Saturday, October 08, 2005

some thoughts on network communication

Presence in the mediated environment of digital networks is probably one of the most complex phenomena of the new types of social interaction that have emerged in these environments. In the current phase of radical deployment (or penetration) of the internet, various attempts are made to come to terms with the social dynamics of networked communication spaces.

Attempts to come to terms with networked communication environments from the field of social theory, are generally shallow, ill informed about actual practices, and sometimes to straightforwardly biased. Psychology does not contribute in any significant way to an understanding of these social dynamics either. The rather popular idea, for instance, that the screen is a projection screen for personal pre-occupations, and that social relations that emerge through the interactions via networked media are mostly imaginary for lack of negative feedback or corrections, is deeply contentious. The idea that absence of corrective feedback stimulates the creation of fictitious relationships is an interesting one, but one that can apply equally well off-line as it can on-line. It illuminates certain patterns of human behaviour, but it does not tell us much of what makes presence in the networks specific.

One of the greatest fallacies of current attempts to understand the social dynamics of networked media is the tendency to see these media as an extension of the broadcast media system. This idea has become more popular as the internet is extended with audio-visual elements. Interactive audio-visual structures, streaming media, downloadable sound and video, all contribute to the notion that the internet is the next evolution of broadcast media. But this vision applies only partially, and is driven primarily by vested interests of the media industry. It is often not reflected in how people actually use the net.

Turnitin - no assignment set?


I just tried to submit my essay (so I can enjoy the rest of my weekend and not think about it anymore) to turnitin.com but it doesn't let me because no assignment has been set?

Is it just me or does anyone else have the same problem?


{not sure what happened but Turnitin seems to be fixed now. Please email me directly if you have any more problems. Sorry for the inconvenience... Luke}

net radio

The lecture on net radio raised the point of the impermanence of the internet, several times.
Your favourite site could be gone tomorrow, or it's format could have changed, so if you are looking for something from memory, it may no longer exist. How inconvenient! Perhaps the solution is to take screenshots, save and download any photos, text or files that you want to keep, in case of server trouble or sites disappearing.

I found it interesting that some radio stations (indie ones rather than commercial) allowed people to visit their websites and listen to or download past shows. This is different than regular radio, which is generally live to allow it to be interactive through call ins, and people being unable to keep what comes out of the radio as a record. Why would someone want to stream/download and listen to a radio show from last week? It loses it's relevance depending on your location, for example in Auckland at 11pm on Sunday night it's not particularly useful to know that it rained in Chicago last Tuesday. I don't listen to either regular radio or net radio, because I have a large amount of music that I like to listen to. If I need more, there's nowhere faster (leaked tracks, albums, unreleased material) or vast than the internet. This is the danger of isolation mentioned in many books about new media, that people will choose to listen to only what they want, thus cutting them out of the public sphere. It's understandable though, to not want to hear DJ prattle, or songs that you dislike.

Can We Trust the Digital?


I recently read an article online from the magazine Popular Science. The above photograph was originally taken by Lance Corporal Ted "JOEY" Boudreaux Jr. and the sign originally said "Welcome US Marines". You wouldn't know that from looking at the pictures though. Shortly after the LCPL Boudreaux sent his digital picture home through email, it surfaced again on the internet on blogs....only this time the sign read some quite different things.

One of the pictures had been changed to read 'Lcpl Boudreaux killed my dad then he knocked up my sister!" another read 'Lcpl Boudreaux saved my dad then he rescued my sister!" and yet another the sign was completely blank, which speaks to the fact that these digital images can be altered effortlessly by anyone.

For the LCPL, this whole ordeal lead to a mulitple month long investigaiton into his actions and the threat of court martial looming over head. This is not only a problem that plagues certain military personnel. If this digital image cannot be trusted, can any of them?

Its a scary thought that someone could black mail you with a completely fabricated image, but its happening. Senator John Kerry was almost ruined when a damaging image of him surfaced on the internet. As it turned out, it was a phony picture, but it may still have affected some peoples opinons of him as he ran for president. President Bush also saw some of this problem, but none of it was greatly publisized.

This cheap technolgy is available to millions of people who now posses computers and digital cameras. All it takes is photo shop, a little know how and a person with a picture. This could mean much for the court system. How can photos be entered into evidence if they could be 'doctored'? The article sited that some people are escaping punishment for child pornography by arguing that the images are computer genertated. As it turns out, there is some computer generated child pornography, according to the article. This opens up a whole different debate upon whether CG pornography of children is the same thing as the real deal. I don't want to go into this, however.

Its not all bad news though. There are already in the makings, forensic sciences that can decipher the minute differences between a real images and an altered digital images. Hopefully, these fields will develop suffeciently to keep pace with the growing problem of fraudulent digital images.

Although Lance Corporal Boudreaux may have escaped the harm that this photo may have caused him, there are many other people who may not be so lucky. This is a real problem in the making. It will be interesting to see how or if it will be solved.

LINK TO ARTICLE

Virus On PSP

Latest news from Symantec official website that the first virus on psp has appear, it's named as "Trojan.PSPBrick". The virus is from unofficail 3rd party software, as soon as the user run the program, the virus start to get into the bios of psp and automaticly delete all the important program in bios which make the psp unusable. SCE advise user do not use 3rd party software, for psp that broken due to this virus will not be fixed, and psp also will out of warrantee. SCE also says that Sony will recently realease another version of firmware 2.01, to stop virus and 3r party program.

Ong Bak' the movie

I recently hired out Ong Bak the movie on DVD. The movie was awesome to say the least, its martial arts content was at another level not because of its special effects rather the lack of it or any at all. Its sort of the argument with digital vs. analogue , its not an old movie its quite recent so thats the thing that really amazed me, cause most movies especially those with hard core action scenes comprises using CGI or high tech devices, this guy (apparently is the next Bruce Lee), doesn't even use wires and does his own stunts and is similar to Jackie Chan, and the stunts are bloody awesome. Its a pretty basic plot line hero against bad guys but its also quite funny at times, the moves are great for no wires and makes you wanna go out an kick somebody ( I suggest you don't). The fact that it uses no CGI and wires gives it a sense of talented directing and special talent and also gives the feel of authenticity with the fight scenes and thats been lacking in today's action/fighting movies where CGI almost takes over the reality of the fights, but Ong Bak doesn't its like watching the old Bruce Lee movies all over again.

I recommend it to anyone who loves Bruce Lee movies and Martial Arts, awesome.

essay essay

I agree with Minnie in her essay essay blog. It seems that when you start out on your question it all seems fairly straight fowards - but the more you read and research the more complex the situation becomes, and the more you begin to doubt that what you are writing is anywhere near complex enough in reference to the hyper intelligent scholars whose musings should affect your work.
Its really hard to stay on a trajectory which is clean and clear from begining to end, when the topic you are writing about is so bendy and current and everyone seems to have a different take on it. I find that I get side tracked into my own views on things, and would love to just ramble on without much reference to the readings and research, but the whole point it to know the main ideas about new media and use those to discuss your essay question.
ITS HARD !!! Im finding this essay very hard.
so thats my whinge.

answers.com

I'm not sure how I initially downloaded answers.com but I have come to rely on it and use it daily.

Answers.com has many features that are informative and useful. In my opinion, the best feature is 1- click answers. 1-click answers is a tool that allows the user to alt click on any word anywhere (from a Word document to an internet page). Another window opens with a dictionary definition of the word and also definitions from sites like WordNet and Wikipedia.

On computer start up, a Today's Highlights window opens with interesting facts such as, Spotlight, Today in history and Today's Birthdays. Spotlight highlights events which happened on that particular day. Today in history follows the same idea as Spotlight but has smaller events highlighted. Today's Birthdays has birth dates of not just Hollywood actors but also important people from history.

Answers.com is an excellent tool for those into trivia. Personally I like that 1-click answers feature as a way of spell checking to insure that I have used the correct spelling of word to fit the meaning of the sentence. I highly recommend going to answers.com and downloading the system for free.

http://www.answers.com/

Friday, October 07, 2005

Be careful when you are doing online banking!

You may heard of that there has been an increasing number of incidents about Internet banking security :A computer hacker installed software in an Internet cafe that allowed him to gather the user names and passwords of people banking online at the cafe for highlighting what he called "lax security of Internet banking"; a fraudster posing as an bank staff member called customers, and asked for their Internet banking password; email scam have affected a number of banks in the past few weeks, etc. They are arousing the attention to online banking security.Many of us have to do online banking, so I think this is a issue what we should concern about.

I got some tips on my bank website and I hope it would be helpful for you who also do online banking. Mybe these advices sound slick , but well preparation is always worthwhile when compare it with" a bare possibility".

- There might be email claims to be from BankDirect, and looks as though it comes from the BankDirect website. Customers should not click on the links in this email, or disclose their personal banking details at it requests.If you receive this email, please delete it immediately from your inbox, and again from your Delete file.


-Always visit a banking website by typing in the web address. Don't click on a link.


-Be careful about clicking on unexpected "pop-up" messages or opening email attachments from unknown sources.


-Always make sure you keep your own PC virus protection up to date. Always keep your operating system security patches up to date.


- Think about the sites you are visiting or have visited. Criminals use some sites to transfer a virus to your PC which may then capture your Internet banking passwords (the risk of this is greatly reduced if your PC virus protection and firewalls are up to date).


-Once signed on, and before using the online service, check:- that the last successful sign on time reported by the service is consistent with when you last signed on.

TXT Version of the Bible

I couldn't believe it when i read it but take a look at this article from todays herald!! You can know read the bible in txt format, for example :"In da Bginnin God cre8d da heavens & da earth" Personally i think it is taking the whole txt language a bit too far i think..

And check this site out too:

http://www.biblesociety.com.au/smsbible/


What comes next i wonder?

When International Wires Cross

ha ha ha ha just had something very funny and vaguely technological happen, so I thought that I would share... My sister is in New York, I text her some totally cynical and bad tempered text about how much groping and kissing action I am seeing around campus, using the phrase PDA, and she relplies

" Oh! I couldn't figure out what was wrong with so many people using Pesonalised Digi Assistants (PDA)"

ahhh, good times.

cha

Video Mashup

Just found this video mashup that gave me a little laugh, something we talked about a while back. So here it is, The Shining a happy story? http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/shining.mov

Essay essay~~~

It seems there are some of you are doing essay Question 9. Actually, I find that discussing one of your favourite animation film criticlally is not that easy. At first, I thought it should be easy because it's just an animated film which contains cartoon characters and funny actions that entertaining people a lot. However, when I read the question and know that we need to firstly find out how the term "immediacy" and "hypermediacy" actually affect the meaning of the film. I was amazed by that these two paradoxical effects do to it. Here, I found out the meanig of these two words. Hypermediacy is a "style of visual representaion whose goal is to remind the viewer of the medium"; Immediacy is the perfection, or erasure, of the gap between signifier and signified, such that a representaion is perceived to be the thing itself. To turn these into my own words, simply, I think that hypermediacy contains a lot of details to generate some useful meanings through the media. But immediacy just creates some suddenly satisfaction which is made from the special effects. Through my reaserch reading, I find out that people usually have desire of immediacy upon hypermmediacy. A good example I learned from Kevin, that is he used "Shrek" to compare with "Finding Nemo". Shrek contains a simple storyline that the director just wants to show off the CGI technique. But Finding Nemo actually has a lot of details in the background, a more complex story line that indicates some deeper meanings of your friendship and kinship. And, it show more "realistic" details than the other one.

So, I m here to share some of my points of view, hope I didnt get it wrong.

Minnie

Thursday, October 06, 2005

I hate my computer

My biggest enemy in life is my laptop; I've been using a laptop for almost 7 years now. And I have always found that my laptop has found the best time to hurt me. I have had my laptop stop working for no reason. I have had my wireless card continuously reset and therefore stop any downloads I was in the midst of (including one that I had done 96% of). I have had my laptop screen pop right off the rest of the laptop. I have had my motherboard stop working. I have had my screen stop working. I have had my caps lock key pop out and refuse to go back in. I have had my space bar stop working. I have had a few drops (ok, maybe not a few) of juice fall on laptop and destroy my keyboard when I had a 6,000 word essay due in two days. I have had my computer reset in the middle of writing an essay. I have had a battery that stopped working within two weeks of getting a new laptop. I have had my laptop refuse to acknowledge my printer though I had already installed it. I have had a blue screen pop up that mentions 'dumping physical memory'. My laptop is also shedding its lovely black color and now I can actually see the metal under it!

All in all I have had a crazy experience with laptops. To tell the truth I think I came out of it pretty easy. My roommate in the US had her hard drive crash about 3 times (she lost all her information twice until she got a CD burner and backed her information there). Serves her right for buying Dell (sorry to any Dell lovers, she actually started a group called I hate Dell after it) The thing is that I use my laptop for pretty much everything (it has a disk space of 20 GB (I think) and I usually have 3 GB free at most): pictures, music, assignments, video games, downloads, etc... Until recently I haven't been able to back up most of the stuff on my computer as I didn't know how. Now I have to sit for hours attempting to transfer it all to my mom's desktop so that we can burn it onto a DVD.

I just read Ben's post "a vitalised iPod anyone?" and I realise that with all these new technologies we do become very dependent on them. They have mass storage, and yet, once you do something stupid, or sometimes they stop working, and its all gone. And yet most people don't learn from these mistakes and go right back and do the same thing. Is it because we trust these new technologies? Or is it that we just don't know how to go about backing up files?

I have always found that at a time when I have the most work, my laptop will stop responding. Yet I myself continue to depend on it and rely on it when I have an essay. Of course its not just me, people depend on it for classes, as well as in offices, as well as over the place. It just makes me wonder what would happen if something like Y2k (which I never really understood) hit and hit bad?

And then again, I remember someone posting on how cell phones today are easily breakable and stop working after a while, and get so out of date. At the same time, the laptop does this too. I bought my current laptop four years ago, and now it feels so outdated as other laptops have upto 70 or 80 GB and people never have to worry about space. As they don't worry, I struggle with keeping as much space free as possible. New models are always being tossed up, and of course, they are constantly improving. Now fewer games work on my laptop which is just horrible (of course good when you need to study and shouldn't be procrastinating) as they all need better graphics cards and things like that. And its not like the laptop is so cheap to buy, especially for students.

So basically my main point was of people's dependencies on their computers as well as other new media, and why no one does anything to back their files up (including me). But I must say as much as I hate my laptop, I am constantly using it. After all they say 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' (or maybe I'm just saying that in hope that she won't stop working in the next week as I have three essays to do!).

Adidas and xbox

Adidas and xbox have merged into a long term alliance. Bringing benefits for both sides in the combination of sport and entertainment. The partnership will lead to xbox 360 kiosks being placed in adidas retail locations and at grass roots football events leading up to the 2006 FIFA world cup. Xbox will also join adidas in supporting an MTV series based on young talented football players trying to get into national squads for the 2006 World Cup. Another feature of the partnership is that adidas will install content on xbox 360 consoles while xbox will have presence on adidas planned FIFA 2006 world cup mobile portal. The alliance will bring together a large group of people joining both audiences that enjoy to play inside and those whose who enjoy to play outside. The collaboration reflects that sports, lifestylpe and video games are inextricably linked. It also brings to the fore that games are big business as large companies from different areas join together to benefit each other.

radar

Hi all,

I am sure most people have heard of radar's, the expensive equipment that people tend to use in their car to detect if there speed camera's or policeman's around them. A few months ago I saw a friend of mine having one on his car. It looked pretty interesting so I asked what is that thing is it a camera or something? I have to admit I was amazed because I didn't know something like that can exist. It made me think, if there is such a device to exist so that drivers know when to slow down or drive with more caution just because there is a speed camera near by or the police, then is that a good thing or a bad thing. Think about it, does that mean other times they speed more than usual? It is good with that gadget so that drivers can be aware beforehand but relying on that just to drive safely or cautiously from getting into trouble with the police can give harm and danger in other times. What are your views on such device (technology) for those that may have a radar or know about it?
I've recently asked another friend about this technology device and he informed me that those who created the speed cameras and sold it to the police and later on they thought of more ways to earn more money (of course) so unfortunately they created the radar and sold them to drivers. To my surprise the radar is not old news, it was out for more than 6-7 years ago. Now they are developing more advance technology to dominate the radars and of course targeting the police market. Therefore this cycle goes round and round, so companies can make more profit.

Pop Up Adverts

Now the internet and television are two very different things. Although admittedly the difference between them is slowly closing in. I have noticed however the increasing number of pop up adverts that are plaguing the web pages of today. My feeling is that if I wanted to go to one of these sites; eg: download 1000 free smiley faces I would have typed into google at the beginning of my random web surfing download 1000 free smileys. And the really annoying things about pop up adverts are that you click for them to go away and then they re-pop about 2 seconds later. Is it not enough that we are constantly hammered with adverts when watching television and now when we go to the movies. But we have to be subjected to pop adverts. The banners surrounding a site are fine because they don’t really interfere with your web surfing. But the whole purpose of this rant was because I found this website called www.i-am-bored.com and it had a few pop up adverts that annoyed. Overall it’s a pretty good website. Over 50 pages of games to play, clips that you can watch and just overall funny things. The type of funny things that get sent through forwarded emails (if anyone reads them).

Restaurant Review Websites

Restaurant review websites are an excellent way to help decide where to go for dinner. Some of the websites are better tahn others out of the three I visit most frequentlly: www.eatout.co.nz www.dineout.co.nz and www.time2dine.co.nz the Dineout website is the best. Dineout offers a range of reviews from visitors to the website that score the restaurant on the food, presentation, the service, the ambience, the toilets and child friendliness. It then collates these scores to give the overall score. Restaurant review websites are useful because they give a range of reviews and provide a more balanced opinion than a review that appears in another medium such as a newspaper review which gives the opinion of one reviewer at one point in time, rather than a mix over a longer period of time, and provide and they provide an open forum for peoples' opinions. However they have the potential to be misleding as well, as a restaurant manager I have heard of a few stories from within the industry of fake reviewers-ie restaurant owners- writing malicious comments on other restaurants and others writing excellent reviews of their own restaurants!

Digital Art

A really cool image in the september 27th Herald caught my attention and i've been meaning to make a blog entry about it. Auckland artist Sarah Hughes won the Wallace Art Awards and as a result the $35,000 dollar reward !!Her winning peices is called 'Download' and is a really colourful, vibrant and fractionated surface of geometrics which have been created with digital technology. 'It is described as a colourful exploration of space on a two dimensional surface'.
I thought this really tied in with some of our readings and the idea of how modern art is always pulling the viewer back to the aknowledgement that the art is a medium and a construction, bringing the viewer out of complete immersion and making them question the idea of construction and creation. I also thought it cool that art of this kind are winning the big awards in New Zealand.
At the begining of the semester I entered this course and argued for the point that the digital age, the age of the computer generated image/sound/text made for a less organic and there for less natural expression of human creativity. What I have realised is that it is impossible for this to be true. All it represents is a ever increasing layering of representation and meaning, which is inevitable with the foward motion of life, always leaving a trail of history and meanings behind us, which always carry meaning for future creations etc.
so yeah - this art is no less art than the Mona Lisa. Its just different.

Wireless Energy

To do a little follow up on the post earlier about batteries. I might have to disagree. Although caps are a wonderfull idea, they are often not considered a financlly viable option becuse of the high demands of current electronics such as color iPods, laptops, and ever more complex cellphones coming out. These devices are high use items with little time in sleep or suspend modes and often doing complex calculations for our desired effect. This causes a lot of drain on batteries as is, and even with large development in caps, it would not be nearly enough to sustain the technology that it would be added into. Really i gain this from having looked around after getting rather curious about this issue from reading the post. I have had a large intrest as well in the idea of wireless energy. Everyone has opened up thier ultra light weight super computer with mega wireless built in and thought man isnt this handy, then crawled under the chair of the person sitting to thier left to grab that hard to reach power strip and wind the cable all the way back to the computer becuse that battery cant make it through the four hour presentation. If only there was wireless energy or a better battery. Well from what i can find, there is both. They are both on the horizon. First some reading for you...

Nuclear battery will last 10 years.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2135295/nuclear-battery-years

New battery to last 12 years.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2143266/boffins-battery-years

Splashpower
http://www.splashpower.com/solution/overview.html

The Wireless Transmission of Electrical Power
http://www.tfcbooks.com/articles/tws8c.htm

Now the batterys i wont go into very much detail, all i can really say is that they working hard to develop smaller, slower draining batteries as we speak, and items like the nuclear battery could really change how some of devices function although i doubt we will EVER see that in a laptop, the second 12 year battery is a much more possible solution even if at the moment only working for health purposes.

The next item is splash power, this is really where things start to get intresting and we can see the future of where technology is going. This is true wireless power. Even though you cant buy the pads on the market yet, they are on thier way, last i heard sonicare toothbrushes were going to be using this technology. Now imagine, your school equips all the desks with a giant splash power strip, all you do is pickup the speical splash power battery from school and then go to class, put the laptop, cellphone, and ipod down on your desk and start taking notes, and meanwhile, all three devices are charging. No cords, no nothing, rather novel thought huh? Well its not very far off with technology like this. Well the next question becomes can i get power over distance so i can chat in the park and use my laptop for hours on end, and thats on its way although more than likely several years from even being in a prototype that could be commerically viable. These are all intresting technologies however that are worth keeping an eye on since they may very well change how we function as a society if we trully become wireless since it seems power is one of the last remaining wires we have left.

Sincerly yours,
Spivey

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

A Vitalized iPod anyone?

Well the title doesn't really link to the main point of my blog entry, although there is some (unfortunate) relevance.
The main point of this entry is to give an example of how dependency on technology could be dangerous. As I have mentioned in an earlier blog, I have a 60gb iPod that I mainly use as an external hard drive to back up important files etc. Well a few hours ago, as I was leaving uni, I noticed that a part of my bag was incredibly damp, in fact dripping. Oh crap! I thought to myself as I opened my bag to find that I did not screw the lid on my V bottle properly, and all the contents in the pocket were soaked. Including my ipod, headphones and phone.

Although my phone was wet, it wasn't as bad as my ipod. After I dried it the best I could (with my shirt and a hand dryer) it was still very sticky and semi-responsive. Occassionally the wheel would work, and occassionally the buttons would work, and I found that it reset when I switched the Hold button on then off. When I got home I put it in the hot water cupboard for a few minutes and now it is completely unresponsive. . .

I had a look on the net to see if anyone else had had a similar incident, and found this http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/15709

Which suggests that I open the iPod (which seems impossible!), remove the battery and pretty much let it dry out completely. And apparently Apple won't attempt to repair it if there's evidence of liquid!

Anyway, I'm not too sure what to do, I'm thinking I might just leave it for a while and see if it just dries out somehow. I'm not one to look at the downside of things, but then again I'm probably going to be quite annoyed if it is perminately damaged and if the files on it are unretrievable!

Any suggestions would be great!

To sum up, I depended on my iPod as a safe and secure storage device for important files, and after a little mishap they could all be gone for good. . . Awesome (!)

Peter Jackson signs up with Halo

I'm a big fan of Peter Jackson, I love his films like Meet the Feebles, Braindead, Bad Taste (and of course the LoTR trilogy) and can't wait to see what he's done with King Kong. I was also a big fan of Halo when it came out and it's come to my surprise that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh have signed on to executive produce the Halo project and are planning on planning on shooting it in Wellington with WETA.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001221619

Halo joins other video-game inspired movies like the Lara Croft, Resident Evil and the upcoming Doom movie (and the rather forgettable Mortal Kombat and worse-than-anyone-could-have-imagined Streetfighter movies).

This is good for both the movie and video game industries. Not only does having his name on board for this project bring credibility to the movie itself, but the fact that an oscar-winning director is involved with a genre that is basically new and still trying to find it's feet with the movie audience will add alot of value to video-game movie adaptations for the future and hopefully secure bigger and brighter talent when it comes to adapting games into screenplays.

Cell Phone Virus Alert

I missed almost a two weeks of blog and as i was updating my reading i noticed how much people are fixated on cell phones. Scanning back over the cell phone topics i noticed that nothing new has really been thrown into the mix except that post about integrating cell phones into the Uni e-mail system for students.Brilliant. As i was saying earlier on in the semester the humble cell is quickly turning into an uber device a la "Johnny Mnemonic" or for a more recent analogy a la "Minority Report." Anyhow, read on.Now that it is no longer just a phone, but more like a data stream receiver/sender, the cell phone is in danger of tapping/hacking/viruses.Yes! Does anyone remember that episode when Paris Hiloton's phonebook was lifted from her cell by some Californian Uber Geeks? Was all over “women’s day” and even “20/20” or “hard copy” did a feature on "Cell phone Privacy". I think it was even on TV3 news, some time near the Oscars.What i am leading up to is that apparently due to the growing complexity of the device, the cell phone can also now get viruses. if you thought your computer dieing for no good reason was annoying, think of your precious Motorola crapping itself heavily for no reason at all.
What impact could cell phone viruses have on our lives? Could these viruses be used for advertising, instead of annoying pop up spam, you will receive pop up TXT, could this be the future?

Cell phones with Bluetooth, MMS and data capabilities will probably be the most susceptible. Basically the same as a computer virus, it is an unwanted executable file that gets downloaded onto your phone via blue tooth or e-mail and then copies itself over and over and over again like a bunch of rabbits on Viagra until your phone is crippled.
Virualy the same thing, you get a piece of spam with a cool “free” ring tone, application or game, open it install it thinking its all gravy and then, WHAM! You are infected!Fortunately the article below explains why these viruses don’t spread that well.Here is a link that you can study on your on free time. http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone-virus.htm

The Critical Side of Live Action and Animation

So I was reading this paper by Alan Cholodenko, a film theorist writing in the early nineties, a revolutionary decade for animation as lectures have been affirming!

The basis of Cholodenko's critique lies around the 1989 film, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" which uses both live action as well as animation. Although it's a bit dated I think that a lot of the suggestions put forward can be analogous to the films that we have been discussing in class which are also hybrids, for example Sin City. Such films appear to exemplify the abandonment of the either/or approach to film making in favour of the both/and method. In other words, the division and the interealation of "live action cinema" and "animation" is becoming much less discernable.

Cholodenko argues against the presuppostion that animatation is merely a marginal aspect of film. More increasingly this view is becoming mainstream, as is evidenced by the massive success of pure animation films such as "Finding Nemo" and films that inlist animation such as "LOTR."

His proposals rest on the idea of "the frame." The framework of the hyrbrid genre as a whole and the frame of the camera. He says that "according to the logic of the paragon [the frame] it is only through animation that film can define itself as film" (p 213) This is then furthered by the articulation that the frame consists of two distinct but inherently inseperable concepts: live action and animation. I think this is bang on because from a historical context it is motion picture projectors that animated still photographs to create live action reels.

So while on the face of things, live action and animation may appear to be in binary opposition, I think that this article reinforces what lectures are asking us to consider, that is, how acutely related these two paradigms are.


[ref: Alan Cholodenko, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit or the Framing of Animation," The Illusion of Life, Sydney: Power Publishers, 1991, 209-242]

the uncanny valley - emotional responses to human forms


Here's an article I've seen referenced many times online and thought I'd bring up here that's somewhat relevant to week nine. It references what the author has termed The Uncanny Valley. It's essentially the moment that humanoid designs move from eliciting positive emotional responses to negative. The theory goes like this: when creating a robot (or alternatively a CGI humanoid for a movie, game, etc.) possible designs range from completely robotic in appearance to attempting to completely simulate reality, with many grey spaces in between. While designs are within the "somewhat human" range the response from those viewing it are generally positive. But once things become almost human the response shifts quickly into the negative, androids seem creepy and unsettling because they're eyes don't shine quite right would be an example of this.

Another, frequently cited example of this is the CGI film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within where although the amount of detail that's been put into the characters is very detailed seeing them kiss is still unsettling. In contrast animations done by Pixar are frequently purposefully skewed away from appearing to human, giving them a cartoon-like appearance and steering safely to the not-to-real side of the valley. For more information on this phenomenon you can check out the wikipedia article here. What do you think of this? Are there examples of things that manage to be incredible lifelike, human and not creepy?

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

A Scanner Darkly


From the director who brought you the innovative animated feature 'Waking Life' is a new movie called A Scanner Darkly which uses the same techonology from Waking Life - I think it is called rotoscoping but i am not 100% on that one, anyway the movie was filmed digitally and then animated over by graphic novel artists, I watched the trailer the other day and it looks pretty cool, haven't seen Waking Life yet so i am new to this style of animation.. it shows promise though! When i was watching the trailer it reminded me of Ghost In The Shell which was an anime feature that came out in 1995. I think even the title of the movie (which is based on the book by Phillip. K.Dick) is related, in that it alludes to the quote from Corinthians which is also referenced in Ghost In The Shell by Kusonagi when she states-

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now i know in part; but then shall i know even as i am known." Corinthians 13:12

Which i think is a statement on how the reality we experience now is only part of it and that the real truth is yet to be revealed, i mean how do we really know what reality is anyway? your dream state sometimes feels more real than your concious state.. and in an age of increasing technologisation of the body this reality is become clearer to us (or darker?) I guess you could argue both ways..

Anyway, the film looks promising so give it a watch when it comes out which i think is early 2006.

Alarm clocks

--> following on from “aye002’s” blog entry

I read aye002’s post yesterday about alarm clocks and cellphone alarms. It surprised me because I was actually going to post about something similar. I, too, have major problems trying to wake up in the morning, but am yet to experiment with different pitched noises! And I agree, having my favourite song would make me stay in bed.

My current wake-up system (which often fails) is as follows: I set my cellphone alarm for 6:30am. I press snooze so it goes of at 6:40am, and so on until 7am. I set my alarm clock for 7am as a backup. But even having both doesn’t always work. The noise of my alarm often becomes part of my dream, and I turn it off in my sleep! I think alarm clocks need to have more functions and become more technological. For example, on Sunday I woke up at 9am. But I had forgotten about daylight savings so it was actually 10am. A whole hour of my life gone! Anyway, later on in the day when turning my computer on, I was pleased to see that it remembered about daylight savings. If only alarm clocks knew this sort of thing.

This got me thinking about technology in the house in general. I realised that there are certain areas that are actually lacking in technology. I think my house may be lacking behind slightly in terms of household technology, but it’s good to see more ‘smart’ devices hitting the shops. However I think there should be more mainstream intelligent devices such as techno alarm clocks. It seems like some things just don’t change, like alarm clocks are still so old-school and analogue (well, mine is anyway). Technology is all about making our lives more simplistic (or more complicated? Depends how you look at it) so I would like to see small household devices improved to make our lives easier :)

-Shannon Doherty

Essay - Studygroup/Blog?

The post of aye002 made me wonder why none of us thought of having an online discussion of our essay questions? As most of us (so I hope) do read this blog regularily, it would be, if not a little late, a good platform for some of us to discuss points and research with regard to our essay question.

I start the ball rolling and say that I will write on No. 3 (the music question).
Many music industry reports treat music consumption primarily as an economic activity rather than a social or cultural activity. How do you think a discussion of music consumption as primarily social and cultural can inform current debates on the economy of digital music?

Well as far as I understand the question is for us to look at how digital music is consumed. The main concern must be that peer-to-peer filesharing networks do provide an avenue for pirated music to be made available online and as newer platforms are not centralised (no big server in one stationary place but individual PC's become networked) they are hard to shut down. Also downloading music is not seen as theft. Consolidation in the music industry means that the "Big 5" own most music which is available in shops. Hence it is possible that downloaders see it as stealing from the rich and subsequently alright to do so. Also how about consumers liking to listen to "playlists" instead of whole albums?

Well I have of course more points but if some people want to share ideas of those who are doing essay question 3 are afraid to use this public forum then feel free to e-mail me at s i l u_n z@yahoo.co.nz (just make it one word, I have those spaces as not to receive spam from webcrawlers etc)

Eye Toy Kinetic

I just found out about an interesting new product for the PS2, a new kind of EyeToy game - Kinetic. The concept is really interesting, and the website already has be fascinated.

Kinetic is like having your own personal trainer, infact you have two virtual trainers in the 'game' to guide you. It's an interesting concept for the use of the camera software which I'd previously seen as rather stupid games that were only midly entertaining, marketing an exercise program is an interesting concept and has me interested. Is this the future of the home workout? We've always seen dvds and vhs workouts which we can use in our homes but this is a step-up. An interactive workout.

Unfortunatly for me the website doesn't seem to want to work beyond the introduction of the virtual trainers so I haven't been able to get much of an idea about the game from that but the concept alone has me very interested, it seems Playstation - or at least London Studio who were also behind singstar - are pushing the boundries of the way we use our playstations, something which could be blamed for many inactive people now could be used as a piece of gym equipment in a sense. This seems to be a very innovative way of using the USB camera for playstation but how many people really want to watch themselves workout?

Italian film festival

The Italian film festival begins this weekend. The festival features a lot of award winning art house films. I’m going to see Morning, Night and The Consequences of Love this weekend. I’ll let you know what I thought of them. To check out the movie times go to http://www.italianfilmfestival.co.nz/home.htm
If anyone lives on the North Shore you should try the Bridgeway Theatre in Northcote Point. It is a really old movie theatre, that plays the same films as rialto and has a yummy restaurant next door!

hi5!

hi5 is a kind of world wide friends network that you and your friends can all belong to. A website that you can somewhat restrict to your friends or their aquantences viewing, where you post a bit of information on yourself and if you so choose, a photo as well. You can send your friends quirky little 'hi5s' such as, best friend, party animal, super cool etc. There is also a testimonial option that you can write for a friend, or you can write for yourself. What this means is that for people who are travelling overseas and have limited internet time, they can just jump on hi5 and write a testimonial on what they have been up to, without having to email everyone, instead it is all on one site that all your friends can access. Since leaving school I havent seen a lot of people for a long time, so after ignoring all these hi5 requests for a very long time I eventually signed up and found heaps of people Iknow on there, a lot of whom are still in auckland, but also those who have moved overseas such as Melbourne, Holland, Europe. I think its kind of cool that there is a network where everyone can belong to so you can see all of your friends, and all of your friends friends, and see how everyone is doing. Another little trick (for America and Canada only) is the ability to find old school friends through doing a school search within the website. Of course you can always just send a group email but hey why not use a website where you can be in far more contact with old friends, and put up online diaries and photos of your trip or anything that takes ya fancy? And it is all on one website and does not take ages to load like some email attachments do.I think its kind of fun!

Widgets

So I discovered the coolest thing the other night. I was looking at my friends Mac and suddenly this weird thing came up on the screen. I discovered Mac’s latest update that comes with a dashboard. You can cover your dashboard with different widgets depending on what you like. You can have hundreds of different widget, from the tides of your area, Google search, note pad, world time, earthquakes, maps, word of the day, weather and even television.
Check out http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/
I can’t wait till the day I’m not poor student and can get stuff like this!!!

a little late i know

Hi,

I thought I knew what I was doing but now I'm quite confused. Does anyone know what the question is suggesting in question nine of the assignment. What does it mean 'discuss the ideological implications of this paradox'?

I e-mailed the tutor but I guess he is quite busy to reply back. So if anyone can help explain what ideological implications mean would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

The Shining - The final cut


Hi guys,

Just got this link and thought that I should share it with you. I assue that most us have seen Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" with Jack Nicholson.

What would happen if we make a promo clip for the movie and put some nice music and narration over the top? The endresult is a movie you would take your whole family to.

The Shining - New Clip here

P.S. You should have broadband to watch this clip.

Monday, October 03, 2005

how kiwi's see the world

You may already know about it, but you can not go on to googles webiste http://maps.google.com/ and look all over the world from a satellite. You can even zoom up on your own home!!!
There really aren't a lot of search engines that beat google. Did you kow that they have a whole range of books online as well. Its a great way to find specific ideas or words in the text. If you got to www.google.co.nz and click on Google.com, then click More / Books and read away. It beats the library catalogue because you can search inside the books.

Commenting on Shannons..

Carrying on from Shannon's blog about texting ill have to say I can relate to a lot of what she said. I think she’s absolutely right with our generation feeling like we need to be constantly in contact with people. I'm the same as her, i'm always checking my phone to see if anyone’s tried to contact me with the latest gossip, uni info, or just anything in general.
However, I feel that the older generation is now also becoming text dependant. When mobiles first started 'booming' my mum was pretty cynical, but now both parents text before they'd call. Even my 87yo grandfather has a ‘cellphone’ – admittedly its one of those old Motorola ones, and he hardly uses it, but still! Of course it’s a generalisation to presume everyone is like this, but I have to say from my experience, most people I know love to use their mobiles.
Jane Harwood made an interesting point about the University texting us our announcements instead of emailing. I think that’s a brilliant idea, particularly if it’s an important announcement like canceling a lecture. Jen M also mentioned that students could use PDA’s – in fact this is being trialed in one of my other classes. A friend is meant to be using his PDA throughout the semester to see if it will help him, but he has since given up on it and prefers the old pen and paper – personally I think it looks fun! Jen also mention students with GPRS on their phone can check their emails anyway. Like her, I have an ancient cellphone so couldn’t do this, however if it was going to cost to use my cell, being the poor student I am I think id rather use a computer! I haven’t seen many people using PDA’s in class, but I wonder if it would just be a further distraction like our phones?

Impatience in the 'Instant Age'

Does anyone find that they are becoming increasingly impatient? Not just with slow technology, but it's also appearing in other aspects of your life too? I've noticed that I am becoming a very impatient person, and I would like to rightly place the blame for this on technology.

With broadband internet at home and uni, I can't stand it when a webpage takes more than a nanosecond to open. And I can't stand it when the computer momentarily freezes or takes a few seconds to carry out a task. I keep being told that I am too impatient, violently clicking in a mad frenzy to make the computer hurry up. I used a friend's internet at her house the other day and heaven forbid, she's stuck in the dark ages with dial-up. It took like 30 seconds to load a webpage. I almost screamed. But what is wrong with me? 30 seconds is no time at all in the scheme of things, and 5 years ago 30 seconds was damn quick! In fact there's a line from a movie I like, set in the 1970s but made in like 2001 and it talks about the fax machine, saying something like "it's able to transmit pages over the telephone. Can you believe it? And it only takes 18 minutes a page!" Oh, if only they knew.

Also I'm finding that it's not just the technology I'm impatient with, but other people. Because the technology is so quick, so instant, I get mad when people take a while to respond. For example, I text someone, and they text back after like 15 minutes. What is that about? Or on msn people don't respond for like 5 minutes. For like forever.

I don't know how I ever coped with dial-up internet, seriously I just can't picture it now. Or how I ever coped without a cellphone, having to wait until I got home to tell/ask someone something, when I want to do it NOW! Is there a cure?

Blogs and Nukes

On his way home from work one day, a head scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico stopped at a internet cafe and created a blog. He was trying to boost company morale by creating a medium where employees could discuss real problems that were going on within the lab. The blog created a lot more stir than that.
In addition to a possibility that the blog contributed to the resignation of the head director, the US Congress got ahold of the blog and saw it as a security threat. The situation is heightened by the idea that because these scientists work with nuclear technology, they are not supposed to have the everyman's gripe about the work place.
Although this is still under investigation, I think the blog brought the fact that the scientist are like everyone else. Much like the creator of the blog states, it has helped the laboratory address some issues and that was what it was for in the first place.

(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4657337) "Los Alamos National Lab Blog Draws Ire on Hill"

The time

Hi all,

I am quite exausted, espcially now that it is day light saving! I feel I haven't been sleeping long enough. In the last few days i've slept 3-5 hours. However my discussion is about alarm clocks. I have noticed that some cell phones have really and I mean really good alrms sounds to annoy the heck out of me, so annoying that I end up grumpy. My own alarm clock on my alcatel phone is useless, no matter if I have set the alarm to the highest volume it doesn't wake me up one bit, that I cannot understand. But when I use my friend's phone it would wake me up instantly, why is that? Is it to do with the high pitch sound incorporated? It is strange how someone knocking on the door can wake someone up so easily compared to an alarm clock. I vagegly remember on this year that people's favourite song can now be incorporated into alarm clocks so that people can wake up to thier favourite songs or favourite singers etc. But then I thought if they do that, then wouldn't people end up still sleeping, because thier favourite tune they are listening to would relax them even more they they will continue to have thier pleasant sleep? Just wondering does anyone know about this? And what is your view on alarm clocks or if you have any information about new clocks? my past alarm clocks didn't work for me, but after hearing higher pitched ones i wake up in an instant.

Response to portable PDF reader :

In Response to the post of portable PDF reader by Ben.
Actually you can actually do this now. On most PDA and I know all Palms you can transfer and read PDF files off your Palm, using Acrobat Reader for Palm OS. Your only limited by the amount of memory of the PDA. I have done so once on my Palm and it was ok. But I can only put on small size files because it’s old and I didn’t have a lot of memory on it. So I can't really put on any course reading on it because they too big. Only problem is that you view it on a small 8 cm screen and the text is small and reading it can get tiring after a while.

But you I see what you mean it would be cool to have a larger PDF file reader, the size about A4 that you could read clearly and easily. That could store a lot of files and books on them. So that you didn’t have to lug a whole lot of books around when your doing an essay. Just and little note pad thing. Like the ones you use to see on Star Track. Information pad I think they use to call them??

Mana-E

Death to the battery.

A friend of mine was telling me about how capacitors could replace batteries in the not to distant future, this is a prospect that I am looking forward to. Capacitors, traditionally, are small electronic devices for storing electric charge in electronic circuitry. Through a Google search I found various sites, like those listed below, which detail how capacitors can be taken from their conventional role of rapid voltage discharge to being controlled to an electronic 'trickle', which is exactly the same as what we get from modern batteries. What would be improved by the use of capacitors is the size of electronic technology, especially that which is mobile. Cellphones, MP3 players and other electronic devices would also be less restricted in form and they would be more reliable as there are no compounds or chemicals contained in them which will degrade over time. I am personally looking forward to not having to worry about having to replace my cellphone battery when it dies. Batteries are expensive and restrictive and the new one will eventually become more and more unreliable till it dies as well.

Hamish

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/capacitor.htm (simple explaination)

www.eepn.com/Locator/Products/ArticleID/31072/31072.html (buying product)

www.flipperit.net/tkalliok/flipperi/goldcap_en.html (computer memory batteries)

Sunday, October 02, 2005

PDF Portable?

No it's not a new product... Just wishful thinking. I cannot stand reading pdf files on a computer screen, and I am sure I am not the only one. Wouldn't it be great if a new electronic portable pdf reader was created! I'm thinking it could be kind of like a digital book with double screens that opens up and allows for zooming and highlighting through a touch screen, and perhaps allow for addtional input devices such as mini keyboards or a mouse feature to add aditional notes etc. As the main reason behind my dislike for reading 'electronic' copies of books/articles on a pc is due to the sheer awkwardness and lack of mobility (as apposed to the real thing), I feel that a personal pdf reader would be a lot more comfortable and a lot more convenient. Imagine if a product was created that had a hard drive/memory storage of some kind that could store hundreds of books or even entire libraries? Could that see the end of physical library locations?. . . ha ha, that last bit was a joke (i think).

Online Video Diaries

Just a trend i have seen starting of late is directors who are doing online video diaries of the production and post production process and then posting them on the net for fans to download. I thought it was just Peter Jackson on King Kong but it seems that Bryan Singer is also doing it and Kevin Smith too, i just had the pleasure of watching the first video diary for Clerks 2 which was hilarious! A very self deprecating man that one.. :p I think that as time goes by more directors are going to start doing these online video diaries of the production process because there is huge demand from internet fanboys to see their favorite projects being made, i guess it is just that further interaction with the filmmaking process that is behind it all and it helps alleviate any fears they might have about a director ruining their favorite comic book.

If they can see how the film is shaping out and the path the director is taking with the project then i think they are going to respond more favourably to the finished product, especially as it shows the director actually cares about the fans and how they feel. I wonder which director will be next to have an online video journal..

Clerks Video Journal #1

The VHS Extra Text!

I was just thinking about the DVD extra text. What Rebekah said was true- people do feel ripped off if their DVD doesn't include any special features. Special features are more personalised and when you get more "inside" look at how the film was created and what the actors and directors are like, you tend to appreciate the film more.

But I've just been browsing through my trusty VHS collection (the one I acquired before I was cool enough to get my own DVD player) and it does appear that DVDs aren't the only place to find extra text. At the end of many films on VHS, especially the ones made from the late 90's onwards, there is a usually a behind the scenes documentary. Some examples:

The Matrix (1999) VHS includes a "making-of" documentary at the end, featuring the creation of special effects and martial arts scenes. The lead actors take turns speaking about their roles and the whole documentary is filled with action scenes and loud music, giving the documentary the same feeling that the actual film has.

After Gladiator (2000), the VHS features a lengthy, behind the scenes documentary, but shows the extent that the director went to create a film that appeared to be set in a convincing ancient Rome, using CGI effects. The fighting scenes are also featured within the documentary.

The Moulin Rouge (2001) VHS also has a behind the scenes documentary, but focuses on the theatrical aspects of the film- the creation of the sets and costumes, the way music was used. There is even a brief history about the actual Moulin Rouge in Paris.

Stigmata (1999) on VHS not only included a "making-of" documentary but focused a lot on the historical documentation of stigmata itself, which I found answered several questions that the film posed regarding stigmata and religion.

Each documentary seemed to use dominate themes or aspects that are found within the actual film. Like the DVD, this allows us to appreciate the effort and detail that went into making the film and makes us want to watch the film all over again. The main difference between the VHS and DVD extra text is that the DVD provides more interaction by allowing us to be selective in which parts of the extra text we can view.

Sports Simulations

Sports simulations are able to convey realsism unlike any other type of video game. This is because the player controls real people n real situations ie. sports games. In recent years there has also been a trend to try and simulate these sports games in recent years to try and simulate television coverage of sports events in an interactive way rather then place the player themself inside the game. One game that exemplifies this is Fifa 2006 which has a fixed camera system but also when watching teo computer controlled teams looks almost the same as a live football match minus the close ups, crowd shots, reaction shots etc. Another way in which sports simulations are able to create this conception of reality is through the fact that incredible attention to detail is not only put into making every player looks like but also getting their personal playing style and the way they move to the smallest detail right. The fact that sports simulations are made from real people in real situtations that could of happened/ could happen in the future gives them the edge in conceiving reality over many other genres and forms of games.

technoculture new media


I never know thought that there will be so much knowledge needed to modify cars, in my mind, modified cars are those cars with big exhaust, huge body- kit, and oversize wheels, which you see everyday on the roads.

After I went to a garage for modifying cars with my boyfriend the other day, I saw there are a few cars looking very factory form to me, but my boyfriend told me they can go as fast as a Ferrari or Porsche, then I started questioning how they made it that fast. At the beginning my boyfriend just explained the simple stuff to me like putting on larger exhaust and filter, but after I asked him to explain more in depth, he told me it’s the computer in the car doing the job these days. The computer acts like a brain for the car; it calculates how much air goes into the engine and how much fuel it would use to do the combustion. Since most of the car modifiers just put on bigger filter and exhaust, it doesn’t help the car gain much power, because the factory computer setting is not programmed to run more air and fuel. So putting on an after market computer to fine-tune the car is the only option to gain high power. There are two types of after market computer, first type is a piggy-back type which you connect the after market computer to the factory computer, then the after market computer will link up and modify the factory computer settings, but most of them only allow to change around 20 to 30% of the factory settings. The second type is a full con type, which you replace the factory computer with the after market one, this will give you a full accessibility to the computer to do any new setting.

The best way to tune the computer is to run it on a dyno machine. The dyno machine has a computer inside, after the car done some running on the machine, it will save the car running data, and show it on screen, which allow the technician to do the new setting to the after market computer installed in the car. To fine tune a car, it will take at least 6 hours, depending on the experience of the technician.

I have never thought of that a little computer in the car can make such a big difference to the performance of the car. Now I understand why guys like modifying cars, it is very impressive to see the results when you’ve modified the right thing.

Home Sweet Home

At the moment I'm looking for an apartment, and it's pretty hard. I want a one-bedroom place, but I don't want a one room place, and I want a balcony (I'm a smoker, but smoking inside is disgusting). I can only pay a certain amount (being a student), and conventional means were just not enough - I can't afford an agent.
Enter the sweet, sweet internet: Did you know that the NZ Herald website www.nzherald.co.nz has a search section in its Classifieds, so you can only see ads which are within your specifications? Awesome. The same for www.trademe.co.nz - they've got heaps of listings, and you can look for flatmates, or just flats, or even homes to buy. They also have the option (as with all their auctions) to e-mail new listings that match your search, but their specifications are a little wide - I've been getting listings sent for Mt. Roskill and Hillsborough and I specified "Central Auckland/Auckland City".
I have to say though, the best thing about looking for a place online is that you can see pictures (although not on the Herald site, it's just the classifieds), and e-mailing agents and landlords is much nicer than talking on the phone and feeling pressured.
I hope this helps other people out, because it's really a great way to look for a place.

A new DVD era is coming.

A new DVD era is coming

The world's third-largest notebook computer maker Toshiba had developed the first PC in the world that is enable to read HD DVD.

HD DVD is High-Definition DVD. It takes the best features of today's DVD and adds new capabilities and greatly enhanced functionality. The normal DVD'S capability is 4.7G. Nowadays, when we buy a DVD, we can get an extra DVD, that is 9.4G. The capability of HD DVD is 30G. That means 20G's more, with that capability, we can get more content about a movie, such as live performance.

Cool! I want it!


Small is beautiful for Apple

by Peter Griffin

Small can be beautiful. Its name says it all. The iPod Nano is small, so small you'll keep giving your pocket reassuring pats to make sure the tiny device is still there. It's the smallest iteration of the world's favourite music player yet, and while it does nothing more than its older siblings, the Nano just looks and feels better. Whereas the full-sized iPods contain hard drives, the Nano uses flash memory. It has fewer moving parts, can be made smaller and is less easy to damage, but it won't hold your entire music collection. I've always been attracted to the huge capacities hard-drive-based music players like the 60GB iPod and the iRiver can supply, but the Nano has revived my interest in small music players. The version I used had 2GB of storage, enough for around 400 songs. That's not as much selection as a full-size iPod but syncing with the accompanying iTunes software which works on Mac computers and Windows PCs is so fast and easy, it's not much of a hassle to shuttle songs between the player and your computer. The Nano's 1.5-inch, 176x132-pixel colour screen is bright and clear and displays the iPod's familiar uncluttered menu. You can also transfer photos to the Nano in iTunes, using a USB 2.0 cable. You'll fill the 2GB Nano in just a few minutes if your computer supports the high-speed transfer system. The photos can be displayed on the screen and a good range of photo formats is supported. You can set up picture slide shows to play with the music. There's no music equaliser, but 22 pre-set listening modes should keep audiophiles happy. And while the music delivered through the classic, white, ear-bud headphones seems to be as good as with the larger iPods, you can plug in your own high-end headphones for slightly better sound quality. There's support for importing contact details from programs like Outlook Express. There's a plastic fitting so you can use the Nano with your existing iPod dock and it comes with a standard connector so your iPod accessories should work fine with it. Reports out of the US last week said Nano users were finding the tiny music player's screen easy to crack and the front easy to scratch. It will certainly be interesting to see how the Nano weathers knocks and scrapes as it ages. If you're rough on your gadgets, the aluminium-encased iPod Mini may be better suited to you. I'm still reticent in recommending any iPod wholeheartedly due to its incompatibility with many music download services, but on design and ease of use alone, the Nano is the best music player Apple has released since the original iPod seduced us all.

Reference:
Griffin, Peter. 2 October,2005. retrieved from http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10348249

Star Wreck – in the Pirkinning

Star Wreck – in the Pirkinning

A Finnish spoof of Star Trek and Babylon 5, seven years in the making, three hundred people involved and now available for free download – gosh those Finnish nights are long!

I've only seen the trailer so far but if that's anything to go by the download will be worth it; remember to get the one with subtitles. The special effects are sufficient (at the trailer resolutonof 480x204 they look very good), the acting, well its not up there with the best but then neither was the first Star Trek. As a trailer it is very like professional ones with the deliberatley jerky editting of very short scenes together with continuity supplied by the sound track. From comments on Slashdot the quality of the whole move, all 102 minutes of it, is pretty good. I would be interested to see the "Making Of" video on the DVD (yes there is a DVD) and would like to see if the FX stand up to higher resolution.

The web site is interesting in that the FAQ, while hardly in the KongIsKing league, gives some interesting insights into the possibilities of doing it yourself and some of the issues in doing that. I know there are a few of these kinds of projects around but they are all worth supporting. And doesn't this really highlight the lack competence in Hollywood these days especially when some of the executives are beginning to own up that they are not being ripped off through downloads, its the quality of their films that is the problem. Given the sheer lack of expenditure this two hour movie should make for embarassment in corporation land.

Magic Bike

A kind of different invention that I’d never heard of, but maybe its been around for a while… A New York artist has turned his bicycle into a mobile wi-fi wireless internet hub which gives free internet connectivity whenever its ridden or parked. The bike has wi-fi antennas mounted on to the the frame, which feed to a laptop hidden in the saddle-bag and the connection can be received from the cellular network or from nearby hotspots. I thought this was quite strange, as I would logically design a ‘wi-fi’ car to perform this function before I’d think of a bike… Its quite a novel way to have a network available anywhere whenever you want it, but I wonder about the security of the bike – particularly in New York! but maybe im just behind the times and this is quite a common thing? The official website I found didn’t work when I tried – www.magicbike.net, but more information can be found here.

CORPSE BRIDE

Warner Bros just released its new animated feature Corpse Bride on 23rd September. It might be the Best Animation Feature of Oscar this year.
"Corpse Bride" is set in in a 19th century European village. This stop-motion, animated feature follows the story of Victor, a young man who is whisked away to the underworld and wed to a mysterious Corpse Bride called Emily, while his real bride, Victoria, waits bereft in the land of the living. Although life in the Land of the Dead proves to be a lot more colorful than his strict Victorian upbringing, Victor learns that there is nothing in this world, or the next, that can keep him away from his one true love.
Victor is voiced by Johnny Depp, and reflects the current trend in animation by also looking like Johnny Depp. The movie's another inspiration is to make Emily a figure of sympathy, not horror. She lost her own chance at happiness when she was murdered on the eve of her wedding and now wants to be a good wife for Victor.
Director Burton and his co-director, Mike Johnson, use the stop-motion technique, which means taking puppets -- about a foot tall -- and painstakingly moving them half a millimeter at a time to achieve a subtlety of expression beyond the range of CGI. It takes a twelve-hour work day to produce even a second or two of usable footage. Burton used stop-motion in 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas, but the digital improvements at his disposal now really make it sing.
By the way, Corpse Bride will be released on 27th Oct in New Zealand.


More



Jxu063

Too many cards!

Every week or two I have to empty my wallet to sort things out. It gets so full of crap, that it gets to the stage where I can’t close it. I am sure some of you can relate. So there I am screwing up old bus tickets, receipts (keeping a couple of important ones), sorting money, and re-organising my wallet. I also have a section for vouchers that I’m sure I’ll never even use.

Anyway, it always annoys me no end at the number of plastic cards I have. Most I need everyday – cashflow card, credit card, bus card, ID, drivers license, etc. Then the ones I occasionally need, so still have to carry – Flybuys, video store card, AA card, library card, Farmers beauty club card (!!), etc. THEN there are the ones that I hardly ever need, but feel lost without them, such as my airpoints card and the infamous 'coffee club' type cards. It's the whole 'just in case' thing.

My point is, it is sooooo annoying having all these cards. I think there should be ONE ultimate card to replace all other cards. It could have a little microchip or computer component that holds all information from our other cards. I read Jane’s blog entry a couple of weeks ago about the new Mastercard (http://technoculture05.blogspot.com/2005/09/mastercard-gets-clever.html) and thought that was quite cool. But how much cooler would it be if the one card was for everything, not just a credit card. Each shop or service could only access the part that they are authorised to, information could easily be added or removed, receipts could be electronically saved on it, etc, etc.
There probably is something like this ‘out there’, but how good would it be if it were just a common thing we all had. Perhaps this would see an end to the wallet! I would be very happy :)

-Shannon Doherty

Viability of Media Mobilisation

As the world becomes increasingly mobilised by technology, this mobilisation seeps into every aspect of our lives, a major area where this can be seen to be happening rapidly is within the media. Recently Vodafone has released within it’s ‘third generation’ mboile services the option of watching streaming mobile television on mobile phones, this being added to the already diverse offerings of other media such as news reports, weather, and gossip columns already available through their ‘3G services’.

Up to now though one area where the media(newspapers atleast) has not been bale to infiltrate in the mobile world has been the amazingly popular Blackberry . To those who are not familiar with this device it is basically a mobile phone with a keyboard which gives those ‘on the run’ the ability to check and reply to emails wherever and whenever they want. In the US and gradually here this device has ‘taken off’, driven by celebrities and high flying business executives who now regard it as the new ‘must be seen with’ item.
Getting back to it’s relevance to the media, up until now there has been no ‘Blackberry’ specific forms of newspapers available for this device. As reported in the the New Zealand Herald recently this has changed, with the Finacial Times in the United Kingdom releasing an free edition of their online newspaper specifically designed in a stripped down form for the Blackberry. While being hailed as the beginning of a revolution in the way we receive media, the financial and long term viability of this approach has been questioned by shareholders and media commentators alike. They bring into question what effect this will have on the actual print sales of the newspaper and highlight the danger of the Financial Times ‘cannibalising’ their main revenue source by offering a free version of the newspaper to anyone with a Blackberry.
This emphasizes the difficulties of such mobile forms of the media in relation to their ability to be financially viable and whether they have a future in the world media sphere. This is rebutted by editor of the Financial Times, Andrew Gowers who sees the mobilisation not only as a tool to reach a global audience, but the way that all newspapers will be moving in the future. He even goes as far as stating that other newspapers that don’t jump on the technology bandwagon and grasp the world of mobilisation will fall behind spelling their own demise as the world moves away from hard copy print forms.

Who is right in this, only time can tell, but what this highlights is that technology and the accelerated mobilisation of the media will play an increasingly large part in media and it will be interesting to see where mobilisation will take the media in the not so distant future.

Alisdair Hungerford-Morgan

individual blog in South Korea

Nowadays, it seems that one out of two among the university students of South Korea has an individual homepage called Cyworld mini-homepage or 'Blog'. The distinguish features from the previous one are that users can connect with each other and go to other homepages without any boundaries. From the Cyworld mini-homepage, we can display my homepage with cute and pretty stuffs so that we can show our own identities and distinction to others. The spreading of the digital camera and the desire to show oneself and to know the others’ lives bring this boom to the young. Although we enjoy it without any hesitation, there are some privacy problems.

The Cyworld mini-homepage has a system to protect the invasion of the privacy. We can divide the guests into neighborhood (1 Chon) and the others. We can show the pictures and the writings to all the other people, only neighborhood or none of them. However, there is a system that other people can take the pictures freely from other homepage although some prohibition systems exist, so it is useless to divide people into different levels in some way.

I think we have the indiscretion to use the Internet to spread other people’s privacy lives something like that. In the near future, it would be possible that our privacy is under the supervision by the Internet or other technology systems as George Orwell warned in <1984>. As he mentioned in his book `Big Brother’, it is a system that put people under surveillance. However, from other points of view, the government can watch over the people and the people avoid dangerous situations under the control of the supervisor. Therefore, it is necessary to think about whether we are safe from that kind of the surveillance and the observer by Cyworld or any other stuffs on the Internet.

Blogs blogs blogs...

Before I begin my blog, I just wanted to know if anyone else had trouble remembering to actually write one up! It seems for the last few weeks, I’ve been so pre occupied with other assignments and what not, that I get to Sunday and realise I’ve forgotten to do it. I put reminders on my phone and write it on my wall planner (which I will admit hides behind a door) but I still forget. The reminder will go off, and I some how forget its beeping for a few seconds, because after a while it stops. I’ve never really been one to keep a student diary or wall planner, so writing it up there on the “things to do” list almost seems a waste of time. This probably (actually definitely) goes to show that my time management skills suck, but every time I get on the blog, I see all these other wonderful submissions people have written on about happenings during the week, and I think to myself… am I the only person in the class who has difficulty finding things to talk about? Am I just not a ‘blog’ person? I suppose now my blog is going to be based on blogs in general, and the somewhat pressures of writing a blog for assessment.

Now really when you think about it, submitting a piece of writing shouldn’t be the hardest thing of all things you have to do. Compared to a 1500-2000 word essay, a 150 word piece (that doesn’t have to be rigorously formatted) on something shouldn’t be a problem. It has to be analytical and relevant to the course, and of course it has to be interesting; I’m sure a blog on computer chips and gigabites (can’t spell it) wouldn’t go down too well with an audience (unless that was your thing). Then you come to class and the lecture kicks in; you start jotting down notes you feel will be relevant for you come the time of assignments and exams. Then comes the time to write your blog. Do you write it based on your notes, or do you go out and find things to talk about?

I’m not saying that either of these is wrong. We are supposed to actively seek out websites or interesting things about technoculture to write on, and if we didn’t use our notes at some stage, we’d probably get very lost as to what we’re supposed to be doing. But for people like myself (and I’m sure there are others out there), I can’t help but feel stumped when it comes to interesting things to talk about, essentially because I don’t spend a lot of time on the computer, and I think this is what it all comes down to.

We get opportunities to surf the net in tutorials, but I am just not interesting enough to find anything interesting! The only thing I do on the Internet is check my email and Cecil for notes. I live in a world of technology, yet I can’t find anything interesting to talk about that hasn’t already been mentioned by someone else (and even then I don’t know what all the latest gadgets are). I have no social ‘technology’ skills; I’m like someone you can’t take to a family dinner in case I say something retarded about the food tasting like cardboard. So this is why I end up writing essentially about my frustration with blogs. Maybe I’m just annoyed that everyone else can do it really well and when I try, I just scrape through. This is probably true, but then again maybe there are others who are better at the blabbing game than I am…

I think people will write on enough to get them through. Most of the blogs I’ve seen have been solid gold and really well done. But for me, blogs will forever resemble my
un-interesting-ness. It seems every thing I find interesting, has nothing to do with technology, and while I have found this course has helped me understand the world of technology a little better, I will feel the pressure to produce some solid gold instead of rust!

DVD's

The lecture on DVD Culture opened my eyes to things you just don’t think about when you kick back and watch a movie. In particular these were the benefits of DVD’s: not having to watch annoying previews, being able to fast forward or skip chapters speedily, the special features about the movie you can watch later on, and as all things are these days, smaller in size than the VCR. When they first came out they were really expensive (as all new appliances are) but now you can buy one for as cheap as $80. You can play them on most computers these days, which means they are portable, and DVD’s can be easily pirated, so you can watch something that hasn’t even been released in New Zealand (this can be both a benefit for the viewer(s), but a definite loss for sales companies). The lecture talked for most of the time about primary and secondary text, and how the secondary text can sometimes change the primary text. It also talked about ‘us’ as DVD viewers, and how people become attached to a movie through film aesthetics and the novelty of its benefits.

I have noticed lately that DVD companies have been re-releasing old versions of movies, such as ‘Labyrinth’, ‘Saturday Night Fever’ and ‘Flashdance’. I have only seen VHS versions of these films so far, but it kind of makes me think that if they do have special features, what would they actually contain? I’m sure back in the 1980’s directors wouldn’t have been thinking about their films being re-released and all the special content they could feature. A classic example of this comes from ‘Dirty Dancing’ (a flat favourite, basically because there are more girls than boys and Patrick Swayze in his young days was quite hot!). It was only $20, which was a bargain, and after we’d watched it, we were amazed to see that it did in fact have ‘special features’. For an 80’s movie it was pretty good, but you could tell the content was made to look like lots (they kind of repeated the same footage, there was no variation from through out the film). It had ‘behind the scenes’ scenes of the dancing, a couple of brief interviews with the cast, and music video’s from the soundtrack. ‘Drive Me Crazy’ (1999) however, had no special features, which was quite disappointing for a relatively recent film. Is this because it wasn’t as successful as Dirty Dancing was in its day? Probably, personally I think Drive Me Crazy was typical American high school shite.

People have become so attached to the secondary text. They feel ripped off when they buy a DVD and discover it doesn’t have special features because it personifies the film. People are fascinated by how the narrative and characters originate, what goes into making a film and how everything was done. I never really paid much attention to special features until I saw ‘Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights’ (kind of like a re-make but based in Cuba). The special features show you all the Latin ballroom dancing and a really good doco on the background of the film and actors (it made it a lot easier to watch because the Spanish guy was cute, and I liked it because I’m a girl and we like the whole dancing/falling in love thing). It definitely gave me a different viewing on the film, because I learnt the secrets to all the spectacular dance scenes (none of the actors had doubles or had danced Latin ballroom before). This film also had a wicked soundtrack full of interesting Cuban music featuring artists like Wyclef Jean and Black Eyed Peas.

It will be interesting to see what the old movies mentioned feature on their DVD’s, and its quite funny how not-so-popular films such as Drive Me Crazy (even though it was a huge hit back around 2000) just don’t get the attention.

addicted to checking

an article in cosmopolitan brought me back to the lecture on our rapidly increasing use of technology is starting to somewhat integrate us with it. the article was written by a lady who was addicted to checking her phone, mobile phone, email and msn constantly needing to be in contact with friends. she stated that she'd "walked under rainbows and over quaint bridges without taking my eyes and thumbs off my Nokia". i suppose i can relate to this as i also constantly check for messages on my phone and as soon as something even remotely interesting happens to me i have to txt someone to tell them about it.
walking around uni its not uncommon to see a couple of friends sitting together and not talking but both txting. a while ago i thought this was extremely rude and mocked people that did this i'm now used to it and ashamed to say that it is sometimes the case when i'm with my friends. mum and dad think its extremely rude when either i or my sister use our phones when we're around them. bit i guess its more of a different generation thing. its our generation that seems to have this intense need to always be in contact with people that arent with you at an given time.
the lady who wrote this artcile says that we need to "loosen technology's grip on us" as it would make us miss the "rainbows" around us, and although i completely agree with this its easier said than done.
if you feel like youre a "checking addict" heres a couple of examples of this that were included in the article that might make you feel a little bit better:)
1. an italian teenager that sent over 100 txts a day can no longer mover her thumb. doctors say she has "severe tendinitis".
2. a UK businessman who can txt in his sleep. he once txtd a friend saying he was being chased and in trouble. when the friend rung him back (immediately), it was discovered that he had been "sleeptexting".