I was reading this particular blog entry written by Raymond, and I agree with the points that Raymond has raised.
News indeed are made readily available to us - it’s practically everywhere and news can be heard or seen almost throughout the day. It has been personally observed that morning TV and radio news programmes usually consists of half hourly news broadcasts, which is actually quite convenient for those who just happened to tune into their program and also update existing viewers and listeners on the latest news or progression of a certain case.
As Raymond has already stated in his blog, in this day and age, we are definitely constantly bombarded with a vast amount of news and current affairs. Even if you stop buying the daily paper or just happened to not listen to the radio for the day, you’ll always be able to rely on receiving the news via the internet. As a majority of the workplaces are connected to the internet, online news has served as a convenience for those who are interested in receiving news updates - sites like The Sydney Morning Herald even has a mailing list to email little snippets of news updates right to your inbox.
Online news aren’t just being displayed on newspaper and radio station owned anymore - it has proliferated to include been displayed on homepages of search engines and even internet service providers. I guess in the future, there won’t be much need for the traditional printed newspapers anymore, as people will become more wired in the future and everything will be based on the internet.
Monday, 28 May 2007
Wednesday, 9 May 2007
Blog #1 - Toward the Creation of a New Medium for the Multimedia Era
I stumbled across this article the other day when I was surfing around the net, trying to be on the lookout for some interesting additions to my team’s report. Simply, this article is about the possible new direction in telecommunications technologies in the future, which the author feels will be predominantly based upon multimedia technologies. The author's idea of new media suggests an integration of telecommunication and media such as television, movies, video games and old media like books and poems. I can definitely see where he is coming from though - we are definitely living in a world which is surrounded by and value both media (such as graphic designs and digital media) and communications.
We are also currently living in a world where it is the norm to see a hybrid of different fields such as communication and entertainment come together. It was suggested that the internet, as a medium, has and will be playing a significant role in telecommunication technologies in the future. An example of this is MySpace. Although it's main function serves to be an online community where people get together and connect as friends or people with similar interests, it also extrapolates other content such as CSS, text, streaming media such as videos (most likely hosted by YouTube and music, and photos, and then reconstructed to be displayed on the same page. The internet has inherently allowed anyone connected to it and those who pose an interest in it to easily become media producers themselves - it has enable nearly anyone to make and share their own videos, podcasts etc. Nowadays, you can see tv and radio stations' websites include videos and podcasts to be readily downloaded by the general population. This can be seen on such sites like Channel 7 and 2DayFM's Kyle and Jackie O websites. The latter one is interesting because here you've got video-clips of these radio presenters, which you usually hear on the radio and rarely see in visual medium.
When reading through the article, there were several discussions about the technologies, which to me, sounded like something that was only conceivable and possible in science fiction movies like Tron and Minority Reports. Really, who knew they actually do exist?! It suggests that we need new technologies which can generate any kind of cyberspace, allows warping in cyberspace, manipulating objects in cyberspace, and communicating with residents in cyberspace. I suppose to a small extent, we can generate any kind of cyberspace by changing skins of individual chat-rooms as can be seen in using MSN Messenger or creating different layouts for our own blog and websites, and to a large extent, we are able to communicate with other residents in cyberspace through avatars. Personally, i'm not too sure about the other two points because how can an individual be able to grasp and manipulate something that only exists virtually? Is it possible, and can it really be done? Can we really remove the physical barrier (the screen) which exists between us in the real world and the virtual world when we are venturing out into the cyberspace?
Generally, the article describes several user-focused technologies and placed huge emphasis on user-to-user interaction and the blending of the real and cyber realms. There were mentions of current technologies such as online video games which incorporates role-playing as the hero/heroine, which is nothing out of the ordinary, however, what caught my eye was a technology called MIC Exploration Space (seen in page 3 of the article). It basically blends the real world (the person) with virtual forms such as underwater creatures or plants, which sounds like a cool technology because it allows the individual to see themselves interacting with these virtual forms on a screen output. Again it is a fusion between computer graphics and real images, and allows us to create and interact with our own cyberworld.
It appears to me that in the future, multimedia based telecommunications are definitely the way to go as we begin to realise what we want out of these technologies, especially in terms of broadcasting tv through the internet medium. Despite the issue on copyright, there are companies such as Telstra’s BigPond changing that by offering legal movie and music song downloads (for monetary exchange of course). Although our current technologies are not necessarily in the place where we like it to be at the moment, we can definitely see a marked improvement like in the animation industry, where animated movies like Finding Nemo and Happy Feet has wowed and captured audience (young and old) with its life-like qualities and movements.
Let me know what you guys think about this article! :)
We are also currently living in a world where it is the norm to see a hybrid of different fields such as communication and entertainment come together. It was suggested that the internet, as a medium, has and will be playing a significant role in telecommunication technologies in the future. An example of this is MySpace. Although it's main function serves to be an online community where people get together and connect as friends or people with similar interests, it also extrapolates other content such as CSS, text, streaming media such as videos (most likely hosted by YouTube and music, and photos, and then reconstructed to be displayed on the same page. The internet has inherently allowed anyone connected to it and those who pose an interest in it to easily become media producers themselves - it has enable nearly anyone to make and share their own videos, podcasts etc. Nowadays, you can see tv and radio stations' websites include videos and podcasts to be readily downloaded by the general population. This can be seen on such sites like Channel 7 and 2DayFM's Kyle and Jackie O websites. The latter one is interesting because here you've got video-clips of these radio presenters, which you usually hear on the radio and rarely see in visual medium.
When reading through the article, there were several discussions about the technologies, which to me, sounded like something that was only conceivable and possible in science fiction movies like Tron and Minority Reports. Really, who knew they actually do exist?! It suggests that we need new technologies which can generate any kind of cyberspace, allows warping in cyberspace, manipulating objects in cyberspace, and communicating with residents in cyberspace. I suppose to a small extent, we can generate any kind of cyberspace by changing skins of individual chat-rooms as can be seen in using MSN Messenger or creating different layouts for our own blog and websites, and to a large extent, we are able to communicate with other residents in cyberspace through avatars. Personally, i'm not too sure about the other two points because how can an individual be able to grasp and manipulate something that only exists virtually? Is it possible, and can it really be done? Can we really remove the physical barrier (the screen) which exists between us in the real world and the virtual world when we are venturing out into the cyberspace?
Generally, the article describes several user-focused technologies and placed huge emphasis on user-to-user interaction and the blending of the real and cyber realms. There were mentions of current technologies such as online video games which incorporates role-playing as the hero/heroine, which is nothing out of the ordinary, however, what caught my eye was a technology called MIC Exploration Space (seen in page 3 of the article). It basically blends the real world (the person) with virtual forms such as underwater creatures or plants, which sounds like a cool technology because it allows the individual to see themselves interacting with these virtual forms on a screen output. Again it is a fusion between computer graphics and real images, and allows us to create and interact with our own cyberworld.
It appears to me that in the future, multimedia based telecommunications are definitely the way to go as we begin to realise what we want out of these technologies, especially in terms of broadcasting tv through the internet medium. Despite the issue on copyright, there are companies such as Telstra’s BigPond changing that by offering legal movie and music song downloads (for monetary exchange of course). Although our current technologies are not necessarily in the place where we like it to be at the moment, we can definitely see a marked improvement like in the animation industry, where animated movies like Finding Nemo and Happy Feet has wowed and captured audience (young and old) with its life-like qualities and movements.
Let me know what you guys think about this article! :)
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