Hey, that's my idea!

Imagine this, you are worth billions of dollars just by being geek. You have millions of online friends. And basically, you just created one of the most influential websites in our generation. Unfortunately, you realise that this is just an illusion and that you are actually not that lucky guy.

To make things worse, you could have been that guy, but this precious opportunity slipped from your hands. poof

The Social Network (2010) movie poster via www.impawards.com

I guess, this is one thing that film The Social Network (2010) is all about. I'm expecting that everyone knows about it by now. It's scandalous. It's hip. It's about Facebook. But there are more to it than the story of Facebook's creators, there are a lot more stories going around the Internet about the other social networking sites that were created same time as the infamous Facebook was brought to life. There is this news about the Columbia University's own Facebook version, CU Community, which was founded by Adam Goldberg. To sum it up, Harvard's Facebook was on a tight race for online popularity with Columbia's CU Community. Goldberg had a chance to join in the Facebook bandwagon but he refused. Now, I guess, it's one of those things you would wish you could turn back the time.

Here is a link to the full article about Goldberg and his social networking site, The Other Social Network on Slate.

My thoughts? Well, I guess, almost everything that was ever invented has an intriguing story behind it. From the invention of the telephone to the latest gadgets, people are always beating each other up to get the all the glory. Truth is (or not) it's a dog eat dog world. As Herbert Spencer once said, 'Survival of the fittest'.

And to those of you who have been under the rocks lately, here is The Social Network trailer.

Are you going to watch it in the cinema?

Why not go straight to the source?

Almost all of us have experienced some sort of computer virus related incident, be it unwanted popups, twitter scams or the more recent Trademe malware virus. When I think of hackers I think of people like 'The Warlock' from Die Hard 4.0, living in their mothers basement surrounded by Star Wars collectibles.

Maybe the challenge isn't to cause damage, but just to prove it can be done?

This is the only reason I can think of that these people don't just go straight to the source. If someone really wanted to cause damage to 'the system' they apparently need only head to the right beach with a sturdy hand saw. It seems ironic that we try so hard to protect our customs borders but do so little to protect the two little old under sea pipes that carry all our internet traffic.

Seems like a wee bit of a lapse in security there, guys.

It's all fun and games using hacker skills to take down twitter, or plant viruses on trademe but totally crippling the internet access of an entire country is a pretty extreme action. Apparently easy to do, but definitely a big step towards testing out the new terrorism laws.

The morale of the story? It's cool to be a hacker but take a saw to an under sea internet cable and you'll be one dead Vietnamese fisherman.

The digital divide

The 'Digital Divide' is the term given to the gap that forms between countries, or societies due to their access to technologies - like the internet. The digital divide can be seen in our culture where access to fast broadband is evident in urban areas but is unavailable in some rural zones. However, the digital divide is more obvious when looking globally. This divide is prominent between First World countries and Third World countries. It is easy for us to take for granted the technology we have. We have enough technology in our Westernised culture to even have an entire course available to study New Media. It is hard to imagine a society where Internet or mobile phones sound simply a myth and a luxury never to be had.

This weeks tutorial reading by Brian Winston discusses the project 'One Laptop per Child'. The project originated from a man called Nicholas Negroponte and his focus was to bring affordable laptops to Third World countries to aid in their education. He wished to address this digital divide and to lessen the gap. Though naturally the arguement arises whether the focus should rather be on the more immediate and essential problems of living before mini laptops are considered for the childrens learning advantage.

Many may think the access to information via the internet is increasingly being seen as a basic human right. In many ways it is becoming a more needful source. Those who don't have it are disadvantaged. But i believe Third World countries could benefit much more greatly if this amount of money were put toward more dire problems such as food, water, shelter and clean toilet facilities. 'One Laptop per Child' seems to be much less urgent in comparison to these pressing issues that are in need of more vital help. Poverty can surely not be helped by laptops, yet.

Ah, the days of Bebo...

The Week 4 lecture on identity made me think back to the days of Bebo (a social networking site for those who don’t know). Yes! I had a Bebo page once. In fact, i believe it’s still there *quickly checks* sure enough it is. It made me think about why i liked that social networking site (SNS) so much and i realised ...i liked it because i could be anyone or anything i liked. I could create a fluid identity and play around with it as i pleased. I found myself constantly communicating with people of different races, personalities and beliefs ...and in every instance i became different too, a chameleon if you like, who would take on the very same personality and beliefs (temporal convergence). And that made me or atleast my online identity, more acceptable (prestige). I found that some of the personalities and beliefs that i liked so much became a part of me permanently (saturated self), as if i was some kind of jig-saw puzzle of different beings (weird). Trust me; if you met me before i ever heard of an SNS then you would think I’d been living in a cave or something. I was so bland, like a blank piece of paper. And then all of a sudden people started writing, imprinting themselves on me and making me who i am today. This is why i believe SNS are so popular these days. You can communicate without having to be yourself. You can be all that you can be. And now that we have FaceBook ...well, just look me up and you’ll see what i mean. My online name? Superman =)

Rally to Restore Sanity

On the 30th of October 2010, a rally will be held on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, The ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’ held by The Daily Show’s John Stewart.

Stewart was inspired to create this rally due to his concern after the recent winnings by the American political party the Tea Party in the mid term elections and the Rally held by extreme right wing TV personality Glen Beck. Called Restoring Honor Rally it was held on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I have a Dream’ speech and held in the same place. An estimated 87,000 to 500,000 people attended this Rally.

It is described on the official website as a rally for “the people who've been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs)”
“Think of our event as Woodstock, but with the nudity and drugs replaced by respectful disagreement; the Million Man March, only a lot smaller, and a bit less of a sausage fest; or the Gathering of the Juggalos, but instead of throwing our feces at Tila Tequila, we'll be actively *not* throwing our feces at Tila Tequila”

Not to be out done, Stewart’s ex-workmate and current face of ‘The Colbert Report” Steven Colbert has created his own rally, to be held after Stewart’s ‘March to Keep Fear Alive’. Colbert’s march, as it seems, is just to get back at Stewart for out doing him with an announcement on his show (The Daily Show and The Colbert Report play back to back). It also looks as though Colbert will use his extreme right wing satirical style of comedy and use it on the issues raised in Stewart’s rally, if there are any

Currently on Facebook, The Rally to Keep Fear alive has 79697 attendees whilst Rally to Restore Sanity has 184771 and has even been tweeted about by Oprah

Something fun to read before Exams (part 1)

Hi, there.

One of my habit, and as I believe that many may do this, randomly tapping interesting words in Google and then enjoin the fun of the contexts. The thing I want to talk about today apparently is not about what I tap in; it is something even better.

Most my friends play video games. Boys like high combative violent games, and girls like online games, such like World of Warcraft, just like what the lecture and reading say. Anyway, let’s get back to the topic. The context inside the link is called “counting down of tragedies in the history of offline games”. It only comes with short explanation and limited pictures, so I have to do some research to fully support its opinion myself, that all these games are piece shits, or may be these games are insulting the good name of “shit”. Unfortunately, I played all most every single of them.

Here and now, Let us start the counting down!

No.9 DukeNukem Forever

In DukeNukem’s defense, this game really can’t be called a terrible tragic, well, in every possible way. I was born in 1984. If anyone who is old enough to play this game, just like me, then you should know exactly what I am talking about. The picture, the visual effects, the sound effect, the killing and the handling, with perfect combination of all these facts, if this is not an epic of its time, then what is. So surely it is not the quality of game makes itself a tragic.

In January 1996, there was the great born of DukeNukem 3D, and the followed by a even greater official announcement, “the next DukeNukem game, the DukeNukem Forever will be published in April 1997.” Today is 2nd Oct 2010; 14 years after that announcement, I have to ask, where the hell is the game? What the hell was happened? You know, or you may not know, but during its legendary delay, or “bouncing”, following things happened.

During its delay, across all platforms, the Final Fantasy has 96 games, four films, three cartoons; GTA (Grand Theft Auto) has 14 games; Zelda has 16 games; and the Sims has 17 games.

During its delay, there were 75 Mega-man games; 50 Star-war games; and 56 Mario games.

During its delay, Black Isle Studio was established, grown, refulgent and then broken down.

During its delay, even Blizzard Entertainment, an super delay lover, made Starcraft series, Diablo series, Warcraft series and World of Warcraft series.

During its delay, there were in total of 15 game consoles invented. They were PS, DC, NGC, Xbox, PS2, Xbox360, Wii, Ps3, GBC, GBA, GBASP, NDS, PSP, GBM, and NDSL.

During its delay, 350 million game consoles and computer (for the purpose of playing games mainly) were sold.

During its delay, the speed of internet increased 300 times faster.

During its delay, the speed of CPU increased 32 times.

During its delay, Microsoft published six operating systems.

During its delay, Google, eBay, Facebook, Youtube. Etc got bigger and bigger.

During its delay, the US government has sent 30 space craft air.

During its delay, four countries have owned nukes, five wars finished, and then 19 new battles began.

During its delay, there were half billion dead, and then 660 million people were born.

I even found a joke about the game DukeNukem Forever;

One day, a Chinese meet the God.
God: With many years of serving me, I offer you one wish?
Chinese: Can you please sink Japan?
God: Sorry, it is quite impossible, do you have another one?
Chinese: I want play NukeDukem Forever.
(With a moment of silence)
God: Here is the map, show me where Japan is.


No. 8 Dreamkiller

Dreamkiller is game, made by Mindware Stodios. Me, myself found it very interesting, and yet very creative. It is a first person shooting game combines the facts of speed, furious and blood shard. The narrative is about a psychologist, Alice Drake, who enters her patients’ mind, and fights all the darkness and evilness inside. At the last, she finally realizes that, the origin of sickness is not something horrible, but the basic needs of every human-being. The game has 12 levels of single play game mode; for every level, there are huge amount of enemies, and by the way, every single of them represents one kind of fear. And the game also provides multi-play game mode, enormous amount of weapons and super-nature magic.

However, once you play the game, you will found that, it is very easy to drive yourself crazy. Really, I mean it. After one night of playing, I start having these weird dreams. The only fun in the game is to shoot monsters with strange guns, but with unacceptable rusty controlling, the only thing you may want to do, is to kill yourself at any point of the game. It is a long game; you may spend hours of hours on it, albeit the repeating of similar setting will make your playing experience equally boring.

The protagonist is called Alice, but please don’t confuse it with the film, Alice in Wonder Land, because it more likes Alice in Nightmare Land. Am I playing the game, or the game is playing me? Hard to say! The graphics is not bad, worth playing.

Games Spot Score is 5.0 out of 10. Under the personal commons of Mike TheMic, he points “Boring first person shooter, nothing special at all.”

No. 7 Deadly Premonition

Once there was a game called “Rainy Woods”, now it called Deadly Premonition. Before I do my own review of this tragedy, I would like to bring some words form others, in order to provide a better description of how horrible this game can be.

IGN gives this game a historical overall score, 2.0 out of 10. It was not the lowest score in the history of video games, but definitely in the history of Xbox 360 games. Deadly Premonition earns a 6.0 for its presentation, “A surreal plotline what might be almost interesting enough to make suffering through the rest of Deadly Premonition palatable.” Author comments the following on the graphics, “as bad as it has ever been on Xbox360”. Score? 1.0, I think this is the lowest mark that a game can ever get. 2 for the sound; “The most mind-bending part of Deadly Premonition is the small set of tunes that loop over every conversation. They will drive you insane.” 3.0 for its Gameplay; “Atrocious mechanics. The only difficulty in the game comes from the clunky controls and camera”. It gets another 3.0 for its Lasting Appeal; “You’re looking at over 20hours to solve this mystery, but only because it moves so slowly”.

I am sure if how many people have played the game Shenmue. It was a game on DC console, made in 1999, magnificent graphics and controlling, and with a much better narrative. If you have no idea about what I am talking about, just think it is a Japanese version of GTA. Anyway, if the game was produced 8 years ago, then maybe we could say that, Deadly Premonition is a termination of Shenmue, and within the paradise, you can explore every corner of the world; you can have tones of sub-missions; and at last but not least, every little detail supports its unique scariness, albeit now, we can only use these words to self-hypnotised, not because of the game has a shitty graphics, it is because the whole game is a piece of shit.

After play it for a little while, you can immediately discover that, Deadly Premonition is combination of two games, resident evil 4 and GTA. When anybody heard it, it surely will turn them on. But this good intention, soon becomes a nightmare for the producer, is way out of their league, out of their production ability. The producer of this mess is a Japanese company, Access. For most of people never heard of it, Access’s business is mostly on cell-phone games.

Oh, dear god, do we have anything else to play? Anything will do!

(Later I will post the rest of the counting down, all the way up to the shittiest No, 1)

Influencing on the Web

We spend considerable amounts of time online, but what makes us visit some sites more than others? With more and more of our time being spent online it only makes sense to try and understand the ways in which we are being influenced online and how we can influence others.

Firstly, to influence someone you need to understand the way they think. By looking at simple psychology and patterns in the way people think, we are able to understand how the human mind works in order to influence and manipulate their thinking, and understand the ways we are being impacted by this.



1.Ratings and reviews completed by users

Showing ratings of the website or reviews completed by users encourages the viewer that the site they are viewing is trustworthy. These sites tend to appear more credible than advertisements on billboards and newspaper because we can read about what other people like us think about the product or service. This works even if it isn’t a tangible item being sold through the website. For example, if you want people to follow your blog, YouTube or twitter simply showing large amounts of followers will get more people to follow you or subscribe.

It works because of social validation. People like to know that what they are doing is accepted by their peers. And when it comes down to it, we more often rely on what other people are doing when we are confused about what we should be doing. We are more likely to do something if someone else has already done so. For this reason many top bloggers and YouTubers remain in their high rank.

2. Give something for free or discount something

Giving out something for free or discounting something makes the viewer feel that you have gone out of your way to do them a favour. As such, this person will feel like they owe something back to you, therefore are more likely to do something for you i.e.: purchase something of yours, or follow/subscribe to your account. This is the act of reciprocity and is often used in the sales approach of marketing i.e.: foot-in-the-door technique. It can be done by offering free shipping for the sale of items or allowing a free download of music or a book.

3. Express limitedness or scarcity

We all want things we can’t have. If there are a limited number of things, the item seems unique and its value increases in the minds of people. This makes people want to have that item to be unique and special. This also works when a limited time frame is put in place. This encourages people to think that they are getting a great bargain and therefore act erratically to get it. Think about www.1-day.co.nz and how they get people purchasing their items.

Many people are looking to understand how our minds work when we are online so as to get us to buy more and use more online. These are still powerful ways to influence people that you may now notice or maybe even use to your benefit.