What is Youtube?

YouTube had become one of the most popular sites on the internet. It not only introduced the easy accessibility of worldwide video sharing, it also created a way for people to communicate with videos and in ways that no website had ever accomplished before it to its degree. It not only created a way to share videos, it also introduced careers that were solely based on making these videos. People can make over $150,000 a year just creating new content for their loyal fan base, a job that would have been laughed at 10 years ago. But how did YouTube become the immense powerhouse of the internet as it is today, and how do people make 6 figures a year off of making videos. Well your about to find out.

Back in 2005 3 employees off PayPal created YouTube, oblivious of the multimillion dollar business that would come. They simply created the site just so they could share videos with their friends with ease. Flash-forward 8 years from then, and you can see what there once small site has become. YouTube has become the 2nd most popular site on the internet, just beaten out by Facebook, but however may edge to the first place spot soon enough as Facebook’s popularity has begun to dwindle. This spot as the second most viewed or visited site is thanks to its perfect timing. As I said before, pre 2005 there wasn’t a large worldwide video viewing sites. There were a few small ones, but nothing as large as YouTube.

Recently YouTube has become a job form some people. With their millions of subscribers, popular YouTube celebrities such as PewDiePie or Smosh with over 10 Million subscribers are making hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad revenue a year. Even without having a million subscribers, you can still make a decent sum off of ads and YouTube partnership with even a couple thousand subscribers. Using this system benefits from both the content producer and YouTube itself, with YouTube gaining more and more people coming in to the website, while the You Tubers gain money from YouTube and for Ad’s to be put on the videos. YouTube has also influenced popular culture with the website itself becoming almost a pseudo television with each different YouTube being its own special channel.

YouTube might be the most influential website of the 21^st century. With it came the ease of global video sharing and opened a new type of jobs that came with partnership.

 

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2 review

This weekend I decided to go out to the theaters and give Cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2 a shot.  The first film got my attention with its constant humor and fun animation style. And with the voice of Mr. T as the uptight police officer Earl and Anna Faris as the bubbly and likeable news reporter Sam Sparks , what’s not to love. And while this film seems like it was more aimed as an all out children’s movie, it still has some laughs for me and was a fairly enjoyable ride.

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2 starts off where the first film left off. In case you haven’t seen the first movie, here’s a quick recap. The original movie had Flynt Lockwood as the budding scientist whose inventions have brought shame upon him. Wanting to prove something to himself and his father, he invents a machine that can turn water atoms into food. Using this machine brings amazing press to his dreary and sad town of chewandswallow. But unfortunately the evil mayor puts too much pressure on him, which causes the machine to overload and instead create a giant food storm. The citizens of the town escape the storm and Flynt manages to stop the machine, but the town’s people flee the city never to return.

And this is where the 2^nd movie picks up from. The president of a large company called Live Corp named Chester V has tasked Flynt and his gang from the first movie to go back to the island to retrieve the food making machine. Being his idol, he instantly agrees. But he is then warned that instead of just having food, the remnants of the city in the first movie are now inhabited by creatures that are half food and half animals. Many of the creatures are really well designed and appealing to people of all ages, from cheese spiders and dog like Strawberries, the food animals are varied and interesting to see and watch.  These food animals make for some appealing eye candy, and even steal the show away from the main characters sometimes.

On the flip side, you can see that this movie was mostly designed for a younger audience, with a lot less serious moments then the first and a more overall upbeat and happy story. There were times when I would roll my eyes from the jokes, and sometimes even the dialogue. In the first movie there was a good share of moments that were fairly intense and exciting, which this movie unfortunately doesn’t have.

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2 is a fun movie to go see, but don’t expect anything to high. With its colorful visuals just making it work, its sometimes childlike jokes and dialogue make this a movie that  I would recommend that you should see this with a younger sibling, because if you go alone at a age older than 12-13, I don’t think you would get your money’s worth.

Breaking Bad Review

Breaking Bad has quickly become the most talked about TV show. It combines excellent writing together with tense moments and combines them together for a flawless performance. This show has become voted the best show in history and it shows. With the last episode viewing Sunday night, I would like to give this show a review and give it a quick rundown before the last episode ends.

Breaking Bad is a show about Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher whose life was turned around when he discovered he has stage 3 cancer of the lung. He knows the cancer will kill him soon, and he wants to be able to financially support his family before his death. His life will be forever changed when he tags along with his brother in law, DEA agent Hank, on a drug bust. There he sees one of his old student Jesse Pinkmen. Together Walt teams up with Jesse to cook meth. Using his knowledge as a chemistry teacher, he soon produces the best crystal meth around town.  He then starts using the name Heisenberg to disguise his name and his meth lord name. But with the best comes the competitors. And they are not happy about it. The longer the episodes come on, the more eccentric characters are introduced like the wheel chair ridden psychopath Hector and the cool and calculated drug kingpin Gus.  But it seems like for every character introduced 2 of them are killed off.

This show has changes everywhere you look. In the start of the series Walter is just a normal human being who is fed up with his life and wants to just provide for his family. But as the seasons tick down, you can see the visible change from everyday man to a murder. As the show goes on, Walt seems to almost turn from the protagonist to the antagonist.  The writing as I mentioned is perfectly, tying all loose ends together so you feel satisfied. It also adds to the tension and twists of the show, making you guess what’s going to happen next. The characters are all acted perfectly; making even some of the most evil ones oddly likeable and gives you mixed feelings in a good way. The show makes you question your morals as well, with you questioning constantly who is the good guys, or if there really are any.

Unfortunately for the younger TV watchers, this show might not be for them. It has a constant stream of violence and language, with AMC giving the show TV 14, but the DVD versions are uncensored and are can most definitely comply with the R rating. The theme of the show is dealing meth and the dangers of doing so, with almost every episode depicting a form of violence and most of them are bloody and gore filled. This plus the language makes this one of the most mature shows on the air right now, and I don’t recommend this to anybody under 15-14, and even they should be able to handle the mature themes and depictions of violence.

Breaking Bad has quickly become the most popular show on air for a reason. There’s a reason why this show was given a 99/100 by Metacritic, the highest rating it has ever given a show.  Its picture perfect writing and dialogue with its spot on actor performances really sell the show.  The plot is amazing with each episode giving you what you want and almost never leaves anything for disappointment.  If you are old or mature enough to handle this show, I highly recommend that you give it a view.

Insidious 2 review

When insidious was released, I was instantly drawn to it. And while it wasn’t perfect, it did its job of giving me a good scare, and I enjoyed it. The creepiness of the first film was executed well, so I was genuinely scared when I saw it on screen. Unfortunately, Insidious 2 was not able to instill such fear and even at some parts becomes silly.

The plot of the first movie is that Dalton can separate his body and enter a magical spirit world called the Further. When he separates his body he could be possessed by other spirits. Josh, Dalton’s father, also has the ability and in the end of the last movie, used it to retrieve his son from the Further. Unfortunately for him, while Dalton was able to return to his body, his body was possessed by the bride in black.

This is where the second movie picks up, with the family employing some ghost hunters to help look up the bride in black. After they figure out more about her, they travel to the Further together and get Josh’s spirit back after they killed the mother of the spirit that possessed Josh.

While the first movie used good suspenseful moments for their scares, this one sticks to good old jump scares, which got old pretty quick. The whole tone of this movie has been toned down a little bit, with the dark creepy mood replaced by a sillier and almost funny mood.

For your money’s worth I would recommend that you wait and go rent the first movie before you even decided to see its sequel. Then and even then I would tell you to wait until this movie goes to a matinee showing to save you a few bucks.

GTA 5 Review

With the new gaming consoles just around the corner, many gaming companies are pushing out last minute titles on the Xbox 306 and Ps3 and soon the PC. And Rockstar has delivered what might be the last great game on this generation of consoles and possibly the best game of the year. GTA V has improved on almost if not every feature from its predecessor. The normally one man story has been replaced by 3 main characters, which are all connected or have met in the past. Each one of them has a different and unique back-story that connects them to each other. Michael is a middle aged retired bank robber who wants to just settle down with his family, while Trevor is a psychopath who comes off as likable but has his violent side. The contrast of characters gives you a way to play who most fits your own personality.  Story wise, this is the most in-depth in the series focusing on the characters interaction with each other to complete missions, switching from character to character to complete objectives and missions.

One trait that has stuck with the GTA series is its violence, which this one most defiantly not trimmed down on. If you’ve played any other titles in the long running series, you know what to expect. There is one exception though, where you are forced to torture a man for information, getting bonus points for trying out all the different types of methods. This scene is fairly intense and is defiantly not for the squeamish. But other than that scene, you get pretty much what you would expect from GTA. This game is most deserving of its M rating and shouldn’t be played by anybody under 15 or 16.

The overall mechanics and graphics are stunning. The controls can be tailored to your personal taste, cementing the game as a personal experience. Like I said before, the main story is the most intense and fulfilling in the series, from high speed chases to robberies, each mission feels unique and different from the last. The graphics of this game really get to show off the capabilities of the Xbox 360 and Ps3, putting together gorgeous shading and wonderful and robust colors.

While there might not be many sour spots on this gem, there are a few. The amazing graphics can only really be shown off on the soon to be released PC version, while the console versions can be slow and blurry at times. And at the time of release, there is no multiplayer mode, so you can’t dominate the city of Los Santos with friends just yet.

With the latest installment in the long running series, you can really see how the developers pushed for the best experience you could find. With its amazing graphics and intense and fast paced game play, this may not only be the best game of the year, it might be the best game of this generation of consoles. I would recommend anybody who owns one of these consoles to give this game a try.

                

Is iOS 7 really what it was cracked up to be?

It’s finally here. After many months of hype and hysteria iOS 7 has finally hit the world this past Wednesday. But is it really worth the download? First off the update takes half a lifetime to download. If that wasn’t bad enough, you need 2.9 gigs of space left on your apple device. This may not seem like an overly large amount, but when u only own the 8 gig variety (like me), it’s pretty tough deleting a large selection of songs or apps. On top of all that, if you weren’t connected to a source of Wi-Fi or your battery wasn’t above 50% it wouldn’t even start. After your done waiting for half a century, and you see that shiny white apple logo startup screen you know it’s done.

 Now after hearing the tedium and unreliable nature of actually receiving the download, you would think that the changes would be good. And I am happy to say that for the most part they are. Now apple has been around in the market for about 7-8 years now, and even though some features have changed over time, the chunk of what made apple who they are stayed relatively the same. But we were promised the largest and most innovative update yet. With iOS 7 came several new features including iTunes radio, the control center, automatic updating, dynamic wallpapers, airdrop (which the android phones have had for a while now), and large visual updates to the apps and the screens themselves. On the whole, I think this update was a good one for apple. The new features are nice, with control center centralizing many well used features that were once restricted to the settings button to just a down swipe. All in all the new features added in this update were very useful and have almost no drawbacks. The visual update is nice, featuring new art for all the apps, lock screen, home screen, and many other small details. Everything is clean and crisp, running and transitionalizing smoothly from app to app.

Now with every good side there’s a bad one as well. While the new visual and add ons are good and pleasing, there are some changes that come with that. The battery life of the device has been hit and for some hard. With this newest update you’ll soon find out that your battery will be draining even faster than before. Unfortunately, if don’t own at least an iPhone 4, you won’t be receiving this update. Even if you do own a 4 or 4s you’re still missing out on a few of the newer features, but this should persuade you from not getting it.

All in all the iOS7 update brought a few drastic changes and while some of the will stand out among the others, all are an improvement from the original design. If you can get past the slower than sloth loading speed and the faster battery consumption, this update will fill and improve all of your apple related needs.