It’s a small world after all

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After going through the video recommended by Elliot and also the readings for week 4, to just simply put it – the term six degrees of separation is not something new to me. But i never knew that based on this theory that we were all only separated by 6 people came out further studies on networking and how the brain is synchronised.

 

 

But is the world really getting smaller? Is six degrees of separation possible without the aid and advancement of technology?  In fact, many people are being connected straight away because of the internet, the advancements of phones or walkie talkies, any mode of communication which does not require us to travel.

 

So basically the six degrees of separation has been cut short. In the video, there was an experiment done where people from all over the world are given a parcel to be sent to a professor in harvard, someone they do not even know. So they send the parcel from one to another until it reaches the professor at the end.

 

 

Look, If I was given the parcel at this point of time, I’d probably just search for his name and contact details online and send the parcel directly to him. I guess the point of the experiement was to show that we are all literally six people away from each other. But that was not what I saw in the video.

 

 

When you claim that we are six people away from each other, shouldn’t the fifth in line know the professor personally? Or is he just the sixth guy who so happens to live in the same city as him? It’s no long about the six degrees of separation but rather the networks that go behind it.

 

 

They always say, that networking and socialising is very important, it aids businesses, boosts economies indirectly and even improve bilateral ties between countries.  And i believe the very fact that we are able to connect and be able to network is because technology is bringing the world together. It is the reason why the world is getting smaller.

 

I love how the whole theory of networking eventually led up to a certain understanding of network with proteins in our cells and maybe one day an evolution. These two are completely different case studies working together. It is amazing to see the concept of networking behind the lines. Whether it is through technology, protein cells or even human social networking. It brings all of us together somehow one way or another.

 

What can I say? It’s a small world after all.

 

What blogging has taught me

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Doing creative work every single day, over and over and over again, is tough work. Sometimes it feels great, like when dozens of ideas start knocking at your mind’s closed door, waiting to be sent out on a secret mission. Whilst on other days, you just want to quit, bang your big head against a wall or do both while you cry, watch tonnes of chick flicks, and eat tubs and tubs of any type of ice cream.

 

Blogging has taught me many lessons. First of all, I don’t really like to eat that much ice cream or watch continuous episodes of chick flicks all that much. Second thing to note, is that habits are most definitely the key to success in life. Most of us complain about not having sufficient amount time. The truth is, we do have enough time to do whatever we want, but we’re just not willing to make the sacrifices to do get it done.

 

Like I said, the discipline of blogging constantly has taught me many lessons. Here are five habits that blogging has taught me about being creative:

1. Do not underestimate the importance of a routine

 

Creative people can struggle to get work done up. In order to put in the time necessary for my own blog, I’ve had to wake up earlier than I am used to. This has done so much more for me than just simply improving on my blogging. The early hours in the morning seem to be of the most productive for most people.

 

I also love how Tim Sanders describes the constant need to feed your own mind a good “breakfast.” in the morning.  During these early hours I try to write, read, and try to set up the course for my day.

 

2. There’s so much more inside of you that’s capable than you think

 

Sometimes people will ask, how the hell do I keep coming up with solid based material to write or work on. To be plain honest, the more you strive to write, the more creative you will definitely become. Constantly writing on something which you are passionate about or concerns you, and somehow you’ll be taking your writing to a new level as you do it.

 

You’ll start to see things and opinions from a new perspective as you do it. So, believe me when I say, that there is more inside of you that’s capable than you think. There are many years of creativity in you that will only get deeper through the passage of time.

 

3. See and seize every moment as it is an opportunity to learn something new

 

I used to just only live — or rather sort of let life go along while I had a good time. But when you blog constantly, it forces you to look for inspiration all the time and everywhere. Every minor conversation, every movie you watch, even every song, every book, and every damn meal you eat.

 

The list goes on and on. Learn everywhere and do not forget to keep track of all your different inspirations and ideas. Pen them down on papers or draw them out.

 

4. Always be open to positive re-enforcements or aka Criticisms

 

I used to dislike publishing my blog because I was afraid of the negative criticism people think about my blog.  I also feared that people would judge me, think I may too young to voice out an opinion, shallow,naive, or even too simple.

 

You must never ever allow criticism to defeat you. Otherwise, your ideas will only live in your own mind for yourself.

 

5. Try not to waste time

 

If you blog constantly, you realise you will have to be able to sacrifice good things for greater things. I don’t watch TV much because there’s usually a blog post that is pending or needs to be drafted. An idea that needs to be developed.

 

Blogging trades mindless boring entertainment for creativity and also vision. I’m also able to make a small difference in people’s lives through my writing and that’s what keeps me going.

 

What lessons has blogging taught you?

 

The world of Pinterest

In the last class before the long weekend break, we were broken up into different groups once again and were given topics to work on. What we got for our Niki page this time, was something far more interesting and creative than the one I had prior to this. We were going to be doing up a Niki page on

NPinterest

 

What could be more interesting right? I’ve not been an active user of Pinterest but it’s no doubt one of the sites that I would go on to, together with Tumblr for creative inspirations and a platform I go to, to seek thoughts and whimsical aspirations as well. So what is Pinterest actually? According to wikipedia,

” Pinterest is a pinboard-style photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, and hobbies. Users can browse other pinboards for images, “re-pin” images to their own pinboards, or “like” photos. ”

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They are inspirational boards which allows us to pin up pictures and images into different themed boards found on the site. We are able to share it with other people or set up private inspirational pinboard as a pictorial diary or for any purpose we want it to. We’re also able to create our own themes and add in inspiration for others to see.

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Therefore, instead of doing up a inspirational board on hand like the image above, everything is done online, without us having to move our butts. Also, there are millions of inspiration to be found online Pinterest shared by the rest of the world. Of course, if you love having to craft up your own inspiration board like the above is just as inspiring because most of us can’t be stuffed to do that.

 

Pinterest is not just a platform for inspiration but also a platform for businesses. Many stores has turned Pinterest into their biggest traffic drivers. Because Pinterest didn’t have a link back to where one could buy a store’s product. Most of the stores started linking all of their look books back to their website and integrated “Pin it” buttons on all their product pages.

 

Most stores also created their own relevant boards to use as inspiration for their brand and for photo shoot ideas. They use data analysis to help in purchasing decisions based on viewer’s styles, colors, cuts etc and are constantly seeing people pin and re-pin images back to their boards. The stores tend to see their images pop up on people’s inspiration boards, wish lists, style and clothing boards which drives prospective customers back onto their webpage to look for more.

 

I feel that, anything on the internet can be used to our advantage in so many ways, it gives inspiration and drives knowledge and creativity. It also helps businesses and creates a space for one to just dwell and seek comfort in. Pinterest is one of the many sites like that and a site which I hope will continue to stay for a long time to come.

 

 

 

My love hate relationship

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So here you are standing at the crossroad junction – Which path do you take? What are the endings and outcome you are seeking for? You settle down to think, maybe a good ending would be nice.. but then a different ending would seem more interesting. Hmm should the star crossed lovers die together? Or maybe kill one of them and have the other alone and always finding hope in the stars. You then get frustrated and throws the book away to a corner.

 

What kind of book is that? You thought to yourself. Who would buy a stupid book with no proper structure to the story and no definite ending? It does gets frustrating when you have to think of how the story goes on your own. Isn’t that why we buy books for? Because we await and anticipate the unknown. We look and explore through the mind and imaginations of the author.

 

Stories are structured and made linear for a reason, probably because we are taught that or maybe it is just a human’s need for structure in our lives. You need to flow through a book from the start and it needs to make sense and tie the entire story back together in the end. Maybe i’m just conventional. But it doesn’t mean I’m not open to a different way or writing or bringing stories together.

 

If you’ve watch Christopher Nolan’s production titled, Inception. Let me just tell you that I was literally mindfu*ked and blown away. Pardon the language. But leaving the ending to our imagination and thoughts was pure genius. At the end of the movie we all found ourselves questioning the movie. Was everything just a dream, or did the main lead manage to finish his task and get back to reality to be with his children? I literally had to watch the movie 4 times to somehow convince myself that my own conclusion was the right one.

 

Changing the structure in texts is a love hate thing. We love something different, something raw and new, yet on the other hand we hate the change. Too much of it makes us uncomfortable and frustrated. There are so many theories to text and writing, and it does prose questions to possiblity of getting things done in different ways. Better ways to encourage creativity and thinking. But is the world ready for that much change? I doubt so. Theories will just be theories, it is something that is required in a educational instituition but not something that currently society will accept just yet.

 

So, thank you for the suggestions. But i’m going to have turn you down. It’s now time for me to sit down, have a cup of tea while I continue reading my favourite selection of conventionally structured books written and explored by my favourite authors.  😉

Geert who?

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Today we got into our groups and got started on our NIKI pages. I was obviously crossing my fingers and hoping Elliot would be kind on me but he threw us a topic no one know, understood and could fathom. Our topic was to write up a interview on some dutch profession who had a passion for media activism and wrote a book on networks. or at least that was what I got out from a 5 minutes read off his wikipedia page.

 

As a group we started gathering more concise information and deets on this guy and with 4 brains combined we managed to understand that Geert, formally adressed as Professor Geert Lovink is a research professor in Interactive media . He is also the founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures, whose goals are to explore, document and feed the potential for socio-economical change of the new media field through events, publications and open dialogue.

 

Well yada yada so on and so forth. But what I would like to talk about is his latest book titled “Networks without a cause” where he explores the social impact of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Google, and so on. What I find interesting is that book takes the specific question of what the social is in social media as its starting point, providing a sociological understanding of the dominant role that centralized media platforms play – that is how they rule the Internet from the inside, and hence a good part of our daily lives. His insight revolves around the statement that “Once the Internet changed the world; now the world is changing the Internet.”

 

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Completely unaware, users of social networks have fallen into a trap laid by the politics of terror. Social networks are chains of complete strangers, who are not permitted to voice any true debate on any topic whatsoever. All that’s allowed is a simple ‘Like,’ watering down any chance for critical exchange, doing even more than television to flatten out people’s lives, and offering no tool that could have any real impact on everyday life, let alone political life.

 

Lovink stresses the point that social networks are socially useless as they lack a common cause. He looks at the total waste of time of using what he calls news industry tools — media that enable real-time updates of no specific value, such as Twitter, which has created a constant flow of journalistic headlines without any depth of analysis or investigation, and which we no longer pay any attention to as we have become so blasé to it all.

 

Word after word, I couldn’t help nodding my head in agreement as I kept on reading. It was the sudden realisation that the once raved season of social media, is now slowly dying off. It made the world smaller and I guess more connected but It made us lazy, less intellectual and everything that old media taught us to do. Old media brings us back to basic and teaches us to go the long horrendous path and not liking a comment but not having anything to say about it.

 

Because we have all been so engulfed in this wave of social media, we grew dependent and forget about writing critical comments, giving honest opinions on things and most importantly opinions that are valued and not just something we write and  within the span of 100 words and try to squeeze them together with short lingos just to get messages across. I’m sure we’ve all benefitted from the use of social media however we have to agree that It’s not what it used to be anymore.

 

We are looking for clearer, better more efficient ways to get the world connected, and get messages acrossed. We, the users of the internet are changing it slowly, we are shaping it to what we want and need. Now that social media is dying, I am excited for what the future brings and new upcoming technology that will further change and enhance our lives like the google glass. We are always changing and so will technology.

 

Search Engine Optimization ( SEO Success Pyramid)

 

 

SEO

 

 

I am writing another blog post on SEO because I’ve recently become a firm believer on it. It’s a unique form of starting a business and can be used to earn quick bucks once you’ve got the hang of it and know how to work on it. It is also a very good method for passive income. Something which we young people, need to start to be aware of. Make the money work for you and not the other way round. SEO is also something which can be set up easily with the right connections and also business ideas. And of course, you can start it off with just a blog which is practically free. Or way more cost efficient than setting up a business.

 

I would like to talk about the SEO success pyramid – which shows a pyramid shaped model (obviously) with key elements and aspects in helping one reach their SEO goals. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can make out for you and your site. With quality content on website, you can inspire people to put a link back to you. Once you know you have a solid product or service and you’ve put in hours polishing your site, you need to attract users.

 

One thing you need to know is that just because a keyword has a lot of competition does not mean that it is impossible for you to rank for. This is best performed by an experienced qualified in market research. The search engines will bring you traffic, but it’s the readers who recommend your articles to others, who will keep your traffic coming for years to come. Pay Per Ranking: The payment system where the SEO company is paid a monthly amount per keyword which is listed on Google 1st page organic results. Don’t forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution.

 

So what’s wrong with that approach? In a similar way, you can use just about any popular news item in order to gain attention in the blog directories. Optimization process is a long and demanding process. Know how important links are for YOUR website.

 

If you have spent a great deal of time and effort putting together a new business and corresponding website, it would be a shame if your potential customers were unable to find your site online when searching for related services. All in all, I hope this prospectus helps SEO beginners, SEO customers, SEO experts, and other related SEO people. It’s about time we make the money work for us. Work hard but also work smart, and that is where the money starts rolling in.

Symposium 2.1

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This week I participated in the Symposium on Design Fiction. I felt that despite reading all the readings most of them eventually pointed to the fact that Design fiction allowed all of us, and not just designers to explore our creativity, think out of the box and anticipate the unanticipated. “prepare for the future” a future the does not seem realistic. What we consider the most basic part of technology like ” texting” was something that anyone would have imagined possible 30 years ago. Therefore, why are we questioning the impossible? Why not we instead allow the concept of design fiction to help us explore and create better innovations for the future?

 

Through design fiction and the symposium I learn that it brings about the concepts of what ifs and how it does not merely apply in design terms but can aid to change a cultural perspective or maybe even a community. We are able to use fiction as a testing ground for any sort of possibilities. It allows us to create a space with boundaries and make mistakes over and over again without any consequences and outcomes.

 

I felt that after all the readings and talking, there was not much to talk about because it all led up to the same conclusions and ideas on design fiction. Maybe there were more that we could explore, however the symposium ended rather quickly because I felt the concept of design fiction could only help us to see the world as what it could be instead of seeing the world as it already is.

 

Using the concept of design fiction for the advancement of technology is a huge deal and something we can look forward to using in the future. Design fiction, though many ideas may seem unrealistic at this present point, we are hopeful that alongside the advancement of technology, we can use design fiction and its ideas to push and challenge boundaries and one day create better forms of technology that can help better society.

 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Blogging for SEO

 

The art of blogging has been around for decades, but many businesses are just starting to realize the true impact blogs can have on their search engine marketing and SEO campaigns. The result: Business-related blogs are popping up everywhere, proving to be a very marketable and profitable SEO tool.

 

Blogs can have the following affects on your Search Engine Optimization campaign:

  • Help your company find its niche
  • Increase the traffic coming to your site
  • Sending your depth of content and page rank soaring
  • Make you a fast friend of the search engine

Every site in the industry could receive a healthy boost in the search engines simply by posting regularly to a company blog. So why haven’t you started one yet?

 

The strength of your blog lies in its relevant, keyword-rich content and its ability to attract inbound links. Because blog entries are usually written on industry-related topics, the search engine will view your posts as being linked together and classify it as relevant content. Your daily posts on industry news, marketing campaigns, product releases, acquisitions or all-purpose general conversation will all count toward your page count as well as your perceived expertise. While creating your entries, it is very important to keep your keywords in mind. There is no need to pack them awkwardly into your sentences, but a few mentions of your company’s targeted terms will help your organic search engine rankings.

 

Blogs can do amazing things for page count. Some blog host applications, such as Moveable Type, will generate a unique HTML page for each individual entry. That means one new page for every entry you write, giving you lots of new pages and a big jump in PageRank. This is an excellent way to create pages for search engine optimization in a short amount of time. A blog entry a day may be all you need to send your page count soaring. This will also help your indexing as search engines typically prefer large sites over smaller ones, working under the notion that large sites are more likely to offer expert opinion than smaller ones. Frequent blogging will ensure that your site is spidered more frequently than sites that do not use blogs.

 

Search engines love blogs for many reasons. First, blogs are usually written in a simple format making them exceedingly easy for spiders to work through. There is no Flash or JavaScript standing in the way. The page code is often very clean, text rich HTML. Secondly, blogs give search engines exactly what they want – original content written in a natural way. What could be better? Search engines love blogs so much that many, including Google, have their own blog search which allows readers to search for information found specifically on blogs. Without a blog, you don’t even stand a chance of showing up on that search. Can you afford that?

 

Design Fiction

What do we understand about Design Fiction?

Design Fiction uses fictional scenarios to envision and explain possible futures for design. Sterling spoke about Design Fiction and emphasized that the key term in Design Fiction is neither Design, nor Fiction:  it is diegesis.  His current definition of Design Fiction is that it is “the deliberate use of diegetic  prototypes to suspend disbelief about change.”  Diegesis invokes terminology from film studies to refer to “things which are inside the word of the fiction”.

For example: diegetic music in a film would be a song playing on a radio in a scene; non-diegetic music would be underscoring that the audience hears, but which isn’t present in the narrative world.  When Sterling references diegetic prototypes he is invoking a concept by film scholar David Kirby that has also been referenced by Julian Bleecker.

Kirby on the other hand uses the term diegetic prototypes to “account for the ways in which cinematic depictions of future technologies demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, viability and benevolence”.  This is a central aspect of design fiction:  it uses a fictional frame to make an argument about a potential future by demonstrating that future in a context that a large public audience can understand.

A common example of design fiction that many people understand is the gestural interfaces in the Spielberg Film Minority Report.  Gestural interfaces had been around and viable for years but there was no narrative to drive their use. The film gave the public a concrete narrative of gestural interaction that was compelling and memorable.

A design fiction has to imagine a culture of use for a technology or design that has implications for how it is executed and built.  Using fiction to frame design also affords the consideration of the values, meanings, and implications of the design from an ethical and political standpoint, often highlighting social elements of a design’s use and potential misuse.

 

Vlogging

 


Vlogging, short for Video Blogging, is blogging through the medium of video. A blog is any web page updated on a regular basis with discrete entries, often delivered to a viewer who has subscribed to the blog and reads it using a third-party interface, or RSS aggregator, rather than visiting the website directly.

The first known videoblog entry was on November 27, 2000. Although the early 2000s were marked by attempts to create videoblogs, vlogging didn’t truly emerge until 2004, when small communities of vloggers began to pop up and big media started to notice vlogging.

Vlogging is still small today, but online video is starting to take off, with websites like Google Video and YouTube offering free storage space. Vlogging isn’t necessarily an action video. It is a blogger who is using video to get his or her message across instead of the standard written blog. The blogger is actually speaking his message on a video rather than having followers read it. That way, his or her readers can see body language and facial expressions that make the encounter more real and personal.