Google…hate it or love it?

credits as tagged.

Recently my life has been revolving around Google. Have been researching on it for my NCT presentation, have been using it for almost every project or for work purposes, have been seeing so much news on it, have been basically exposed to Google…whether I want it or not.

Liting presented the topic “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” in NCT. Understanding the title from its surface,  the answer is probably, NO. If there is no Google, there are always other search engines to make us stupid isn’t it? So another way of saying it, probably it is not about us getting stupid, but the technology getting smarter by each day.

Referring to the article at The Atlantic , I realised that the whole idea is more like “Is the internet making us stupid?”. My first reaction is noooooo….and on second and third thoughts, its still nooooooooooooo. I am a hugeeeeee fan of the internet, I am just like any other youth out there who will probably live our lives at 50% of its quality now without our precious internet. That’s right, the internet improves the quality of our life. For e.g. If I need to find out what is a Boa constrictor (random example), in the past, I probably have to search the entire encyclopedia for it. Now with the internet, be it Google, Yahoo!, Bing, or whichever search engine out there, I can easily find out what is a Boa constrictor. With the time save, I can have more time to do other things such as catching up with my friends etc. Isn’t that quality time spent?

Its so important that if I do not have the internet for a day, I will feel lost and probably, SUPER upset. Addiction or not is already not an issue, nowadays, almost everyone I know uses the internet everyday. It is not an addiction, more like a need and a norm in our normal lives. It has already become part and parcel of our lives and our society.

I do not think that Google is making us stupid. In my opinion, it makes us smarter. An example again,using the Boa constrictor. In the past, if you are lazy to flip through the pages of the thick encyclopedia, you would have given up the urge to know the meaning of it, but with Google now, we just have to type it in the search box on the top right hand corner of our browser, seriously, how difficult is that? I bet 99.9% of the people I know will not mind searching for the meaning of it. So instead of giving up, you learn something new instead, isn’t that increasing our general knowledge? Isn’t that increasing our intelligence as we read about the Boa constrictor? See! Google makes us smarter, or even, search engines makes us smarter, the internet makes us smarter!

Another thing that was mention is about how people tend to read lesser now that we have the internet. In my opinion, not true again. I am not that convince simply because the people around me who loves reading, are still reading. Reading is a hobby. If you have a strong passion for it, it will continue no matter what. If your passion is not as deep, anything that interests you can waver it, is it really only the internet? No.

Here is a video made by some girls as a response to the Atlantic article as I have linked above. I think it is really simple and short, but it sort of explains how the internet has improved our lives instead of making us stupid:

Aside from this presentation, Aileen and I have also done a presentation on “Google Today, Google Tomorrow”. This is a pretty interesting topic I would say, by doing it, I discovered another side of search engines and now, I can better organise my searches -  to see what type of searches goes into which search engine.

I am impressed the most by Wolfram Alpha. It is a genius search engine! Without it, I wouldn’t have known that I was born on a Monday and share the same birthday as Bruce Willis. It is really genius with numbers and is a search engine that is unique with its own selling point. In this era where people do not really care how distinctive the various search engines are, Wolfram Alpha is able to position itself as unique and different. That’s already a bonus.

Is Google threatened by Wolfram Alpha or even the Semantic search? I believe so. At least a little. No one stays at the top forever and these types of searches are merely upcoming new trends that Google will have to understand and integrate into their system to make sure they do not lose out.

Aside from that, I have to say that I am excited to more exposure to the web 3.0!! Ahh~ web 3.0. Since Google came out during the web 2.0 era, I think it will be realistic for Google to start worrying about the big number 3.

Before I end off, here is a video that I have actually tweeted. It still amazes me everytime. Treat this as a present to celebrate Google Chrome OS.

PODcasting, RSS and many more!

“PODCAST!”, this word reminds me of the cute podcast commercial by Don and Drew for podcast.sg. LOL. but anyway, have you ever wondered why is it called podcast?

P=Personal
O=On
D=Demand

Cast=the CAST from broadCAST.

Put them together, you get PODCAST! I am not new to being a subscriber of podcast, because I have subscribed to some podcast such as Muttons to Midnight and Dan&Young from 987fm.

This is basically how your iTunes(if you are using iTunes) will look like if you subscribe to a podcast:

At the Podcast tab, you will see all those that you subscrribed to and their description. As you can see, right now I have only 3, I am looking into increasing this. ^^

When you want to listen to it, you click into it and this is what you will see:

And if you do not have the episode yet, you just click on “GET” and you will get to hear it.

Being a user of podcast, I think it is pretty good, like for example, I used to listen to Muttons to Midnight everyday during secondary school, it is like the best companion for exams, but after exams and all, I stay less in the study room, watch more tv and surf more, therefore, sometimes I miss episodes where they do certain segments that I love. Podcast! saves the day! Because I subscribe to it, I get to listen to some of their funniest jokes without having to tune in at the exact moment when they are hosting. Thats, the exact point of what Podcast is for, PERSONAL and ON DEMAND – the convenience for your usage.

I think another thing cool about Podcast is that, if you heading towards being a DJ, why not start with podcasting first? It trains you in some way and you can share the music that you like with other people, build a mini fanbase etc. In any case, its good training. How about a short video to sum PODCAST up:

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This image used to be kinda alien to me, but now its less alien! I finally know how this thing works!

The misunderstandings: I used to think that I must pay in order to get RSS feeds.

The discovery: Not only is it free, it is also possible to be linked to google reader, which is good because simply, you just need a google account. It gives you not only your gmail but almost everything googlish. <– I COINED THIS WORD. LOL

I think RSS is really good and useful, instead of finding the information that you want, let the information find you!
It also helps that it is so convenient to subscribe to feeds since this logo is almost everywhere! My google reader interface is sill super empty now since I just started using it, embarassing to post, so yeah, get your own google reader and look at it everyday and enjoy your moments with it! XD Oh and a video on Google Reader:

Matt suggested a feedreader to get the feeds that I want, but personally, I think I prefer Google reader. I am a person who is very particular about how my computer space is being used, because I do not have the best laptop in the world and I do not have all the space in the world to use. My GB is real…small. So, I have developed strict rules about using the harddisk space in my laptop. I do not really like the idea of INSTALLING a feedreader and since there is an alternative, which is the Google Reader, why not make the best use out of it right? I do not have to INSTALL a Google reader, instead, I can choose to be constantly logged in and everytime I visit my reader, it will feed me with all the new information that I want to get. Awesome and easy peasy Here is a video to illustrate RSS and how it works!

And..yes, if you realise, I love videos by common craft, its really in Plain English and its interesting to watch. The best part is, its very summarised and clear. I love it!

Other than RSS, in Flo, Ying and Sinkai also presented on Continuous Computing(CC), Continuous Partial Attention (CPA) and Social Bookmarking.

I think the simplest to understand is probably CC, right now, many of us just need to be connected all the time, we have a dire need to be online and either to communicate with people or to update ourselves with information. Technology has fortunately, allow us to compute continuously <– self-coined again. Just check out services such as Gladly cast. Even if your cellphone does not have a connection to the internet, you are able to post something on the cyperspace. Isn’t that amazing.

CPA. I am probably, a victim of that. But i believe many of us are. How many people can actually come online and just stick to one website, roam it, then move on the the next right? Heard what TABS are for? Its inevitable for us to be hooked onto different sites at one time, resulting in split attention or rather, CPA. And one thing to take away from this, CPA =/= Multitasking.

Social Bookmarking!! I think it is really cool! I FINALLY know what is delicious…>.<. But firstly, I really love the name! AHAHAHA. I loveeeeeeeeee bookmarking. So much so that I think it has somewhat become a habit. Its so convenient, if you like any page, just bookmark it! You don’t have to remember it, or even, copy it down. Bookmark is just by one click and woots! it will be there, stored in some browser memory and the next time you just have to click once to get back to the site again. BLISSSS ^^

Social bookmarking is cool because you share what you are bookmarking! All over the world, we can roughly see what sites are people surfing and what they like. The n if you like something that they are looking at, you just click on it and you get to see it too. Its really cool to see what people are sharing because human likes interesting things right and also, with third party endorsement, some sites are really, truthfully awesome.

I also finally got to know what is digg.com all about. I loveeee the name again. Some alien part of me always liken this word to Hip Hop, thats why i DIGGG it. (Some rap music I listen uses “dig” as a word to describe “like”. )Its also really cool, if you like anything, just DIGG it and it shows people you like it and you have just joined into a pool of people who like it too. 1 to many and many to many.

Sign up for an account with Google Reader, Delicious and Digg now!!

Wisdom of Crowds.

I have never heard of this term before…except for, perhaps, the Chinese version of it, which is 三个臭皮匠， 胜过一个诸葛亮。After being taught this term “Wisdom of Crowds”, I realised that, I have always been a believer of it, as long as many people come together as a huge group, the group will definitely outsmart the smartest person you ever know.

To put it simpler, if you recall form your Biology lessons, more brains=more grooves=smarter. Isn’t it so? Without the example of Wikipedia, I will never know that wisdom of crowds is actually used online too. That’s right! Wikipedia, when everyone is doubting the credibility of it, there is something called the “Wisdom of Crowds” which actually saved this awesome encyclopedia some face. Not that I am a harcdcore Wikipedia fan, but I seriously think that Wikipedia has given us more information in life and perhaps, improve our general knowledge to a certain extent. Before I start writing this post, I even googled Wisdom of Crowds, and what do I get? Wikipedia again.

Wisdom of crowds is indeed awesome. It answers to so many of our questions with contributions from people all over the world, logging into wikipedia and making any page better for readers who are searching for that article.

Wikipedia is good because of Wisdom of Crowds and also bad because of Wisdom of Crowds. Good because knowledge is being shared and improved, bad because the information edited into the article is not justified and it is just from the person’s knowledge, this means that it may be right or wrong.

Just when I thought it is a tie, I saw THIS ARTICLE.

One paragraph like this is good enough to make me re-think the credibility of Wikipedia:

Of course, we now know that simply isn’t true. For one thing, Wikipedia isn’t written and edited by the “crowd” at all. In fact, 1% of Wikipedia users are responsible for half of the site’s edits. Even Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, has been quoted as saying that the site is really written by a community, “a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers.”

In conclusion, I still think that more brains means more wisdom, which is the blunt way of explaining what is Wisdom of Crowds. However, when this is being brought on Wikipedia, we need to re-think the credibility if we are going to use the information for a live-or-die situation, that is, if you are going to use the information on Wikipedia for something superrrrr important, don’t. If you just need it to clear your momentary doubts, why not? It informs more than it harms anyway.

FACEBOOK!

Woah! 2 posts in a day! (Please refer to the post below for my thoughts on OKTOLIVE! first episosde ^^)

Well, that day in NCT, we heard the presentation from Sam and Nad about facebook groups and pages. They were talking about how uninteresting it will get, but I beg to differ! I think it is not as bad as they said, at least I did not feel like sleeping at all! Thats quite an achievement, considering the fact that I sleep at horrible timings like…now? XD

Actually I do know about the difference(a little), but the usage is pretty unknown to me. Like, I do not know that pages needs to be official and that groups can be set up by anyone, as long as you are a user of facebook. Now that I know that pages are only considered lawful if they are set up by official managements, somehow, I have more trust in the pages that I have joined (unless I pay them a visit and realise that it is not the official management)

While listening to their presentation, I found an article, which talks about how facebook is going to tighten their privacy policy for their users. –> Here.

Actually, sometimes, I wonder if privacy is really possible on the cyberspace, like what Ping said, the answer is probably no. And it also makes me wonder why people who joined social networking sites and have their profiles everywhere, seek privacy? If they are out to join SOCIAL NETWORKING sites, then what is all the talk about privacy, other than obvious security-related matters, I don’t see the big fuss about having privacy online.

In my opinion, privacy is pretty much self-controlled when it comes to being online. If you have a blog, and you care sooo much about privacy, there are solutions. 1. DONT HAVE THAT BLOG. <– get a book and kick it old school with something called the diary, jot down whatever you think and tuck it nicely in a locker or something. 2. DONT BLOG ABOUT STUFF YOU DEEM PRIVATE. <– isn’t this simple and straightforward? you are your own main gatekeeper.

In conclusion to this privacy matter, I feel that everyone should get connected on social networking sites, instead of worrying about privacy, think about the 1001 benefits it has. I am not a hugeeee lover of facebook, but I sure would like to thank the fact that its existence got me connected with friends that I have already lost contact with. The power of facebook is seriously an eye opener

Oh and fyi, There will be a Facebook movie, titled “Facebook: The Movie”, it is a feature film about Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook. I will be quite attracted to watch this film. Anyone? Check out more about it HERE.

They even found a place to replace Havard University (the place where Facebook started out),m, fiming will take place at Johns Hopkins University. Check out HERE.

We have been OKTOLIVE-D! ^^

As the time got closer and closer, I was actually pretty nervous. Like what I told Shireen, my 3G partner, the feeling of doing all the technical runs will be different from how it is like when we are doing the actual show on Friday, true enough, even before the show I was feeling weird.

Its not a feeling of fear, more like excitement and anticipation. After a month or so together, after the laughter we shared and the effort that all of us put in, I want to see how our little baby will turn out like. Before the show started, I went to the washroom and met Zeng Yue Li (for those who do not know who she is, she is the host for Jiao Dian aka Focus Point) . She chatted with me asking who are we, where are we from etc, she is really nice ^^

When the show started, all of us were immediately immensely absorbed into our own roles, doing what we should do, I held apple chips in my hands but I did not even have the time to eat it! Thats how dedicated we all are! And so we were handling 3G calls yada yada… and BAM! when it ended for us, I did not even realise 20 minutes have passed! For that moment, I had a sudden realisation how different it is to be a viewer and to be part of the crew.

As a viewer, we just need to sit comfortably and watch the show, but behind the glamour on the stage, there is so much hardwork by a team! I mean, I have all the while knew, but it did not come across as strongly to me, but to be part of the crew, the feeling is irreplaceable.

When finally the countdown to 1 after the SP logo, everyone cheered and clapped and said thank you-s. The feeling of that and seeing all our names on the credits roll is really tear jerking. Even when typing this, the feeling came back and now I felt a little touched all over again. You know,  the feeling is this, an example, even if no one cares, even if no one appreciates it, even if we are as small as an ant, the pride that we have for our work is tremendous, it is a feeling that you can’t get with money. For that night, everyone is equal and working towards the same goal – GET THE SHOW OUT NICELY. Thats all we hoped for. Even after the show we endured the rain and hugged equipment and everything else and got back to the office. Some of us were texting Ping too ^^. (Mrs Lam, Ms Nga and Ping came along to show support! All of us were so happy to know that!) And then when our boss came into the office to say that we have all done a good job, I felt touched again. For that night, much tears were held back, but they were tears of happiness and pride

After the show, we went out for fish and co dinner! with Aik Khoon, it was really awesome to get some food down my stomach, the hunger pangs just grew stronger on the way to Novena! ^^ It was when I saw this that I recalled it was Halloween on Friday =.=

Its a pretty scary image eh? o__o It turned out like that with my phone’s flash. XD

So we all sat down and so we started ordering and so we started eating. But when Yan’s Sharkie Freeze came, some of us were shocked by the size, just check out the SIZE. WOAH.

HAHA! the ratio of their size is like 1:2 <– yes I am exaggerating. XD

I ordered Seafood Platter! It is my first time eating it! It tasted fine, just that the Calamari…could be better. XD*points to below* this tasted awesome!! I have never thought of using Mushrooms for salad, just WHATS WRONG WITH ME SERIOUSLY. u___u.

We even had fun singing a birthday song to Aik Khoon, even though it wasn’t his birthday. XD!

ALL IN ALL, it was an awesome night! ^^ And remember, even if we have times like that:

LETS WORK HARD TOGETHER!! <3

Lights in the studio, darkness of the flight of steps up to the studio, my awesome oktolive! team, my colleagues, the little corner we squeezed in to navigate on our laptops, the 1001 controls on the complicated looking panel, the nice feeling of the aircon, the packet of welfare bag where all the food are, the counting down to the show, the cheers when the show ended, the unique bond that everyone shared in the studio regardless of whether you are at the floor or at the panel, thank you MR PRODUCTION, I have found back the reason why I loved you so much in the past. burning passion shall continue? I guess? Lets hope and look forward ^^

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I am also pretty happy about something, a sneak preview, more details on the other blog soon ^^:

❤

My “Minority Report” and more!

In last week’s NCT tutorial, we watched snippets of “Minority Report” acted by one of Hollywood’s big name actor, Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg.  Its cool that we got to know the pros and cons of advancing technology through a movie! Movies are the best <3.

It is suppose to illustrate how the world will be like when it is in the year 2054. Briefly speaking, in the future, police are able to solve crimes before a crime is committed, almost everything is made from the touch screen function and roads are everywhere because we have too many cars.

Personally, I do not think that we need around 40 years to reach that standard, just look at how fast technology advancements are nowadays, just a few months back, you might be exposed to some new device, but a few months later, you get the second generation of it, making your version of the device look paler in comparison within a few months.

Do we really need 40 years to reach the standards as shown in “Minority Report”? Perhaps not right? With new things coming up almost everyday, the competition is strong and with this competitive spirit, companies will keep producing new products to excite the modern crowd, so being part of the crowd, lets anticipate more to come!

Back to “Minority Report”, I have a deep impression of the scene whereby what they call “small bipedal robotic eye scanners” are being sent to rooms to find John Anderton (Tom Cruise) because it was found out that he will commit murder in the next 36 hours. These scanners are created because as shown in the movie, in the future, everyone will be identified by our iris scans.

Luckily for John, his eye transplant was a success he can’t be identified (yes he did an eye transplant for this! its..kinda scary somehow). I was impressed by the nice high angle shots to show what happens to the different people in different rooms, the shot is so brilliantly done in my opinion! But the little scanners, they are pretty scary aren’t they? They just climb onto you, regardless of what you are doing, and scan. o__o.

It is like…they have a hidden control over you. If that happens in real life, I will be so freaked out! They are probably more scary than cockroaches…or not. Okay they are equally scary, I do not want cockroaches climbing onto me and scanning eyes too. They look really like metallic insects >.<

Apart from “Minority Report”, there is another movie that illustrates the world in year 2054. And it does ILLUSTRATE. It is called “Renaissance”, directed by French director, Christian Volckman and starring Daniel Craig as the main character. It is also known as Paris 2054 and this movie, is totally done in the “Marvel” way, why do I say that? Basically it reminds me of how it is like reading Marvel comics, black and white, except that “Renaissance” is animated.

Check out the trailer!

Even the car that you see is created by Car Manufacturer, Citroën, specially for this movie! The design team from Citroën specially designed this car to fit the thoughts of what the directed imagined the world to be like in the future.

CLICK! to read more about this cool collaboration!

By the way, speaking of animation and the future and Social Media, here is a pretty cute video, a paper art illustration of how Social Media is so effective now. Simple and nice illustration using the ice cream! cool!

Oh, and in case you need a good laugh, check out this video done by the OKTOLIVE! team for Ping Kwa! Our dearest NCT lecturer! Its her birthday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY PING! ^^

And do not forget to catch OKTOLIVE! Every Fridays at 6.30pm, only on Okto Channel!

P/S: Tomorrow’s the first episode! I can’t wait!

Woots!彡

Ahh~ this is the first time I am trying this out! Hmm..the first week of school is over…just like that! Before going back to school, I miss my friends, now that I am back, I miss them..more? It is like you-know-there-is-not-much-time-left kinda thing and that makes everything else worse u__u

I am currently busy with both school and internship! Speaking of which, it has been a month plus with oktoLIVE! team mates I think our behaviour, words that we used etc tells a lot of how we are getting along. We kinda live and breathe one another in our little office ^^ TX day is on Friday! I can’t believe its so soon! I am pretty excited about that and will make sure I do my job well together with Shireen my new partner, we are the 3G secret team. <– just a name I thought of   XD So remember to tune in to oktoLIVE! starting from 30th October 2009 at 6.30pm, Okto Channel! <–has our blood and tears. ROFL!

This semester, we only have 2 modules! Professional Preparation as well as New Communication Technologies. (aka #nct on twitter XD) I would say its one of the less stressful semesters, but yet, a lil’ stressful at the same time because we have a short time for everything. Speaking of NCT, we are told to keep track of news on technology, I have never really been a tech sort of person, not that I hate it or anything, just that I won’t have the desire to have an iPhone, iTouch, iPod, or anything that my peers normally have or want to have. I am just happy with my Nokia 6220 classic, though it does give me mini problems at times. I don’t even have a MP3, my phone is my MP3. LOL. But yes, I guess NCT is a chance for me to be in touch with technolgy and be a true blue 21st century modern being

Saw a friend’s tweet about Windows 7. My first thought is “What is windows 7?” I am that noob towards technology. So I decided to do the google and I realise that it is a new “Vista”! Yes we have windows 95, 98 and then 2000, XP, Vista and now…*drumroll* Windows 7! This means that the next time I pop into stores and want to get a desktop computer or laptop, i will be presented with Windows 7! Sweeeeet! Not that I know a lot about Windows 7 straight after its launch, but more like I have heard bad things about Vista, though it depends from user to user. But well, saw from an article, (CLICK!) that Vista is indeed not doing very well to match up to their competitors, so here they present us with Windows 7! Actually, can anyone tell me why is it called Windows 7? LOL why 7 right? because its a lucky number? because it has 7 unique selling points? I dont know~ but I read some where that Vista is suppose to be version 6.0, so the new Windows 7 is version 7 and someone comes along and say why can’t it be 6.1…o__o…in my opinion, I am happy with 7. XD

Moving from the windows 7 topic, I swear that NCT lectures are enjoyable! We talk about twitter, f acebook, blogs etc, all of these, most of us use it everyday. Got to know from lecture that Bing, Google and Yahoo will soon be able to search for our tweets and facebook status! This is indeed interesting, in the future, everyone will know what everyone else is doing just by typing something into the plain white box. An action that, I am actually, already very fond of repeating. Its so easy for us nowadays, if we do not know anything, we just have to type in the little box and it will produce us with 1million + answers most of the time. Being a habitual user of search engines, I guess the new functions will be really interesting! And ah-hah! Speaking of search engines, I got chance, together with some of my friends to visit Yahoo! Singapore Branch! Details on next post! woots!~

P/S: Really tired now, gonna catch some sleep, *Bling Bling*!