Week 2 Social Media

The social media has definitely changed drastically over the years, in terms of its convenience and the number of users. There has been a power shift from the traditional media such as the television, the radio ( which was invented in the 1800s), movies, magazines and newspapers. However the social media is way more popular than the social media in terms of usability, recency, reach and accessibility. Because of its convenience, the use of traditional media has declined.

There are actually tons of different social media platforms which makes it difficult to choose which one to use, however the most common ones are Facebook, Twitter, Youtube which has garnered over millions and millions and users.

I myself started a so called 'social media' game called Neopets, and it is a web version game where you can meet new friends and sell items, or even compete with one another! Gradually my friends were pestering me to use Friendster, they even helped me create an account for me. Well ofcourse I reluctantly used it, mainly just to say hi to friends or upload pictures and find our mutual friends. However what I really disliked about Friendster was that it was a little stalker-ish, because you could actually find out who viewed your profile! Now that I'm using Facebook, it's way of running the website is in fact not too bad, they did lots of changes over the years.

Today in class, (yes i'm blogging almost right away in case I forget..) our instructor showed us a few videos on this social media website, Second Life. It is kind of like a virtual life thing where you could create avatars and be what you can ever imagine! I used to be hooked up on online games (so I could socialize with people whom I never met), but now I've grown out of them. Honestly I probably won't sign up for it unless a whole bulk of people I know joins it first. 

Podcasting!

Podcasting is distributing audio or video content via RSS 2.0, or Atom. Podcast clients such as iTunes, Juice, or CastPodder(linux) allow listeners to subscribe to your RSS/Atom feed and automatically download your content to their portable audio players as it becomes available.

How It Works

1. Create audio or video that you want to share (usually MP3 or MP4)
2. Upload the file to a server
3. Link to the file in a post in your weblog
4. WordPress automatically Includes a link to the file in your RSS/Atom feed
5. Listeners "subscribe" with podcast client application to your RSS/Atom feed and download new files automatically.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Podcasting

RSS:

RSS powers many interesting applications:

• News headlines on large ticker displays.
• Music playlists.
• News readers (like Google Reader).
• Software version notifications.
• Watch for new music or movie releases.
• Receive instant notifications of keywords.

hmm I have not really ventured into these although I know that it has been around for quite some time... haha maybe in future I guess.

Week 1 - Introduction to Internet

It is amazing how far the internet has come today, and what impacts it has made. It has definitely shaped many of people's lives and changed many things. Look at the number of users of the internet that has increased drastically over a short amount of time. Hours and hours are spent on the internet, millions are using it.

What exactly does the word 'Internet' mean? It is a collection of computers connected to form a global networked environment. And we use a medium called the Web. Not spider-WEB but just Web, which is a system of interlinked hypertext documents contained on the Internet. Thru this we can see images, text, videos, GIFs, etc... and we navigate through to the next 'page' via hyperlinks.

Which looks like this:

What I learnt most was the evolution of the web from web 1.0 to web 2.0 and currently web 3.0

Web 1.0
It is the “readable” phrase of the World Wide Web with flat data. In Web 1.0, there is only limited interaction between sites and web users. Web 1.0 is simply an information portal where users passively receive information without being given the opportunity to post reviews, comments, and feedback.

Web 2.0
It is the “writable” phrase of the World Wide Web with interactive data. Unlike Web 1.0, Web 2.0 facilitates interaction between web users and sites, so it allows users to interact more freely with each other. Web 2.0 encourages participation, collaboration, and information sharing. Examples of Web 2.0 applications are Youtube, Wiki, Flickr, Facebook, and so on.

Web 3.0
It is the “executable” phrase of Word Wide Web with dynamic applications, interactive services, and “machine-to-machine” interaction. Web 3.0 is a semantic web which refers to the future. In Web 3.0, computers can interpret information like humans and intelligently generate and distribute useful content tailored to the needs of users. One example of Web 3.0 is Tivo, a digital video recorder. Its recording program can search the web and read what it finds to you based on your preferences.

https://www.google.com.sg/search?q=web+1.0+2.0+3.0&um=1&hl=en&authuser=0&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=XvB3UceOAYTkrAe2joDwBA&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAA&biw=1134&bih=522