Lights. Camera. Drama.

 When I was a senior at Smith College, I took a Sociology of Rock Music class. The last paper of my undergraduate career was all dedicated to the death of the cultural global brand that once was Music Television (MTV). My professor was a bit skeptical about the whole ordeal, you know. MTV was still around, even though YouTube and Myspace continued to dominate the online entertainment space. A year has passed. I could not have predicted such a catastrophe, if it was written across my forehead.

No more TRL. No more music. No more iconic MTV logo. Do not get me started on these dumb reality shows! Do you want to know why I will only watch MTV for the awards shows now? When I heard that the cast members of Real World: Jersey Shore were given $10,000 per episode contracts to produce a second season! Oh my fucking god. MTV, what have you done? You substituted a generation of wonderful music shows such as TRL, Diary, Fanatic, and MTV Jams for a bunch of tasteless, attention whores? MTV is like Tiger Woods. It was married to popular music and well-respected by celebrities who acknowledged it as the catalyst that launched their music careers. But it ended up sleeping with Snookie instead. (Thank god I do not watch Jersey Shore!). MTV has clearly lost its morals and is only here to cash in on the latest reality show craze it helped generate in the early 1990s instead of being relevant again.

YouTube could end up on the same path to self-destruction. Unlike MTV, I will continue to use YouTube to watch videos because it is still relevant to me. After reading Wired Magazine's "5 Secrets to YouTube Success" article, I realized that YouTube has come a long way since its founding in 2005. YouTube has transformed average people and local bands into semi-famous individuals overnight and I hope that the exchange of communication and ideas continues to thrive between YouTube vloggers and their followers.

But after playing around with the new YouTube layout, I learned that YouTube needs to rethink its website design strategy. I initially thought the new video page was a April Fool's joke. However, when I realized it wasn't, I spammed Twitter, tweeting that YouTube needs to figure out who is on its user-experience team before it makes another decision because the homepage is horrendous. It may have taken YouTube ten months to listen to user feedback to create this new layout, but it needs to reconsider this disaster. First of all, I do not like this thumbs up, thumbs down policy that YouTube implemented to replace the five-star system. What if I like a video, but think it is not worthy enough of a thumbs up? So, the rating of the video is somewhere down the middle. With the new system, there is no middle ground. With the old system, I could have easily graded the video with three stars.

Secondly, I hate the excess of white space on the left side of every page. I think the font size and columns (ie. related videos) were rearranged to give the users a more "user-friendly environment". Despite the influx of spam and racist comments, I personally like the old layout a lot better. This is coming from someone who is a YouTube consumer, not a vlogger. I knew where to go, which buttons to press. Now each page looks bare and out of place. The only new feature that I like is the you can now easily share your favorite YouTube videos with your Facebook friends. Other than that, nothing.

I am glad that the people that I have talked to in person and on Twitter about this issue agree with me 100%. We as fans should contact YouTube and demand the old video page back somehow because I do not want YouTube to be the next MTV. If more fans complain about it, then YouTube will get the message. If they don't, YouTube might continue to develop new design changes without our opinions and eventually go downhill, allowing another online video-sharing website will take its place.

What are your thoughts on the new YouTube video page? What should YouTube do next? Is MTV a has been?

With a April 3rd release date the tentative release date and the overexposure the Ipad has been receiving on the Internet for the past month, consumers are still wondering whether or not Apple's newest creation is a worthy marketing venture to invest one's money in. In my "Steve Jobs, What Have You Done?" piece, I strongly believed that the Ipad will become a marketing success and I continue with that proposition.

Imagine a world with iPads during your college days. It was literally several months ago for me. I remembered my heavy black backpack, full with books, notebooks, and the occasional laptop. What if I had replaced my current Compaq Presario CQ70-120US laptop with a 64GB iPad? Do you know how much bag space I could had with a two pound "netbook" on my back? I could have saved many days and many nights walking up and down the Smith College campus. The convenience is maddening. I could have done all my homework and online research more effeciently with an iPad.

The iPad is going to redefine "space" once again. With the iPod, the user controls the flow of music, his/her emotional capabilities, and the social environment around him/her. A iPod user can literally shut off the emotional and mental demands of everyday life by becoming one with the music. With the iPad, professors, students, business people, and other professionals will control their work and social media activities, the presentation of such work, and their social interactions with other people around them.

Want to show off your portfolio to a potential employer or favorite college professor? Bingo! Bring out your Ipad and demonstrate your skills in a more professional and timely matter. My only concern with the iPad and other e-book devices is the digitalization of books. I want my books in my face, not on my computer. Magazines, newspapers, scholarly journals, articles, and annual reports are the exception.

Print magazine publications such as Wired Magazine and the Wall Street Journal will be available on the Ipad in digital form. With the Wired Magazine demonstration, it is like having the physical components of Wired Magazine, but in Adobe Elements format. With the Wired brand's strong readership, I would not be surprised if its fans are willing to pay a monthly fee to use the new Wired application on the iPad. Wired Magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson stated about this digital evolution, "The point here is that we are entering a new era of media, where we finally have a digital platform that allows us to retain all the rich visual features of high-gloss print, from lavish design to glorious photography, while augmenting it with video, animations, additional content and full interactivity."

I could not agree more with Anderson, but I have some questions. If other print magazines followed suit with this concept, what will happen to the online versions of these print magazines? Should they be included in the reconfiguration of print magazines on the iPad? I personally think if Wired Magazine gets to be digitalized on the iPad, so should Wired News (wired.com). Secondly, do you think every print magazine and newspaper will follow Wired Magazine in this approach? With traditional print media dying every day, they will be only a matter of time when the Internet will take over the print industry.