Category: Group A

Reaction Gifs:

Reaction gifs are the most common form of gifs because they are able to be used easily to convey a message. The gif I have chosen above is most often used to show displeasure or just disappoint in someone’s actions in a comical way. It successfully brings out these emotions, while the second gif of Terrell Suggs on the Ravens shares no emotion or reaction. This second gif is a counter example of the reaction gif because it shows no reaction while the first gif clearly conveys an emotional message.

Sports Gifs:

Sports gifs are fairly self-explanatory because they simply feature sports clips to create a response from the viewer. Whether it’s an exceptional play, like the gif above, or an athlete making a mistake, sports gifs are able to get a reaction. Sports gifs are generally used to highlight the greatest plays made by athletes in their sports but occasionally they are used to show bad plays and the subsequent disappoint by the player’s teammates, adding to its humor. The gif I used for my counter example is a clip from The Intern showing a group of people playing Quidditch. It’s simply showing non-professional athletes playing a game that is not really considered a sport at this point which counters the professionalism in most sports gifs.

Fandom Gifs:

Fandom gifs are quick clips of movies that show an iconic moment or a memorable quote. These are extremely popular for people to use to show their favorite movies and to use those moments for a satirical purpose in life. Since fandom gifs only use a quick clip like the one from Goodfellas above, I used a gif where every Star Wars movie ever made are embedded into one gif as my counter example. I used this as my counter example because it does not focus on one particular part, but puts every movie together in a jumbled mess.

Posted from My blog by Charlie

Reaction GIF

via GIPHY

Reaction gif’s are a way for individuals to react to statements, opinions, events, etc. They allow users to convey emotions through an animated image. Conventionally, as seen in the first image, reaction gifs contain an individual’s entire face. This provides more context and makes the emotion the gif is conveying clear. Taking this convention into mind, I decided to focus on one small part of the face in my counterexample. By zooming in and focusing on a small part of the face, viewers lose some of the context. This allows for a broader range of potential interpretations. Shock is the obvious emotion being conveyed in the first gif. However, when we take the same action (a blink) and zoom in, suddenly the gif could be attempting to convey various emotions. The second gif illustrates that a blink could mean any variety of things including shock, boredom, tiredness, etc. The unspoken convention of including the entire face acts to provide context and streamline interpretation.

Cinemagraph

via GIPHY

Cinemagraphs are a version of gifs where only one aspect of the image moves. It is commonly associated with being artistic, grand, or classy. In recent years it has become a popular technique for advertisers as illustrated by the first photo. This image utilizes cinemagraphs to advertise hairspray by having a model’s hair blow in the wind. The image appears very high class and artistic. The counterexample we created only as one part of the image, the drool, moving which classifies it as a cinemagraph. However, the photo has a comedic or even crude effect causing it to deviate from the normal use of a cinemagraph. By changing the purpose of the image we are critiquing the purpose and challenging the artistic or even pretentious connotation surrounding cinemagraphs.

Sports GIF

via GIPHY

Sports gifs are known for displaying the most intense plays, epic fails, or entertaining reactions. The first image shows an intense catch resulting in a touchdown and embodies this category of gifs typical use. In our counterexample, we decided to create a parody of this category by making a sports gif in which nothing happens. In the second image, you can see the players from Oregon and Kansas prepare for play to start and then we can assume a whistle is blown, despite not having audio, all of the players stand up and start wandering around. The anticlimactic nature of this gif acts as a critique to sports gifs.

Posted from Intro to Digital Studies by Kat

In What is a File?, the authors mention the need to find different means to store data and files. A constant problem many of us face with our computers and mobile phones, is overflowing the storage capacity of the device and not having enough storage space. However, people have already come up with some platforms that act as hard-drive disk for much of our electronic ‘baggage’.

Dropbox, is a file hosting service, owned by Dropbox Inc., and is used by more than 500 million people, with an annual revenue of 1 billion dollars, since it first started 10 years ago. Dropbox was founded by two MIT students,  Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi,  in 2007 as a startup company.

An early photo of Dropbox cofounders Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. By Drew Houston.

Drew Houston actually came up with the idea of Dropbox while on the Chinatown bus going from Boston to New York. He, once again, had forgotten his thumb drive (USB), and decided to take out his frustration by starting to write new code which later turned out to be the beginning of Dropbox.

After posting an intro video for Dropbox, his now co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, randomly happened to see it on Hackers News, which made him email Houston with the idea of working together. This was perfect timing as Houston needed a cofounder in order to be funded by Y Combinator, a seed accelerator owned by Silicon Valley legend Paul Graham.

After just one meeting with Houston at the MIT student center, Arash Ferdowsi decides to drop out of school with only one semester left and join Houston in creating Dropbox.

Dropbox Logo. 

After a weird meeting in a rug shop and and a party for iLike (an early music startup by Facebook) the two new cofounders saw their funding go from $60 to $1.2 million in just one click of the refresh button.

After a couple demo videos online and an offer by Steve Jobs himself to by the company, Dropbox turned out to be ranked as one of the most valuable startups, not only in the US, but also in the world. At the time Dropbox was valued at over 10 billion dollars.

Even though I’m not a big user of Dropbox, it is definitely a tool that is very useful for anyone that has more than one photo on his or her phone or computer. Dropbox makes our lives much easier by storying anything we need without taking up space on our own devices but also by being able to access these files and data from anywhere in the world.

Bibliography

Mazarakis, Alyson Shontell and Anna. “Dropbox Founder Reveals How He Built a $10 Billion Company in His 20s – Even Though Steve Jobs Told Him Apple Would Destroy It.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 12 June 2017, www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-founder-and-ceo-drew-houston-interview-2017-6.

“Y Combinator (Company).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Sept. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator_(company).

Posted from DIG101 by Danae

In the article we read for class, the authors spoke about two concepts which really resonated with me. The first of these was the notion of the idea of ‘delete’ as once files are opened up for sharing, there is no outer boundary and the file can, in theory, live forever. The second concept that grabbed my attention was the idea of file formats being conceived as a response to what users sought to do with their data. I find this idea of a data type as a response to consumer needs fascinating, as file types themselves, unlike the files themselves, can fall out of vogue and seemingly disappear.

Throughout reading this article, I thought about Adobe’s announcement back in July about phasing their phasing out of Flash. Flash sometimes referred to as .swf’s were a very popular file type found in web development across the net. Over the past few years, as internet users have demanded faster loading and better quality video in-browser, HTML5 has become the dominant online video format. Unlike Flash, it doesn’t require third-party plug-ins, which to slow down a user’s browser.

Adobe announced they will no longer creating new features for Flash as part of the beginning of a phasing out of the popular plugin. I find this fascinating in relation to the article because of the two concepts of file immortality and file type development that I previously mentioned. Eventually, Adobe will stop offering security updates for Flash, which will effectively make it inoperable for most users. There are tons of animations, games, and other assets that are stored in .swf’s. Soon, preserving our ability to engage with these files on modern devices and preserve them for the next generation will be the responsibility of the passionate homebrew communities which have fortunately formed around file types like Flash.

Sources:

Get ready to finally say goodbye to Flash — in 2020

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/MSR-TR-2011-109.pdf

Posted from My blog by Will H.

With increasing development of computers and filing systems, people are now able to store massive amounts of data with ease. Data today is exponentially cheaper than it was compared with when computers were first introduced in the 1980’s. In an article on mkomo.com, the cost of data per Gigabyte was just under one million dollars but, compared to 2010, the cost of data per Gigabyte has dropped to less than ten cents. This massive drop in cost per Gig has created a necessity for hard drives that are able to hold enormous amounts of data and new systems within the hard drives that allow the user to access information quickly. With data becoming so cheap, it became critical that technology catch up to be able to handle so much information.

With the capacity to store exponentially more data than could be done in the past, computer scientists must make sure that the data collected does not disappear due to a crashed computer. In the article “What is a File?” the authors state that because computers can fail “in part” and “in totality,” “data within this system are so arranged that if part of them is destroyed or even the whole, this event does not catastrophically affect the system’s functioning, its utility.” This necessity to create systems that are able to not only store data but also retain it in case of a total system failure. “Filing” has evolved over time, just as data has, and it will continue to be adjusted to fit the need at the time.

Bibliography:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/MSR-TR-2011-109.pdf

http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte

Posted from My blog by Charlie

To be completely honest, the article “What is a File?” really confused me. What exactly do the researchers mean by saying the word “file” is an abstraction. I did not follow this very well.

There was one idea, however, that really stuck out to me, because I felt like I could easily relate to it. In the article, it states: ‘… they used to have a desire to put a file “on a CD” so that “it could be safe.” But they go on to say that this is hard to do in the context of Cloud storage’ (9). I think this is true for many people when it comes to thinking about “files,” especially now in the era of the “Cloud.” There is an insecurity attached to “files” because they are not physically there, but just data in a system. This questions ownership. Who owns these files? The user, or the system creator/manager? What happens if the system suddenly breaks down? Where are all the “files?” Are they protected? Can they be stolen through the Cloud system?

These are just some of the questions that, at least, for me, come to mind when I think of saving a “file” especially with the Cloud. People find a sense of security in backing up their “files” on a physical hard drive or CD, because ownership is clear, and there is no system that could crash or hack information. It feels more concrete. Below is a picture of the kind of hard drive I use to back up all my “files,” in case something were to happen to my computer. It is the Seagate Expansion.

Picture Source 

Every so often I like to just stick this hard drive into my computer and back up all of my files. Yes, they are all backed up in the “Cloud,” but this hard drive makes me feel more secure not only in the insurance that my files will never be deleted or gone forever, but I know that I own them this way.

Posted from Digital Studies 101 Blog by Lindsay