Week 14 - The future of the internet

It is undeniable that the internet has brought about great conveniences to many. In fact so much convenience that it is almost possible for one to stay at home to do many of their chores from home.

In the previous posts, I mentioned that students are able to still catch up with their school work when their had to miss weeks of school due to the sars outbreak with the help and invention of blackboard. Then we have e-commerce, people are able to make purchases online without needing to go out of their houses and have the purchases delivered to their door steps. We had social networking to keep us "close" and connected to our friends and kins. Being connected to the internet also allows us to work from home via emails, video live conferencing and such. You see, internet has really brought us so much ease and convenience that we can almost go about doing everything from the comfort of our homes.

Perhaps in the future, we will really be able to do EVERYTHING from home, without having to physically move about. I remember reading a story "the machine stops" by E.M Forster for my literature in secondary school. Although it was written in the 1909, long before the invention of computers, internet, it has almost very accurately predicted what the future would be like when humans grow overly reliant on technology and on the computer. It depicted how humans would stop leaving their homes, how humans will start growing and becoming cold to one another due to the lack of human interactions and humans may not be able to make it or survive without technology. Because, the short story is about the detrimental and devastating effect of what technology can do.

Hence in my opinion, although technology like the internet has made lives much more comfortable and convenient for us, we must always bear in mind that these are bonuses in lives. They are invented and here to help AID us, but we should not grow overly reliant on it as the story has depicted. For example, although social networking has aided us and helped us to stay connected to our love ones whom we are not able to see everyday, we should not solely depend on it. We should still put in efforts to visit and interact face to face with out people, not just via the screen because such interaction is cold and not genuine.

Internet is still advancing, and i'm sure that in future, it will definitely bring about greater conveniences. Like i said, when that is the case, maybe there will be no need to leave our homes and perhaps we do not even need to move about as the connectivity and technologies improve. We can order our meals online, pay our bills online and etc. When this happens, human's health will also be affect due to the lack of physical movements.

Hence we must almost make an effort to remember that humans are the creator of machines and technologies, and not the other way round. We must not let the machines and technology control and ruin our lives.

Free Topic: Why I love Stumble upon. - Week 13

Have you ever felt so bored at home that you feel like your life is really rotting away? Well, I have, and i really hate that kind of feeling.

Being a student kind of means that you are financially crippled 1/2 of the time. So when that happens, I will try to stay at home so that i can avoid spending, or rather OVER-spending. One fine day while being broke and staying home, i stumbled across this social bookmarking website called "Stumbleupon", and that is one of the best discovery i've made online. Stumble upon allows you to list out your interests, and then base on your interests, brings you stumbling around websites that are of your interests. That means, almost every site that you stumble across are very possibly those that you will spend time reading, going through, and enjoy it. To date, i have discovered hundred over other websites that i found useful and interesting and they have since really killed and fight my boredom for me, which i am very much thankful for. So i am gonna repay stumble upon and help them do a "publicity" by sharing its awesomeness. I will share 5 interesting sites that stumbleupon has led me to, which may help kill some of your boredom if you think you could use so

me of it.

1. Need some softwares/applications to edit or do your work but don't feel like spending the thousand of dollars ? Fret not. Allmyapps.com have compiled a list of

freeware or free application that may come in useful and handy if you need them. They have also categorized them neatly, so you can easily find what you need based on the categories!

2. Are you interested in photography or graphic designs? Does photography inspire you? If your answers to those questions were yes, you should probably visit photographyserved, where fresh work from leading creative professionals are showcased.

3. Still feeling bored? Then you should probably try downloading one of these free MMORPG from here. Awesome gameplay and graphics, best of all, it's even free!

4. Have you always been fascinated and intrigue by some really wonderful advertisments and how they convey their messages across? If you had, then you'll probably be very interested in this site, whereby it showcases some of the really amazing ads that have been done. Click here or here or here.

5. Looking for inspirations or need something to spur you on in life? Sayingimages, the new in thing on the blogsphere, can or may make a difference in your life.

Free Topic: The Transition of Internet in my life? - Week 12

To me... internet is simply the remedy to ABSOLUTE BOREDOM.

I started using the internet when i was about 9 years old. I remembered that before internet invaded my life, i was pretty much into watching tv or spending time outdoors. But everything changed when i started getting hooked on the internet or perhaps the computer.

Back then, i was really into gaming. But at that time, to play DECENT or FUN games, you had to purchase them, at during that time, games were really expensive. So i remember buying them and playing them for a very long time even if i got sick of it. But den, internet was evolving at such a rapid speed that soon, many things were available on the internet(games, music), FOR FREE, but that is of course only if you know your ways round the internet.

At 11, i got hooked to chatting in chat rooms. The most popular chat program then was mIRC (Internet Relay Chat) or ICQ (Internet Chat Query). I wasn't much of an ICQ user, but i was an avid IRC user. I would log into it on a daily basis and stay hooked onto it for hours each day. At that time, there was no broadband bundle or unlimited access and whatsoever. If i didn't remember wrongly, my internet package only had 16 hours of free usage,

after exceeding that amount of time, you will have to start paying for your usage. And i would choke up to $200+ over worth of bills. At mIRC, it's not only about making friends, there were also channels there whereby you could download music. You could choose to be a leecher and just download from people or you could opt to be a server and let people download music from you(music sharing). When you qualify to be a full board server by clocking a certain amount of hours within one week, they will let you gain access to their music storage database. It was pretty much back in those days, and i continued to be hooked on mIRC until i was in secondary school.

When i was in secondary school, i was introduced to 2 phenomenal web; Neopets and Friendster.

Friendster came much later in teenage ye

ars. So neopets! It is a virtual pet website where users can own/adopt pets. Users can train their pets and level them up for battles, do trading of items, set up businesses, doll up their pets and even play simple flash games. At that time, this was pretty entertaining and addictive. It was also pretty phenomenon because everyone knew what neopet was. Users could also exchange/trade items with other users or send gifts to them. Perhaps this is already one of the

predecessor of social networking sites. After school everyday, people would rush to the free access computer lab in school to "chope" a computer so that they could play neopets.

And then... when i was in upper secondary, friendster took over the world, or my world,

by storm. Everybody grew obsessed with uploading pictures of themselves

, adding/finding friends, looking at other people's pictures and then most importantly,

writing testimonials for friends. Testimonials were also always

the longer the better, because it would

probably mean that the person is "very good". And the more testimonials you have, it means the more popular you are. But soon, the purpose was defeated because friends were just posting funny comments and such, not the exact kind of proper testimonia

ls. As Friendster's primary function was to upload pictures and write testimonials, the craze soon fazed out after 2 years, and that is when facebook took over the world.

And after all these, we now have facebook, twitter,

tumblr, blogging, live journal and etc. I have all of these right now, and i log into them daily too. This is the way to stay connected to your friends, to the world. Not only will you know what's happening to your friends, but through some of your friend's updates, you can also get to find out what's happening around the world. I would feel pretty lost these days without using them, it's like there's something missing.

It's undeniable that social networking site has made an immense impact in our lives and brought about great changes. I don't think i can survive more than a week without all these social networking stuff. I may be exaggerating, but truth is, i really do not want to go back to days without the existence of such great inventions.

Internet Journalism - Week 11

These days, journalism have caught the wild fire and have spread to the internet as well. One may not really know what internet journalism is, but if i mention a few names, you will bound to have some idea. So... i'm sure you've heard of "Razor TV", "Stomp" or perhaps "Xinmsn" from Singapore ?

As Wikipedia defines, Internet Journalism is "the reporting o

f facts produced a

nd distributed via the Internet". These facts or news could be from real profession reporters or they could also be from nosy netizens who have experienced and sighted some "interesting" happenings.

Razor TV's platform have professional reporters, but i feel that they tend to focus or pick on an event's absurdity or bizarre-ness, and not so much on it's importance, although they to make an effort to. In othe

r words, i feel that there's some kind of entertainment value in Razor TV's content. Take this video for example

The focus seemed to be more so on her ridiculous answer of how she has regretted not bringing her parents to Universal Studio. Not that these internet journalism doesn't report facts, i'm sure it does, but somehow, to me, it seemed that they are always another side to it which pulls you off the main track or focus.

Then we have sto

mp.

Stomp's news are kind of less political and heavy. As suggested by its slogan on the left, "you generate the content, you write the reports, you take the photos, you shoot the videos". Hence it is like more of a platform for netizens or budding reporter to report on societal issues or sightings, such as displ

aying public affections too openly in public or other p

oor behaviors in public. Usually

such reports are sent in by its readers who have sighted such events and when they post it on Stomp, it provides a platform for readers to generate discussions and be raises readers' awaresness of such happenings and phenomenon at the same time. So sometimes, readers should be prepared to read of see some biased or exaggerated comments in it, and should not expect all reportings to be 100% accurate or true. In fact, some of the reportings could even be hoax at times, so it would really be bette

r and wises if readers hold some reservations to what they have read.

Of course, there are other very credible internet journalism such as NYTimes.com and BBC.co.uk. However, both of such sources have already been around for very long and are also the state's newpapers for both New York and The United Kingdom. Their reportings are usually very serious and reflects worldwide or major issues. There are minimal tabloids in the reportings from these.

So after watching the video from razor tv on one of our latest PAP candidate Ms Tin Pei Lin, what is your impression of her? 2 days ago, i saw a friend of my on facebook posted this picture up:

Did u feel the same as him? I, on one hand, have my reservations on that. :)

Politicians taking the virtual world by storm - week 10

I am quite sure that internet has change politics in many ways. And i would believe that it will change the way politics is done in Singapore more than ever. In Singapore, before the internet and social media, opposition team had little ways to reach out and communicate with the citizens, thus making it hard to convey their ideas or policies across. If they are caught rallying or out publicizing openly for the party without a license or permit, they will be caught and dealt with.

As a result, many has condemned the current ruling party and saying that this is not fair play. Contesting parties are extremely upset and fought for the rights to be able to reach out to their supporters and also to gain better recognition. Today, our government has somewhat relented or loosen the law (or were there simply no laws governing this) and has allowed opposition political teams to "connect" with their supporters via the internet, meaning that they are allowed to set up their own website or use various forms of social media to create awareness of their existences.

With only one means of legal medium to reach out to the public, i do believe this will still need some time to take off, but i believe, with so many young people being connected to the internet these days, this will bound to make changes to our political system, sooner or later. Concerned youths who serve the internet on local politics will get to know them, what they represent and their policies. And with the internet's popularity on the rise, it won't be surprising that internet MAY very well be our main source of information in the future, especially for the future generation. Having said so, this is the place to start "propagandalis-ing" the youths of tomorrow, and with its reach growing broader (and soon over taking the television), I really believe that if anywhere, internet is definitely a good place for politician to reach out to their supporters and potential supporters. The power of internet must not be undermined.

Those who undermined it, may very likely not emerge as victor, like hw McCain of the US had totally neglected it.

Internet Security - Week 9

If you are a frequent web surfer or browser, internet security is definitely something that a user should neglect. Negligence on internet security can cause a user a lot of problems and if serious can even end up as police cases.When we talk about internet security, we are talking about firewalls, virus protections, internet scams such as phishing, spams and many many more.

Without the help of virus protection softwares such as Norton Anti-Virus, AVG anti-virus, users

are much more prone and susceptible to viruses. It was said that the are millions of viruses online, if we go online without the use of firewall and anti-virus softwares, we will be said to be playing with fire, exposing ourselves to the million of viruses out there and before we know it, we may be hit with one which can cause your computer to malfunction, depending on the severity of the virus.

However, viruses do not necessary have immediate impact on the computer, some can take a few days, or ever a few years to act up. Speaking of which, some viruses are also less prominent or visible than the other. Take phishing and spyware for instances, which works hand in hand. Phishing is defined as "a form of internet fraud that aims to steal valuable information such as credit cards, social security numbers, user IDs and passwords.." Malicious websites that you stumble upon will secretly 'plant' and spyware into your computer, so when you enter personal information into forms, these spywares will be able to obtain this information. When fallen onto the hands of evil, these personal and private information can be used against um such as credit card theft and etc. Hence, when we install firewalls, anti-viruses softwares, we will be better protected against such harms like these. However these softwares are also not 100% foolproof.

The advice to safe online practices when disclosing personal information is for you to clear your cache and delete browsing history. Also, we should keep our virus softwares up to date and do a full system scan at least once ever fortnight . It would be good to install a software such as Ad-Aware because this is a software which helps you to clear all those spywares planted in your computer.

Multimedia - Week 8

For a person like me, it'll be hard for me to live in a world without multimedia. Multimedia, as the name suggest, is a broad and wide aspects of various media, such as videos, music, animaltion, graphic and etc.

I graduated from Singapore Poly with a diploma in multimedia, therefore one can understand why i said it'd be hard for me to live in a world without multimedia. Multimedia is my passion, and we live in a world that relies on multimedia these days. Everyday, we will have some form of experience with multimedia, such as watching or streaming a video clip or a trailer online, listening to music, creating animation and so on. Back in my poly days, my world really did revolve around multimedia, i am always editing or designing animations, videos and graphics. Although i wouldn't say i am a professional, i dare say that i am pretty competent with softwares such as final cut pro on mac for video editing, audacity and pro tools on windows for music editing, adobe master suite (flash, photoshop, dreamweaver, image ready, illustrator and premiere pro).

Being competent in these softwares have brought about much advantages and conveniences. I am able to create entertainment for myself or others, and i am able to digitally beautify or enhance many things. Attached in these posts are 2 videos and 1 image of how i am able to beautify things. Knowing how to use these multimedia tools or softwares have also in a way equipped me with a skill which has enabled me to feed myself or earn some extra cash. I do some freelancing for people to design collaterals for their events or even design and edit the webpages and video. Best of all, freelancing can pay pretty well too, so one can really consider picking up such skills. However, i feel that this could only be temporary because these days, people are becoming really tech savvy, meaning that many people can edit and enhance things themselves and no longer require engaging a professional to help them do

things like these. So maybe the moral of the story could be that, pick up the multimedia skills while there is still market for it, because when everyone becomes tech-savvy and can do the job themselves, you may already have earned enough to conquer some other markets!

Some of my works below:

Video done for Com 101 in UB, May 2009. Using Adobe Premiere Pro.

Animation Video done for Year Two Modelling and Animation Project in Singapore Poly, using Autodesk 3d Max and Adobe Premiere Pro.

Digital Imaging + Enhancing for freelance job using Photoshop.