Category Archives: technology

Film, Football, Journalism, Minnesota Vikings, Off campus, Podcast, Side Hustle, sports, technology, Uncategorized, voice, Winona, Winona State University, YouTube

Side Hustle- Sports Podcasting

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Having the same conversation over and over can be tiresome, especially when you’re talking in circles.

One of the most common debates in sports is, “Moss is better than Rice,” or vice versa, and it usually gets nowhere.

That’s why in 2014, Garret Greenlee created a Twitter and YouTube channel where he could prove his sports-related thoughts through facts.

“I got sick of having the same conversation with people like, ‘man this guy’s good, or this guy’s good,’” Greenlee said.  “I just created an account and thought whatever happens, happens.”

The accounts grew rapidly.

After four years, Greenlee’s Best NFL Matchups had more than 20,000 followers on Twitter.

Only problem was, he had no idea what email he used when he made the account.

“I was following people way too fast, so Twitter thought I was a spam account,” Greenlee said.  “They sent an email to the account I had with it, but I had no idea what that email was, and I lost the account forever.”

Greenlee had to start all over.

Lucky for him, he had a couple friends with similar accounts, and they gave him a shout out to help build his new channel, Football Analysis.

“I only have 1,500 subscribers on YouTube right now.  Not ‘only,’ like I’m grateful for them, but I want to get to the point where I’m at 30, 40, 50, 100 thousand subscribers and do a giveaway once a month of a signed whatever,” Greenlee said.  “I do appreciate the support, but I want to get to a point where I can use this as a side income just for talking about what I love, which is football.”

Greenlee’s set up.

How does Greenlee make money with these videos?

“You have to have 1,000 subscribers,” Greenlee said.  “But within the past year, you also have to have four thousand watch hours of your content. So that took a little bit to build up.”

Four thousand hours may seem like a lot, but with browse features, you can reach more people than just your subscribers, which happened to Greenlee a few times.

“I have a couple with 30 thousand, 20 thousand views and that really gets a lot of the hours at almost the snap of your fingers,” Greenlee said.  “So, in reality you could have one video that has 60 or 100 thousand views, and you get your four thousand hours, then the rest of your videos combined could have only 500 views.”

Since the interview, Greenlee has reached the 2,000-subscriber mark with his new account.

The content is starting to pay off.

He explains this in the video.

Andy Carlson, a Winona State graduate and creator of the Purple FTW! podcast, said a Vikings vs Ravens blizzard game in 2013 sparked his interest in talking sports.

Carlson looks at all the players on the Vikings roster and analyzes the national media coverage of the Vikings, while adding his own twist of humor for his 23,000 subscribers.

“There will always be a market for fan content,” Carlson said.  “People want niched down perspective over national media jabronis.”

Here is a clip from a recent video.

With this being his side job, Carlson said he always finds the motivation to release numerous videos a day.

“The viewers who continue to make us part of their day (motivates me),” Carlson said.  “If we can be a nice little five minute break from life and give some info and some entertainment. Worth it.”

Carlson offers monthly memberships for $4.99 and $24.99 on his YouTube channel that offers extra benefits such as one-on-one chats and free merchandise.

Teespring has teamed up with Carlson and Purple FTW! to sell this merchandise that includes t-shirts, mugs and stickers.

Purple FTW! merchandise for sale on Teespring.

“It’s a very decent side hustle,” Carlson said.  “Merch is fun, and everything helps keep the production lights on.”

With the quarantine giving people more free time than ever, podcasts and YouTube may be a good pass time to listen to, or maybe even try.

Football Analysis Link

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjoHPnySKcDbxzaF2R8YM2Q

Purple FTW! Link

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Xt29Fi1ES6C1fEtWFUFIw

Film, Journalism, News, Safety, Security, technology, Uncategorized

Deep Fakes

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Until recently, photographs, video, and audio were considered a trusted form of communication and storytelling.

Then, photo editing technology and software was developed and photos were no longer considered to be fully trusted.

Some photographs have been altered so well it’s almost impossible to tell.

But videos can’t be faked, right? Wrong.

New technology is proving that to be false.

Deep fake technology has been developed to superimpose someone’s face onto another’s.

According to the computer science department chair at Winona State University, Mingrui Zhang, the idea behind the technology has been around for more than ten years.

It’s mostly been used for entertainment purposes such as the popular children’s movie Toy Story.

“It uses generative adversarial network (GAN) which is based on neural network algorithms,” Zhang said. “It is like any unsupervised neural network it learns from the subjects.”

According to a research paper by Robert Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, and Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, “Harmful lies are nothing new. But the ability to distort reality has taken an exponential leap forward with ‘deep fake’ technology. This capability makes it possible to create audio and video of real people saying and doing things they never said or did.”

This technology could pose as a threat to privacy and security, according to Zhang.

“It may bring up legal and ethical concerns,” Zhang said. “Those are also what computing education society is facing. The social implication of technology,”

Much like on the social media app, Snapchat, there is a feature that maps out a user’s face and can put photos of friends faces or other filters onto a user’s face.

Snapchat is similar to deep fake technology. Flaws can be detected rather quickly and the users can tell it isn’t someone else.

With deep fake technology, it is more complex but the results are better.

“For example, you want actor B to behave like actor A,” Zhang said. “You take video of actor A, the software will analyze the video and construct the skeleton of A, and A’s motion. In filming, wrapping the skeleton of A with the skin of actor B will make the audience think that B is in action. That’s how AVATAR was made, but the process is too expensive for average person. But with help of a machine learning algorithm like GAN, faking is possible for everyone.”

An issue where deep fake technology arose was in the porn industry. Users of the technology were placing celebrities faces onto others in porn videos.

This is an issue of consent and the well-being of those celebrities. They did not give permission to have their faces in those videos.

“Deep fakes make them available to average person. It started for entertainment, could be used to fake someone’s action who has never committed,” Zhang said.

Chesney and Citron wrote more on the effects of deep fakes.

“Deep fakes have characteristics that ensure their spread beyond corporate or academic circles. For better or worse, deep-fake technology will diffuse and democratize rapidly,” wrote Chesney and Citron. “. . . technologies—even dangerous ones—tend to diffuse over time.”

With that in mind, the porn industry may not be the only industry that is affected as it is hard to contain this type of technology.

Chesney and Citron also wrote about how deep fake technology could affect journalism.

“Media entities may grow less willing to take risks in that environment, or at least less willing to do so in timely fashion,” wrote Chesney and Citron. “Without a quick and reliable way to authenticate video and audio, the press may find it difficult to fulfill its ethical and moral obligation to spread truth.”

Video posted on YouTube by: Bloomberg

art, Campus, Community, Digital Life and Learning, Events, Outdoors, technology, Winona State University

Yuge Zhou: In the Shape of a City

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Winona State University’s Art and Design Department hosted a video installation exhibit by Chicago based artist, Yugo Zhou, called In the Shape of a City, on Oct. 16 through Nov. 6. The exhibit featured two video pieces, Midtown Flutter and Underground Circuit, which were filmed on the streets of New York City as well as the subways.

Art Gallery Coordinator, Roger Boulay, oversaw the exhibit.

“Yugo Zhou exhibited at Winona State last year,” Boulay said. “I saw it and I loved it, and I decided to invite her to exhibit here, and she accepted.”

Boulay said it was interesting to bring two pieces that were investigating urban spaces to Winona.

“Since Winona is located in such a rural environment, to have two pieces about a big city, is a nice change of pace,” Boulay said. “It might make many of our students, many of which come from rural backgrounds, think about the city in new ways, and maybe disrupt preconceived notions about the city.”

Rachel Hollcraft, of Crookston, Minn., and a sophomore and WSU, viewed the exhibit with her classmates.

“The different people, especially in the piece on the floor, gives a sense of individuality to every person caught on tape, and in a way that makes New York City seem smaller,” Hollcraft said.

“I really appreciated the detail put into timing people with the stop light, in the piece on the wall,” Hollcraft said. “The piece on the floor was my favorite, because the amount of time put into filming, and then creating a loop of different people entering and exiting from each square is incredible, and shows the hard work of Zhou.”

Boulay said there were over 300 layer of video in Underground Circuit, and Zhou listened to entire television series during the video editing process.

Boulay said Zhou received an $800 stipend, and stayed at the WSU Alumni House during her stay in Winona.  The exhibit was supported by WSU and by a grant from the WSU Foundation.

The Shape of a City exhibit allowed viewer to interact with the pieces. Viewers could walk on Underground, if they took off their shoes. Viewers could also look behind Midtown Flutter to see how the piece was made and look at its various dimensions.

Watkins Gallery hosts six exhibits by visiting artists each year and six by current WSU students. The next exhibit called, CHASTUSHKI, by Amy Toscani, will be on display from Nov. 13 through Dec. 8.

 

Campus, Digital Life and Learning, e-Warrior, laptop program, technology

Addressing The Costs of WSU’s Digital Life

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Since its inception 19 years ago, Winona State University’s e-Warrior Digital Life and Learning Program has become a key part of the university’s educational vision, earning Winona State the moniker of “Laptop University.”

Each full-time student at Winona State is automatically enrolled in the program and given the choice between a Mac or PC laptop computer. Since 2014, students have also been issued an Apple or Android tablet device. Students are issued new laptops and tablets every two years they remain at the university.

According to current tuition rates, each full-time student pays $485 dollars per semester to participate in the laptop program as well as a “technology fee” of approximately $100 dollars. Given these kinds of costs, some students argue they could buy a laptop for the cost of a single semester in the program. Director of User Services Robin Honken explained that it’s difficult to get students to see the full value of what they pay.

“I think things that maybe are taken for granted here wouldn’t be had you had a different experience.” Honken said her daughter attends a college where they don’t have a laptop program. When her daughter spilled on her laptop, she had to go without a computer for a period of time. In this regard, Honken said students at Winona State are lucky because they can get their laptop replaced immediately.

Kenneth Janz, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Chief Information Officer at Winona State, oversees the program. Janz said it’s difficult to see why the program costs so much each semester if you only think about the program in terms of tangible items.

“There’s a lot of hidden costs that people don’t see but are there,” Janz said.

According to Winona State University’s 2013 Digital Life and Learning Board Report 65 percent of the program’s cost goes to hardware, which includes the laptops and tablets students receive every two years. 15 percent goes to paying the full-time professional staff and students who work in technical support and 10 percent goes towards maintenance of the machines, which includes warranties, repair, spare laptops, and other components. 5 percent goes towards purchasing software applications such as the Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud Suites, and 5 percent goes towards other miscellaneous costs of the program like the laptop buyout program for seniors, training or administration.

In addition, Janz explained the “technology fee” covers the cost of printing, printers on campus, wireless access points and certain software not covered by the e-Warrior fee.

Janz explained one of his department’s biggest costs is managing the sheer amount of internet traffic from every device on campus. Janz elaborated with a recent example.

“None of the other CIOs in MnSCU have the problems we have. There was a day last week where we had 15,000 leased IP addresses on campus.” Janz explained that each device whether it’s a cellphone, tablet or computer has its own unique IP address.

“Not all of the students are here at the same time taking classes, which gives you an idea of how many devices each student carries. We have way more devices than people actually on the network and we have to manage all of that.”

The fees students pay each semester go into paying for all that bandwidth and the hardware to manage it.

Despite the advantages it provides, some students would like to see changes in the program, particularly in the ability to choose different price points.

Jason Carpenter, a senior at Winona State, said more options for him would be beneficial.

“I’d love it if students could get reduced fees if they didn’t take tablets or additional electronics. Since I didn’t take one, I’m not a liability for the university leasing them out.

Nathaniel Nelson, a junior, said he prefers to use his own devices, even though he’s still required to participate in the program.

“The MacBook Airs and the PCs themselves, they’re not exactly up to snuff with most industry standards,” Nelson said.

Nelson said he built his own computer to ensure he has the most powerful hardware.

“I’m paying the fee but I just don’t use it as much,” Nelson said.

Since his personal computer can’t have university software on it, he also subscribes to the software he needs separately as well. Nelson said he’d like to see more options within the program.

“You can’t just have one laptop for every individual…everybody’s different…I’d rather see more choices.”

Like Carpenter, Nelson also said he’d be interested in seeing more variations in price. Despite his criticism of the program, Nelson commented on the value of the program as a whole saying each student having a computer is a good thing.

“When you have standardized hardware, it makes it easier to teach,” Janz said. Janz also acknowledged that not every major’s needs are met by the program. Janz said the Graphic Design department in particular is one major they’re working with faculty to improve, as they require devices with more computing power than many other majors.

Janz said his department brought up the idea of a “Bring Your Own Device” option for the program in 2013 based on student surveys, but it didn’t gain any traction. This would mean students would purchase their own devices and the cost of the program would drop to $200 or $300 dollars a semester. Janz said many students questioned why they would still have to pay that much if they brought their own devices. Janz cited the costs for bandwidth, campus technology like access points, projectors and printers. Janz said they will most likely float the idea to the board of trustees again in the year 2019 when their current leasing contract expires and the program must be renewed. Janz said they will keep proposing it in the hopes of offering more options for students.

“We’re constantly trying to find the middle ground to make the program as useful and as valuable to the students as possible,” Janz said.

 

*For more detailed info on the e-Warrior Program check out the most recent program assessment.*