The Future of Internet

Have you guys seen Wall-E? I think that is the future of our lives as internet users. Obese, on a chair, in front of a multi-touch screen all day.

I'm not Kidding! The internet is going to take over the world. I mean now, I have already started purchasing my groceries online, I have yet to make a trip to Cold Storage for months ever since I discovered this awesome site www.thebutcher.com.sg . I also buy my clothes online, I watch movies online and read online, I even speak to my friends online. I am in front of my computer the whole day on the internet! Can you imagine if the internet starting inventing taste over the internet, I could even eat and drink over the internet, I wouldn't ever have to leave my chair!

I am glad to tell you that companies have been trying to recreate the sense of taste over the internet though. Go check our DigiScents at digiscents.com to find out more.

I think I should get off blogger and head to the gym now.

Internet Business

Grupon comes to mind when I think of Internet business. If you don't know what grupon s, well, it is a website that offers daily deals on food, leisure activities and entertainment. you can access their site at www.grupon.com.sg

Grupon has gained so much popularity that Google recently offered them 6.6 billion to buy over their company, but Grupon declined. According to Forbes, grupon is the fastest growing internet business as compared to Amazon and ebay. Grupon has also recently bought over a Singaporean website called Beeconomic.com which is structured similarly to Grupon in terms of business model at 24 million from a Singaporean, Karl Chong in his late 20's.

I wished I thought of that idea!

Journalism and The Internet

Citizen Journalism is on the rise with social media sites. What citizen journalism offers is a more realistic account of events around the world. News companies are turning to citizen journalism for a variety of reasons: third party perspective, realistic account, no financial resource to send a news anchor to the other country.

While there are certainly positive aspects of citizen journalism, there are negative aspects too. For instance, the reliability of information. These news by citizens like us are posted by people who do not have journalistic background or proper training of journalistic reporting.

One example of Journalism over the Internet would be reports by Al Jazeera. An internet-based or rather YouTube centered news reporting company. This company have over 200million viewers because of its truthful reporting versus news companies such as CNN or FOX. Here is an example of their news report:

Because Al Jazeera is a YouTube centered reporting company, they have lower production costs, as such they do not have to act as a mouthpiece to the state or to investors of the company such as CNN.

Do you think FOX will adopt such news report?

Politics and the Internet

Singapore and politics? I think its best if I keep my opinions to myself, I don't want to be thrown in jail like Chee Soon Juan. With that said, I think that youths of Singapore are not apathetic towards politics, we have just been taught since young that when it comes to politics, its best if we not say anything.

But this doesn't mean that our Singaporean leaders feel the same about keeping their opinions underwraps. Have you guys heard the LKY on WikiLeaks? Well you should.

What Steinberg was told:

"The North Koreans are “psychopathic types with a ‘flabby old chap’ for a leader who prances around stadiums seeking adulation”.

Entertainment & Multimedia on the Internet

Being female, I don't have a thing for online gaming or animations. As such, the only multimedia content I access over the net are pretty much illegal video streaming of popular U.S TV shows. Come on! I'm sure you know of people who do it too.

My favorite sites to access these videos are tvduck.com or watch-series.com, the best part of these videos are that they cost nothing! & Since sitcoms are usually featured in the U.S first before reaching Singapore, I can stay significantly up to date with these shows faster than anyone and earlier than 8 days can make a review of it. I can also re-watch older series which I love like Sex and the city or Friends but too cheap and Singaporean to buy the original box set.

So in this post, I advocate free multimedia content. Use tvduck.com ! All you can watch for free!

Security and The Internet

For today's class, we had a serious discussion on threats on the internet. Spywares, viruses, Phising. And I would like to say that even though I am amongst those who are very susceptible to these threats because I often download movies or use my credit card to shop online or for internet banking, I feel that I am pretty safeguarded against these threats.

Reasons being, because I use Norton anti-virus, secondly, my Firewall is never switched off, thirdly, I am using a MAC, Apple promises that Mac's never get viruses and lastly, nothing unfortunate has happened to me before, such as people stealing my credit card info or my laptop dying due to some virus.

However, with that said, perhaps the closest experience I've had with Phising is a scam email about a rich Nigerian guy who wants to give away his fortune. But seriously, who would ever fall for that!

It is easy to spot such scams & I believe the only people who will fall for it are those greedy fools! These scams have so many loopholes! Firstly, no one would be crazy enough to give you their fortune. Secondly, if these Nigerian businessmen were so rich they would not be using hotmail accounts. Lastly, they wouldn't make so many spelling errors on the email.

Colbert Vs. Wikipedia

Today we covered common internet tools. Search engines, Remote access, Dynamic web interactions and Sharing resources on the Internet.

Well, besides Google, my other favorite internet tools has got to be Wikipedia. I depend on Wikipedia most of the time for my school research or utilize it to gain an in-depth explanation of things I am unaware of. I find it to be an extremely insightful and a reliable tool and I am often unaware as to why my lecturers refuse to allow us to cite materials off Wikipedia.

That was until I saw this hilarious video of Stephen Colbert, a comedian which I love, dissing Wikipedia. This is his video, it may give you a whole new perspective to Wikipedia. Enjoy!

The Oxford Killer

Last week I blogged about the proliferation of slangs and abbreviations associated with social networking. This week, I am going to talk about the dictionary who is going to give Oxford dictionary a run for its money! The Twitter

Dictionary! Twitter dictionary contains words that are commonly used on twitter or the invention of new words that

involves the word 'tweet' or as Twitter users call it "twerminoogy: twitter terminology.

1: Tweetless: Meant to describe someone who is speechless.

2: Attwaction: Attraction between two twitter users.

3: Dweet: A tweet that has been sent by a drunk user.

4: Mistweet: To describe a tweet that a user regrets sending after.

5: Retweet: Repetition of a tweet that has been posted by another user.

6: Tweeple: Twitter users, people who use twitter.

7: Tweetaholic: Term to describe someone who has an addiction to twitter.

8: Tweetroduce: Describe a situation where one user introduces one follower to another.

9: Ztwitt: To tweet extremely fast.

10: Twettiquette: Twitter Etiquette.

I don't know what you have to say about this, but I know what I have to say; Those Twits!

Social Networking and Online Community

With the invention of social networking comes the invention of 'Chat-Slang', Chat slang refers to the abbreviations used over social networking to make your sentences more interesting. Though I belong to the generation who coined such terms, I must say I haven't full mastered all of them. Here are a few examples:

1. TAFN ( That's all for now )

2. TBC ( To be continued )

3. SCNR ( Sorry could not resist )

4. SASB ( Sobbing and sniffling bitterly )

5. LOL ( Laughing out loud ) this is the most common term.

6. GTG ( Got to go )

7. SPST ( Same place same time )

8. MACINTOSH ( Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs ) Bet you didn't know that! You thought it was a brand didn't you! haha.

What's annoying is that sometimes I can get a messages saying: "LOL SCNR. Okay TAFN GTG CUNT, SPST."

& when I receive something like that my immediate thought was, what the hell, did he just use a vulgarity on me. But actually what he meant to say was ( Laughing Out Loud, Sorry Could Not Resist. Okay, Got To Go, That's All For Now, See[C] You[U], Next Tuesday, Same Place Same Time ). Seriously?!

Publish Post

Communicating on the Internet

Today's class was structured around social networking, instant messaging and email communication. As an avid user of all these mediums to communicate with my friends, I have to say I love email the most.

The reason why I love emails over social networking such as Facebook, Twitter or even MSN is that there is no face to face communication. When using MSN, sometimes I get people whom I don't really feel like taking to, making an internet call to me or spamming me with messages. I get so annoyed whenever I'm multitasking on the computer and in the background, their chat box keeps appearing and the MSN soundbite keeps on beeping away.

It is not really their fault for the innumerable annoyance over MSN. It is just that with MSN, we learn how to type in short forms, or have a tendency to type one word and hit enter cause its free! Whereas over SMSes where we are charged per sms, we tend to squeeze in as much info on one SMS to save money. Therefore, over MSN, one sentence would go like 'Hi' followed by "How are you" then, "Haven't seen you for awhile". As such, I have steered clear from MSN, disabling my auto-sign in whenever I log unto my computer.

As for social networking. There are just so many unspoken rules to follow. For instance, one is not allowed to not "un-accept" a friend request from perhaps your boss or colleagues. Even though we have been advised many times that it is best to keep your private life away from your work life. Many a times, when I have chosen to ignore a friend request on Facebook, I will receive hate mails, questioning me on why I have declined their friend request. It often leaves me puzzled because I believe that it is MY Facebook & I have the prerogative to accept or deny whoever I deem fit.

& even in situations whereby I accept a friend (I would rather not) out of courtesy & to avoid hate mails, I would have go to the trouble of categorizing them under certain privacy lists in order to select what I allow them to view on my Facebook and what I disallow them from viewing on my Facebook. What a hassle!

Therefore, email is still the best option, there is not rush to reply a person because there is no certainty if you have seen the email.

Start of COM 125

Hi guys, I am Clarissa. And this is my first blog entry for COM125 introduction to the internet. By the name of this class, one might think that it is an easy class because everyone knows about the internet, everyone uses it, what could be so difficult!

Sad to say, I was one of them. But I couldn't be more wrong when I attended my first class and realized that I knew nothing of how the internet actually works. The mechanics and technicalities behind the internet system. How it works and how it is simplified so that the end users, 'us' could utilize it to make our lives so much more efficient.

There's this thing called cloud computing which I still have yet to get a firm grasp on and then there is this class about social networking which I am extremely interested in. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and a long list down is something we are all familiar with and use on a daily basis, I for one would say that I cannot live a day without scrolling through my Facebook page.

We use it for free, but has anyone ever thought about how these social networking sites make money if everything seems to be for free for us end users? Besides advertising of course, there are other ways Facebook monetize their website and thus making Mark Zuckerberg the youngest billionaire. If you haven't already guess, income from advertisement is just a drop in the bucket for the tons of money they make every day.

Companies are now also looking to social networking sites to publicize their businesses. While it sounds great in theory, I for one think that it is a lousy idea because there is no conversion rate, people don't readily buy your product, sure, they do learn more about your products. But what is the pull, in my opinion, I still think that traditional marketing works best.

Perhaps I am severely wrong and am just making a fickle assessment of how social networking works, I still have more to learn & looking forward to the next class!