Friday, October 26, 2007
Com125 Assignment9: Jame Oddo, a YouTube politican star
Personally, until couple of years ago, subjects about politics are not one which I am interested in as well as articles about politicians. Unless a political article published on the first page of the newspaper, I would not bothered to know about politics. However, now the articles, stories and even gossips about politicians are available not only on newspapers, but online web blogs. As I surf the web, I read an article about politics and get to know more about it. The sphere of politics is not an enervated and boring story anymore, is an easily accessible and interesting topic on the net to people.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Com125 Assignment8: 'MSN web messenger' review application
The site: MSN Messenger
URL: http://webmessenger.msn.com
Functionality
MSN Messenger is a freeware instant messaging client that was developed and distributed by Microsoft in 1999 to 2005 and in 2007 for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system (except Windows Vista), and aimed towards home users. It was renamed Windows Live Messenger in February 2006 as part of Microsoft's Windows Live series of online services and software. MSN Messenger is often used to refer to the .NET Messenger Service (the protocols and server that allow the system to operate) rather than any particular client (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Msn_messenger).
A discussion of the site’s design
Unlike other websites, MSN messenger provides a small screen sized a quarter of normal websites which makes convenient to open up the web browser while working on other websites. While you talk to others, you can customize the chat screen to whatever you want to make and send it to web-chat partners. Also, there is a number of emoticons available using IM such as smiley faces, winks and nudges which you can use on web chats by a click. On MSN messenger, you can see a lot of links which connect to the websites, so that you can check emails while on MSN messenger, easily link to the internet shopping website, or a game website. This is how it is designed for MSN Microsoft to advertise their products.
Social aspects
As soon as I get home, the first thing I do is turning on my laptop. While doing it, I am logging onto MSN messenger automatically. Also, after meeting a friend from a class or anywhere, one thing that I ask before I go home is, “Do you have a MSN ID?” Since the internet have provided a place to interact with people online, MSN messenger became so popular among friends and colleagues. We can talk online after classes and works. It gives us a different pleasure to communicate online with people compared to offline interactions. In that sense, MSN messenger keeps going our social ties and relationships interactive.
Not only keeping interactions with people, but MSN messenger is productive. While you log onto it, you can share mutimedia files between friends. Also, as soon as logging onto MSN web messenger, a little screen pops up and show news headlines of current hot issues. Thus, everyday MSN messenger provides somethings productive for me.
Beneficial aspects of MSN messenger
One of the great benefits of MSN messenger is a fast and convenient communication with others online. Even more, the conversations between me and others can be saved in computer hardware as well as all instant messages. Even if the message receivers are not online, you can still send instant messages, and they will be stored until the friend logs on and checks them out. At once, people can have multiple conversations with many friends. I have friends who I do not meet often physically, but I can still keep in touch with them for years through MSN messenger. MSN messenger is not only an online software which keeps people interactive, but it is where people share files and interests in the global wide.
URL: http://webmessenger.msn.com
Functionality
MSN Messenger is a freeware instant messaging client that was developed and distributed by Microsoft in 1999 to 2005 and in 2007 for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system (except Windows Vista), and aimed towards home users. It was renamed Windows Live Messenger in February 2006 as part of Microsoft's Windows Live series of online services and software. MSN Messenger is often used to refer to the .NET Messenger Service (the protocols and server that allow the system to operate) rather than any particular client (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Msn_messenger).
A discussion of the site’s design
Unlike other websites, MSN messenger provides a small screen sized a quarter of normal websites which makes convenient to open up the web browser while working on other websites. While you talk to others, you can customize the chat screen to whatever you want to make and send it to web-chat partners. Also, there is a number of emoticons available using IM such as smiley faces, winks and nudges which you can use on web chats by a click. On MSN messenger, you can see a lot of links which connect to the websites, so that you can check emails while on MSN messenger, easily link to the internet shopping website, or a game website. This is how it is designed for MSN Microsoft to advertise their products.
Social aspects
As soon as I get home, the first thing I do is turning on my laptop. While doing it, I am logging onto MSN messenger automatically. Also, after meeting a friend from a class or anywhere, one thing that I ask before I go home is, “Do you have a MSN ID?” Since the internet have provided a place to interact with people online, MSN messenger became so popular among friends and colleagues. We can talk online after classes and works. It gives us a different pleasure to communicate online with people compared to offline interactions. In that sense, MSN messenger keeps going our social ties and relationships interactive.
Not only keeping interactions with people, but MSN messenger is productive. While you log onto it, you can share mutimedia files between friends. Also, as soon as logging onto MSN web messenger, a little screen pops up and show news headlines of current hot issues. Thus, everyday MSN messenger provides somethings productive for me.
Beneficial aspects of MSN messenger
One of the great benefits of MSN messenger is a fast and convenient communication with others online. Even more, the conversations between me and others can be saved in computer hardware as well as all instant messages. Even if the message receivers are not online, you can still send instant messages, and they will be stored until the friend logs on and checks them out. At once, people can have multiple conversations with many friends. I have friends who I do not meet often physically, but I can still keep in touch with them for years through MSN messenger. MSN messenger is not only an online software which keeps people interactive, but it is where people share files and interests in the global wide.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Com125 Assignment7: Online community: where people build their relationships
The meaning of friendship
How can we define the term, friends? As we live in the society where people are able to connect to each other online, the meaning of friendship is getting blurry. In the past, about 10 years ago, friends mean a lot to each individuals, which indicates friends are people forming relationships with us doing physical activities. However, now in 2007, we can easily form a relationship based on the online network though a number of online blogs and an internet access across the world.
“When I see somebody with a large number of supposed friends, I suspect that they’re using the term ‘friend’ to mean ‘acquaintance,’ or that their motives in getting Friendster-recorded friends are not really about the relationships for the their own sake.” — Bob (danah boyd 2006: Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites)
When we go on our friends' web blogs, we see lists of friends, or celebrities who are linked to people's web blogs. We think that they are cool with bunch of friends' list. As an exmaple of Facebook, we can go on others' blogs and find out who they are, what univeristy they go to, and who they hang out with mostly and so forth. From what is represented on blogs, we think that we know a lot about someone and become a 'friend'. Through my friend's friend, and their friends' friends, we keep expanding our social relationships online for the sake of popularity. Are they really 'friends' or just 'colletors of acquaintances'?
Online Community: A place to maintain social relationships
A virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media rather than face to face (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community). The fact that people can interact with others and moreover, form social ties without face to face relationships, attracts online users to join the online communities. Because it is online community which is linked through Web browswer, it can be spread out so quickly. This is one of the attactions why online communities are becoming more popular. You can just go online and type friend's ID to add him/her as my 'friend'. Compared to offline community, online community is a lot simpler to contact to each other between friends. If someone leaves a message on my Facebook blog, I can simply reply to the message. Whereas, to communicate in offline communities, people should make a time and get together which involves time consuming.
Online communities offer more chances to get involved in relationship with friends than offline communities. Though I've been travelling and studying abroad for years, I could still keep in touch with friends from my old schools. A website called, 'www.iloveschool.co.kr' provides a place for people look for their friends and teachers from their elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. Once I join the website and add my schools and the completed year of the study, I can see friends/teachers who joined the website and message them. Sometimes, I can even talk to them online on webchats. So far, I've found a lot of friends and teachers from my high school through the website. Not only looking for friends online, but online communities keeps maintaining relationships with people by emailing and messaging to eachother no matter where they live. Therefore, online communites are now located in us playing as a webmessenger role for our social ties and relationships.
Reference:
danah boyd 2006: Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community
How can we define the term, friends? As we live in the society where people are able to connect to each other online, the meaning of friendship is getting blurry. In the past, about 10 years ago, friends mean a lot to each individuals, which indicates friends are people forming relationships with us doing physical activities. However, now in 2007, we can easily form a relationship based on the online network though a number of online blogs and an internet access across the world.
“When I see somebody with a large number of supposed friends, I suspect that they’re using the term ‘friend’ to mean ‘acquaintance,’ or that their motives in getting Friendster-recorded friends are not really about the relationships for the their own sake.” — Bob (danah boyd 2006: Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites)
When we go on our friends' web blogs, we see lists of friends, or celebrities who are linked to people's web blogs. We think that they are cool with bunch of friends' list. As an exmaple of Facebook, we can go on others' blogs and find out who they are, what univeristy they go to, and who they hang out with mostly and so forth. From what is represented on blogs, we think that we know a lot about someone and become a 'friend'. Through my friend's friend, and their friends' friends, we keep expanding our social relationships online for the sake of popularity. Are they really 'friends' or just 'colletors of acquaintances'?
Online Community: A place to maintain social relationships
A virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media rather than face to face (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community). The fact that people can interact with others and moreover, form social ties without face to face relationships, attracts online users to join the online communities. Because it is online community which is linked through Web browswer, it can be spread out so quickly. This is one of the attactions why online communities are becoming more popular. You can just go online and type friend's ID to add him/her as my 'friend'. Compared to offline community, online community is a lot simpler to contact to each other between friends. If someone leaves a message on my Facebook blog, I can simply reply to the message. Whereas, to communicate in offline communities, people should make a time and get together which involves time consuming.
Online communities offer more chances to get involved in relationship with friends than offline communities. Though I've been travelling and studying abroad for years, I could still keep in touch with friends from my old schools. A website called, 'www.iloveschool.co.kr' provides a place for people look for their friends and teachers from their elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. Once I join the website and add my schools and the completed year of the study, I can see friends/teachers who joined the website and message them. Sometimes, I can even talk to them online on webchats. So far, I've found a lot of friends and teachers from my high school through the website. Not only looking for friends online, but online communities keeps maintaining relationships with people by emailing and messaging to eachother no matter where they live. Therefore, online communites are now located in us playing as a webmessenger role for our social ties and relationships.
Reference:
danah boyd 2006: Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community
Friday, October 5, 2007
Com125 Assignment 6: ‘Second Life; Self and Online Identity’
What is online identity?
Wikipedia clarifies an online identity as a social identity that network users establish in online communities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_identity). Donath mentions that a single person can create multiple electronic identities that are linked only by their common progenitor, that link, though invisible in the virtual world, is of great significance (Donath, 1996). In the reading, Donath also tries to find out the relationship among multiple personas sharing a single progenitor. Considering the fact that we are living in the information age, a lot of people start their daily routine start with checking the emails, and webpages and finish their days with checking the emails and the web pages’ posts. By experiencing the online life as a big part of their lives, people can find their new identities in a new space called cyberworld, and moreover, they try to generate multiple identities and keep developing them as parts of themselves. This phenomenon can be looked at as a challenge of their stable identities in a real life. Therefore, we all can have new ‘me’ in online community using avatar though it is a completely different self as compared to who I am in a real life. Avatar, which is a graphic icon presenting myself online for web chats, 2D or 3D online games and even more for cyber-shopping and cyber-education. The use of avatar becomes broad and various on the cyber world. In the past, people were attracted only for anonymity, but in modern days, they feel like expressing themselves more in the cyber world through the avatar. Thus, this popular graphic technology called avatar was only available as Ready-made characters which we could only combine with few online items, but now more various types of avatars are available, thus users can make their unique avatar in virtual communities.
Trans-gendered Avatar
By using the avatar, people can show themselves as a completely different self as their real lives. Interestingly, many of online users even present themselves as a different gendered avatar. A male web user make up a female avatar online and interact with other web users online. He tries to talk like a female online and express the avatar with pretty and girly accessories. The problem which could be occurred here is the confusion between his real identity and virtual identity. As much time he spends online as a girl, his real-world identity can get influenced by the virtual identity. One of my gay friends, he actually does this gender swapping a lot in cyber world. In the real world, he does not look like a gay at all, but on the web, he totally turns himself as a girl. I do not think that gender swapping means bad at all, but this certainly is a shocking thing for me. When I first met him at my previous work, I did not know that he was a gay, but after I looked at his online webpages like Myspace, Facebook and Friendster, I found that he was a gay or a person who has a little mental problem. I see this phenomenon with a pretty positive view. Everyone has different personalities and perspectives. Genuinely, they are sensitive and introversive, they can be extroversive and outgoing online if that is what they want to be presented at least in cyber world. Therefore, cyber world can be seen as a new second life for us, and this fact can show our society as a new open world which offers various types of opportunities.
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