Internet and Journalism

With the dawn of the new era, the internet has become a huge essential part of our life. One particular significant event that has emerged from the internet, is the sprouting of what i like to call as citizen journalism. So what is Citizen Journalism you may ask?? :S

Citizen Journalism is when private individuals do essentially what professional reporters do – report information. That information can take many forms, from a podcast editorial to a report about a city council meeting on a blog. It can include text, pictures, audio and video. But it’s basically all about communicating information of some kind.

 What i discovered about citizen journalism is that there are two different categories to it:

1. semi-independent 
2. fully independent

Semi-Independent Citizen Journalism

This involves citizens contributing, in one form or another, to existing professional news sites.

• Readers posting their comments alongside stories done by professional reporters - essentially a 21st-century version of the letter to the editor. A growing number of news websites allow readers to post comments. In an effort to prevent obscene or objectionable messages, many websites require that readers register in order to post. 

• Reader blogs that are incorporated into professional news websites. That can includes blogs in which readers critique how the news organization is performing.

Example:

New Jersey.com

Independent Citizen Journalism

This involves citizen journalists working in ways that are fully independent of traditional, professional news outlets.

• Blogs in which individuals can report on events in their communities or offer commentary on the issues of the day.

 Example: 

Onlinecitizen

• Websites run by an individual or a group of people that report on news events in the local community. Some have editors and screen content, others do not. Some even have print editions.

Examples:

Daily Heights

My only concern with citizen journalism is where is it the appropriate line to draw?? If everyone is to write their opinions about a certain issue, it is dangerous when that issue is highly sensitive and result in some form of unhappiness among the public. For example, take the local website, stomp. As can be seen from the website, there are occasional articles written by "stompers". However, at times fellow "stompers" may accuse the "stomper" who wrote the article as being too nosy and taking pictures that are inappropriate and that they should mind their own business.. For example, there was a particular post that i read where the "stomper" on the train had taken a picture of a guy who had taken a picture of a girl who wore a mini skirt without her permission. People started accusing the author as being as bad as the guy for taking pictures of him as well which makes one realise that even though the author's intention was to bring attention that there are sexual predators on trains, other people may not view in the same light.

This brings back the same question, where is the line that we should abide by?

Internet and Politics

The power and limitation of internet for political campaigning

It has been a widely understood fact that the internet is a powerful method to reach to audience far and wide and yet at the same time, it is limited in its own way.. today,  i will be touching on this topic since this week's main theme is on politics.. :)

Firstly, let me touch on the power of the internet. Indeed, the internet has many multiple uses, even for political campaigning! The internet is powerful as it allows people immediate access. Since most people check their E-mail anywhere from 1 to 100 times a day, using the Internet to reach out to potential voters is brilliant. Also, each candidate has a website where voters may go to find out how to help the campaign and to see where the candidate will next be speaking. The Internet helps to quickly spread the word about the policy of the candidate.

For example, let's take the most well known president of the world in this current time, Barack Obama. He too, understands the value in reaching to the technologically savvy demographic. One of his donation campaign was conducted in part via email. Rather than a contributor sending $20 and never hearing back, the campaign managers cleverly set up a system that allowed people donations to be matched by other donors. Each donor could contact one another and write why they supported Barack. As a result, this donation campaign was a success, mostly thanks to the accessibility of the internet to the public. 

You Tube also has an impact on politics. This more recent addition to Internet usage provides instant coverage of political events, news clips that relate to candidates, ads that are making the rounds of Internet users, and spoofs of the candidates. If a politician does something embarrassing in public you can be sure it will be on You Tube within 24 hours or less. Morever, youtube videos target young people to participate in online opinion and may bring more youths to the polls in upcoming elections.

The Internet also makes it easy to mobilize political activism. Political groups are able to stage huge protests and events with a simple mass E-mail. Impromptu gatherings are also possible via E-mail alerts. If a candidate is in a public space during private time he or she may find a crowd who has been alerted via the Internet awaiting them outside on their departure.

The Internet also allows voters to use Google or Helium to find articles about and texts of speeches by each candidate to read about their political strategies. The Internet makes keeping up on each candidates opinions quite simple. It is an invaluable tool for voters.

However, despite the above factors that i mentioned, i feel that the internet is limited in some ways.  Personally, i feel that by using the internet, the political campaigns loses its personal touch. People who watch the videos of the speeches that candidates make may not get the full impact of the speech if they were not at the campaign "live" which may affect the voting. Besides that, using the internet may sway people to vote for someone just because they see a mass majority of people giving opinions on the internet to vote for a certain candidate.

Ultimately, political campaigning will inevitably make use of the internet to promote the candidates, therefore, it is always good to keep in mind the above while reading/watching the speeches made by the candidates.. :)

Reflections on com 125 Project Groups & my own com 125 project

The focus for this week's com 125 classes were presentations from the other groups. It was quite enlightening to watch other groups present as through watching their presentations,  I found myself mentally taking note of some key aspects that my project group and i would have to keep in mind during our own presentation. :) Probably one thing i did learn from the presentations is to make the presentation a little more engaging and have something in store for the audience which they can take away from the presentation after watching it... 

Currently, for my own com 125 project, it is due in about 2 weeks time.. Work has been distributed and while looking for resources to back up some of the data in our project, personally, i feel that i have learnt quite a bit from searching on our topic, some of which i probably would not have realised unless i had bothered to research it out of my own interest. I feel as if i i'm learning something new every time i deal with the project work material. :) I'll be crossing my fingers that the project will be a success! :)

Multimedia on the internet

Last week's lesson was really MINDBLOWING. I loved the tech gadgets that professor showed us as they looked really out of this world! I especially like the Xbox 360 Project Natal Game console. Really cool idea of making the individual the controller instead of using a physical controller  :P Thumbs up!

Anyway, i went to surf the net and found other cool multimedia gadgets that are also really unique.. :) Check the video out below for Virtusphere:

 Pretty cool right? :) It's actually a hollow sphere, which is placed on a special platform that allows the sphere to rotate freely in any direction according to the user's steps. Transmitting a virtual environment to the wireless head mounted display, users can move freely 360 degrees creating the most immersive virtual experience. Personally, i feel that this may be great for gamers as it allows more hands on for gamers who like to move and feel the action when they play rather than having to stay rooted in the spot. Besides that, i was exploring the possibility that it may allow people to exercise while they play the game and in that sense, allow gamers to so stay healthy while they're playing? =P

Another cool techno gadget that i MUST share with everyone is this: PIXELBOTS. They're by far one of the coolest things i've ever set my eyes on. If you ask me, they're like a swarm of robots that have intelligence and they are able to notify you of anything under the sun. AND BEST OF ALL, it can become a moving motion picture at certain intervals! How COOL is that!!! :O I can't even put into words what they are in all accuracy so please watch the video below instead :)

Curious Displays from Julia Tsao on Vimeo.

Internet Security

For this week's class, we were exposed to internet security and one particular useful thing i learnt was how to differentiate between a virus, worm and trojans. So what are the differences??? :O

 Virus:

 A virus:

• a computer program. It's written by some individual or individuals, presumably with the intent of spreading and causing grief.
• makes the infected computer "sick" - in the computer sense, "sick" can mean poor performance, crashes, lost files and data, or more.
• replicates itself - just like you can copy a file from one disk to another, and now have copies on both disks, a computer virus is in part defined by its ability to make copies of itself. Typically the copies aren't on the infected computer, but rather on other computers, which leads us to the last characteristic...
• infects other computers - exactly how depends on the virus, of course, but another key defining point for a computer virus is that it can spread, on its own.

Computer Worm:

A worm:

• a stand-alone program
• can cause a great deal of trouble merely by getting passed from one computer to many others, and can clog up a network very quickly.

Trojan Horse:

A Trojan Horse:

• program that claims to be one thing, but is, in fact, another
• not a virus, per se, but may carry them.  
• For example many people consider Kazaa, the music sharing software, a trojan horse because it carries with it a bunch of spyware. 

So, locally, in Singapore, are companies in Singapore aware about all the cybercrime and stuff related to internet security??? :O

According to an article from CNET news, it states that:

Many organizations are focused on stopping random hackers and blocking pornography when they should be concerned with bigger threats from professional cybercriminals, according to a new cybersecurity report.

to read more: see this link.. http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/security/0,39044215,62060776,00.htm

In short, many companies are misguided with relation to their security. To me, this is a big concern as the focus of companies are misdirected and imagine what cybercriminals are capable of if they know how lax the companies are with their security! Their companies could very much suffer a big loss should they be attacked by cybercriminals.. One can only hope that through news like this, companies would increase their security against potential internet cybercriminals. 

Internet tools

HAPPY CHINESE YEAR EVERYONE!! :)

For this particular blog entry, it's gonna be pretty exciting as i did a video entry of using an internet tool, in specific google maps. And it's even more exciting as i did it while i was on my chinese new year holiday in London! So please watch the video as it took me a while to piece together the pictures and videos i specially took for this video :) 

Before you watch this video, i would like to introduce the google tool which i am exploring so you have more knowledge about this internet tool. So what is Google maps? It is a basic web mapping service application and offers street maps, a route planner for traveling by foot, car, or public transport and an urban business locator for numerous countries around the world. So visually, it looks like the picture below when you type in a destination you would like to get to.. 

The most spectacular feature of google maps that i am very intrigued with is probably the street view.. Google makes use of a car with a camera attached on the top like the one you see here:

By so doing, it allows google maps to show us UP TO DATE (AMAZING ISN"T IT!!! :D) the pictures of the place! The pictures are very clear and allows us, the users to see the place and spot it easier when we look for it ourselves.. Is this tool cool or what!!

NOW, on to the main highlight:

My video on my experience using google maps! Hope you find it fascinating! :)

My experience making this video has indeed been quite a fruitful one as i learned more about how to use google maps and how to use it to enable myself to reach the tube station in the fastest time possible. Moreover, after making this video, i will probably use google tools again if i ever get myself lost! :) One of the best google tools created!!

Power of Internet for Learning

This week's class was on elearning which is the learning using digital tools and content. To bring in a more personal light, it's especially so for me as I am now doing an online course where my professor (MGO 302: Product and Operations Management ) teaches me through videos that she uploads in real time(albeit a bit outdated by a few hours, nonetheless, still very amazing that i can see her teaching even though she is many leagues away from me! :P) and students located in Singapore and London are able to watch her lectures. Personally, i do think this form of teaching is quite effective as she doesn't need to travel to Singapore to teach and YET is still able to teach us! Therefore, instead of having only 500 students from US, she has 200 extra students over singapore! And with the videos, it gives us the students the flexibility to pause and replay whatever material we missed while the lecturer was speaking! Now wouldn't we all wish that we had that in all everyday lessons where we can pause to copy notes and press play when our teachers talk too fast?? :P

HOWEVER(yes yes, there is always a "however" to almost everything!), there are some cons (at least for the students that are not "physically present" in class). For example, i ran into a problem with the videos uploaded. I discovered to my horror that I had been watching videos from last year 's curriculum!!! :( Apparently it was a technical error on the US side but due to the time difference, it took a while to fix (wasting some time on my part!). Besides that, there is always the problem of asking questions through email.. It's just that certain things are really hard to explain through email (especially stuff like diagrams!! OH MY!) and there's always the possibility that the teacher may misinterpret the question asked when trying to figure out what the email was asking.

Despite the pros and cons, i do find overall that im learning a vast amount from the course and im glad that i took up the course in my last semester! Really rewarding experience.. :)

Just a sidenote, i did manage to find out that there are some ways to make elearning more effective for those interested in it:

1) Add a face

Learners are usually reluctant to attend a soft skills training as they tend to think of it as being non-essential, as opposed to technical, work-related training. Already non-motivated, learners will resist a training that is imparted by a faceless, soulless monitor. 

Adding a friendly face to the course material will add a human dimension to the training. Introducing a coach, buddy, or a mentor at the beginning of the course will make it easier for learners to understand the learning objectives. Bringing him/her back at checkpoint and summary screens will be a good idea. Coaches can also help introduce scenarios in the training.

2) Answer WIIFM (What’s in it for me)

The most important question posed by the learners: What’s in it for me? (WIIFM)While most learning objectives address the question in concrete, technical terms, they fail to motivate and convince the learners how the training proposes to benefit them. An instructional designer or content writer should focus on responding to this question in a simple, mentor-like manner, explaining clearly the advantages of the training to the learner. 

3) Present scenarios

A soft skills training cannot be imparted with a series of dos, don’ts, shoulds, and shouldn’ts. A learner will not gain anything from the training unless the training responds to the corresponding whys and why nots. Well-illustrated scenarios can help explain the finer details of the soft skills.

4) Familiar territory

Use characters and situations closer to real life to present scenarios. A thorough audience analysis will help build strong and effective scenarios. Factors such as age, country, ethnicity, language, culture, even attire and food should be taken into consideration while creating scenarios. At times, non-familiarity with the audience could result in a well-meaning scenario giving offense to the learners.

5) Provide online help

This is the toughest challenge and is often not considered because of technical limitations. An always-available guide can help learners extract more from trainings. I am not referring to a physical guide here, but an online repository of information acting as an available facilitator.