Future of Internet

With such a fast-paced development, it is certainly difficult for any of us to accurately predict the future of the internet.

I will not go into the technical details of Semantic Web.

Instead, I hope that in the future, we will be able to have the internet on any equipment, not just conventional electronic device likes computers or mobile phones.

How about having internet on your chopping board? I'm sure many mums, and even domestic help, will approve of that.

One can be in sync with Martha Steward as she teaches one how to bake and cook.

Currently, the such technology exist (think: Microsoft Surface), but is largely limited due to cost factors.

Therefore, with further development, it may be possible to largely reduce the cost of such technologies, allowing it to be installed anywhere we want it to be.

Such widespread internet delivery means that it will be able to reach a more diverse target audience, especially those that are not exposed to such technologies, like the elusive "mum demographic".

This also allows for a more niche marketing on the Internet, which may not always be a bad thing.

Consumers will be able to get more relevant information easily, thus staying true to the nature of the Web 3.0 where it aims to understand the needs of its users.

On the same note, input methods can also be improved as a

more intuitive and interactive input method is being adopted.

Companies like Apple are using a Multi-touch track pad, which is definitely more user-friendly as compared to the conventional PC-input method.

Such technology is very much still in its infantile stage and we can certainly look forward to greater development in the near future.

However, one important thing to note is whether such technology will be universally used.

For many Mac users, they often find it difficult to use the PC due to its very different input method.

Just look at the mouse and the track pad.

The same applies to PC-users like myself; I have no idea how to operate the supposedly more intuitive Mac track pad.

Hence, only if a large number of companies choose to adopt the same kind of input method will such technology become an aid rather than causing more grief for those who are less technology savvy.

Politics and the Internet

Versus

Who says that Singaporeans do not care about politics?

Ms Tin Pei Ling (Top left) and Ms Nicole Seah (Top right) are the most talked about election candidate right now.

Google search for "Nicole Seah" increased exponentially in the past few days, whereas searches for "Tin Pei Ling" increased steadily.

Although it does not show people's attitudes towards them, at least we know that not all Singaporeans are ill-informed or apathetic about our politics.

Yes, I have to agree that our one-party dominated political situation may not be the most exciting, but I would like to think that many young Singaporeans are still concerned about local politics.

For the 2011 General Election, the PAP unveiled their youngest candidate Ms Tin Pei Ling ,27, for the Marine Parade GRC.

By now, I'm certain that many people have already heard about her, either through the internet, television news or your peers.

Prior to her involvement in politics, Ms Tin was a senior associate for Ernst & Young, and is married to Ng How Yue, principal private secretary to PM Lee.

Ms Tin has received lots of bad publicity recently, mainly due to her behavior and comments.

In 2007, she said in a speech that the widening income gap between the rich and poor is not the government's responsibility. She has also been criticized to on the internet to 'lack substance' and not having a clear stand on key political issue.

Not only so, a video showcasing her immature behavior, or inappropriate behavior for a politician, has also been posted on YouTube and has since gone viral.

All these led to a smear campaign against her on the internet.

Her private life is also being used against her in many of the nasty comments posted online.

Popular local political commentator, Mr Brown, also wrote her a poem which is now very popular on the internet.

When I was just a little girl

I asked my mother, what will I be

Will I be pretty, will I be rich

Here’s what she said to me.

Que Pei Ling, Pei Ling,

Get a rich husband, forget how old is he,

The future is as bright as can be,

Que Pei Ling, Pei Ling

Ferrari, LV….

When I was 25, I got married,

I asked my husband what lies ahead

Will we have rainbows, day after day

Here’s what my hubby said.

Que Pei Ling, Pei Ling,

I work in Pee A Pee,

the money keeps pouring in,

Que Pei Ling, Pei Ling

Lambogini, Gucci…

Now I am in Pee A Pee

I ask Matthias, where will I stand,

Will it be SMC or will it be GRC,

This is what he says to me.

Que Pei Ling, Pei Ling,

Just act cute and smile,

Marine Parade is it,

when you see uncle Goh

Easy… Peesy…

.

Source: http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?t=3164904

Another candidate that is widely talked about now is Ms Nicole Seah ,24.

She will be a candidate for the National Solidarity Party (NSP) in the coming election.

She is an advertising executive for a MNC and is also a graduate from the University Scholar Program of NUS, just like Ms Tin Pei Ling.

The interesting thing is that she will be up against Ms Tin, in the fight for Marine Parade GRC.

Marine Parade GRC has never been contested since 1992,

but the Ms Seah and fellow candidates sure hope to shake things up a little in this coming general election.

Although I don't think that the NSP has a chance at winning, all this buzz sure makes the general election more appealing to the younger generation.

Burberry & Technology (New Update)

Watch the Entire Show here -> Burberry Beijing Live Show

Highlights of the Show (Below)

Latest Update:

Burberry Fashion Show in Beijing uses 3D technology to create a runway show that uses both real and virtual models.

It also manages to re-create the climate of rainy London by using high technology projection and artificial snow flakes.

The ceiling-to-floor projection screen allows them to create life-size hologram to walk down the runway, showcasing Burberry's collection.

For those who are interested, this is the ad which the runway show was trying replicate.

I like the ad campaign very much.

Although it's set against the background of a Rainy London, the vibrant colors of the collection truly stands out.

Journalism and the Internet

The internet has created a wonderful platform for its users to quickly gather and post the latest information on just about anything in the world.

Internet journalism is no longer just an alternative these days, as many people, especially the younger demographic, get all their news information through online sources.

This includes both formal and informal online sources.

Formal sources I'm talking about refers to those that published by an established news agency, whereas informal sources refers to news that are posted by internet users.

This is evident from our local newspaper - The Straits Times.

It has an online version on the internet so that people can receive news on-the-go or wherever they are.

However, what I want to highlight here is the more informal online portal - STOMP - which allows users to post news or any interesting information they have or saw on it.

This portal allows these information to be really up to date, almost instantaneous in fact, as users are able to upload pictures, videos and comments to the website immediately.

There is currently a large number of STOMPers (STOMP users) and they often upload first hand information on the hottest news topic.

In many cases, the news is released on STOMP first before we see it in the newspaper or on prime time news.

STOMP also covers many stories that are deemed too insignificant or unimportant for the newspapers or prime time news.

Unlike traditional forms of journalism, this gives the users freedom to choose the kind of news they want to receive, and I feel that this is vital and how news should be.

However, such 'citizen journalism' has also received much criticism.

Traditional media advocates feel that news published by these amateur citizen journalists may lack coverage or does not portray the entire truth.

Yes, this is certainly is a relevant concern, but it does not affect the many benefits of citizen journalism.

With all these STOMPers and the fact that almost everyone owns a camera phone these day (even my grandma), every single moment of the day is ripe material to be captured on video or picture. And before you know it, you are already up on YouTube or STOMP, being laughed at by complete strangers.

In light of this, I feel that people will be more aware of their own actions as well as those of others.

So, the next time you want to engage in some disapproved behavior (think: littering or public displays of affection), do think twice.

You may just become the next celebrity on STOMP.

Use of Multimedia

I also want to share this video with you guys.

It's by Jimmy Wong, in response to UCLA student Alexander Wallace's video ranting about Asian students talking loudly in the library.

Her insensitive and rather untimely (think japan's tsunami) video has led to death threats and she has since quit school.

It also led to many response video and parodies of her original video on YouTube.

This really shows that the use of Multimedia and Social Media can create huge impacts in our lives, be it positive or negative.

However, the thing I wish to highlight in post is Jimmy Wong's clever use of multimedia and Video-sharing sites like YouTube.

He is a relatively new artiste in L.A. and has his own YouTube Channel (Jimmy Wong).

He often does cover songs of other singers on his YouTube channel and also post some of his own songs.

This is a clever way to market himself, very much like how Justin Bieber successfully launch his music career after being discovered by Usher on YouTube.

This is very similar to how companies market their products or launch an advertisement campaign on their YouTube channel.

In this case, the 'product' is himself.

It has all the benefits of using Multimedia online, such as low cost and ease of distribution.

It also allows him to quickly gather a large fan base.

Like most celebrities, he combines the use of Multimedia with Social Media such as Twitter and Facebook.

This also increases the interactivity of the Multimedia, as one is able to respond to his postings.

In today's world, it is almost a 'must' for anyone who wants to become someone to fully utilize all these internet tools and application.

I feel that this is quite a successful ' marketing campaign' for himself, as he is gradually receiving more attention and is going to be cast in a Hollywood film next year.

Internet Security - Phishing

Phishing is a form of spam that attempts to deceive recipients to gain access to their personal information.

Phishing is even more dangerous than regular computer virus or worms as it may cost substantial damage to a person’s wealth and reputation.

In this case, unwilling participants who thought they were processing payroll for an international company were actually money mules who are enrolled into a money laundering scheme unwillingly.

Alexey Mineev from New Hampshire recently pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. He set up drop accounts that were used to receive and send money that were stolen from brokerage accounts.

He could be sentenced to two years in prison, and a $40,000 fine.

Alexey, and his co-conspirators, Alexander Bobnev and Aleksey Volynskiy worked as a team. They would con internet users into watching an online video that required a special codec to be installed, a screensaver or a security patch - which would actually be the delivery mechanism for a Trojan.

They could then monitor the users’ online activities and retrieve their passwords and other personal information used for their brokerage or bank accounts.

Bobnev would review the accounts and Alexey and Aleksey would move the funds out of the users’ accounts. Once the money leave the users’ account, it is almost impossible to recover.

This is just one of many cases of large-scale phishing on the internet.

It is good to know that most banks in Singapore have a dual-password system.

However, such systems are also not 100% safe. Hence, it is vital that we are aware of such situation and be more alert when we do transactions on the internet.

Internet Tools

I created a short stop-motion farewell video for a friend leaving for Australia to study

It was created using iMovie as I felt that it is more user-friendly than Windows Movie Maker.

Hope you guys like it.

E-learning

E-learning is definitely quickly becoming one of the tools that help enhance our learning experience in the 21st century.

The benefits are endless. It is more interactive, definitely more interesting and it allows us to learn and explore a subject more freely.

Websites like Popular's E-learning Website allows primary school students to log onto their web and access all the different assessment books and other learning materials.

I feel that this is definitely a way to get younger children to do their work.

The colorful visuals and a more interactive interface also helps them remember what they have learnt more easily.

E-learning also enables distant learning which allows people to access information wherever they are.

Videos and virtual classrooms are quite common nowadays in many established universities.

Personally, I feel that Google and Wikipedia is one of the best tool for learning on the internet.

Google & Google Scholar allow many students, like myself, to efficiently search for information.

It can be for school work or even just for general knowledge.

Although some people are skeptical about the authenticity of information on Wikipedia, I feel that the quality of the information available on Wikipedia is improving.

Most of the information provided are actually cited from reliable sources.

It may not be the best source of information to be cited in academic writing, but it certainly is a great way to introduce a subject to one who has no clue about that particular subject matter.

E-commerce: Burberry

Luxury fashion brand Burberry staged the world's first digital fashion show in 3D.

This fashion show is also available online.

The company provides an online feature that allows users to move the models and the Burberry products.

By clicking the mouse, viewers are able to change angles and move in various direction, viewing the products in different angles or even zooming in.

Viewers can even purchase the items online simply my clicking on the item.

I think this idea is both innovative and brilliant.

It gives the 150 years old & well-established label a much needed boost in the 21st century.

According to Burberry's Creative Director Christopher Bailey:

"The objective is to get closer to people. I think that's what the web does, it makes the world very small. For example, we have a fashion show whether it's here in London or Milan, and maybe we get whatever, 1500 people come to that show. As soon as you live stream it, you're talking about millions of people. So all of the sudden you have to think in a different way, that 'now it's not just the industry. It's not just buyers, it's not just press, it's now the public.'"

Well-known fashion blogger "The Satorialist" was also hired to help Burberry with their site.

It allows trench coat lovers to upload pictures of themselves or others wearing their favorite trench coat from the British label.

This is definitely a successful innovative E-commerce example as Burberry saw a 24% increase in revenue in the first quarter of 2011.

Many other luxury brands, such as Marc Jacobs & DKNY, have also follow suit by upgrading their online sites to allow better interactivity with their users.

Twitter

@actcutemonster

Many of my friends are on Twitter but not me!

I always felt that it was too similar to Facebook status updates.

And that it was pretty 'lame' to keep blabbering about what I am doing constantly.

Eg: "What should I eat?" or "Chris is going to the loo now"

Since I have to write this blog post & due to peer pressure, I decide to give Twitter a chance.

& soon enough, I got hooked.

I realize twitter isn't just merely about twitting the random things we do.

Yes, many of us do that as well.

But we also tweet about many interesting things we see (news), or a new place we visit.

It also keeps us up to date with what's happening to our friends and even celebrities we like.

Twitter is also great for creating or enhancing business opportunities.

The basic logic is that if you have enough followers,

you can always send out info/messages to a large crowd instantly.

I, for one, follows ASOS.com on twitter.

So whenever they have a promotion (free shipping or sales), I will be informed.

I think this is very effective as many youngsters check their twitter much more often than their E-mails.

I am one of them!

Unlike Facebook status updates, only those we follow us get to see our tweets.

Similarly, we only get to see the tweets of those we follow (meaning you can ignore updates from people you don't really care to know about. Haha)

Also, we can choose to tag relevant people in our tweets.

Yes, you can do that on FB too, but the one thing that is very annoying on FB is that you get alerted whenever someone (even if you don't know them) comments on a thread you previously did.

However, Twitter and Facebook are not mutually exclusive.

We can now turn out tweets into FB status updates when u add a #fb at the end of the tweet.

Hope that piece of info helps those of you who doesn't know it yet. ^^

Social Media - Blogs

According to Wikipedia,

A Blog is a type of website or part of a website.

They are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries (like this one you are reading now), description of events, or other graphic materials.

Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.

Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.

If you are reading this now, I am sure you are no stranger to a blog and I certainly do not want to go into the boring technical details of blogging.

Instead, I would like to share my personal blog with you guys - actcutemonster.blogspot.com

If you do get a chance to visit my blog, you will realize that the color theme is the same as this blog. I selected this color theme based on the color theme of one of my favorite brands - Chanel.

As you would notice in my blog, there is a lot more pictures than text.

I feel that people nowadays have really short attention span and having more pictures will definitely make a blog more interesting.

Below is the market share of the various blogging sites in 2006.

However, ever since Google bought over blogger, it has expanded rather rapidly. There are also many new blogging websites that appear over the years.

Micro-blogging sites such as Twitter is definitely what is vogue now as it's popularity surpasses many of the more established blogging sites.

Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0

Main difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

Web 1.0	Web 2.0
One-way	Two-way
Authoritarian	Democratic
Passive	Active
Static	Dynamic
Closed	Collaborative

Web 1.0 is often too authoritarian and top-down.

They are websites that only allows you to 'Read-only'.

The best examples are the many static websites which appeared during the .com boom.

There's no active communication or informative flow from the web users to the web master

Web 2.0 is democratic and bottom-up.

Instead of the New York Times Web 1.0 site telling you what the important stories of the day were, Digg.com and Buzz.Yahoo.com shows the stories users have voted the most important.

Also, social networking sites like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook are also great examples of Web 2.0 sites.

As you can see from the diagram above, webmasters and user interaction no longer depends on direct means of communication.

A whole new system of social interaction is created using simple syndication, such as RSS feeds.

Web 1.0 sites are usually static and are rarely updated (except for news sites),

but Web 2.0 sites are dynamic and change constantly,

reflecting the inputs of the web users like you and I.

CNN : Uses both Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

CNN.com is one of the leading Web 1.0 news website in the world.

In order to catch up with times and allow for more interactivity, it now has a sister website - iReport.com

iReport.com allows web users to submit their videos to the site,

and CNN will then select some of these videos to be posted on the main website, CNN.com.

Introduction - Top 5 things I use on the Internet

Hi, to everyone reading this & Mr Abel Choy,

I'm Christopher and to start off my brand new blog about the internet, I will introduce you guys to the top 5 things I use most frequently on the internet.

No. 1 : Facebook

Yes, this should come as no surprise at all to many of you, especially those who know me. I am a Facebook addict.

I love to upload pictures of restaurant and yummy food that I eat wherever I go. I have 2 full albums of food currently and I definitely plan to keep it going. ^^

Facebook also enables me to keep track of what my friends are doing and be updated on their lives, usually through pictures they upload.

One great feature I like about Facebook is that it has a birthday alert.

Since most of my friends are on my Facebook list, I will be notified whenever one of their birthday is arriving.

No. 2 : YouTube

YouTube is wonderful!

I use it to watch all sorts of videos when I am bored.

There are movie trailers, funny videos, and even television series.

However, one of the bad things about watching television series on YouTube is that it is usually divided into many short videos (usually less than 10 mins each).

Also, due to copyright issues, many current US based television series or movies are not available on YouTube.

On the up side, YouTube videos tend to load faster than many other video viewing websites. ^^

No. 3 : Online Shopping

A few years ago, I was not a fan of online shopping as I prefer the feeling of going to a mall and browse for things I want to buy. I still do.

But ever since my friends introduce me to some of these online stores, I got hooked immediately. I guess one of the main reason is that they offer huge discounts for major labels at different times of the year.

Definitely cheaper than buying in our local stores.

ASOS (UK) and Nordstrom (USA) are one of the few websites I visit most often.

For those of you interested, do check it out some time.

You may just find the bag or shirt you wanted that is out-of-stock in the local stores. ^^

No. 4 : Windows Live Messenger

Windows Live Messenger is also a tool that I cannot live without.

I log on to it automatically whenever I switch on my laptop.

I chat with my friends on it, have group chat or webcam sessions with them too.

Since I am on my laptop most of the time when I am at home, it allows me to chat and catch up with many of my friends that I have no time to meet in person.

The best thing about such online messenger is that it allows me to reply at my own pace.

So I can be doing my work and chatting at the same time. ^^

No. 5 : G-Mail

Lastly, I use G-Mail for both work and personal matters.

It is almost impossible to live without an E-Mail account nowadays, especially for work.

In my case, I use it mostly for school work. It allows me to communicate more effectively with my peers or project group mates.

One thing I like about G-Mail is that it is relatively stable and has an enormous storage space. Almost unlimited.

However, I must admit that I do not enjoy opening my E-mail account sometimes as it always means that I have more work to do. =(