The Grand Finale!!!!!

COM125 has certainly been the best module of this semester. It was a fun learning journey with lots of entertaining videos and generous break times with not so fun killer exams. Nonetheless, it was enjoyable and I definitely learnt a lot more about the Internet; a tool that I was pretty sure I was familiar with until this course.

Web 2.0 was eye-opening. I've been throught the era of the old Internet and went with the flow of the rising social media but I never noticed the evolving power of the Internet until Web 2.0 was brought up. When e-learning was mentioned, I thought about the various online modules that were offered in the previous semesters but I never once imagined Second Life to be an effective learning environment.

Most people would have participated in e-commerce one way or another, as did I, but it has never occured to me that if I were ever to be dedicated to setting up a business online, I could actually be a millionaire; or so I would dream. Which brings us to growth mindsets, where we should all be open to new ideas and always ready to learn. For instance, learning about the various 'hidden' magic of Google, the site that I have saved as my homepage but has probably utilized less than 20% of its full capacity. With Google and YouTube, I'm able to blog and upload videos that I have created.

Then comes the drawbacks of the Internet with its 1001 viruses and cybercrimes. Thank God, living in Singapore has protected us from cyber bullies but of course, like everything else, some may fall through the cracks. Cyberbullies may be everywhere, even when playing Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games; which is another marvellous addition to the many tools and services of the Internet. People across the globe may be connected and playing the same game together in real world time. Just like the connectedness in games, so too can multimedia marketing reach out to potential consumers in all corners of the world.

Politicians have also used the Internet in that way as their channel to reach out to the mass population. Whether it is to sustain support or to draw up their statuses, people make use of the Internet's global reach to send out any messages they need to. This in turn would be an utmost asset to journalism. Instead of being passive consumers of media, the people now have a voice and the Internet has brought about a platform for two-way interactivity as the media and its audience may now exchange views and feedback.

The evolution of technology has led to a vast change in our society and in our world. It has impacted our lives in more ways than one. Our lifestyle have been made more convenient with the Internet but being a double edged sword, problems have also surfaced. As I am typing this, new ideas about advancing the uses of the Internet are arising and the future of the Internet is left in the hands of almost anyone. Just like in my first post: Will the Internet be our friend or foe? You decide. =)

Future of the Internet

In the past, generations were divided into decades. Right now, each generation has been defined by a separation of 5 years. Digital age and advancing technology has brought about the decreasing number of years that marks a generation. Perhaps in the near future the distinction may be that of every two years.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an invitation-only event where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration. The following video is what they perceive to be the future of the Internet.



Reading a person's identity off their bodies, drawing a watch on your hand to draw a time or taking a picture and dialling a number with just your fingers and palms. As convenient as it may be, it infringes on a person's privacy, causes one to be lazy, and puts numerous companies, like phone, cameras and watches, out of business. This would result in a widescale job losses and a major impact on the world's economy. It would be crazy just to know a person's interests just by lookin at someone. Imagine walking along a street and a total stranger turns on his device just to check out your personal information. It's freaky, stalkerish and simply insane.

As much as the advance in technology is impressive and marvellous with all its advantages, I certainly wish that somehow it would stop progressing at this rate. Humans are experimenting with changes more than what most could handle. Those who are not tech-savvy may fall behind whilst those who do not even have any form of technology gadget would be left further behind in the technological divide. I am a supporter of Ipod and playstation consoles but I do not want a world where people can start using walls as a computer screen with everyone's identities unprotected and available for the world.

Journalism on the Internet

Since the birth of media, the people have always been passive consumers. The Internet has most certainly opened the doors to a dimension and brought about the ability to interact instantaneously with people from all over the world in both print and on video. Hence the term 'Citizen Journalism' was coined.

According to a BBC article by Tom Carver, he mentions that 'If people are interacting, it means they are engaged, and that must be healthy for society and democracy.
It also keeps media organisations like us on our toes and gives us a better sense of who we are broadcasting to.'

The Internet has shaped the future of journalism and it has definitely made a remarkable media development, changing the landscape to a rather active one as it involves the engagement of the people. Viewers are now given a voice as the Internet enables them to provide comments and opinions of what they would want to learn about. Broadcasters, as stated by Carver, are now able to get a fuller understanding of their audience and maintain their appropriate standing on news matters.

However, the technological divide is more evident than ever in this case. People who lack access to the Internet and other forms of digital media; are they simply left to fall behind the achievements of those on the higher end of economy sphere?

Politics and the Internet

The first media president in the United States was Teddy Roosevelt. He was the first President to use the power of the media to appeal directly to the American people. He understood that his forceful personality, his rambunctious family, and his many opinions made good copy for the press. He also knew that the media was a good way for him to reach out to the people, bypassing political parties and political machines. He used the media as a "bully pulpit" to influence public opinion.

That was in 1901. A century later, Barack Obama takes the seat and the media is his medium of his reach to the people not only in the United States, but all across the globe.

With modern technology, the boundaries of media are limitless as the Internet takes on a vital role that has been integrated into the lives of many, especially the lives of those who have the choice to vote in elections. Obama not only reach out to the people through online campaigns and banner ads, but he even pays a visit to local talkshows, making himself out to be a pretty laid back individual. People see him as not just their leader, a political figure, in fact he has become more of a celebrity than any other presidents before him. Despite the 'stardom', his willingness to be just himself and hang loose has bridge any form of formalities as people would see him as an equal, one of them, and feel even more comfortable with him around and as the president.

Here's a video of him on The Ellen Degeneres Show:


However, the Internet reaches out only to those who utilize it, even though a vast number of people do, these numbers are greater only in the younger generation. So to extend to the mass population, I guess President Obama has to come out with new strategies =)

Entertainment and Multimedia

Past the age of analogue media, currently everything has gone digital and of course advertisers would be the first to hop onto the wave of the changing platforms and take their ads to the depths of multimedia.

Here's a video of the First Weber's New FrontRunner Marketing System - The Most Advanced MultiMedia Marketing System in America!

Thanks to the advance CGI, game graphics that used to look like:

Now looks like this:

The change has definitely brought a whole different gaming experience as it is even more affective with its realistic graphics.

Anti-viruses and Cyber Crimes

Recently my laptop had to be reformatted as it couldn't be started and the loading process of the start up just kept going in loops. At the same time, virus alerts were popping up on my desktop and I couldn't do access my windows update because the virus was blocking it. So I decided to do the next best thing I could think of. My AVG virus scan and norton anti virus apparently didn't prove to be effective since that stupid virus found a way to feed on my windows update hence I decided to install Bit Defender.

Things were going smoothly at first, since the virus scan did it mojo, sieving out any other viruses and fixing other unforeseen problems but somehow couldn't remove that trecherous virus that was blocking my windows update. Worst of all, Bit Defender was slowing my entire com and didn't let me access my computer games which was what I need desperately to escape my schoolwork and virus headaches. Each window was taking at least 5 minutes to load once clicked on and so now I've uninstalled Bit Defender since in my opinion, letting the virus eat your com is better than waiting for more than an hour just to start your com or sign into MSN.

According to an article by ZDnet Asia, a Symantec Asia-Pacific Internet Security Threat report stated that 'Singapore--with its small population--is ranked second in terms of the level of malicious activity per user, Ng said, adding that Taiwan has the highest level of such activities per user. "That doesn't mean Singapore has a high level of malicious activity," Ng said. He added that the city-state contributes 2 percent to the amount of malicious activity in the region. "It just means that an Internet user in Singapore may be more subjected to malicious activity," he said.'

As everyone knows, Singapore's government would be there to defend the nation and thus in 1993, Singapore passed the Computer Misuse Act (Chapter 50A of the Singapore Statutes), which it has amended four times, as recently as 2005. This Act addresses computer crimes and provides for stiff penalties for the violation of the law. It has applied its existing Penal Code provisions for activities that are deemed cyber crime. For example, the release of a virus would fall under the jurisdiction of the Computer Misuse Act, whereas an economic crime (e.g. extortion or securities fraud) would fall under the aegis of the Penal Code.

All in all, everyone should simply follow the procedures that was shown during Monday's COM125 lecture but keep in mind, you can't have a cake and eat it. Anti-virus programs do come with their limitations.

Google and Windows Movie Maker

Google Earth may be fun and innovative and it allows us to fly the skies and sail the seas to any destination that we desire...but nonetheless it could also be the perfect search scope for terrorists to plan any infalliable attacks.

So I've just installed Google Earth and realised that it even allows me to not only explore the surface of the Earth but under the seas too. In addition to that, we are able to access images of how places used to look like and compare these historical imagery to present times and also study how it has changed over time. Undoubtly, Google Earth has given us insightful knowledge about our world that we probably wouldn't have known about.

Without Google Earth, I might never discover that a place like Upernik existed...or the fact that it's a small town located on the West Coast of Greenland with a population of only 3000.

Besides Google Earth, Google has tons of other useful applications like Google Image, Groups, News, YouTube, and of course Blogger.

This video is a list of top 10 horror films according to ME. [Viewer discretion is advised; so people like Fel, avoid clicking on the play button =) ]

The last time I made a video was probably 5 or more years ago. Making one for this blog certainly brought a sense of nostalgia and it also took me longer than I normally would have taken then since I've grown to be unfamiliar to most of the tools.

For starters, I had to search for pictures to add to my video, limiting myself to 3 pictures per movie and thanks to Google Image, I was easily able to come up with the 30 necessary movie screenshots. Since I already had the music file of the song I had in mind for my video, my work was further simplified as I imported the mp3 into my window movie maker project.

Next, I had to rank the movies in order and then insert the titles into the appropriate parts of the clip. The Storyboard allowed the arrangement to be done easily. Most of the effort went into making sure the clips would fit into the time range of the song and that was easily settled in the 'Timeline' mode of WMM.

Overall, this exercise reminded me of how fun and useful the Windows Movie Maker application is and in terms of user friendliness, I'll probably give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars. =)