Blogjects!!

Week 13 blog post is “Why Things Matter” from http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/files/WhyThingsMatter.pdf

Blogging is very normal now. People just have to register an account online at the blog software and start blogging. Anyone who blogs is known as “Blogger”. People often blog about what they see; what they feel and what they think. The author state that they have something semantically weighty to talk about, whatever their particular idiom of social exchange may be — politics, geek news, gadgets, music, personality fetish, knitting, best practices for smoking salmon and so on. They also can share their pictures, video on the blog. Other than human, did you know that object can blog as well? It is known as blogjects.

Basically, blogjects is object that blogs. The word blogjects is the combination of “blog” and “object”.  Blogging is an activity which allows people to share their comments thought, usually on a particular topic and blogjects had the same concept but is just that object is doing the blogging instead of human. The author mentions that Blogjects literally just blog and it don’t pay attention to comments.

"Internet of Things"

Blogjects are different from the thing from the internet. The thing of blogjects can participate in exchange ideas, they not just publish but circulate conversation as well. The author had mention how blogjects function and works - “A Blogject can start a conversation with something as simple as an aggregation of levels of pollutants in groundwater. If this conversation is maintained and made consequential through hourly RSS feeds and visualizations of that same routine data, this Blogject is going to get some trackback.”  

The basic idea of Internet of Things

The three peculiarities characteristics of Blogjects:

1.      Blogjects track and trace where they are and where they’ve been

Blogjects need to trace where we are in order to communicate with us. For example, when we are lost, we can communicate with it and ask for a map (Google map) around the area and find a way out. It is very useful when people get lost in the jungle or during hiking. It is also very useful for parents for them to know the location of their child and where they have been. Then, the parents can know that their child did go to school, tuition or so on and didn’t mess around or skip school.

2.      Blogjects have self-contained (embedded) histories of their encounters and experiences

Blogjects has the ability to remembering things and keep a record of it. It carry the knowledge of previous stories, recordings or experience. For example, the video above had mention that imagine a running shoes can be able to upload to a website about the time, distance, the calories burn during the running and it store the information on the internet and check the progress overtime.

3.      Blogjects always have some form of agency — they can foment action and participate; they have an assertive voice within the social web.

What I get from this sentence is that Blogjects can interact with a group and communicate with us. Can u imagine communicating with a thing but not human?

As a conclusion, personally, I do not like the idea of Blogjects because it’s invading my privacy. It’s like there is person stalking you and they know where you are, what you are doing and even keep a record of it. Then they share their information about it with others – internet’s blogger and blog readers. It’s kind of scary. But Blogjects did have it good part in it. What do you think?

Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web

Week 12 posting is “Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web” by Daniel Roth from http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-07/ff_android?currentPage=1

What is Android? Android is operating system for mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers to connect to the internet. It is created by Andy Rubin. The reason for the invention of Android is that the market in mobile phone is so much larger than then the computer and day by day, people will use mobile phone to access to the internet instead of computer. Andy had stressed that “there were nearly 700 million cell phones sold each year compared with fewer than 200 million PCs — and the gap was widening” at the pitch for the android. Besides that, when time pass, people will use mobile phone to access to the internet instead of computer. Mobile phone is a device that people will carry it at anytime and anywhere and it is more likely for them to use mobile to access to the internet more than the computer. With these, Rubin come out with Android and he want to partner with Google.

Page, the cofounder of Google, had done many things to make sure that Android will work and help in his business. “Thirty-four companies — firms like Texas Instruments, Intel, T-Mobile, and Sprint Nextel — were joining Google to build a wireless interface based on open source Linux software.” Google was planned to take the trillion dollar global wireless market.

“The company put a free Android software developer's kit on its Web site and announced the Developer Challenge, with $10 million in prize money to be parceled out to the creators of the best applications for the new system — a great social networking tool, say, or a handwriting recognition program.”

This challenge is open up to everyone. With this challenge, Google wants to develop fun and interesting application for Android to attract more people to used Android which means that more people are surfing the internet. This means that more people viewing the Google ads and this profits the Google.

Apple vs Android

The biggest competitor in the market for Android is Apple. Apple is a proprietary operating system whereas Android is Google developed open source operating system. Android and Apple have similar functions and application. Both of them support multitasking, it can download many application and use it. There are some differences between Apple and Android which is that Android surf the net thru browser while Apple surf the net thru Safari and so on.

The difference between Apple and Android

But the big difference between Android and Apple is that Android is user friendly whereas Apple is not. For example, Apple can only share their information, pictures, video, music and so on with Apple devices like iPad, iPhone, Mac book and so on. It can’t share it with other smart phone or devices unlike Android which can share its information, pictures, video, music and so on with any type of smart phone. It is also one of the reasons why people choose Android instead of Apple.

Android is user friendly

Basically, in this article, the author tells the story of how Android is developing and how it gets to the market. At the end of the article, the author state that “If they're doing that from an Android phone, great. If not, but they're on a phone made more Web-friendly thanks to competitive pressure from Google, that's also fine. "I hope it's Android," Page says. But either way, Google wins.” I’m totally agree in it, whether people used Apple, Android or other Web-friendly phone, in the end will still profits Google, because they help Google to drive more user or people to surfs the nets and with this the amount of people viewing Google ads will increase and profits Google. Therefore, Android is the smart move of Google.

Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go

Week 11 posting is “Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go” by Morozov, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/facebook-twitter-revolutionaries-cyber-utopians

There are many social networking like My Space, Friendster but the popular social networks are Facebook and Twitter. It is a must to have Facebook and Twitter account, especially Facebook. Almost everyone has a Facebook account. There are less people in Malaysia has Twitter account compare to Facebook. Facebook had become a trend and a person without a Facebook account can be consider as outdated because people can get the latest news thru Facebook. For example, people start sharing the video that the China girl hit by the trucks and everyone started to discuss about it. We can get the latest news on Facebook compare to the news in newspaper or television.

Back to the topic, the author had stated that “the internet can be an effective tool for political change when used by grassroots organizations”.  Why the author said so? It is because that there are many people using internet for all kind of purpose like socialize, working, doing assignment, study and so on. So, internet is a media that can easily reach everyone and it is a useful and effective tools for political change, inform the citizen and so on. The author also stated that internet was used to publicize, and even organize protests in the Middle East does nothing to counter his argument. 

How addicted are you towards Facebook?

Internet is a very powerful media to influence people, especially social network. It is because that people spend most of the time on social network while they on internet. There are people on Facebook 24/7 and check the Facebook all the time with their smart phone. Facebook is very influential and it brings up many social issues and becomes a piece of news. For example, there are a lot of people sharing a video that show a bunch of students’ gang up and bully a female students in the secondary schools.  After this incident, there are a few similar cases is discover too and people started to pay attention in this issue. It becomes a big hit in our country and it is about the school policy, school rules and it is against the moral value. This shows that Facebook is an effective and powerful tool.

It is very easy to start a protest using a social network especially Facebook and Twitter. People can create an event or a page about the protest and share it. People can simply share it by click on the share button and the protester can share other information, pictures and even videos to make people join their protest. As for Twitter, the protester can use hash tag “#” and when there are a lot of people talking about the issue or protest, it will become a popular topic and it will be put at the right hand side if twitter page. It is easier for people to notice it can talk about it. It is even easier for people that are famous and influential to make a protest. It is because that there will be many people will follow them (in twitter) or like their page on Facebook and their message can be easily spread around. People will also pay attention to their action and words too. Therefore, the famous people should not simply said things that are not true or start a protest for fun. It will affect the society.

Civic hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy

The week 9 blogging is Civic hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy from http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-edemocracy/article_1025.jsp

According to the author, it stated that the British government is facing a huge problem which is that the citizens are seemed to ignore the representatives’ democracy.  Since everyone is using the internet, therefore the British Government wants to use internet to solve this problem and connect to the citizen. But the solution that come out by them – The internet is not working. Its true that internet can connect with many people and most of the people used internet everyday but the problem here is that the citizens in not interested in the politics and they will not view their page and so on. As the author had mention “if someone isn’t interested in politics and they don’t see the point in taking part, doing it online is not going to help much”.

The author had mention some interesting points in the article such as electronic politics, reciprocity online, the democracy application, and most importantly is the civic hacking and e-democracy ethic.

Reciprocity online - helping each other

Reciprocity online means that people help each other to solve problem thru the Internet. To make it simple, it is like I help you to solve your problems and you help me back with mine. The author had stated a good example which is the gamer today. The gamer today will go to the gaming community to ask for help to overcome a challenge. Then, the other gamers help to solve the problems because sometimes they may need others help to overcome their challenge as well. How to link this to the politics? The author stated that the British government should have developed an application – democracy application or software to meet the social goal. It can let the citizens to participate in it and help each other with their problems, interact with the parliament. It is called as “civic hacking”.

The author had given a good example for civic hacking – Meetup. Meetup had the similar concept with civic hacking. It is not a application but it is a website which allow people that have the same interest to link together – meet up. For example, Jane had just moved to a new town and she had no friend there and she wanted to find friend with the same interest like play Sudoku, likes animal and so on. Then, she can go on Meetup and register her interests. When there are sufficient amount of people had register for the same interest, the sites will send an email and suggests you to meet up for a drink. Isn’t it cool and sounds fun? We can have lots of friend with the same interest.

From the author point of view, the British government should develop a civic hacking website instead of some boring political website. Because people will not interest in the political website; they will not visit it and use the application and they won’t find that it will help a lot in their life. About the ethic of democracy, the author stressed that people should be connecting are not citizens and parliamentarians, or voters and civil servants. It should be connecting ordinary people with other ordinary people. The application that develops should connect ordinary people with each other and help each other to overcome the civic problem. It will helps in the people to involve in the democracy as well.

TWITTER!!!

This week blog about “How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live” by Johnson.

I’m totally agreed with the author that Twitter makes a terrible first impression. When I first had contact with Twitter, I totally do not know how to use it and the purpose of using it. It can’t share pictures, video, and it just let you send 140 characters message. I was too used to Facebook, so I’m totally do not like this new service when I first in-touch with it. Then, slowly I found it is kind of interesting to just post a short and straight forward tweet just like a conversation. I keep up with my friend in UK on Twitter to know how she is doing there and what she is doing. Just like what the author mention in the article – “We don't think it at all moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask.” I always had conversation with her on twitter instead of msn because both of us do not have the time for long conversation, both of us are doing our own stuff and Twitter is the perfect choice for us.

            Twitter is very simple, and straightforward. It do not have the like button, comment button and share button, it just have reply, retweet and favorite. Sometimes, my friend said something that I really like, I can’t click the like button or share it (I was so use to Facebook) but to reply with short words like I like it. It is so simple that when you like what people said about it, you can reply to that person that you like it or retweet it. Retweet button is the same as the sharing button on Facebook. Since Twitter can’t share pictures, video and so on, but Twitter user can share it with friends by tweet the links with a short and simple introduction with it. I like the simplicity of Twitter, so, and i totally agree that once you start tweeting, you will get addicted to it.

Many artists own a Twitter account and of course they have tons of followers. They tweet about their daily life just like all of us and share it with their fans. There are many artist promote their new songs thru twitter. They just need to share a link of their music video and their fans will it. There are artist also inform their fans about their new song in twitter too. For example, Jesse Mccartney tweeted that his new song will be at iTune soon and asks his fans to purchase it. Therefore, twitter has become an advertising tool too although it does not have a corner for advertising.

Besides, the author had mention about the intimacy that the fans had with their idol thru Twitter. Whenever their idol tweeted something, they can reply it and some of the artist do reply their fans. For example, Justin Bieber will go thru their fans tweet, reply them or retweet it and he even follow his fans on twitter. This is one of the reasons why people is crazy about Twitter.

Did Bieber follow you on Twitter?

            Twitter also had become a business tool. It is because many businesses had a twitter account and tweeted about their product, services to update their follower as well as customer and also communicate with their customers. For example, MY FM – a Chinese radio station in Malaysia owns a Twitter. It will keep update with the news, which artist is coming to the studio for live broadcast, who is in the studio now, what game is coming up next and so on to attract people to listen to MY FM.

Better than Free!! =)

This week blogging will be “Better than Free” by Kevin Kelly
Introduction
Before I read this article, I was attracted by the topic of this article – “Better than Free”. What is better than free? Everyone likes free things. Everyone goes for it when there are free things. I was curious about the idea of – Better than free.

“Better than Free”

The internet is a copy machine

                The author stated that “The internet is a copy machine”. It is the most suitable words to describe the information on the internet. It is because that everything on the internet will be copy again and again. For example, when we are out of idea on doing an assignment, we will find the information on the internet and get some inspiration and idea from it. From this, we copy the idea of other people’s work and make it into ours.

How can we make money with the “copy machine” while the information can be easily copied in millions? The author had stated there are eight intangible values that are better than free.

Eight intangible values that are better than free:

Books and Internet

1.       Immediacy – People can get free copy online for free but still there are people will pay money for it. Why so? Because people want the immediacy. For example, when a new “Harry Potter” was released, there are people lines up in front of the book store in the early morning just to buy the books.  There are even people that camp it in front of the book store the night before it release just to get the books. Internet can’t do all this. Another example, people will still spend money to watch movie even though the movie will be free to watch or download through internet sooner or later. Why? Because of immediacy. They want to enjoy the movie once it was release.

To stand out - personalized

2.       Personalization – There are bloggers earning money by blogging; the more visitors they have to their blog, the more money they earn. There are many bloggers around the world. They blog about different stuff everyday and how does a blogger to make his or her blog stands out in order to attract the visitors? The answer here will be personalized. This makes them different from other bloggers and makes the visitor remember and differentiate them from other bloggers easily and visit their blogs frequently.

Get help from Manual

3.       Interpretation – How people learn a new thing? For me, I prefer guidance from others – people or manual. The author gave a good example in the article - there are companies like Red Hat provide paid support for free software and they earn money by support and guidance.

Online shopping vs in store shopping

4.       Authenticity – Nowadays there are many people selling clothes through internet because it is cheap, more convenience and so on. But still many people still prefers to go to the shops and buy it. It is because they can know the quality of the clothes and the actual size, and make sure it is perfectly fine before purchase it or they can go back and change it if something goes wrong. They feel that the shop will be more reliable and warranty. Online shopping can’t do that. People do not know the quality of the clothes, the actual size of the clothes, odes it fits and whether the clothes in perfect form. Therefore, people rather pay more and go to the shop to buy clothes.

5.       Accessibility – Accessibility talk about backed up. The author state that the ownership sucks and he gave a good example of it - Acme backs everything up, pays the creators, and delivers us our desires.

The environment of a football match

6.       Embodiment – Internet is a virtual world. You can’t touch or feel the internet. It the same goes to the information and everything available in the internet. It means that it do not have the feeling of embodiment. For me, I like to read through an article on a paper more than on a laptop screen. It because I can easily take notes at the side on the paper or make a mark on it to remind myself. Other than that, when you watch a football match through your laptop screen is so much different from watching live in the stadium. You can’t enjoy the environment in the stadium, the excitement and the feel when everyone is shouting together; become sad when they team you support missed the goal and so much more. It is much more fun to watch it live in the stadium, that’s why, there are many people willing to paid the expensive tickets and watch it in the stadium.

7.       Patronage – “Audiences want to pay creators” – Kelly. It’s so true and this makes the music records to sales while there are songs available online for downloading. Like the author said, the fans feel connection between them and their idol when they purchase the album. It also shows the appreciation to their hard work. Another example is that people will purchase song thru iPod while there are songs available online for download.

Harry Potter =)

8.       Findability – “No matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless.” – Kelly. The author clearly state that a work that can be seen and can be found is very important and valuable. The internet has all sort of information and there are millions and millions of information of work, so it’s not easy for a specific work to be seen. This is known as clutter on the internet. For example, if J.K Rowling publish “Harry Potter” through internet it has huge possibility that her work won’t be seen and this lead to work that not sales. Besides that, people can easily make copy with it or stole her idea and produce a better work.

These eight facts are the basic things for people that want to earn money from conducting the business online. So, you should understand it, remember it if you want to conduct a business online or offline.

Media convergence

This week blogging – ‘The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence’ from Henry Jenkins

What is media convergence? Media convergence means that the use of several media on the same time. The typical example is that when we doing our assignment, we will use Microsoft word, listen to music, chat with friends, using social network – Facebook on the same time. Basically is media convergence means multitasking. People will not want to own a device that does not have much function or application. Now, even a basic mobile phone has mp3 function, camera, video recorder, can online and so on. This is known as the shift of technology.

The new technology/ new media

I remember when I was young, I did not know what is Internet but now, we can’t survive without Internet. The internet is the basic need for everyone now. People used internet to search for information, get information, for social purpose and even for education like e-learning, for assignment and so on. The widely used of the internet shows the shift of technology from traditional technology like books to internet. Like me, I rather used Internet to search for information instead of books. It is because internet has wider information and its very convenience.

 Another typical example of technology shift

The author stated that media convergence impacts the way we consume the media. It is very true because we multitasking every day. For example, we use mobile photo to take picture, edit it and post in on Facebook or mail it to other people. While we edit the photo, we may on the mp3 player on mobile phone – typical multitasking. As i mention just now, I used Microsoft word to type my assignments, listen to music, and chat with my friends, on Facebook and sometimes, I even watch the television program while i'm doing my assignemnt. We are multitasking at every minute, every seconds because of the new technology.

The uses of mobile phone/laptop/tablets/pc

The author stated that “Media convergence is more than simply a technological shift.” The author means that media convergence also link to the shift of technologies, industries, audience and so on. The shift of technologies and industries had focus on the internet because internet is the basic for people. Because of that, the behavior of audience also changed. One of it is that, audience behavior has change from passive to active. For example, last time, audience from traditional media is passive which they just take what it showed on television without giving any opinion or comments while the audience on the new media – Internet is very active. They can give comments; speak out their thoughts on Internet. For example, Harry Potter fans can share their thoughts, opinion and feeling with others fan on internet like forum or even social network like Facebook.

“Convergence is also a risk for creative industries because it requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media” – Jenkins

The companies have to rethink what the consumer wants and the consumer needs in this new era. They need to make changes in order to fit to the audience and to attract the audience attention. For example, many people do their business online because Internet has larger audience, no physical borders, free and so on. Many companies have their own webpage and advertise online to attract people’s attention or create awareness. Traditional media like newspaper also have online news because people do not read newspaper but read news online. For example, The Star newspaper has its own webpage which called The Star Online. A business that does not change accordingly or follow the trend will be outdated, difficult to fit in the society, and even get eliminated from the market.

As a conclusion, the media convergence changes the way we consume media, our daily life as we attached to our mobile phone, communicate with the new technology more than communicate with people. People will spend more time with the new technology instead of the time with people. Therefore, media convergence had its bad and goods. Do you agree with me?