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.