Online persona

I remember 'ages' ago when some people were criticized for being shy and insecure in reality but when they are on the Interent, they completely transformed into this confident and talkative perons. Well, i think these criticism are still there, even after all those year of internet popularity. But why do we think it is a problem? Is it because many of us still seems to think that what goes on online are to be unreal? I think it is a wrong way of looking at it. Because
really, even offline, our personalities change depending on the circumstances we are in. We act differently toward different people, so why should it be any different online?
For example, you think you are smart, articulated, and humourous. But if you are in a foreign country where people don't speak your language, it wouldn't matter how articulate you'll be. It'll be difficult to remain in your usual personality. So really, Internet is just another 'context different from the one we call reality'. Your change of personality online is only natural. If you are shy in reality, and outgoing online, then I don't think it is something to be criticzed, because Internet is just one of the many different circumstance, situation, etc. which we encounter that cause us to react differently. Just like "reality".

Downloadable music vids

A friend put me on to this site a while ago and I thought it was worth sharing: www.kobravideos.com

It's a site where you can download new music videos (mostly rap vids) through different methods; You can download the clips either through a torrent client (like Azureus), through an irc client (like Mirc), or by simply searching "kobra" on a peer-to-peer program like Kazaa or Limewire. I won't try and explain what torrents and irc are exactly cos I'd be here for a while, but the Kobra site has a FAQ and links explaining torrents and irc in more detail.

The clips are in the .mpeg format and using the right software you can burn them onto DVD or VCD to play on your TV (I use Toast 6 to burn CDs/DVDs). The quality of the clips are pretty good - not as good as watching them on C4 or Juice - but definitely good enough to watch them. The file sizes vary from 40 - 80 megabytes and you can fit roughly 80 clips on one DVD.

Advertising and Product Placement

Since the idea of product placement was mentioned in the video games lecture, I think I've suddenly become more aware of things around me. I went to watch the Island last weekend and couldn't help pick up quite a few: Xbox, Aquafina, MSN search, and Puma clothes. But most of these were real blatant placements as there are big signs of Xbox flashing as they play a game, and the MSN search is just so obvious.

I found a few sites which have picked up other examples of product placement. One of them is www.productplacement.com which explains it as "Product placement stands alone as the only form of advertising with a diminishing cost per thousand (CPM). Once the product is in the film, it is there forever, delivering impressions and media values in perpetuity." Then you can search the site for different examples of product placement in different movies which I found pretty cool.

On other websites I noticed a few placements that I missed such as Ben & Jerry's ice cream, the apple logo, the Cardillac CIEN (of course that's because I don't know too much about cars), Calvin Klein, and a Mactruck( http://www.bertelsen.ca/100/review-the-island-movie ). On the same site you find some comments at the bottom, even some really crude ones about the guy who wrote the review being an 'anti-capitalist' for saying that the product placement was too blatant.

I just find it amusing to realise that we don't notice all these products, and yet it affects us. Many people believe that this blatant use affects us negatively, and then you have those who don't even see it. Sometimes I wonder if these messages are subliminal. Of course I don't agree with that in the Island as it was quite obvious. How much is advertising taking over our worlds? Or how much has it taken over our world already? We live in a world of brands and logos in everything we do: the clothes we wear, the stationary we use, domestic things we use such as toothpaste, our cars... There are moments when I agree with other theories which say that the media is just a method that is used to aid the elite and take from the others. Most of what we see today is advertising. I remember learning that even on the news, most of the serious stuff only gets 15 minutes of the 1 hour, and that about 15 minutes is taken by advertising, and a lot by sports and entertainment. I just hope we don't become slaves to advertising, but then perhaps some of us already are...

Lost

For all those fans of Lost who, like me, just can't wait for the next season and want to find out more http://www.oceanic-air.com/ is an excellent website. With an interface that resembles a real airline website, the more you click and push and experiment, especially with the so called "cursed" numbers, the further it leads you until you can finally reach a huge online forum that has literally thousands of entries and different people's theories on the show. Waving your cursor over certain texts will bring up diary-like entries and clicking on the seat plan will reveal small and somewhat confusing clips about each of the characters, generally confusing you even more, (well it confused me at any rate). The main problem with the site however is that unless you have broadband (I don't at home) it takes a very long time to load especially the season 2 trailer, which flicks through it at an excruciatingly slow pace, and you have to watch the trailer in order to get to the forums. However it is full of intriging details about the show and reveals several teasers that will have you hanging out for 2006.

Lost

For all those fans of Lost who, like me, just can't wait for the next season and want to find out more http://www.oceanic-air.com/ is an excellent website. With an interface that resembles a real airline website, the more you click and push and experiment, especially with the so called "cursed" numbers, the further it leads you until you can finally reach a huge online forum that has literally thousands of entries and different people's theories on the show. Waving your cursor over certain texts will bring up diary-like entries and clicking on the seat plan will reveal small and somewhat confusing clips about each of the characters, generally confusing you even more, (well it confused me at any rate). The main problem with the site however is that unless you have broadband (I don't at home) it takes a very long time to load especially the season 2 trailer, which flicks through it at an excruciatingly slow pace, and you have to watch the trailer in order to get to the forums. However it is full of intriging details about the show and reveal several teasers that will have you hanging out for 2006.

So why I weblog then…

*I get off on seeing my words in print; I feel my need to publish. I love the notion of leaving my words behind for myself/others to find out and enjoy.

*Blogging makes my online time rememberable.I spend a lot of time on the internet, hours a day all told reading for pleasure, information, knowledge, ect.. I'm reading more and enjoy more, and using my weblog to link to stuff I ve discovered in my suffing help to reduce my guilt about spending so much time online.

*My weblog is linked from several others, and theirs from mine. We got a sense of community, a community with a relative independence. I don't need to clutter someone's email box, and folks who know me well enough also know they can check out my blog to see if anything truly noteworthy in my mind. I was once been told that 'my friends, is why I weblog'.

That seeing someone talked about Weblog phenomenon......

That seeing someone talked about Weblog phenomenon, reminds me of Doc Searls, one of the deep thinkers in the blog movement, says: “it’s a matter of ‘and’ logic, not ‘or’ logic. Weblogs will inform old media. They eill increasingly be a source of information that traditional media will rely on.”

Firstly, because of the more interactive, less “mass media” nature of news Web sites,wblogs are a form of new medium that tends to address one of the weaknesses of traditional mass media – their inability to address a fragmenting market.

As a nature of Internet news dissemination, Weblogs take advantage of the Web’s capacity to update issues instantly, conferring advantages on both journalists and viwers.

Rather than use the Internet as a one-way, broad-cast-style or newspaper-like information distribution medium, bloggers use the Internet as a collaborative, fully interactive network that has the power to bring many voices together and weave them into a single web. Viewers are invited to “be the media,” and thus to challenge traditional definition of what counted as “news” as well as who qualified as a “journalist,” was very much consistent with the animating ethos of the Internet.

scoping out the world. . .

was looking to provide a little info of a site new to me, shown to me the other day by a friend from uni. a (what I thought to be) simple mapping site provided by google. then i vaguely remembered seeing a post from jules the other day that was much in the same. so i downloaded and checked out her sight:
http://earth.google.com/
it was basically what my friend had shown me, only to the 10th degree. loads of interesting features, as jules had pointed out.
initially the whole concept struck me as real interesting for the fact that my friend (who lives in ireland and goes to school at edinburgh) and myself (from michigan in the u.s.) could show exactly (literally exactly, with the aerial views provided) where we each lived. with its impressive zooming, we saw down to the very overview of my rooftop. and for him, to the canals that he has sailed; alternating between the google picture of the area to his own personal pictures of the canal’s sunset. amazing really.
we were just messing around with solely the map features, but as jules pointed out in her post, there is so much more to explore. literally so much, from pharmacies to bars and clubs to movie rental places in various areas found all over the world. definitely something to check out if you’re bored or want to be a bit more geographically cultured!

Technology, the Global South and Skipping Steps: Internet in Rwanda

Donna Haraway describes the cyborg as skipping the Marxist concept of original unity going straight to what lies beyond that. In Rwanda, with out doing the homework, they are doing the same thing. Rwanda is one of the poorest nations in the world and is attempting to become the most wired country in Africa. Most of the people in Rwanda are subsistence farmers but the government wants to insure that it doesn’t get left behind in the technological global world.
Passing by the complications; most Rwandan farmers can’t read, and the roads to get from the farms to the internet café are dirt and covered in pot holes and the schools that are supposed to receive the computers do not have electricity, the Rwandan government plans to get internet access to every part of the country.
Is the global community demanding that countries have internet access to be taken seriously? Is the internet going to be able to help Rwanda leap frog past a torn land of political unrest, grief and killing into a world player? Does this parallel to Castells theory that technology is creating a plane where small organizations can operate on the same level as large ones?

Listen to the news cast from NPR (National Public Radio, USA)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4800031

Technology and Ethics: Camera Phones

In addressing technology and ethics I am not concerned with whether or not we have gone too far. Answering that question should really be left up to the philosopher. I am addressing the ethical dilemmas that are raised by our growing inventions and increasing technological aptness.
My first example is concerning cell phones. Although there are many routes to travel from here, I am specifically citing cell phones with cameras, still and video. Is the convenience and fun that having a camera on a cell phone worth the real problem of dealing with secret photos? Peeping toms? Perverts? And every other bad intention that can be satisfied by this small, mobile, covert camera? The following link is for a news article from CNN. It highlights some of the convenient benefits and phenomena surrounding camera phones (like mo-blogs) as well as the security and privacy violations. This piece of technology has more than started new forms of discourse. It has started new types of laws as to where you can and cant bring your phone.

Link to news article

There are other aspects of technology and ethics that I would like to address in this blog, this one is just for starters. Send any comments this way – I’ll be sending more out.

Legal and free: Films from the archive

For years the music and filmindustry complained about the illegal downloads via the Internet. However, apart from 2nd hand trading through eBay and TradeMe the offer to "poor" people gets bigger and bigger by the day. It will be many years until we can download the latest Hollywood blockbusters but for those who love classic movies and don't want to spend money on old VHS tapes or DVD's (if available) there is an option.

First port of call for all filmfans online is the library of the Internet Archive. Hundreds of titles are already available, from Wild West to Zombie movies, slapstick comedies to action dramas. And only just recently one of the most wellknown movies has been added. More famous for its ridiculously cheap look, Plan 9 From Outer Space reached cult status amongst film buffs and even reached a more mainstream audience when Tim Burton made Ed Wood, a biopic on its director Ed Wood.

Fans of Vampire and Zombie movies also have the option to legally download The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the classic silent horror movie by the german director Robert Wiene in 1920. In addition Murnau's ultimate vampire movie Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) and also the first Hollywood movie about the living dead, White Zombie (1932) with Bela Lugosi and George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1967) are available. If you don't want to be scared, there are several romantic comedies, Wild West movies, Tarzan movies (seems to have been a genre in that time) and movies from the legendary Three Stooges.

How is this all possible? Simple, the copyrights of all those movies have expired and are now public domain. The Internet Archive is seeing itself as the modern equivalent of the Library of Alexandria which wants to archive knowledge aquired in the digital age. In addition to the film it also offers free music, text documents and the "Wayback Machine", a search engine looking through the archives of the world wide web.

Looking through the movies I noticed that the classic Hollywood movie Charade (1963) with Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn and Walter Matthau is available. This is only possible because of an error as the producers forgot to mark the copies of the film with the necessary copyright. For the sake of space and time I cannot indulge in explaining how copyrights or public domains work but I suggest looking through Wikipedia for Public Domain or Copyright.

The format available for the movies are usually in the broadband saving MP4 format, which still looks alright on a computer screen or the professional MPEG-2 format, which can be burned immediately onto a blank DVD.

The reason why I became interested in this subject was that I can freely distribute those films on DVD to friends and family and most importantly I can cut or mix those movies the way I want it. For example Dean Lachiusa made a "Survivor Cut" of Night of the Living Dead where he leshed out the story by adding a new beginning with a NASA launch, a flashback that adds backstory to the Johnny & Barb Cemetery experience, and well placed color during delicate scenes. Legally!! As soon as I have some editing skills on Final Cut Pro I will try to update Charade and cut it down to a 60min running time instead of its original 113min. Just imagine if "my" new updated version becomes succesful? I could legally pocket all the proceeds.

Keep it foolish!

MD

MD was invented during the 90s by Sony Company, but it did not enjoy its popularity at that time. Some specialists think that MD is one of the biggest failures in Sony’s products because compare to MP3, MD has complicated recording function, which could bring music fans lots of inconvenience. More significantly, its price is much higher than the ordinary MP3. However, I believe that MD is worthwhile for the high expense because for music fans, it enable them to enjoy long lasting music. The mini disk in MD could record music codes three times as large as ordinary CD. Its battery also allows MD to do 3 hours recording or 5 hours non-stop broadcasting task. Besides, MD also provides more different kinds of music environment for music fans. Its MZ-M10 and MZ-E10 version could create four sound environments. People are able to experience music either in the studio circumstance or lively. Or they could enjoy music in club and arena environments. Moreover, its superiority to MP3 is that people are able to change the genres of the music (heavy, pop, jazz or unique), according to their own interests. Also, compare to MP3, which is a simple recording and broadcasting machine, MD works as a mini studio. That is, people could edit music as well. MD enables music fans to cut parts of the music and paste them onto other music, so that people could make their own music, by using the same code. Probability just because of its advantages, it starts to become glaring in Asia recently.

Recommended listening: diggnation.com podcast

The tech news site digg.com has an accompanying weekly podcast. Catching up on the first few episodes has kept me happy on the trip to and from work this week. If you're not aware of it, digg.com is a social news site, i.e. there are no editors, users submit stories, and stories only get onto the main page based on the number of users that "digg" that story. It's been described as a kind of cross between the content of slashdot and the format of del.icio.us. The podcast provides a nice digest of current and interesting technoculture stuff. Don't expect deep and meaningful analysis. It's extremely light-hearted. The show is very American and pretty geeky (though easily accessible for non-geeks): shades of Bill and Ted but with Grand Theft Auto instead of Fender Strats ("dude, that's awesome!"). You can get the podcast (and even the videocast if bandwidth isn't an issue) directly from the diggnation.com site or if you have the new version of iTunes you can get it through the built-in Podcast directory.

In-Flight Peace and Quiet, thanks to computers

When we think of on-board computers on aircraft we normally think of a small computer in the cockpit that aids the aircraft in GPS navigation or the laptop computer that the pushy businessman in Business Class is using. However there are computers in other places too, places you wouldn't even think of - inside the sides of the aircraft; that is between the cabin wall and the outer shell of the aircraft to measure the vibration caused by the engines and feed it back into a computer that actually matches and thus counteracts propeller-vibration making for a quieter cabin. In other words on-board computers "mirror" the noise that is caused by propeller driven aircraft. So far it has seen very successful use on the Bombardier Dash 8 series of aeroplanes and for Saab Aircraft of Sweden. Visit http://www.ultraquiet.com/ for an interactive demonstration of their leading aircraft technology.

Robots to have the sense of touch?

I didn't want to fill up Kevins blog entry with a fifth comment so decided to post this as a seperate entry, thought it was interesting considering what was covered in todays lecture:

An article in the Herald on a new kind of human like skin that give robots the sense of touch... wonder what senses will be available to them next?

i found this part of the article particularly interesting: "it will be possible in the near future to make an electronic skin that has functions that human skin lacks by integrating various sensors not only for pressure and temperature, but also for light, humidity, strain, or ultrasonic,"

Article

http://www.nrl.com
I like the idea that National Rugby League has a dedicated site bringing every bit of information possible under the sun about the game. I'm a massive league fan, watching and playing and this site has alot of features that I think New Zealand could develop from with regards to the tri-nations and NPC. If I miss a game due to work, or if it isn't televised live I can go to the site and check it out with live updates. These updates mimic the NBA updates (http://www.nba.com) in that it isn't just text based commentary that you might find on the usual cricket sites, but a detailed list showing you everything from the simple stats as in try scorers, goal kicks, score and time, but every single player has his own line of stats such as tackles, tackle breaks, missed tackles, hitups, metres gained, try assists, kicks in play, offloads, dummy half runs and errors (even his season and last five game averages). It even shows the conditions of the ground surface and weather at the venue. These are just the game day stats aswell, you can do player comparisons, ie If you want to see how Stacey Jones is going compared to Andrew Johns for this Saturday nights game you can click on player stats under statitistics and directly compare the two in almost every category imaginable.

I think this is quite amazing the ability to give the spectator all the information he could possible want instantly these days. This doesn't just have implications for www.nrl.com but external applications like Virtual NRL (http://www.virtualnrl.com/ (closed this year) are new extremely detailed fantasy sports games that are developed just through from the availability of this detailed information. With the higher profile that rugby has in the world compared to league, I would like to see the NZRU do a similar thing with the NPC/Super 12/Tri Nations, maybe it would bring a bit more excitement into the game.

How Stuff Works

There are often times in life when you come across some mechanical or physics concept that everyone grasps but you don’t. Or perhaps technology is moving at such a rate that you simply had no time to adapt to the difference between tube TV and plasma TV. One is better, but how? Or simply if your are curious about some mechanical gizmo that is simple but still a little bit of an enigma.
I found this site, it is essentially an encyclopedia and an online tutorial about anything scientific really.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/

The site features a comprehensive search engine and many categories such as Nice Rides, Crime and Engines to name a few. The site also features reviews of latest consumer products like digital cameras iPods and some odd little gadget that progress brings forth like a Mosquito Magnet.

I spent hours browsing it initially because there were some many things that I knew OF but nothing ABOUT. An excellent educational tool and also to satisfy disputes and curiosity. Might be useful in lording the newfound trivia over your friends.
I personally learned what a fuel rail does in a car from this site and was able to avert an engine fire. Bonus!
Admittedly it’s quite a technical site but it does use simple language and has tons of illustrations.
Check it.

Sharing?

Many of you may be familiar and involved with what is known as file sharing communities. To me and I'm sure most people the words sharing and community have very postive connotations. For me this conjures up the image of a utopian society where everyone shares out of love for their fellow humans. If a study by two researchers Adar and Huberman which I came across in a BBC article (and I think was mentioned in Nabeel’s lecture) is anything to go by, my image is anything but the truth.

In their study of the file sharing network Gnutella (which popular file sharing programs such as Limewire rely), they found that 90% did not actually share, instead leaching off what they described as ‘powerusers’ the 10% that actually did share. This is quite a shocking tribulation for anyone who uses these file ‘sharing communities’ as it has to be questioned as to whether such a system is sutainable. This said, in my own experience I have to admit that I more than often try to avoid people uploading files off me because it uses some of my bandwidth of which I only get 1 gig a month. Know I look at this way, I’m really just a ‘leecher’ as well. The only time that I actually consistently let people upload off me is in the case of torrents, where I am forced to do so.

What this says to me is that this will be the future of file sharing, as in it’s present form where it is basically a ‘leeching’ network it has no future sustainability. Although in forcing people to share it eliminates that desirable view of a free and loving utopia, I guess this is the close we will be able to get to it for know, and if it can help us get the files we want, I’m happy.

Alisdair Hungerford-Morgan

Virtual Woman

Art (or music) having a life of its own. This is one of the concepts we talked about in our lecture on ‘Popular Music and Digital Networks’. We also talked about the concept of 'Steams of creativity'.
I guess it seems to me like a creative sprit spreading, giving cultural values to something that once wasn’t.

Thinking about creative process, I started to think about how as kids we used to get a piece of papers and fold it over into separated parts. Each person would draw a part of the human body and fold it over (so the other person couldn’t see). Then next person would proceed to draw the next part of the body until completion. By the end you would have something interesting and funny to look at, that everyone had a part in!

I’m not to sure how well everyone knows Photoshop and Freehand, but I have decide to make a person (like the paper one) but by turning on and off the layers in Photoshop. Who knows what it will end up looking like, or if it will go any further………..well have to wait and see!


I’m not to sure the best way to send the file around so I thought a list could be send to my email address or to the blog and then my person (Jo Bloggs!) could be sent on from there.
If anyone had any other ideas for how the person could be sent around, please express these.
If you are interested in participating please send me an email.
josu014@auckland.ac.nz.

It will be fun, and a great way to play around with Photoshop and Freehand.

Retro-Futurism

Bringing back the old-school. Recently I came across this post on SlashDot, where this guy had turned an old NES controller into an optical mouse. Along with bellbottom jeans, worn jeans, tie-dyed tshirts, emulated console games, and text-adventure games, there is a lot of retro-futurism going on around us. This exists in film and television as well, like in the Matrix, and Dark City, Blade Runner and the Truman Show. Is it fashion or nostalgia?

A thought on Cellphones

With all this talk about text message, or "txt msg” in text speech with new feature and devices, I think of a recent instant, where two members of my family had their cell phones not working for some reason. At the same time we were trying to organize a family event. And I realize how hard and difficult it is to organize and plan thing with people, without cellphones. I just make an observation that we have become so reliant on cellphone and the fact the most people have them. Which pose me with this question, with technology that is making it easier to organize and communicate, has it actually made us less organize in fact. We seem to relay on that fact that we can text or call someone. To talk to them or find out where they are. Say if you want someone to pick you up from uni, beforehand you may have to pre-plan the time and place to be pickup from. Now more what happens is that you just say that time, and then txt when the time come and tell them the time and place from where you want to be picked up. I can remember a time when not everyone had a cellphone, and if you had to plan to meet someone you have to actually be at home at talk them on the phone, and plan things in advents compare to now where you can just txt them when your out or just plan thing on the go.

Or does it like in Vicki's post where a technology device that is made to talk and communicate with other people, can be used if you didn't want to actually talk to someone, by just texting to them. My main point is does the devices that we use to keep us organize and communicate with other people, actually does the opposites.

Mana-E

Tucker Max

Tucker Max's website tuckermax.com may not be for everyone (and I say this in relation to the post about rotten.com, which can be a little too much for me sometimes, too), but it really is the ultimate in weblogging. This guy's whole life, all of his escapades and embarrassing moments are up online for us to see. It's not quite a blog, it's more a series of funny and unbelievable stories.It's appealing not only to our desires to see and hear about disgusting things (see: "Tucker Tries Buttsex" - disgusting and hilarious), but also the root of the appeal for many of blogging: seeing other people's business and being anonymously famous. It's like reverse voyeurism.We also get to see the perilous side of the open online journal - the risk of prosecution for libel because you embarrassed someone else (The Miss Vermont Story). Tucker also has a real blog (as opposed to just a story), and a blog of his dealings with Hollywood (as he is "in the process of selling out"). This website is hilarious and offensive in a South Park/Vice magazine kind of way, so check it out. (If you don't know Vice, you should check out their site too, at viceland.com).

Sin City

I recently saw Sin City at movies after waiting patiently for it's cinema release and decided to write about it on the blog. It's an amazing film graphically, the stark contrast of the black and white. Although I've never read Miller's comics you can really get the feeling of them and the sense of the film been so close to it's source material. I imagine most people are aware that the film is almost entirely in black and white, with some colour. The effect of this is very striking, the black and white creates a high-contrast noir style film and the colour really brings focus to certain characters. Certain elements of the film really play on the comic book concept, the bursts of colour really add to this, as does the style of action and the excessive violence. The film was shot digitally in colour and then changed to black and white, filmed against green screen. It is an interesting film to look at new cinema techniques and special effects. There are a few behind the scenes shots at the official site which show the before and after editing shots.
I imagine in time more and more films will be shot digitally, although it is most beneficial to films which have a lot of CGI and other special effects.

gore and stuff

In tutorial today Kevin talked about the gore aspect of games, and the fact that people fixate on the visceral visuals that are offered up - like blown off knee caps and opened up chests, instead of thinking about the ideological hard-outness of such things. The way that people are horrified by the fact that young people want to shoot game characters in the head, rather than thinking on a lager and broader scale, about the fact we have an industry which feeds a global demand for simulated experiences of this kind etc etc. Just that it reminded me of rotten.com and peoples desire to experience, view, take part in acts of (pretend) horror. It seems like it must be a natural thing to want to play out these fantasies, and I know that this is an argument already well established - that people, through playing out these desires let go of the desire or possibility of doing so in real life. Its also understandable when you compare it to going to a horror movie, the desire to indulge in your own fears is immense and kind of satisfying in a way which is hard to pin down. Being horrified and afraid in a situation where you are in control physically and pshycologically (because you know you are in a cinema experiencing something which is only fictional, but still powerful enough to absorb you), is a way i guess of messing around with the darker aspects of ourselves.

Games n the new way of advertising...

Reflecting on the games lecture by Jo, and her talk on advertising in games, I've sort of noticed how games themselves get advertised. This particular topic came to me because my little brother couldn't stop hasselling me about, "how he was gonna smash me in the new up and coming NFL 2006 Madden Game" on PS2, how it was only a month a way before my destruction as gamer and his rise to champion of all sporting games on PS2. As brothers we were quite competitive and always wanting to be the best, so I looked up on the website to actually get some dates on when the new game was actually coming out, www.easports.com was the official site, and there it was NFL 06', something like "August the 9th, coming to stores near you!", it was like looking at a promotion for a blockbuster movie starring Brad Pitt, it certainly had the characteristics of it. What to expect from the game, who's in it, the great features, the star started line up of new music..everthing. Sports stars (like cover boy McNabb- star quaterback for the Philly' Eagles), talking about it and how fantastic it was, (if you have no idea what im talking bout its cool), its the fact that it seemed all to familiar, remind you of anything,..... red carpet moment for a premeier, thats exactly what it was, the launch of the new game, set out in the website like a movie premeier.
Whats interesting is that its found in most popular games these days, promoting the game like a movie seems the best way to get people to but them, another great example was Grand Theft Auto San Andereas, and how the trailer copied movie characteristics, editing music, explosions, etc..., the fact is games are a big thing in todays technological era, and how they are advertised is even more important to its sucess as an industry.

Online communities Pt2

I would like to elaborate further on my post about online communities. I am fascinated about this subject as I grew up in an area where even telephones were not the norm in households. I vividly remember my 15^th birthday which coincided with my parents finally getting a landline. I also only got my first mobile at the age of 25 and the Internet to me was something Pamela Anderson appeared in. In my youth I still learned shorthand, typewriting and manual bookkeeping. However, I do feel that I have moved with the times when necessary and now would call me computer literate.

Freaks and Geeks (no offence intended) worldwide have a chance for a new online image. Nerds suddenly became hot property as friends, as it was them who could configure your system, perform the latest soft- and hardware upgrades and copy those cool games for you.

“Online everyone is created equal”. The leftist-pinko view certainly has relevance today. As John Smith becomes “online_stud99” or Susie Miller “sexy1”, years and years of image making become moribund. Yes, it is possible to have an online instead of an offline identity. One of the major fears of the 1980’s was that “Big Brother” is constantly watching you and all your secrets are revealed. Now millions of people go the complete opposite way and make every aspect of their life public. Internet cameras in the rooms, online blogs reading like personal diaries including their latest attempt in online journalism or social critique. Podcasting and video conferencing will become more and more popular and those who wish can live the most public of lives. Maybe this word has been created before but I call this “Online whoring”. Pretending to be someone you are not.

I originally wanted to right about communities so I present to you two websites of which I am a regular visitor and contributor.

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement

Blog of the Childfree community

Keep it foolish!
Christian

A history of vinyl

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/features/vinyl/

Just adding to the discussion about text messaging from a couple of days ago.

I'm 22 and it doesn't feel like too long ago when text messaging was unheard of. We relied on the telephone to get in touch with people. I agree with Bec- now we have it so easy. With a simple text we are able to contact people,without have to face or talk to them. I text my parents to let them know that I'm well or text friends to say hi. I can even organise work plans with my workmates through texts. I don't particularly like speaking on the telephone- I often leave my land phone off the hook for days without even noticing- and with text messaging I have the convieneince of being able to say what I need to say while avoiding lengthy or uncomfortable conversations!

Personally I love our ability to abbreviate, but it does make me wonder if this "easy" way, will have any long term affects on the next generation's (or even our generation) ability to actually talk to people. Can our social skills be affected? Will people our age become more anti-social then they were ten or fifteen years ago, as they hardly have to face or even talk to people to make plans these days?

What about the way we write? It seems a bit of worry when students are handing in essays in text message form. Is this deterioration of our literary skills or will text messaging just be the language of the future?

Here's a site: www.text.it for anyone who is a little stuck in the past and has not fully grasped the art of text messaging. A UK website, with a How To Text guide, text messaging basics for beginners, texting tips, jokes and facts (eg, in the UK, an average of 3 million texts are sent every hour), as well as a brief history of the text message. May inform or entertain you. :)

mobile phones

I was on the bus a couple of days ago and there was a guy in front of me listening to music using headphones that were plugged into his mobile phone. I know this isn’t really that new, that people have been downloading music onto their phones for a while now but it just got me thinking about just how much you can do with a mobile phone. To be able to check and send email, download music and movie clips, copy music files, take photos and videos and obviously keep in touch with people (to name only a few functions) all using just your mobile phone saves you having to use a whole lot of other electronic objects such as a camera, discman, television, computer etc. to perform these functions…and its all mobile even! My phone supposedly does all these things and I’ve had it about 4 months now but I still only really know how to send txt messages and make calls. I suppose there’ll always be those of us that just can’t keep up with technology.

Blog about blogs

I only recently have discovered the phenomenon of the blog and to tell you the truth I lack insight into why they are so popular, not so much for the creators of the blog but by the viewers of the blog.

I can easily understand someone being a fan of a blog if a person does lead a particularly interesting life, but many blogs have peripherated out to be on inane subjects such as one I viewed the other day by someone who found problems with local public bathrooms and wrote about them. The subject matter for some blogs seems to be fairly unimportant and through this I find them pointless, unless they are a blog discussing useful subject matter as this is.

As I said it has been less then a year that I have known what a blog is so this may be the reason I am missing what they are useful for other then the writers enjoyment. Primarily due to the subject matter that many possess.

everything what U need!

New Zealand’s the biggest online auction site, TradeMe!!

Motors, houses, looking for flat mates, clothes even animals are available to find from this website. Buying formula is same as auction, so offer better price person can get the item until the close time. Just looking goods doesn’t need to login the site, but to check your items if you have out for sale, you have to login and check your individual information; from there you can check other people’s comments about your items if they required. So you don’t have to look through the list one by one.

This site is good for looking the goods what you want. Just click the item and check the detail at home. This website is really save your time and labour because you don’t have to go the auction market. But the limitation of this website is that most of them are secondhand, even if there are some new items but not many.


Have you used this before? Yes, I have. Before I was looking for a kitten during the kitten season, there were lots of kittens waiting for loving houses. That time, I found the little tiny female kitten and offered as a free!! (Although I spend $100 for using taxiL) Anyway a smart way to use this website is, think about the season. Everything has their high demand season even the kittens. Using this season, you can have variety choices and may offered low price you don't even think about.

ad busters

I was told about ad busters in another lecture of mine and thought i might share it with the rest of you:). Quite an interesting site, www.adbusters.com. Ad busters is a website and magazine entity dedicated to culture jamming, an attack on marketing and advertising. The site ridicules public advertisements, aiming mostly at large corporations, such as McDonalds, Calvin Klein, Absolut Vodka, Tobacco Companies and more. They use ad campaigns of big companies and change the ads around focussing on anti-marketing strategies. These culture jammers are in a sense attempting to interupt the flow of captial, production and consumption- as I was told in my lecture. They are trying to provide an x-ray of the underlying part of advertisements, possibly the other side to the large marketing corporations it is attacking. Not only does the site feature disfigured ads, but includes attacks on big political names, Tony Blair for example. The site also has an online forum which is raises awareness or asks questions on current issues/debates, or media related issues. A somewhat bitter attack on media and advertising?Yes in some ways but interesting at the same time. I know that this is not really what this paper is about but it is good to see the other side, see what media activists are putting out there and how they are questioning the commercialisation in the culture of advertising. However what I do question is the fact that these people are still using media forms, such as billboards, internet and the magazine to attack advertising culture. Hypocritical? or just a way of getting their point across?-Jane.
-sorry just realised an easier way to get to the site is through www.adbusters.org , the one i gave before is a bit of a round-about way of getting to the media I am talking about, apologies for any confusion.

SONY PSP

Since last lecture is about gaming, i would like to tlak about Sony PSP. The official realease date of Sony PSP in New Zealand is the 1st of Sepetember, i think there are lots of people want to buy it, so i here to give everyone an overview of Sony PSP.

With eye-popping graphics, dazzling widescreen LCD, wireless connectivity and the ability to play games, music and movies when and where you want, the PSP gives you the freedom to enjoy entertainment on your terms.


As i got one from overseas for few month, i would like to tell you people that it is fantastic. It has too many functions, such as play UMD games, mp3 player,photo viewer, website surfing, watching movie. All you need is all in PSP.

Here are some specification about PSP which i got from Sony website:

PSP Specifications:

PSP CPU Core
MIPS R4000 32-bit core128-bit bus1-333MHz (1.2V)8MB eDRAM main memory2.6Gbps bus bandwidthFPU, VFPU (2.6 billion flops)3D graphics extended instructionsI Cache, D Cache.

PSP Media Engine
MIPS R4000 32-bit core128-bit bus1-333MHz (1.2V)2MB eDRAM submemoryI-Cache, D-Cache90nm CMOS.

PSP Graphics Core
1-166MHz (1.2V)256-bit bus2MB eDRAM (VRAM)5.3Gbps bus bandwidth664 million pixels per second pixel fill rate3D curved surface and 3D polygon engineSupport for compressed textures, hardware clipping, morphing, bone, tessellation, bezier, b-spline (NURBS)Maximum of 33 million polygons per second24-bit full color (RGBA) .

Sound Core
VME (Virtual Mobile Engine)Reconfigurable DSP166MHz (1.2 V)128-bit bus5 giga operations per secondCODEC capabilities3D sound, 7.1 channelsSynthesizer, effecter, and other abilitiesATRAC3 plus, AAC, MP3 for audio.

Media
UMD (Universal Media Disc)60mm-diameter disc660nm laser diode1.8GB capacity (dual-layered disc)11Mbps transfer rateAES crypto systemUnique disc IDShockproofRegional code systemParental lock systemRepeat ordering system.

Other Specifications
16:9-format widescreen TFT LCD (480x272 pixels, 24-bit full color)MPEG4 AVC decoderWireless LAN (802.11)IrDA (Infrared Data Association)USB 2.0Memory StickAV in/outStereo headphone outLithium ion batteryExpansion port.

Currently there are bout 40 games that realeased on PSP, the price of each game is around $80 NZD. I personly recomond those game lover don't hesitate and get one, it won't let you disspointed.

Technology - gaming and other innovations

Since the last lecture was on gaming, I thought I would post some news about upcoming gaming consoles (including PlayStation 3) and other innovative technology from Japan. (Source- Metropolis online magazine)

"Playing the field
Sony and Nintendo take on the world




Unless you’ve had your head in the sand (or just don’t care about the fripperies of the gaming world) for the last few weeks, you’ll have noticed the announcement of new games consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Setting aside America’s finest, Nintendo’s new Revolution console can be safely ignored for now, as the company hasn’t really worked out what it’s going to do yet, but its latest Game Boy iteration is a gem—the Game Boy Micro (probably around ¥15,000 when it comes out in the fall) measures just 50x101x17mm and pretty much flogs the Game Boy platform to death. Beyond the size, there’s nothing new in the box, but its cuteness should make it a hit. The real biggie is Sony’s PlayStation 3, which—if we’re to believe the hype and the methane generated by a zillion hairy journalists in LA in May—is a fabbo mega-computer that can also play Pac-Man. Of course, it will really turn out to be good at movies and maybe a little music too, so look out for it at around ¥39,800 before Christmas. www.scei.co.jp, www.gameboy.com"

**Note- 15,000 Yen is equivalent to approximately $193.623 NZD, while 39,800 Yen is equivalent to approximately $513.728 NZD. (A useful site for currency conversion is http://www.xe.com/ucc/)
Since Japan gets everything early, I don't think NZ will get PS3 before Christmas- wouldn't they have started advertising it already?



"Don’t throw away those old tapes



While we may think the future’s all-digital, it’s not always easy to abandon those old home movie tapes or episodes of Happy Days recorded way back in the 20th century, which is where neato gadgets like Pioneer’s ¥80,000 DVR-RT7H come in. The RT7H (didn’t it save the day in the last Star Wars?) features a triple-header of VHS, DVD and HDD within its shiny shell, and boasts simple ways to suck your old gear out of its analog time warp into the digital future. The one-button dubbing feature allows for the transfer of VHS content to DVD at the push of, well, a single button. Moreover, the device’s software brain makes sure everything always fits onto the DVD just so. When it comes to programming on the hard disk, it can be transferred to DVD at the rate of an hour’s worth every 40 seconds, after which there’s a big red button marked “Delete” that need be pressed only once. www.pioneer.co.jp/dvd"

**I think this is a really good way of combining old and new. After all, in the future when DVDs are phased out, what can you do with your collection aside from purchasing them all over again in the newest format? Such as.....

"Panasonic Diga DMR-E700BD Blu-ray recorder



Blu-ray machines are shooting out of Japan's electronics big boys like nobody's business. The new round of would-be DVD replacements are tipped to succeed because they can, A) store loads of data (around 50Gb) on their next-gen disks; and, B) do so very quickly. In a nutshell, that means they're able to record high-definition television (HDTV), should it ever take off, and can do that fancy time-shift trick we all know and love. Panny's ride on the blue wave also has tuners for just about every flavor of broadcast out there and is likely to cost around ¥250,000. http://diga.jp"

**Note- 250,000 Yen is equivalent to approximately $3,226.91 NZD. Even if this technology becomes popular, it's too expensive to become a fixture in everybody's home, unlike DVD players which are only around $200. The caption above wonders whether high definition TV will ever take off. The problem is that with HDTV, celebrities can no longer hide behind thick makeup and bright lighting to make them look flawless. HDTV has great resolution, so picks up every blemish and wrinkle, so celebs resemble normal people. To be honest I think people prefer to watch something visually pleasing, although it may be an illusion.

human or machine?

Couple of years before, I saw a Hong Kong movie which talked about a local King of gambler called Jim. In order to win the local big competition and make a living, Jim goes to do the scientific operation abroad, and he inserts himself a tiny computer in his brain. This computer has fluoroscopy in the system and it could recognize others’ cards in their hands easily. Also, the computer is able to calculate automatically the chance he win if he shows a particular card and tells him which card he uses will increase the probability he win. So every time, he earns the prize easily. However, he suffers from the pain in all of his life, because when he charges battery for his computer, the electric current has to pass through his body and brain. Finally, his body function is damaged, and he becomes paralytic. After seeing this fiction, I think maybe the boundary between human and machine is blurrier by the raising of computer. Now everyday, computer interacts with people’s ordinary life. People are so dependent on it that it nearly takes the position and responsibility of human. Robot is the creature under this situation. Recently, America has invented a new Robot, which could do all kinds of housework. The amazing point is, when I see the image of the Robot, I think it is definitely not a machine, because it looks really like a human. I am so scared about this because I could not even recognize which is machine and who is human when this Robot stands together with a real person. Human loses their identity which extents even to their appearance. This cause me worried, and I could not help thinking about if computer is really the slave of human or if human, just like Jim, would become the substitute of computer in the future.