251011 Ninth

The Internet is an extremely powerful tool till that the government not only used it to ease the access of the transparency policy but to use it as a platform to gain votes for campaigns, especially nationwide election.

Take the Singapore General Election 2011 for example.

Social Media was such a strong tool that our Prime Minister Mr Lee used it to interact with the citizens. Seriously, I don't think it is 'cool' to do that, I would rather prefer the old way of

interaction via meet-the-people session in neighborhood markets or community centre.

But I can't deny the fact that the feeling is quite awesome when someone of such high rank actually reply your questions and answered to your suggestions.

Youtube, oh my youtube. My twitter and facebook timeline was filled with rally videos of all the candidates. How is this so?

Well, the spread of news via the Internet is phenomenal. I still remember on the night of the announcement of the results, I knew the results via twitter instead of Ch 5 News or CNA.

Yes, the traditional media is THAT slow in conveying news and they even filtered some of the necessary information that was provided but not announced to the public.

For example like how a certain candidate wish for a recount and stuff like that, it wasn't reported in the Live news at all. Instead, there were lame broadcast of all the actual rally support sites in various stadiums in Singapore. lols.

Without the Internet, YAM AH MEE won't be so famous now. I found a ridiculous but yet funny parody of Mr Yam on youtube. :D

Not only in Singapore, in other countries like USA or UK, people monitor their government via the web. And politicians used such platforms to give speeches and create interesting videos

to engage and pull their votes.

The next election would be 2015, by then I'm eligible to vote. I think that the usage of the Internet for politics won't be a 'new' thing. Instead, perhaps there would really be such thing as Internet voting for those Overseas vote.

Well, let's see!

241011 Eighth

// Our project are almost done and I've found something interesting while doing it.

Didn't know that mac computers are allowed to use the pre-installed QuickTime player to record on-screen activities!

Seen those youtube tutorials on how to hack adobe photoshops or generating keygen for passwords? YAH! I finally know how to create that kind of videos using Mac Os! :D

All you have to do is to click on your Quick Time Player in your Applications....

And select FILE > New Screen Recording!

It is as easy as that.

You could even choose to mute your environment, or insert your own voice while doing the video. :)

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Okay, back to the actual blog entry. So, we need to find ways of businesses using multimedia to promote their product.

I remembered a few months back that I came across a video by Google on their newest product Chrome OS. Where the whole browser system is your operating system.

Sounds cool eh? Well, here's the video!

Seems pretty cool huh?

You can find Chrome OS mostly in the newest tablet PCs :)

Instead of having a whole long list of news article or a feature page on the main web, by using such tools engage audience more. In this case, macromedia flash.

Therefore, by posting it up on youtube, viewers can vote their choice of whether the product is good or bad by liking the video or leave feedbacks under the comment area.

Personally, I think that having all my stuffs on the web is quite risky? Because there is still a high risk that your stuffs are gonna be rip off by hackers lurking in the random corners of the Internet world. D:

But nevertheless, it is an innovative idea for eliminating the traditional 'long' booting time for other normal computer OS.

151011 Seventh

Alright, so this week was about Virus and Worms on the net.

Something that I hate a lot when I was still using Windows a year ago, especially when I was using Internet Explorer and Hotmail, the virus content was AMAZING.

Because of the popular chain emails on Hotmail, every mail received was a threat. And back then, there wasn't any security scan available for email hosts, so inevitably, the spreading of all the virused documents was uncontrollable.

This not only affect my leisure of being on the internet, I can't even chat well with my friends on msn. Have you guys had this issue before?

Someone suddenly said, ' hey I saw your picture somewhere.... click this link.' For the first time, I clicked the link out of curiosity because the sender is a good friend of mine. Who knows.... I got the virus just like that.

I don't know how to see or check whether it is a virus, worm, bug or trojan. It just screwed the whole computer no matter how much I uninstall the program. Seems quite deadly huh?

Years after, anti-virus came into the market.

Being a cheapo, I went and download a FREE ANTI-VIRUS software on download.com and guess what. The virus was IN the ANTI-VIRUS. Inception much.

So that hits me and I went to purchase Norton Anti Virus to cope with everything. It's scans and amazing and deleted almost all the bugs that are threatening my system. :D

Ah... Norton..

Now there are different kinds of Anti-Virus software available in the market to tackle different kinds of viruses..

From gaming to internet to tracking to spyware... you name it, they have it.

I've some friends who experienced hackers that hacked into their social network accounts. But I think, the most common reason is that they didn't empty their cache when they were surfing in a public computer... Dumb move.

So now, I'm a mac user and virus-free! Ever since I switched to Macintosh, I never have to deal with those pesky pop-ups and irritating download-worms and bugs.. Although I do miss the variety of softwares that Windows provide, but Im a convert!

;D

Sixth 081011

So we have to create our own video huh?

It's is quite hassle to do a tutorial actually, those blogger make it seems so easy. Uploading to youtube is the worst, the wait is utterly long. haha..

But ta dah~ I managed to shoot it with my canon camera, edited it with iMovie and upload it on youtube. Enjoy~~ :D

Fifth 011011

Haha, such situation won't be there if we have alerts or notifications on our phones isn't it?

Onwards to the future of E-learning or digital classroom. Technologies are evolving annually and it's amazing speed alter the definition of learning dramatically.

For example, instead of seeing little children holding big cardboard books, you'll see them playing with kindle or ipad on public transportation. It's up to the point that you don't know if technology is killing the fun of physical learning or not.

Okay, back to e-learning.

My first taste of E-learning was in 1996, where I'm still a little kiddo in Kindergarten in a little computer lab called EDNO LAND. In there, a room filled with huge computers with embedded software to let us learn via cartoonic scenario. It was a great experience, but not much on learning though because I was more focused on playing instead of interpreting what I need to learn. haha.

All the while in Primary and Secondary School, I had elearning lessons on how to type, how to use Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office. Back then, it was quite enriching because it is new to me.

In the recent years, we could see that the trend of E-learning really flourished. From the traditional computer labs, now we could see laptops being integrated to lesson usage. There would be no more A1 size paper presentations, instead, there would be powerpoint presentations.

Like how Republic Polytechnic Classroom environment is! Personally I wasn't from RP, but I knew how their system works (due to friends).

Okay the FHM Stickers are a bit distracting.

But nevertheless, this is a typical scenario of how RP's classroom look like. In the morning, everyone would be given a problem to solve. At the end of the day, students are expect to present their solutions to the class.

This enhance learning, yes, but most of friends forgotten how to write by the end of their tertiary education. LOL.

And here comes a new product Microsoft Surface.

A multi touch panel?

To be honest, I've seen this thing, something similar back in 2010 when I was working in Singapore Science Centre.

In one of their exhibition, i-Space, they have this multitouch panel or table to exact where visitors could draw, paint, and send the info into an interactive wall for display.

Pretty neat in predicting the future huh? haha.

It pretty seems like an enlarged Ipad to me. like an iTABLE I supposed?

I personally don't think that this technology would be successful as it is just another multi functional device that is bigger and allows more people to deal with it at a single time.

However, my words could be wrong, if people would buy this device and increase family bonding time.

It just don't really work for me. OPPS =X