Web 2.0 Presentation Blog

I really enjoyed working on the Web 2.0 Presentation. As a public relations major, current intern at a health and wellness company and Assistant Supervisor at the UF Survey Research Center I am used to trying to get people’s attention. In my everyday life, I try to spread awareness about a new campaign, persuade people to do a survey and try to get people to adapt a new fitness regimen. I knew the most important part of my Web 2.0 Presentation was to get people’s attention immediately. I considered what song, video or statement would grab my attention and then thought about how I can use that to appeal to my audience. I decided to choose the “This is Your Brain on Drugs” video from the Partnership for a Drug Free America because I remember the impact it had on me when I first saw way back in elementary school. It was a really powerful message and showed what could happen to those who do drugs and how it could affect your brain.

Since I use PowerPoint to debut specific presentations, I know the worst thing you can do is read the words on the screen word for word. “Say it then show it” is a great saying when it comes to how to present a PowerPoint without losing your audience’s attention. I used Screencast to put my presentation online and it was really simple to create an account and upload your video. I used Camtasia for the first time to record my voice and didn’t have any problems in voice quality.  Since I was aiming for an above average presentation, I did have to start over at times when I stumbled over a word or the YouTube video wouldn’t work properly. This was my first virtual presentation and I thought it was an effective way to show your ideas without being there in person. You cannot be judged on your facial expressions or what you’re wearing, only on your voice and the setup of your presentation.

I found the peer reviews to be very helpful and they assisted me in improving my project. I was under the impression that we only had to refer to our sources in our source document, and not the actual presentation. I was unclear on what the source document required so I didn’t include sources in my presentation. The two students who peer reviewed my paper pointed this out to me and I was able to make changes in my final version. Since I put so much effort into my presentation, I wanted to do everything I could to not lose points for not mentioning my sources. Other than that one issue, I seemed to be on the right track when putting together my presentation on How to Make an Effective Public Relations Campaign. When I peer reviewed someone else’s paper and watched several other videos, the first thing I noticed was the variety in each presentation’s length. Some presentations were 2-3 minutes while others were over ten minutes. Even though there was not a set number of minutes each presentation had to be, I found this to be a gaping difference between each presentation. I also noticed that a lot of my peers read directly word for word of the presentation and I suggested you don’t have to put everything on the screen you wish to talk about. I hope I was as helpful to my peers as they were to me when it came to the peer review.

I learned how to record your own voice to do a virtual presentation and how to embed YouTube videos into a PowerPoint Presentation. I also learned how to cite sources and find a way to grab the audience’s attention. The hardest part was getting the YouTube videos to work properly and adjusting the settings to make sure audio was enabled. I plan to use the tips I learned in this project as an alternative to meeting with clients. It seems like you can share the same presentation with clients and get the same results by saving a lot of money for travel and sharing your presentation online. Public relations practitioners work with a lot of different clients all over the world so the idea of sharing a presentation online with your client makes a lot of sense.

http://www.screencast.com/users/mattth412/folders/Default/media/53ee40b1-c660-4d31-bc51-d40ebf945fe4

Tutorial 2: Digital Rights Management

What is DRM?

Digital Rights Management aka Digital Restrictions Management (Free Software Foundation)

Source: http://digizmo.com/2010/04/15/samsung-to-adopt-microsofts-playready-drm/

DRM is commonly used by music artists, copyright holders and publishers to control how a file is used and shared. DRM removes usage control from the person in possession of the digital content and gives control to a computer program. The problem DRM is trying to solve is to restrict repeated distribution of digital content via file sharing networks.

By downloading an MP3 file of a copyrighted song instead of going out to the store and buying a CD, you are causing the artist and their music label to lose money. The movie industry loses approximately $5 billion a year because of illegal DVD distribution. Although it is legal to make a copy of a CD or DVD for yourself, it is not legal to pass along a song or movies to others for free.

DRM helps to prevent copying, limit playback to one device, set an expiration date and use a digital watermark. An expiration date is ideal for rentals, so that the content stops working after a certain time period. DVDs that expire after 24 hours have been sold in retail stores in the past.  A digital watermark stores invisible digital information inside an audio file which identifies who bought the original audio file.

There is a way for people to get past the DRM. By using the analog output of one computer and feeding it into the microphone input of a second computer, you can record a new digital file. In the new digital file, you can exclude limiting playback to one device, a digital watermark and an expiration date. Although there is a small loss in fidelity, it can circumvent the DRM.

Ramifications for the DRM include upsetting honest customers who can only play their files on one device and aren’t able to copy a music file to their I-pod. It is not a good idea to displease law-abiding citizens who are only using your file for their personal use and have no plans to illegally share with others.

Here is a video of a DRM protest that took place at a San Francisco Apple Store. The protesters give  reasons why the public is restricted by DRM to try to persaude the public to eliminate DRM.

Source:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YdnccYI2-w

Sources:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/drm1.htm

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm

http://digizmo.com/2010/04/15/samsung-to-adopt-microsofts-playready-drm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YdnccYI2-w

ISM 3004 Class Lecture 06.02 – Audio

Excel Project

For the Excel project, my job as a worker at a fitness center was to see if their workout program was effective. I created formulas in order to measure the 500 participants in a 20 minute exercise. Maximum Heart Rate, Target Heart Rate, Highest Heart Rate, Percentage Increase and whether the subject’s target was achieved were all measured in the raw data spreadsheet. The spreadsheet measured for fifteen minutes of exercise with one minute intervals. I also had to setup the print layout, create pivot tables and set freeze panes so that you could see the first two rows throughtout the spreadsheet when printed.

During my current internship, I often use Excel to measure the results of surveys I give out to specific fitness classes at the Southwest Recreation Center so this project was very helpful to me. I wasn’t aware of the pivot table function and really only knew the basics of Excel. I hadn’t used the PEMDAS order of operations since middle school but I did remember what it stood for and how to do it. I found absolute cell addressing to be most useful because it could be used by all the data in the project since the owner didn’t know which percentage she wanted to use. It took some time to find the highest value in a range of cells and implement it into the raw data. The IF function was also very beneficial to me so I could set boundaries to determine whether the subject did or did not reach their target level.

I expected the pivot tables to be most confusing and to take a while to figure out. However, the instructions were very clear and I didn’t have much of a problem adding the two pivot tables to the project. In the first pivot table, I answered the question “How many subjects reached their target heart rate during the 15 minute exercise window?” I did this by using Yes, No and the Grand Total as columns to go along with rows for Male, Female, and Grand Total. Now I could see which participants reached their target level during the exercise. For the second pivot table, I determined the average percent increase in heart rate for the subjects grouped by decade and gender. Gender was included in the columns and age in the rows. I am glad I got an opportunity to use more advanced Excel skills in this project and look forward to using them in school and my career.