Future of Internet

Thurs marks the second last of Dr Choy's lecture. The future of the internet is unpredictable. We will always be surprised by the next innovation or invention.

Dr Abel showed us a video about a new invention by the Japanese: the umbrella that has internet.

I was thrilled and amused at the same the time by the invention. Japanese always come up with the quirkest innovations!

Anyway, internet would be so prevalent that using it would be almost at no cost, as long as you have the device to, whether it is a mobile phone, a tablet pc, a laptop, basically anything under the sun that allows one to log on to the network!

10 years down the road, information is going to be more transparent than ever because curbing or limiting information access by authorities have proved to be futile. People will grow to be more alike of one another because information are shared and exchanged.

10 years from now, internet will be intrusive into lives as we began to spend most part of our time surfing the internet. Socialising, entertainment, work, even playing sports may be done without even stepping out of the house. With the use of avatar and projected images, many of us will start to live and work more in the virtual world than the real world. Well, think of Bruce Wilis's surrogates!

Also, 10 years down the road, television and radio will be redundant. People will be too preoccupied with the net to devote any attention to other 'old' media.

Social Networking and Online community

Just recently, Dr Abel showed us this video introducing the origins of facebook. Can't believe the founder of facebook is only a couple of years older than i am. Yes, reality hurts. oh well, my aim now is to score well for COM125 and bring up my GPA! :)

Apart from digressing.... Initially, facebook started as a social networking site for harvard university undergraduates and slowly expanded to the rest of the world. Though facebook is already 6 years, the hype over this application has not die down, well, not yet maybe. Unlike its 'predecessors' like friendster, facebook has seen a surge in overall usage just over the first quarter of 2010.

According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008.^[137] ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 132.1 million unique visitors in June 2008, compared to MySpace, which attracted 117.6 million

The web-site's ranking is now 2nd in terms of worldwide traffic and is 1st in terms of photo uploading with 14 million uploaded daily.

By 2005, the use of Facebook had already become so ubiquitous that the generic verb "facebooking" had come into use to describe the process of browsing others' profiles or updating one's own.

The success of facebook could be attributed to the fact that socialising is crucial part of people's life. It is thrilling to know that friends that you have not met for a long time have suddenly added you on facebook. Also, it is surprising to know many of us have common friends, which we probably was unbeknownst to. Also, facebook has been improving itself over the past few years such as tying up with other zynga game networks to come up with games like cafe world and farmville that got many users addicted too. unfortunately, i used to be a facebook addict, logging on the website every now and then.

Also, facebook's stylish and user-friendly outlook appeals to the crowd.

Recently, it has also be announced that facebook is one of the most used search services in the world. Facebook saw search queries grow 10 percent in February 2010 and surpassed Google in the United States to become the most visited Website for the week ending March 13, according to studies from leading market researchers. comScore said search queries on Facebook grew from 395 million in January 2010 to 436 million in February 2010, a growth of 10 percent. This pales in comparison to Google's 13.4 billion queries for the same period, but search on the leading social network site is spiking.

It seems like the craze over facebook is still ongoing. Some of my friends even made facebook as their homepage! Personally, i am logging on to facebook from about thrice a week to as frequent as thrice a day!

So, how often do you visit the facebook?

Multimedia and Entertainment

Multimedia is the new synonym for marketing communications. With the enhancement of visual and audio aids such as animation, still images and the click of the mouse for interactivity, companies have found more effective ways to reach out to their target audiences, imagining a myriad of creative ways to advertise their products, presenting information on its special features in ways the masses would never have seen before.

Providing a multi-sensory and multi-dimensional world that a potential customer can immerse himself into, the multimedia is the crux to interpersonal, relational advertising, bestowing a higher level of informed decision-making on the customer.

I am the most impressed with Samsung’s method of using multimedia to market communications. For one, they promote Samsung not as yet another electronics brand but as a lifestyle; as an experience to behold. For example, in their website targeted at an American audience, it features an interactive exhibition of rotating LCD screens, developed in collaboration with the Parsons School of Design, presenting curated exhibits on New York related themes and personalities.

Customers can also create and send a personalised postcard online, discover how Samsung products work and try them out within the context of everyday life. Samsung’s concept is to engage with visitors, rather than sell to them. The environment, wholly designed by Imagination, has retail design cues, but it is not a store. Since its opening in 2004, it has also been used as an event space for product launches and press conferences. I feel that this is very effective in attracting an informed market who is probably sick and tired of having salesmen extoll the virtues of Samsung products. This alternative method of avoiding the explicit in-your-face advertising and focusing on ensuring an enjoyable customer experience in the Samsung world is much better.

Internet changing the world of journalism

Journalism has now reached another level with the high usage of blog and other internet services.

One of the most commonly used online journalism is stomp.sg

This website constantly updates its site (RSS feed) with juicy news. This news websites are generally popular and hence, attracted many regulars. One distinction between e-journalism and the traditional one is that e- articles encourages feedback. Readers are free to comment and respond to the article, unlike those of the traditional newspaper, which is a one way communication tool.

Also, e-journalism is quick and convenient. For both the journalist and the consumers. Uploading of information is fast and quick, and readers are able to read it almost instantaneously. On the other hand, traditional newspaper still requires publishing and transporting it to the vendors.

The heavy usage of internet by city-goers today is a contributive factor to the surge in e-journalism. People have easy access to website like yahoo, google, and these websites usually post the top news for the country in the homepage. Hence, every breaking news would be at our fingertips just with a click of the mouse! See, how convenient news reading is now. There is no need to even dirty our hands by flipping through those large recycled papers!

Another point that i want to bring up is that e-articles are generally less formal. Well, i suppose it is due to the nature of the medium? Such informality actually appeals to the readers and hence increases its readership. However, i feel that this point is subjective. :)

Nonethless, we should note that Singapore is still a rather conservative country. E-journalism, to our dismay, is only available and limited to certain issues. Even websites like stomp.sg or razortv network only discusses on social, 'people' issues, less emphasis is put on 'political' or 'economic', in other words, the more serious topics.

Hence, there is still a boundary to where e-journalism can go, nonetheless, i do agree that internet news and reporting would be a bigger phenomenon in the years to come!

Security on the Internet: to trust or not? (Part Two)

Singapore has begun coming up with cyber laws since 1993. In general, Most of the provisions of the Computer Misuse Act carry a maximum fine up to $10,000 Singaporean dollars and/or imprisonment up to three years for a first offense. For the second and subsequent offenses, the penalty is a fine up to $20,000 Singaporean dollars and/or imprisonment up to five years. If there was damage caused as a result of the crime, the penalty is a fine up to $50,000 and/or imprisonment up to seven years. If the crime involved a threat to Singapore’s security, or to the banking or other financial, communications, or transportation industries, or to public services including utilities, safety, police, civil defense, or medicine, the penalty is a fine up to $100,000 Singaporean dollars and/or imprisonment up to 20 years.

A continuation of the previous post where i talked about the misuse of internet on social internet tools like msn messenger, facebook etc. The focus is now brought to a commonly made offense that has been undermined, that is unauthorised access to computer material.

A different kind of unauthorised access to computer networks is involved in the activity of “mooching” or “piggybacking” on an unsecured wireless network. Although prosecutions for this kind of activity are rare in Asia and indeed globally, Singapore already has a reported case. In March 2007, it was reported that a 17-year-old who piggybacked on his neighbour’s wireless Internet connection in order to engage in online chatting was sentenced to 18 months’ probation in the District Court.

Mooching does not seem like a harmful act but it does, infringes people's rights and is a form of cheating because basically you are using somebody's connection without paying nor permission. Such act do not appear to be serious and is an inevitable offence by the offender. This comes to a question of how serious should the punishment be should a older person be convicted of such crime? After reading this article, i must be more careful when my laptop is connected to a WLAN network, whether its mine, or has my laptop accidentally been 'mooching' on other networks.

Food for thought: Are you one of those who are sub-consciously committing this offence?

Security on the Internet: to trust or not? (Part One)

There are a lot of cyber crimes - crimes that occur online in the world. To name a few, internet card fraud, unauthorized access to confidential material, cyberstalking and harassment.

As mentioned in the earlier entries, i started using online chat programs like mirc when i was primary 4. Fortunately, i have an older sister to guide me and taught me to use false identity and must not divulge any personal details to anybody online. I'm thankful i did not fall into the hands of internet cheaters.

However, i realise that anyone, is gullible to such internet predators.

This happened 2 years ago on our sunny island, it has been reported that a 24-year-old undergraduate was sentenced to 27 months in prison for stealing the MSN instant messenger identities of several women, using these to assume their identities to chat with other people on their contact lists, and doctoring pictures by superimposing the heads of some of the women on naked bodies. He further threatened to make public the image of one victim unless she sent him photos of her breasts. The offender faced nine charges under the CMA and one charge of criminal intimidation, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced in January 2007.

My skin just cringed upon reading this article. It means that chatting on MSN with people you 'supposedly' know aren't trustable because you cannot guarantee the person on the other end is really your friend.

Cybercrime has become more prevalent as social networking websites (facebook, myspace) become more pervasive in our society. There may come a day where there will be full-time law enforcers, policemen and investigators on cyber crimes. Oh my, what has happened to those days where people don't even have to lock their house doors?

I guess if we are more cautious of what we type online, and to set ourselves some limits to information sharing, that should keep us away from becoming preys to such online predators.

On a lighter note, i would like to end this entry with a video.

We the NETIZENS of singapore. Pledge ourselves as one united community.

The Singapore government warned that “persistently political” websites would be required to register with the Government and be subject to the same restrictions as political party websites.

Far from having a chilling effect on local “blogosphere” (the community of blogs), many bloggers simply ignored the directive. Numerous blogs sprang to action to cover the elections, discussing many issues which the Government-controlled mainstream media had omitted. Mobile phone videos of almost every opposition rally were uploaded to video sharing site YouTube and cross-posted on blogs, despite a controversial law which bans “party political” videos in Singapore.

Local humour writer mrbrown created a series of digital audio recordings, dubbed “persistently non-political podcasts”, in a spoof of the minister’s warning. His podcasts used everyday Singaporean experiences to poke fun at various players in the election, particularly the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP). One clip after the election results featured a student boasting to his friends that he scored 66.6% in his examinations. That figure was the percentage of the popular vote that the PAP had garnered, and which the mainstream media had proclaimed was a decisive victory. However, inSingapore’s highly competitive academic culture, a score like that would be considered mediocre at best.

Some were surprised that the Government did not take any action against these law-breaking bloggers. After all, this was a government that had always enforced laws that they enacted, especially those oriented towards managing political dissent.

The Singapore Government had earlier said that as part of their efforts to promote the use of the Internet to the country’s economic advantage, it would adopt a “light touch” towards regulating online content. So far, this promise has been largely kept. There have been only three Singaporeans who have been publicly hauled in for material posted on the Internet. All had posted offensive remarks about other ethnic groups or religions — a taboo in multi-racial Singapore. To date, no Singaporean has got in trouble for posting dissenting political views. This is despite the fact that most political expression on the Internet is critical of the Government (One PAP MP, Denise Phua, put the figure at 85%).

Some have attributed the lack of enforcement to the inability of the Government to find violators who use pseudonyms to cloak their identity. This is a mistaken assumption, as the “racist” bloggers — all of whom used pseudonyms — would attest. Nevertheless the sheer number of bloggers makes it impractical to hunt down every one of them.

Paradoxically, humourist mrbrown was fired as a columnist from mainstream newspaper Today for an article that sarcastically declared that Singaporeans were “fed up with success”. Among other things,mrbrown had criticised Singapore’s high cost of living. Such an article would not have raised an eyebrow had it been posted online. The Government was signalling a different treatment for political expression online and in the mainstream media (To be exact, the Government did not sack mrbrown. The information minister’s press secretary merely wrote a strongly-worded letter to the newspaper’s editor. The signal, however, couldn’t be clearer).

The Government’s rationale is not hard to guess: The traditional media reaches out to a far larger audience than the Internet, even in a highly-wired society like Singapore. Mainstream English newspapers The Straits Times and Today have a combined daily readership of over 1.7 million, while even the most popular local socio-political websites are each visited by no more than 9,000 readers a day. After factoring in television and the vernacular press, it is clear that the mainstream media has a commanding mindshare of voting citizens.

To differentiate society’s level of acceptance of the news from the mainstream media and the Internet-based media, the Government has attempted to portray the latter as irrational and unreliable compared to the former. In a speech to international journalists in October 2006, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong charged that the Internet “enables clever propaganda, inflammatory opinions, half-truths and untruths to circulate freely and gain currency”.