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.