture was taken the night before I left Taiwan. My family took me to my favorite taeponyaki place and I used my instant camera to take this picture with my little brother, Henry. My mom told the restaurant that I was leaving for the U.S., and they gave me the dessert shown in the picture, with good wishes written on the plate using chocolate syrup. That was a sweet evening!

So now i'm back! I know I'll have good times and bad times just as always, but this will be my last semester at Purdue, and I want to cherish every minute I spend on campus. Just like last semester, I'll use my camera and iPhone to document special moments at Purdue and post it here. So when I graduate, I can show it to my friends and say, see, I didn't waste any second in Purdue, especially the last year.