Author Archives: Shay Stein

Tesla Holiday Feature

This post was intended for Week 13, December 6, 2022.

Check out this TikTok I made of a feature that will impress all your neighbours! “Tesla Lightshow” is a holiday feature that rolled out to Tesla cars via a software update in December 2021. The lightshow blasts a song through the car’s internal and external speakers with the car’s lights, mirrors and even windows! It’s a fun, light hearted feature that will definitely catch the eyes from neighbouring houses.

Featured photo: N. Cristovao (2021). Tesla releases Holiday Update with 2021.44.25. Not a Tesla App. From https://www.notateslaapp.com/software-updates/upcoming-features/id/661/tesla-releases-holiday-update-with-2021-44-25

Process Post #12: TessDrives Community Guidelines

These community guidelines are designed to make this website an inclusive and welcoming platform. We welcome everyone especially those who are currently a Tesla owner, an electric vehicle owner, a prospective electric vehicle owner and even those who are just curious and passing by! This will ensure that this website is a safe space for everyone and creates an engaging environment for a wide range of diverse individuals!

Guidelines:

  • We will not tolerate any form of hate speech including but not limited to: Age, Disability, Ethnicity, Gender Identity and Expression, Nationality, Race, Immigration Status, Religion, Sex/Gender, Sexual Orientation, Victims of a major violent event and their kin, Veteran Status. Those engaging in these forms of hate speech will be banned from accessing the website and may face penalties and/or prosecution
  • Treat others online the way you would want to be treated
  • Everyone has their own opinions, please be respectful if your opinion differs with another individual
  • Do not give out personal information online and respect each other’s privacy

Rationale for Community Guidelines:

I started the community guidelines with an introduction as to what the community guidelines were for. I made sure to clearly mention that the website is a safe space where everyone is welcomed. Notice, I didn’t mention that only Tesla owners were allowed, nor did I mention only guys were allowed…

While this is not an exhaustive list of guidelines, I believe this is the optimal amount. It lays out the most important guidelines to follow for my website, without fire hosing my audience with a list of rules that might deter them from my website. I intentionally left out a guideline relating to trolls in hopes of utilizing the counter-trolling strategy where my audience can “flood the victims of abuse with kindness” (Stein, 2016). I feel like if I included a non-troll guideline, this would actually encourage the trollers to troll.

I am hoping that this brief set of community guidelines will lay a foundation of expectations for those who visit my site. Community guidelines tend to be updated as the world evolves. The internet faces new types of problems and learn to adapt to them through updated community guidelines. I believe this will be the same case for most websites from our Pub 101 class. But for now, these are the finalized community guidelines for TessDrives.

Featured photo: L. Adriano (2022). Insurance Business Canada. From: https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/ca/news/breaking-news/osfi-amf-release-capital-adequacy-guidelines-for-insurance-companies-414135.aspx

References:

Stein, J. (2016, August 18). How Trolls Are Ruining The Internet. How Trolls Are Ruining The Internet | Time. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://time.com/4457110/internet-trolls/

Process Post #11: Transmedia Integration

This process post was intended for Week 12, November 29, 2022.

Am I doing this transmedia integration stuff right? I do have two social media accounts as an extension of my current website. So I think I am on the right track? According to the blog, “Pokemon as Transmedia Storytelling” from Kevinbrittenylauren.wordpress.com (2013) with words from Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia storytelling is a process. Elements of a fiction get dispersed across multiple media for the purpose of creating a coordinated entertainment experience” (Jenkins, 2009). While transmedia integration does not directly mean social media integration—that’s the way I’m going to interpret it for this process post.

After reading the Pokemon blog, I had a good idea of what transmedia integration was— simply put, it is creating something that can be translated across different forms of media such as magazines, movies, tv shows or even a video game—these were things I knew weren’t really possible for my TessDrives site. Something that is possible for the website is the social media aspect of it. Currently my website translates across two different social media sites, YouTube and TikTok. In a way, you could say I’m on the right track?

My YouTube channel currently has a total of 1,327 views and my TikTok currently has a total of 1093 views. These are some pretty impressive numbers given the amount of subscribers and followers I have across both platforms. If I have to be honest, I did start my YouTube channel much before this Pub 101 class started but the TikTok account was actually created during the first week of class—so I am definitely impressed with the latter.

If this class were to extend longer, I would definitely work on establishing TessDrives as a recognizable username that translates across all social media platforms. Those who prefer longer educational videos would turn to YouTube, those who prefer shorter videos would go to TikTok, and those who prefer looking at photos of my Tesla would go to Instagram. I believe this would be an effective way to capture a larger audience with different types of preferences.

Featured photo from: B. Tenderich (2015). Transmedia Branding vs. Integrated Marketing: What’s the Difference? LinkedIn. Retrieved from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/transmedia-branding-vs-integrated-marketing-whats-burghardt-tenderich

References:

POKEMON AS TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING (2013). Retrieved from: https://kevinbrittenylauren.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/pokemon-as-transmedia-storytelling/

Blog: How much does it cost to charge a Tesla?

I feel like this question is the most common question I get asked from non-EV users. For this blog, I will try my best to be as transparent as possible in the most concise and digestible way for all my readers. This is the best estimate on how much it costs to charge my Tesla and I will be comparing the charging costs against how much it costs to fill up my gasoline car which is a 2011 BMW 323i.

We will assume the follow charging rates from BC Hydro electricity (BC Hydro, 2022) 0.14 cents per kwh (BC Hydro has two rates, step 1 rate of $0.09 per kWh and step 2 rate of $0.14 per kWh, the average household tends to pass the step 1 threshold so we will be using the step 2 rate to calculate the electricity cost). To make thing’s easier, I have an iPhone app that tracks my at-home charging history on my Tesla Model 3 called “Optiwatt” (not sponsored). The app does not track how much I spend on Tesla Superchargers or Pay per use public charging stations (these tend to cost ~$0.50 per kWh) which I have never used since I got the vehicle.

For gas prices, we will assume premium gasoline costs $2.00 per litre since BMW’s and other german vehicles require premium gasoline (Park Ave BMW, 2020). I could provide receipts here of all my gasoline purchases, but I will just estimate how much it costs me to fill up my BMW with an average amount of driving.

Let’s start with the Tesla Model 3, since I got the car in March 2021, it has only costed me a total of $409.82 with 27,353 kilometers on the odometer. To put it into perspective, a full tank of gas on my BMW 323i costs me ~$120 which gives me ~600km of range. This means that, if I spent $400 on gas for my BMW, I would only get to drive a distance of ~2,000km versus the entire 27,353 total kms driven on the Tesla! Don’t believe me? Here are the screenshots from my optiwatt account…

iPhone Screenshot of homescreen on Optiwatt app showing total money spent on electricity.
iPhone screenshot of total odometer kilometers from Optiwatt app.
iPhone screenshot of different charging time duration and costs to charge a Tesla.
iPhone screenshot of different charging time duration and costs to charge a Tesla.

This is just a quick and easy way to explain how much it costs to charge my Tesla Model 3. Charging costs vary by municipalities, countries, and the type of chargers you use. I’m hoping this gives my readers a glimpse of how cheap it is to charge a Tesla. Of course there are many other factors that go beyond the scope of this blog, but I am more than happy to go deeper into charging related questions via comments, email or by scheduling a zoom meeting, so feel free to leave comments on this post or contacting me via email at vancitytess@gmail.com.

References

BC Hydro. (2022). Residential rates. BC Hydro – Power smart. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from https://app.bchydro.com/accounts-billing/rates-energy-

use/electricity-rates/residential-rates.html

Park Ave BMW (2020). What Type of Gas Does My BMW Take? Park Ave BMW | BMW Car News and Research. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from

https://www.guideautoweb.com/en/makes/bmw/3-series/2011/specifications/4dr-sdn-323i-rwd/

Featured photo: Manthey, N. (2022). Tesla opens paid charging at (some) Destination Chargers. Electrive.com. From: https://www.electrive.com/2022/08/04/tesla-opens-paid-charging-at-some-destination-chargers/

Process Post #10: Updates to Tess Drives Website

I have made some notable adjustments to my website ahead of both the peer review and second round of feedback from our TA Lauren. I added a recent posts section to my homepage, updated the featured posts section and have done some initial alt text adjustments to the photos across the website.

It took me a while to figure out how to put a recent posts section onto my homepage. Since my homepage runs on Elementor, it was only possible to add in a recent posts section if I had Elementor Pro—which I was definitely not paying for. I could have used some html coding but I have never took a comp-sci course in my life so I was also not going to go down that route. Instead, I was able to add a recent posts section from the WordPress side and that fit the glove perfectly! I was able to display both my public posts and my Pub 101 posts that have dates to clearly show when they were posted. I feel like Lauren would definitely appreciate this when she’s grading my work…

For my featured posts page, I looked to Lauren’s feedback from round one and she told me it would be nice to have the titles of the posts under the featured posts photos. Initially, I did it that way because I was struggling to add text under the images, but through some careful trial and error, I was able to figure it out! And I have to say, it looks much clearer now as to which image belongs to which Tess Drives post. I also updated the three posts to reflect more current posts that my viewers may be interested in. The difference between recent posts and featured posts is that the recent posts are chronologically ordered from oldest to newest and featured posts are random posts to catch the attention of readers.

Last but not least, I had some free time to add some alt text to most of my images on my website. It was a pretty simple process, I just had to go into WordPress and go to my media library and individually choose the photos to add alt text. I found it odd that on the public facing side of things, you can’t actually view the alt text without using the “inspect” function. I guess I was expecting something similar to Twitter’s alt text where you can click into the “ALT” badge and view the alt text from there. I like this touch, I am going to see if there’s a plugin I can install to my website to have alt text show like that.

Peer Review #3: Stephanie Gorwill (swagfashionblog)

Link to website: https://swagfashionblog.weebly.com/

Design

What works well

Upon landing on the homepage of the website, it was interesting to see that Stephanie chose Weebly to design her website instead of WordPress. I like this ambitious move as it shows that she is courageous enough to step away from the status quo and make her website stand out more.

Stephanie does a really great job setting the scene for her website viewers, she has “Fashion & Lifestyle” in large white text and a Louis Vuitton monogram background as contrast. It is extremely clear what the website will be about just based off a few seconds on the homepage.

I love how minimal her menu bar is and it has only the important tabs needed such as “Home,” “About,” “Public Content,” and “Pub 101” with a drop-down menu for Public Content and Pub 101. It makes it super easy to identify and navigate through the website.

Lastly, on her “About” page, I love how it has a “collage-style” aesthetic showcasing her personal photos, a biography, and her social handles.

What needs some improvement

I noticed on her website she had two buttons that were not linked to pages correctly. The first one being the “read more” button on her homepage and the second one being the “Pub 101” tab on the menu bar. I would suggest her to go back and properly link these pages as it is common for users to expect these to be functional buttons

Although I did like the use of the Louis Vuitton background, I would suggest Stephanie to use a higher quality photo. It is evident that the image has not been optimized for the website and it is quite distracting visually since it is the background for all her pages and content on the website.

Lastly, I would change the logo/website name on the top left corner from Stephanie Gorwill to the actual name of her website (supposedly SwagFashionBlog?) as it is confusing whether the website is a personal blog or a fashion blog.

Content

What works well

Going into her public content, it is great to see that my initial impressions of a fashion blog is carried over to her content, it is exactly what users like me expected.

Stephanie has gone with the approach of choosing fashion items that she has personally purchased and giving her overall review of the item. She does a great job with this by even comparing the items to similar products like she did with her blog post called “The Aritzia Super Puff” where she compared this product to a similar product offered by Canada Goose.

It was also great to see that Stephanie reviewed some products that were unisex such as the Artizia Superpuff and the Nike Mercurial Superfly 6 Elite AG-PRO Fast AF – ‘Total Orange/Black/Volt’ (wow that’s a mouth full! haha).

What needs some improvement

One of the main aspects Stephanie can focus on is perhaps making her blog posts a little longer. I noticed that each blog post was only around 200 words. As a reader who is interested in the content, it was a little disappointing when I reached the end as I had so many questions that Stephanie probably could have addressed if she wrote more!

While this sound knit picky or outright annoying, I did find one typo in Stephanie’s website in her blog post called “Coach Mini Charlie Backpack in Pebble Leather Black” specifically the line “If you’re on the market looking to purchase a mini backpack…” This probably should be changed to “in” rather than “on.”

Marketability to Intended Audience

What works well

As mentioned earlier, I love how the theme of fashion is clearly portrayed to the audience and is consistent across both her design elements and content. As a person who is into both streetwear and luxury goods, it is great that Stephanie does not limit her audience by only producing content to one specific gender or one specific fashion category. This will allow her to gain more traffic on her website.

What needs some improvement

While Stephanie does a great job of listing her social media handles in her “About” page, it would have been nice if she was able to link her profiles to each handle. In addition, it seems like she has given her personal Instagram and Facebook profiles as her Instagram is on private and the Facebook profile requires you to add her as a friend. I believe these should be listed under a “contact us” page rather than the social media handles as these two platforms do not relate to her fashion content.

Process Post #9: Data Trails and Tracking

This week’s process post prompt looks at data trails and tracking. In the early ages of the internet, data tracking was an entirely new concept. Google was one of the most notorious for this when they collected search prompts from users to improve their search engine. Nowadays, almost every single individual on the internet gives up their data in one shape or form—it is nearly impossible for you to not give up your data. Only those who properly do their due diligence may be able to minimize it, but not avoid it entirely. I will be looking at data trails and data tracking from both the perspective of my own audience on Tess Drives and my personal take on how I feel about data trails and the choices I currently make when I am on the internet.

Tess Drives’ Audience

I successfully installed Google Analytics on my website on November 2, 2022. It was a little confusing to get it up and running mostly because the instructions on how to download it wasn’t quite clear in lecture and tutorial. I finally had the “ah ha” moment when I realized the Google Site kit plug in had both Google Analytics and Adsense and you need to go to Google Analytics on the web to access the metrics. I’ve had to help a few colleagues in the class with this as well because we all thought that Google Analytics itself, was a WordPress plug in.

Here is a summary of some of the data from Google Analytics:

In the last 7 days…

Traffic

-100% of page viewers have directly searched my website to land on the webpage

-0% of page viewers have stumbled upon my website through socials (YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, or Instagram)

-61.1% of page viewers are from USA

-27.8% of page viewers are from Canada

-5.6% of page viewers are from American Samoa

-5.6% of page viewers are from India

-83.3% of page viewers view my website on desktop

-16.7% of page viewers view my website on mobile

Content

-Average duration on my homepage is 4 minutes 48 seconds

-13 page views on my website home page

-4 Views on my contact us page

-2 Views on my about page

What does this data tell me? Well, it gives me a glimpse on how well my website is being perceived by the public. For example, I can see that my website has reached viewers outside of my Pub 101 class judging that 61.1% of my page visits have come from users in the USA. Or, I know that I need to advertise more on my social media platforms to get viewers from my YouTube to head over to my website judging that all of my page viewers have come from directly searching my website rather than being redirected from my social platforms.

On the flip side, some people may find that I am breaching their privacy by tracking these kind of metrics without their permission. I find it odd that there is no automatic disclaimer from Google Analytics to tell my audience that their actions are being tracked on my website. Maybe this is because Google Analytics tracks engagement anonymously? I am unable to view personal information of specific visitors to my page, I am only able to see generated numbers from the tool.

So, is data trails and tracking wrong? In this specific example, I feel like my audience has nothing to worry about. Since I am not gathering personal information such as legal name, age, sex, or location. I am simply trying to learn the skills to create a website and to engage with my audience effectively.

On the other hand, large corporations — especially in social media — gather not only your personal information but track your behaviour online that is associated with your account info to target you with ads and suggested content. This has only come to light in the last decade where Facebook was put on the spotlight for unethically selling Facebook users’ information to third party advertisers in the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal (Confessore, 2018).

The problem with data trails and tracking when it comes to social media and other corporations, the agreement to give up some of your data is buried in thousand-word pages of terms and conditions—which the majority of people just scroll through and click “agree” and get on with their lives.

So I ask again, is data trails and tracking wrong? Morally, it is wrong. But I am no expert on privacy laws in Canada and the United States. To me, I feel like it is impossible to not give up your data nowadays because it has been so convenient for big corporations to use our data and make our lives easier through things like tailoring content online, Smart Home tools like Amazon Alexa, and productivity enhancements such as the Apple ecosystem.

It is evident that if you want to make your lives easier with technology, it will have to come with an expense of giving up some form of data.

Shay’s Opinion and Choices

Nowadays, data is key and companies are willing to pay millions for it. I have come to a point in time where we have become so complacent with giving up my own data to companies to make my daily life easier. For example, under privacy settings in my iPhone, I have nearly every app tracking my location because apps like Starbucks require to have my location tracking on to make it more convenient to locate the nearest Starbucks or to mobile order a coffee. It’s just so much more simpler to give these large corporations the ability to track me to fully benefit from their applications.

A more severe example of giving out my personal information is of course to the company of Tesla. I have set the Tesla app to track my location as “always” since my iPhone is the key for the car. Tesla has advised users to keep the settings like this to allow the car to unlock quicker when I walk up to it.

Something that may seem even more frightening is that I have basically given up my entire rights to Tesla when I am driving the car. I am currently enrolled in the limited early access full self-driving beta program where I have been admitted to use Tesla’s beta software based on my driving habits. You will see in the screenshot that I have included (Autopilot Review, 2022) that in order to use the beta software on the car, I need to “consent to the collection and review of on-going VIN-associated vehicle driving data while enrolled” – essentially, I am granting Tesla to not only spy on me while I am using the software, but they can spy on me and collect data from me while associating the footage with the exact vehicle identification number that was assigned to my vehicle. With all this in mind, I’ve thrown in the towel because who else can say that they are driving a car that is “full self-driving,” to me, it’s entirely worth it. Tesla is clearly using this information further enhance their self-driving software so that it can become fully autonomous and they definitely have better things to do than to spy on me.

All in all, I definitely could care less with how much data I have given to companies such as Tesla. I am able to fully utilize the $15,000 software upgrade to make my car drive itself and I am confident Tesla has better things to do than to spy on me online.