Blogjects!

What is blogject?

Does it sounds familiar? Blogject is actually a combination of two words which is blog and object. Blog is where people can write their electronic diaries, comments and share thoughts. As for blogject, same concepts apply but one thing different is that instead of human blogging, it is the "object" that is blogging.

This term is created by Julian Beecker earlier in his discussion.

Blogjects in the near-future will participate in the whole meaning- making apparatus that is now the social web, and that is be Julian Bleecker comming the "Internet of Things". The most peculiar characteristic of Blogjects is that they participate in the exchange of ideas. Blogjects don't just publish, they circulate conversation

Like what it meant in the paragraph above, instead of playing the passive role, blogjects are the active one. It is so much like a human but the only different is that they are non-living things. For example, the Pigeon that Blogs. It is a project by Beatriz da Costa in order to study the quality of air in certain areas. The Pigeon that Blogs is made up of a flock of pigoens that equipped with a sensor to allow them to communicate with the Internet wirelessly. Besides, they also have a GPS (Global Positioning System) on them which enable the researchers to track the exact location of them. More importantly, an environmental sensor so as they fly, it'll record the toxin and the pollutants in the air.

There are three characteristic of the blogject which is

- it can be track or trace the places they went and the exact location of them now.

- it have self-contained of all the things/events they went through and embedded within themselves.

- it is assertively passive where they act and participate in conversations.

One of the example found online is this,

Isn't this cool? You're literally communicating with your home. It might not be something we'll get instantly but I'm sure with the advanced technology, it will definitely come true.

So is blogject benefiting us? I would not say yes nor no to this question because there are still flaws in it. Like, what if false communication occurred? Everyone's interpretation to everything is different. How to ensure communication breakdown won't happen? Just like my previous post, now that human can communicate not only with the smartphone/Google but also the house, the car, the computer and et cetera, will be world still remain the same as how it used to be?

Think yourself! =)

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

A wise choice back then bring us benefit today.

When Rubin wants just an imprimatur of Google, Page came out with a better idea : Buy Android.

In fact, today, Google is one of the biggest search engine. I won't be surprised if they claimed that they got the highest visitor rates everyday. Their wide coverage of websites helped the netizens so much on finding the websites. What's even better is that because Google helps in so many things, now that whenever there is a problem, first thing we think of is..."GOOGLE it!"

So, now that they know the world is so advanced and most of the people have a smartphone on hand, Page figured out what is his next step.

The company's theory was that if you make browsing by phone easy and fun, people will use it just like a desktop browser, with Google search as the main port of entry. Christmas Day 2007 offered Google proof that the strategy could work.

Now, you can do anything on an Android phone. Google Map (Commandro) , Recipes of cooking (Cooking Capsules), Music player (Tunewiki), Android scan and et cetera. Isn't it useful? The phone has almost the same function as the computer right now, best of all, it is portable!

In the whole article, Roth focuses on the process of how Android and Google collaborates and it benefits the world. And personally, I think they did something really great. From a big heavy computer that needs to take a minute to boot so that you can surf the net, to just a slide/tap to the internet. It is just making everything works better in shorter time. It even have map navigator, weather forecast, music player and more!

Yet, there are still downsides to this change in my opinion. It's true that the technology makes our life easier but when changing enhancing the pace of life, don't you think it change something else too? What is, you asked. Attitude it is. Now that everyone is just a tap away from the Internet, instead of looking at a friend's eyes and chat with them, they'll choose to face the phone.

Whenever there are no topic left among friends, they'll face the phone and check updates of Facebook. Got lost in the middle of a city? Use Map Navigator. Wants to cook? Check on cooking capsules. People don't even bother to ask anyone about things anymore. Instead, they'll just depend on the gadget. Where the communication between human went?

But at the end of the day, that's not what Google or Android concerned. At a developer's eyes, bring Google and Android together is a success. Like what's mentioned in Ruth's article,

"If the only thing android achieves is getting more people to spend more time online, then Google still profits. More users mean more people viewing pages with Google ads. 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."

So, do you know who is the biggest winner now? Wise decision, brought him the best profit. Google's creator, Larry Page, is the biggest winner in the game!

Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go

Today's topic: Cyber-utopians who believe the Arab spring has been driven by social networks ignore the real-world activism underpinning them

True much? I'll let you decide yourself.

Ever since the Friendster, Facebook, MySpace et cetera are on business, it somehow made is as if it's a must for everyone to have at least "an account". (There are people with more than an account, I don't know how that works but somehow it just turned out this way). But, that is not the problem. What we concern here is the adherence thought of the cyber-utopians. They pointed out that these digital tools are now the platform to summon up a revolution. Do you think the same?

To a certain extent, I do agree that it is the platform to summon a revolution. Take Facebook as the example. Majority of the citizen has a Facebook account, and if there were a revolution to be raised, Facebook is definitively targeted by the activist. Reason is simple. We, are not fully practicing freedom of speech. Most of our printed media (Newspaper) and TV channels are govern by the authorities. Do you think there is even a slight chance the activist can "advertise" on the newspaper/TV channels?

For example, if the revolution has something to do with The Star, and the activist were to "advertise" on the Star to gather the members, what will happened? I think The Star won't be that dumb to even post it on the newspaper to help the activist to recruit member so that they can raise a revolution don't they? Isn't it ironic if the hot issue of the day on The Star mainpaper be "Member recruiting for The Star's revolution!!"?

So, it's clear enough that the only way to reach the other members are social networking sites. However, that doesn't mean anything. Like what Morozov mentioned in his article,

" This is not to suggest that neither of these communications devices played a role in these decades-old uprisings - but it is to note that the people directly involved may not have the most dispassionate appraisals of how these watershed events occurred."

You posted something online, doesn't mean people sees it.

People sees it doesn't mean they are interested in it.

People interested in it doesn't mean they will take any actions.

Besides, internet is the only platform with freedom of speech. Anyone and post anything on it. Take it serious or not, it's all depends on the reader. If someone said something like "Oh my god, so-and-so race is just so stuck up" and the next day, a protest raised, does it means that the person who said that line should take the blame?

We practice freedom of speech on social networking sites. Just like the name it self, it is a social site. Not some sites that contains all kinds of provocations. Hence, it is not wise for the cyber-utopian to put the blame on social media for all the summoned revolution. Even though it might have influences to it just because everyone is on the site, it doesn't mean that this is the media that driven the Arab Spring like what it is mentioned earlier in this post.

WikiLeaks

The topic of the week is about Wikileaks!

As what sir thought us earlier in class, WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organization that posts all kinds of contents that are supposed to be classified or secret.

This organization was initiated by a man named Julian Paul Assange. According to Khatchadourian, "since it went online, three and a half years ago, the site has published an extensive catalogue of secret material, ranging from the Standard Operating Procedures at Camp Delta, in Guantanamo Bay, and the "Climategate" e-mails from the University of Easy Anglia, in England, to the contents of Sarah Palin's private Yahoo account." (2010)

In the article written by Raffi Khatchadourian, one of the videos that was posted up on WikiLeaks is the video taken regarding the attack of the American soldiers in Iraq back in year 2007. In the progress of gettign the video up on the Internet, Assange went through a tough period.

When Assange got the video footage, a number of people who share the same thoughts with Assange volunteered to help out to edit the video to a short clip in total secrecy. Besides that, Assange also intends to ensure that when the videos is up on Internet, there will be no way to take down the video unless they were to dismantle the entire Internet.

Here is the short clip regarding the matter. From there, you can see that the American soldiers are brutally killing the people in Iraq even the innocents.

(click to go to the original site)

When I was reading the article, I thought that Assange might get caught by the government for posting such content on the web yet, somehow Assange manage to get away from it. It is because WikiLeak has more than twenty servers all over the world and have up to hundreds of domain names in the world wide web. It make the government close to impossible to track him down.

"Lawyers working for the British bank Northern Rock threatened court action after the site published an embarrassing memo, but they were practically reduced to begging. A Kenyan politician also vowed to sue after Assange published a confidential report alleging that President Daniel arap Moi and his allies had siphoned billions of dollars out of the country. The site’s work in Kenya earned it an award from Amnesty International."

Even until now, WikiLeak is available and without you noticing, they might be in an operation of coming out with another leak again. In my opinion, WikiLeak is not exactly a bad organization. This website actually helped us a lot in knowing the truth of some organization, with the excellent skills of them, Assange even able to get away from all kinds of lawsuit. It is indeed total transparency to everything. Nothing will be cover or hide from in this area.

Some of the people might think that WikiLeaks is not a good organization for the fact that it is invading other's privacy but in fact, this organization just helped us to know and understand more about the stories behind the pretty lies.

Again, this is about the ugly truth.

On a side note, if you're wondering how Assange got all the money as his expenses, it's all donation. Knowing that this organization reveals the stories behind the scenes, there are people more than happy to donate money so that his operation/project can go on. Cool isn't it? This is the power of collaboration! From here, we can see that there are things that even the government can't govern. The WikiLeaks!

Check out more leaks from the website itself!! (http://wikileaks.org/)

How Twitter change our life?

This week's topic is one of the common medium we're using now! Twitter!!

Like what it was mentioned in the article, Twitter changed the way we live. Now, everyone will use Twitter to update status like "reach home now" "eating now" "this place feels so nice!" etc etc to let people know what are they doing. But do you think that back then, people will figure out how to send a message to everyone of his friend just to tell them what he is eating right now?

In my opinion, now that majority is in Twitter, they tend to update things that are supposed to be private. For instance, what is he/she is doing, where is he/she now, what happened to her/him recently. But in fact, these are the things that are suppose to be private. And, like what's it is mentioned in the article, because of these updates that are posted up on Twitter,

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 you even having to ask

Which also will eventually lead to lack of communication among friends.

Look, when one get to know everything about you on Twitter, do you think she/he still bother to ask you again? A friend that haven't meet for ages, the conversation might turn out like

:Hey! Long time no see! How are you?

to

:Hey! So how was your trip to Melacca yesterday?

It disclose too many things about a person to the whole world. Yet, everyone is enjoying it. Even thou it's just a tiny matter like what you ate this morning as breakfast and ended up be an interesting topic right now.

I like how Johnson gave an example on the article. A progress of how an in-room-tweet-conversation turned to involve outsiders. As long as the content is posted up on Tweeter to the public, everything is visible to everyone.

Besides, I'm pretty sure because of this, more and more abbreviations are created. Identify if you know any of this!

LOL

ROFL

LMAO

IMO

MTE

IYF

FYI

WTH

FTW

IKR

TTYL

AFK

so how many you know out of so many abbreviation?

In addition, I agree very much with what Johnson said about Tweeter is like an added second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchange. Because of all these social networking sites to update the status, nowadays, people won't know what is supposed to be private and what is not.

Like what I mentioned in the earlier post about a mother tweeting about the death of her kid just 30 minutes after he passed away. People don't know what is and not supposed to post it up. In addition to that, with the limited characters to insert, it might even distort the meaning of the real statement.

From what I see, if I were to compare if Twitter is changing our live to a better or worse life, I would say it turned worse. Lack of privacy, lack of face to face communication etc.

Johnson mentioned a few points that Twitter helps in this century as well.

News and Opinion : Indeed, now, Twitter can even be a platform to the hottest news in town. Whenever there are news, everyone will just post it up on Twitter. What's next? People will start to share and the message will go viral. Taking the speed of re-sharing into account, I guess even online news won't be able to catch up.

Searching : Just almost the same concept with weblog. Whenever you want to have some recommendation, you can look around from the friend's update or even to tweet a question and get feedback from friends. For example: What to eat tonight? Most probably you'll start getting all kinds of suggestions of food to eat.

Advertising : It serves just like the Facebook fan page. There more successful business it is, the more followers there will be. What they do with it then? An interaction platform! Whenever they launch a product, they tweet and the followers will get it from their tweet feeds. Besides, the consumers will not have to go through all the hassle to make a complain as well if they want to. Instead, they can tweet and tag the company so that they knows it straight away. I remember reading a blogger tagging a cinema's twitter complaining about the bad service she received from the ticket seller. After she tagged the company, the company got it straight away and waited for the blogger to finish her movie and compensate her with two free ticket to another movie. Don't you think with this way it is way faster compare to calling or emailing?

But there is also downsides to this hot + famous platform. People used to go to their e-mail, RSVP or letter constantly to see if there are any updates that are important for them to follow up. Yet for now, people constantly checking on people's update and people's life. They don't concern of their live as how they used to do anymore. The best example is people nowadays follow their idols. For example, the hardcore fans will constantly refresh their idol's page to see if they update. And apparently, the more famous a celebrity are, the more tweets they'll have. It is like constantly letting people know what are you doing so that they'll think that they're close to the celebrity. More to the point, the fans can reply to the said tweet which will make them feel even closer to the celebrity.

Today, Twitter is like one of the famous platforms for the netizen to interact with each other. However, Johnson stated that

The weather reports keep annoucning that the sky is falling, but here we are - millions of us - sitting around trying to invent new ways to talk to one another.

Do you think the people are all going to the wrong direction? What is the main thing that we should concern? How to communication with friends? or how to stop the Earth to turn worse?

Weblog

What is your first step if you were to research on hotels? Weblogs.

Where will you surf if you're trying to get yourself a nice and comfy place to have a nice dinner/lunch? Weblogs.

In fact, actually you can find weblog covering a huge range of things now. From travel, food review, movie review, song review to even the little things they bought. So, why are they so passionate in sharing the reviews/thoughts out? One of the reasons is to get more visitors to their blog and earn money through that. You see, there are plenty of advertising community sites now to be put up on the blog. For example, Nuffnang, Adverlets, Google ads etc.

But do you think that it eventually made the writing field/book publishing harder to get more business? Like what it's mentioned in this article,

This assumption has it backwards, because mass professionalization is an oxymoron; a professional class implies a minority of members. The principal effect of weblogs is instead mass amateurization.

No matter how weblog is so common in this world right now, they are still nothing compare to the books that are published. In fact, there is a clear line of difference between these two parties. Books, obviously it is more details, professional and filtered which is and is not suitable to be published. Example, a travel guidebook. When a travel guidebook is published, the content in the book are all been filtered. They know what they should and what they should not include in the content. Besides, it'll also explain in a more formal way. As for weblog, instead of going like

"The Great Wall of China has a total length of 6,259.6 km"

it'll turned out like

"Gosh, the Great Wall of China is soooo long!"

It's more informal and things being discussed in it is normally briefer compare to the book. This is because the bloggers are just typing out whatever they thought of. They don't have a specific audience. Unlike the books, they know that when a person ever buys that book, there is a high chance that he/she needs it as a reference to go to a certain place. The author have the responsibility to give whatever information to the reader about the place so as to make the reader to have a clear mind on the certain location.

This is also why books are mostly more formal compare to weblog. Not many people can stand writings in books like "wow, this is really nice so you really have to taste this! It's so awesome!"

From the example given, it is obvious enough to show that this is why the mass amatuerization is getting so common. Like it's stated in the article itself,

As long as ink on paper enjoys advantages over the screen, and as long as the economics make it possible to get readers to pay, the webloggers will be a de facto farm team for the publishers of books and magazines.

No matter how it be, weblog is just a diffusion of cocktail party. It's serve more like a place to sharing thoughts among the circle of friends than a medium to pass to the public. Besides, with the information given/provided in the weblog itself is not enough for the readers to understand a matter. It's unfiltered.

However, in my opinion, even though it is just a mass-amateurization, they are still a lot welcomed by the readers. Why? Just like what the previous paragraph stated, it is unfiltered! Everyone just post whatever thoughts they thought of on the weblog and that's all. Regardless it is good or bad, if that's what they think, without any hesitation, they'll blog it out. And that is how the public get to know the truth. For example, again, travel. When a person wants to book a place as accommodation, instead of browsing through the websites of the hotel/books, they'll go for weblogs. Why? This is because they did not censor anything.

They use only the normal camera to shoot the scene, to show you how it looks like. They write their honest thoughts towards the place, how good is it how bad is it and so you can have your wise choice.

In a nutshell, weblog are turning to a mass amateurization but it is not a bad thing in a way. Firstly, it gave just a very minor impact to the publishing books afterall. Books are apt to a more specific target audiences and convey in a more formal manner and as for blogs, it's totally different. It apt to just the circles of friends of the author and convey informally. Besides, with the unfiltered content, the readers could understand and know more about the "truth" over something. Pretty sure this is also what a reader wanted to know. Instead of

"Fuji Apple is the juiciest apple in the world"

I think the readers will prefer

"Fuji Apple is just a normal apple. Nothing special about it actually. It's just a little bigger than any other apples"

The ugly truth is always the thing we want to know the most. Agree?

Media convergence

What a phone can do back then?

60s - Calling

90s - Calling/Texting

now? - Calling/ Texting/ Facebook/ Tweeter/ YouTube/ GPS/ Apps/ Videos etc etc

Ever think what might happen next time?

A single tab might even enable you to start your car's engine! Who knows right?

And why is all these happening? It's because of the media convergence!

Phone is no more just a phone. You can do plenty of things using that tiny little device.

TV is no more just a TV. You can even MSN or Skpye through that.

Maybe in 5 years time, an oven is no more just an oven. It might be able to teleport foods from other place to yours!

In fact, media convergence helped us alot. At least we no longer have to on the computer, wait for a couple of minutes just for it to start up and dial the modem so that it is connected to the Internet then only we can check our email. Instead, just a tab in the iPhone/Android/ Blackberry saves the time.

We don't need to wait for a week to have your message delivered to somewhere else but just a call would do the job. No more carry a world map/ local map everywhere when you have the smart phone on hand.

In Jenkin's study, it says media convergence is a process, not an endpoint. Which is really true. In fact, the ideas will not stop here. Compare the differences of iPhone to iPhone 4. It's improving day by day and soon, iPhone 5 is launching and it's still counting. It will never end.

However, like what Jenkin said in the study,

Many parents complain that the media floodgates have opened into their living rooms and that they are no longer able to exercise meaning choices about what media should enter their homes

Indeed, the producers are the one to come out with the products, but the consumer actually have a choice to take or not to take the idea. There are always parents/people complaining that the wide use of smart phones is influencing their kids and those with a smartphone are most likely facing it 24/7. But who should take the blame? Producers create things but they can't control how the consumer use it. At the end of the day, the consumer is the one who should do the job of controlling.

But! Sometimes, don't you think that media convergence is not as good as what we thought? Because of them, we lack of socializing with people around us anymore.

Because of them, the kids nowadays is over-exposed to digital devices.

Because of them, the traditional medium is fading off.

Imagine, if a kid nowadays can play an iPad way better than us, can text way faster than we do, know more apps than we do, I guess newspaper is not long away from the muzium.

Seriously, I won't be surprised if a kid in 50 years later doesn't know what a newspaper is.

Again, media convergence have both good and the downside. It's just depends on how the producers and consumers use it. It's not just a give and take process. In between these two steps, it includes "think". Think wisely before you use. =)