Com 125 Blog week 10(Internet Journalism, you double edged sword you)

Ah, online journalism, the new by-word in the newscape. The popularity of online journalism is phenomenal as more and more people every day are shunning traditional forms of news media for websites like the Huffington post.

Is this a good thing, you may ask.

The answer is yes and no.

On the surface the answer is simple: “OH, internet media is more convenient, and it’s free, plus its news so it can’t be wrong…right?” Dig deeper and the issue is a micro chasm of what the internet is doing to all media in general.

News is important; its importance can and should never be downplayed. Without news, our world view cannot be maintained and we descend into a world of not knowing and not understanding. So yes, it’s great we have such robust and able forms of news deliverance and reporting around the world. However, the rise of the internet, especially free news sites has caused a paradigm shift in reporting and more importantly, the economics behind it. This may sound complex but bear with me. The news business of the pre-net age was just that, a business. You spent money on subscriptions; you got a paper a day. That and the odd add was enough to keep the paper and its army of staff and reporters employed.

The internet though, introduced a new business model into the equation a model completely add driven, where paid subscriptions could be applied only to be accompanied by a mass exodus to a free news site. It is advertisements that generate the vast majority of income for online news. Ads are quantity driven, with page views being the main form of currency.

News has always had two faces, the straight laced, normal style of reporting that people read on planes, in ties, drinking white wine and then there are tabloids, read by people on the toilet. Tabloids are fun to read but provide little to no true and factual news. The thing is, in today’s e-commerce economy where internet ads form the bulk of revenue, there is far too much emphasis on increasing page views. Due to this, normally, very reliable news outlets are forced to some degree, to sensationalize their content to increase page views.

As more and more traditional news outlets are joining the internet sphere, this brand of sensationalism is going to get worse and different outlets try to outdo each other for page view and advertising dollars. News is going to be less and less about the things that matter to us as people and more and more about things that interest that much more base part of us.

So next time you are drinking you morning coffee and wonder whether to pay the buck for a copy of a paper or to read it on your iPhone, remember this. Also, why would you read on an iPhone?

Com 125 Blog week 9(Political (In)sanitynet)

The political sphere of the Middle East has changed, that cannot be denied. From Egypt to Libya, old regimes have been toppled by populations yearning for change.

However, now that the region’s turmoil’s have taken center stage, we sometimes forget how it all started. It was one stall vender in Tunisia that set himself on fire to protest. This one act of ultimate defiance, captured in the lenses of cameras of all kinds galvanized an entire region of the world to stand up and ask for change. The catalyst behind all this is of course, the internet. Those pictures and videos of the man in Tunisia spread like wildfire over the internet, driven by social media like twitter and Facebook. The change to the region has been massive and it’s all thanks to the net.

The internet has fundamentally changed the way politics work by keeping the flow of information away from the powers that be. In the past, politics was very much a game of he said, she said but now, with the internet, issue are viewed with millions of eyes, each analyzing and commenting on it differently.

Without the internet, the death of that stall vendor in Tunisia would have taken much, much longer to get into the public’s eye and by then, the shock value would have not been as unanimous and therefore, one could argue that the response would have been nowhere as powerful as it was. Information is power and he who controls the flow of information, in general controls public opinion. The internet however, has broken that cycle. With the internet, the flow of information is truly free and what’s better, it’s all in real-time. This has changed politics everywhere, forever.

For politicians, it’s a double edged sword, on one hand; they have a much larger pool of potential voters to engage at the same time but also have to contend with that much extra scrutiny. Also the internet is like a women, she doesn’t forgive, she doesn’t forget so it serves as a very large barrier to technically incompetent politicians like McCain with more net-savvy ones like Obama have used it to massively bolster their campaigns. What this means for you and me, however, is that we are all going to need to get smarter.

While the internet gives us all a voice, some convincing, others not, it’s up to us to decide what we agree with. We have been spoiled by the generally trust worthiness of print news and take most things on internet news sites to be gospel. This is often not the case and a healthy BS detector is essential.

It’s not all bad though, now that everyone has a voice, a true democracy is evolving in cyberspace where the opinions of millions of people can be collated to see what the majority wants. So in conclusion, I say, let politics embrace the internet, let politicians use it for their agenda’s if their cause be noble. If it’s not, however, it’s up to all of us to stand up and use the voice the net has given us to deter such people.

Com 125 Blog week 8(Tools to iunleash your creative side)

I use multimedia; you use multimedia, we all use multi media. It is ubiquitous, it is important, it is everywhere. It can be your best friend or it can lead to your downfall.

In today’s internet powered world, a plethora of devices have the ability to share all sorts of multimedia content with the world. Be it text, photos, audio and even video, there are a bunch of tools out there to let you unleash your inner creative spirit.

Below ill detail the top websites for audio sharing, video sharing, sharing and the obvious amalgamation of all of them, the social networking sites. I do this because I’m a nice guy, and because I want my A…probably.

Photos:
1. Flickr: It’s fast, efficient, has a clean and friendly user interface and most importantly its reliable. It also has the largest penetration across platforms. It’s also completely free and has a very helpful and vibrant community.

2. Photobucket: Say what you will about how it’s old and dated, there is a reason photobucket has stayed alive for so long. It just works. It comes without any of the bells and whistles of Flickr but what it lacks in deep features it makes up for in quick and easy usage. You get in, upload your file, get a URL, and get out, no interruptions.

Video:

1. YouTube: Seriously, what can I say that hasn’t already been said? It’s the world’s largest video sharing site and probably one of the top five most important websites in the world. There is a reason for its dominance however and it’s due to two mean reasons, ease of use and deep integration. For example, when Apple said it wouldn’t support Flash, the standard video sharing platform, Google made YouTube compatible for iOS users by creating on the fly conversions to a QuickTime based format. It’s this integration that has made YouTube so ubiquitous.

Also, it’s incredibly easy to use, make a video and press upload, no technical knowledge is needed at all, and everything is handled on YouTube’s end. YouTube is also present on mobile devices, Android getting probably the best version of the app, obviously. You can upload from your mobile devices with just a touch. There is no other video sharing site that offers this kind of deep yet simple service and it’s for this reason that YouTube has become the television of a new generation.

2. YouTube: See above

Music:

1. What is this, the 90’s? There is no descent music sharing site available, nor is any required. Just like how TV made radio redundant, video sharing has made audio sharing redundant.

Social networking:

1. Facebook: The killer of MySpace and Friendster is the go to place on the web to interact with people you know, or think you know. Seriously though, there is an incredibly high chance you use Facebook more than me so anything I type would have any purpose. Point of the matter is, for its ability to amalgamate all forms of media and its ability to integrate this into an environment of user generated status based content, Facebook is the deserved king of social networking.

2. Twitter: If Facebook’s status features were compressed to a limit of 140 characters and made into a site, it would be twitter. Offering only text update based services; it’s for people who want tiny tidbits of info quickly and efficiently.

So yeah that’s it, hopefully this lets you know what to do with the multimedia you want to share.

COM 125 Blog week 7(Security online)

I know what many of you think, “I’m a nobody on the internet, why should a virus attack me, and it’s not like I visit bad sites nor do anything naughty. All I do is Facebook and tweet” or the classic “Virus’s don’t exist on Mac’s and I have a Mac because I’m unique”

Guess, what you’d be wrong on all accounts. Now I’m going to be nice and explain what each of the different kinds of major internet threats are and what you can do to save yourself.

Viruses: Like a human virus, this bunch of code attaches itself to files and then replicates. Its issues range from minor slowdown of a single computer to the shutting down of whole networks. Its whole point is to maliciously disable your computer and the sad part is that viruses are normally executable files that need to be run by the user.

Worm: These treacherous files are worse than actually viruses, believe it or not. Like viruses they self-replicate and harm your machine in similar ways but unlike viruses, no user input is required. Once they are in your machine they will do as they please, and they love attaching themselves to emails you send.

Trojan Horses: Again, a very apt name for a software very much like the mythical Trojan horse. They are often bundled together with actually useful software but like the Greeks lying in wait for the Trojans to lax their guard, the malicious code strikes and it’s the repercussions range from simple slowdowns to complete machine malfunction.

Do not loose heart, o brave net warrior for there are tools at your disposal to keep these forces of evil at bay and out of the goodness of my heart I will share some.

1. Have a working, updated anti-virus. This is by far the most important tool at your disposal. Also, don’t be fooled into thinking only the expensive anti-virus software like Norton and MacAfee work, there are free alternatives without bells and whistles that still work very, very well. I especially recommend Avast and AVG. Avg though, has seen a decline in quality over the past few years so defiantly Avast is the king of free anti-virus now, in my humble opinion.

2. Invest in good anti-spyware software. Windows xp and up has access to Microsoft’s Windows defender which is as good an anti-spyware software as can be found anywhere. Spybot search and destroy is another old-school favorite.

3. Update your OS. Your OS manufacturer will always release patches periodically to address security flaws, always download them…yes even Mac’s.

4. Use common sense. If something online seems too good to be true, it most likely is. Also if you have no idea what the file you are opening is, Google it, learn about it then make a choice.

So yeah, that’s it, with these tips in mind I hope you can prove an able shield brother in the war against the evils of the net.

Com 125 blog week 6(Video tools)

This was an itneresting one, with todays topic being itnernet tools i guess ill list the tools i used to make this video.

1. Adobe Premiere Elements. This is, in my opinion, the best video editing software for people of less than awesome skill, it has just enough frills to give you depth yet no so much that you become buried and lost.
2. Audacity. Used this for the audio, this is by far the most feature rich free audio editor available.

Now about the video. I am a gamer, always have been and i am a great fan of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. When Relic and THQ made Warhammer 40,000 dawn of war 2, i was in seventh heaven so i made a commentary video of a match a friend of mine played. Enjoy!

Part 1:

Part 2:

COM 125 Blog week 5(Does the iPad do human machine interface better than anything else?)

I have an iPad, I love it and I hate it. I love it because it fits a very specific niche, and I hate it because it’s those techno-commies at Apple that discovered this niche. At the end of days, the tablet market is divided into two, those that have iPad’s and those that want it.

What is an iPad though?

In its simplest form it’s a computing device which has a different human machine interface than the standard desktop or laptop. Instead of a using a cursor and keyboard to manipulate the GUI, you use touch. We call it a tablet computer because when held it looks like an ancient stone tablet. It’s something people would obviously like, the ability to touch to manipulate a device. There is nothing more intuitive, until telepathy comes around of course. So in my opinion, above and beyond the app store, it’s the utter change in the technology behind

Why however, has the iPad, a relative newcomer to the touchscreen market, taken the world by storm when others have floundered for years?

In my opinion, until now, tablets have never really been…well, tablets. The old tablets that companies like Fujitsu made based on a Windows OS were basically laptops with a very bad touchscreen. The thing is though, even though touch has been around for a while, the tech behind the latest generation of tablets is pretty new. The old tech required you to have a stylus and what used to happen is that when the stylus or your nail for all you lazy people was used to literally poke at a touch interface hardware device that was situated between two plastic sheets. When that plastic sector touched the interface hardware, it detected it as a touch and responded accordingly.

You couldn’t use any other part of your hand unless it was sharp and pointy.

This sort of touch interface was not intuitive; it required another piece of hardware to be used effectively, effectively adding another barrier to the interaction between you and your machine.

For all of Apple’s posturing that the iPad was a magical device etc., all it was, was a device at the right place at the right time. Apple had the intelligence to understand what exactly people wanted tablets to do and they threw everything else away. At the end of the day, the reason the iPad remains king and the reason it has been so successful in revitalizing a basically dead tablet market is three fold. First, they saw what people wanted in a tablet form factor and gave them exactly that, nothing more, nothing else. Secondly they made it very user friendly, keeping the same basic UI and OS from its iPod touch and iPhone devices. Thirdly, it had full app support and the promise of dedicated apps that would make use of the larger screen real estate.

In conclusion, the iPad could probably the best portable device in existence now to experience the web.

Com 125 blog week 4(E-commerce)

E-commerce is a multibillion dollar industry and almost everyone who has used a computer has at some point or another, knowingly or not, participated in this form of business. Like any business, e-commerce has its own business models and prototypes and below I will try to explain what they are.

1. C2C or consumer to consumer which is a system whereby two consumers make use of an internet site acting as mediator to buy and sell goods. The best example of this would be sites like eBay or craigslist.

2. B2B or Business to business which, like the name entails, involves one business buying or selling things to another business such as large corporations selling to smaller retailers.

3. B2C or Business to consumer is the most common type of system whereby the consumer would use the internet to shop for good, make payment with a Credit Card and expect delivery to a specified address. This is the system currently used by retailers such as Amazon.com.

4. G2C or government to citizen which is the kind of transaction whereby citizens handle affairs with the government like passport work etc. online, and make payments for such services online. This is a very popular model in Singapore, virtually eliminating long queues and accounting hassle by making everything electronic.

I think e-commerce is incredibly important because it gives consumers never dreamed about freedom. There are no pesky salesmen, no dubious merchandise…most of the time. You are allowed to browse and pay at your convenience.

However this isn’t to say that such a system has no flaws. Of course, putting your financial info online has its drawbacks and with hackers getting more and more advanced, your financial safety online is always going to be an issue. Also, the goods themselves, which unlike a brick and mortar shop, cannot be seen with all five senses so sometimes, something’s that looks great on a computer screen will look less than stellar when it’s in your hands. In the long run however, as e-commerce and the tech that runs it becomes more and more ubiquitous, I am certain this will improve.

At the end of the day, e-commerce is a business, it has its models and we should not look at it as something amazing but rather a natural extension of the capitalist ideology we as a race have accepted.

Com 125 Blog week 2 (Social media and the best way to experience it)

Ah the internet, the net, the web, the interwebz, the cesspool of humanity, that thing with the colourful things. Call it what you will, the internet is here and it’s not going anywhere. Today, we mainly use the internet to view media.

However, this post will deal with social media. Now what is social media you might ask? Well, it is user generated media, meaning people like you posting a video or a photo are contributors to this new form of media, one without boundaries.

However, to experience the joys of the internet, you need a tool, a browser. There are many out there and it’s important to choose the right one.

Today I’ll be looking at browsers and why I use what I use.

Like all people, the good overlords at Microsoft saw it fit for me to begin my internet journey on IE 5. I remember being on Pacific Internet and having an old 56k router. Oh speaking of those old routers, remember the noise? Oh that noise, the beeps, the static, all of it, ingrained forever in the recesses of my mind.

Anyway browsers, yes, so many to choose from yet so little difference. Now I’m no slouch when it comes to the PC, I know my stuff and for that reason, Apple’s Safar and Google’s Chrome are not for me. The former is too underwhelming, taking up far more memory than its underwhelming features should require, bad programming perhaps.

Chrome’s lack of third party functionality makes it only good for luddites that want a gimped browsing experience. Me, I want to have power over my browser, it’s my gateway to the internet after all. For that purpose, only one browser makes the cut. Goode ole’ Mozilla Firefox. The add-ons run the gamut from inbuilt media players to skins and themes to utilities like calculators. No other browser gives you this much control over your internet experience.

One could argue that Opera provides a lot of these features but at the end of the day, the user base of Firefox is a lot higher, which means more people are developing software to be integrated into Firefox, over Opera and as the free market has though us, more variety equals to more customer happiness. Also it gives the rebel anarchist in me pleasure that IE as a normal, everyday browser cannot match Firefox even though it has the largest market share.

At the end of the day, for a full, feature packed browser that gives you the integration to do the most with your social media, look no further than Mozilla’s excellent Firefox.

Com 125 Blog Post week 3 (Why social networking can suck)

Today I shall be discussing the dicey topic of social media.

I could go on and on about why we use Social Media, what role it plays in modern society or how it has evolved into a driving force on the net sphere.

Personally, I hate social media because I believe it is watering down the sacred art of human communication and it has created a perpetually self-conscious generation of youth, constantly judged by who they know and what they do. Now that could just be because I am lousy at it and unlike the female member of my species, I am unable to post racy photo’s to get males to my social networking pages. Not that I can’t post racy photos, just that I choose not to. So I will give a few reasons as to why I think social media sucks, yet people still use it.

So without further a due, here is my top 3 reasons why social networking sucks.

3. People assume you are narcissistic.
The above statement is completely true. The concept of social networking is no more about networking; rather it’s become a worldwide popularity contest. To have the best Facebook page you have got to have good pictures, sexy pictures, pictures that make people want to say “Damn I wish I was that guy/gal I’ll never try to better myself because such people already have a head start”. So what people do is become very protective about their self who eventually evolves or devolves for that matter, into narcissism.
Then there’s the whole concept of the profile page. Posting huge amounts of data makes it seem like you are a self-obsessed idiot. This isn’t wrong. Strangers don’t care about your fifty favourite movies, seriously. It turns into a universal way of thinking in which every is thinking “It’s not about me, I don’t want to read it, you arrogant person’

Then there’s the icing on this cake of crap, the profile picture. People viewing it feed the narcissism. And folks, especially ladies, you’re not fooling anyone by casually posting provocative pictures. People know you want to be stared at, and that’s what they will do.

2. Your ten million friends are less than one
So you have gazillion friends? Your notifications icon looks like an abacus? You have to scroll for an hour to look at updates from 5 minutes ago?
Congrats, you win at life!
Not really.
How many of these do you actually know? How many of you ladies added some guy you met when you were higher than the stratosphere or how many guys have added the hot chick in the hopes she will mention them in but one post. These days, it’s not,”Hey you’re a swell fellow, shall we hang out?” its “Add me on FB and then we will see”. In many ways Facebook and most social networking is, like I mentioned above, a giant competition.

People look at your profile, your wall and everything in-between and make assumptions about your character before even meeting you once. So if you have a million friends, you are cool, and supposedly, attractive people will want to sleep with you, at least that’s what people think.

1. How social is social networking, for that matter how does it help with networking?
How do people become friends? How do two people, knowing nothing about each other, become pals? Well it’s not because of Facebook, that’s for sure. Making friends is an art as old as human kind, there’s the awkward first hello, that first smile as some sort of common interest comes to mind and a plethora of other nuances. With social networking, a glance at the persons’ profile is often enough for you to come to some type of judgmental conclusion, be it right or wrong. It’s not that at all, it’s a system that breeds suspicion and stereotyping. The meek and the shy among us have it even worse.

So at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves an important question, is the distant admiration of strangers important enough to risk things like our reputations among our close circles, our privacy and the simple joys of getting to know someone by getting to know someone, instead of creating the concept of the person from words and pictures on a screen.

Com 125 post-week one (Dues ex internet)

To begin this series of posts regarding the internet, I think it pertinent to start from within. To start with what the internet is and what it means to me, specifically and where I think it will be going.

To illustrate how ingrained the net is in my life, all I have to do is look at my computer screen, as I type this word document, I have a YouTube window open playing music, I have my steam game client running, my antivirus is connected and so are my drivers etc. My phone is perpetually connected to the internet, as are my gaming consoles, even my TV. This does not mean that the internet is there with me 24hrs a day but for a large part of the day the internet is there, a conduit to the world, a link to people I have never met.
For the future however, allow me to talk more than just a decade or two into the future, that sort of thing I suspect, will be covered admirably by my esteemed classmates, let me talk about what I think will happen in about a century from now.

In one word, complete integration.

As the human body stands, evolution-wise, right now, is inadequate for the things we require it to do. We require outside hardware to allow us to keep the world running. In the future I believe that man and the internet will not be two separate things. After all, isn’t the brain just an organic computer with storage, access memory and different levels of computing power? Right now, to access the net and work within it, we require a computer, a keyboard and a mouse. Without these three tools, high level internet functions cannot be done. In the future however I believe our very brain will be linked to the internet, we will slowly start to evolve into a much more social species as such a device would enable communication and discussion on a level infinitely deeper than we are capable of today. To be honest, as we are now, I do not believe we, as a race, have the wisdom to even be trusted with such technology.

Oh trust me, the day will come when a baby will be born with a connection to the internet and little nano-machiens will exist to keep the machine components inside us functioning. There are downsides, certainly, beginning with the utter lack of privacy and coupled with the abandonment of certain freedoms. It’s a wonderfully complex question and one that has to be asked when discussing what is the future of the internet especially as connection is becoming the new it-word. How far are we, as a race going to allow technology to integrate into our lives?

I assure you the subsequent posts are going to be a lot more focused but what better way to start than with wide eyed curiosity.