Week 10: Hello journalists.

To start of this week's topic, I will show you a video on the difference between traditional journalists vs citizen journalists

Citizen Journalism is set to stay.

Everyone can be journalists now, churning out stories at anytime and anyplace. Journalists used to just publish for one paper. With citizen journalism, these journalists can talk about their stories at any platform. Especially with the emergence of social media, these stories get published more easily and well, even faster!
(as fast as SONIC the hedgehog hehe. & yes i find the fast gif highly amusing!!haha)

Not to mention, journalists may even use the stories that the citizen journalists publish and expand more than the stories to get more insights.

In Singapore, we have Stomp. 

It's where citizens can just post anything interesting under the sun. I mean literally. There are reports about crimes, even. Citizen journalism provides first hand point of view from the people, FOR the people. I feel it's more personal and more biased. People only say things that are favourable to them. (aka, more sensationalised)

In Stomp, there is the citizen journalism award of the month. Every month, there will be an article running for "top" citizen journalist's articles at the end of the month. They will usually be competing with other entries. The one receiving most likes from the people (by voting via Stomp Facebook page) will receive recognition and this will actually "pay tribute to the most impactful, engaing and much-talked-about stories contributed by the man in the street." (mumbrella, 2013)

With the emergence of such awards, it is no doubt citizen journalism will have a new height, most likely because of the recognition that they can receive via this site.

Curious if there were any similar citizen journalism sites in Singapore, i googled about it in other countries. First, was to check out our neighbours, the Malaysians.

The first thing that came out was this site. 

It even explicitly talks about having training before you can become a citizen journalists. They also added that they have to have internships before they are allowed to publish their own work/news. That is a far cry from Singapore definitely. We don't even have trainings!

Wow, didn't know the malaysians regulate their news, even using citizen journalists!

Read more about them and what they do here.

In the end, I think journalists and citizen journalists have to work hand in hand so that the stories published are worthy of reading. (but really, most of us love sensationalised stories don't we?)

Oh well, oh well. I am going to leave y'all with a picture of how you budding citizen journalists look like when you're gonna publish a photo you just took ahahah:

Till then,
A.

Week 9: Politics, politics everywhere.

When you think of internet and politics, there's definitely that one politician that comes to mind. Who else, but Mr Barrack Obama! 

We've gone through in class how he used websites and social media to connect with his voters. Because of his viral marketing strategies, many politicians have followed his footsteps.

In my opinion, young people are not as apathetic as before because politics and politicians are now using social media to reach out to younger generations. Sure, we use traditional media too but we are frequently using social media as opposed to traditional media. The younger generation spend a lot of time on these sites. In a recent survey, most Americans spend an average of 23 hours per week being online and using social media. (Business News Daily, 2013) That's like almost one day of the week just spending online!

(by the way, it could be more. We're just unaware of it.)

Young people also want information instantaneously. We go by the mentality, "if i want it now, i want it NOW". It's because we ALWAYS have information at out fingertips (ie; google)

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. We want to always be on the know, we always want to be updated and we do not want to lose out. So when politicians tap on this social media where they constantly update about their activities, young people will most likely follow them. (and follow their politicians

One such example in local context is MP Baey Yam Keng who constantly updates his instagram and take "selfies" of his own. he also has other social media sites, such as Facebook. According to him, "it could be useful as a channel of engagement with the public" (Stomp, 2013) Here is a screenshot of his Instagram.

Also, I think the younger generation wants to get personal to the politicians. When they feel that they are close to the politicians and their queries gets answered by them personally, it definitely makes them (the people) more confident of their politicians and the politicians are favoured by them.

Therefore, social media has changed how we view politics, esp to the younger generation.

Till then,
A.

Week 8: Amazing Augmented Reality

I never thought I'll say this, but I love augmented reality!

Having seen the video shown in class and having seen a group presentation on augmented reality (which totally blew my mind away, by the way) I was amazed by its abilities. A normal image can now trigger augmented reality. It has, literally come to life. The image can now speak for itself. In my opinion. no more boring exhibitions!

Talking about exhibitions, I went to Art Science Musuem the other day for the exhibitions which included Mummy's exhibition, National Geographic and Eames exhibition. Little did I know that on the fourth floor of the musuem, there was also an exhibition. This exhibition is usually held on the first Sunday of the month called the Sunday showcase. Admission is free, so if you have nothing to do, head down to the museum to check out interesting workshops and activities to do! I was lucky enough to be there because at that point, a student from NUS actually introduced me to Augmented Reality applications that was designed for history lessons for the secondary school students.

When I was in Secondary school, history lessons were mediocre. It was usually lecture based and there were little hands on activities to do. Secondary School students are lucky now because they can now use augmented reality to learn their history lessons. More hands on activities, I like! This idea was more for the secondary one students when they were learning about the founding of Singapore. I tried using the ipad for the augmeneted reality part and it really worked ! By the way, researches have found out that using Augmented Reality has helped to improve memory retention by up to 22%! In case you want the full article, click here.

Here's how it looks like: The Jackson Plan!

So anyway, much has been talked about augmented reality. I think this will be the future of learning in Singapore. Well actually, not just learning. I think augmented reality will change the lifestyle of Singaporeans if we ever decide to tap on this. Here's an example of shopping for clothes:

and here's an example for shopping for car:

Augmented reality will one day, become our future. It has already slowly creep in and do wonders for advertising (and I don't think it takes much either!) and I'm sure it will expand from now on.



Who know, probably in the future, kids will use augmented reality as toys?

Scary thought, actually.

Till then,
A.

Week 7: "V is for Virus, It's bad for your computers!"

Hello!

This week in class, we learnt about various computer virus and worms and how they have affected several systems in the end. Some viruses were created just for pure fun while some really meant to damage the system infrastructure of the companies affected. We rely (or over rely, actually) on our computers/internet to do our work, that without it we are unable to proceed to do our work.

VIRUS

To recap, a computer virus attaches itself to a program or file enabling it to spread from one computer to another. There are different levels of severity when a virus attacks, ranging from mild to risky. A virus cannot be spread without the user's (or host!) action and the users are usually kept in the dark about the virus that they are transmitting as it is hidden.

WORMS

Computer worms are malicious software applications that  spread via computer networks by exploiting security loopholes, as compared to viruses which NEEDS a host to run. Usually, this worms will be sent via email (and also other ways of course) and will replicate themselves to infect other computers in the servers as well.

They are hidden little pesky creatures hidden in attachments and they can be deadly!

Gotta be aware of them and refrain yourself from getting infected by using anti virus softwares!

Just a fun fact, the first anti virus software were Flushot Plus and Anti4Us developed in the 1980s! Now now, it's been quite some time hasn't it? Make sure you have your anti virus software updated regularly ok!

Anyway, in class we also discussed about the different viruses that were viral at one point of a time and ILOVEYOU virus was the one that caught my eye.

Not this ILOVEYOU:

Rather, it's this sneaky little pest:

It was first sent out on 5 May 2000 in the Philippines and then it moved to Hong Kong,  Europe and finally United States.

What did it send out in the email? Your "love letter" and since it is a worm, it is able to replicate itself and send it to other computers in the same server and then infect your computer. or your friends and families. The thing about this virus is it makes the users' mailing list as a source of target so people assume they are getting this message from their friends/families and are most likely to open them as they believe it is a safe source. But of course, they were tricked and.............goodbye productivity and $$$$.

I really think it is a smart and clever way to ask people to open and read the presumed love letter by an admirer. I mean, that's a really good way to reel people in. Who would have thought eh! It just takes one gullible person to open it and you, might just be the next one on line to be infected by it.

Scary right.


Well, my friends, just a friendly reminder from me to you.......Remember to always stay safe, keep a lookout for suspicious email and ALWAYS update your anti virus software.


You'll need it.

Besides, prevention is better than cure isn't it?



XO,
A.

Week 6: Video la vida.

I  decided to do a (video) picture collage of my little baby brother who is just about a month old for this week's blog assignment. There's just too many pictures of him growing up since day 1 so I thought why not make a video and compile everything together. When he gets older, he'll get to see it too! Besides, whatever stays online, will be permanent isn't it?

So there you go folks, my brother's name is Aushaf Harith and he is the main baby in the picture. The pictures taken were from day 1 till day 35. Maybe I should do this every 6 mths or so to see how he has grown. Heh.

 Initially I wanted to record myself and do a lip sync item but then I realised I really have a bad quality front webcam for my laptop and my phone battery don't last at all. (& I look super haywired there, I dont even know what I was doing) Therefore, I scraped that idea although it was a really really really fun thing to do! But it's okay, babies (MY baby bro) can rule the world and take over my video part. hahahha.

I'm SURE babies will approve!

HAHA.

The process of video editing is quite fun actually. Maybe because it's not really a video video, but rather a  video picture collage which still makes sense because it's a video. I used Windows Live Movie Maker, which I never knew existed in the realm of my laptop. I finally utilised it and boy, was it a quick and easy process. I'm not a film maker (yet. hahahah) but this is super easy to use. If you're just starting out and playing around, this is definitely a good tool for you.

Firstly, all I had to do was to select pictures or videos (which i did both, but more of pictures) and then just arrange it nicely in chronological order. After that, I changed the duration in which each picture is featured from 7 secs to 2 secs to cut down the time of the video. After that, I added the opening slide.

Secondly, I added in music. I had a hard time choosing because i only had a limited amount of songs in my laptop so I just chose whatever that was a happy song and I *ALMOST* chose a default song on windows which was quite sleepy and fit for a lullaby. But, no lah. Just because most of the pictures are about baby sleeping doesn't mean I should have a lullaby song. So I chose one of the catchier song in my limited playlist.

AND I THOUGHT I WAS DONE!

BUT, lo and behold when i uploaded into youtube, the song cannot be played *GASPS* because of copyright infringement *gasps* so I choose a default playlist from youtube.

no choice.

but still cool.

Thirdly, I looked through the video and did minor editing and credits and WALA, it's all done.

SUCCESS~~~


I had so much fun doing this, I might consider doing this again and again. & not just about babies you know. Maybe some video documentation of some sort. I am so excited!!!!!!!!!!!

Should share some of my creations next time HAAHAH.

Okay, till the next time my friends.

A.