The Gerald Blog

NCT is almost over November 25, 2009

As six solids weeks of NCT classes come to a close, two statements sum it up best.

The first would be “Social Media is not just for fun”. Social Media is where the mass majority of Generation Y spends their time while on the computer. This presents a ready-made demographic of people, both male and female, that companies can target should it fall into their target market.

Social media also marks the death of the irritant also known as the pop-ups/pop-unders. Social Media sites are cautious enough to not allow pop-ups to appear on their websites as it will irritate the user and hence cause them to stop going to the site. Advertisers instead use ads that appear beside the content of the page, and if the user is interested, then they can click on the link. Advertisers are charged by the number of clicks on their ads, instead of by how many times the ad appears.

This new form of advertising on social media is a win win for both advertisers as well as the social media site. For advertisers, they only pay for the number of people who are actually interested in what they’re trying to advertise. For social media sites, they do not sell out their users to hungry companies.

The second statement that I will remember fondly from NCT class is that ‘augmented reality is the future’. Like it or not, it’s a matter of time before it takes over every form of traditional medium from television to radio and even newspapers. Why watch television on a screen when it can appear anywhere at anytime in the future?

With this latest development in technology, expect advertising to follow suit. It opens up a whole new can of worms on how advertisers can utilise it. Advertising in traditional media has been less and less effective, and this new form of advertising couldn’t have come at a better. It would likely rejuvenate the industry and trust me when I say that the first company to fully understand augmented reality and use it to the best of their capabilites would become the leader of the advertising industry.

With that, my new communication technologies blogging experience comes to a close. I doubt I would blog about future new technology developments. I’ll leave that to the groovygenies and the mashables of the world.

November 8, 2009

http://www.wibw.com/nationalnews/headlines/69482952.html

How young is it considered too young? According to the article, children these days are faking their ages to create online profiles on wesbites like myspacae, facebook and twitter. Which begs the question, at what age is it considered too young?

According to Facebook, that age is 13. That is the mminimum age that they have set for you to create a profile. I think 13 is just about right. I think most of the people my age would remember back in the friendster days, the age requierment was 16, but even back in secondary school, we would put our age as 16 just to get a profile. And there is really no fool proof way where the websites can verify the ages.

Most importantly, keep up with technology, or you’ll end up a SUA KU!

Which puts the onus of making sure what children do online in the hands of their parents. Even at 13, the mindset of children can still easily be swayed. It’s scary to think what dangers lurk in the realm of cyberspace. However, is it right to depive these “teenagers” from something which, if done right, is actually quite harmless?

I think the easiest way to solve this problem is to be honest with your child. I, for one, have never understood how some parents refuse to actually explain to their children what sex is. Does that really mean your child will never find out? They will look for alternative forms of information instead. So why not become that source of information that your child will come to at all times?

THe same goes for cyberspace. Be honest about the dangers of cyberspace, from online sexual predators, to cyberbullying and scamming. For maybe a few years, sit beside him or her, and use the computer. You can use another laptop to talk to your child, or even play online games together. Heck, I’ve seen parents to ask their children questions on FB. There is nothing wrong with it! Let your child treat you as one of their friend, and they wouldn’t be afraid of sharing their online privacy with you. This way, you can keep an eye on what they do and warn them of any dangers at hand.

November 5, 2009

I just watched “He’s just not that into you” (yes it’s quite an old show) and it had this one scene where Drew Barrymore is most irritated with her Myspace date that she says something like “video calls, myspace, instant messaging, whatever happened to just talking on the phone”.

It just got me to thinking how true that one sentence was. At every phrase of our lives, there is always something that we will miss most. The innocence of childhood, the craziness of secondary school life, eventually we’ll remember the fun we had in our three years in Singapore Polytechnic. What would we miss most about technology?

When we’re old, would we miss the privacy we shared when technology had yet to dominate our life, causing us to be here pawns in technology’s bid to rule the world. Many movies, such as the recent movie, “gamer” have illustrated the danger that a Bill Gates-esque figure would one day use what he created to control the world.

Why don’t we stop this new-age arms race? Is it even possible to have a winner? Science and technology had its fun, now let’s go back to living in a time when we can have a date without a mobile phone going off, when bitching about other people invloved actually talking quietly in a cubicle at work, when your mum had no way of contacting you and yet she isn’t worried.

Let’s go back to a time when technology was a novelty.

October 24, 2009

An article in page 8 of the New paper on Saturday just sickens me to the stomach. Basically, what happened was a food blogger from NTU, (you can find her blog here http://myfoodsirens.wordpress.com/) wrote negative comments about a dessert place and they threatened legal action against her. Amongst the words used was “sickengly sweet” and “akin to eating  jam out of a jar”.

The dessert store in question here is Obolo, a popular dessert store in Joo Chiat. I’ve personally been to the place, so this struck a chord with me. I tried it and I thought it was decent. Nothing too great, but not as bad as the food blogger, Kaelyn, described it out to be. Its walls are literally plastered with newspaper and magazine articles raving about how great the food is.

Some of my friends might know, I write for Oops! magazine. In my time in Oops!, I have tried contacting food establishments to arrange a food review. One of such establishments was Obolo. However, they politely declined. But what I’m trying to say here is that you meet all kinds of owners when doing food reviews. There are some who won’t welcome you, while others accept you with open arms, but want you to play by their rules while you’re there, and some are just plain awesome. I would categorize Vittles in the latter category. They welcomed me and my photographer friend Alec generously and we were stuffed full with their delicious dishes that you will be reading more of in the next Oops! magazine (cheap plug alert! cheap plug alert!)

I better stop getting off course. What sickens me about this article is how Obolo threatened a food blogger, who is writing out of leisure and for entertaining readers, with legal action when all she did was voice her disapproval. As a tertiarty student who’s reading out for the fun of it, I feel for her. There’s really nothing she can do but remove the post even if she violently opposes the idea, because she just can’t afford a lawyer. I don’t even think that the two phrases that the establishment took offence to was even slanderous. I interpret ”Sickengly Sweet”  as being too sweet that it is very gelak after awhile, and “akin to eating jam straight out of a jar” as explaining that it tastes like jam.

Have Obolo become so deluded by all the great comments they have received in the past  they no longer can accept criticism. Is that what our food society have become where you reach a certain level of immortality and everybody must bow to your feet? I was open to the idea of returning to the place next time but that possibility is safely shut now.

Is the owner being way too senstive or am I wrong for standing up for a fellow food blogger? Please leave your comments.

I also have a food blog, but it’s sorta been stale for awhile, but I’ll give it a cheap plug anyway. http://the-ultimate-food-blog.blogspot.com/