Student: John Slattery (09004371)
Chosen blog: Pixelsumo (Here)

The blog which have chosen to review is Pixelsumo. Pixelsumo is a blog by Chris O'Shea. Chris O'Shea is an artist and designer who specialises in creating interactive art which often utilises digital media and technologies. He is very experienced in his field and he has had many clients in the form of private companies, as well as a number of commissions from public institutions. He has also created exhibition works for such names as the Tate Museum in Britain. His installations are often entertaining, but also cause one to ponder on the mechanics and thought process behind each piece.

Naturally, as the author is an artist/designer with an active interest in technology, his posts reflect his interest and involvement in those areas. Many of the posts are based around technological innovations, such as his post about Microsoft's new video based games control system. The majority of his posts are based around his interest in digital art installations which he has designed, and also designs and concepts by others which he finds interesting. Some posts also focus on news in the digital art or gaming industry, and events which he is interested in.

Pixelsumo's posts are perhaps a bit sparse for my liking, but were more frequent than the mustech.net which was far too sparse to be of any value, and far less frequent than Gizmondo's amount of posts, which was far too frequent to make keeping up with it anything short of a full time job. I received a total of 10 posts in my Google Reader from Pixelsumo. I have received 6 from MusTech.net, and a whopping 1000+ from Gizmondo. The posts from Pixelsumo have come roughly in weekly intervals, with a default 3-4 posts which were deposited by Google Reader upon subscription.

I would consider the target audience for a blog of this nature to be people between the ages 16-40 with interests in technology, alternative art, digital media or alternative entertainment.The language used by the author was, therefore suitable for an adult audience. I found it easy to understand, with the exception of a few new words derived from the technological world, which I had not previously encountered. The design of the blog was also quite interesting. Previous blog posts were selected by clicking on an image of the object/objects which were the topic of the blog.The blog posts themselves contained many links to external sources, as well as videos from video providers such as YouTube. Other embedded artefacts included images.Interaction in the blog takes place in the form of commenting the blogs, and the possibility of experiencing a conversation with Chris O'Shea himself, or other subscribers with interest and/or knowledge in the area.



Chosen post: The Fun Theory(Here)

My favourite blog post from Pixelsumo had to be the post entitled "The Fun Theory". It was a post which referred to a campaign advertisment for Volkswagen. In the blog, there was a number of images and videos which asked the question "Can we make people do things by making them more fun to do?". The videos contained two experiments where two objects were modified so that they provided a source of human interaction. It showed some very impressive conclusions. Later in the post, Chris directed our attention to some similar interactive installations. I liked this post especially because it showed the potential of interactive installations to modify human interactions for the better without making it a chore.




My comments on blogs:

Pixelsumo
Comment 1-http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/playful-conference/comment-page-1#comment-64173
Comment 2-http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/hand-from-above/comment-page-1#comment-64174
Comment 3-http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/project-natal/comment-page-1#comment-64175
Comment 4-http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/boom-bench/comment-page-1#comment-64176

Music, Technology And Education-MusTech.net
Comment 1-http://mustech.net/2009/10/13/google-wave-keyboard-shortcuts-and?dsq=20115039#comment-20115039
Comment 2-http://mustech.net/2009/09/28/excited-or-insulted-writing-songs?dsq=20116375#comment-20116375
Comment 3-http://mustech.net/2009/09/20/amazing-youtube-music-video-series-3?dsq=20116631#comment-20116631
Comment 4-http://mustech.net/2009/10/23/microsoft-7-the-upgrade-play-by-play?dsq=21106225#comment-21106225

Gizmodo
Unfortunately, Gizmodo does not allow commenting rights to people without an audition. Therefore, I was unable to comment on these blogs.