The 30th Wiki

The final wiki for the course is inspired by my place of work, the Lake Superior Zoo.

The Lake Superior Zoo began in 1923 with a man and his pet deer and it evolved into a Mecca for animal lovers in northern Minnesota. Bert Onsgard envisioned a zoo and the community responded with vigor: donating their labor, supplies, and money. Schoolchildren even raised funds to purchase the Zoo’s first lion cubs. The little zoo fought through the hardship of the Great Depression, appealing to the escapist mentality of poverty-stricken Americans. From there, it grew to host an incredible family of animals, ones that have left an impression on people to this day.

Today, the Zoo is home to a Siberian tiger, lions, a polar bear, grizzly bear, snowy leopard, and countless other exotic animals. With its recent accreditation by the AZA, the expansion is on the horizon for the Lake Superior Zoo.

Seven Web Wikis

Pandora.com is free, personalized, internet radio. Users create their own stations based on a genre or band and Pandora streams music that is similar. To do this, Pandora uses the Music Genome Project, a system that uses over 400 individual attributes to apply to a song and analyzes them to bring the user music they will like. Some of the characteristics include "Beats Made for Dancing," "Knack for Catchy Hooks," and "Emphasis on Instrumental Performance."

Pinterest is a photo sharing site that allows users to create "pin-boards" and browse through millions of images and "pin" the ones they like on their board. Created by Ben Silbermann, the website became the fastest one in history to gain 10 million users. TIME Magazine called it one of the "50 Best Websites of 2011." Pinterest's mission is to "connect everyone in the world through the things they find interesting."

Alexa.com, the global leader in web analytics, is a website that records traffic (or the number of "hits") on other websites, as well as their rank. It is an invaluable tool for marketing and research. It was founded in 1996 and gets its name from the Library of Alexandria. The top three sites right now are Google, Facebook, and YouTube.

StumbleUpon.com  states on its home page, "We help you explore new and interesting things from every corner of the Web." It functions as a roulette-like discovery engine, bringing the user to websites of photos based on their interests and likes. Clicking the button allows the user to "stumble" upon a new page. As of August 2011, the site registered over 1 billion stumbles per month.

Twitter.com is a social networking website that made "micro-blogging" famous. Users of the site send and receive messages no longer than 140 characters, called "tweets". As of 2012, 340 million tweets are sent daily. In an interview with the L.A. Times, Twitter creator Jack Dorsey said when it came to naming the site, he and his team "came across the word "twitter," and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds." And that’s exactly what the product was" (source).

Netflix.com is an on-demand movie provider that allows streaming over the Internet. The website is only one half of the company, the other branch of it is a service that provides subscribers with DVDs through the mail.  Netflix brokers deals with movies studios for the films, documentaries, TV shows that appear in their media library. A Netflix app is also available for iPhone, iPod, iPad, and other mobile devices. 

TheOatmeal.com is a web comics site created by Matthew Inman in 2009. The site gained popularity because of Inman's clever and humorous spin on everyday situations. The site attracts around 4 million visitors per month. According to an interview Inman gave to the Seattle Weekly, he has been taking drawing classes in hopes of re-inventing his signature style. 

Here is the latest comic that media-savvy types such as myself will finder interesting.

More Movie Trilogy Wikis

Spider-Man

The first Spider-Man film stars Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson, and Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn/Green Goblin. This film serves as Spider-Man's origin story, depicting the trials and triumphs on his path to becoming a superhero. Director Sam Raimi (who was also the creative mind behind The Evil Dead) showed extreme interest in the project, which had been stuck in the development stage for nearly a decade. The film used a Spydercam, a camera capable of dropping 600 feet with fluidity and exceptional quality, mimicking the acrobatic movement of the high-flying superhero. 

Spider-Man 2

The second film in the trilogy focuses on Peter's life as he struggles to balance his superhero duties and his duties as a student, boyfriend, and son. And of course, this is made all the more difficult when a new villain threatens to raze New York City: Dr. Octopus. After an experiment backfires on him, Doc Ock loses his wife but gains four tentacle-like robotic arms that have a mind of their own. They corrupt his mind, making him fatally hubristic and murderous. Meanwhile, Peter finds himself losing his Spider-Man powers, which according to a physician, is the result of stress. Peter must now decide which path to take and where his destiny lies. Spider-Man? Or Peter Parker?

Fun fact: The pizzeria Peter is fired from in the beginning of the movie is a real place in NY. They received a huge boost in sales after their phone number was prominently displayed on Peter's bike helmet. 

Spider-Man 3

The final installment in the trilogy is by far the darkest. Spider-Man faces villains such as the Sand Man, Venom, the New Green Goblin, and an alien symbiote. Spider-Man is at the height of his fame, and this inflates Peter's ego, causing him to become reckless and ultimately, susceptible to the malevolent influence of an alien life that bonds itself to his Spidey suit. This black-suited Spider-Man is more powerful but also more deadly. Peter becomes consumed with the power and it addles his mind, causing him to lash out at the ones he loves most. He realizes the negative influence the suit has just in time to rescue Mary Jane from the evil clutches of Venom and the Sand Man. 

Despite mixed reviews, it is the most commercially successful film in the series.

Rise of the Archivist

“Archives exist because there's something that can't necessarily be articulated. Something is said in the gaps between all the information.” - Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon's bloodline photography project, as mentioned in her TED Talk, extends beyond the realm of archives and strikes a chord with the audience. I work in the College Archives and I thought Taryn's talk was incredibly insightful, but her experience is rare. I have spent a good portion of my time in the archives filing pictures and documents, which isn't exactly earth-shattering stuff. That routine was my job until about a year and a half ago.

The family of one of the College's earliest male professors bestowed upon the Archives all of his papers and letters. James Franklin Lewis was a veritable Renaissance man - he taught chemistry by day and was a prolific poet by night. In his short 42 years of life, he wrote over 2,000 poems, several novels, and three plays. Using his letters and personal documents, I constructed a biography that will hopefully be published.

In honor of the curation of this special collection, a small reception was held in the Library on April 27. Lewis' children (now in their 70's) attended with their families and were eager to share their few memories of their father. Professors from both the science and English departments were invited to speak about Lewis' thesis on organic chemistry and read some of his poetry.

The family was so grateful to my supervisor and myself for the care we took with their father's belonging, his life's work. That to me, was what Taryn was referring to, the thing that cannot be articulated. The pride in one's work; the sense of completion a family feels when their questions are answered. Archiving has become so much more than organizing photo albums.