A recent YouTube video showed L’il Wayne, fresh out of prison, surprising a Las Vegas audience by joining Canadian rapper Drake onstage. What is the most noticeable part of the video (other than the awful sound quality)? Take a look at the audience – actually, take a look at the sea of Blackberries, Droids, and iPhones shooting video of the performance. Everyone has their phone out! And the person who made the actual YouTube video almost certainly shot that on his or her own phone (on that note, check out the high quality zoom on Lil Wayne).
This is a prime example of the bond between mobile computing and social media. Let’s pretend that you are a person in that Vegas crowd, and you have your phone above your head, taking hi-def video (and low-def sound) of the spectacle. What are you going to do with that video? This question relates to the ubiquity of mobile computers in our lives.
To answer the question: what are you going to do with that video? Keep it on your phone, and only show your friends? That’s nice, but kind of boring. Look how many hits some of the other posted videos taken at the same time got. Some are in the hundreds of thousands. You can post it to YouTube, easily: any cell phone that can take video can post to YouTube via an email account. you can also share it on Facebook, and link that to Twitter. Social media sites cross a lot of borders, because the programmers who work for Twitter and Facebook know that cross-exposure is a mutually beneficial thing.
Now, take yourself out of the context of a concert. What is a more student-practical use of using your phone to capture video and other media? How about taking notes during lectures? Smart phones have plenty of different ways to make this easier, from dictation apps, to audio recorders, to video recording.
This blog is another good example of the positive, university-centred uses of mobile computing; pictures of freebies, notes taken regarding events, emails sent and received via prompts. Probably about 60% of the activity of this site is run via mobile computing – and that’s strictly smart phone work, which excludes written work done on a laptop (also technically a mobile computer). Mobile computing – via phone, laptop, and now tablet – has emerged as the major force in social networking precisely because of its mobility. A social person is generally a mobile person; one who can take access his or her social media. Just as the past blog posts have indicated, a mobile, social person can also utilize ubiquitous computing devices to increase efficiency, success, and innovation.
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