Left this post for last because I am a procrastinator wanted to do a decent job on it…and I think I’m pretty satisfied? I spent waaaaay more time on it than I expected to, though. It’s only 48 seconds long, and the results are rather underwhelming, considering the amount of effort and angst put into it.
Initially I used Windows Live Movie Maker because it seemed like the simplest choice, but it turns out that the simplest choice also gives the most problems. All was fine and dandy until I tried playing some of the clips I’d painstakingly trimmed from the original video files – for some reason, they were corrupted. I think it had something to do with codec compatibility issues. Basically: Windows Live Movie Maker can **** my *****.
After some frantic Googling, I downloaded Pinnacle VideoSpin. If you think WMM is user-friendly, wait ’til you see the VideoSpin interface – even a video-editing n00bcake like me found it easy to use. It even detected the separate scenes in the source videos, which negated the need for manual trimming. The only gripe I have about it is that there is no option to remove or even just mute the audio from the source video; I had to remove the audio from the source video using WMM.
Soooooo…yes. The fruit of my intense labour is a fanvid, and definitely my first and LAST time making one because IT’S JUST SO DAMN TEDIOUS! To think I only had to splice and rearrange clips from one video with a few scenes here and there from some TV episodes and set them to a 48 second-long audio track… My respect for fanvidders and their patience and resourcefulness has gone up ∞fold!
I suppose for a first-time fanvidder…it’s satisfactory? I managed to set the clips to the appropriate bits of music (as best as I could), but apparently I got the video resolution wrong or something because there are black bars on the sides. WHATEVER, I’M JUST SUPER GLAD I’M DONE WITH IT. I present to you… POPPY MONTGOMERY: SEXY BITCH (yes okay go on judge me I AM JUST VERY ENAMOURED WITH HER RIGHT NOW OKAY ♥___♥)
Leave a thumbs-up and/or comment on the YouTube page if it didn’t suck? :) ♥
The most pertinent example I can think of to illustrate the lucrativeness of e-commerce is Black Friday. Black Friday, aka the day that leaves most of us in the red.
IBM reported a 24 percent increase in online sales for Black Friday this year. ComScore is announcing even stronger results for e-commerce, with Black Friday seeing $816 million in online sales, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011 and representing a 26 percent increase versus Black Friday 2010 ($648 million spent).
I’m not surprised that Amazon received the most user traffic; they have literally countless deals in all categories to appeal to every consumer need. Need new pyjama pants? Amazon. Lawnmower? Amazon. Toaster? Amazon. DVDs and CDs? Amazon. I almost forget that Amazon started out as an online bookstore… How it has grown. There are deals on 24/7, and when the holiday season rolls around, the deals get SERIOUS.
There is no way consumers can resist the slashed prices on items (Amazon helpfully points out the % in savings) and especially the lightning deals. Lightning deals are special discounts on certain items that expire after a limited time period (e.g. available only from 12.30pm to 4.30pm). As the items have to be checked out within fifteen minutes of adding to cart, this encourages consumers to impulse-buy. Smart.
Now that our credit and debit cards’ worst nightmare has come and gone, how much damage have your bank accounts taken? Allow me to indulge in some post-purchase regret (BUT ONLINE RETAIL THERAPY FEELS SO GOOD)… Presenting my Amazon Black Friday haul:
Community Season 2 DVD – USD13.99
Modern Family Season 2 DVD – USD8.99
Weeds Season 1 DVD – USD7.99
Weeds Season 2 DVD – USD7.99
Weeds Season 3 DVD – USD7.99
Bridesmaids DVD – USD5.99
Despicable Me DVD – USD5.99
GROUPLOVE – Never Trust A Happy Song CD – USD9.99
Junior Boys – It’s All True CD – USD12.58
Junior Boys – So This Is Goodbye CD USD12.99
Mates of State – Mountaintops CD – USD9.99
Portishead – Portishead CD – USD9.99
Basically.
No wonder Amazon always comes out tops in the e-commerce stakes. Please lock me up when the Christmas sales start…
The following text and pictures are taken from A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design by Bret Victor, with additional comments here and there by me. The article is about how everything seems to be moving towards touchscreen interfaces, and how it is an unimaginative future.
The above video is a “vision of the future”, which basically consists of a lot of this sort of thing:
It’s a lot of the same thing, isn’t it? As Victor puts it,
“…this vision, from an interaction perspective, is not visionary. It’s a timid increment from the status quo, and the status quo, from an interaction perspective, is actually rather terrible.
This matters, because visions matter. Visions give people a direction and inspire people to act, and a group of inspired people is the most powerful force in the world. If you’re a young person setting off to realize a vision, or an old person setting off to fund one, I really want it to be something worthwhile. Something that genuinely improves how we interact.”
Victor feels that a future consisting of such homogeneous interaction tools is a bleak one. He offers this definition of a ‘tool’: A tool addresses human needs by amplifying human capabilities.
He brings up human capabilities, aka what people can do. Because if a tool isn’t designed to be used by a person, it can’t be a very good tool, right?
What’s the central component of this “Interactive Future”?
Hands do two things. They are two utterly amazing things, and you rely on them every moment of the day, and most Future Interaction Concepts completely ignore both of them. Hands feel things, and hands manipulate things.
Go ahead and pick up a book. Open it up to some page.
Notice how you know where you are in the book by the distribution of weight in each hand, and the thickness of the page stacks between your fingers. Turn a page, and notice how you would know if you grabbed two pages together, by how they would slip apart when you rub them against each other.
Go ahead and pick up a glass of water. Take a sip.
Notice how you know how much water is left, by how the weight shifts in response to you tipping it.
Almost every object in the world offers this sort of feedback. It’s so taken for granted that we’re usually not even aware of it. Take a moment to pick up the objects around you. Use them as you normally would, and sense their tactile response — their texture, pliability, temperature; their distribution of weight; their edges, curves, and ridges; how they respond in your hand as you use them.
There’s a reason that our fingertips have some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body. This is how we experience the world close-up. This is how our tools talk to us. The sense of touch is essential to everything that humans have called “work” for millions of years.
Now, take out your favorite Magical And Revolutionary Technology Device. Use it for a bit.
What did you feel? Did it feel glassy? Did it have no connection whatsoever with the task you were performing?
I call this technology Pictures Under Glass. Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade.
Is that so bad, to dump the tactile for the visual? Try this: close your eyes and tie your shoelaces. No problem at all, right? Now, how well do you think you could tie your shoes if your arm was asleep? Or even if your fingers were numb? When working with our hands, touch does the driving, and vision helps out from the back seat.
Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness. It’s a Novocaine drip to the wrist. It denies our hands what they do best. And yet, it’s the star player in every Vision Of The Future.
To me, claiming that Pictures Under Glass is the future of interaction is like claiming that black-and-white is the future of photography. It’s obviously a transitional technology. And the sooner we transition, the better.
What can you do with a Picture Under Glass? You can slide it.
That’s the fundamental gesture in this technology. Sliding a finger along a flat surface.
There is almost nothing in the natural world that we manipulate in this way.
That’s pretty much all I can think of.
Okay then, how do we manipulate things? As it turns out, our fingers have an incredibly rich and expressive repertoire, and we improvise from it constantly without the slightest thought. In each of these pictures, pay attention to the positions of all the fingers, what’s applying pressure against what, and how the weight of the object is balanced:
Many of these are variations on the four fundamental grips. (And if you like this sort of thing, you should read John Napier’s wonderful book.)
Suppose I give you a jar to open. You actually will switch between two different grips:
You’ve made this switch with every jar you’ve ever opened. Not only without being taught, but probably without ever realizing you were doing it. How’s that for an intuitive interface?
We live in a three-dimensional world. Our hands are designed for moving and rotating objects in three dimensions, for picking up objects and placing them over, under, beside, and inside each other. No creature on earth has a dexterity that compares to ours.
The next time you make a sandwich, pay attention to your hands. Seriously! Notice the myriad little tricks your fingers have for manipulating the ingredients and the utensils and all the other objects involved in this enterprise. Then compare your experience to sliding around Pictures Under Glass.
Are we really going to accept an Interface Of The Future that is less expressive than a sandwich?
Thought-provoking, no? I admit I’d never thought about this before until I read this article. I was too won over by the coolness of the glossy surfaces and snazzy interfaces in the videos to actually think about the implications as Victor has pointed out.
So then. What is the Future Of Interaction?
The most important thing to realize about the future is that it’s a choice. People choose which visions to pursue, people choose which research gets funded, people choose how they will spend their careers.
Despite how it appears to the culture at large, technology doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t emerge spontaneously, like mold on cheese. Revolutionary technology comes out of long research, and research is performed and funded by inspired people.
And this is my plea — be inspired by the untapped potential of human capabilities. Don’t just extrapolate yesterday’s technology and then cram people into it.
This photo could very well could be our future. But why? Why choose that? It’s a handheld device that ignores our hands.
Our hands feel things, and our hands manipulate things. Why aim for anything less than a dynamic medium that we can see, feel, and manipulate?
What do you think? Do you still believe that sliding pictures under glass is the way for technology to go? Or are you, like me, worried that our future descendants might end up with significantly less dexterous capabilities due to the proliferation of such technology?
According to Wikipedia, citizen journalism is the concept of members of the public “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information”.
STOMP has often been called Singapore’s citizen journalism website. Is it really? I almost never visit the website because I find the “news” posted by “citizen journalists” to be incredibly inane and more of the kaypoh nature than of actual newsworthy substance. The Singapore Seen section of the site, made up of photos and videos sent in by STOMPers along with commentary, often features photos of unsuspecting bus and train commuters caught in some kind of embarrassing situation or engaging in uncivil behaviour. While such posts remind us that we are far from being the gracious and civic-minded society that we aim to become, they are also far from worthy of being labelled “citizen journalism”. Kaypoh-ness should be called kaypoh-ness, not masquerade as newsworthy items.
Citizen journalist is a misnomer. There is no such thing. There are citizens and there are journalists. Everybody can be one of the former, but to be called a journalist means that you are a professional.
We advocate abolishing the term “citizen journalist.” These people can call themselves “citizen news gatherers,” but it is no more appropriate to call them citizen journalists than it would be to sit before a citizen judge or be operated on by a citizen brain surgeon.
What do you think? What is citizen journalism to you? Are you a STOMPer/do you visit STOMP regularly? Do you find the site newsworthy (or cringeworthy, like I do)?
I cannot remember politics without the involvement of the Internet. The first American presidential election I was old enough to pay attention to was Bush/Kerry in 2004; I was much more invested in the 2008 Obama/McCain election because of their respective campaigns’ widespread use of the Internet. I remember checking the polling results from each state during my lesson (in a computer lab) and announcing to the class that Obama had won.
These are a few of the reasons why Internet political advertising is so successful:
Voter Engagement
Internet advertising for political campaigns works best when it builds a community of like-minded followers of a candidate and gives them regular updates and “Things To Try” — such as polls and online fund raising. The most surprising aspect of Internet advertising, according to Aaron Smith, a researcher for Pew Research and presenter for the DCI Group, is the degree to which the Internet encouraged “microdonations,” contributions by ordinary citizens in the $50 to $200 range, well short of the legal campaign donation limit.
Nearly one in five (18%) internet users posted their thoughts, comments or questions about the campaign on an online forum such as a blog or social networking site.
Fully 45% of internet users went online to watch a video related to the campaign.
One in three internet users forwarded political content to others. (Source)
Narrowcasting
The Internet allows candidates to tailor advertising to groups of constituents focused on specific issues without worrying that the message will offend other voters. This provides campaign managers with a difficult balancing act — how to bring in the early voters while not having those ads come back to haunt the campaign if the candidate wins the nomination.
Used For Fact-Checking
From the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, to Move On, to FactCheck.org, the most effective form of Internet advertising purports to fact check, or provide additional information that the candidates “don’t want known.”
The John McCain campaign, for example, originally said that Governor Sarah Palin opposed the so-called bridge to nowhere in Alaska, Ms. Huffington said. “Online there was an absolutely obsessive campaign to prove that wrong,” she said, and eventually the campaign stopped repeating it. (Source)
Viral Advertising
The Internet gives the perception of intimacy and direct conversation with the candidate; through the use of social media and social networking sites, a particularly attractive Internet ad can be spread to millions of users who re-post the link to their friends and coworkers; this allows the ad to “go viral” and spread rapidly. An ad that “goes viral” can have an impact far out of proportion to the costs incurred in making the ad.
Mr. Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. Mr. Trippi argued that those videos were more effective than television ads because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of having their television shows interrupted.
“The campaign’s official stuff they created for YouTube was watched for 14.5 million hours,” Mr. Trippi said. “To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million.” (Source)
User-Created Content
The Internet allows ordinary citizens to make widely distributed political commentary and statements about candidates. An example: One of the biggest Internet viral ads of the 2008 presidential campaign is the “I’ve Got A Crush On Obama” video on YouTube. It was entirely fan-created and spread wider than anyone expected.
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In the local context, this year’s GE was absolutely riveting because of the way it engaged social media. I kept myself in the loop mainly by reading tweets to supplement what was presented in the mainstream media (ie television news and newspaper reports). My memory of the night of the election results is still vivid; I remember sitting in front of the television with my laptop for hours, eagerly awaiting updates on vote counts. Relying on official updates from news stations was much too slow; unofficial tweets and rumours from reporters at the counting stations proved faster and often more reliable.
The PAP vs WP fight for Aljunied GRC was the major talking point of the GE, and after unofficial news of WP’s win broke, Twitter went crazy. I was even banned from tweeting for twenty minutes (aka put in ‘Twitter jail’) because of the excessive amount of tweets I was posting and retweeting. Most of the Singaporeans I follow on Twitter were equally involved in the hype that night; it definitely was very interesting seeing everyone’s views on the voting results.
And of course, who can forget the breakout character of GE2011, Returning Officer Yam Ah Mee and his monotone? Within minutes of his first appearance on the podium, a Facebook fanpage had been spawned, and was generating Likes at a viral speed. YouTube remixes quickly followed, and this is one of my favourites (I even downloaded the MP3!):
I believe that with future political campaigns making use of social media and the Internet to an even larger extent, political apathy can and will be reduced. Were you similarly engaged in this year’s GE because of social media? How do you feel it added to or detracted from the entire political experience? How do you think the Internet will continue to influence politics in the future?
We’ve all learnt about the importance of Internet privacy and how to protect our computers and ourselves from viruses, worms, phishing, fraud etc… People are becoming more vigilant about our online security, but have you considered the fact that every mouseclick and every Google search that you make on the Internet is being tracked in some form or other? Every seemingly-innocuous action you make on the Internet goes into an enormous virtual vault of information about YOU that companies will exploit in some way or other to cater/suggest products and services to YOU and personalise YOUR online experience. The key words here are, clearly, YOU and PERSONALISE.
An eye-opening account of how the hidden rise of personalization on the Internet is controlling-and limiting-the information we consume.
In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google’s change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years-the rise of personalization. In this groundbreaking investigation of the new hidden Web, Pariser uncovers how this growing trend threatens to control how we consume and share information as a society-and reveals what we can do about it.
Though the phenomenon has gone largely undetected until now, personalized filters are sweeping the Web, creating individual universes of information for each of us. Facebook-the primary news source for an increasing number of Americans-prioritizes the links it believes will appeal to you so that if you are a liberal, you can expect to see only progressive links. Even an old-media bastion like The Washington Post devotes the top of its home page to a news feed with the links your Facebook friends are sharing. Behind the scenes a burgeoning industry of data companies is tracking your personal information to sell to advertisers, from your political leanings to the color you painted your living room to the hiking boots you just browsed on Zappos.
In a personalized world, we will increasingly be typed and fed only news that is pleasant, familiar, and confirms our beliefs-and because these filters are invisible, we won’t know what is being hidden from us. Our past interests will determine what we are exposed to in the future, leaving less room for the unexpected encounters that spark creativity, innovation, and the democratic exchange of ideas.
While we all worry that the Internet is eroding privacy or shrinking our attention spans, Pariser uncovers a more pernicious and far- reaching trend on the Internet and shows how we can- and must-change course. With vivid detail and remarkable scope, The Filter Bubble reveals how personalization undermines the Internet’s original purpose as an open platform for the spread of ideas and could leave us all in an isolated, echoing world.
Intrigued yet? Here’s a TEDtalk video of Pariser talking about the “filter bubble”.
A: Your filter bubble is the personal universe of information that you live in online — unique and constructed just for you by the array of personalized filters that now power the web. Facebook contributes things to read and friends’ status updates, Google personally tailors your search queries, and Yahoo News and Google News tailor your news. It’s a comfortable place, the filter bubble — by definition, it’s populated by the things that most compel you to click. But it’s also a real problem: the set of things we’re likely to click on (sex, gossip, things that are highly personally relevant) isn’t the same as the set of things we need to know.
I haven’t gotten very far into the book, but these following excerpts really jumped out at me:
Most of us assume that when we google a term, we all see the same results – the ones that the company’s famous Page Rank algorithm suggests are the most authoritative based on other pages’ links. But since December 2009, this is no longer true. Now you get the result that Google’s algorithm suggests is best for you in particular – and someone else may see something entirely different. In other words, there is no standard Google anymore.
According to one Wall Street Journal study, the top fifty Internet sites, from CNN to Yahoo to MSN, install an average of 64 data-laden cookies and personal tracking beacons each. Search for a word like “depression” on Dictionary.com, and the site installs up to 223 tracking cookies and beacons on your computer so that other Web sites can target you with antidepressants.
Holy crap, 223?!
In the next three to five years, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told one group, the idea of a Web site that isn’t customized to a particular user will seem quaint. Yahoo Vice President Tapan Bhat agrees: “The future of the web is about personalization … now the web is about ‘me.’ It’s about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalized for the user.”
I found this particularly interesting:
The filter bubble introduces three dynamics we’ve never dealt with before.
First, you’re alone in it. A cable channel that caters to a narrow interest (say, golf) has other viewers with whom you share a frame of reference. But you’re the only person in your bubble. In an age when shared information is the bedrock of shared experience, the filter bubble is a centrifugal force, pulling us apart.
Second, the filter bubble is invisible. Most viewers of conservative or liberal news sources know that they’re going to a station curated to serve a particular political viewpoint. But Google’s agenda is opaque. Google doesn’t tell you who it thinks you are or why it’s showing you the results you’re seeing. You don’t know if its assumptions about you are right or wrong – and you might not even know it’s making assumptions about you in the first place. […] Because you haven’t chosen the criteria by which sites filter information in and out, it’s easy to imagine that the information that comes through a filter bubble is unbiased, objective, true. But it’s not. In fact, from within the bubble, it’s nearly impossible to see how biased it is.
Finally, you don’t choose to enter the bubble. When you turn on Fox News or read The Nation, you’re making a decision about what kind of filter to use to make sense of the world. It’s an active process, and like putting on a pair of tinted glasses, you can guess how the editors’ leaning shapes your perception. You don’t make the same kind of choice with personalized filters. They come to you – and because they drive up profits for the Web sites that use them, they’ll become harder and harder to avoid.
I could go on and on and on, and this is just from the first ten pages of the introductory chapter! I’m excited (and already really paranoid) about the upcoming chapters. It’s certainly a very thought-provoking read. Check out the website for The Filter Bubble here, and do check the book out if you get the chance!
Amazon truly has one of the most successful virtual business models out there. It is the world’s largest online retailer and has separate websites in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and China. The company was started by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and is named after the Amazon River, one of the largest rivers in the world. It started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified; now its product lines include books, music CDs, videotapes and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, clothing, industrial & scientific supplies, and groceries.
Amazon uses the internet as thesole method for selling goods to its consumers. Amazon’s competitors, such as Barnes and Noble, and Borders use brick and mortar as their main distribution channel. This method of using many store fronts is extremely costly. Thus, Amazon’s competitors are at a disadvantage because their costs are significantly higher than Amazon’s costs, allowing Amazon to sell the same goods at a lower price.
Amazon’s business model provides a competitive advantage because since there are no store fronts, the main distribution warehouse can be anywhere. In order to keep overhead low Amazon locates its central warehouse in an area where rent is cheap. When a company has such an advantage, it is able to keep costs low and transfer the savings to its customers in the form of lower prices. Although Amazon sells many products well below market price, they are able to generate profits from the high volume of goods sold.
Amazon’s competitive pricing and good service has developed into a reputation that is hard for new online booksellers to compete with. The research on this site demonstrates how due to the internet and its recent boom, Amazon is able to maintain lower costs than its competitors, provide its customers with a more effective and cost-efficient way to shop for goods, and as a result maintain a competitive advantage over its competitors.
Amazon has always focused on making the shopping experience at easy and fun. Many of the most important criteria for shopping for goods and services online were pioneered by Amazon, including fast and secure credit card processing, informative merchandise evaluation using pictures, descriptions, and reviews and even virtual community chat rooms for customers. A more specific example includes Amazon’s pioneering of the “1-click” ordering system, which made it possible for returning customers to place new orders without having to tediously re-enter basic and payment information.
2. Personalized service
Amazon attempted to use personalization to “build the right store for every customer.” Each customer had a Web page personalized based on his or her recent purchases. This is the equivalent of having a unique storefront for each customer in hopes of drawing in as many return customers as possible. Amazon tested the look of various different Web page designs and measured the responses they generated from customers. These personalized Web pages featured personal “in-line” messages. For example, if a particular customer had not visited Amazon in a while, the message might read, “Welcome Back, Joe, we’ve missed you!” If the customer had recently made a purchase, such as a DVD player, the personalized Web page provided a targeted offer such as “Feed your new DVD player with DVDs up to 25% off.”
The percentage of the discount was based on analysis of the individual customer’s purchases. Amazon also sent out personalized e-mails and coupons to customers who had not visited the site in some time. These coupons and e-mails were personalized using the individual customer’s profile and a summary of recent purchases. In addition to these personalized recommendations, Amazon attempted to maximize profits by product bundling. For example, when a customer clicked on a book of interest, an additional book would pop up and Amazon would offer the additional product at a discount. Bezos believed in personalization and branding as a crucial element of his business model. He once said, “It’s just like in traditional retail. If a small-town merchant knows your tastes, he could tell you if something interesting came in and he suspected you might want it.” Using personalization and bundling, Bezos managed to use the Web as a means to give a mega retailer a mom and pop feel.
3. Pricing and branding
Many people perceived Web pricing as a benefit to customers who could now at virtually no cost to them, compare the prices of identical goods across multiple suppliers. Others suggested that when there are only a few sellers in the market, the sellers could also benefit from this and as a result charge higher prices. Sellers could potentially collude to coordinate their pricing and implicitly agree to charge a higher price.
Bezos believed that online customers valued selection, convenience and good service above price. Amazon spent over 19% of sales on marketing in 2000. In that same year the Amazon name was more recognizable than Burger King, Wrigley’s, or Barbie, and of course more recognizable than Barnes and Noble. Interbrand, an international brand consultancy based in London, ranks global firms by the value of their brand; Amazon was number 48 worldwide in the 2000 list, just above Motorola and Colgate and well above number 72 Starbucks.
Today, Amazon is able to leverage its brand and customer satisfaction to extract a premium over most of its competitors. According to an MIT study, three of the eight online book retailers in the study had lower prices, on average, than Amazon. The lowest priced retailer, Books.com, had prices that averaged $1.60 less than Amazon’s prices. Books.com’s price was lower than Amazon’s price 99 percent of the time. Yet, Books.com had only about 2 percent of the online book market while Amazon.com enjoyed a share of more than 80 percent.
The case study covers more aspects such as Amazon’s competitors and future prospects, and offers interesting insights into the company’s success. Check the rest of it out here!
I must say I am in awe of the immense success of Amazon’s business model. I have a few gripes about its interface (I find it too cluttered for my liking) and shipping options (iParcel is a steaming pile of ****), but generally my experiences with the site have been positive, and I keep going back for more because really, who can resist a good deal? The prompt and good customer service doesn’t hurt either. Share some of your Amazon experiences (good or bad) in the comments!
Behold…the real reason why your Amazon packages are always late:
Are you on Facebook? You probably are. Do you play (or have played) at least one Facebook game? Chances are, you do. Even if you said ‘no’ to both questions (I simultaneously judge and envy you), I’m sure you have friends and family who play at least one Facebook game. My mum is constantly trying out puzzle games on Facebook (Bejeweled Blitz and its numerous derivatives), and even my dad, who learnt to use the computer and surf the net not too long ago, plays Facebook games in his spare time.
Judging from my own Facebook experience, the most popular games amongst my friends are FarmVille, Restaurant City, Texas Hold ‘Em, Tetris Battle, and The Sims Social. The latter two are games that I have played, after initial (futile) resistance. Peer pressure, how I know it.
Besides the all-powerful social weapon that is peer pressure, these games also have a high take-up rate because they are easy to play. This is not hardcore gaming; there are no steep learning curves, just user-friendly interfaces and simple controls. As such, it is easy to become addicted. I have since weaned myself off my Sims Social and Tetris Battle addictions, but I still remember how easy it was to fall into their time-sucking traps.
Many of these games can technically be played solo, like Tetris Battle, but it is the optional social elements that really bring out the games’ potential. I usually played Tetris Battle on my own, but occasionally it was fun challenging friends to a battle and winning stars off them instead of strangers. (Read: cajoling friends to try out Tetris Battle and then taking advantage of their n00bness to win. I never said I was a nice person.) The simple chat function that is enabled during games with friends also adds to the social aspect.
I tired of The Sims Social quickly (I think my fascination lasted less than two weeks) because of the repetitive gameplay. The main draw of The Sims Social is being able to build a nice house for your Sim and furnish it etc, but to do that one has to have enough Simoleons –> Simoleons come from doing tasks –> tasks require energy –> there are only so many times you can visit your friends’ houses one by one to collect free energy and repeat mundane tasks before it all seems like a chore.
That said, it shouldn’t be surprising that The Sims Social has become such an immediate hit, seemingly embedded in our pop culture. Right now it ranks #2 in the list of most-popular social games on Facebook, with 40 million active users compared to the current reigning champ, CityVille, which has 75 million monthly active users.
In your opinion, what is it about social networking games that keep people coming back for more? If you have personal experience playing social networking games, what improvements would you like to see in the future? Social network gaming is definitely here to stay, but thankfully, I’m out of its grip for now!
There have been a few features recently in the local newspapers about wired families – families whose daily lives are totally integrated with technology.
I chose this picture because gingers are awesome.
It’s inevitable, of course, with technology becoming increasingly pervasive in our everyday lives. Children are being raised in a highly tech-dependent environment, and getting used to it at a younger and younger age. For me and the rest of my 1990 cohort, we spent most of our formative years without the Internet or snazzy mobile phones. I only got my first email account at ten years old, and my first mobile phone at 12. We remember our lives before the Internet, before touchscreen phones and iPads. Kids these days don’t. Their life IS the Internet, touchscreen phones and iPads.
Dude, that phone is like, ANCIENT.
To be honest, I find it rather disconcerting when I take the train and see children everywhere glued to their handheld devices. It’s becoming increasingly common to see young children in public playing with their parents’ (or their own..!) iPhones, iPads, PSPs, Nintendo DSes etc while their parents are busy doing something else. These parents are the opposite of helicopter parents. It’s bad enough that some parents leave their parenting to their domestic helpers; now they’re simply giving the task to impersonal gadgets. At the very least, give the kid a Kindle. Or better yet, take him to AN ACTUAL LIBRARY and let him read ACTUAL BOOKS that have ACTUAL PAGES that can ACTUALLY BE FLIPPED.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Of course, being a wired family has its advantages too. There are plenty of educational apps specifically designed to stimulate children intellectually and creatively, and staying connected to all your family members at all times is much easier.
Tell that to this guy.
What I’m driving at here is that while technology is not a bad thing (…okay, that’s a debate for another day), raising a child in an environment inundated with it can be. Technology should be used to complement a child’s upbringing, not dominate it.
Would you consider your family to be a wired family? How has this tech invasion changed the way you communicate with your family? Do you also feel like snatching iPads out of young brats’ hands and stomping on them (the iPads, not the brats) while yelling at their parents “DO SOME ACTUAL PARENTING!!!” like I do?
What would we do without the Internet? (Well, we’d be outdoors more often doing healthy outdoorsy stuff, meeting friends instead of writing on their Facebook walls, actually having a life instead of living this pathetic minnow existence in this deep, vast, virtual sea…) Rhetorical question.
I KNOW, RIGHT?!
The Internet is very, very awesome. We all know that. It connects us to everyone, everywhere, anytime, all the time. Everything is a Google search away. The Internet brings long-lost friends back in touch, increases communication between existing friends, makes it more convenient to organise events. Buying something from another continent = a few mouse clicks and typing of credit card digits. TV shows and movies not (legally) available in the country we live in are easily accessible, if we know where to look. Arr!
Simply put, the Internet makes our lives so much easier. I could go on forever about the pros of the Internet, and so could everybody else. But of course, something so awesome MUST have its drawbacks.
YOU IN DANGER GURL
All the previously-mentioned pros of the Internet can also turn into cons: information overload, psycho exes stalking your profile on Facebook, frittering away hard-earned money on frivolous online buys, piracy hurting the entertainment industry etc. Then there’s the flame wars on every YouTube video in existence (the Internet’s favourite topics: racism, homosexuality, religion), paedophiles who take their preying online, annoying pop-up ads, the spam… OH MY GOD I HATE SPAM.
Except this kind.
For me, the biggest con of the Internet (and technology in general) is the negative impact on my attention span. I cannot read thousand-word articles all the way through without wanting to skim or switching to another tab to do something else for a while. I cannot be patient and stare at a loading page if it takes more than three seconds; I need to use those three seconds to do something else. At any given online moment, I will likely have at least five to 15 browser tabs open for that purpose. Any video longer than two minutes…I’ll probably skim through it. (In fact, I just skimmed through a 1min 20s video. I suck.) Five minutes of studying is followed by ten minutes of Twitter on my phone. Even while watching shows on my laptop, I need to have something else going on at the same time on the other half of the screen. I get bored of doing something so quickly that I need to do something else along with it, or switch my attention to newer, shinier things.
We should probably start evolving into this now.
You’d think constant multitasking would improve our multitasking and attention skills, but it’s a myth. Well, according to scientists and their research. Scientists are smart and they do smart things. We should believe them.
According to recent brain research, that assumption is false. “If you have a task that requires decision making, of comprehension, you can’t really do two things at the same time,” Yantis said. The parts of the brain that process auditory information and visual information, for example, are in two different areas, and MRI studies have shown that only one can dominate at a time. So if you think you can successfully talk on your cell phone and work on your computer, research says you can’t. (Sauce)
More evidence from smart people:
While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress. And scientists are discovering that even after the multitasking ends, fractured thinking and lack of focus persist. In other words, this is also your brain off computers. (Sauce)
I used to say with pride that I could multitask well, but now I just say that I multitask. I certainly can’t do it well, not when I find myself constantly missing bits of dialogue and plot points when I watch shows and play games at the same time. If this happens to adults, imagine the impact on growing children, whose brains are still developing and being shaped by this sort of rapid-burst information overload. Can you say ADHD? It’s a real concern.
Serious. So serious. Deadly serious. Don't snigger. THE INTERNET WILL KNOW. AND IT WILL HUNT YOU DOWN.
Guess why I took two hours to write this entry? Because of… WAIT FOR IT… MY LOUSY ATTENTION SPAN AND THE WONDERFUL DISTRACTIONS OF THE INTERNET! Awesome. The Internet is awesome. Like I said, it’s too easy to wax lyrical about how awesome the Internet is, so I’m asking: what is the biggest con of the Internet for you?
Basically.
University at Buffalo (SUNY). Communications major.
I LUV TEH INTERWEBZ 