Chicago sighs

I could almost feel the depression seeping through the television screen. I sat in my mother's hotel room on Ontario Street, downtown Chicago, and watched as my beautiful city was eliminated first round in the 2016 Summer Olympics bid.



But, the darkness has faded, and life must go on. Hopefully Rio can tackle the infrascture, transportation, and economic difficulties the Olympics presents.



I am sad I won't be able to meet Michael Phelps in 2016 (when i'm 28?!) and confess my undying love, but I am praying that the money we would've spent does go towards school and transportation costs.

Keeping up with Copenhagen

The First Lady arrived in style. A chic black and white skirt suit complimented Michele Obama's confidence as she arrived in Copenhagen on Wednesday to back the bid for the International Olympic Commitee (IOC)'s 2016 Olympics decision.

Madrid , Tokyo, Rio, and Chicago are the four remaining cities that have a bid for the Olympics.

The IOC will make its final decision tomorrow on where the 2016 Summer Olympics will be held. Copenhagen is the hub of Olympic activity through Oct.9 and has spent an estimated $9.1 million on its first Olympic decision event according to CBSnews.com.

FLYPPING OUT!

A dark, menacing webpage appeared the first time I visited Flyp. At first glance the site seems depressing and boring. But after a quick flip through their scrolling feature stories, neatly aligned in the middle of the homepage, the website that claims to be "more than a magazine" is exactly that. Not at all dull, Flyp is an organized online magazine that prompts interest in a variety of topics.


Unlike Time Magazine's website, which stuffs information down your throat from a jumbled homepage, Flyp is an online tool that is easy to read like a magazine and goes beyond dry, one dimensional webpages. This may have been the point of Flyp Editor in Chief, Jim Gaines, the previous editor of Time Magazine, "We aim to combine mediums in a manner that allows the stories we develop to make sense together as a package...but in a more dynamic and frankly, more realistic way, given how people consume media."

Once a story is opened it splays an intro video with sound and awesome graphics across your whole monitor. The graphics are bright and tight, there's an option to have music stream continuously, and pictures and graphs are so fluidly pieced together you barely realize how much information you're actually absorbing. The story itself has links and embedded videos that are creatively displayed; the whole event let's the user actively enjoy each story.

The home page not only links to readers' blogs but also offers a Podcast for the iPod or iPhone. Flyp is a great online experience and while its future is not certain, people are talking excitedly about this new media site. Flyp must find a mature and digitally savvy audience that yearns for a wide range of topics. Users must hold on to the meaning of the story and not get lost in all the flash and glitter of this appealing new journalism experience.

SOCIAL MEDIA MAYEM

Last night, September 13th, 2009 marked the annual MTV Music Awards. Maybe it's all a part of my maturing process, or maybe MTV really has mixed up too much to handle. As young adults in their 20s and 30s look back on Music Television (MTV) we reminisce about the time when music was actually played and only one anchor was necessary to inform us of which music was currently blaring from our old box TV sets. Amongst the yapping"twitter correspondant", the clueless fashion correspondant, and the two mellow fellows who were supposedly key anchors...I found myself dazed and confused!

(Oh, yes, almost forgot the idiotic guy backstage who had a hidden camera view and made creepy comments ).

That was just the preshow. I give MTV credit for attemping to infuse all aspects of social media into a large awards show but I anxiously await the next with high hopes of a more mature digital editing effect. Thanks again for the dissapointment, MTV. Come on people, let's absorb actual newsworthy information from the internet, TV, and phones AND create smooth medium mobility simultaneously!