…Thank goodness.
Whew. That exam wasn’t too bad, I didn’t get to write down everything I had to say, my essay was a little short, but at least it’s over now.
This is probably the last time I’ll post anything on this blog.
In the words of the great Martin Luther King, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Well, for three days. Then it’s back to school for A2… *collapses with exhaustion on keyboard* gklwt6iop345;[sd
HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN !! ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.
Well, the history exam was dreadful, so I thought I’d do something a little more lighthearted, and at the same time cover an area of new media I haven’t really looked at on this blog before: Internet culture.
You see, the Internet has its own culture. I’ll admit that I haven’t escaped its dreaded influence – for example, I know what “lol” means. Still, at least I’ve never played World of Warcraft, and I have never used exclamations like ”w00t” or “pwned” in actual conversation, unlike certain nerds I could mention…
Internet culture involves the spreading of ideas, so that some things become famous online simply through word-of-mouth. A good example would be the way songs posted on the Internet become massively popular despite being virtually unknown offline, such as the hilarious ”The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny” by Lemon Demon and the awesome ”Canon Rock” by JerryC. Also demonstrative of the power of Internet culture is the massive hype that surrounded Snakes on a Plane.
Another common element of Internet culture is “webspeak” or “MSNspeak” – dialects constructed from text messaging, “leet” hacker slang, computer codes such as binary and hex, fake html tags (such as <irony></irony>), adoptions from foreign languages, and quotes from cult video games (“Where’s that DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald?”). Then of course there are smilies 
and other emoticons ^_^ and ASCII art. Some of it can be quite hard to understand, too. Out of curiosity, I Googled for “dictionary internet slang”, and found that there are actually websites that exist purely to help parents figure out what exactly their kids are saying to one another online.
Heck, there’s even a “Hacker” (leet) version of Google. Well, that’s all I’ve got to say about computer culture. Crazy, huh? The Internet really is one weird creature, that’s for sure.
!ph j00r r34ding tihs, g00|) luc|< w!th teh e><@m!!!
FOR GREAT JUSTICE.
I’m getting nervous now. History exam this afternoon, no idea what I’m going to write, and media first thing tomorrow.
Anyway, latest from BBC news, Amnesty International have spoken out against Internet censorship. They claim that the Internet “could change beyond all recognition” if something is not done about the increasing censorship, which they consider companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are allowing to continue. They warn that more and more countries are imitating China, banning websites and arresting bloggers. For example, Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman recieved 4 years imprisonment for insulting the president and Islam.
Amnesty are holding a conference, “Some People Think the Internet is a Bad Thing: The Struggle for Freedom of Expression in Cyberspace.” Various people will speak, including Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikimedia, who was involved in devising a “bloggers’ code of conduct” earlier this year.
For more information, see http://irrepressible.info/.
The BlackBerry is a PDA type device. It can send and recieve emails, telephone, fax, text and browse the Internet, as well as run certain software. As Shawn Baldwin of Capital Management Group puts it, “it allows me to be out of the office but still have the office with me.”
This to my mind sounds like a mixed blessing. When you leave the office, surely you don’t want to carry on working? With the BlackBerry there’s no excuse for laziness. That doesn’t stop various successful enterprisers from making videos about why they love their BlackBerrys. Adam Lowry, of Method Products inc. says “It helps me manage my own sanity.” O-K… Good for you, Mr. Lowry. Moving swiftly on, Nina Garcia of Elle magazine explains “BlackBerry, for me, is freedom.” Being at the mercy of my clients’ and colleagues’ emails all day isn’t my idea of freedom but there you go. Actually, I’m a little scared by some of the videos. For example, New York choreographer Danielle Flora exclaims “It absolutely changed my life! Completely. I’m serious, it really has.” Actually, I’ve never heard of Flora before, but her video’s wonderful - she actually does claim to “love” her BlackBerry and describes it as “awesome” and “huge” (by which she means it’s good) and like Garcia talks of the “freedom” it gives her. You begin to wonder about these people, but they’re all successful business men and women, so they must have a point.
And then, of course, there’s Mo Rocca…
But the BlackBerry isn’t just for work. Oh no. The BlackBerry is “for life”. I’m not yet sure if that’s as opposed to “just for Christmas.” It can be used for social purposes too. It can even play the odd game (although I bet it doesn’t do Tetris).
Edit: I removed the link to Baldwin’s “why I love my BlackBerry” because that video doesn’t seem to exist any more. They must have taken it down. Does this mean he doesn’t love his BlackBerry anymore? Has he dumped it? Is it heartbroken? I’m crying into my keyboard just thinking about it.
Adam’s latest update includes a faulty link. You can access the page it refers to by clicking http://adamrobbins.edublogs.org/12-new-media-essays/ on this page or entering that into the bar at the top of the screen. Worth doing, there’s actually some useful stuff there.
Edit: He’s fixed it now. Good ol’ Adam.
Sorry about the last post. So, these stats. Basically, comScore have revealed that the average European accesses the net 16.5 days in a month, and spends 24 hours viewing 2,662 web pages. The country with the “highest net penetration” is Norway, with 83% of the population online, whilst the country with the lowest is Russia (11% online). Germany have the largest online population at 32.5m 15 year olds and above, whilst the UK has the most active Internet users with 21m people online everyday.
However, the managing director of comScore Europe, Bob Ivins, says that given convergence people watch TV online as well, so it’s tricky to give accurate statistics. He also indicates the way UK Internet usage increased after the introduction of Broadband.
Groan… short post here, been trying (not necessarily successfully) to revise all day… sooo tired…
So, BBC article on internet user stats is here, and says stuff about how us lot in uk are teh most activw internet users and it also mentions sweden somewhere i think… ugh i’ll read it in the morning… too tired to blog zzzzzzzz
And to think, I only got a DVD player 3 years ago…
The other day I met a friend in town (who will remain anonymous for fear of him being embarrassed/offended/stalked by Internet perverts). He was browsing a certain shop that sold electrical equipment (which will also remain anonymous since I have no intention of promoting them), trying in vain to find a Wii. The shop did, however, have a PS3, and this friend was wondering what the point of it was. I must say I found the graphics very impressive (although there are as yet no games to match some of the classics on other consoles, e.g. Halo 3), but there was nothing original about it. Except for something called “Blu-ray”. What was “Blu-ray”? Nobody seemed to know, so we asked one of the staff about it. He explained, “Blu-ray is a new kind of DVD experience. It plays special DVDs – Blu-ray DVD players won’t play normal DVDs and normal DVD players won’t play Blu-ray DVDs.” Riiight. My friend asked if there was any advantage of buying Blu-ray DVDs over normal DVDs, and he talked of “special features” and “improved storage capabilities”. I was just beginning to wonder whether we hadn’t accidentally asked a PS3 sales executive by mistake, when my friend remarked that he’d still rather buy a Wii. At this point the shop guy was revealed to be a fanatical PS3 fan who told us about his passionate relationship with the first PlayStation (well, that’s what it sounded like) and listed all the reasons why there was nothing that an Xbox 360 or Nintendo Wii could do that the PS3 couldn’t do better. At this point my friend showed that he was an equally obsessive Wii fan and began to list all the reasons he’d rather have one of them over the PS3 any day, much to both my and the sales bloke’s embarrassment.
Anyway, just now on – surprise, surprise – the BBC technology website, I came across an article on a recent Blu-ray related event. It turns out that Sony and Toshiba are engaged in a “format war” over their rival DVD players, Blu-ray and HD DVD respectively. Both are capable of storing larger quantities of data than regular DVDs and both are powered by blue laser beam technology. Sony have surprised everyone by cutting the price of Blu-ray players by $100 to get ahead of the market, citing “growing demand for the next generation technology and falling production costs” as the reason for their action.
This is all very reminiscent of the debate over Betamax and VHS that occurred in the ’80s, with some studios backing one type of disc and some backing the other, while the public are stranded in the middle. The BBC offered to answer people’s questions about the Blu-ray format, and you can see their answers here. As for me, I’d rather keep my regular DVD player, thank you very much.
Spam is annoying.
Spam is annoying.
Spam is annoying.
Spam is annoying.
Spam is annoying.
Spam is annoying.
Spam is annoying.
Spam is annoying.
Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying. Spam is annoying.
So you can see why anti-spam authorities were so eager to arrest the so-called “spam king” Robert Soloway, who sent millions of spam emails to people and insisted that what he was doing was legal and protected by US free speech laws. According to the BBC’s video, some recipients of his emails disagreed, but this seems to have been by-the-by as far as I can tell, since he was arrested for identity fraud, money laundering and mail fraud, not for the spam itself. Perhaps this is why the rate of spam in the world has not fallen since his arrest. In fact, the following day 70 billion spam emails were sent, which as the Beeb helpfully point out, equates to more than ten by every person on the planet.
Now that is a lot of spam. Now that is a lot of spam. Now that is a lot of spam…
I’m not going to even bother linking this one back to films. It’s all media studies, and the exam’s on Thursday, so I’m just going to note pretty much every (vaguely) relevant thing I come across.
The iPhone (once again, as reported by the BBC) is a new mobile ‘phone, produced by Apple. It functions not only as a ‘phone (complete with texting, media player, voicemail, calculator and photographs, of course) but also as a web browser and, as you might expect, an iPod. This is Apple’s big venture into the cell ‘phone market, which dwarfs the MP3 player market that Apple already dominate.
It features something called Visual Voicemail, which is purportedly an industry first. The basic idea is, you have all the voicemail messages in front of you on a touch screen, and you simply select the one you want to listen to, without having to listen to any of the others.
I can tell I’m not going to get along with the iPhone though, since it features both an automatic spell-checker and predictive text. I mean, I know what I’m trying to type, OK? I don’t need some smug little device to try and tell me that the word I’m looking for is in fact “book” (even when it isn’t). Sheesh.
