Viral Video: Chris Hadfield Rocks in Outer Space
MCDM Connect: Wine, Marshmallows, and Networks
How do you spark lively conversation, meaningful professional connections and new ideas? In one all-too short evening? An un-conference just might be the way to go, especially when ...
Viral Video: Chris Hadfield Rocks in Outer Space
Stressed out after a long week? Gravity be gone – we’re off to the moon with Chris Hadfield, who returned with his Russian and American colleagues on Monday nig ...
Game Night 2: EMP Style
On Friday May 10th, the EMP (Experience Music Project) exhibition The Art of Video Games signed off in the same awesome way it signed on, with an epic night of gaming. As described ...
Seahawks & Smack Talk
#Gameoverman, this was the hash tag to use if you were lucky enough to have made it to the epic Madden battle between select Seahawks team members at game night, the party that si ...
EMP Museum Game Over for Twitter Trolls
Last Friday the EMP Museum in Seattle hosted Game Over 2, a night of gaming to usher out their Art of Video Game Exhibit. There were so many great things that happened that evening ...
Viral Video: Military Spouse Day
Today is Military Spouse Appreciation Day…so here is a video of some of the best surprise homecomings of service members and their families. Shout out to MCDM student Jessica ...Citizen Journalists: Nobody Plays by the Same Rules
What are the basic rights of citizen journalists? What protections they can expect as granted by the First Amendment, and specifically what rights do they have regarding reusabilit ...
Hey Restaurants! Let canon Show You How to Use Twitter
Heads up ye owners of dining establishments, a small intimate restaurant in Seattle has a few things to teach you about how to engage with customers in today’s fast-moving so ...
Books that Talk, Taking on Literacy and Global Poverty
This post was produced as part of the UW Comm Department’s undergraduate Entrepreneurial Journalism course. By Alysa Hullett While Americans are tapping away at their iPads, ...
Divide and Conquer: Customer Loyalty Mobile Apps Abound
Special to Flip by Katherine Loh I was sitting at a local coffee shop when I witnessed a rather common, but painful situation. The cashier handed a gentleman his credit card after ...
Divide and Conquer: Customer Loyalty Mobile Apps Abound
A customer scanning her Pirq iPhone app at a local coffee shop – Photo by Katherine Loh
Special to Flip by Katherine Loh
I was sitting at a local coffee shop when I witnessed a rather common, but painful situation.
The cashier handed a gentleman his credit card after he swiped his $8 total for two. As he and his friend take a seat, the customer behind him asks the cashier where she could scan her mobile rewards application. The cashier points to the glowing 10-inch tablet off to the side; the customer aligns her smartphone to a colorful barcode on the tablet. Her $9 drink total for her and her kids magically changes to a $4.50 value.
At this point, the first customer is probably thinking his wallet is suddenly feeling tremendously lighter as he looks down at his iPhone 4s, heavy with regret. What did that customer just scan? How did she get such a terrific deal?
Continue reading
Zach Braff Engages With Fans. Now They’ve Funded His Movie.
Zach Braff, courtesy Kickstarter
They funded his movie in three days.
Zach Braff wanted creative control of the follow-up to his hit independent film, “Garden State“. According to Zach Braff’s Kickstarter campaign, a traditional financing deal requires compromises on casting, location, and budget. To support his vision, Braff decided to try crowdfunding. “Wish I Was Here” launched April 24. Three days later, funding surpassed the $2 million goal.
We could focus on the intent of Kickstarter and the ethics of a celebrity drawing from that limited pool; the points of interest and controversy related to this story run the spectrum. We’d like to try another focus: What is it about Zach Braff that made this happen?
Continue reading
What the Cr(app): Lulu – it’s – well… a lulu
Special to Flip the Media by Iku Kawachi
Of all of the applications of ever-ubiquitous social media that make us wonder what the world has come to, perhaps none is more likely to disgust us than this one: Lulu, an app for girls to rate, gossip about, and search for boyfriends and hook-ups (no boys allowed).
Lulu, available free for Android and iOS since last June, describes itself as the “smart girls’ app for private recommendations and reviews on guys.” It requires users to authenticate their identity by logging in via their Facebook account, upon which they can access a grid-based interface featuring thumbnails of guys and numerical 1-10 scores. Individual pages have scores on categories like “Manners,” “Sex,” and “First Kiss,” hashtags divided into positive and negative traits, and links to their Facebook profiles.
Lulu prides itself on its experience being “as private as you want it to be. You can use Lulu completely anonymously or share reviews with your BFFs.”
Continue reading
Viral Video: Tuna Melt Will Melt Your Brain
We’re ready for the weekend, aren’t we? Hopefully you’ll have time to play. Our message today is: Play big, or go home. Watch, and marvel:
What the Cr(App): Kissing Cousins?
Ok, so I know dating apps are some of the most widely used apps around, but this one really takes the cake. We all know about Ok cupid, Plenty of Fish, How About We etc… It’s all good; we all deserve to find happiness and for some online dating is what works.
I myself have used OKCupid in the past & have met some really fantastic people, but, did I ever wonder if any of my matches were relatives? No! In Iceland, however, this is something people legitimately worry about and FINALLY a dating app has been designed to make sure you don’t accidentally “bump uglies” with a distant cousin.
Whaaaaa?
A mobile byproduct of the Íslendingabók or, The Book of Icelanders: a genealogical database of Icelandic Inhabitants dating back 1200 years, the App “Islendiga-App — “App of Icelanders” is designed to help Icelanders avoid becoming sexually involved with a relative. With a population of only 320,000 people that are descendants of only a handful of ancestors, a lack of immigration and the odd way that Icelander’s last names are devised, incest prevention has been a running joke in Icelandic culture for quite some time.
“Bump in the app before you bump in bed”. Users simply “bump” phones, and the app shows how closely the two users are related. There is even an alarm feature that lets you know if you share a grandparent.
There is enough stress in the dating scene without having to worry about boning down with a distant cousin during a girls (or dudes) weekend on the town, but with over 4,000 downloads, this App may make us go “Huh?” but it appears to be proving useful in its native country.
Do You Pay for Your News? The Pay Wall
Boston Marathon, courtesy the Boston Globe
Monday, April 15th. Two bombs explode near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, a big news day. More than two hundred are injured, three are killed and the Boston Globe’s pay wall comes down. In the world of Internet news content that’s almost news by itself.
Pay walls prevent Internet readers from using webpage content (mainly news and scholarly readings) without paying. They’ve been controversial because for years, online newsreaders have taken free content for granted. Not anymore and not on that Monday. News about the Marathon Bombing was free for all. And not just in Boston.
Review of TinEye, Reverse Image Search Tool
Screenshot of TinEye
TinEye is one of a number of “Reverse Image Search” tools available online. The way it works is, instead of entering some keywords to look for an image, you submit an image to seek more information about it. Tools like this are a great way for photographers to search for unauthorized use of their photography. It’s also a way for people to simply find out more about a photo they’ve seen on the internet.
TinEye does a constant crawl of the web to make regular updates to its image database. To date, they’re indexed more than 2.6 trillion images from the web. Tens of millions of new images are added every month. It also follows protocol from websites that wish to not be searched.
For more proactive content creators, TinEye also offers the capability to create an imagemap and submit it so that images crawled, indexed and added to their index. This enables the creators of the content to appear at the top of image search results. In addition to its regular web interface, there is also a browser plugin that allows quick right-click searches.
I did a test of a few images to see what the results would be. First, I tested an image by Seattle photographer, Meryl Schenker. Meryl’s photo of a same-sex couple applying for a marriage license became an iconic image in the wake of the passage of Referendum 74 in Washington state. I knew that the image had received both national and international press. The search returned just 11 results, though I’m sure there were dozens more.
Next, I did a search of Marilyn Monroe’s famous “subway dress” photo. This yielded a more robust 605 results, though I’m sure it’s a mere fraction of all of the instances on the web.
Lastly, on a more serious note, I did a search for an image of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. Surprisingly, there were zero results. Although, I imagine that within time, this number would increase.
Ultimately, TinEye is a good enough tool to use, probably in combination with others. However, it’s not as reliable in terms of depth or timeliness of results as I’d hoped. Perhaps the internet has just gotten too big to search for everything.
Need News? 4 Great Resources
Users on Their phones CreativeCommons Image by Denis Dervisevic
I’ve become a bit of a news junkie in the past year. It started with writing for a political blog and now I’m working as a online news producer in TV.
Over those 12 months I’ve learned some great resources for news updates. I thought I’d share some of my favorites places to go for news, especially for those of us who will live and die with an iPhone (or Android) in their hand.
1. Breaking News
For getting the latest updates on news stories around the world, Breaking News is hard to beat. They started as a Twitter feed only, have expanded to a great app, and are also online. While owned by NBC, Breaking News sources information from outlets regardless of ownership.
Not only do they cover a lot of content and focus on mobile, but they live up to their name in often being the first to break news, without making mistakes. This past week, as big news story broke and developed around the country, Breaking News was one of the few outlets that didn’t print miscommunication. Continue reading
