The future of internet

I can't imagine what the future will be like - especially when it comes to the internet. The Internet changed everyday life in our society. It has created new ways for us to connect with friends and family or altered the way we do business.

Based on what I have blogged for the past few months, I am personally looking forward to the improvement of augmented reality apps and devices. Future technology such like Google Glass have been piquing my curiosity. I feel that anything related to augmented reality will be a huge success because it doesn't play so much with your mind and you can still differentiate from 'real' reality.

If I had to venture a guess on what the future of the internet will be like:

• We'll see Internet capability in more devices and products
• Networking coverage will increase
• Wireless networks will act as the primary access point for most devices

It is basically the same pattern from the last few years. We always hope for better connection and all that. On the other hand, it becomes increasingly possible to imagine that privacy becomes obsolete as our technology progresses. 

As we move to a mobile, social and pervasive Internet, we may see our private information become part of the public record. What if everyone managed to get their own pair of those Google glasses, you could use that same pair of glasses and Internet connection to look up information about someone standing near you. What if I'm about to meet someone you'd like to date. You decide to see what this person is like, so you provide a quick command to take a look at whatever information the Internet has on this person. 

Through facial recognition software and a connection to the Internet, you have instant access to public information about your interest, including any social networks he or she might belong to. It all appears in a cloud around the person and soon you know his or her interests, opinions and even relationship status. This is just food for thought: It's scary to imagine all of that but it's not entirely impossible. 

Power of Internet for Politics

The internet is not all about fun, even the serious stuff is included. Yes, politics is part of the serious stuff. When it comes to the combination of politics and the internet, President Obama's presidential campaigns will come to mind - even without going through what was covered in class.

Many people attributed Obama’s success in 2008 directly to his Internet strategy, and the New York Time noted that his campaign’s use of YouTube and Facebook changed the face of American politics. He received high coverage for his methods of promoting/marketing himself through the use of social media to reach a wider audience. That, in the end, became tremendous help towards him becoming America's current president.

Many people try to avoid politics because they feel that it's not their main concern and whatever the government does has little effect on their everyday lives. However, that is not true. It is important for us to keep track with current affairs and also, what is going in politics. The decisions made in politics will have some impact on the people - especially the younger generation.

Double thumbs up to his campaign team for knowing their stuff:

His team understood how useful and efficient the Internet is and along with the social media aspect, it will elevate the campaign to a whole new level. Obama dominated the social media space because his team understood how to get the internet to work its full magic. The real power of social media is not dependent on "the number of posts or Tweets but in user engagement measured by content spreadability".

For example, Obama logged twice as many Facebook “Likes” and nearly 20 times as many re-tweets as Romney. With his existing social media base and spreadable content, Obama had a much bigger reach.

Obama changed the way elections were run and how it will in the future. He and his team showed the power of social media and technology and more importantly, that individuals could make a difference if given the right tools and support. The campaign itself demonstrated the power of the Internet to get people engaged in the process on a scale never done before.

Citizen Journalism

The internet itself turned out to be a very interesting entity. With its existence, a lot of things are starting to change. One profession that is starting to shape in a different way is journalism. As technology keeps getting more advanced, journalism starts to branch out more. This is where the rise of citizen journalism emerges.

Citizen journalism refers to any type of news gathering and reporting -- writing and publishing articles about a newsworthy topic, or posting photographs or video of a newsworthy event. This is done by members of the public rather than the professional news personnel.

Back in the day, professional journalists were the only ones who had access to the technology to publish their work to a large audience. If someone wanted to contribute to the news, that person could write in to the editor or pass around a homemade publication through the mail.

Today, anyone can share newsworthy information and opinions as long as you are equipped with a laptop and a decent internet connection.

The whole idea about citizen journalism has been controversial: what does it mean to be a "professional" journalist if everyone is a journalist? The argument is that real journalists adhere to certain standards like fact checking, naming sources, searching out opinions on both sides of an issue and avoiding libelous statements. You don't necessarily need to have a degree in journalism or carry credentials to practice these principles, but publishing a personal opinion about anything does not necessarily make you a journalist.

In my own opinion, I feel that citizen journalism has been and still is a great help to the news community. One of the driving forces behind citizen journalism is that mainstream media are not the exclusive center of knowledge on a subject. The audience knows more collectively than the reporter alone. It's great that there are more people getting involved - people who actually know about stuff get to communicate.

There are pros and cons to everything and citizen journalism is no exception. Looking on the bright side, citizen journalism allows you to include more people, more voices and other stories from different points of view.

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

When I heard about augmented reality (AR) in class, I suddenly remembered about this Google Japan commercial I saw a few years back - which I felt that it could show how augmented reality work in a way.

Back then, I thought the whole concept was very interesting and fresh because you would be able to try on your favorite clothes without even leaving your home - but also provided that you had a projector and a huge screen. Now, we are starting to have augmented reality applications on our mobile phones! There is a surge in the number of upcoming augmented reality apps and I would like to introduce 2 AR apps that might come in handy for you:

1. Snapshot Showroom

You might not love to shop, but there will be a day when you will need to think about purchasing a decent couch. This app called Snapshop Showroom allows users to view how and what potential furniture may look like in the comfort of their living room, kitchen or any other desired area of their home.

Once you capture an image of the desired room you wish to furnish, you can quickly browse and place items (chairs, lamps, beds, tables, etc.) from the likes of retailers like IKEA. Users are able to resize the furniture, reposition it in the virtual environment and experiment with various patterns and color combinations until they find the right fit for the setting. The furniture can be directly purchased within the app - which means it can save you the trouble of making a trip down to the physical store.

2. Lookator

Since all of us do own a piece of gadget, we often face the trouble of needing Wi-fi when we get out of the house (especially when we don't want to waste money on data). What makes Lookator a useful app is that it helps to search and find Wi-Fi networks without any hassle.

Once the app is installed, users merely need to launch it, hold their gadget up, and view directions to the nearest hotspots using constantly updated vector-based models. Directions will lead you to a better signal, even if they’re not fully accurate and on top of that, Lookator presents every available network’s signal strength and whether the desired network is protected by a password.

The app also enables users to search crowdsourced data for quality networks just outside their mobile device’s selective range. Finding a place with free Wi-Fi has never been easier than this.

These are a few of the many AR apps that might change how we see things in real life. Technology is getting really fascinating with such apps - especially when it is a great help in our way of life.

Internet security

Long time no see! It's time for an update and this time I'll be talking about phishing and provide the guidelines to prevent you from ending up in that situation.

If you still have no clue, we pronounce phishing like how we say the word "fishing" and no, this is not the virtual version of the hobby that we know of.

This type of "fishing" is the act of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as passwords and credit card details (and sometimes money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

It’s an automated way which is used by Internet criminals to extract sensitive information from both individuals and businesses, often through the method of impersonating legitimate websites.

The potential for high rewards (such as gaining access to bank accounts and credit card numbers), the ease of sending forged email messages impersonating legitimate authorities, and the difficulty law enforcement has in pursuing the criminals has resulted in a surge of phishing attacks. It has affected a lot of people and resulted in the loss of a colossal sum of money.

Most of the time phishing attacks occur through e-mails. These e-mails are designed to resemble as though they came from legitimate businesses such as financial institutions (which is the most common one) and many others. This phishing emails contains a link, and upon clicking that link, the recipient is taken to a website that looks exactly like the real and legitimate website.

How do you prevent phishing?

1. Protect yourself against spam
2. Communicate personal information through the phone or secure websites
3. Do not click on anything from unknown sources
4. Beware of links in emails that ask for your personal information
5. Beware of pop-ups!

These 5 tips should be helpful enough in preventing you from giving out any sort of personal information. Always stay vigilant about such things because people like you spend so much time on the internet and on their devices.

Internet tools

Since we are supposed to make a video for this entry, I've decided to film some snippets of my post-birthday outing last night. This entry is quite late because I couldn't think of anything to film. Luckily, there were some celebrations going on for my birthday. My Macbook has been with me for over 2 years and this is the first time I am using iMovie. However, I can't say that I haven't had any experience with video production - given that I have tried working on Windows Media Player on my previous laptop.


COM125 from Aimee on Vimeo.

It isn't much but I hope you will enjoy watching this amateur and shaky piece of work :D

E-learning

E-learning is starting to emerge on its own right now. I remember I was in Secondary 1 when I had my first contact with e-learning. That happened during the SARS period. Students were all stuck at home and I guess my school decided to go with the e-learning method so we would not miss out on our day-to-day learning. In my own opinion, I felt that the whole e-learning experience was a massive failure simply because this method was something new to both the school and us students. The school did not fully utilize the portal and also, the teachers didn’t really go through the work with us in the end. After that, the portal wasn’t used very often when I last checked.

The second time I met up with e-learning was when I entered poly. My poly was keen on us getting our own laptops as its specialized problem-based learning was partially dependent on the whole idea of e-learning. Various forms of digital tools were being used in our lessons. As a communication student, it was superbly useful in my own learning. I picked up on certain techniques or concepts much faster with the use of e-learning.

With e-learning, there is the question of virtual classroom vs physical classroom:

What exactly is a virtual classroom? Basically a virtual classroom is an online learning environment. The environment can be web-based and accessed through a portal. The teacher and students are logged into the virtual learning environment at the same time. It's pretty similar to a real classroom since both teacher and students have to be present. Students can participate through video streaming and produce their own questions in the forum.

I am generally fine with e-learning. There are definitely advantages on using e-learning and being present in a virtual classroom.

However, I wouldn't prefer being in a virtual classroom over a physical classroom. Being well-aware of my capabilities, I am more suitable to be in a physical classroom. I have this tendency to not understand certain things and it might even be possible that I might get misunderstood if I post questions but frame it in my own way - in which the teacher or other students will interpret it according to their understanding. Thus, I would prefer to be in a real classroom and have a one-on-one interaction with the teacher or classmates.

E-commerce

Given that technology is constantly advancing, it is no secret that e-business is starting to become very prominent in the market. People, like you and me, are shopping very frequently online, which leads to increasing sales figures over time.

Take for example, Amazon owns about 10% of the e-commerce market and other retailers like Apple and Walmart own another 10% of the pie. The costs associated with virtual retail are comparatively low, so ultimately it becomes easier to turn a profit selling online than offline. Companies such as Everlane are making use of the online platform to sell their products instead of depending on opening physical stores.

Here are 6 simple ways on how to be successful in the e-commerce market:

1. Understand your customer.

The question to ask is why do they go to the competitor's store instead of ours?

2. Sell products consumers want to buy. 

Once you understand your customers, be sure to sell products that meet their needs. Watch for upcoming trends. But remember that once a product is a best seller, you’ve probably already missed that trend.

3. Do not play Wally with your customers.

It is important to be found by your customers. One good way is to invest in search engine optimization, advertising, blogging, social media, and other marketing activities to drive qualified traffic to your online store. Always be sure to diversify your traffic sources so you can direct the traffic towards your site.

4. Personalize every customer interaction. 

You can start by using first names in every email promotion. Strive to deliver a unique shopping experience within the capabilities of your ecommerce platform. Build a solid community through social media, events, or other online activities. Participate in conversations wherever your target customers are.

5. Fresh content. 

Refresh your content, post seasonal messaging and offers, provide timely insights, and provide incentives for return visitors to your stores. Consider seasonal themes around your store to give it a fresh look.

6. Always think mobile. 

Shopping online is already a huge thing. The next biggest thing will be mobile websites and apps because these few will be where consumers end up shopping in the future. Go mobile now. Most smartphone owners already use those devices to shop online.

These are a few ways to get some success with e-commerce. Start with one or two and see how things work out!

The future of social networking

We are all familiar with social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. I am sure that you, the reader, have a comprehensive knowledge at the back of your hand. As much as we are enjoying the accompaniment of these sites right now, other companies are building new ones because we know these trends will fade away in the near future (like Friendster and myspace).

Let me introduce you to an upcoming social networking site:

My sister recommended Tinder to me because she mentioned that there is a lot of hype among her friends at the moment. Even though Tinder is known to be an online dating application, it can also be used as a platform to get to know new people and make friends. Basically, Tinder gathers users' basic information by using their Facebook profiles and analyzes each user's social graph to match potential candidates that are likely to be compatible based on their geographical location, number of mutual friends and common interests.

Oddly enough, this app allows people to judge each other at face value. Whether someone approaches your profile or not solely depends on looks (as they only see your picture). It is not entirely detailed like how you stalk other people's Facebook profiles and find out things like which schools they attend or what music do they like.

Why is it so appealing? The creators have designed the app to make rating faster and also, in a more subtle way. Instead of tapping on the big red "X" to pass over someone, users can simply flick the photo aside, as if the person has been dismissed by a wave of the hand. Users get to know if people they find "cute" will like them back. You won't have that fear of suffering the agony of rejection. Since Tinder often shows people at random, you could come up with the excuse that a handsome or beautiful stranger has not liked you back because they haven't come across your photo. I guess in a way, you will find out what kind of people you tend to attract.

It is a refreshing idea for the social networking scene. You could say that Tinder is like a guilty pleasure app. Aside from the fun you may get from using this app, please be wary of who you make friends with through this application. Some people might not appear who they are in the pictures. 

Social Media

Social media is all the rage right now. There is no way you have no idea what social media is, unless you've been living under a rock with your Friendster account. Social media comes in different forms, as you can see from the image below. You have your microblogs, networking sites, content communities and the list goes on. I am pretty sure that we will be seeing more new ones every single month.

Of course, we can't say that all existing social media sites are meaningful or useful. If I had to pick a favorite social media, it would probably be Youtube. I've been visiting the site since '07 and I am still not sick of it.

As I recall, Youtube used to be a site where people can upload videos. No one would ever thought that it can turn into this massive and influential community. I love how this video-sharing website became our one-stop center for anything – tutorials for learning a new language or how to cook a certain recipe, beauty, music, gaming etc.

Majority of people can only pay attention to visuals more than text these days. This is probably why Youtube is still appealing to the masses and also why the Youtube community keeps growing. We don’t have to spend money to subscribe to cable television when all we need is Wifi, type in something of our interest (sneezing panda/dramatic chipmunk!/random music video) and tadaaaaah! Instant entertainment.

You could say that it is like the ‘television’ of our generation. Television itself isn't dying yet but given that most of us are always hanging around our laptops and computers, we tend to turn to Youtube as an easy access for entertainment. Due to this fact, television stations such as Korea’s KBS World has started to upload full episodes of their variety shows and drama serials on their official channel. With everyone being able to gain access to the Internet, Youtube videos have the ability to reach to a wider audience without any geographical boundaries. Anyone can watch the same thing and share comments/thoughts with those who share the same interests as them. It can become a space where you can relate to others or laugh at the same stupid video content. If we feel nostalgic and decided to watch old school music videos, they are there too!

This video perfectly sums up how insanely huge (and fun) the current Youtube community is:

If you have your own comments/opinions on the Youtube rewind vid, why not join these teens in this Teens React vid:

Sure, there will be pros and cons to social media but I personally feel that social media has assisted us tremendously to how we receive entertainment and it clearly shows the shift in our source of televised entertainment as current technology continues to evolve further. That's my take on social media. I hope you had (some) fun reading this entry and do enjoy the weekend!

In-tra-net

Hello everyone! This blog is specially set up for one of my communication modules in school. Please bear with some of the dry or incoherent content but I will try to lighten it up with visual aids :)

I have been using the Internet for most of my life. When the question of “what is the internet” suddenly popped up, my mind just went blank right away. Before this module, the Internet simply served as a tool for me to gain access to a multitude of websites. I have never given much thought to the Internet as something that I have to learn about. It is like why do you need to know the theory when you’re already familiar with the practical. Most of us know how to use it, but we don't really know the mechanics behind it.

Instead of boring you with facts about the Internet, I would like to look into this little something called the intranet. It really stood out to me because it can be only used within an organization and "others" outside of that organization will not be able to use the internal network. I became curious about the use of the intranet. Why can't organizations use the internet like the rest of us?

So what exactly is the intranet? 



It is a term for a batch of private computer networks within an organization. Intranet itself uses standard network technologies (such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi or even web servers) to serve as a tool to “facilitate communication between people or work groups to improve the data sharing capability and overall knowledge base of an organization's employees.” It basically isolates itself from the general internet base. An organization's intranet includes Internet access but is protected by firewalls so that its computers cannot be reached directly from those on the outside.

The basic intranet package would consist of your own internal email system and a message board service. If you want the comprehensive package, it includes the databases containing company news, documents, forms, and personnel information on top of the basics. As more features are added, an intranet can become essential to the operation of an organization. It eventually becomes a portal that provides access to all the things employees need. Because of the fact that the intranet is protected by firewalls and by the need to log on with a secure password, employees working outside the organization are only able to access the intranet by using a virtual private network, also known as VPN in short.

Why do we need the intranet?

It all boils down to one main purpose: time! As you know, time is money. The intranet has the special ability to save you, your colleagues and superiors' precious time. Organizing your documents, information, data and other digital media in ways that can be found quickly is a tremendous benefit that any organization can use in a jiffy. We do not have to spend late nights to recreate something that has already been done before. Matters regarding a client or a special project can be referenced in an accessible manner. When an employee leaves, the knowledge, data and documents created by that person will stay within the virtual and physical walls of the organization. What happens in the organization, stays in the organization.

Here are 5 ways on how the intranet can improve the way we work:

1. Allows documents to be stored by categories 
2. Keeps project history with files, documents and many others in one place 
3. Limits information access to those who need to see it 
4. Encourages collaboration between different teams in the organization 
5. Provides employees with portals to keep track of their projects, meeting schedules and many more 

So there you go! It is not entirely meaningless to learn about the intranet. Sooner or later, you will find that the intranet takes on a whole different meaning from the internet itself once you enter the working world. In a way, I suppose organizations have their own secrets and the intranet is a useful tool for them to keep the outsiders/business spies away.