Week 12- Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web

Android is an open-source software stack for mobile devices, and a corresponding open-source project led by Google. Android OS’s mission is to establish an open platform for developers to build innovative mobile apps and create the most efficient online speed to the users. They don’t want the users to spend too much data as the data packages are quite expensive. They are thinking about the ways to give the users a great experience without wasting the spectrum. So, the Rubin went to discuss about the partnership and co-operation with Google to create the new experiences. However, Apple technologies are tending to create an easier, more intuitive experience so developers can focus on making great apps.

Due to the reason of technology generation, peoples tend to switch their online behavior from PC to mobile phones. Compare to I-phone, Android can’t fulfill the needs as Apple had more power with the co-operative with the application creator but I-phone had restricted for source code closed. Android are free to install any applications in the Android system’s devices and they wanted to make sure that there was no central point of failure, so that no industry player can restrict or control the innovations of any other. That’s the reason of created Android and made its source code open.  This is the best advantages that Android can compare to I-phone. Besides that, Android had created a fantastic speed for internet surfing to the users and save from their data. As the partner of Android , Google providing the best Google Mobile applications for the phones that run the Android operating system like Google search, Google Maps, Gmail, Youtube , Latitude, and more others to make the Android’s phone users more convenient and efficiency. 

Week 11- Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go

Recently, the evolution of the communication tool had made the changes to the world. Facebook and Twitter had become the most popular communication tool among the world. Through Facebook and Twitter, peoples can connect each other which have the common interest or topic. People can discuss the topic and get different opinions around the world because of the revolution of the communication tool to social network.

Through Facebook and Twitter, people can found the leader which has the power to decide or lead the false and true and solve the problem for the group members. Twitter and Facebook are the communication networking which can share the personal feeling to the people in the social networking’s world. Through the social networking’s world, people can exchange their opinion to get their suggestion to solve the problem. People can know other people’s personal feeling by follow-up the blogspot.

Although the social networking is very famous communication among the people but it also got its disadvantages. For example from the CNN news article, it said that “there are few top universities make creative by using Facebook or Twitter to communicate with students but there are still much universities are still slow  to catch on. So, this will make the students neglect to their websites as the tweet too infrequently or fail to reply to student questions.” This example makes the paper or board information become more famous compare to using social networking to communicate with the students. So, this is not much suggestion on the advantages and disadvantages on social networking as different communication devices can reached different target audiences. 

Week 9-Civic Hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy

According to the Webster’s defines democracy as “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation.” Putting an ‘e’ in front of democracy means nothing more than using information technology tools to facilitate, improve and ultimately extend the exercise of democracy. E-democracy has both a tactical side and a strategic side. On the tactical side, information technology has advanced communication and the access to information arguably better than any known medium (Caldow, 2004)

 Although internet is the most popular communication tool in global, but when it collocation with the e-democracy, it will show low-effectiveness when the peoples are interested in the politics. The British government had paid effort in the networking to find more citizens pay attention and participate in the politics but in the article state that it seems to be the wrong assumption as people who are not interested in the politics, the electronic democracy will not help to grab their attention although it is in the internet form.

However, if reciprocity online is distributed, it will work better and benefit to the e-democracy as in the article said that reciprocity means helping someone because, at some unspecified point in the future, you will need someone else to help you out too. It is rational realization of ‘do unto others as you would have done to yourself’.

Due to the reason of popularization of social networking in internet, even politics others also spend many times and money to develop the applications which can meet the teenagers and also the social goal. Nowadays, the companies spend lots on the broadcasting area like radio and TV as these kinds of broadcasting had large popularity and it has the most effectiveness to the audiences in the ways sharing the information by using the medium. This is applied in the application too. Many creators find any ways to expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.

So, the e-democracy should not be target on the peoples who had the qualification that can involved in the politics but also the ordinary peoples as this group of peoples had closed connection with the internet and they also had the highest possibility change from ordinary people to the people who can participate in the politics. It can create the electronic free spaces for the peoples to exchange their ideas and opinion to create the communication’s relation.   

Week 8- How twitter will change the way we live?

What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online application that is part of blog, part  of social networking site, part cell phone or IM tool which designed to let the users answer the questions ‘ what are you doing’ and ‘what are you thinking of’ by using 140 characters for each ‘tweet’. It also let the users find the responses from other tweets through online resources that they are interested in music, movies, even a common topic. Twitter is very similar with Facebook which is other social networking site which is much more popular than Twitter as they are both involving to the users’ mini updates. Besides that, the users can follow anyone to know about the latest update for the personal status of ‘what they are doing’ and also their latest news. For example, the celebrity use Twitter to increase their population as their fans can communicate and follow the latest news of the celebrity.

Twitter changes our life in the ways:

1.       News and opinion.

Traditional newspaper normally update one day after the accident but through twitter, peoples sharing new information and news update on the spot, it maybe from the victims or the sides. So, the news spread faster than the newspaper compare with twitter.

2.       Searching

It the information is for entertainment or news update, searching it on Twitter is more accurate compare to the search engines or news article as articles mostly filter by the big company to defend their reputation. The search engines mostly are more written by the historians but if you want the article recommended by peoples or had the highest response rates, Twitter is the best ways and application for it.

3.      Advertising

Now is an internet world which people more likely use internet as the media compare to TV, radio and outdoor advertising. Mostly internet advertising is more effective comparing to the others because peoples spend more time in internet world though mobile devices, computer or any devices they could access to internet.   As Twitter is a trend which have millions of people using it, so advertise through this media platform can meet the advertisement objectives.

As my opinion, Twitter got its good and bad as people can use it as a personal status updated but 90’s generation is too addicted in Twitter is not a good phenomenon too. The first thing people do every day is posting their status instead of greeting with their parent. People will have less face to face communication with their parents and in the end it will become digital’s world as people will communicate through the electronic devices.

Twitter is the platform of building relationship too. Through Twitter, users can follow the peoples they concern such as high-school friend, colleagues, relatives, parents even friends that had lost contact for a long time period. Through Twitter, they can know what they are doing recently and also find the friends they had lost contact for a long time. So, it is a good application for building relationship too. If Twitter and Facebook these kind of social networking keep assisting, there will never lose contact and people can follow their old friends as frequency as they can.  

Week7- Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing

What is mass amateurization?

Mass amateurization means the process whereby the two parts between experts and amateurs (a person does a thing because of his/her pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons) is dissolving and creating a new category of professional amateurs. It means that shift away from professionalization. For example, people change to writing to the internet rather than writing to the print media as internet creates a space or platform that encourages people to write out loud.

Compare with traditional publishing and weblogs

	Traditional publishing	Weblogs
Intrinsic value	Publish anything in print, more work & high cost. Large market share taken by big companies.	Platform for unlimited reproduction and distribution of written word, low and fixed cost
Extrinsic value	Need to convince a professionally skeptical system to take risk on print publishing due to the reason high cost on large scale printing.	Effortless as people can write out loud without asking for help and permission.

In mass amateurization, everyone can become professionalization as there is not constraint for them. People can take photo and share their photo through internet (weblogs, Facebook) although there are not professional in the particular field. People can share their ideas or mind in the written form through weblogs to tell the worlds what are they thinking about without any restrict compare to the print publishing. In print publishing, the publisher will edit the things that you write and publish to the public but the writing is not valuable to the author as that is not the original work that he or she wants to share about.

However, there are still limitations for weblogs posting or publishing the original works as it will become worthiness because weblogs doesn’t pay for the work but print publishing does. Like Shirky said in the article:

‘Oxygen is more vital to human life than gold, but because air is abundant, oxygen is free like weblogs make writing as abundant as air, with the same effect on price. Prior to the web, people paid for most of the words they read. Now, for a large and growing number of us, most of the words we read cost nothing.’

However, recently, weblogs start to pay some rewards to encourage peoples to write more. The most famous or higher rated post will be given some incentive to encourages the webloggers to post more as webblogers will always be the de facto farm team ( people who written in practice or actuality, but not officially established). Those incentives will get from the advertisements which advertise in the particular weblog, personal sponsors or getting donations from Amazaon and Paypal tip jars.  

As conclusion, each types of publishing have it good and bad, like weblogs will be less credible compare to print publishing as mostly weblogs were written by the amateur and the print publishing is written by the professional who are more reliable by the public as professional are the expert in their field. This will become the limitation of weblogs but the one things that amateur can win professional is the creativity as amateur can publish whatever they one without restriction and they can written loudly whatever they think or the ideas in their mind. 

Week 6- The Culture Logic of Media Convergence

This week, we learn about media convergence.

What is media convergence?

Text + photos + audio + video + graphics = multimedia.

Convergence means the context of media. It refers to the technology driven unification of different media channels. In addition to convergence at the distribution level there are areas in which the same content can be re-packaged across medial for example; computer games and films use the same content in different ways. According to Henry Jenkins, media convergence is more than simply technological shift. Convergence refers to an evolution process of technology like nowadays cell phones are not simple telecommunications devices that use for contact peoples. They allow us to play games, download information from the internet and receive and send photographs even text messages.

Media can influence a person through changing their perception.  Peoples believe what they see in their own eyes. There are few theories that mean media can influence people behaviour such as cultivation theory, magic bullet theory and also hypodermic needle theory. When peoples spend long-time period in a particular television programs like sexual, violence or horror, peoples’ behaviour tend to change because they will imitate and learn what the see and hear on the media. Due to this reason, gate keeping theory shown as a role that filtering the content that ‘they’ think will influences the social behaviour.  ‘They’ refers to different media controllers from different countries. However, according to the journal, it said that: ‘convergence is a risk for creative industries because it requires media companies to rethink old assumptions about what it means to consume media- assumptions that shape both programming and marketing decision.’ This decision narrows the range of the creative peoples from limit them to come out with new creative ideas in creative fields.   

Nowadays, people learn not only from TV, radio or print media. Internet had an important role of shaping public’s perception. Through internet, people can know the truth from the debates. So, in my opinion, the media should not filtering so much as people can know from the internet and they will feel they had been cheated by the society as consumer doesn’t like to be cheat. Media convergences affect us positively as well as negatively. Therefore, people should know how to use it for our benefits and not letting them bring negative impact to our lives. 

Week 5 In Against Intellectual Monopoly by Boldrin & Levine

This week talks about intellectual monopoly and intellectual property. How Watt related to intellectual monopoly?

Before this, let have a reviews for Watt’s first,

James Watt (1698-1782), at nineteen he was sent to Glasgow for learning the trade of a mathematical-instrument maker and he returned to Scotland in 1757 and established his own instrument- making business. Watt soon developed a reputation as a high quality engineer. In 1763, Watt was sent a Newcomen steam engine to repair. This made him start his go into more studies on discovered the ways to make engine more efficient and he finally success produce a steam engine that help him earned money and clear his debts. His stream engine was very popular on the century as the engine was four times more powerful than the original engine which design by Thomas Newcomen.

So, answer to the question: “How Watt related to intellectual monopoly?”

The steam engine that developed by Watt was too powerful that it can help to promote economic development. So, many people started to do further studies on the machine as Watt was the only one who sell the steam machine. To prevent anybody else from making a steam-engine like the one he had developed, in 1755 years, Watt had been granted a patent from Parliament. For the next twenty-five years, they had a virtual monopoly over the production on steam-engines.

Nowadays,

There are still intellectual monopolies which happen on Microsoft and Apple. Apple increasing using patents in an aggressive fashion just like Microsoft. As recently people use jail breaking to unlocking the application which needs to pay in Apple. Although jail breaking of Apple devices was legalized, Apple intends to patent its mechanism which allows it to detect a jail broken iPhone, iPad or iPod and restore it to factory settings.

To know more details, you can refer to this link:

http://techrights.org/2010/08/24/datel-settling-apple-spyware-swpat/

As in the book “Against Intellectual Monopoly”, it reaches the conclusions that are at variance with both sides. There are good and bad for intellectual monopoly.

In the intellectual property:

It divided in to 3 broad types that recognized in the legal systems:

1.       Patents

A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the Patent and Trademark Office.

2.       Copyrights

Provide protection for authors “original works of authorship”, including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works, both published and unpublished.

3.      Trademarks

It serves to identify the goods, services, and ideas.  Trademark rights used to prevent others from using a confusingly similar mark, but not to prevent others from making the same goods or from selling the same goods or services. It also uses to protect a title, slogan, and other short word phrase too.

As conclusion, I feel that all the intellectual property is the law that uses to protect the author original work and advice people to create and explore for new ideas. It can to produce more creative works to the industry. However, in the consumer sight, it will become not reasonable due to the intellectual property law. Some of the “black heart”  businessman will increase the price for the original work as no other people can produce the same things and consumer need to buy in higher rate. So, there are pros and cons for the intellectual property and it will be a long journey for arguing on the existence of intellectual property.