Saturday, August 27, 2005

Digital effects in films


I recently went to see Sin City and it struck me, as I was trying to think of anything else but what was on the screen, just how much digitization is in films.

I have to admit that I did appreciate the quality of the effects in Sin City. Most films now have atleast a small amount of digital effects. While I realise that it is, in most cases, more cost effective to have digital effects reather than live action, I was left thinking however if there are now too many effects in films which distracts from being pulled into the narrative a film.

It also accured to me that the effects in films could be desensitizing watchers to grotesque violence allowing more films of that nature to be made and viewed (as the main criteria for producing films is if they will make a profit or not).

While I did enjoy Sin City I didn't feel like I got the whole idea behind the movie as I was constantly being distracted by the images on the screen. Highly Recommended!!

Link to previous blog on Sin City by Jennifer.

Video calling and mobile music

Both Telecom and Vodafone have been advertising Video Calling and 3G phones excessively recently.
While I am pleased that New Zealand is catching up technology wise, I doubt I would use video calling much. The only time I would use it is to communicate with friends from overseas. The downside to video calling is that it takes away the privacy the telephone has given us for so long. Would you like to answer a video call early in the morning when you are half asleep, or when you are not looking your best? It is for this reason, along with the price of 3G handsets, that I doubt video calling will take off the way of text (SMS) and pxt (MMS) messaging.
As the Mcguigan article states- "The industry is desperate to persuade people to switch from 2G to 3G, throw their old mobiles away and pay for new and much more expensive models and services."
Now colour screens and cameras are not enough, we need higher resolution screens, two cameras and music capabilities.


I am surprised at the amount they are charging for downloading mp3 tracks onto yout cellphone as well, something like $3.95 per song (read from the new vodafone catalogue). If you download music from a paid site, you can pay $3.95 for thousands of songs, (iTunes is more expensive) and if you download music illegally, then it's free! On some mp3 capable cellphones, you can upload music for free using a data cable. So will people pay these high prices for music on their phone?

I found it amusing that McGuigan says in the article in the age before the necessity of cell phones, he had friends and still managed to meet them. Sure, it's possible- but there's no room for error- how do you tell your friend you'll be late? Or more importantly text them about important issues, like the latest installment in the Jen-Brad-Angelina saga?

Let's be a MAYOR!


The PC game SimCity became one of the most popular city building simulation game. SimCity 4 allows you to build the largest region of cities ever seen in a SimCity game, complete with separate agricultural, commercial, industrial and residential sections. You control every aspect of how your city operates from delivering electricity to residents to how traffic flow is managed, fighting crime and responding to crises. Sim City 4 Rush Hour has been released to expand the fun by focusing more emphasis on transportation, SimCity 4 Deluxe will be released in September 2005. It's a compilation pack that includes SimCity 4 and its expansion pack, SimCity 4 Rush Hour, together in one.

In SimCity 4, you have the hand of 'God' for shaping the landscape and summoning disasters at will. And you can be a big-city 'Mayor' for managing every last detail of your bustling metropolis. Also you can make your own 'Sims' to paly them in your city to get the inside scoop on what life's really like around town.

Simcity 4 is both entertaining and educational. You cannot help but learn some of the mechanics of politics, economics, geography and ecology. You can also see the cost of mass-transit system-possibly taxes will need to be raised or other aspects of the city will need to survive on less money in order to keep the transit system running. A variety of graphs, charts and maps aid you in your decisions.

Remixing Windows

Okay, something completely new to me that I didn't know about is the remixing of versions of Microsoft Windows by private users to form entirely new (or mixed) versions of Windows. I came across the article in Wired news http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68589,00.html?tw=wn_9techhead and was quite surprised by the concept explained in the article (if you follow the above link). Many of these remixed versions are found on file-sharing networks and contain a combination of files that computer experts are mixing together to form new improved versions of Windows, arguably better than the versions that Microsoft themselves are churning out and charging the earth for. Indeed if I wanted to improve my version of Windows through a series of addons and file-sharing I could quite easily do so and therefore effectively never have to 'replace' my old version of Windows. It's parallel to the concept of remixing some old worn out 1960s pop song with say an Eminem rap of today. Something else you may like to have a look at is the link to the web-site provided by Wired called "The Pirate Bay" whereby files can be downloaded and shared through the web. http://thepiratebay.org/ Both sites are well worth a look and the Pirate Bay is particularly interesting with it's constant updates on various legal proceedings against it.

Friday, August 26, 2005

How to fix CD's......

I just discovered the most useful thing that some of you may already know.

My brother came over today and he was trying to play Splinter Cell on our PS2, but the game wouldn’t work. My boyfriend was trying to tell him that the game has never worked since he’s had it, but my brother made a bet with him that he could make it work.

Then my brother did the oddest thing- He covered the CD with toothpaste, scrubbed it off with tissue paper and then popped it into the PS2. After that the game worked perfectly!

For those of you that don’t know, if you’ve got a CD that doesn’t work because of scratches or dirt in the CD, put toothpaste or Jiff on it and then rub it off.
If that doesn’t work because the scratches are quite bad, try using Silvo or Brasso.
Apparently it works every time! But I’m definitely going to have to find out for myself….

"Proof that true stories are weirder than made-up stories"

If you prefer to hear a slightly lighter side of the news, you have to check out News of the Weird. This website has had articles featured in Sideswipe, the humorous column on the back page of the New Zealand Herald and has a large amount of funny and just downright stupid examples of human behaviour. If you like to have a laugh at other people's expense then look through the 'The News" section in which you can also flick back through the archives to read older weird news. The site also features a blog, which Chuck Shepherd (the site creator) calls instead a Supplemental Communication Tool. You can also sign up to receive weekly updates of the news without, apparently, getting your email inbox inundated with other emails. The site is very easy to use and is updated weekly every Sunday, so you know you are getting fresh material to look at. However it is run by an American so favours the US, i.e. on the Weird Map where you can find weird stories from different states in America, but nowhere else in the world.

Nintendogs


Stumbled across this game when i was looking through this months issue of Gamefreaks. Looks pretty interesting.. remember the Tamagotchi? A passing fad? maybe, but Nintendo have recently released Nintendogs for the DS in Japan. It's sort of like the Tamagotchi games but this is a much more evolved version of it.

There are three versions of the game: Dachschund, Labrador Retriever and Chihuahua (I would go for the labrador myself) and in each game you can do a multitude of things with your furry friend. You have to clean, feed, excersise and even pick up your dogs after dinner pitstop. Most of those you could do to your Tamagotchi but Nintendogs goes much beyond that, you can pat your dog by using the touch screen and teach it simple tricks with the microphone, also if you are on the subway or walking through a crowded place and your DS picks up another person with the game who is standing near you the dog will bark and you can connect the two together and let the dogs play with each other, cool eh?

Another important difference between this and the Tamagotchi is just how damn cute they look, instead of just a blob on the screen you get a very realistic image of mans best friend:



Doesn't that make you want to pick it up and cuddle it?

This sort of game will open up gaming to a wider audience and perhaps it might make it a more viable public activity which isn't restricted to certain demographics. Nintodogs has been hugely succesful for the DS in Japan as sales have increased enormously, with a lot of the purchases being made by women. (Check out this wired article) That can only be a good thing.

The fact that these puppys will always remain a puppy and never die may make certain people prefer these to real dogs, could this see the end of the household pet? A bit farfetched i know but not too far i think. Still, even though these are far more manageable pets theres nothing quite like having your 1 year old puppy curling up at the foot of your bed when you go to sleep.

Related Info:

Nintendogs Website

BBC News Article

Wikipedia Article

Flash Demo

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Music industry and cellphone.

I just saw on HEADLINER today (TV One) that with the new introduction of music clips and real music ringtones being available on newer phone now. That cellphone industry is working closely with the music industry to offer music and content on cellphone and specialized music and items targeted for cell phones. The spokes person for the NZ music industry said it was good, because all the clips and ringtones are copyrighted, and that with ringtones for example the artist gets royalties, with the newer ringtones that actually play a small piece of the actual song, the artist gets royalties compare to a polyphonic ringtones where the song is just a copy of the tune, and the artist doesn't get any royalties. This is interesting especially because you cannot share or transfer ringtones or music clip between cellphone users. So there is a low risk of piracy

Is this way of portable digital music? , With the newest phone that come with 1 GB MP3 players on the cellphone. As Luke was talking in lecture about us caring our cellphone and I-pod around. Could we all just be caring one thing a cellphone and Mp3 player in one? That would only let you put on legal copyrighted music and ringtone?

Mana-E

Cyborgs

I dont know bout anyone else but its probably just me, but cyborgs are a very interesting topic. Normally you would think robotic when the name cyborgs get brought up I certainly do, (especially the likes of Terminator or Robocop). However when I was pondering bout cyborgs I certainly got the feeling of half human half robot. The fact that people have come up with this stuff is amazing, some would say crazy fair enough there are some starnge ones, however the concept I guess is quite revolutionary in terms of technology. But beyond robotic fantasies of terminator and robocop, you have that fella called StelArc, interesting bloke. He's in way a working example of technology and the body, his electricuting display is a great example, you can laugh and look on with amazement, or simply say that guys a "couple of sandwiches short of a picnic". However you look at it is in a way a very small stepping stone towards the notion of cyborgism. But what bout does apes that have human-speaking qualities on Planet of the Apes?, I guess they can fall into the category of cyborgs or not....who knows?

Why don't you remix the Beastie Boys?

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/23/beastie_boys_release.html

The Beastie Boys are posting acapella tracks -- just the vocals in other words, along with BPM
info -- from their songs and encouraging their fans to make noncommercial remixes of them. A new
track goes live every Friday.

3 the Hard Way | 093.00 bpm |
Alive | N/A bpm |
An Open Letter To NYC | 093.75 bpm |
Brr Stick 'Em | 102.00 bpm |
Ch-Check It Out | 115.00 bpm |
Ch-Check It Out (Just Blaze) | 107.00 bpm |
Oh Word? | 098.00 bpm |
Rhyme the Rhyme Well | 100.00 bpm |
Right Right Now Now | 101.00 bpm |
Root Down | N/A bpm |
Triple Trouble | 110.00 bpm |

Seems more and more artists are doing this. I think David Bowie was one of the first back in the early 90s. But recently the British artist M.I.A. and her label XL Recordings have offered this way for fans to rework existing tracks.

Nabeel

Shiny happy news

Maybe this is another hoax (see Christian's previous post) but unfortunately I don't think so. You know how everyone bemoans how negative and depressing the news always is? Well here's the answer: Happynews.com! It only tells nice stories. Do you (like me) find this nauseating or do you think there's a place for something that counterbalances the grim and depressing picture of the world painted by traditional news outlets?

And on a completely different topic, a viral ad produced by Virgin Mobile: Billy the Finger.

What goes around

The announcement of the death of Robert Moog, creator of the Moog synthesizer today set me thinking about the circular nature of invention.

Forty years ago electronics in music was analogue. The idea of the Moog was to let you take various sound waves and literally mix them together to produce a new one. It was really: “here's a box with lots of inputs and outputs, here's a bunch patch cables, now connect an output here to an input there and see what you get”. For some, like Wendy Carlos, you got interesting sounds, the rest of us would produce aural mush. It was very difficult to use and certainly very expensive. It turned out to be easier to grab a sound sample as a starting point, hence the $80,000 Fairlight of 20 years ago. Now it was more a case of concentrating on the end result.

As an aside you can now get a digital simulation of the Moog with a screen representation that includes the patch bay and all the analogue bits but the sound is digital. Whether its any good
I do not know but it does seem a weird thing to do.

Anyway back to invention. In computer games and animation starting from the ground up was fine but characters did not move right. Feet were never really in tough with the floor, things like that. It was easier to use motion capture, in effect sampling of real action meant you could concentrate on what the character did not how it was achieved.

Finally there is AI. It has not really progressed since the early days of game. If you applied the Turing test (can you tell the difference between an AI and a human) it was too easy to spot the difference. So what was the answer, on-line gaming and use real people as opponents. In other words its back to sampling again.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Rocketboom on Nightline

Hey all,
I was just reading the blog and watching Nightline at the sametime (wow, multitasking!). Anywho, they showed a story on Rocketboom.com (the Vblog that we saw in one of the early lectures). They interviewed the creator and he said that if they put a 15 second commercial at the end of each broadcast they would make 1/4 million a year. He also pointed out that it costs them $25 a day to run the site....

Webmail? The choice is not that easy!


When I first arrived in New Zealand I opened up an internet account with Ihug as it was the closest operator to where I was living (a very small office on Symonds Street). My e-mail address was of course my username@ihug.co.nz. I used at first Microsoft Outlook Express, later on Pegasus Mail and then Outlook. I enjoyed using Outlook as first and foremost I could compose e-mails offline, which in the age of dial-up was a big plus. I could also utilise Fonts and Formatting tools available from Winword and use other features like the Calender and Tasks function. However, I didn't have the opportunity to switch Internet providers as I would loose my e-mail address unless I keep my account with Ihug. I then realised that I would rather switch homes and my telephone number than loosing my e-mail address. Needless to say I felt stupid but talking to fellow students or friends I realised that it I was not alone and it is quite unusual to change a well used e-mail address. Anyway, I wanted to feel free to change my Internet provider if necessary and therefore wanted to switch to a webbased e-mail programme.

Firstly I looked at probably the most available - Hotmail! However, despite Microsoft's promise to deliver a better and brighter future (Balmer's words!) I couldn't get over the fact that it only allows for a mailbox not bigger than 2mb!? What a disgrace! In the times of photo- and filesharing, Powerpoint presentations and HTML e-mails this is ridiculously low.

Then I looked at Gmail. I opened up an account after receiving an invite from a friend and liked the easy to use interface and first and foremost the 2.5gb free space and the option for attachements up to 10mb. However, I did have troubles with Gmail scanning e-mail messages to "personalise" advertising. Gmail claims that no human will ever read my e-mail but I was not convinced. I stumbled then across a website Gmailusers which is a collection of articles talking about the pros and cons of Privacy Issues surrounding Gmail. I was creeped out by the fact of how hard it is to delete e-mails. Why would Gmail keep your e-mails for that long? Also I am completely freaked out by how far into your private sphere, agencies in the USA can go all under the banner of the new Patriot's Act. What would stop the US government to tell Gmail to scan all of its e-mails with the words "bombs", "salam alaikum" or "Allah" and forward their e-mail addresses to the government agency? Surely, some people would say that this can never happen but ask American citizens if they thought that the Patriot's Act before its inception was ever possible.

I then looked at Yahoo!. Surely it has its shortfalls like a very small screen for me to write e-mails and having no formatting options when using Yahoo with Firefox. I refuse to use Explorer so I have to live with strange line breaks and composing messages in plain text only. The mailbox storage is acceptable at 1gb and attachements are available up to 10mb. But also what attracted me to Yahoo Mail was that it is already beta testing its new interface based on technology from Oddpost, which it aquired in 2004. Oddpost's browser-based mail client provided much of the look, feel and speed of a desktop mail client. The beta will be limited to a select group of Yahoo! Mail users. Among the features in the new interface, which will work in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, are drag-and-drop, message preview, address auto-complete, scrolling through all messages in a folder (rather than just a small group at a time), and right-click menus.

I have changed my e-mail address to Yahoo and really enjoy replying to e-mails wherever I am. Before that I had either no access to already downloaded or archived e-mails unless I was in front of my computer. I know that there are programmes like Outlook Everywhere but for a light user like me hardly a viable option.

Keep it foolish!

P.S. Today I mentioned in class about underwear with an in-built GPS system. Unfortunately I fell for this hoax as reported by Museum of Hoaxes. I sincerely apologise!

Essential Features

Today in our tute Kevin was discussing how technology such as mobile phones have become these kind of essential items that most people own and how the big corporations are producing all these gimmicks that we apparently 'need'. Such as with the new G3 and its 'transmitting video in real time' quality - not really necessary, a phone call or text would suffice, but it has the potential that it could become a fun kind of toy.
With the new G3, the marketing is targeted so that when enough people have them its seen as a common place item and therefore needed - sort of like the way txting and pxting was introduced into mobile phones. Kevin also mentioned the egg ad screening on tv at the moment, in which the teenage egg (yes, they're actual eggs) is using an ipod. As the advertisement is for a completely different product, the ipod is being unintentionally advertised because it is seen as standard now.
Being the poor student that I am my phone somewhat resembles the original bricks that began the evolution of the mobile, but I often have a look at the market of phones available hoping to find one that will entice me to dig deep. A number of my friends have purchased the recently advertised 'walkie talkie' phones, and when I first saw them I thought they would be a wicked way to communicate around uni. However, a few months down the track and I have yet to see any of them use this function - (it could be due to the fee that you incur when you use it), and I personally cant see how features such as video messaging or even the walkie talkie idea will really catch on in the near future. (However, I do think that incorporating an mp3 player into a mobile phone is a great idea). I'd be keen to know if many people do use the walkie talkie feature frequently, and if so, is it very useful??

Sony Revolution



Check out this video:
http://video.gprime.net/media/video/sonyrevolution.wmv

Here's some information about 'Sony Revolution'
http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/IL/
http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto/datatile/
http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto/papers/chi01.pdf (technical pdf report on it)

This looks really amazing to me, it's been described as Sony does Minority Report. Sony says the inspiration for this technology is actually from 2001: A Space Odyssey where the memory of HAL was stored in transparent rectangular slabs.

The video shows the user placing these transparent rectangular tiles onto a grid patterned tray (a flat panel liquid crystal display). These tiles act as a "graspable window for digital information". Certain tiles have certain functions, ie, if you place a weather tile onto the 'tray,' it will automatically retreive the weather forecast etc for the region you placed the tile in and display it on the tile.

In another example on the video, the user places a music tile and a shopping tile onto the grid, selects a CD on the music tile, drags it onto the shopping basket tile, presses checkout and places his cell phone onto another tile for identification. You can see the unlimited potential and 'coolness' factor this technology has. It has supposedly been designed to simplify everything into 'task specific appliances' where everything is focused on the task at hand rather than the 'underlying computer' that supports it. This technology describes itself as minimizing the orchestra of digital products littered around the house by having these tiles as 'information appliances.' These tiles can give you direct access to an unlimited amount of information (weather, internet, maps, webcam/security portals), appliances (such as tv, vcr, email, paint, etc), consumer products and much more.

The pdf file is quite an interesting read if you have time, it details the aims and motivation behind this technology, the interaction ideas and tile functions, the direction Sony wants to take it, how it works, etc but if you don't have time for that I definately recommend you download the video to see the latest technology from Sony to see what I'm talking about because you have to see it to believe it. Words don't do it justice.

Just to note: I couldn't get the video link above to work on the uni computers with that link but if you feel like downloading the 6mb clip I found a direct link so right-click save here.

Ten Years Younger!

In response to Vicki's post on 'Im disturbed by The Swan,' i totally agree with the idea of reality tv becoming too obsessed with the way people look.

I too, had never seen an episode of The Swan, so was shocked at what women put themselves through to live up to the expectations of others - the need to be 'perfect.'

The New Zealand made show 'Ten Years Younger' has the same sort of idea as these other shows, but for most of the participants, surgery is not needed. Along with a new wardrobe, makeup tips, a new haircut; botox, their teeth fixed and cosmetic surgery can be done. In this way it seems very much like 'Extreme Makeover' or 'The Swan,' but in other ways its not quite to the full extent. I think that people just go for the easy option offered by these American tv shows, without attempting exercise if overweight or looking after their skin on the outside etc. 'Ten Years Younger' is trying to make people look more their age, as a number of people look older than they are from smoking, baking in the sun, or their hair going grey early and so on. It seems that there are a number things that can be tried before going under the knife! So im not sure that this programme has as many negative aspects as the others, other than the fact that people arent happy with the way they look and always have the need to 'look better.'

Programmes like these too, i believe, make the contestant or participant sound and look so much worse than they actually are! At the beginning of the programme someone is always going on about how the 'desperately need help' by exaggerating their flaws and making out that they cant continue to live the way they are!!

But i agree...there definately needs to be more emphasis on personalities or beauty within rather than external beauty!


the need for immediacy and our reliance on technology

While recently on holiday in Rarotonga, the need that we all seem to have developed for immediacy in new technology became very apparent to me. This is in terms of cell phones and internet. After a few days there the need to be in contact with me friends mixed with a bit of boredom saw me going into the little internet and cellphone place. I was told by the man there that yes you can join up to Koka-net, however you must use a Vodafone phone and could only text Telecom numbers, text charge would be the same 20cents, phone calls costing $3 a minute. I stared at him slightly confused and amazed, but agreed and we bought a sim card.
The point of this is that later on we went to the internet cafe to check emails and on my dads email was an email from a friend, subject 'london bombings'. We thought this was a joke, but decided to check the xtra website anyway, a few minutes later (quite literally, and much to our frustration) the website loaded and we found out that yes it was true. We once again waited out the slow connection to read the article, while venting our frustration at the slow speed and I got onto texting, as one of my friends was currently on holiday in London. I text her siser around 6 times that day tryng to find out if this friend in London was okay, getting no reply I was getting very worried. However the next morning she text me saying that yes she was fine, and seemed confuseed about the number of times I had text her all at one time. All of my texts had been delivered at the same time the following morning, around 24hours later. It amazed me that we have become so reliant on technology to communicate, and that New Zealand's development in technology and immediate delivery is actually pretty reliable compared to Kokanet (sorry no offence) but this message delivery 24 hours later happened two or three times.
Our ability to get in touch with people either by phone or through fast speed internet is now in high demand and being somewhat taken for granted. Our demand is being developed to be faster and faster all the time, such as the fast internet Telecom ad with fast Eddie. Meaning that what was seen to be fast internet a few months ago, now seems ancient and slow. Technology development is growing by the day and is now becoming so normal to us that we couldn't imagine life without it, but it makes you think when you can not get that type of access in other countries. So next time you are annoyed at the computer loading for a couple of seconds to long, or a text message taking a couple of minutes to be delivered to someone, just remember how much it has developed and changed from what it used to be.

3D Ultrasound Pushes Boundaries

Last weeks readings highlighted how technological advancements reinforced/displaced boundaries of gender, touching lightly on the area of ‘laparoscopy’ and the ‘critical role it had played in the assessment of foetal development’. This got me thinking about how technology has not only had an effect in reinforcing/displacing boundaries in relation to gender, but also in relation to social issues, especially in relation to the area of foetal development and abortion.

During the 1970’s the widespread introduction of ultrasound in the area of obstetrics lead to a heating of the debate among ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-abortion’ groups about the ethical and moral issues surrounding abortion, as it was used to visually highlight the level of development of foetuses at early stages of pregnancy. This technology was grasped by ‘pro-life’ groups, including the distribution of the video
The Silent Scream consisting of an ultrasound taken during an abortion at 11 weeks gestation in the US. While quite benign by today’s standards, this video lead to intense debate during the time, in some cases swaying the opinions of those on both sides of the issue and is an example of the use of technology to further a group’s stance on a social issue . While this may now all be history, recently with the introduction of 3D ultrasound into the mainstream enabling a real-time 3D view of a foetus(see photo above), technology has interestingly once again stirred the issue of abortion, and is again being used by ‘pro-life’ groups as further evidence of the advanced development of the foetus early in pregnancy.

While obviously everyone has different opinions on the issue of abortion, I think it is a good example of a contentious issue of which debate surrounding it has been heavily influenced by technology over the years, and still is today. It also brings into question the effects that technology has in shaping the direction of debate surrounding all social issues.

Alisdair Hungerford-Morgan

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Films as signposts

Films are often considered social signposts for oncoming or present change, giving an insight to our hopes, fears and insecurities underlying them. While academic essays can give a perhaps more direct critique on the ideas associated with, say digitization, it is most often films and other forms of 'popular' culture that hold more sway over public opinon, and lets face it, public opinion matters. I'd like to pay tribute to a few of the great films that have influenced me.

1) Ghost in the Shell (Anime) 1995 dir. Mamoru Oshii
Ghost in the Shell is one of the land mark animes, which eventually spawned the Matrix, for whatever that's worth. It very bluntly lays out the existential question with reference to cyborgs, or robotically enhanced humans. The main protagonist Kusanagi is essentially all robot, though she says she was once human (we never know this for sure). She often questions her existence, wondering exactly what separates a human being from a robotic/digital entity, and if she is merely a 'ghost in the shell'.

2) Starship Troopers 1997 dir. Paul Verhoeven
An obvious play on fascism, ST utilises a graphical user interface, similar to a PC desktop, to provide news clips and narrative 'intel' to the viewer. The sequences are obviously imitating propaganda, providing a warning to the potential abuse of the internet, which was already being widely uptaken by this point.

3) 2001: A Space Odyssey 1969 dir. Stanley kubrick
This classic sci fi film uses a self aware, super smart AI named HAL to comment on man's use of technology, or rather, abuse of technology. The HAL's betrayal directly contrasts with the introductory ape sequence in which one monkey accidentally discovers that a bone can be used as a weapon. The idea is of course that we uptake a technology before we consider its uses.

4) Robocop 1987 dir. Paul Verhoeven
Yip, another one from that guy. Robocop, rather than , say the Terminator, provides a deep criticism of an increasingly automated society. This is perhaps most illustrated in the scene where the battle 'mech' walker turns on its creators, killing them all, as it could not yet distinguish friend from foe. Robocop's redeeming quality comes only from teh fact that ihe is part human, and his repressed memories and feelings play a pivotal role in providing 'real' justice.

Obviously there are many other great sci fi films, and even from other genres, which comment on this wave of digitisation and antipersonal contact;
Spielbergs AI, Godard's Alphaville, Terry Gilliam's Brazil and Appleseed (CGI) to name a few. We as media scholars should be paying particulaly close attention to films such as these, as they can tell us a lot more about the greater society of the time than an abstract introspection. Please do add to my list of films, noting also which questions they raise about the issues of technology in wider society. I'm always trying to broaden my horizons. But if you get the chance, do try and see these, particularly ghost in the shell.

mahalo - marc t

Politics and the Internet... Sort of...

My vote this year will be decided solely on what the new government can do for me. Selfish I know, but I'm tired of thinking about the greater good. The idea of paying $30,000 of interest on my student loan so that everyone can get superannuation is ridiculous to me - is that money realistically going to be there in 50 years when it's time for me to retire?
Labour's "No Interest on Student Loans" policy sounded good, but I heard a few things that put me off: it might only be on loans drawn down after April next year, for example. I wanted to check everything out before I decided, I want to make my vote count... towards my future wealth.
I went to the Labour Party website www.labour.org.nz, to look at the Policy Cards and get some clarification, but the website was as vague as the information I had already recieved! The website has separate sections for women, education, every left-wing thing you could think of, but none of these provided me with answers. There's not even an FAQ section. So I asked one of those "Ask Me" enrollment people around Uni - "Who will be elligible for no interest: new loans, or existing loans, or both?" He told me: "Keep watching the news and they should clarify it for you." So much for making my vote count - I can't even figure out what it's counting for. I guess this is one of those occasions where you realise that the wealth of information available online is mostly useless. I think I'll still vote Labour though, just in case :)

Under Your Skin

Under Your Skin

Credit card companies are hopeful that the latest chip technolgy will catch on with the general public. If this latest idea is at all similar to the others, they are not likely to have much success. The idea is not brand new, but it is still cutting edge. Businesses are prepared to ask people to no longer carry credit, ATM or debit cards anymore, but be implanted with a small chip under the skin. This chip will then broadcast a radio frequency and when place under a scanner at say an ATM, it will immeadiately know who you are.

The idea is catching on with many companies and in some cases governments. The US military has been placing chips in its soliders for years now. The idea may soon be reaching the general public. Why keep track of people with identification numbers when you can just put a chip in their arm?

Many would argue the positvies here are to great to dismiss. No one will ever get their credit cards, money or identity stolen again. The oppostion would argue differently, however. Theives could easily find the frequencies to the chips and redirect the signals to ATMs and have acces to accounts. The really ambitious thieves may go so far as to try to remove the chips (or even the body parts they are in).

There is also the issue of invasion of privacy here. If these chips are anything like peoples personal home computers, it wouldn't be long before advertisers began taking advantage of them. There could be tracking software implemented to learn where people spend there time. Billboards could recover transmitted signals and the ads would cater to whoever walks nearest to them (a moment seen in the movie Minority Report). People would no longer be alone anywhere. It would truely become an Orwellian Big Brother society.

For the benifits that some people may recieve, the dangers out weigh them. Companies can try their hardest to market this ambitious product to the public, but I like most people probably just don't like the idea of being 'chiped'.

-gabe

Downloading music

Here's an interesting article on downloading music, Big Champagne and 'The Chumbawumba Factor':

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/features/weekly/05-08-22-the-chumbawamba-factor.shtml

Nabeel

Monday, August 22, 2005

I'm disturbed by The Swan

I couldn’t believe it when I saw the clip from The Swan the other day in class. I’d never seen the show before and I was shocked to see how those women’s low self esteems was used to create entertainment. It’s sad that the show sends the message that beauty is on the outside. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with a little cosmetic surgery, but it is as if they had to go overboard with all the extras, such as the botox, eyebrow lifts and whatever else can be lifted, cut off or added on.

I’m sure that if I watched a whole episode that I would be told the usual comments that the “contender” was a wonderful woman, a solo mother to 7 adopted kids, devoted all her time to charity and was teased at school for being ugly. But the show would go way past that. It’s not a show about how wonderful people are, but how much more attractive they can become physically. It’s also sad that the message we receive is that physical beauty equals success, popularity and ultimate happiness.

“Self-improvement” shows are the new phase of reality TV, but what concerns me is that teenagers are destined to have low self-esteem at some stage in their adolescence. The message that they are going to receive from TV shows, such as The Swan and Extreme Makeovers, is to look past their “inner beauty” and look for their nearest plastic surgeon to solve their problems. It disturbs me that this is happening.

Years ago, I remember Oprah and Sally Jesse Raphael giving makeovers to people for the same reasons. No surgery was involved- it was the usual fashion, make up and hair stylists, a gym guru, usually a counsellor who helped them with their self esteems and maybe a pair of contacts or a set of braces. These people came out looking stunning and they didn’t need surgery to do so.

One TV drama that was interesting was Nip/Tuck. My first impression was that it would be a show with too many plastic looking “perfect” people with too much money. It was interesting to see that plastic surgery was often challenged and not necessarily glamorised, as it showed the complications and issues that can be involved.

It seems these days that cosmetic surgery, for commercial purposes, is used to find flaws within ourselves. Why is it so hard to find a TV show about how wonderful a person is…..?

Gran Turismo 4

Gran Turismo 4 is a very popular Play Station 2 game among teenagers and car lovers. In the world of racing games, the Gran Turismo series has gained its prestige through the game's graphics, sound and especially the feeling of reality when player plays the game.

The GT4 game provides players more than 700 cars from more than 80 manufacturers around the world. This is the first step to create the virtual reality of the game. Players can now create a new personality in the game whether they assume they are super racing drivers or millionaires who own the best car in this “cyberspace”. The capability and the quality of the cars are all imitating the real models. Once you earn enough money from a special racing match, you can buy the car you want but first, the player needs to go through a licence test. The higher the qualification of the licence, the more advance mathes you can play on. Hence, the more money you can generate. Also the game provides the opportunity to players to improve or decorate their dream cars.

Moreover, this game attracts people successfully because it also involves more than 50 courses to drive. These include real-life racetracks such as Fuji Speedway, Suzuka, and Laguna Seca; a cosmopolitan array of city courses from metropolises such as Hong Kong, Seoul, and the Big Apple; rally courses on dirt and (new for this installment) snow and ice; and old fictional friends such as Grand Valley Speedway, Deep Forest Raceway, and Trial Mountain. Hence, the GT4 game let the super car fans’ dream come true. People now can have a taste on the thing they will never have chance to do in their real life time through this perfect game.

Internet: The way to fame or embarrasement?

I was just reading Shannons post about the young sweedish man called Daniel, who created what most of us would like to rename a small annoying object...the Crazy Frog 'song' (if you want to call it that). It made me think about after the researcher heard of his experimentation with engine sounds and what not, that the internet really is a place for launching yourself. People are putting themselves out there on the internet, because it is such a great way to be recognised. But is it really? Whether or not young Daniel knows it, most people (upon meeting him and learning of his music career with animated creatures) would want to silence him for his efforts. This then made me think of our beloved Rongo family... ah yes...the Rongo family. The special family who liked to play musical instruments (anyone thinking American Pie and band camp) and hang beaters around their necks (?). The unusual placing of family and animals on the couch for the official lauching photo (did anyone else think the poor dogs were trying to escape?) Now I know that they were in no way trying to get famous off their webpage, but as many others discussed, why wouldnt you just send emails? The cheesy decor of the site really topped off the 'humour factor', so it really just makes me wonder why people would put themselves out there for the world to see. Couldnt they just make a web page, then email people who they really want to see it, a kind of login/pin number, or are they just different? I think the moral of the story is, is that when you are doing anything on the internet (like this blog), you just really have to watch what you're doing, to save yourself the embarrasment.

Media Players

There are a vast number of programs out there used for viewing media. Between DVD's, avi, mpeg, mp3 and all the other media I can and do play on my computer I have numerous programs which I use. Today however I decided to write about two programs I use for music and the pro's and cons of these two programs. They are Winamp and iTunes I use both at times for listening to my mp3 collection. Of course some people do use windows media player, but I don't feel it's even remotely in competition with these programs.

I have been a big fan of winamp for many years. When listening to music I often dump my entire collection onto one playlist and hit shuffle. The jump and enque functions makes it easy to find specific songs without disturbing a playlist and when minimized the current track title displays on the winamp part of the taskbar. Winamp also lets me be as expanded or compact as I like, with library and an equalizer and a playlist that I can open and close at will. The library is easy to manage and I can add folders which will re-scan every so often for new media, I can even add folders from the network. Of course one of the neatest parts of winamp is skins, such as the gun version pictured. Despite my love of winamp I've recently taken to using iTunes at times.

There is only one reason I use iTunes - smart playlists. This seems to be the only benefit for iTunes as a music player, however I have discovered one problem with this is the fact that most of my music is labeled incorrectly. I do not own an iPod so I have little use for iTunes, I find the library almost impossible to simply update as I do not want to create a specific iTunes folder, I store my music on an external harddrive which I have already organised myself. Also I've found it interesting to be able to access my flatmates music through iTunes via our network, however I usually have little use to listen this way when I could just copy the mp3s. I find if a song starts to play and I'm not sure what the title is I cannot glance to my taskbar which I have always found useful with winamp. Although the search function does include album which I have found useful in finding songs from soundtracks.
Personally I don't think I'll be making any permanent shift to iTunes, but I'm curious, what programs does everyone use? And why?

feedback wanted

hi,

If anyone has any issues with the course, the lecturers or tutors and wishes me to bring it up for this weeks student rep meeting (on wednesday morning) you can email me (in confidence) at dsad005@ec.auckland.ac.nz and i'll pass it on. It doesn't necessarily have to be negative either, any feedback, positive included is welcome/useful/appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan.

sth about web



It is widely believed that Internet has transformed our lives with more speed and efficiency. No matter when and where we are, we are able to get the latest information either publicly (news) or privately (e-mail) through the internet. However, I believe with more people log them onto the Internet, especially the popular or authorized one; we will assume more risk for ensuring our security. Recently Google is considered as one of the Internets with the biggest hidden danger for keeping people's security and privacy. Mark from the Administration of Justice in America recently points out that the more Goole interacts with people's life, including people's online chatting and using Blog, the more possibility that Goole will receive summons from the court. I reckon the reason is because that Goole provides a service called Gmail to their consumers, this service will ensure that Goole keeps people's emails, information about Goole library, and consumers’ passwords for accessing particular WebPages permanently. Meanwhile, Google also provides picture sharing, message sending and paying on line services. There is no doubt that information such as people's bank account will be stored in Goole as well. So for whatever you do, for whichever webs you have paid visit to, or for whomever you send emails to through Google, the system will know immediately. Another reason is because Internet is an open environment so that every person is able to access it, it also increases the opportunity to criminals to hack or steal people's on line information, especially the big Internet company like Goole, which assembled huge amount of people's information and privacy in the world. Although Goole spares no effort to ensure people's privacy, it still could not totally guarantee our on line security.

comments spam (again)

After receiving 6 spam comments on my last post, I've now locked down comments to members of this blog only.

Another twist in the Gutenberg Galaxy?

Lulu.com exemplifies just how simplistic all those early predictions of the "death of print", the "demise of the book", the "death of the author" and the "paperless world" from the early days of the "digital revolution" turned out to be. On one level, this could be seen as another extension of "vanity publishing" (alongside blogs, podcasts etc). Not good enough to get a publishing contract? Now you can do it yourself! Affordable, and they look just like 'real' books! But I think it's potentially much more than this. A serious tool that promises to cut out the middle man will hopefully force publishing companies to think about the kind of value they provide to (and extract from) authors. If big name authors start taking the opportunity to self-publish (as some are already doing by making books available as online files), then they may necessitate some kind of loosening of the restrictive practices that often go on in publishing. (As someone who has published a couple of academic books, I should add that in both cases, my publishers were thoroughly reasonable folk - I don't mean to tar them all with the same brush). What this may portend is that, whilst the book itself has gone from strength to strength in the digital age (the age of Amazon.com, the Harry Potter franchise, etc. etc.), maybe it's the publishing industry that stands to fall victim to the digital revolution.

There are some really interesting factors involved here:

1. It's printing 'on demand'. Instead of predicting a print run in thousands, as publishers do (then having to pulp several hundred copies that never get sold), here a copy of a book is only printed when a buyer orders a copy. I heard one of the founders (Bob Young of Red Hat Linux fame) being interviewed the other day and the interviewer said something like: "So you must have pretty fancy printers for all this if they can print and bind books all in one. How many pages per minute do they run at?" To which Young replied: "We don't think in terms of the number of pages per minute. We think in terms of the number of books per minute!" Gee whizz. The books are (allegedly) indistinguishable from the results of professional offset printing presses. At the moment, they only produce soft cover books but are currently working on hard cover technology.

2. Unlike traditional vanity publishing (which can be costly), it's free. Lulu just take a cut if and when you sell a copy.

3. The author/publisher can make changes to the text between copies (e.g. corrections, updates, censor's cuts etc.) so my copy of a particular book may be slightly (or even very) different from your copy even though they are not separate 'editions' and may have been purchased within days of each other. I like the idea that the traditional notion of the book as a stable and clearly bounded text may be fading away and that books (even the dead trees variety) can become slippery and mutable artefacts like other digital objects. Is this the advent of the post-industrial book?

4. What about social publishing? Open source books that can be modified, cut, spliced and remixed to create new objects to grace our coffee tables and bookshelves... has that got any legs?

spam comments

Looks like we had our first spam comment (see Xue Tian's post below) unless I've missed some already. I'll change the blog settings if this starts happening regularly, but it's nice to think someone out there in the big wide world (who isn't just flogging pills) could comment if they wanted to.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Google Earth takes you to anywhere you want

I would like to introduce a pretty cool software: Google Earth. Google Earth is a new software that almost includes all the major cities in the world. It puts a planet’s worth of imagery and other geographic information on users’ desktop. When users run the software, it could take users to another city by flying the space. Within a particular city, users could search for schools, restaurants, place of interests, hotels and more, and also type in an address and zoom right in. The main idea of exploitation Google Earth is explore, search and discover.

The problem is that Google Earth is a large data based software, it is really hard to provide up-to-date information as the rapid development of the world, so most of the data are 2 or 3 years old.

Did you ever plan a trip? But you found you didn’t have enough money or time. Download Google Earth, it takes you to anywhere you want without paying any
money.

Google Earth is a free download software, the website is http://earth.google.com/

internet...your key to fame?

Watching C4 the other day, for the first time I saw the video clip to Crazy Frog…yeah I know its been around for awhile…but it brought me back to last semester Sociology 211 when we watched a few versions of the Crazy Frog thing and also the Numa Numa dance thing. Its kind of funny to think that just playing around with a webcam or experimenting with sound effects could make two guys so famous. I guess it just shows how much the internet is really capable of.

Crazy Frog originated from17 year old Swedish Daniel Malmedahl who was really into imitating the sounds of combustion engines. His friends saw comedic potenitial in his impressions and posted some of these on the internet. A researcher heard Daniel’s impressions on the internet and asked him to appear on a Swedish television show. It was after this show that Daniel’s recording started to appear on peer to peer file sharing networks and websites all over the internet. In 2003 the Crazy Frog animation was created by another Swede, Erik Wenquist, though it was then known as The Annoying Thing. It was in 2004 that a German company Jamba licensed The Annoying Thing renamed it Crazy Frog. Crazy Frog started off as a ringtone and Jamba earned at estimated £ 14 million from the ringtone. After that came the Crazy Frog song and video clip, video game, computer virus and even Crazy Frog popcorn! How crazy is that?! All because of some guy’s impressions of engines….

The Numa Numa dance is kind of a similar story. A guy used his webcam to record himself lip synching a Romanian song and dancing along to it. I think it’s so funny. Gary Brolsma actually published his Numa Numa dance in 2004 and then turned into a huge “web celebrity”, although he is now supposedly embarrassed of this performance and is not very hapy about his fame. But you can now buy T-shirts and other Numa Numa dance memorabilia and there was even a Numa Numa dance competition to become the next Gary Brolsma. If you haven’t seen the Numa Numa dance you can do a Google search on Numa Numa dance and there’s a whole lot of websites where you can watch it. I think it’s worth watching…it’s hilarious (but that could just be me..).

Anyway, all this just got me thinking about all the possibilities that the Internet offers people and in just how many ways people have got into it.

be wise immunise. with the wire on bfm.

technoculture new media

This is paragraph is taken directly from the bfm website, in the news section. (http://www.95bfm.co.nz/default,2735.sm)
PODCAST FEED FOR THE WIRE
Selected interviews from the Wire (weekdays 12-2pm) are now available in an RSS/Podcast feed, which can be found permanently on the bNews page. By subscribing to this podcast using iTunes (or another RSS aggregator of your choice), you'll be able to keep informed even when you're not by your radio.
Instructions
Live Wires is now listed in the iTunes podcast directory, so it's easy to subscribe using this link.
To add the Live Wires podcast to a different RSS aggregator application, follow the instructions for subscribing to a new feed, and paste in the url below when asked:
http://www.95bfm.com/sm/livewires.rss

The Wire on bfm is a daily 2 hour show, held each day by different hosts. It's injected with news, opinions, information and advice on different issues and affairs each day. It isn't only just about 'serious' news issues though. Check out Friday - the rock and roll wire. It is awesome. If you are prone to liking rock and roll, punk, or indie seriously this is an excellent show. I've listened to it semi-religiously since 6th form, which means I've had to programme my radio to record the show for many years now. Tuesdays are based on local arts, and international art (performance, visual, media and film) which affects new zealand. Thursday is for the intellectual, concerning local policies and issues.

Wednesdays feature Russel Brown. You may recognise the name from his weekly blog "hard news" on public address. http://www.publicaddress.net/ I'll post more on the topic of public address later, othewise it will make this post go on f-o-r-e-v-e-r.
To access the list of wire's you can have a listen to podcast, follow this url http://www.95bfm.co.nz/default,news.sm
There is a wide variety of podcast wires to have a listen to. The following is relevant to the course
"New Zealanders are increasingly concerned with morality according to a recent newspaper survey. Really? Speech writer, blogger and author of "Civil War and Other Optimistic Predictions" David Slack talks about the survey..." http://www.95bfm.co.nz/default,2946.sm
And if you have been wondering just what is going on with the uni strikes (remember the one with the weird sirens that kept distrupting our lecture a while back?) then have a look and listen to this www.95bfm.co.nz/default,2802.sm. It discusses the strikes 6 universities around the country have been undertaking.


If you managed to read this entire post then really, I suggest you listen to the rock and roll wire with Troy Ferguson. Here is his dj page here. He is my hero... http://www.95bfm.co.nz/default,1552,troy_ferguson.sm



Oh, and to see all the wire shows click here for the full bfm line up
http://www.95bfm.co.nz/default,shows.sm

Cool! You can find all songs' lyric you want here!

Do you often feel bored when you want to find the lyric of a song that you like but you can not find it easily?

I would like to recommend a website to you: www. lyrics007. com! It is likely for you that you find all songs' lyric you want there.

Lyrics007 has got a very friendly interface. Here is some steps about how to use it: a) checking what the singer name's initial is b) clicking the corresponding letter on the interface (A to Z) c) picking up the singer that you want from the list of singers d) finding out the song you want

Of course, it is more convenient for you to directly search the lyric from the lyric-searching engine which is just on the homepage of that website.

Find it now, good luck!

Technology vs Profit

I recently saw an article on xtra.co.nz about a brand of Oakley sunglasses that had been developed to work with a mobile phone. The brand is called Razorwire.

Razorwire sunglasses work with Bluetooth technology allowing for handsfree communication. It allows the wearer to make and receive phone calls 33 feet (10 metres) away from a compatible mobile.

Razorwire follows the success of another brand called Thump, which could play digital music. The market had already been tested and showed that it was a product that people wanted to buy. The Razorwire brand can be sold in places that would not usually stock sunglasses, which opens the brand up to a larger section of the market.

How much technology that is developed actually makes it into the marketplace? I am sure that the majority of products are only released if they can make a profit.

While I do believe that there would be a market for such a product that, Oakley’s would be crazy not to exploit, it does lead me to wonder how much new technology is based around profit.

http://oakley.com/o/o2261d

external hard drive

When you need highly portable storage, you probably immediately consider USB flash drives and USB-powered portable hard drives. By developing the computer technology, the pocket hard drive's appearance is getting smaller and the size is getting bigger. In the past, Seagate put on the market 2.5Gb and 5.0Gb device external hard drive about 6months ago. However now there are so many diffenrent types of external hard drives that also have huge amount of size appeared.
Samsung's new pocket hard drive offers 80Gb(left picture) and also Toshiba put on market 80Gb external hard drive(right picture).

it's everywhere. Like a plague amongst motherboard designers, the USB socket has become ubiquitous with the modern day computer. Asides from devices like printers and mice, USB devices range from the quirky to the rather useful. Arguably one of the most useful groups of devices on the market today is the portable USB drive. High speed reliable and small, they've virtually killed the floppy disk drive giving computer users a better way to store and transfer their files. I have a lab top, which has tiny tiny size. For me, this pocket hard drive is really useful, because I can store my pictures, music, movie, drama, and other files as well.

Gender Identities and Technology

I found last weeks lecture and last weeks reading to be really interesting. The theme I found particularly interesting was the idea that gender identities change over time and what it means to be a women in the 1950s, is not what it means to be a women now. Both the reading and the lecture talked about cosmetic surgery and how women now days will have apparent flaws. Cosmetic surgery also fits in nicely with the technological aspect of the course. Although it may not be new media, it certainly did not exist 20 odd years ago. With the introduction of it, more emphasis has been placed on the way a woman looks. Instead of women being happy to accept what they were born with, technology has now meant that surgeons have the ability to play “god”, (if you want to use such a cliché saying) and turn them into something that they were original not.
The example used in the lecture “The Swan” was perfect because the whole show was about how these women were not good enough for society the way they were and thus they needed to become beautiful. It also brings in the concept of feminism and the male dominated society. “The Swan” never had male’s participants and it emphasis the idea that was held in the 1950s, women were meant to be seen not heard.
So in fact maybe what it means to be a woman has not changed over time?