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.