Viacom Making All the Money???

Viacom has released that they've had a 37% increase in revenue this quarter, a surprised especially compared to last quarters profits. Well apparently Viacom owns more companies than I actually knew, ie: MTV, VH1, and Paramount Pictures. They said that their increase came from television channels and returning advertisements. They did have a 19% decrease in film revenue because of a decrease in dvd sales. They said that they plan to make this up by releasing "branded" and "franchise" pictures, which are pictures that made good revenue previously. Movies on this list are "Shrek Forever After" and "Iron Man 2". They did say that MTV didn't have great viewings, therefore they will reevaluate their program listings.
My question is, is this too much power? Will we soon go back to old media where it is ran really by one mass media institution. We really have no control. Then there is only one person in control of all of our different aspects of entertainment, Sumner M. Redstone. Will other try to take over different ownership of companies that Viacom owns?

"Born Free" Ban....

M.I.A.'s recent video, "Born Free", has been banned from U.S. and UK YouTube. The video depicts military/police violence against a targeted group, redheaded people. The video is extremely violent and is almost 9 minutes long. Was there a message behind it? I watched the video and I did receive a message from it. I took that the United States has hatred against people and will do almost anything to keep them excluded from our world, almost like the Holocaust. Why redheaded people? I think it was just a symbolization of "stupid" reasoning behind racism, sexism, homophobia, and alot of other -isms and phobias that people have. I think that was supposed to also symbolize that things that are uncontrollable, such as redhair, are reasons why people are hated. Hated for merely being themselves. YouTube hasn't released reasons why the video was removed but it can still be found in various ways on the site but under age regulations. This was a shock to me because when we discuss YouTube we talk about the freedom of what people are allowed to upload and that there aren't strict regulations. Maybe this means that there was an extreme problem with this video or does it just depict the message behind the video and song even more, that we aren't really born free in America? If you're interested in viewing the video you can find it at http://mashable.com/2010/04/27/mia-born-free-video/ and also see what Mashable writers had to say about it. I would say "Discretion".

Sex on Craig's List...

It has been a known advertisement on Craigslist, sex. Women and girls have been trafficked on this site more and more each year. These ads aren't in disguise, they are blunt and frank. A recent article showed that these ads brought their revenue up 22% and is projected to make them $36 million this year. The Federal Business Bureau of Investigation arrest 14 members of the Gambino crime family for selling sexual services online of girls of 15 - 19 years old. The executives of Craigslist have been quoted not agreeing with the misuse of their site but if that is true why is this taking place? More importantly, how is this taking place? Why aren't the advertisements being screened and if they display misuse, being deleted. I personally think that executives are dragging the cases further along to make more profit. This definately needs to stop before more girls become victims.

New Media Sites Rule The World!!!

A recent article released on Mashable compared Facebook to, it's direct rival, Twitter. The article showed how Facebook was visibly beating Twitter. They compared numbers. Twitter's 100 million users not touching Facebook's 400 million users. The article also compared user activeness with "buttons". Twitter's "retweet" button wasn't comparing to Facebook's "like" button. The article also said that Facebook is compatible for every mobile phone, whereas Twitter has to make special applications for different mobile devices, instead of making a master application model. Facebook is also winning with applications. With looking at what users like and what makes money and build a social media site, a question can be asked. Why can't I create a social media? I know what users like because I'm a user of both. It's easy to find out what brings in money from websites. I'm going to think more about this. How can I create the next social media??

Phone App Helps Africa?

Farmers in Africa had been getting cheated out of money from cow sells. People would come by their cows to sell them to dairy farms but the farmers didn't know how much to charge for them. The farmers would end up selling their cows alot cheaper than what the others were going to sell them for. Leaving the farmers cheating out of product and the amount of work went into raising it.

Now an application has been created for phones that will help farmers in Africa solve this problem. One of Kenya's own, Amos Gichamba, created the application. It was created so that when the farmers have questions about what to charge they can send a text asking their question and it will be answered according to the market at the time. Gichamba said that Africa was taking their problems into their hands and solving them.

Is technology on the path to change the world and through text messages at that? Read more ... http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/12/africa.apps/index.html

Why You Can't Stay Away

They try to keep us from it. Browsing, searching, tweeting, uploading pictures, and watching videos. We do it through out the hours of the day at home, at school, and at work but are they trying to change that? Some schools are banning access to the web in classrooms or during lectures but all we do is use the web on our phones. They ban certain sites at work but workers find loopholes around those bans and even go to "not so safe" sites for work. Even some countries tried to ban their internet access but the citizens just crack their firewall. Why do people try so hard to get through these bans? Is it because the internet is addictive or just because we always want what we can't have? Want to read more about this... visit http://mashable.com/2010/04/13/social-media-ban-backfire/.

How Many Plan To Make $$ of the IPad

When I first heard of the IPad, I didn't understand what's purpose was. There are so many things that you can't do on it, and if you buy it, why not just buy and IPad? Those were my thoughts. They also said that the new addition to technology would save Journalism, I didn't understand that either. I understand that even though there are still alot of book readers, if they want it, why wouldn't they just buy the hard copy. I just couldn't wrap my mind around how it was a good investment, nor how they would make money off of this product. So I searched the web for some answers.

Magazines are making their issues available to purchase for the IPad. These issues would be more user friendly for their readers. They could bookmark, fileshare, and even create virual libraries of their magazines. This is the same trend that newspapers and books will follow as well. Some websites and companies plan to sell applications that promote new products and other updates for their companies. I guess this can work but it's also scary. Will we get to the point where we won't have hard copies of newspapers, magazines, and books faster than we thought??