Reflection

This is actually the FIRST time ever for me to have my own blog. Back in those days when everyone around me was playing with blogging in Xanga, I was still playing with stupid online games and neopets, a virtual pet community with games and a chance to raise unusual pets.

I realize that managing a blog requires hard work,


Comments I have made:
Joanne's Nico Douga
Joanne's online reading
King's innovations change life
King's smart phone kills conversations

How many information are you giving out on the internet?

The internet enables us to communicate, acquire and share information ignoring the physical barriers. Many people developed a habit to put their conversation on the web, allowing more than one person to see the message.

I started facebook when I was in Form 5, since I have to remain in contact with my friends after they go aboard to study. At first, when there was only less than 100 friends in my facebook, I was happy being able to communicate with my friends in the UK and Canada, and I was able to find a few primary schoolmates which I haven’t contact for a long time. However, when I entered University, the number of friends boosts up like having a turbo engine in it, and that’s the time I feel uncomfortable updating status and having conversations with my friends. Knowing that facebook kept the intellectual rights of the things users posted in it, including photos and other stuff, along with the reports on facebook privacy, I decided to stop putting information on Facebook and put only a limited amount of information to maintain contacts with my friends. And that’s the reason why I turn to use another social network- plurk, to interact with 30 of my friends, which are really my friends.

What I would like to say from my experience is that there is a high risk of exposing personal information on the internet, especially on social networks like Facebook and twitter.

I recall reading news about a couple in the UK having a son with heart disease. They kept on updating the information about their kid on Facebook for friends and relatives to know the situation of their son. However, they allow ‘friends of friends’ to see their status and that result in the ransacking of their home twice when they brought their son to a surgery and announced in on Facebook. This is not the only case, there were many other reports on burglary, bullying, rape and even murder.

This picture shows how vulnerable you and your home is when you update your location and status on social networks.

http://mashable.com/2011/11/01/social-theivery-infographic/

This report carried out in UK shows that 80% of the burglars would check the status on facebook, twitter and other social networks to target which properties to rob. They would also use Google Map to check the neighborhood before they commit the crime.

Therefore, while enjoying the convenience of social networks to interact with friends, we should also be careful of what information we are giving to the others, while some of them are your close friends, some maybe the people you don’t even know who could possibly post a threat on you. 

Here is a reference site about the privacy of personal data in Hong Kong:
http://www.privacy.com.hk/

Information and validity

Information and validity

We are now living in the new age of media where information flows faster than anything on the internet. With the new speed and amount of information flow, people can easily get access to new information on the internet simply by clicking into the search engine.

Blogs came out more than 10 years ago. It became more and more popular since the late 90s last century and became the mainstream web 2.0 tools for people to express their own ideas and exchange opinions by leaving comments under the blog entry. Founder of O'Reilly Media, Tim O'Reilly, even draft a ‘Blogger's Code of Conduct’ for bloggers to enforce civility on their blogs by being civil themselves and moderating comments on their blog in 2007 due to the threats made to blogger Kathy Sierra, including death threats.

1.    We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.

2.    We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person

3.    We connect privately before we respond publicly

4.    When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action

5.    We do not allow anonymous comments

6.    We ignore the trolls

However, as the speed of information flow increase, blogging became less popular, no that there are no bloggers anymore, but many of then turn to faster and shorter ways of information, such as twitter and weibo. Blogs became a supplementary to the 140-words micro-blogs.

 

                                 twitter                                        weibo

Hubpages is another thing. The similarities between blogs and hugpages are that both are post published by individuals and allow a comment sections for opinions exchange under the management of the hubber. However, Hubpages is not a blog. A magazine-style articles, which are longer than blog post and covering a specific subject in depth is being adapted. Hubbers do not have to spend time to manage their articles like blogs, all the articles are being tagged and sorted out by hubpages itself.

http://hubimg.com/v/site/homepage_v03.mp4

Despite the different structures of blogs and hubpages, the same constraint lies in them. Even though the Bloggers’ Code of Conduct is being promoted, with the virtual identity on the internet, it is almost impossible for people, bloggers in particular to control the comments people gave. All they can do is to delete the comment and black list the person, but no one can control the comments they post elsewhere.

Also, the validity of the published posts is not controlled. There is no one such as ‘internet police’ to manage the quality of the posts as the number of posts and articles on the internet is unmanageable.

The problem exists not only in blogs and hubpages. Wikipedia, known as the free encyclopedia, did nothing to ensure the validity of their pages. As anyone with an account is allowed to post and edit a page, the information on Wikipedia is not trustworthy. Ironically, Wikipedia always comes first in the search engines whenever names of celebrities, politicians, objects, terms, anything that Wikipedia contains was typed into the search engine. This gave users an illusion that the resources from Wikipedia are all true.

Hence, what we should do on the internet is to behave and think. The virtual identity is not that virtual, people can’t stay hidden forever; information cannot be blindly absorbed. 

My digital life

I am a computer addict, not that I would go crazy without a computer and network, I can live without it for a few days, but I would use the computer everyday for at least 3 hours if I got it with me.

2 of my 'must visit' websites everyday:
http://www.facebook.com/
http://www.plurk.com/

Both sites are social networks which allows me to check the updates of my friends and interact with them through the online platform. Whenever I got access to the internet, the first thing I would do is visiting the two sites. Total addict.

There is one experience I would like to share about social networks: me and my friends are staying in one room, each have a computer with them. Even though we are having verbal communication, there were other conversations happening on the web. Occasionally, somebody would laugh out, 'hey, what are you talking about' in the middle of a conversation.



Seeing how our generation, or even the generation before us, become so used to the internet and become part of our lives, it is interesting to learn how to use different media tools and the different writings in the new media age.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/101594790/

This is actually what I am like when I am using the computer~~

Week 7 Digital Video

Creating the video is not too difficult, but to balance the sound of the background music and the voice of the narration needs more time and effort than imagine~~

As the Windows Movie Maker and Photo Story is a beginner stuff for Movie Making, they are easy to manage but effects are limited. If I have to create digital movie again, I would try something bigger like the Adobe Premier Professional~

newcomer!!

Hi there~~