Just Bubbles
I dream to have a warmer disposition
I dream to be a more cheerful, eloquent and active person
I dream to live a life of class and elegance
I dream to play the piano and violin
I dream to live a life of spiritual pursuit
I dream of being a simple person
I dreamed of not being me
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The Laughters
First week of internship has passed. So we did have dinner together this Friday. We’ve planned to have this as a weekly meetup. I can already see who are the ones we won’t see much after Poly.
Though for the previous 5 days I’ve been in school without the gang, that I hang out for the past 3 years, it wasn’t too bad. Tatami Room became our make-shift office. Campus Radio is sharing the place with the Comm Agency so that made 12 DMC people. That actually took away the sense of absence of my gang.
On Thursday we got a surprise from Ms Lum. She got us a little Xmas tree. That really made our day, and gave us more sense of belonging to our little place. That’s why she’s one of my favourite lecturers. So motherly, really. Hahah!
So Adam seems to be the happiest Intern, being surrounded by OLs, taken-care-of, with a posh environment(changi airport). Firdhuas too is enjoying himself every minute post-processing videos in a relac-one-corner suite. Feels happy for these two and can really see them going far in their fields.
Life at work can be quite tiring but unlike school, after work hours, you’re totally free. I’m enjoying this nuaing-at-home. And meanwhile Im looking forward to more work next week, and the next Friday meetup!
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Tags: DMC, Internship
The Signs
It’s Saturday, and the coming Monday would be when we all start our internships. I’m not too nervous as I’m going back to the familiar building, just that it’s all now in professional settings with much higher expectations. I’d think everyone else are much more nervous, and worrying about their coming 3 months.
While I’m feeling quite comfortable, things become especially quiet.
Everything has slowed down since the dinner and party. I still check on my Tweetdeck but the updates on DMC group are significantly lesser. And I guess it’d only go slower.
We went iluma and Ion to get clothes in preparation for monday. Then the four of us sat in Starbucks and chatted about our past and future for hours. And I just pondered if we’d gonna meet and sit like this few years down the road.
As we enter new environments and leave old ones, friends come and go. We feel lonely in between but smile again when we make new friends.
We’re so adaptable, and I guess that’s how we survive.
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Tags: DMC
The Goodbyes
The most sentimental part of last #nct lecture was not about the speech or the video. The most sentimental part was after Ms Nga said “End of Lecture”, with the lecture theatre going total silence for half a minute, then…
…the applause.
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Tags: DMC, NCT
The Point of It All
So the last of #nct lectures was over.
Throughout the 6 weeks, Ms Kwa brought us on an adventure into Twitter, Google Wave, Google Docs, Facebook. We’ve realized about our subconscious use of Continuous Partial Attention, and felt the emergence of potentially more powerful information machines like Bing and Wolfram Alpha.
Today, we’ve all come to an end of everything. Let’s talk about the point of it all.
New Communication Technologies are an inevitable step we, the human race, will all take. The uncertainties we’ve felt about this change in the landscape of media are not unfounded.The rise in communication prowess of individual is a threat to professional communicators. Advertising, PR and Promotion are rapidly being commoditised.
What does it mean to us, the future communication professionals. Would we still have a Ogilvy/McCain/Saatchi&Saatchi to reside in? I’d love to think they’d still be able to be the big brothers.
When our generation replace the majority of consumers world, would traditional mass media still have the market share that they have today? Or would we be buying majority of media space from Google, Facebook, twitter, Bing and xiaxue.
There are countless uncertainties and almost-certainly, the entire landscape would have an overhaul. What these all mean to us, is that we have to continuously change our steps, be aware of the million changes to the world and communication.
What I’ve learned in year 1 and 2, seem to be very different from #nct. It’s scary, menacing, and yet, extremely exciting.
Following ms kwa words, I hope and want to be brave enough to be the first batch to venture the new frontiers despite all the threats and uncertainties. The world changes every second and so would I adapt. Speed, courage, awareness, creativity, openness and social-networking are the notes taken.
The point of it all?
Anticipate change and adapt new relevancy constantly.
Note: Special thanks to ms kwa for giving us one of the best modules in DMC.
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Tags: DMC, NCT
An Argument would Fall Flat
Traditional books will undeniably be replaced by eBooks.
Traditional books are environmentally unfriendly. Millions of trees are chopped for publishing. Such books are also resource-inefficient in distribution to the masses, and the less mainstream books may not be easily accessible. It is also tough to manually search information in books for scholarly research.
Even if habits are hard to change, technology can force the change in us, by the global need for higher efficiency. Afterall, this is the era of Google. Where information are getting googalized for instantaneous information retrieval.
The Digitization of Traditional Books
In secret locations and using secret methods, human beings are scanning lots and lots of books for Google. About 10 million books is digitized per year. The total number of eBooks in existence is estimated to be 65m. And other than Google, Amazon has been scanning large volume of books, as have Microsoft and Yahoo!
With the increase in supply and demand, 3,000,000 eBooks are downloaded every single month.
The 4 Trends of eBooks
#1 Unbundling. One fine example would be the iPods. Think how have iPods unbundled music albums (people now download only the most popular tracks out of the whole album), revolutionized the landscape of music industry, and almost-totally wiped out CD players. Will traditional books be eventually unbundled, with people only reading the most interesting chapters, for the benefit of time-efficiency?
#2 Wikipedia, which is free, collaborative and online, has eaten into sales of paper-bound alternatives. So books that people would not traditionally read in their entirety, or that require frequent updating, are likely to migrate online and perhaps to cease being books at all. Telephone directories and dictionaries, and probably cookbooks and textbooks, will all fall into this category.
#3 Interlinking of books. What if books are interlinked? Just like hyperlinks on a webpage, we may be jumping from books to books to books, instead of just sticking to reading one. We would then be exposed to a much larger amount of books than we would previously be. And this will raise a fundamental question of, what would then define a book when book is no longer book-like.
#4 Greater ease to publish your works online. Without the need for a publisher, you can publish your books on your own, online for a very low cost. One fine example would be stephietan’s magazine, Manifesto. By this publishing option, printing and middle-man cost is effectively reduced to zero. Link: http://issuu.com/ilovefashionation/docs/manifesto_issue_1
However, in future traditional books will still exist in small volume, due to habits, physical need for the feel of books, and the pride of owning one (think souvenir). Even though many of us would still prefer reading on solid physical books, eBooks is definitely the next step for human race – the coming together of information in digital form for instantaneous Storing, Searching, Retrieval and Sharing.
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Tags: DMC, ebook, NCT
This Period of Life
So I tried to sleep, turned and flipped on the bed, but still was awake. The night seemed to be especially cold and quiet. Life for the past years came flashing back. Could no longer feel that I’d still be in this comfort zone for long. The familiar noises, laughters and faces are going to go away. It’s been like our 2nd home, but all is gonna change as our lives are on the way to chapter next.
This period of life, is called graduating.
Filed under: DMC, a.breath | 1 Comment
Bing it? Nah, not anytime soon.
Just slightly more than a decade ago, google was a name we’ve never heard of. Now, it has become one of the biggest technological company to date. Just exactly how big is Google now? I did a little research on WolframAlpha.com
Is it a match to big tech players like Sony and Dell?
Looking at Google’s market cap and net income, putting google in the same league would be a mistake
Hmm, let’s be a little more ambitious. This time let’s try Apple and Microsoft.
Surprisingly, Google’s very near to Apple, and highly likely be over-taking Apple since Google’s a -booming industry. I referred google as the industry itself, as for the past decade, Google has yet to meet a formidable competitor.
.Google Vs Yahoo!
Though both Yahoo! and Google are famous search engines, they actually serve different group of customers.
Yahoo! customers = Advertisers
Google’s customers = You and Me
As evident from Yahoo’s homepage, its cluttered with adverts n links to third-party sites. Google on the other hand, positioned itself clearly with a clean homepage and search result page. The text advertisements can only be seen at the right column of the search page. Perhaps this is the reason why most of us tend to google it than yahoo for answer.
Something amusing to share here. Recently,Yahoo! mentioned that it was never meant to be a search engine. As quoted, “We have never been a search company,” from Ms. Bartz, the chief of Yahoo! The biggest thing for Yahoo is increasing the number of pages people consume and slapping as many display ads as possible across those pages. “My fortunes are tied to my pages,” Ms. Bartz said.
Well, apparently it isn’t doing so well.
So July this year, Yahoo! decides to wave the white flag.
.Yahoo! + Bing
Yahoo! and Bing had decided to merge in July 2009. If you’re wondering who Bing is, it is actually previously known as Live Search, Windows Live Search and MSN Search. The name has been changed 3 times in marketing effort to better position Microsoft Search engine against big players like Google and Yahoo!
I’ve tried Bing. It has really cool features, and these are the most note-worthy:
#1 Video search- allows you to preview the videos with just a rollover the image icon.
#2 Image search customization – allows you to obtain specifically what types of image you want – black and white, image size and ratio.
#3 Integration with WolframAlpha. This is one of the coolest search engine I’ve seen. Haven’t heard of this search engine? Try typing your birthdate on www.wolframalpha.com
Bing also provides rather relevant and targeted search results. However still, Bing is not Google. Bing will not replace my default search engine. There’s this little issue that no matter how much advertising and features-filled it is, it can’t easily change our habits.
I’ve lived Google for a decade now, and I can’t see myself saying “Bing it” in the near future.
Filed under: NCT | 1 Comment
Tags: Bing, Google, NCT, Yahoo!
.1 Why Twitter
Twitter has officially become our school curriculum.
I thought Twitter’s lame. I saw Twitter as only a tool for people to get updates about friend’s lives. Yet, its lesser than Facebook as Twitter’s basically graphic/photo and video incapable (being fundamentally text-based communication).
Boy, was I so wrong.
In Twitter, our particulars are shortened to just 160 characters of Bio and a profile Picture. It’s vastly different from Facebook/Myspace. Twitter is about useful information. In Twitter, you are what you share. Your value increases with the quality of your tweet and your network of followers.
Twitter is knowledge.
2 weeks into using the app, Twitter has replaced my main source of news. Spending 5 mins on Twitter is akin to scanning thru one entire section of Straits Times, till the point where my mind is overloaded. I knew of the Ford Shooting incident half a day before I saw it on TV5 News.
Twitter is a catalyst for shaping perceptions.
Since so many people gain important information and decision-making opinions from tweets, its a rich yet cheap marketing resource. And people who tweet are potentially strong influencers.
.2 Notes taken by Experiencing Twitter
Three notes I’ve taken:
1. The quality of your time spent on twitter = quality of people you follow. (think stephietan mentioned this)
2. To increase influence on Twitter, is not just equal to increasing number of followers. Followers must be relevant, of quality and biological.
3. Your tweet is successful when there are plenty Retweets.
.3 Experimenting Twitter
As a communication student, of course I can’t miss out trying to see how this interesting medium work. I decide to experiment how to increase influence level.
Experiment #1 – Following reciprocal Tweeps
Search and follow influential tweeps (relevant to your niche) who have approx the same number of followers and following. This imply that they probably would follow u back when u are their followers. Advantage of this method is to have quality tweeps following you. When you have a good tweet, they might RT and this would increase your followers considerably. However, beware of who you follow. Remember note 1.
Result: Success
Experiment #2 – Tweeting what i’m doing
By regularly update on what you’re doing gives your followers an insight of your life. However, you need to be either leading an extraordinary life or you’re a celebrity like xiaxue for people to be wanting to know the “what are you doing”s. I’m neither, thus updates of such would only be of interest to my close friends. Furthermore, if you tweet too often or plenty of irrelevant info to your followers, they might start unfollowing you.
Result: Fail
Experiment #3 – Tweeting my blog posts that are potentially of interest
As I realised what people RT are usually those of relevance to most other people, Ive decided to try tweeting about my review on laptop. And indeed, Ive received more than 100 views in total after the tweet. This reminds me of what patlaw said - Social Media should be just a side tool for organization’s marketing plan. Twitter/SocialMedia is never a solution itself.
Result: Success
Experiment #4 – Sharing Twitter Contacts
Every friday is sharing day. People share quality/relevant twitter contacts on #Follow Friday. In this way, as you mention the contacts you’re sharing, people would in turn be grateful to you and this enhances the relationship.
Result: Success
Writer’s Notes:
#1 Thanks http://www.createbacklinks.net/ for creating backlinks to my posts.
#2 Edited Twitter’s spelling error. Credits to Pingkwa for correcting this.
Filed under: NCT | 1 Comment
Tags: DMC, NCT, Twitter
Sony debuts Vaio X Series – 11.1-inch ”World’s Lightest Laptop” that lasts up to 14 hours.
This babe arrived at storefront less than a week ago. I’m feeling extra free today thus I’ve decided to give this a little review.
Ps. Sorry for the low quality image as they’re taken with a Point&shoot at storefront setting.
The Vaio X Series – The World’s lightest laptop. With merely 670 grams total weight (with battery), and at just half-inch thin, it’s easy to forget you’re carrying a laptop on your hand. As quoted from Sony, it’s “thinner than a No. 2 pencil” Wow, really? Check this out, look at the image below, it’s slightly thinner than my Nokia 6500s.
We’re talking about unprecedented mobility here.
The X Series comes in 3 Models with all running on the latest Windows 7. At highest configuration, X runs on Intel Atom 2 GHz Processor, 2GB, 128 Solid State Drive and 6.5 Hrs Battery Life. This would cost you $2,499. Lower configuration models come at $1,999 and $2,199 (SGD). For the advertised 14 Hours, you would have to purchase an extended battery separately. I’m not sure of the price yet as the battery has yet to reach my store.
X’s mobility is undeniably the world’s best. How about speed? The initial setup of Windows 7 here took only about 7 minutes. Basic navigation around the installed programs are speedy. No complains here even though it’s just running on an Atom Processor. Windows 7 is said to have been made compatible with Atom processor, leveraging on its high power-efficiency.
Of course we’re not talking about gaming, video/photo processing, 3D Modelling or Autocad work. These are impossible. It’d serve the wrong target audience as well. We’re looking at people who need to travel about and just need a reliable little tool for checking stocks, completing office work, meeting client and just needing to use a laptop on an airplane.
Verdict?
Mobility – 10/10 (I’d want to give it 12 but that’s off-scale)
Performance – 6/10
Value – 8/10
Filed under: Product Review | 2 Comments
Tags: Review, Sony, Vaio, X
