The Future of the Internet

Given that our world is also being dominated by machines and the Internet, what would it be like 10 years down the road? Would it become more advance or would people begin to withdraw from it? My personal view is that it will just keep getting better but at a huge cost.

Pileus, the Internet Umbrella

Pileus has a large screen on the top surface, a built-in camera, a motion sensor, GPS, and a digital compass. This is such a brilliant invention of bringing the Internet out on the road! This gadget allows people to use Google Earth when they are lost, and take pictures and upload them onto Flickr to share them with friends immediately. To view the photographs they have taken, all they have to do it to snap their wrist.

However, despite all its functions, Pileus is an umbrella, thus people would not use it if the weather is fine. Besides, since most people already own phones that have GPS function, why would anyone carry an umbrella that has Internet access? Some individuals refuse to carry an umbrella out with them because they find it bulky and inconvenient, why would they carry it out with them just for Internet access? Also, it is also very dangerous because individuals using this umbrella would be risking their lives on the roads while taking pictures and finding their way as they have to keep looking up. The invention is good, but it has neglected its practicality and the safety of the users.

The Sixth Sense

This is another terrific but intimidating invention. This video will show you how it works, how it can invade our privacy, and how it can cause the fall of many businesses. For instance, by drawing a watch on your hand, you can see the time, why would anyone want a watch anymore? If you can call a friend using your hand, why would anyone buy a phone? When you see someone on the road and stop to talk to him or her, all your information, as well as his or hers will be revealed on his or her and your shirt. Is this really what we want, to be that transparent?


The Facebook

This social networking website is very popular across the globe now, but would it survive 10 years down the road. I personally believe the answer is no because of the changing needs of human beings and the continuous improvement on the different kinds of gadgets. Moreover, most people use Facebook to either find long-lost friends or to play games, but with so many friends on the list, how many of them can you really maintain a close relationship with? At the end of the day, they are just a number you can show off to the world how popular you are. Also, the games are addictive because there is competition among friends. After a long period of time, some people will drop out off the game realizing that they can never beat those who are always “protecting their crops” and “going around stealing others’ crops”. Without all these challenges, even the player with the highest score would withdraw from the games.

The Internet trend is moving from Web 2.0, a read-write web, toward Web 3.0, which is also known as a semantic web. This advance in the Internet will provide you with more convenience than you ever need, because it can understand you and it acts like a personal assistant. Is this not scary when the person who should know you the best should be your loved ones instead of a machine? The Internet may be a great gift, a great convenience. However, would you sacrifice your relationships with your loved ones for this convenience? Your answer will determine the future of the Internet.

Social networking and Bebo versus Facebook

A social network is a social structure made of individuals or organizations called "nodes," which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige

The main social networking sites include Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut, and Hi5. The main similarity among these sites is to bring people from all over the world together, to enhance the relationships between people. Ironically, they have also brought people apart as they reduce the amount of face-to-face interaction between individuals. They are very popular because they fulfil Maslow’s third level of hierarchy of needs that is social, the need to feel loved and a sense of belonging. To me, these social networking sites are certainly beneficial for individuals living away from their friends and family and they want to feel connected to them. However, for people who have their close ones around them, these social networking sites might do more harm than good as they bring these people further apart.

Social networking sites can also be dangerous because you are exposing your most private life to people all around the world. Some people might argue that as long as I limit my content to only my friends and people I know, I will be safe. The question is how sure are you that you would not be sold out? If friends decide to share your photos, or worse, edit and share them with strangers, what can you do? And what if the person who claimed to be your friend and even had a picture of your friend as his or her profile picture turns out to be someone else?

Commercial companies can benefit from social networking services via advertisements. However, how beneficial is this idea? People go on Facebook because it is FREE! Who would continue if they have to pay for it? Thus, why would people respond to advertisements on Facebook when they are there to find friends or play games?

Therefore, social networking sites are definitely not useful for business unless you are pushing your goods to individuals whom you know and you have the time to explain the products and services to them.





The social networking website, Bebo, founded in 2005, is an acronym for "Blog early, blog often". Its founders are husband and wife Michael and Xochi Birch. It is available in several languages, such as English, Polish, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian. Like Facebook, Bebo also has profiles that contain a comment section where other users can leave a message, and a list of the user's friends. Basically, the applications in Bebo are somewhat similar to that of Facebook, however, when it comes to games, which I believe is what makes Facebook so popular, Bebo is far away from being successful. Games such as Gangster War and Knight of Honor are not user-friendly, at least to me. Compared to Facebook, Bebo is too BORING!!! And what you can do here is just too limited. Most importantly, I have no friends, using this social networking site.

Bebo does have this application which I kind of like, that is the Bebo’s social inbox. It is a way for us to organize all your messages in one easy-to-use inbox. The Social Inbox features updates from Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL Mail, and media recommendations that deliver us the most relevant online entertainment. However, what is it that Bebo can do that Facebook cannot? Nothing that I can think of.

Also, Facebook allows one to find friends who are not in their email address book, an application that Bebo does not feature, as it only allows one to add friends whom they are ALREADY connected to via mail.

The Internet’s impact on the future of Journalism

As netizens, we are definitely able to feel the changes which the Internet has brought forward to us. The major one, which has the greatest impact on journalism, is convergence. The Internet has encouraged a shift in who creates, distributes, and ultimately owns the news. This phenomenon of convergence can be supported by the emergence of increasing number of online news sources.

Journalism is the profession of reporting, photographing, or editing news stories for one of the media. Traditional journalism includes news and information transmitted via the newspaper, magazine, radio, and television. Citizen journalism, on the other hand, emerged from web 2.0, are news and information provided by citizens, or rather netizens, like us. They can be found on websites, such as YouTube, IReport, Twitter, DigitalJournal.com, and All Voice.

One example of citizen journalism in Singapore is Stomp. Stompers are allowed to post pictures, videos, their views and comments on this particular website. When I viewed this website, I had several thoughts, one of which is that, stomping with personal conscience is not a virtue that every stomper has. For instance, some stompers made the effort to “blur” the faces of the person in the picture, while some intentionally enlarge it to show the public.





Stomp has brought about several advantages and disadvantages:
• Immediate reports of what happened, no delay that may interrupt with what exactly took place
• Serious news, as well as, ridiculous news which professional journalists may not be interested in
o Eg. PSP game so engrossing that this guy forgot to zip up his pants
• Like the traditional journalism, it provides a forum for public criticism and compromise
• Anonymous, thus, there is no obligation to verify and give the truth, or keep the news comprehensive and proportional. Therefore, there is no loyalty to the citizens.
• Practitioners may or may not maintain an independence from those they cover, as they might make use of this medium to divulge a secret of a friend or relative, whom have offended them
• It does strive to make the significant interesting; however, it may not be relevant.





In the near future, I believe there would not be freedom of speech or action anymore because everyone would be restricted as they are afraid of getting on the news for making a wrong comment or a wrong gesture. However, when it comes to reliable news, I believe print is still dominating, because not many people are willing to pay to read news online, and 82 percent of people in New York, with preferred news sites said they would look elsewhere if their favorite site starts demanding payment.

According to Rupert Murdoch, we should “embrace progress!” rather than resist it, to avoid destruction. However, because sometimes “progress” moves too fast for us to catch up, we are unable to decide for ourselves what change to embrace and what not to embrace.

Politics – Do we care?

Politics = darkness, boring, control, government, fights, arguments, backstabbing, etc.

These are words that show how young people view politics, power, and influence of the higher authority. That explains why they are also called the disengaged generation.



Is politics good or bad? Well, I personally believe that it is amoral. Just like money, it depends on the person in control of it. Therefore, voting is important and having good people in the government to lead us is crucial.



Young people these days, including me, feel stressed out easily. Why? Because unlike most affluent and wealthy celebrities and royalties, our circle of influence cannot overcome our circle of concern, thus we are constantly worrying and looking for solutions to problems. The lack of power and the overwhelming concerns are the source of stress.

Therefore, I believe one big reason why young people in Singapore are apathetic toward politics is the fact that, unlike America, we do not have the full freedom of speech. Any comments that we make about the government might put us behind bars. Thus, even while typing this, I am really careful about everything that I say, because this topic is about politics. This lack of power and right to speak up is also a source of stress.

Another reason why youth refuse to engage in politics is due to the difficulty in understanding it. No one would enjoy doing something that they do not understand.



So how do we solve this major problem of getting youth to be interested or even involved in politics? Perhaps parents or teachers can talk more to them about it, BUT using simple terms and not jargons and big political terms that confuse and turn them off even further. For instance, to some people, the destruction of wild life, like politics, has nothing to do with the youth, but why are some of them willing to spend time understanding, protecting, and getting involved in it? Animals are the reason and motivation. Therefore, we need to find a motivation for these young people, to give them a reason to feel a need to understand and be involved in politics.

Alternatively, the Internet may be used as a tool to engage young people in politics. Politicians can set up personal websites, and create accounts like facebook and twitter to get understand the youth first before getting them to understand politics. However, despite all these change, it is still important that whatever is put on the website about politics, it must be simple, if not, no one would read!

Introduction to NewsML and XML

If you think that blog entry is going to be like a CSE 111 written lecture, come on, I do not have so much knowledge about NewsML and XML to give a lecture, but I can give you a rough idea of what they are and how to create them.

What is NewsML?

• An XML format for news content
• Developed by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC)
• Serves as a media – independent framework for multi-media news

What is XML?

• Extensive Markup Language
• Markup language = a set of words and symbols for describing the identity of pieces of a document
• Improves the functionality of the Web by letting you identify your information in a more accurate, flexible, and adaptable way.
• Extensible because it is not a fixed format like HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
• Metalanguage—a language for describing other languages
(design your own markup languages for different documents)
• Written in SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)

For example:



This is what you will see on the Internet Explorer:

Tove
Jani
Reminder
Dont't forget me this weekend!


This video will show you how to create an XML document:

Singapore fighting against Cyber Crime and Computer Crime

What is the difference between them?
• Computer crime is also known as “cyber-trespass” that involves acts that attack the functions of a computer and access to a computer or the Internet. For instance, hacking, denying someone access to Internet usage, and sending unsolicited or virus-causing electronic mail.
• On the other hand, cyber crime includes fraud, theft, and extortion using the computer as an instrument of the crime.



What has the Singapore government done in order to counter these two types of crimes?
• Passing of the Computer Misuse Act in 1993 which prohibits:
o obtaining of unauthorized access to computer material
o altering contents of a computer
o intercepting any computer service or function
o obstructing lawful use of a computer
o impeding or preventing access to or impairing the usefulness or effectiveness of any computer program or data
o disclosing a password or access code
4 approaches in combating computer crime in Singapore:
• Pass new legislation that creates crimes where activity warrants it
• Impose severe penalties as punishment and deterrents
• Provide law enforcement agencies with additional powers
• Criminalize abetting and attempting to perpetrate computer crimes

Microsoft Movie Maker (MMM)

This week’s blog exercise include learning how to use Microsoft Movie Maker (MMM), making a simple video and put it up here, and then discuss my experience of video making. Now, before I begin my first attempt to “create a movie”, I must first do what I am best at, that is planning and researching. Here is a video I found on YouTube that teaches you and me, how to make a movie using MMM. This video is long, as it lasts for about nine minutes, but it is cool. It shows us not only the basics but also some special effects. Watch it to find out more.



The three main benefits of MMM:
1. You get to “manually” capture only the parts of the video that you want
• Saves space
2. You get to break up clips that you want to place at different places on your timeline
• Organization
3. You get to trim the ends of clips
• Perfect your video

Now, instead of taking a personal video and showing you my face, I took one of my favorite videos to learn, practise, and show you how easy it is to make a movie, or rather a presentation of your own.



All right, that was my masterpiece, but please, the voice in the video obviously does not belong to me (don’t think I don’t know what you are thinking). Making a video or movie with MMM is not tough at all. I did enjoy it because I have kind of created my own master piece from someone else’s work! It’s not ethical I know, but it is fun! Anyway, I have already acknowledged that THIS VIDEO DOES NOT BELONG TO ME, I merely borrowed it to experiment my movie-making skills. It does not look professional I know, but I guess it is passable for a beginner. Enough of praising myself, hope you guys can learn something from the above two videos and perhaps use these skills on your upcoming project!

Microsoft Surface – no more key boards and mouse

This big machine here is a revolutionary multi-touch computer that responds to natural hand gestures and real-world objects, helping people interact with digital content in a simple and intuitive way. It has a large, horizontal user interface, which can be used as a unique gathering place where multiple users can collaboratively and simultaneously interact with data and each other.

Key features:
1. Direct interaction. Users can grab digital information with their hands and interact with content on-screen by touch and gesture – without using a mouse or keyboard.
2. Multi-user experience. The large, horizontal, 30 inch display makes it easy for several people to gather and interact together with Microsoft Surface - providing a collaborative, face-to-face computing experience.
3. Multi-touch. Microsoft Surface responds to many points of contact simultaneously - not just from one finger, as with a typical touch screen, but from dozens of contact points at once.
4. Object recognition. Users can place physical objects on the screen to trigger different types of digital responses – providing for a multitude of applications and the transfer of digital content to mobile devices.

Watch this.



Let me walk you through the origin of Microsoft Surface.
In 2001, Stevie Bathiche of Microsoft Hardware and Andy Wilson of Microsoft Research began brainstorming concept. They wanted to combine the physical and virtual world.



In 2003, the first prototype was created, using an IKEA table.



In 2004, 85 early prototypes were built for use by software developers, hardware developers, and user researchers. The team grew and became the Surface Computing group.

In 2005, the “tub” model was created.



In 2007, 30-inch display table-like form factor has emerged.

In 2008, Surface is ready for sale!

Learning - Do you know how?

“To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.”
Socrates

Guys, when you think you know something, think again, what do you really know? Benjamin Bloom came up with his Bloom’s Taxonomy in 1956 to divide educational objectives into three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor.

Under cognitive, he provided us with a checklist that differentiates our thinking into two categories: higher order and lower order. Higher order thinking includes analyzing, evaluating, and creating, while lower order thinking includes remembering, understanding, and applying. If the requirements for lower order thinking look familiar, you are correct; our Singapore education system makes this compulsory for us. However, we are rarely trained to develop in our analyzing and evaluating skills. Creativity is crucial in our education system, but I also believe that it has been done the wrong way because we it does not follow these 6 steps. I personally believe that you need to get the basic knowledge at the tip of your fingers before you can use it to create new ideas. Without the basic knowledge, how can you create anything from nothing?



Affective talks about emotions. Emotions and memory are closely linked because the two of the brain that are responsible for these functions are closely connected. The more emotions something triggers, the longer you can remember it. Why do companies often spend large amount of money on advertisers to come up with catchy captions and advertisements to promote their product or service? This is because they know the impact of words on humans, and how a few words can trigger one’s emotions, which would gradually influence his or her thinking and actions. For instance, L'Oréal Group, the world's largest cosmetics and beauty company, changed their slogan to “Because you are worth it”. Which woman in this world would not think that they are worth the thousand dollars of cosmetics. This change of slogan is certainly a success.



Psychomotor describe the ability to physically manipulate a tool or instrument. Why is it that some people are able to juggle with balls while others can never do it? Can these skills be trained or are they innate? How long do you have to train yourself before you can really say, “I know how to juggle”? How do you know if you REALLY know how to do it?



Try it out yourself. Watch the video and learn. =)

6 crucial steps to making E-marketing a success

1. Build Engagement
• Getting to know prospects and customers extremely well

2. Create Contagious Content
• to gain the attention of prospects and to help spread your ideas to others who have yet to identify themselves
• focused on your prospect's priorities and perspectives to quickly promote recognistion of value
• Educational content focuses on what buyers need to know
• Expertise content showcases the value your company provides in addition to your product or solution
• Evidence content is the stories of customer successes, media coverage, analyst opinions and, increasingly, word of mouth referrals and social conversational exchanges

3. Evolve Nurturing Programs
• includes a collection of marketing content that is tuned to address the specific problem-to-solution scenarios of each market segment
• buyers choose you over your competitors because they trust you to understand and solve their problems

4. Increase Momentum

5. Empower Sales• step into conversations with qualified sales opportunities in parallel with a buyer's expectations

6. Integrate Social Networks
• social networks help maximize the value of investment while creating inbound demand
• with no participation, you would be forgotten soon

Top 10 E-commerce failures

Since a long time ago, people have been trading for a living. They roamed around the streets to trade for olive oil, pottery, food, and even slaves, almost anything under the sun. Some traders gained more advantage over others because the goods were not given an actual price. Also, people who were able to bargain and argue well took the upper hand. Trading was not fair. Today, people continue to trade, but at an upgraded level. They do not need to do it face-to-face, neither would they face unfairness because all goods are labeled with their prices and all transactions are done via a systematic method. Since everything has improved and seem so great, why did people still fail? In this post, we will take a look at the top 10 dot-com flops and learn about why they failed.

1. Do not grow too fast too soon even if you have a good idea
Online grocer, Webvan made this mistake by raising $375 million in an IPO, expanded from the San Francisco Bay Area to eight U.S. cities, and built a gigantic infrastructure from the ground up, in only 18 months!


2. Unsustainable business model
Online pet-supply store, Pets.com’s popular talking sock puppet mascot failed to give pet owners a compelling reason to buy supplies online. After ordering, customers had to wait for a few days to receive their goods, which they needed immediately. In addition, Pets.com lost money because it had to undercharge shipping cost to attract customers. Eventually, it collapsed.


3. Think twice about your idea before you start - it might turn bad and cause you to lose more than what you earned
Online store and delivery service, Kozmo.com provided good services such that customers could receive the goods they ordered within an hour, rain or shine. Unfortunately, it took Kozmo.com some time before it realized that this idea would cause it to lose a lot of money on delivery, especially when customers only ordered a pack of sweets or a DVD.


4. Consider better ideas that might overtake your good dot.com idea
Flooz.com was an online currency designed to replace credit cards, had boggled the minds of many as to in what way is this alternative better and safer than actual credit cards or gift cards. Eventually, it went bankrupt in August 2001 along with its competitor Beenz.com.

5. Spending outweighed the company's income
Like Pets.com, eToys spent millions on advertising, marketing, and technology and battled a host of competitors.


6. Do not employ more than what you need and use only the resources that you have
Online fashion store, Boo.com’s website relied heavily on JavaScript and Flash in the days of 56k modems, thus users had to wait a long time for it to load. Also, they employed 400 people when they only needed 30.


7. If product or service is no good, no promotion or program will make it work
Microsoft live search launched two programs to entice users to use Live: Cashback and SearchPerks. Both did not have a significant effect on traffic numbers because Live's search results were very poor. Live search has 10% of the search market.


8. Ensure than what you spend on promotion does not exceed what you earn
Disney was never able to make Go.com popular enough to validate the millions spent on promotion.


9. Running out of money
Kibu.com, an online community for teenage girls, ran out of money and closed the site 46 days after the launch party.


10. Internal conflict can cause you to go bust
Personalities and egos clashed during long work hours, one partner was ousted, technology was stolen, and they never got the software to work as it should have. A competitor eventually took over GovWorks in 2000.

Experience the RSS and Podcasting

To access information, we have two ways. The traditional way requires you to go out to look for the information you want, while the new way is to wait for the information to come to you. Wait a minute, did I say wait? No, the Rich Site Summary (RSS) would not require you to wait. In fact, the information that you might be looking for is constantly being updated to make sure that you receive the latest news. RSS is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.


RSS feed icon

So this is how you do it:
1. Set up a Google account at Google.com/reader
2. Go to your favorite sites
3. Copy the url
4. Go back to Google reader and click on add a subscription
5. Paste the url
6. Add
I did it! And now whenever I want news from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and information about Ellen Degeneres’s latest show, all I have to do is to log into my Google Reader and I get everything (maybe more) that I need to know.



A podcast is a series of digital media files (either audio or video) that are released episodically and downloaded through web syndication. The RSS feed icon is commonly used to indicate the Web feed for a podcast.

Web 3.0 (Semantic Web) – your new guide and personal assistant

Imagine you wanted to watch a comedy and take some Chinese food after that. You turn on your laptop, open a Web browser, and Googled for theater, movie and restaurant information. You spend some time reading the synopsis of each film and customer reviews for the restaurants. You also want to look for a Chinese restaurant that is close to the theatre. In summary, you visited a dozen of Web sites before you are ready to leave the house.

Web 3.0 will make these tasks faster and easier. Instead of multiple searches, you can type a complex sentence or two in your Web 3.0 browser, and the Web will do the rest. For what you wanted to do, you could type "I want to see a funny movie and then eat at a good Chinese restaurant. What are my options?" The Web 3.0 browser will analyze your response, search the Internet for all possible answers, and then organize the results for you.­

The Web 3.0 browser is also a personal assistant. As you search the Web, the browser LEARNS what you like. The more often you use the Web, the more your browser learns about you and the less specific you'll need to be with your questions. Eventually you might be able to ask your browser open questions like "where should I go for lunch?" Your browser would consult its records of what you like and dislike, take into account your current location and then suggest a list of restaurants.



“In its current state, the Web is often described as being in the Lego phase, with all of its different parts capable of connecting to one another. Those who envision the next phase, Web 3.0, see it as an era when machines will start to do seemingly intelligent things.”

- John Markoff, The New York Times

Social Media - a path to becoming anti-social

Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”. In simple terms, social media refers to tools and platforms people use to produce, publish and share online content and to interact with one another. These tools include blogs, podcasts, and videos, etc.

According to Wikianalysis, News Corporation (NWS) owns Myspace and Photobucket, a photo-sharing website. Yahoo! (YHOO) has been attempting to enter the social media segment via Flickr photo-sharing website and 360 social networking sites. Google (GOOG) purchased YouTube. Microsoft (MSFT) announced a minority $240 million investment in Facebook in late October, valuing the company at an estimated $5 to $15 billion overall. AOL announced on March 2008 the $850 million purchase of Bebo. At that time, Bebo was the third largest social networking site behind MySpace and Facebook in terms of page views and unique monthly visitors, both key metrics for online advertising.

Some examples of social media software applications include:

Communication• Blogs: Blogger, LiveJournal, Open Diary, TypePad, WordPress, Vox, ExpressionEngine, Xanga
• Micro-blogging / Presence applications: FMyLife, Jaiku, Plurk, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, Yammer
• Social networking: Bebo, BigTent, Elgg, Facebook, Geni.com, Hi5, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Orkut, Skyrock,
• Social network aggregation: NutshellMail, FriendFeed
• Events: Upcoming, Eventful, Meetup.com

Collaboration
• Wikis: Wikipedia, PBworks, Wetpaint
• Social bookmarking (or social tagging): Delicious, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, CiteULike
• Social news: Digg, Mixx, Reddit, NowPublic
• Opinion sites: epinions, Yelp

Multimedia
• Photography and art sharing: deviantArt, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, SmugMug, Zooomr
• Video sharing: YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, sevenload
• Livecasting: Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Stickam, Skype
• Music and audio sharing: imeem, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter, ShareTheMusic

Reviews and opinions
• Product reviews: epinions.com, MouthShut.com
• Business reviews: Customer Lobby, yelp.com
• Community Q&A: Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers, Askville, Google Answers

Entertainment
• Media and entertainment platforms: Cisco Eos
• Virtual worlds: Second Life, The Sims Online, Forterra
• Game sharing: Miniclip, Kongregate

Other
• Information aggregators: Netvibes, Twine (website)
• Social media monitoring:[clarification needed] Sysomos Heartbeat
• Social media analytics: Sysomos MAP




One example that really caught my attention was Second Life.





http://static-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/downloads/en/Second_Life_Quickstart.pdf

This is the site where a manual guide is provided to TEACH you how to control your avatar. Second Life (SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world (also call "the grid"). Second Life is for people aged 18 and over, people aged 13 to 17, do not fret, Teen Second Life works just as well.

After I know the existence of Second Life, Facebook seems perfectly meaningful to me. Really, why are people so dissatisfied with their real life that they have to adopt an avatar to try out a second life? Is it not tiring? Would you not get confused by your own identity? I personally find this absolutely ridiculous. Mum has colleagues who told me that they have an adopted son. At first, I was really happy for them, but when I found out that the son of theirs come from a different world from us, my heart sank. Why? Yes, you get to fly and do a lot of things that you cannot do in real life, but when you wake up (log out I mean), it is the reality that you have to face. Yes, you may have no troubles in that world, but similarly, it is the real life that you have to face at the end of the day. To me, users of Second Life are escapists of problems. If there is an aspect of life that you wish to change (except your gender), gather your courage and do it. If this is what you want, continue, if not, quit. You will never have the same experience if you do it only online. This is the real life, you need to experience it to feel it.

Google earth, Third Voice, and Facebook

Google earth, the new application Mr Choy introduced to us during the second lecture. And so I am checking it out now. It is SO COOL! Mum was standing right behind me while I was searching for a picture of my house and TA DA! I found it! “Which stalker took all these pictures?” she asked. I laughed and explained that, “This is Google earth, Mum, and how long have you been standing here?” “When I saw a picture of the Earth”. This is what she is talking about.

As I searched on and zoomed in, this was what we saw.



And soon, I found my house! (I do not want to post a picture of it up here)
Besides Google Earth, COM125 provides me with MANY interesting (not really) information. Heard of the Third Voice? It is a free browser plug-in, created in 1999 by Eng-Sion Tan and colleagues, which allowed Web surfers to share comments about websites using “sticky notes”, to induce "inline discussions" among Web users. However, Third Voice soon gathered more enemies than friends and was called the “Web graffiti”. Really, who would enjoy seeing their websites being “vandalized” by constructive or unconstructive comments and opinions of strangers? 2 years later, as expected, Third Voice finally surrendered due to financial issues, and went boomzed!

Reason for the fall: Third Voice failed to generate adequate advertising revenue to raise consumers' awareness of its free service, and it also could not generate enough consumer awareness to raise the advertising revenue it needed to stay in business. It all boils down to the lack of communication and money.

If people are not able to accept this form of “freedom of speech”, why is facebook still so hot now? Yes, I do have an account, but I still find it a complete waste of time, simply because the games are too addictive! Facebook does have its plus points; at least it gave me an opportunity to gather all my long-lost friends.



Facebook, like any other application, did face financial crisis and it actually had a net loss of $3.63 million in year 2005. However, Facebook was much luckier than Third Voice such that it received investments from several companies due to its population of more than 350 million active users worldwide. Therefore, to all entrepreneurs, capital is not the most important factor in business, the popularity of your product or service is.

To gain popularity, you need to learn how to improvise all the time. This is how Facebook does it. The Interface evolution.

Profile shown on Thefacebook in 2004.

Facebook profile shown in 2006.

Facebook profile shown in 2007.

Facebook Lite shown in 2009.

Why Am I Blogging?

Honestly, I hate blogging. I mean, why sit here and type when the world is so big and there are so many people out there who can lend you a listening ear? Well, perhaps to most bloggers, blogging might leave a greater impact on the people around them. You know what I mean.

However, we cannot deny that some blogs, like our local bloggers’, Xia Xue’s and Mr Brown’s are really entertaining. Their intentions? I do not know. Perhaps just to be famous or maybe to make money out of advertisement? But sometimes it is great to know that the world is made up of different kinds of people, some like me, who find it ridiculous to type out how I feel and share it with everyone, strangers or not, well, I mean who really cares? Also, how do you (whoever is reading this) know exactly how I feel right now while typing this, and how genuine am I?

Enough of how I feel about blogging, back to reality, I have to catch up with technology and do this for COM125. Who knows at the end of this semester I might be addicted to blogging (highly unlikely)?
It took me quite some time, before writing my first entry, to figure out the “blog language”. Blogging is supposed to be relaxing, but Mr Choy, I know you will be reading this, so well, I wrote drafts! This is so much worse than writing academic essays, but trust me, I will get the hang of it in no time. Sometimes, videos do help a little.



COM 125, introduction to the Internet. You must be kidding, some said to me. Why of all modules did you choose such a silly module, trying to find out what you already know? My question to them, you know how to use it, but do you really know what it is and how it works? That is when the knowledge and the theories come in.
What is Internet? This question may seem silly to people who use it almost every day, like us. However, besides knowing HOW to use it, do we really know WHAT is it and WHEN it is created?

The greatest thing about the Internet: NO ONE OWNS IT

Basically, the Internet is a collection of computers connected to form a global networked environment. There are several ways to connect to the Internet. We can do it via the Internet Service Provider (ISP) by modem, Internet ready cable, Digital subscriber line (DSL), or turning on a computer or notebook, which is on a network at work or school connected to the Internet. The Internet connects everyone everywhere!

Web 1.0 VS web 2.0

Web 1.0 Web 2.0
DoubleClick --> Google AdSense
Ofoto --> Flickr
Akamai --> BitTorrent
mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation --> search engine optimization
page views --> cost per click
screen scraping --> web services
publishing --> participation
content management systems --> wikis
directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --> syndication

Terry Flew’s description of the difference between Web 1.0 and web 2.0:

"move from personal websites to blogs and blog site aggregation, from publishing to participation, from web content as the outcome of large up-front investment to an ongoing and interactive process, and from content management systems to links based on tagging (folksonomy)".

Web 1.0 was the first ten years of the Internet. It consists of websites which contained a one-way flow of information or "read-only" material. Web 2.0’s content, on the other hand, is decentralized, with many users not only being consumers but also contributors and producers of information.

According to Reed Hastings, “Web 1.0 was dial-up, 50K average bandwidth, Web 2.0 is an average 1 megabit of bandwidth and Web 3.0 will be 10 megabits of bandwidth all the time, which will be the full video Web, and that will feel like Web 3.0”.



Web 3.0, in short, is a "semantic web", where the Internet KNOWS you.

Web 4.0, in short, is when the Internet OWNS you. AVATAR!!!

I shall stop for now and start pondering about my next entry.