Technological change : how fast is the fast ?

Technology change very fast nowadays. i still remembered during the time i knew the word ‘computer’. They were extremely difficult to use, cumbersome and were very large and expensive machines. Those days, the computers were only used by technical specialist, for example engineers, who were familiar with off-line and logic programming.

Computers are now change from being huge machine, housed in large , air-conditioned rooms to much smaller machines, including some that can easily be carried around by children. Consequently, instead of being use by highly experience programmers, people from all walks of life – commerce, education, manufacturing and entertainment, begin to use computer system.

Today’s computers have become much affordable –  less expensive.

From the mainframe size, to personal computer to laptop to notebook. While our PC or notebook or laptop sits on a desk at the office or on a coffee table at home, smartphones go everywhere with us and integrate into every part of our lives. But despite getting smarter and smarter, phones are too small to replace PCs completely. We need a device that bridges the gap between what PCs do and what mobile phones do. That device has arrived, welcome to the age of the tablet.

The concept of a tablet PC isn’t new. Before, it was just a laptop with a screen that swiveled around and folded back. And of course, it was quite uncomfortable to carry as a slate and awkward to use as a laptop. When the Apple iPad hit the market, critics quickly called it a giant iPhone without the phone. The iPad evolution has altered everything we thought we knew about tablets, and other hardware manufacturers are following up on Apple’s success quickly.

Today’s tablet is exactly a thin slab, dominated by its screen. The software for tablets has changed, as well. Instead of struggling to run a full-fledged version of Windows, which requires a significant amount of processing power and isn’t optimized for use with a touchscreen, most new tablet models released nowadays run a relatively lightweight, touchscreen-focused mobile operating system such as Apple iOS or Google Android.

Are tablets very necessary to have ?

For me, at this point of time, tablets aren’t necessary devices, at least not at the present time with their current capabilities. They certainly are popular, but they are just another ways to access the internet. Tablets are best for those who are always moving and find that mobility is and portability is extremely important to them. Used most often as entertainment devices, the tablet isn’t for serious computing, and when thought of as a toy, it definitely isn’t cheap.

These changes in technology have opened up a wide range of new possibilities for the new way in which computers can be used. For computers technology to be widely accepted and used effectively, they need to be well designed – how to fit the technology to people’s need and their work. Producing computer system that are straightforward to use means, that system designers have to think beyond merely what capabilities the system should have. They need to consider the interaction that goes on between users and a computer system, and how the use of computers might enrich the work and personal lives of people.

Technology is going to fast, but how fast is the fast ?…

I Cant Live Without You..

The mobile phone ( or i just called it hand-phone ) is one of the most rapidly growing new technologies in the world, especially among the younger generations. Recently, mobile phone has evolved into something more than a simple communication tool, gaining its own place in various aspects of social interaction. Some people revealed that mobile phones play an integral part in their lives, some felt as though they have a very strong attachment to their mobile phones; as if their mobile phones were part of them, and some concluded that mobile phones were fundamental tools with which they maintain and manage their relationships contributing to reinforced peer ties.

As for me, mobile phones have intruded in my life because of their varied multi-function capabilities have replaced many other devices. They have become my personal diary, which keeps me updated of all my meetings and importants events. Some might even want to replaced the wristwatches as they find it easier to see time in their mobile phones – but not for me, I still love my watches, I still need them.

Mobile phone has popularized the messaging service and this has made it easy for people to send across messages and nearly wiping out the traditional lettering system. Thus mobile phone has intervened in our lives in a positive manner and continues to make it better.

Whenever I stressed and need some music to soothe my soul, I just turn on my music player on my mobile, and it will work for me. Most of the mobiles nowadays do have the music player function. Perhaps, to ensure that we won’t get bored at any point of time. Not only that, phones have also popularized the camera feature. as mobile phones now offer expandable memory features and some are designed with hard disk in them ( up to 8GB ), we are now able to store multiple files and multimedia in our phone.

Accessing the internet has become mandatory in many professions, including myself. My mobile phone is also replacing my laptop by enabling internet access. Indirectly, this has given a way to service providers to provide various internet services. Mobile banking and stocks updates have become a common affair for the mobile phone user.

The mobile phone has made a positive contribution to our life. it cannot be denied that a mobile phone entitles us to communicate with almost anyone in anywhere. We are now able to keep in touch with oour relatives far away or our friends who might be sitting on the opposite side of the world. Next, the mobile phone is also playing an irreplaceable role in our modern life. An average person with an mobile phone can listen to music, watch TV as well as keep up with the news and updates from his friends’ online pages. He can also look up in a dictionary, search for information while studying or turn to the GPS for help while getting lost. To put all things in a nutshell, with its positive contribution, the mobile phone has now been an important part of our life.

Look at the video.. muahahahahah… ( gelak gila kuasa )

Samsung Galaxy Note – my next to-be-sweetheart by end of this year.

It’s a token for myself for being work hard for the last 12 months. I may say that I’m an addicted person to mobile phone. For record, I have 8 mobile phones in my collection. Huh, dear all my handphones – I just cant live without you.

Social Networking – Its “fruits” to the community

Here we go :- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Friendster, Hi5, MySpace.

These are only a few of social networkings that i know, instead of hundreds, or maybe thousands of them available in the Internet. I bet as soon as you hear these words, you can add at least another three sites to the list off the top of your head. But what is social networking?

By definition, social network is a type of online media that expedites conversation as opposed to traditional media, which delivers content but doesn’t allow readers/viewers/listeners to participate in the creation or development of the content. Huh, very technical, isn’t it ?

Lets make it simpler.

In my opinion, social networking is a medium which provide a very delicious and fun way to spark conversations. It is an easy way to share our ideas, photos, videos, likes and dislikes with the rest of the world and find out what they think of them. We can find friends, business contacts and become part of a community or a bunch of different communities. Nowadays, we can interact either using our computers or get connected using our mobile. Everythings seems to be very easy nowadays.

Although people have been using the Internet to connect with others since the early 1980s, it is only in the last decade that social networking services have proliferated and their use has become a widespread practice. It has been studied that almost of all Internet surfer are aged between 16 to 29 years old. They spend more time online (an average of 22 hours per week) than any other age group. They are also early adopters in the mobile phone market with 97 per cent owning a mobile phone of which 64% are internet capable. In addition to downloading content, looking up information and emailing, mobile engagement with social networking, is rapidly gaining popularity.

What will be the impact of these social networking ?

I‘ve made some studies and reading on this particular subjects and there are tones of good and bad listed, but for my entry, I just plugged some of the points. I wish to focus only on the benefits of social networking has brought to our lives. ( asyik cerite pasal keburukan je, tak best lah..)

Developed Media Literacy In Ourself.

Traditionally media literacy has been understood and taught in relation to mass media, addressing issues of media ownership, censorship and advertising. However, today’s online and networked media environment requires a more complex digital or web literacy that is often not explicitly taught in school. This environment requires that young people develop new skills to participate and stay safe in the new digital media environment.

Online media literacy includes the knowledge and skills required to use a computer, web browser or particular software program or application, understanding of the many different spaces of communication on the web, as well as skills to create and upload image and video content.

A research indicates that the use of social networking services can support the development of media literacy. The creation and sharing of content on services such as Facebook and MySpace has been seen to increase both user’s technical literacy‟, as they learn to use code to create their profiles, and creative content and visual literacy‟ as they draw from and re-use media in appropriate ways for communication and self-expression.

Assist in Education Approaches

Social networking can be used to extend opportunities for formal learning across geographical contexts. For example, within the Linking Latitudes program established by International schools in Subang Jaya, Malaysia and Pularumpi School on Melville Island, learners from both schools use instant messaging and Skype to share information about their cultures and work collaboratively. Students from two schools interact with other students  from over forty other schools that registered in the same social network. Additionally, it is also can be use between teachers and students to improve rapport ,motivation and engagement .

However, It is important to note that the educational benefits of social networking are not experienced equally by all people. Certain groups of learners, such as Indigenous young people, those from low socio-economic backgrounds and those living in remote areas, face persistent challenges of internet access and literacy. Maximising the benefits of social network for these groups specifically requires addressing access and digital literacy.

Enhance Individual Creativity

Rapid uptake of digital technologies have opened up unprecedented possibilities for amateur users to create and distribute content such that media users have become producers. User -generated content describes both the generation of original creative content and remixed content that creatively reworks or repurposes existing content. The interrelationship between social networking and social media has provided a key impetus (via platforms such as youtube.com and flickr.com) for the sharing of this self-generated content with broader networks. Young people in particular are more immersed in this participatory media environment than any other age-group. They now create and share their own ‘small media’ in their everyday communicative, creative and social activities.

All in all, social networking services are now recognized as significant players in the Web 2.0 environment, transforming communication practices, opening new spaces and processes of socialisation and impacting upon traditional social structures. This new environment poses certain challenges and, like any setting for social interaction, has some inherent risks. However, this review suggests that  these challenges and risks have been over-emphasised in recent years both in popular media and social research. If we want this social networking services to retain relevance and deliver benefits to the community, our understanding of cybercitizenship must be more holistic, to fully encompass and resonate across all of the settings in which we live our lives – be that home, school, work, our local communities or our communities of interest.

Ethical Issues In Internet Community

We are now living in era where issues such as privacy, digital security, identity theft, spyware, phishing, Internet pornography and spam crossed our mind each and every second of our breath. These costly and time consuming concerns were completely foreign to the world community only a few years ago. Few laws and protocols have been developed with the intention of protecting the general citizenry from harm and organizations from financial loss and civil or criminal lawsuits.

In general, people have become more and more technologically savvy. In structure, the Web is as amorphous as the network itself; it is really nothing but a huge mass of documents located at various institutions around the world. Because these documents are all interconnected, inter-indexed, and inter-referenced, one can easily access information from several different countries in the period of a few moments.

Because the Internet is such a unique medium with the unique structure, people are having difficulty making rules for its use. There is nothing to stop someone from abusing the network. As with your daily actions with those around you, you will have to face the consequences of your behavior. If years of network use have produced anything resembling a system of order, it is surely embodied in what is called as netiquette. Netiquette is a conjunction formed from “network etiquette”, developed by some users in order to put certain controls and rules of network conduct. The interesting and unique thing about netiquette in contrast to a hard-and-fast system of rules is that it allows room for interpretation.

As for me, i have my own netiquette. Whoops whoops… I’m not saying that these rules was created by me. This is what I’ve been practice and it is very common sense, and I also found it is very benefit to me as one of the consistent user in this cyber world.

Joe’s Netiquette 1: MY WORDS ARE EASILY ACESSS

Whenever i compose an email or writing my own internet entry, i always assume that everyone in the world will read my words. Although e-mail is sent to only one person, but, it is very easy to forward the e-mail message to hundreds or thousands of people out there. (Unless, i have a complete trust that the recipient of my email will keep it confidential)

Anything put up on the Web is openly available for anyone in the world to see. The word ‘anyone’ not only includes our professors and classmates, but also the government, our office colleague, our neighbour and all people in the world. I always cautious with what i put on the web and make sure that my information is always appropriate, representative and informative as possible, as these people have only a small bit of information ( from my wording ) to simply judge me.

Joe’s Netiquette 2: THINK TWICE BEFORE REACT

Have you ever received an email message that suddenly strike you that seems to be a little too personal, or have you ever read a message in newsgroup that seems  to be a little too offensive ? of course, these may lead to misinterpreting the intent of the sender. Perhaps the message that we are taking so seriously was intended to be taken sarcastically–or perhaps we have stumbled upon a newsgroup where noone-holds-barred messages are tolerated, or even expected. Either way, it does no good to pour fuel on the fire of what could potentially become a “flame war,” where a few people engage in pointless verbal warfare, usually as the result of a misinterpreted message or an undiscriminating author.

YES – YES – YES !!.. yes i’m giving you the BIG YES here. One of the biggest drawbacks of communicating electronically is the difficulty of communicating emotions through text. When we communicate electronically, all that we see is our computer screen. we don’t have the opportunity to use facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice to communicate our meaning; it just words—a lonely written words–thats all we’ve got. And that goes for our correspondent as well.

So, if we the sender, read our entry, again and again, think the consequences of our wording again and again, before press on the enter button. And if we the reader /recipient, read again and again, understand the content before we jump into the conclusion.

Joe’s Netiquette 3: BE A GOOD USER

In the cyberworld, we are commonly known only through our email address. Many people interpret this as a free license to verbally assault anyone who rubs them the wrong way.

Since the Internet is so flexible, those user who really know how to use it, can wreak “virtual havoc” upon our “virtual world.” They may not be able to hunt us down and dismember us, or even send us a letter bomb via Poslaju Mail. But, remember this,  it is not all that difficult for a hacker seeking revenge to effectively disable us link to the Internet. Ever imagine finding 10,000 new messages in our emailbox every day? Such a cruel form of revenge is surprisingly feasible, without all that much effort on the part of the infuriated avenger.

So, behave on-line as you would in person. Watch what you type and how your word potentially volatile statements. Assume that what you say will be taken in the worst possible way, and that if someone is upset enough by it, it will come back to haunt you.

Joe’s Netiquette 4: BE A SMART WRITER

We all want to be think that we make a good impression. In the virtual world, though, an impression isn’t made by a nice suit and a clean shave–you could be naked for all those out in Cyberworld care. Your writing, on the other hand, will be highly scrutinized. If you write well, you will likely come off as educated, intelligent, and respectable. If you compose hastily and sloppily, however, your readers may perceive you, perhaps inaccurately, as uneducated and unintelligent.

If you want to make a good impression on those out in the Cyberworld, it’s a good idea to make your writing look as professional as possible. any reader will likely take your message as seriously as you make it look. If you don’t bother to make your message intelligible, chances are he won’t take its contents very seriously. On the other hand, if you take a few minutes to compose thoughtfully, your reader may pay a little extra attention to what you have to say.

What i’ve been post today is my practise and may be considered as  just some of the rules or code of ethics used on the Internet.

Dear friends , remember my say :

“The Internet is a large place to get lost in, and also a large place to get into trouble. Always make certain that your netiquette is up to the mark and no one has a chance to point a finger at you”

-peace-

Blogging – The Dark and The Bright Side Of It.

It was all started that sunny day when my lecturer announced the need to have a blog as part of our MIS assignments. I’ve thinking and thinking and thinking for about a few weeks on this matter – how am I going to start with my own blog? Because blog is not exactly synonym in my life’s dictionary. But, whatever it takes, still, I need to obey with the subject’s requirement, which is to have a blog, or I wish to call it my online diary.

I’ve been surfed through the Internet just to find the suitable hosting for me when finally one of my classmates introduced me to this wordpress.com. I found it is very easy to use and of course very suitable for me as the new beginner in this ‘blogging world’. Now perhaps i can write some of my ‘mind – talking’ here.

From day to day, i’ve been asking myself what will be my first post to this joerahman.wordpress.com ? Few titles have been listed in my experia’s reminder, but, for my first time clicking on this ‘publish-blog’ button, i wish to post a simple ‘warming-up’ entry.  So i choose to share some of my thoughts on blogging.

I still remembered, back to few months ago when media reveals the incomes of some Malaysia’s bloggers, and most of them are teenagers.  The news just opened my eyes on the opportunity and possibility of earning big money just by sharing our thoughts, our life and our daily routines with the world through the Internet.  It can be interesting, it can be a fun-way for certain people who have the passion, especially in writing. I’ve heard some people say there’s a book inside everybody. So perhaps this blog revolution has let the book out.

For those who have personal blog, it will be very easy for them to vent their feeling, by simply typing some text and let the world know exactly what had happened to their life. In this case, bloggers should be very aware on their posting as most of the blog-posting available in the Internet, too much on personal information. This can come in the form of putting in particular information, for examples, full name and address or “saying” something in one of their posts that they may regret later. Although we can easily delete posts that we have written, blogs have a funny way of staying in the memory of search engines – such as Google. It’s important to never post something that we might be afraid will come back to us soon.

On the other hand, looking in the business aspects, blogs can be a useful communication tools between the organizations and its customers / clients. We will be able to update or to post new information quickly and get it to our customers / clients just as fast.  We will also be able to keep everyone informed of new policies, products and other important information without having to send out massive emails or snail mail. We can also drive traffic to our business site from our bog – by having links on our blog as well as others

This ease, however, can lead to unreal expectations – where visitors / readers might expect them to be updated each day, even if that’s not possible. Blogs are easy to start and hard to maintain, just like everything else on the web. Writing continuously might be one of the most difficult and time consuming tasks for some people to undertake. Yes, blogs can be a cheap strategy to build up relationship and can be an excellent way of sharing knowledge, but it is also can be very expensive – blog eat up our time. As a result, many blogs are not updated.

I have often found that the people who have most time to write have least to say, and the people who have most to say don’t have enough time to write it. Thus, the real expertise within the community lays hidden, as we might get drowned in trivia.

All in all, the advantages and disadvantages of internet blogging are numerous, but ultimately it is up to us to decide whether or not blogging is something we would enjoy or profit from. Blogs are great way to communicate and experience , if used correctly.

-peace-

pstt * been thinking to change my layout.. what say you ?