Task 1 week 4

My experience with user generated content websits would be web sites such as wiki's, youtube and i think that websites such as alluc.org and veoh.com. I find wiki's reeally useful, if you need a quick fix to find out information, because they are usually straight to the point and are usually in simple language that is easy and quick to understand. for instance this is a wiki on user generated content. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-generated_content. Even though there are issues surrounding whether the content is real or not, if i found out an interesting fact, i would always go look it up further on another website or in a book, so wiki's is a good source of finding initial information to then go on to do further research. Another user generated website that i often use is IMBD.com, this is always useful if i am doing a bibliography and i need to dinf out the director or publisher of a certain film or televsion program. For instance i am currently doing some research on childrens media and i had to find some information out on a program called "Shoe box Zoo", the information i needed to find out included, directors, channels, company actors, all this information i was able to find on this web site, http://imdb.com/title/tt0406468/. I have used youtube to both post and look at videos, although they are trying to cut down and often take off content that isnt entirely legal to post like full tv series or new videos released, they are often useful to me to watch videos of cheerleading and dance, to help me with ideas and to see what other team are l;ike and what standard they are at. Also if i dont have a song on my computer i often listen to it on youtube, instead of paying for it or downloading it.
Alot of the idssues surrounding the WGA strike are due to the fact that people like me use sites such as alluc and veoh, but the reason i use them is because of impatience and money. One of the main series that iw atch on the internet is HEroes, this took a very long time to come to british television and even when it did it was just on the sci fi channel, it took at least another 6 months to come to terrestrial and so when the second series came around i didnt want to have to wait another year for it to come to terrestrail television. Also with the price of cinemas and ebing a poor student i can not afford to go to the cinema to see all the films that i want to see and so when they are as easy accessible as they are, i just cant resist the temptations that surround them.
I spend alot of my time on social networking sites, before i came to uni i lived on myspace, but since being at uni i have been converted facebook and ahve never look back, i love the fact that you can post pictures and look at everybody elses pictures from nights out. and they are always there never to be lost. you can always post on someones wall and message them and keep in contact with people that maybe you wouldnt always talk to text or on the phone or over msn. Often on myspace and facebook you get security issues, i have often had eople hacking into my facebook and sending out messages about ringtones and other random stuff with out me even realising as soon as this happens i change my password. It does annoy me that it is this easy to hack into my facebook, but i do not know what else to do, the good thing about it now is when you are choosing a password it does tell you how safe it is, for instance if there is a red signal next to it its not very self and the greener it gets the safer it is.
Another issue with facebook is it annoys me when people send you lots of applications, or add you when they dont know you, if i do not know who a person is i do not add them, because i think it is kind of strange if they do add you! This happened with alot of bands on myspace i used to get alot of adds from random local or amateur bands, but i didnt tend to add them because there music didnt usually interst me and i didnt understand how they got my url to add me.