South Park characters hip with the internet

I don’t know if you all caught last night’s episode of the brutally satirical Comedy Central cartoon, South Park but i sure did. As often is the case when a new episode is aired, my mind was blown.

In this weeks episode Cartmen, the shows anit-hero, begins to uncover a terrorist attack on South Park when a Muslim student is introduced at school. Cartmen immediately calls fellow character, Kyle who is home sick, and has him check the new student’s myspace account. When the facts don’t check out Cartmen smells something funny and the full on spoof of Fox's drama, 24 ensues.

Through out the episode Cartmen is in contact with Kyle using Google, youtube, mapquest and myspace to dig deeper into the conspiracy. "Cross reference his youtube posts with his myspace page blogs," Cartmen says at one point.

I don’t even know what that means or if its even possible but it was hilarious to see these characters who are supposed to be in fourth grade solving a terrorist attack using the internet while the FBI and CIA have trouble keeping up.

In one particular scene the FBI is working along with the boys and one of the agents tells someone to use ask jeevs to search for one of the suspects. The boys all laugh and inform him that nobody is still using ask.com.

It kind of makes fun of how the older generation is so out of touch with the advances in the internet world and how some children have a better idea of how to get information on the net than adults.
Anyway it turns out that they end up preventing the attack but the Muslim student had nothing to do with it. And the moral is that Cartmens racism, though misguided, is responsible for saving America. Another good moral would have been: If you’re a terrorist don’t post on youtube.

Here is an example of some the effect that South Park has had in the media: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbGGt_HI304

Printed words on paper a thing of the past?

There is much that journalists can learn from bloggers and other forms of online journalism. Journalist can learn about audience feedback and being more interactive with the readers. Obviously this can only happen in online publications but it seems that that is the direction that newspapers and the media are going. I think that newspapers will never actually completely die because they still have their advantages, like being able to pick it up and walk around with it. (I hate reading from a computer screen too, it's miserable on the eyes.) But the fact is that most of the new generations out there are using their computers exclusively to get their news and new crazy features are becoming very popular. Like vlogging, and all that mess. The point is that news outlets need to keep up to speed with the rest of the online world. Sometimes when I don’t get a chance to read the paper I will go to the San Francisco Chronicle's online edition and I must say that it is terrible when compared to other online newspapers. It has hardly any graphics zero space for reader response, pretty much just the exact text that’s in the print edition. I don’t really mind because I just read the articles anyway, but it is surprising when I go to the Orion's web site and it has ten times the features. I guess it just goes to show that the younger generation is already moving forward and older media outlets are being left behind in the dust.
Here is SF Chronicle's sorry excuse for an online paper: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/

Internet creates new age of brakettology

With selection Sunday right around the corner sports fans are gearing up for the grueling task of filling out their NCAA tournament brackets.
Ten years ago the only way one might of had to research the teams involved would have been to look at the standings in the newspaper or maybe read about teams in a college basketball magazine. But now with the Internet, all of the information that you could possibly think about needing to know when picking your teams is right there at your finger tips and if you’re cocky about your college basketball knowledge you can put your money where your mouth is much more conveniently with online betting pools.
What the Internet has done for fan involvement in the NCAA tournament is actually quite unbelievable. Before all there was one game on television at a time and hardly any way of fallowing the rest of the games. Now you can not only get in game stats of all of the action on the court, you can get up to the minute analysis about any team involved.
To be honest it is hard to imagine all of the excitement surrounding the tournament without Internet. The interest has grown to a level where anyone can fallow along with the excitement and it has made the month of March arguably the most engaging month in any American sport. I am usually the kind of person to say that the Internet is negative when it comes to things that I am interested in, but when it comes to March madness I am all for it.