Google TV

In autumn 2010, Sony plans to begin selling TVs, and Blu-ray player based, under the name brand name Sony Internet TV. At the same time, Logitech will start selling its own
set-top box which will be connected to an existing television. Mouse producer is also planning a special range of tools for Google Tv, such as remote control, keybord, Bluetooth interface.
Unfortunately, the TV offer is only limited to U.S., however the website content will available everywhere.

Pakistan blocks the access to Youtube and Facebook

Access to the most popular video sharing website, Youtube, and most commonly known and used social networking site, Facebook, was blocked in Pakistan, because there is un-Islamic, or Islamic-offensive content.
As for Facebook it started with the activity encouraging drawing images of prophet Muhammad, which strictly forbidden in Islamic countries.
Besides, there are also other pages blocked, like part of Wikipedia and some link to BBC news page, especially the section dedicated to South-East Asia.
One of the links blocked is to a BBC News website article about Pakistani soldiers apparently beating Taliban suspects in a video posted on Facebook- as it was written in one of the BBC articles.
First, they started to block only links, however the offensive content continue appearing. It is very offensive for many people in Pakistan and many of the are ready to delete their profile accounts or have already done it.
The conflict has risen, cause Facebook and YouTube are platforms by means of which free expression of opinions and ideas is possible.

"Such malicious and insulting attacks hurt the sentiments of Muslims around the world and cannot be accepted under the garb of freedom of expression".
Undoubtedly, this a thorny issue. Is a website administrator, who is guilty here,the users or a Muslim people who don't have the distant to themselves?

I would like to attach a coment of one Pakistani girl, which may give us some perspective on this problem:

I find these to be ill-advised measures. Blocking websites in countries does not prevent the content from existing in the first place. I think the Pakistani government should move to ban pornography (which is still easily available) before they ban Facebook and YouTube which are obviously on the better side of human development.

Is it the end of facebook?

Recently, a company named Sophos conducted a survey and asked about 1600 users of Facebook about privacy concerns. It came out that a significant amount of users of this social networking site, feels concerned about privacy settings. Two thirds, so almost 60% users of Facebook is considering leaving the portal, 16% claims that they stopped using Facebook because of inappropriate control and care about their personal data. Facebook has been criticised as a consequence of the recent changes introduced, namely the way of accessing the users' data inside and outside this social networking site.
The concerns are mainly focused on this "opt-out" attitude which gives the access to facebook user's personal data from other websites.
The media suggest that Facebook is to announce further changes concerning privacy in a few days, however there is no quarantee that it will calm the users down.
Despite that critical dispute, it is rather slightly probable that the users will start huge exodus from Facebook. Nevertheless, FB will have to consider introducing some easier ways of setting privacy and change the policy of privacy, cause people really dont want to display their private data like telephone numbers, or pictures with family to the whole Internet.

Spotify and Facebook

Social networking sites go beyond sharing basic information, photos, thoughts with your friends. Music, which creates so called social captial, is also present in SNSs and in some cases it is a base for them. For example, Last.Fm, which enables not only "trying" some bits of music, but give the users the possibility to share their musical tastes with their friends.
What I have encountered recently is another social networking site concerning music, which is called Spotify. What is interesting about it, is the fact that it has been recently revamped and has started a cooperation with both Facebook and iTunes.



The mission statement, which I found on the Spotify's website, present this venture as follows:
Spotify is a new way to listen to music.Any track you like, any time you like. Just search for it in Spotify, then play it. Any artist, any album, any genre - all available instantly. With Spotify, there are no limits to the amount of music you could listen to. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it.

This the way it works with Facebook:


According to Daniel Ek, CEO and founder of Newsbeat, the idea of Spotify goes beyond listening friends music collection:
"I think this is a massive step towards the next generation music industry where it's about access to music and not about ownership any more."
Free streaming, listening music for free...what does it mean for music industry? and artists themselves? Does it mean that we will stop buying CDs? This I leave as an open question...

Inspired by:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/technology/newsid_10080000/newsid_10087400/10087477.stm

Social Media at Work

Social networking on the Web is almost exclusively an interest of young people.
However, with the growth of popularity, such social networking sites as Facebook
are more and more often of interest of adults to such extend that they are present
in working environment.
Since the main purpose of social networking sites is to socialize, many people
spend significant amount of their working hours on talking with facebook friends and
at the same time they deteriorate their productivity.
However, there are some other concerns regarding social networking sites, which were
mentioned by Anthony Balderrama, and they are as follows:

• 17 percent of companies report that they have investigated the posting of confidential, sensitive or private information to a social network, such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
• 10 percent have taken disciplinary actions against an employee who violated social networking policies in the past 12 months.
• 8 percent terminated an employee for violating a social networking policy.
• 45 percent are highly concerned about unauthorized information being posted on social networks.

It is not only that the employees waste their time, for which they are paid, but also
they may cause a potential danger to a company.

So, if we do not want to make our employers angry, we should limit our usage of Facebook...otherwise, they are gonna put a ban on this website, and for sure, we dont want it ;)

Google Wave

One of the purposes of writing this blog was to reflect on different new media tools. The new tool, I have been using recently is Google Wave.I started to use it as a means of communication for the collaborative research project for New Media and Society. Honestly, I got used to different communication tools like skype, facebook chat, gmail chat, or gadu-gadu (polish communicator). However, since I am almost always satisfied with google tools (I adore gmail, google chrome, and google maps), I decided to give a chance to this one.I have attached this movie to shortly explain you what google wave is about:


Few words about my experience with google wave.
First of all, and it is always important for me, is the design. For me-perfect. Just take a look :)
Secondly, this tool is based on so called "waves". These are the topics u establish and invite people to discuss them. What is more, on these waves u may upload some files. However, you have to know exactly during which moment of conversation the file was uploaded. There is no place, no folder for uploaded files.What I did not like about google. wave was the fact that the information about new wave was sent with delay to my gmail. It works really slow- even writing waves.Unfortunately, this google tool is not so popular among my friends- I used it only for academic purposes and it was rather another nicely organized ibox for me. However, there are many extenstions to google wave, which I have not had a chance to use yet, like for example pollo gadget for conducting surveys. I hope to have more chances to try some of them.

Twitter and Collective Memory

This semester I attended the course of Media and Collective Memory. We approached the topics concerning history and the way media reports on it. Basically, the role of the television, radio, press and the Internet was emphasized. Unfortunately, the issue of social networking sites was not discussed despite its importance.
However, I found an elaboration on it in the article written by Maggie Shiels entitled Congress to archive every tweet ever posted publicly
Generally, the Library of Congress is to archive every single public tweet ever made. The digital archive will include tweets from President Barack Obama on the day he was elected as well as the first tweet from co-founder Jack Dorsey. Google plan to finish all of the archive by the end of the summer (from March 2006).

Twitter is claimed to be a valuable source of historical record; it is a source of collective memory. In the era of witnessing, we use social networking sites to comment on the events important for us. For instance, people reacted on twitter in the case of the Iranian election last year, the Mumbai bombing, the Haiti earthquake,
and the downing of the passengers in the Hudson river.

"As a historian you will be able to look back at that and understand what people felt. The same with the healthcare legislation that recently passed. You can look back and say what where people talking about and have those views changed over time? We think that will be really useful."

In my opinion, also facebook plays an important role in the process of presenting collective memory. Last week we could observe post made by Polish people about the plane crash and the death of the President, Lech Kaczyński. There are also facebook groups formed, commemorating events established concerning this tragic event.

Using the internet to win votes

Just as radio and television revolutionized the presidential election process in earlier decades, today the “new media” are making a significant imprint on how campaigns are conducted by candidates, covered journalists,and evaluated by the voters. While the same basic goals for campaigns apply, the tools to accomplish these goals have expanded.

Since I have been recently working on the topic of new media incorporated in politics, concerning mainly election campaigns, issue awareness and citizens mobilization during Barack Obama campaign, I also wanted to approach different example- winning voice using the internet in the face of forthcoming elections in UK.
Firstly, I visited the most common UK website, which is of course, BBC news. They created a special section about the election, where people can read breaking news and where they can also vote.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8608320.stm
When you follow the link above, you can find some interesting information about incorporating new media UK campaign. They number most common of them:
-youtube
-social networking sites (twitter, facebook).
Now, the politicians are trying to use all of these tools to connect with the voters in different ways. However, the key weapon here is google- the parties are competing to buy up search terms next to which they can place ads. " If somebody clicks on ur ad, it is clearly something of relevance".

Facebook is also big player in the election.

It all started with the presidential election 2008 in US and as Obama's example shows, it was effective. Undoubtedly, new media is a way of engaging the youth in politcs, cause new media is the area which in majority belongs to them. However, in my opinion, the politicians should remember not to overestimate the value of new media, and still use the traditional methods.

Technology addicts offered treatment

Visiting social networking sites, online gaming, online shopping- seem to be usual activities which are somehow enrolled in our everyday lives. Nowadays, we cannot imagine a day without a computer and our favorite websites. However, isn't it going too far sometimes? I'm sure all of us can find at least one example of a person whose life is dominate by new media or to some extend distorted: some of these people cannot go out witout the mobile; some do not go out at all cause their social life takes place in the SNSs(social networking sites) and some of them prefer meeting creatures from their favourite game.

The post was inspired by the recent event which concerns the case of a couple from South Korea who let their baby starve to death when they were busy playing online game Prius for 12 hours [sic]. It was not the first case in which technology caused problems in everyday life. That is why in South East Asia spreaded online gambiling clinics. As Zoe Kleinman BBC news technology reporter says a treatment in London is also available:

The programme is designed for young people who spend large amounts of time each day playing computer games or using social network websites.
When deprived they become "chronically agitated and irritable" said the treatment's founder Dr Richard Graham.
Dr Graham's treatment programme lasts 28 days if done intensely.
However it is not designed to wean people entirely off using technology, he told BBC News.
"It's not realistic to have an abstinence programme," he said.

"Most addictive behaviours peak in youth and you're more likely to be male - but the internet is gender neutral.
"The preoccupation with accessing sites and responding to messages is so compelling that it gets prioritised... it can impact on other areas of life and skew young people's ability to engage in other activities."

Well...the majority of us probably do not want to admit that this problem concerns also us.
Thinking about myself, I do not really want to know how many times I visited my facebook profile or my gmail today (even while writing this post).
As it was said by Graham "You can't avoid the internet, you can't avoid technology" but I think we should be alert and observe if our behavior is not getting out of control.

To sum up, I have attached one movie which is a record of a behavior of a boy whose mother deleted his warcraft account. For me it is scary:/

Video conferencing and Elluminate

I have to admit that this is the first video conference class I have ever attended.
At the very beginning I was a little bit sceptical about this way of conducting lectures, however later I was impressed.
Since I could not attend the course from the first classes I had to start everything by myself (even though I was recommended to meet the assisstant, my ambition did not let me).
All in all, I did not have any problems while accessing the programme, installing it, and later on, managed it. I really liked the Elluminate's functions like : bravo, disagreement, raise ur hand, etc. They enable one to interact with the lecturer and remain active during the lecture, while still lying on the bed and drinking tea :)btw, it is so great for me that I can be completely relaxed and comfortable in my room and at the same time I am focused on the lecture and hear exactly what the professor is saying cause I have earplugs in.
In my opinion, video conferencing is the future for global education (and education for lazy people too ;)
But...to be honest...there is no room for laziness. U cannot just stay online and go out cause u never know when the question gets u! :)
Even though we r in our home environment, it does not make the classes less serious. And actually I really like it.

Introduction

This blog was created with the aim of reporting on the usage of new media and their influence on society. It is a part of a course of New Media and Society which I am taking during the spring semester 2010 at the Faculty of Social Sciences at University of Ljubljana.

Few words about me...

I am an Erasmus student from Poland where I am doing my MA in the field of Cultural Studies at the Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities.
At the Faculty of Social Sciences at University of Ljubljana I have already been taking the second semester, however approaching New Media from the scholar perspective is something new for me.

Media and its impact on society remain in the field of my interests. I am particularly keen on the mechanisms of promotion via new media, especially by means of social networking websites.

I'm also optimistic about improving my skills in using these new media devices and programmes which were unfamiliar for me before.