Blog Number 2: The Smith's

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2010/01/11/group-hopes-to-make-the-smiths-how-soon-is-now-number-one/

This Facebook campaign arises from a previous campaign in which two Brits planned on making the song "Killing in the Name," by the band Rage Against the Machine, the number one Christmas single in thew U.K. Well, they succeeded in the campaign and "Killing in the Name" was the number one single in Great Britain, beating out Simon Cowell's show, "The X Factor," which normally takes the number one Christmas single. Now, the same type of Facebook campaign is taking place again. The latest campaign is in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the album "Meat is Murder" by the U.K. band The Smiths. This group wants to make The Smiths' single “How Soon is Now?” the number one single in the U.K. for the week of Feb. 7-13. They currently have about 12,000 people in the group on Facebook, which doesn't even come close to the amount of people who were in the group for Rage Against the Machine. At it's peak, the group supporting “Killing in the Name” had nearly one million people in it. Now this tactic is being tried again on Facebook. This a great display of the wonders that social media gives us. The “Killing in the Name” group not only helped RATM fans talk about the band and interact with each other, but it also gave them a chance to see the band play live again. When Rage's song reached number one, they decided they were going to play a free concert in the U.K. Fans of The Smiths are hoping the same thing will happen with their band. The Smiths haven't played together since 1987, so this is a great way to get the bands who you want to see back together. We will most likely see more of this in the future.

Bella De Soto

This is the weirdest Website I have ever encountered. I'm not even sure what the heck this is for. It's just a mass of photos, videos, and text that has just been thrown together onto a page. It's also one of the biggest web sites I've ever seen at 503 mb. I've been looking at this website for about 30 minutes now and I still can't decide what its true purpose is. Everything is wrong about Bella De Soto's web site.

http://www.belladesoto.us/

Ray Kurzweil

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ray_kurzweil_on_how_technology_will_transform_us.html

It's amazing to think that technology such as artificial intelligence will one day be upon us. And it will be upon us sooner rather than later. Plus, nanotechnology is something I didn't even know existed. All of the different ways we will one day be able to treat diseases is fascinating.

I thought the neatest technology Kurzweil featured in his lecture was the cell phone translator. That would make talking in between different nationalities so much easier. I hope that technology is able to develop and every cell phone user may some day have it.

Who I am

My name is Matt Gardner and I am a junior at UW-Whitewater. I was born in West Allis, WI, and I have lived there in the same house my entire life. I am a print journalism major and a multimedia minor. I was originally a speech minor but switched to multimedia because I felt it was more applicable with today's journalism standards. I am the Opinion Editor for the Royal Purple here on campus. Through my nearly two years with the Royal Purple, I have found that being a journalist is a very stressful job, but it is something that I'm more than willing to deal with. In the future, I hope to be writing sports for a magazine, website, or newspaper. Sports has been the biggest part of my life since I can remember, and it's the area of mass media I am most familiar with. My dream job would be working for either Sports Illustrated or ESPN. I played four sports in high school, football, basketball, baseball and track, although football is my favorite. If I had to choose any sport to cover, I would definitely choose football since it was the sport I grew up with. I am a huge Packers fan, and I would die to see them win another Super Bowl. On another note, I am also a very avid runner who has tried out for the track team at UW-Whitewater (unfortunately I didn't make it, despite running a 4:38 mile). I love to be in shape and one day hope to run in The Boston Marathon.