Blogjects

Toys can talk! 

I remember when I was still a kid, I always imagined my pencil case can talks, my toys can talks and even toilet bowl can talks too! These were some little imagination when I was still a kid. But these are not something impossible anymore. Now things can blog too! 

Blogging is not something new in digital world. People now blog about their life, foods, politics and more stuff that can related to people. Now, objects can blogs too. Not opening an account to blog in computer, but communicating to human and response back to human. "The most peculiar characteristic of Blogjects is

that they participate in the exchange of ideas." Blogjects join Internet users to discuss and response back to users to do the interaction. This will be really fun because users can interacting with Blogjects when they are surfing on the Internet. Instead of getting answer from searching one by one, interacting way of asking question is better. 

"A Blogject can start a conversation with something as simple as an aggregation of levels of pollutants in groundwater." Simple conversation can always lead to in-depth questions. Blogjects have the ability to start the conversation to let Internet users to start discussing and they will response back to the users. People usually think Internet is one-way communication but blogjects are two-way communication and they interact with users actively and lively. This can actually creates some interest on some boring topic and create awareness at the same time. For example, blogject has started a topic which is about air polution in the world. With this intereaction from blogject, the topic can become a debate kind of style of discussion which can generate Internet users' interest towards air polution and create awareness on this issue at the same time.

There are three peculiarities of Blogjects:

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

In my opinion, I think Blogjects need to know where they were or where they are so they communicate and give the right response at the right place and right topic. This is their awesome ability to keep themselves well-organized without messing themselves in where they are, where they were. 

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

From what I understand from this sentence, Blogjects have the ability of remembering what they have experience in previous discussion or what kind of users they have met before. With this, Blogjects able to improve their knowledge about certain new issue or they able to understand different people with different idea easily. 

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

From what I understand from this sentence, blogjects have some agencies that can bring up the topics to boost up the confident of Internet users in participating for the discussion or debates in social web. With this, it can increase the interactions of blogjects and Internet users. 

With these characteristic, blogjects will become a 'digital friend' of human. In the future, they will be the best helper or friend in human life. For example, they can become friends with a student who study in overseas alone; help out a mother to tell bed time story to the children. I personally think blogjects is really interesting because they are interactive and fun at the same time. But is it a good thing or a bad thing? I think it is quite scary when a computer invading a person's privacy or talk to you suddenly. 

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

Digital wars among Apple and Android

I believe hard work have to be pay before success in anything. "A simple yes and Rubin would have walked away happy." Through this sentence, I can deeply feel how much hard work has Rubin paid off for creating Android and the happiness of someone accepting his idea. However, no one is perfect. Rubin is smart in technology, he created Android. But, he never expected that Page from Google has better business strategy. To be clear, thanks to Rubin for letting us surf the Internet; thanks to Page for spreading Android and improving Android. 

Apple and Android are competitor since year 2005. Everyone expected Google to come out with an Android Phone after Steve Jobs come out with an iPhone. This is competitor world, I have what you have and you have what I have. However, Google does not come out with a gPhone but Google gather thirty-four companies to build a wireless interface instead. Is this a strategy of Google? I don't know. But I think they have successfully created a mystery side of Android. 

So, how do you think about Android and IOS? I am an iPhone user. I personally think iPhone is nice in playing games because it has awesome sensitive touch screen. And it is nice in capturing pictures and videos with it high res camera. However, iPhone are restricting their users in some features. They restricted iPhone users to share musics, videos and apps with other phones by creating own format of music, video and apps. They have a bluetooth function, but it does not provides the function of bluetooth-ing the files to other phones like HTC, Nokia, Blackberry and more. Somehow, iPhone is like creating a own little world to gather all the iPhone users without letting them out from the area and not letting other smart phone and hardware to invade into their world. They want to be special. Apple are good, but they are somehow a bit too selfish on sharing. 

I personally do not like Android phone much. The functions are quite similar with iPhone but iPhone has better touch screen and camera functions. A good thing about Android is, they understand the phrase of "sharing is caring". Android has common file format of music and videos; they provides bluetooth function for people to share their stuffs. This can actually shows how Google come out with a strategy. With this, it has actually attracted some iPhone users to use Android phones. "In Google's regular line of business, the strategy has always been to unveil innovative, occasionally flawed products - like Google Docs - then keep them in beta for months or years." Google has the idea, but they did not use the idea effectively. I personally think this is the reason of why Apple has the bigger market than Android. 

Competition is reason of most of the improvements. With the competition between Apple and Google, users can expect more advance products. In my point of view, people should thanks to both of the creator of smart phones. Without both of the companies, there will no smart phones which provides really convenient functions. Without competitions between Apple and Google, there will be no improvement in the products. Both of their products have their own specialties to attract their own customers or fans. As a consumer, support the products that you are interested in but not blindly follow the trend or market of the products. Be a wise consumer! 

Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go

Which one do you like? 

There are many choices of social networking site in Internet World. People now will not choose and create account on the social networking site they like but create account in several social networking sites. Why? I think is because of trend. Everyone now use social networking site to interact, share information, spread rumors and more. Social networking site is also a place which gather people around the world which cause big impact when there are rumors or bad news spreading in the sites. 

“In my book, I argue that there digital tools are simply, well, tools, and social change continues to involve many painstaking, longer-term efforts to engage with political institutions and reform movements." According to this statement, writer believes that digital tools have the power of involving people in political issues through social network sites. People now discuss anything in social networking site, they use social networking site as a tool to influence people. Let's take cyber-utopians as an example. As what have mentioned in the article, cyber-utopians summon up social revolution. Utopians used social networking site to influence the Utopians to start social revolution. Why they got a chance to do so? The reason is simple, because social network site gathered large amount of people. 

With social networking site's features, cyber-utopians can upload pictures, videos and words to influence and convince people and people will tend to believe everything on social networking site but not real-world. In my opinion, people will listen and obey what cyber-utopians posted up online is because almost all of the people involved themselves in Internet and they have take it as one part of their life. When someone exposed too much on something or it is something they are similar with, they will tend to involve and join the revolution. There is one case from a secondary school in Klang Valley, let's call them School A. School A's student are unsatisfied with their new canteen's food and price, they created a group in Facebook to protest and invited almost all of the students from School A included ex-schoolmates. This has become a biggest issue among all the students and parents and of course the creator of this group has become "The Father of Canteen". This is not a big issue until the creator created this group to protest. Everyone is concerning about this issue even students from other school. This shows that social networking site is influential and also shows social networking sites can lead to protest activity and cause revolution. 

"The recent history of technology strongly suggests that today's vogue for Facebook and Twitter will fade as online audiences migrate to new services." I strongly agree with this statement. People use to use Facebook to interact with friends by posting wall post, sharing what is their dinner tonight or sending vegetables to friends through Farm Ville in Facebook. But soon, it will brings online users to a new service. What kind of service? Protesting maybe? Influencing people to join their revolution maybe? Who knows if social networking sites will become a exhortation tool instead of communication tool? 

Facebook and Twitter have give online users a best place for people to communicate and it has attracted a large amount of audiences to join this big social world. By taking this as advantage, people can call up people to join their revolution or protest activity easily. And the best thing, people in social sites are easier to influence compare to people in reality. Not to say people are easier to get influence, but people hardly differentiate the right or wrong things in social sites. 

WikiLeaks - Julian Assange

Picture tells the story. 

No one likes to be lied. People have a rights to know the truth of anything, including news in the world. Julian Assange has provided a good platform for people to find out the truth of the news - WikiLeaks. According to the article of Khatchadourian, Julian Asssange has contributed a lot in building up WikiLeaks. With his bravery and journalist's spirit, getting truth of news are not something impossible anymore. 

In Raffi Khatchadourian's article, it has mentioned "WikiLeaks exists wherever he does". It is fair enough to say that because Assange is the creator of WikiLeaks and he is the journalist who found out the truth of the readers. He travels from country to country just to investigate and reveal the truth of a news. He will keep the information updated no matter where he is. As what I have mentioned, no one likes to be lied. This is why there are many volunteers are helping Assange to maintain the website. With the help of these volunteers, Assange can only travel over the world for getting more international truth to the readers. 

However, revealing the truth of the news of government is something might against the lawsuit and the contents might be force to remove. "He told me that WikiLeaks maintains its content on more than twenty servers around the world and on hundreds of domain names", said Khatchadourian. This is the reason why Assange does not worry the contents will be remove. They are smart. Smart in a way of protecting their precious contents. With different servers and domain names, they will hardly found where is the contents' location, who posted it up and where is it from. In this way, they can protect the contents from being removed and also protecting themselves at the same time. This is a smart way I can say. 

In my opinion, citizens will like WikiLeaks but not the government of the country. Citizens like it because they can know the real story behind a news and they can know the truth of a news without finding themselves but only surf on WikiLeaks. With WikiLeaks, citizens do not need to search for the truth of the news themselves and they can fight for their rights on knowing the truth of news easily with the proofs of WikiLeaks. However, from government's point of view, WikiLeaks might not be a good thing. When there are some misleading information spread out to the citizens and citizens believe the information, government will hard to rule the country and also getting trust from the citizens. 

As what I have mentioned earlier, no one likes to be cheated but no one likes to let others reveal their secret. Wikileaks revealing secrets and provides the information on the web, it is something unethical but they are trying to telling the truth of a news to the readers. I can't judge which side is right or wrong, but I'm sure they are working hard their own parts. I'm impressed by Assange, with his bravery and courage on revealing top secret. He has become a great role model of journalists. 

How Twitter will change the way we live

We live like this?

I used to tell my friends the story about how I spent my weekends in secondary school. Good old days with exchanging stories with good friends. However, sharing is not something physical anymore, it has become something virtual. Everyone now interact and share their feelings with people through Internet. Twitter, the little blue bird has bring people into the world of sharing our own life by 140 words.

Instead of keeping our daily routine as own privacy, people now share their daily life to the public. Not only things that important but also things that do not impact much to the public. For example, 'I ate an apple this morning!' Is this something important for people to know? I don't think so. However, someone might reply 'An apple a day, keep the doctor away!' or 'Ohhhh! I ate orange this morning!' This kind of information is more on our life than serious information like world news. Those information are not information that is a must to know but people will like and want to know about these information to be in the norm of the society.

Of course, there are a bunch of people have used Twitter as a media to do informing. Twitter is a convenient media for informing the whole world about what is happening in the world. For instance, there's a car crash in somewhere and it causes massive jam. If someone have posted this in Twitter and people will aware about this. People can avoid the massive jam and know about new news at the same time. For your information, there is a China version of Twitter called WeiBo (www.weibo.com). There is one case in China, train crashed and a lot of them has stucked in the train. People that have stucked in the train has asked for help through twitter-look-a-like: WeiBo to save children and old folks in the train. People retweet it and people have helped out to called the police and firemen.

"Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask." This statement from Steven Johnson have proven through with the China train crashed case. People can know what happen and can take action immediately without asking where, who and what. Besides, as I have mentioned earlier, people now will update their personal things on Twitter. With Twitter, we can know what is people around us doing without asking them but only "Follow" and "Refresh" the page. Twitter has changed the way people getting information and also the way people interact. Compare to old days, people used to interact face-to-face in order to know their recent activities, but now, people interact through Twitter and only by words without speak out verbally.

 Twitter is a trend. It brings people together. People discuss the information in the Twitter together, it has become the open conversation. Those information in Twitter not only let people interact in Internet, but also face-to-face conversation. Information in Twitter might be the common topic of discussing face-to-face in the future as people now are starting to have in-depth discussion on the topic in Twitter. In the future, a topic of a conversation will not from us but from Twitter.

In the coming years, those major channel of information will be influenced by Twitter. Why? Here are some points.

News and opinion
There are different news are available in Twitter. People can post up the link or pictures of an event or a news and people who followed them will retweeting and spread the news to others. In the future, Twitter might be the Internet site that provide updated news in a short period of time. With sharing and retweeting, people can gain different opinion and think more critically through the comments.

Searching
People can search topic easily with search bar, friends' status or with Twitter's feature "hashtag". With hashtag, people can search topic they want by keywords and they can even create their own keywords by hashtag as well.

Advertising
Online advertising is everywhere! There are some organization like Airasia is on Twitter as well. They promote their newest promotion and announce newest flights to the audiences. Through Twitter, advertising can be done easily because Twitter spread very fast and the advertising message will be straight forward as there are word limit. It will be very effective in targeting people because people disclose their daily life in Twitter and advertisers can understand audiences easily by reading their Tweets. This shows that Twitter does not only change people life but also changing the way organization attract people.

When I was young, my parents told me I should not use the Internet unless I need it for educational purpose. try to compare old days and now, people used Internet to get information for working purpose, searching scholar documents and more. Now, people mostly used it for socializing purpose. We play online games, adding strangers in social networking site, telling public what we have done this morning and more. People now does not concern what is the newest Journal article from this researcher but worrying which picture they should use to put in on Twitter so they can get more followers.

In my opinion, Twitter has changed people's perception towards own privacy. People now reveal their own private life on Twitter and ask for comments. They post up the pictures of their foods, pictures of new dresses, or even updating status saying that 'Who is tired please retweet!!'  These are something not necessary but almost everyone is doing it, it has become a trend. To adapt audiences' life, organizations have to change the way they advertise to attract new audiences.

The Long Tail

Do not have extra space to store anything more in your room? 

The increasing of entertaining and information sources have create a problem to shopkeepers of record stores and bookstores. It has creates a problem of lacking of large space for so large amount of sources. And this is why, long tail has played an important role. 

Long tail has provides shopkeepers a great place to store their large amounts of sources. It has also increase the demand and interest of audiences on buying a book or CD label. As what Anderson has mentioned in the article, online bookseller - Amazon.com has "created the Touching the Void phenomenon by combining infinite shelf space with real-time information about buying trends and public opinion." Online bookseller has brings a buying trends for a not-so-good selling books and many people has aware of this book. Through the public opinion that have commented in online bookseller sites, it has attracted people to buy the books after reading good public opinions in the sites. 

Through online bookseller, people can easily aware of obscure books. There are unlimited selection in the sites and people just have to order, pay and save the book as a file in computer. Compare to bookstores, people have to walk to the shop and buy the books. However, they might not found the books they want as bookstores has limited space to store the books. In online bookstore sites, there are many different selection of books for audiences to choose and even old books from Journalists from many years back or non-famous book. Online bookstore sites's admin does not need to worry about the space of storing such much amount of e-books as long tail has gave audiences a big place to search for their books. 

Long tail has provided a big space for people to expand their business. Through long tail, business people can selling their sources without paying any production fee, distribution fee and more. In a shop, they need to sell their sources like CD or books to gain a certain amount of money to get back the profit. This can really bring a big advantage to the sources distributor and audiences as well. Audiences can found unlimited interesting sources and sources distributor can earn profit without paying other extra fees. 

It is true that long tail bring a lot of advantages to the society. But there are also some rules that applied into this new economy. 

1. Make everything available

Will you feel depressed when you can't find the music CD you want in Label stores? I am sure this will not happen when everything goes online. Let's use iTunes has example. iTunes provides many different music from the world. From jazz music, pop music, kpop music and more. It covers big coverage of music. Besides music from singers, they also provided covered music from Youtubers. This is a big attractions as many audiences like cover version of music than original one. Youtubers will usually provides a link and said "you can purchase this covered music in iTunes". This is the rule. Make everything available, no matter what kind of music, books or any sources audiences need, it must in online since there is a big space for them to post it up.

2. Cut the price in half. Now lower it. 

People like cheap stuff, especially when people see the word DISCOUNT. Same to online stores. In my opinion, low prices product will always gain more attention because audiences might think there is a risk in online buying. Giving discount is a good way of increasing sales and create awareness on that source at the same time. Customers are the king, we give what they like and provides things that satisfy them. They like discounts and cheap stuffs, so we give them discounts! :)

3. Help me find it.

Through long tail, a lot of sources have transfer from shops to online shops. This is a important rule for online shoppers to sell their sources. If audiences can't find the sources they want, they will not able to buy the sources and online shoppers will lose a business. Search engine can be provided in the site itself so people can search in the website. To help audiences find the sources successfully, name of the sources have to be keywords for example, name of the author, name of the singer, keywords in lyrics and more. Help audiences up, they'll thank you by paying you money. :)

Is long tail good or bad? Long tail has lead people to download sources illegally. People uploaded different sources online and let audiences to download illegally. In China, there are many different websites like www.sogou.com.my, www.baidu.com.my for people to download musics without any charges. This is the disadvantage. Long tail has provided a big space and people use it for unethical activities. 

Sources and data are all digitalized now. People now can access and purchase sources from another country by online without flying over there. Digital sites like ebay, iTunes, Amazon.com and more play an important role and thanks to long tail, these sites are growing rapidly and it provides sources from different area and people which boost up the audiences' demand on entertainments. In future world, people might fully depends on online shops for searching old or new sources and CD shops or bookstores might disappear soon. I feel sorry for traditional books lover and also CD collector. :( 

Media Convergence

Media Convergence! 

Compare to our good old days, we used phone to call, use gameboy to plays games, use TV to watch drama, use radio to listens songs and more. We need many different gadgets to do many things. We can't multitask by only using one gadget. The changes of our society has boost up our demand on entertainment and getting information. This is why media convergence happened.


Media convergence is more than simply a technological shift.
(Henry Jenkins)


From what I have understand from this statement, it is basically means media convergence is the changes of old media to new media. New era has brought a big changes to the media. Media started to co-operate with each other to create a new media to provides people more functions. Let's take mobile phone as an example. We used mobile phones to make calls and sending short messages, but now, people used mobile phone to check on social networking sites, play games, sending e-mails, taking pictures with adding different effects and so on. This is what we call media convergence.


Media convergence has brought a big impact to the society. Why do I say so? Firstly, I think media convergence helps people a lot in their career. People now can access to Internet through mobile phone or Ipad to reply e-mails from clients or bosses. They do not need to go back to their office for just finding a important file, but only by checking through their database in their laptop or even their e-mails. Compare to old generation, people can only check information of company by checking files or hand-written form of documents which store in their office. Now, people can check it any time, any place. Media convergence brings big convenience to employers and employees.


Secondly, I personally think Media convergence has give entertainment to lifeless people. Before I explained why, please let me define lifeless people. I think lifeless people is like students, employers or employees, housewives and more. Their life is full of works and they have less entertainments compare to others do. With Media convergence, they can multitasks. For example like housewives, they can play with their smart phones while waiting calls from children; students can go on social networking sites (SNS) to socialize with friends and play games in SNS while researching on assignments. Thanks to media convergence, people now can multitasks with just using one media which is something convenient and it saved the buying cost of a few technology gadgets for different purpose.


'Convergence is also a risk for creative industries because it requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media', said Henry Jenkins. Old consumers always prefer to use traditional media on getting information or other uses. The traditional media including newspaper, TV, radio, which do not provide several functions in one media. It has became a habit for old consumers to look for information by different media. However, new consumers are more prefer to do things conveniently. New consumers now use only one media to access anything. For example, people now can use iPhone to call, sending short messages, checking emails, playing games and more. This is what I mean convenient. People can multitask by using only one media. 


"This next generation audience research focuses attention on what consumers do with media content, seeing each subsequent interaction as valuable because it reinforces their relationship to the series and, potentially, its sponsors." (Henry Jenkins) In the future, consumers might have different views towards media. Audiences research on how consumers use media in the future. Then producers can only predict and understand what kind of media they should use to fit in with future audiences' behavior of using media to get media contents. Producer now may hardly predict consumers' thinking or the behavior of using media because consumers now are more concern about the feel of using media but not the usage or function of the media. To send information to new consumers, producers have to be really understand to the consumers so they can choose which media to convey the message to the consumers. 


In a nutshell, media convergence has changed people's life. It has brings convenience to the society and new consumers are more prefer media convergence than traditional media. However, there are still some old consumers are still prefer and support old media. To target old and new media, producers need to do a lot of research on audiences and research on what are the best media to target them.