2010 My Reflection on Media Consumption
December 13th, 2010 | By TY
Lately, I have noticed several factors which influence my decision-making with regards to media consumption. I feel the most impacting factor is my fear of falling behind technologically. Also, I’ve noticed that regardless of what I’m doing, I feel the obligation to multi-task and attend to my regular media outlets in order to stay up on news. Whether it is about technology that will increase my productivity or simply the scores to my sports fantasy players, I must always be on close guard through the Internet either on a computer or my iPhone. The Internet has its pros and cons and I have realized that I rely on it more than anything else.
Being a free-lance graphic and web designer outside of school, I have even more incentive to stay tuned with the latest advancements in computer technology. Actually, I feel it’s almost to the point where I spend more time searching for new stuff than using the technology I have already mastered. Making investments of money and time in new technologies can make or break you in today’s times and I find that I spend a lot of my time tracking the specs and reviews of new hardware and software in hopes of making the right choices now that will positively impact my future. Sometimes it is hard to predict the future of a new technology and I feel “doing your homework” before buying in to whatever is new is essential in the tech age of today. Ask the people today who previously bought an HD-DVD player if they will stand by their choice today. There is nothing I hate more than buying a lemon or making a purchase that comes back to bite me down the road.
This quarter, the first fascination of new technologies for me was HTML5 and its claims of increased compatibility and more robust features that will lessen our dependance on third-party plugins for publishing rich content. Features like font embedding, html canvas, and native audio and video playback are all features that will help solve the Apple/Adobe Flash spat that is limiting the advancement of rich media in the mobile market. Upon further inspection, the new update is very promising, however, I decided I will wait until the kinks have been ironed out before I start developing in HTML5. This is because not all browsers support the codecs used in the video and audio playback which makes the new method not worth it in my opinion. Also, YouTube has already made the HTML5 jump and their new embeddable players not only support all browsers including mobile versions, but record views which is valuable for publishing your own media.
Another object of my fascination has been search engine optimization. As a web designer, I must be aware of all the methods and tricks for placing well on search engines for my own sites and the sites of my clients. Keeping clean code and posting fresh, keyword-dense content is the best way to tackle a certain niche. Of course coding your meta tags with relevant and targeted keywords is a must, but many overlook the content which is king. I have also found that the keys to achieving a higher PR ranking is Inbound Links (Do-follow links from sites with high PR). Every site I am a member of (Myspace, YouTube, etc…) all have my URL and even forums have my URL in the signature. Whenever I post a YouTube video, I include my URL in the description so whenever it is reposted on other sites, a lot of the time my URL is also posted.
Lately I have been obsessed with achieving the fastest hard drive speed I possibly can on my new Macbook Pro which is currently the biggest bottleneck for HD video editing. CPU speed, multi-core processing, and RAM have been the talks of computer speed since the 90s, but it has reached a certain point where those trusty 7200rpm hard drives aren’t going to utilize your snazzy new processors with maxed out RAM. SSD drives and Raid configurations are the future of hard drive speed. SSD drives are offering the fastest speeds for single drives, but the technology is still not perfected. I just pulled the trigger on a $500 Raid 5 eSata enclosure (OWC Mercury Pro Qx2) giving me up to 200mb/s speed. It wasn’t only about speed because another major selling point was that since the data is spanned, one of the four drives can fail leaving your precious data safe.
Did I really need to pay $500 when the $100 discount for black friday just seemed to irresistable to pass up? I won’t know if I made the right decision until a few years have passed. I was eyeing that eSata enclosure for over 4 months and sprung on it once the price dropped for the holidays. My reasoning for making the investment was largely due to the fact that I will get the speed I need to edit HD video while having the peace of mind that if one of the drives die, all my precious data will be fine and waiting to be rebuilt on a replacement drive. After spending hours researching the new technology, will that time I will save rendering outweigh the time and money I spent? Were all the benchmarks and reviews I found on the Internet genuine or inflated by marketing and SEO?
The Internet is a tool we all depend on and a tool that creators must utilize to stay up with the competition. However, like many good things, the Internet is better when used in moderation. The Internet makes many things easier, but easier doesn’t always mean it is as good as the old fashion way.
