Tag Archives: Facebook

Smith Weekly Tips takes Youtube by Storm

April 26, 2012   Steven McLeroy

The stress of school work and golf practice everyday can be a tiring down process. Being on the road seven out of nine weeks is a grueling process for anyone, especially a college senior.

Michael Smith is two weeks away from graduating from Stephen F. Austin University with a degree in Journalism.  To add to his resume, he has also helped lead the Lumberjacks to several collegiate victories.

Trying to stay focused on school with the golf season going on can be a very difficult task. With the spring golf season down to its last tournament Smith has become well-known throughout the collegiate athletes with his new YouTube hit videos.

Over the past several weeks Smith has been performing a parody of Michael Breed golf tips.

Breed is a highly respected golf instructor who has been giving golf tips on the Golf Channel for several years now. His show the “Golf Fix,” has impacted every level of golfer. Breed comes out with new instructions of teaching every day.

Being a high level golfer and watching the show Smith came up with the idea that he would start doing his own videos of golf tips in a comical way.

Smith’s first video became viral during Mid-February. Watching Breeds’ latest show on how to hit the “flop” or an exciting high soft golf shot, Smith immediately went to the camera to start his acting career.

“Once I saw Breeds’ video I had this idea to do comical lessons to try and make my friends and team mates laugh. I would go off what Breed would say in his shows then I would totally just flip what he said to do,” Smith said.

What started out as a joke, Smith quickly received immediate feedback from friends and fellow classmates.

“All of the responses were the about the same, everyone couldn’t stop laughing and they wanted more. So I did what the people wanted and started doing them weekly,” Smith said.

Smith Weekly Tips was born and was spreading like wildfire. The first video received a number of views, and when the Lumberjack squad traveled to golf tournaments players from other universities were asking for advice. Once the Lumberjacks returned home from South Carolina Smith recorded his second video of, “How to hit the long ball.”

The video contains a two minute instruction on how to gain distance on your tee shots during the round. While recording the instructional video Smith accidentally hits the golf ball in the house and nails the wall.

“We were about to do another take since I accidentally hit the ball into the wall but after I watched it, it was perfect,” Smith said.

The second video was an immediate hit. It doubled the views of the first video in two days. Also, it attracted not only young stereotypes but older people were starting to comment.

“Im not a very good golfer but the videos just make me forget about all the issues I have and makes me laugh,” Brian Day, amateur golfer said.

Since the second video Smith has recorded two more videos with his most recent one coming out on April 19. With some of his fellow teammates struggling to get out of the bunkers in golf , Smith decided he would poke fun of them and make a video.

Joking and laughing in the video Smith recorded his funniest video yet with hundreds of people replying back via text and facebook to Smith.

“It was crazy within an hour of posting the video I got about ten text messages that said best video yet or I can’t stop laughing,” Smith said.

With all the hype around the videos Smith is considering sending an application into the Golf Channel to see if he can team up with Michael Breed one day.


Read More

Social Networks

April 09, 2012   Marcus Reynolds

One of the biggest disablers of this time period is technology. People at work, at school, and even people in places like churches get distracted by the many different forms of technology. The largest form of technology distracting people today would be social networks.  Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and the newly added Pinterest and instaGram are swiftly growing and taking over today’s generation. With photos and status updates about your daily thoughts and actions, these social networks are a way for people to keep up with their friends, family, and even favorite celebrities on a daily basis.

As a student, this becomes a problem because it distracts students in class and while studying so they don’t always retain all the information needed to make the grades desired on assignments and exams. It has gotten to the point where professors sometimes don’t allow phones or phone usage in classes because they know that the students will be distracted by these different social networks. Studies have shown that the more students are using social networks, the less they excel in academics.
Other than being a distraction just from academics, social networks are a new found distraction from news resources such as local news channels, radio, and world news. These social networks will tell you everything you need to know about a problem or situation going on in the world before the news even comes on. Just as these networks take away from your studying, they take away from getting the news from proper news resources. Tuning in to news channels, top radio news, and world news stations is not a must anymore because these social networks have the news and updates on hand for us. As technology, blossoms we can get all these updates on our phones, computer, etc. So, sitting down watching the news or listening to the radio is no longer a must now.
If that is not proof enough, Social networks also deprive some people from sleep. The fact that each network is so addicting in itself can keep you up for hours and hours at a time. In some cases, Facebook and Twitter have kept people up all night, not studying just on these networks doing nothing at all. Some people would rather be awake on these networks then sleep getting ready for the next day.
People around the world thrive off of what they put on social networks. They even distract you from doing your job sometimes. Older people, other than just teens and college students, have accounts on social networks to stay connected, so on breaks at work, they login to the networks and are on there so long before you know it the working day is done and their task are incomplete. Then ultimately if that continues, they could be terminated from their job for not doing what they are supposed to do. A quote from Brainbloggers.com stated, “Greek psychiatrists argued that a woman who had gone as far as losing her job on account of her compulsion to check and update her Facebook, could be identified as a social network addict.”
Although social networks are addicting and entertaining they ultimately are one of the biggest distractions we have today. Social networks somewhat rule the world in a media aspect. If you really want to know something, I guarantee you can find it on any social network. You might not even have to look that hard. It could be a trending topic on Twitter or at the top of the News feed on Facebook.  Saying all this we should really strive to cut back on our use of all social networks, evening if it is tempting or event if we can get the top news on there. Stop and pay attention to the things you are supposed to be doing because the social networks will always be there.
Read More

The Great Kindle Debacle of 2012- Jessica Payton

April 01, 2012   Jessica Payton

In recent days, when I got out of class I went home and sank down in my favorite spot on my sofa, right in the corner with my body angled so that the rest of me took up 2/3s of it, while the big fluffy pillows framed my head. I decided I would try to relax after my grueling back to back Monday schedule took its toll on me.

It started off as a good calming afternoon of browsing the internet and sipping a hot cup of tea, when all of a sudden I saw it! Amazon.com had screwed me out of an even better kindle for much  cheaper than the one I bought! I was so distraught. I felt like the team at Amazon swindled me out of hard earned money. With the money that I would have saved by just waiting another month, I could have enjoyed a nice spa day to myself!

Don’t get me wrong I love Amazon and the great deals it offers to me. It’s almost like it knows me personally and can help me find all the right stuff just for my personality. But if it knew me as much as I would have thought, it would have given me the offer to get a kindle for only $79  instead of the $116$ that I ended up paying for it! I was moved to tears when I noticed that not only is the 79$ Kindle is touch screen… BUT THEY ALSO OFFER IT IN 3G! It sadden me to think that if I only had it in 3g I wouldn’t have to look like a complete poser, trying to show off at the local starbucks (thats the only place my kindle will connect to the internet) sipping their pretentious and overly priced coffee. I am no hipster might I add. I do not wish to sit in a coffee shop for all the world to look at me and think, “Man that girl must have a great life… I wonder what she is writing, could it be a novel or a screen play?”. NO PEOPLE! I only use Star Bucks for their wifi so my Kindle will work, since it is not on the 3G network! So I digress, the new kindles that are not only touch screen but also 3G cost less then what I paid for mine only 2 months ago! Have a look for your self!

The letter from Amazon.com:

Dear Customer,

There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less.  Both approaches can work.  We are firmly in the second camp.

We are excited to announce four new products: the all-new Kindle for only $79, two new touch Kindles – Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G – for $99 and $149, and a new class of Kindle – Kindle Fire – a beautiful full color Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games, web browsing and more, for only $199.

These are high-end products – the best Kindles we’ve ever made. Kindle and Kindle Touch have the most-advanced E Ink display technology available, and the 3G Kindle Touch adds free 3G wireless – no monthly fees and no annual contracts. Kindle Fire brings everything we’ve been working on at Amazon for 15 years together into a single, fully-integrated experience for customers – instant access to Amazon’s massive selection of digital content, a vibrant color IPS touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle, a 14.6 ounce design that’s easy to hold with one hand, a state-of-the-art dual core processor, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, and an ultra-fast mobile browser – Amazon Silk – available exclusively on Kindle Fire.

We are building premium products and offering them at non-premium prices.

Thank you for being a customer,

 

 

Jeff Bezos

Founder & CEO

p.s. – Kindle Fire has a radical new web browser called Amazon Silk. When you use Silk – without thinking about it or doing anything explicit – you’re calling on the raw computational horsepower of Amazon EC2 to accelerate your web browsing. If you’re curious, watch this short video to learn more about how it works.

Oh how this just grinds my gears. I tried to look on the bright side of all this madness that has been force upon my life. I dug real deep to appreciate what it is that I had. And I had finally gotten over my anger at Amazon.com. I found out that if I sit in a certain chair in the art building then I could connect to the internet during class and down load great new books. I was once again happy with my choice of Kindle.

Now, I was raised in a christian home and my parents and the Bible taught me not the envy my neighbors things. But when a good friend of mine called to talk about coming over to my home to show me something new, I felt the pull of the little green monster again.

My friend was so excited to show me her new Kindle Fire. The green monster was trying to jump out and take control, but like a good christian I pushed it back deep down inside never to be heard from again. I told her how cool it was and that I was happy for her. But I found myself secretly plotting to sneak into her apartment and switch out my boring kindle for her super new and super flashy Fire.

Recently my friend had made a comment to me about switching kindles. She said she didn’t have enough time to read and hardly had any books downloaded on it. All she used it for was to check facebook. In other words it was a glorified paper weight. My heart swooned at the thought of having the Fire and being able to see my books in color, and even catching up on all my favorite shows on Netflix. Something I couldn’t even imagine doing on my normal Kindle.

Later when I saw her a few days after we talked I mentioned switching out our Kindles. She gave me a dumbfounded look and then laughed in my face. I was confused. Wasn’t this the girl, that just days before, had been complaining about having the Fire and not having any books on it to read. That it wasn’t worth it to her to have it! I was heart broken. What a tease she was.

I went back to my house and sulked. Slowly I came out of my funk, I told myself that I didn’t need something so flashy to enjoy reading. I have always loved reading and just because I couldn’t keep up with the lastest Gray’s Anatomy wasn’t such a big deal to me anymore. I love my Kindle, even though I’m still a little upset that I couldn’t get the newer one with the cooler tools.

So I now encourage everyone to grab a book, wether it be a paperback, hardback or electronic and just get lost in a world not your own.

 

 



Read More

Studying Tips for Finals by Amanda Marsh and Kelsey Jones

December 13, 2011   Kelsey Jones

The halls of the Boyton Building, as well as all around campus, are filled with students running around frantic all because finals are lurking around the corner. Finals will be held December 12-15. Are you prepared?

According to About.com Preparing for Final Exams, students should not only review the material they studied through out the semester, but also the common terms the instructor used.  If you are nervous about taking the test, make a practice test.  The practice test will help you study.

If you know that your final will have fill in the blank, the best way to study is to re-read all your notes and underline important terms, dates and phrases the teacher has emphasized.

According to Callendaer & McDaniel 2009, “re-reading your textbook has ‘little or no benefit’ when you are studying for a test”

Students who read through the book again fail to read actively. It is better to use one method of study than to try re-reading the book, looking over notes and making flash cards.

If a student plans to read the chapters they can practice the read-recite-review method.

“3R methods says to read the test, set the text aside and recite outloud all that you can remember, and then read the text a second time,” according to McDaniel et al. 2009

Some students find it easier to study with a partner. “A great study partner will understand some methods or problems that you don’t. You will be able to explain some problems to your partner in return. It’s a trade-off,” About.com said.

“Believe it or not, lots of points are lost because students get careless on bubble sheets! Review these common and very costly bubble sheet errors that can wreck your test performance,” About.com said.

Also according to About.com, preparing for final exams not only helps you prepare for certain types of tests, but gives you tips for studying for history, science, English, foreign language and psychology finals.

Are you so nervous after studying to the point where you have trouble sleeping? Ericia Rains, SFA journalism senior, said with a smile, “ To help me relax I step away from all the projects and books and check my pinterest.

Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, become distracting and weigh heavily upon college students. When assignments and study guides are mostly posted online these days, it seems hard to stay on track with school priorities, according to an article titled Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites.

According to mashable.com, there are mixed effects of social networking on college students’ grades and study habits.

Students who use Facebook and hit the books simultaneously found their multitasking led to 20% lower grades than those of their more focused peers. Facebook-using students also made less money during school from part-time work, putting in around five hours per week as opposed to 16 hours per week for a typical, unplugged counterpart, according mashable.com.

There were also students with positive effects when it came to grades and Facebook. Social media may have a positive impact on students’ sense of themselves in the community. Social media-using students were twice as likely as other students to feel well liked by their peers and to participate in extracurricular activities. And 20% more of Facebook-using students (as compared to students who didn’t use Facebook) said they felt connected to their school and community.

Not only do grades and finances suffer, but also students might actually end up feeling more depressed or lonely. Almost half of students believe they are sadder than their friends on Facebook, and 25% of college students have shown signs of severe depression in their status updates at one time or another, also according to mashable.com.

During this studying season and frantic end-of-the-semester assignments, keep your cool. Do not negate to social networking and stay on task. This is a sure remedy to passing finals and advancing your life.

 

How Justin Ikpo prepares for finals.

Justin Ikpo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marcus’s tips on how to study for finals.

Marcus Rosendoll

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark’s advice for students who are preparing for finals.

Mark Chaplin

 

 

Read More

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

November 16, 2011   Marcus Rosendoll

The social networking site www.twitter.com has swept SFA’s campus this past year. Just a few years ago Twitter was overshadowed by its social sister www.facebook.com.

In the beginning Twitter was being used by news reporters from companies like CNN and NBC to voice their viewpoints about the news. People started to make fun of them because they were giving their honest opinions.

Soon, famous people began to use twitter because the site was a hot spot for the media attention. Celebrities, like Ashton Kutcher, realized that Twitter was a social channel that would help boost fame.

“At the end of the day I get to control my heat when it’s on my channel. Heat, meaning paparazzi attention and channel, meaning twitter account,” Kutcher said in an Israeli TV interview.

Twitter gives the user the ability to follow along with editorial topics in the area and update a status or “tweet” about what is happening in the area.

When CEO and owner Jack Dorsey first created twitter in 2006, people were slow to catch on. By 2007 the average was 5,000 tweets per day. Now in 2011, Twitter receives an average of 200 million tweets per day.

It is not rare to see a student walking to class while on a cell phone updating a Twitter status.

Twitter user @iDylanBarker posted a status that reads “I love Twitter more than Facebook because I can update my status every 5 minutes without people thinking I’m crazy.”

Monique Right, SFA Junior, said, “I will never put my whole life on Twitter.”

The Daily Buzz Blog says out of Twitters 106 million users, almost 50% of those users are college students.

The layout of Twitter differs from other social media sites such as Facebook, Blogger and Xanga, in that the site concentrates on being user friendly and ads are limited.

The site consists of a navigation bar on the top of the page and a scrollable timeline with tweets from people that you follow. The social networking site provides a wide avenue of ways to tweet, via web or with phone applications like Plume, Tweetcaster, Twitter for Blackberry, and Twitter for iPhone.

“The only time I tweet is on my way to class,” Angela Assett, SFA senior said. “I don’t think Twitter is addictive. It just depends on the person because some people make twitter their life.”

According to a breakdown of social demographics by the http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com, women are 4 percent more likely to tweet than men. More than half of college students that have a twitter account log on daily.

Advantage of social media

  • Social networking sites among college students are sought to be a necessity instead of a leaser. Websites like Twitter and Facebook are used as a great tool to keep in contact with co-workers, teachers, and friends.

Disadvantage of social media

  • Procrastination is a plague amongst students. Social networks tend to sway students attention.

Adina Howard, SFA senior says, “ I think Twitter could help students, because honestly, I get jack text messages really late, but on Twitter, everything is instant, so whenever I want to know what is going on, I get on Twitter.”

Twitter, along with all other social medias, is un-ignorable. With Twitters’ over 106 million users, countries have been connected and an idea is able to go from one mind to 65 percent of the world instantly.

Are these new venues of communication overthrowing traditional interpersonal communication?

Will people be having class reunions 50 years from now on Twitter? Or what about even getting married on a social site? We will have to wait and see.

Kutcher said in an Israeli TV interview, “True connection requires a handshake.”

Read More

Communicator-in-chief

November 16, 2011   Keith Lansdale

The field of media is ever changing. With advances such as Facebook or Twitter, it’s hard to remember a time when they were not a part of everyone’s lives, when even ten years ago, none of it was available. There have been e-mail, and similar medias, but programs like Facebook and Twitter are not helping to carve out the future. Almost every business out there now has a Facebook or Twitter account, sharing information, deals and news to their subscribers.

Dr. John Hendricks, director of the Division of Communication and Contemporary Culture and professor of communication at Stephen F. Austin State University

Yet despite the growing appeal, the new media had never been used in a presidential race before Barack Obama used it to help spread his messages which helped lead to his election in 2008.

Dr. John Hendricks, director of the Division of Communication and Contemporary Culture and professor of communication at Stephen F. Austin State University, was quite taken by the technical achievements of Obama’s campaign and wrote about them in his new book, “Communicator-in-Chief: How Barack Obama Won the White House Using New Media Technologies.”

Hendricks’ book has recently been awarded the Edited Scholarly Book Award from the National Communication Association’s Applied Communication Division.

“I was fascinated watching the 2008 election and the way that Obama was using new media technology,” Hendricks said. “I was impressed with the way Obama was targeting messages towards specific demographics with technology and McCain was not doing that. I felt like John McCain was way behind in terms of the use of technology.”

“As one who likes to watch politics as sort of a spectator’s sport and then a scholar who is interested in technology, particularly media and the way it covers campaigns, I thought that would make a pretty cool book,” he said. “So I contacted a friend of mine, a person I respect as a fellow scholar, named Bob Denton who’s up at Virginia Tech. He’s written and edited a lot of books on politics and I told him what my idea was for the book and the different things I wanted to look at and examine and see if he wanted to sign onto the project.”

Dr. Robert E. Denton, Jr., thought the idea would make for an excellent project, and they immediately went to work.

“I went out and contacted scholars who specialize in certain areas, for instance, I’m not a video game player, so I didn’t know you could advertise in video games, but Barack Obama’s team knew how to do that,” he said.

One such spot was an Xbox 360 racing game called Burnout Paradise, where in-game billboards can be seen with Obama’s face and a message encouraging people to participate in early voting.

But video games were only part of the strategy, Hendricks said.

“They had people who had actually designed Facebook working for the campaign, and they created a website that looked like Facebook and it was specifically designed for the Obama campaign,” he said.

Hendricks began collecting all the information and wanted to get the book finished very quickly.

“The reason it is an edited book is because I needed to get that book out quickly after the election while the interest was still high,” he said. “Bob signed on and agreed to help and we did it in a fairly swift pace for books and book publishing.”

And the book seems to be selling very well for books of its type.

“Usually, publishers are happy with about 400 to 500 books sold, and the book has sold well over 1,000, so that’s pretty good, and I’m real pleased with it,” he said.

Obama’s team were responsible for a lot of technological firsts, but if Obama’s opponent McCain had been using the same tools, Hendricks doesn’t believe it wouldn’t have changed the end result.

“I’m not a political scientist, but my instinct is, no, it would not have changed things,” he said. “It probably could have tightened the numbers up, and it probably would have been a closer race than what the ultimate outcome was, but I think after eight years of certain policies, the electric becomes tired of it. We were in a recession, and I think the winds were blowing in a way that was favorable to Obama,” he said.

With the 2012 elections now less than a year away, the republican party has made certain changes, looking to use some of the same techniques.

“I think the republicans for 2012 have gotten much more technologically savvy,” Hendricks said. “They know they have to.”

Still, a year away there haven’t been that many new changes to the media world, he said.

“I think we’ll see more of the same stuff used more effectively,” Hendricks said. “We live in a society now where everyone is constantly looking at a cell phone, or their laptop, and we live in an era now where we have push media, not pull media. It’s user generated, and they want to choose what information comes to them.”

The book has gotten the attention of The National Communication Association which is the largest national organization to promote communication scholarship and education. It is a non-profit organization and has more than 8,000 educators, practitioners and students who work and reside in all 50 states and more than 20 countries.

The National Communication Association has awarded Hendricks’ book the Edited Scholarly Book Award.

“I’m quite humbled by that fact,” he said. “The National Communication Association is the largest association for communication scholars in the nation. When I was notified, I asked if they had made a mistake, because I’m just a country boy form Arkansas.”

Hendricks said he was glad to see that a book that came out of SFA could be recognized for such an award.

“I think it shows that good research can be conducted from right here at SFA in Nacogdoches,” he said. “I told my wife, they’re going to know they made a mistake when they hear my country twang. You never think while you’re doing it that it might be recognized, you just have fun doing the work.

Read More

Red, Yellow, Green and Blue Skies Ahead

November 05, 2011   Randal Teater

The reason

the average Facebook user joins the social web bohemith in the first place is because everyone else they know is already on it. So when something new comes along and asks users to ditch the safety net of their untold multitude of friends, many do not like the idea of being alone in a new technological frontier. Online search engine giant Google has decided to take on Facebook with the introduction of their Google+ service, and as such is asking the founding user base to begin a-new their personal networks.

Facebook

has dominated the online social scene ever since the opening of the service to everyone, not just the student population that it originally had targeted toward. This overwhelming success came at a price to the user’s overall experience in two big ways:

The first change that came to Facebook, after it had taken over as the online social network king, was the turning the outlet of social information into a profitable business model by opening up its service to the general capitalistic market. Every large consumer based product company, television show, movie, and political organization has some sort of presence on Facebook today. They want anyone and everyone to be their “fan”, but not because they actually care about everyone that follows them. Instead, the new purpose of everyone’s wall is to become a billboard for the advertisement of things they are “fans” of.

The second was the ever growing need to have more “friends” than someone else, creating this rush to add people to one’s personal network regardless of actual interpersonal real world connection. With the addition of each “friend” that was of little to no importance, every connection with a “friend” that really does matter is diluted.

Have no fear

because Google has taken the burden of improving the vast wasteland of social networking for all of us.

Opening their newest service to the general public(by invite by someone already on Google+, or signing up to receive one from Google). Google has focused on taking the issues of other social services and building an experience that, like all other services Google does, ties together as much as a person’s online life together as possible. All that is required is a free Google account and the guts to try out something new.

One of the primary focuses of Google+ is to redefine the boundaries of each of the connections in a person’s social networks. The idea of grouping contacts within separate circles emphasizes the notion that not all connections are equal. Friends, family, and business contacts normally do not need to have the same stream of information from an individual, and in many cases the crossing and blurring of these lines can have unwanted consequences. This can be useful to college students who try to juggle the different aspects of their personalities: friends to party with, parents to keep in contact with, or professors using the service as an extension of the class room.

Google+

wants to allow the user to be in complete control of who can see what information is shared. This is in effort to fix the problem that just because one may be interested in someone or something, they might not be hold that connection to be as important as others.  The idea has also become popular with other social networking sites, most notably with Facebook introducing their own version of grouping protocols, though apparently none of the copy-cats have had the same success as Google+.

Another exciting feature that Google hopes will set it apart from the competition is the Hangouts attribute. As the name suggest, Hangout is when large groups of people can interact together live in a back and forth sharing of video and audio. The media richness of the content being exchanged really gives G+ an edge that currently no other service can touch. According to a USA Today article it can be very beneficial to study groups or campus club meetings.

Perfection

may still be a ways off for any networking service, and with the concern of privacy becoming more of an issue, new problems will continue to arise for the services that are offered to the public.  Google+ is currently a step in the right direction, and is helping to push Facebook, as well as other social sites, to incorporate the new features and ways of connecting people online.

 

 

 

Read More

Bullritos- Kelsey Delta

October 05, 2011   Kelsey Jones

Bullritos is a new restaruant located near the Nacogdoches Library. Bullritos has an assortment of Mexican style food including margaritas.

Read More

  • Calendar

    May 2013
    M T W T F S S
    « Apr    
     12345
    6789101112
    13141516171819
    20212223242526
    2728293031  
Powered by WordPress | Designed by: SEO Consultant | Thanks to los angeles seo, seo jobs and denver colorado