Life and Times of Dennis Crowley

This heartfelt article shows parents that just because your child may prefer video games to homework and athletics it does not mean that they won't have a lasting impact on this ever expanding world. Dennis Crowley is now known for being a Co-Creator and the CEO of Foursquare, but he may be the only CEO that truly believes that life should be a game and not taken so seriously. 

Foursquare is an App available on the iPhone, Android, WebOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile Phones. The purpose of the app is to "Check-In" where you are throughout the day. If you are a user that checks into one place the most then you are awarded "Mayor" of that establishment. Certain restaurants, stores, cafes, and bars award specials for their "Mayors." When you check into a place you can also leave a tip for other users about this place. The app works the best on smart phones because the app can gain access to the location of your phone and show you the places near you in which you can check in.

As you visit new places, stay out late, or visit the same types of places a lot (like art galleries) you receive different badges. Crowley sees these badges as motivation to go out and explore the real word and a way to have fun with your sometimes monotonous daily life. The app's intention is to get people out and about and doing new things. Crowley had ups and downs throughout his adult career before creating the booming success that is Foursquare. Parents should think before forbidding their children to play video game because, for Dennis Crowley, that was where he got all of his inspiration for Foursquare.  

Second Life is Truly a Second Life

In the novel "New New Media" Paul Levinson spends an entire chapter talking about the phenomenon that is Second Life. Second life is a virtual world where you can create an avatar and live out another life on the net. You use a name different then your own, in most cases, and you can go about life in this virtual world just as you would the real world.

You can do pretty much everything you do in real life on Second Life. Avatars get their hair styled, buy clothes, buy land, dance, and do business.  Paul Levinson's avatar created "Soft Edge Bookstore" a virtual bookstore on Bookstore Island in Second Life. His rent was paid in Linden dollars. The shelves were stacked with all 15 of his books. At the bookstore they were able to read more about his books, and found out how to buy them on amazon. If you bought the books he could tell you where to ship it for an autograph, just like a real bookstore! At the store, his avatar sat on the front porch in his rocking chair.


Linden dollars are the currency that the avatars use on Second Life. Linden dollars are named after Linden Labs who created and continues to develop and administer Second Life. Linden dollars are used to purchase anything from land to a good-looking butt. You can earn them by either purchasing them through PayPal or you can earn them from other residents in Second Life. In December 2008, $5 U.S. dollars purchased about 1,310 L or Linden dollars. Linden dollars works like any worldwide currency.

Second Life is a fascinated social network where you can be a new person and do whatever you want. It is only one tenth as populated as Facebook, but it is definitely going up in popularity. So join Second Life, and have another life separate from your own.  In this article they talk about how second life has significantly improves the quality of life for its disabled users.

In my experience on second life i found it fairly confusing. I talked via chat and not microphone and enjoyed flying around, but found it hard to navigate. I did not like talking to people because I found it creepy to talk to people I didn't even know. I don't intend to further my use of Second Life because I do not believe t was for me, but I could see how people could get addicted to it.

MySpace Music

In this blog i would like to discuss the phenomenon that is music on MySpace. In the old days you would have to go to open mic nights and bend over backwards to get your music into the ears of record labels.  Luckily, now with MySpace scouts often search the site for the next big band, allowing there to be another way to make it big. I will now discuss what Paul Levinson found when researching MySpace music in his novel "New New Media."

"Music pages" on MySpace were created in 2005. The purpose of the page is specifically for bands and music artists. The band uploads MP3s of their music and invite people on and off MySpace to come and listen for free. Once you build up an extensive number of friends you can let a record label know how much excitement your band is generating on your MySpace music page. In 2006, MySpace took it a step further by partnering with "SNOCAP"and began offering free samples of music, with a purchase option of the full recording at the price you pick.

Artists like Ebony Moore, James Harris, Truth on Earth, Kate Nash, and popular rapper Sean Kingston were all discovered on MySpace. Sean Kingston was born in Miami, Florida and raised in Kingston Jamaica. He used mMySpace to ignite his career by "hitten up" Jonathan J.R. Rottem, a record producer with a My Space account, with messages from his own MySpace account. He was persistent through MySpace till he got the result he wanted, which was No. 1 songs in the U.S., Canada, and Australia since July 7, 2007. MySpace is a for of new new media that has changed the way music is discovered today. This article discusses the art of finding a band on MySpace and how it is definitely possible to get discovered through MySpace.

Do you dig Digg?

For my entry on Digg i wish to discuss the Digg chapter in Paul Levinson's book "New New Media."The first topic about Digg that Levinson discusses is how a submission becomes "popular." Levinson says that in order to make a Digg article popular it has to receive "an undisclosed number of Diggs, and no minimum number of Buries (Digg keeps this Digg/Bury algorithm secret), the submission becomes 'Popular,' or is put on the front page of Digg," (Levinson, 100). It is important to know that a Digg is what you click when you like they story, and a bury is what you click when you dislike it.

A controversy within Digg is that, like Wikipedia, Digg and Buries are often amassed via deliberate campaigns of readers, instead of being an assessment by an individual reader. From 2007-2009 Digg had a "Shout" option that would allow you to Shout to as many as 200 friends to encourage Diggs or Buries. This option was eliminated in 2009 because the Digg administration was worried about deliberate campaigns on and off the system to Digg or Bury stories. Operations purported to Digg X number of Diggs for a given story for $1 or more per Digg.

Another topic that Levinson discusses is the difference between real like friends and online "Friends." He states that in order to be friends with someone offline it requires you to know a lot about the person, but online that is definitely not the case. However, he does state that they do have a similarity and that is that they both have a similarity or a community of interests. On Digg online Friends often have a similar taste in the stories that they like. Anyone can become a fan of someone else on Digg and this generally means that you like the stories that this person likes or for whatever reason are interested in what they have to say.

This blog overviewed three aspects of Digg, and through this blog i hope that you had a deeper understanding of whether or not you dig Digg. In this article they discuss and analyze the top 100 Digg articles of all time.