由美のブログ

On the Future.

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 22:43:23 +0900

We've seen this in class, but I think it's worth watching it again because it is going to be awesome when it is finally ready for public consumption.

I've always wished that the internet could be more interactive and intuitive. 6th Sense seems like a dream come true. All that information at your fingertips [literally!] anytime, anywhere!

I believe that the internet will continue to evolve and integrate itself even morefirmly into our lives years down the road. Already, we are "cranky" if we have no internet for a couple of days.

With 3D TVs hitting the stores next season and Microsoft's Project Natal an up and coming gameplay system, I believe that we are already on our way to having a 6th Sense in our daily lives. o(〃＾▽＾〃)o

On Social Networking.

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 21:50:51 +0900

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Flickr are some of the most popular social networking sites today.

Statistics have shown that there has been a great jump in the number of accounts made on social networking sites in the past 3 years.

Why the big jump in numbers?

I believe that this has to do with something that we have previously learnt from PSY101 - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Having many friends fulfills our third need - the need for love and belonging.

Having friends makes a person feel wanted and welcome in a social circle. Social websites are an extension of this feeling of belongingness as we no longer have to meet up just to fulfill that need, posting a message on someone's facebook wall or tweeting about a person you miss generates the same, if not more, gratification.

As these websites allow your friends to see how many people you have on your friendlist, people are also inclined to add more friends, even if these are people they have only met once or not at all. Having a large friendlist also adds to the amount of gratification felt.

This, in turn, fulfills the 4th tier of the model - the need for esteem.

Self-esteem is raised when you are accepted by many people. The more people likeyou, the more self-esteem you have.

Apart from this, social networking sites are also a very convenient way of keeping yourself updated on what is happening to your friends around the world. Families use these to keep in touch with oversesas members, like a child who is studying in another country.

Twitter gives you real time updates on what is going on in your friends' and families' lives.

This decreases the distance between people.

Businesses are also starting to make use of social networking sites to promote their products. Fan pages are created and people are invited to join their groups for discounts or special offers.

This is a big draw factor for people who enjoy online shopping.

Also, as pictures of new products are posted online faster than when they hit the shelves in stores, shoppers are able to view and decide on which items to get before the general public.

And for people like me, you also get to "stalk" your idols by becoming a fan of their fan pages and fan communities.

Yamapi's fan page on FB

However, all this convenience, we must not forget that these websites keep records of everything we upload so we have to careful about posting private information onto these sites. Things like your home address and phone number should not be posted even if you've put them on "private" because ultimately, you are not protecting this information from your friends, but the owner of the website and what he might do with it.

Network safely! ('-^*)/

On Journalism.

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:22:40 +0900

Increased IT-literacy has birthed many citizen journalists, more commonly known as bloggers. Aside from famous ones like Xiaxue and Kenny Sia, there are a far greater number of unknown "citizen journalists"... People like you and me. (^-^)/

It is easy to be a "journalist" now. All you have to do is to have a blog, or socialnetworking page like Facebook, and you're good to go. You're free to report on anything, anywhere, anytime. Your friends read what you've written, look at the pictures you've taken, and watch the videos you've made. You don't have to LEARN how to write all these stuff, you just need to have a good sense of what's most likely to interest people.

Well, you need to have a good command of the English language, of course. No matter how long or short your "piece" is, it is bound to annoy others if you can't put together a grammatically correct sentence or spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious right.

I'm kidding about the latter.

For the people who are curious about that word. =)

There are critics who are predicting the death of print journalism with the steep increase in the number of citizen journals.

However, I beg to differ.

Print journalism reaches out to people in ways that the internet cannot.

People who prefer tradition are more likely to buy a newspaper or magazine than read an article online. As these papers and magazines hire professionals to report on the news, it is definitely more reliable than the speculations of a teenager online.

Also, once you buy a magazine or newspaper, you can carry it around with you as it does not weigh much, though the latter could be a bit too bulky for reading on public transport. In contrast, digital media can only be accessed with the existence of an internet connection, which cannot be found everywhere, and thus limits the times you can catch up on the latest news.

Digital media is convenient, fast, and varied, but it doesn't mean that the rise of digital media will cause the death of print media. On the contrary, I believe that it will encourage print media to step up on efforts to bring the latest news to the people more quickly and accurately.

It all boils down to how we make use of our resources.

On Politics and the WWW.

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:53:50 +0900

Ah. The internet has finally gotten its grabby hands on politics.

I'm sure everyone has seen at least one or two of President Barack Obama's election videos online. Mr. Choy showed some in class, if you were paying attention. =P

While the people outside of the United States do not get to vote regardless of how they feel after watching the videos, the global support that Obama garnered in the course of campaigning was staggering. All around the world, people were rooting for him to be the next president, despite the fact that he was black.

Such is the power of the internet. It changed the way we communicate with one another. It changed the way we connect to the rest of the world. And it is starting to change politics.

Campaign videos posted online can be viewed by anybody - anywhere, anytime. The fact that what's on the net is free for viewing as many times as you like instigates people to share these videos with family and friends. This greatly increases the "area of effect" for the campaigner. It makes it all the more important to make videos with impact so as to be able to touch the hearts of the people.

Obama did it.

So can you.

On Entertainment and Multimedia.

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 23:53:18 +0900

Yes, this is a fangirl video of my favourite Japanese boy, Yamapi!!

It is commonplace now for us to be fans of artists from other countries and "stalk" them all the time. This is definitely not possible without the internet and the sheer variety of resources made available to us through it.

Remember the first blog entry? Entertainment on the internet is a good example of how Web 2.0 is being put to use. With the raging popularity of video sharing sites like YouTube, people around the globe are uploading their own videos, including *cough*illegally captured*cough* programs from their home countries, and making them available to those who are unable to watch them.

Great news for a hardcore Japanophile like me!

We are not only entertained by video streaming. As there is a vast amount of entertainment available on the internet, we can listen to podcasts, play online games, or catch up with friends on social networking sites. The possibilities are endless.

However, with this, social responsibility is needed to ensure that content including racism or religion do not get posted online. There have been cases of teenagers being arrested or fined for posting racist comments on their personal blogs.

We tend to go overboard when we receive overwhelming responses from the public, more so when we are getting responses from people overseas and anonymity via theinternet allows us to write what we like without anyone ever knowing our true identity.

We must not be blinded by what we think we see. ;D

On Internet Security.

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:19:25 +0900

My group is doing a presentation on this next week.

Here is a preview of what we will be presenting.

We will be teaching you guys how to protect your PCs from viruses and hacking attempts.

Look forward to it!!

On Google Docs.

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:28:31 +0900

Google Docs is an amazing app, isn't it?

Gone are the days where you need to edit a word document, track changes, send it back and forth, and somehow, lose track of what changes had been made.

Google is amazing. (´0ﾉ｀*)

What is a Google Doc, you say? Simply put, Google Docs is a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service all rolled into one web-based app. As everything is stored online, you will never have to worry about your computer crashing or your hard disc zapping out on you again.

Your only worry is if King Leonidas decides to storm Google HQ one day. f^_^;

Google Docs works very much like the Microsoft Office that everyone is used to. Smart move by Google, as this will eliminate complains of having to learn how to use a completely different program.

Think of Google Docs as IM-ing on a document. Each time you edit it, your friends are able to see what you're doing instantly. It's also possible to have 2 or more people editing the same document at the same time - Google automatically tracks every single change! More importantly, each change is tagged with the changer's name, so you know who changed what!

Autosave also guards your edited documents against sudden disconnections.

Google Docs may very well be the future of productivity software.

Give Google Docs a try if you haven't, you'll be surprised at how much more productive it makes project work! (°∀°)b

On E-Learning.

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:34:20 +0900

Pretty accurate depiction of "modern education", isn't it?

Being one of the lucky, or unlucky, people of my generation to have gone through primary school using chalkboards and subsequently whiteboards in secondary school, I really appreciate how simple things like powerpoint slides and videos make learning today so much more convenient.

Kids today take technology for granted, but then again, they never had the chance to clean chalkboards every week on "duty" and subsequently cough up chalk powder at night and blame the teacher for their loss of appetite.

One thing I remember, though, is that we always had "e-learning week". I always felt that it was useless since we just lazed around at home and then when we went back to school the following week, the teacher always had to repeat the lesson in the classroom.

Things now are different.

Our teachers post lessons online in the form of powerpoint slides and word documents so that we can download and print them for reference. We have online tests and even online lessons, where some teachers record videos of themselves and post them on the website. In poly, powerpoint slides were essential during presentations. Handmade charts and vanguard sheets of giant words were as extinct as the dinosaurs.

The virtual classroom is no longer a white elephant.

E-Learning has improved the quality of education today. Instead of waiting a full day to ask our teachers a question in school, we can simply email them or posta question in a class forum. Online lessons enable us to go through certain sections as many times as we like - something that is impossible in the physical classroom as the teacher would get tired of repeating 3 sentences 30 times. (;^_^A

Search engines like Google point us in the many directions available for picking up knowledge about virtually anything on, and outside of, Earth.

Already, I have younger cousins who do not know how to use a printed dictionary and think that the abacus is "a very old roller skates". They are only 11 and 12this year, but can make powerpoint slides almost as fast as I can.

Without a doubt, e-learning is improving the quality of education but with the increased use of technology, people might gradually forget how things were like before gadgets invaded our lives.

If e-learning does away with the need of physical classroom lessons, the socializing skills of mankind might very well suffer.

After all, my classmates and I bonded over cleaning a blackboard that never seemed to be clean no matter how many times we beat at it with our dusters.

On E-Commerce.

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:13:45 +0900

Mention E-Commerce and I immediately think of the massive increase of "blogshops" over the past couple of years.

Because e-commerce is a really wide topic, I'll just focus on these blogshops instead.

Like any girl, I love "wandering around aimlessly looking at pretty things", but even though blogshops seem like a very convenient way for me to get my daily shot of "shopping", I've never really jumped onto that bandwagon. This is because I feel that online shopping could do with more improvement.

Here are a few of the reasons why I think they can do better.

1. Many blogshops simply load photos into their "shops" without putting them in order. I feel that photos of the same item but in the same angle should be consolidated into one picture instead of posting 3 or 4 pictures. It's easy to do with photoshop and will make those with lower-speed internet connections feel less frustrated when some pictures load and some don't.

2. Blogshoppers are unable to actually touch and feel the items they want online, unlike in a real shop. This is a big hurdle for most online shops since it is impossible to recreate that on the internet. However, what they can do is to take photos of the items from different angles and provide accurate dimensions below or above the pictures. This will help shoppers to better evaluate the goods and decide if they really want to buy them.

3. Most of the blogshops I've come across have a "No returns, no refunds" policy. Coupled with point #2, this really takes away more incentive to buy online. When you buy from a normal shop in a mall, you are usually allowed to bring back defective goods within 7 days, if you can provide a proof of purchase. But with blogshops, it's a "buy at your own risk" policy, which puts some people off.

4. Payment methods. I never had an ATM card till I was in my final year in poly [19 years old!]. Before that, whenever I saw something I liked online, I had to be content with just looking at pictures of it because the blogshops refused to do CODs [cash on delivery]. By only accepting bank transfers and paypal payments, it is harder for people who wish to or can only pay by cash.

5. Integrity. We've all heard horror stories of blogshop owners getting away with all the money transferred into his or her bank account and everyone else never setting an eye on what they've placed orders on. Only buy from shops that have had genuine positive testimonials as it is easy to fake testimonials online.

I hardly ever buy anything online. I like to look at and feel the item before I buy it. This is because I once bought what looked like a huge butterfly on a ring for myself. But when my friend passed it to me [had to borrow her bank accountto buy it since I didn't have an ATM card back then], it looked like a housefly instead.

T'was the size of one too.

On Instant Messaging.

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:14:07 +0900

Everyone uses instant messaging nowadays. Or should I say, almost everyone who owns a computer uses instant messaging - and this includes the older generation like our grandparents!

A computer geek myself, I've experimented with many IM clients.

In upper primary, there was Internet Relay Chat, more commonly known as IRC.

IRC was one of the most popular IM clients of the time as it allowed users to have "channel chats" and "private chats".

As you had to join "channels" to talk to people in IRC, channel chats were like a massive party where many people would be talking all at once and everyone could see what was going on. If it were a real party the noise would be deafening!

Private chats were possible as well, for people who wanted to get away from the general "noise" of the channel. The only drawback was that you had to have at least one channel open.

Private chatting spawned some of the first few IM scams like pretending to be someone else in order to gain a particular person's private information. Many people looking for cybersex also turned to private chats, more often than not randomly sending messages to people who were in the same channel as they were.

The most famous cybersex persona has to be bloodninja, who poked fun at the act of cybersex by giving ridiculous answers to the people who sent him messages. The logs are preserved here. Read at your own risk!

After IRC, there was ICQ.

ICQ is a homophone for "I seek you". It was basically an answer to the people who wanted private messaging without having to log onto a public server like IRC first.

ICQ was the first IM client to offer the sending of messages from PC to mobile as SMS. It also had offline messaging support and enabled resumable file transfers in the event of an accidental DC.

MSN Messenger by Microsoft gained popularity soon after.

Till today, it remains one of the most popular IM clients in the world.

Although it didn't offer SMS sending, it was fast and easy to use.

It has been getting constant "upgrades" since its first release in 1999.

Its popularity increased after it was re-programmed to offer users video conferencing as well.

Video conferencing on MSN wasn't very stable, however, and many people experienced constant disconnections due to network instability.

And then there came Skype.

Video conferencing on Skype was so much better that many people started using it. Besides, Skype offered skype-to-landline calls at a much cheaper rate than many of the telco companies.

Skype is now the most dominant VoIP client in the world.

Even your grandma knows how to use Skype, you'd better learn too! （‐＾▽＾‐）