Week 10 - Internet and Politics

With the Singapore General Election coming up, I foresee that there will be a lot of online activity generated by people's political interests and concerns. The social media was not as developed during the previous election period five years ago, and citizen journalism was still a rather new concept then. We are talking about different times now. With the use of Facebook and blogs, it is easier for people to discuss and share their political views and opinions (as long as they do not cross the boundaries of attacking any political parties online). It is also easier for people to bring to attention the political issues that has been on their hearts and minds.

The Internet is a revolution by itself. We have seen how the Internet has brought about political change in several countries. Even Obama made used of the Internet (like Facebook and Youtube) to gain support and popularity for his presidential election in 2008. With the Internet campaign launched by Obama and his team, he won the election. The Internet also sped up the process of the Egyptian Revolution earlier on this year.

We have already seen the online video on PAP's youngest candidate Tin Pei Ling in class, and the same video is becoming viral on the Internet. I am sure more attention will be focused on her in time to come, and the social media would be the place where many voice out their thoughts about her and the election. This is just the start.

With the availability of Youtube, I think rallies will be videoed and uploaded online, and the reach of each political parties, especially of the opposition's (because of limited exposure), will be much extended. Singaporeans living or working overseas will be able to get recent and frequent updates on the political scene and social situations in Singapore and cast their votes wisely even though they are not physically here.

Change has been the big word since Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. And now, in Singapore, many are crying for change as well. No matter which party wins the majority of the seats, all Singaporeans hope is for the country to become a better nation for its people, not only economically, but as a whole.

Week 9 - Multimedia

Week 8 - Virtual Viruses and Bugs

Just recently, I kind of fell into the trap of an online security threat. I opened a web page that seems totally innocent; it is actually the web page of a food blog. Then there was a pop-up that looks like it was from my operating system instead of the web browser, saying that it is experiencing some high online traffic that might be due to an unknown virus, and urged me to perform a scan. Some weird points,

1. It looks like a prompt from Windows and I was using Mac (with the exception of Windows for Mac software)
2. I don't remember having an antivirus software on my Mac, so why is there a prompt?
3. There wasn't a cross on the top left hand corner that allows me to ignore the prompt.
Thus, I had no choice but to start the "scan". Then I was brought to a web page that looks like WINDOWS was performing the scan for me and that was when I realized I was fooled and that it might be an online security threat, a virus or a bug or spyware, or worse a Trojan. I was worried, then I remember people telling me that Mac doesn't get viruses or malware in general because malware are usually invented to target Windows users. So immediately, I went to Google to see if that was true.

To my disappointment, I found out that Windows users are indeed more targeted, but Mac users are susceptible to malware too. I went to search for a free antivirus software for Mac and read up a few online reviews before downloading one. Installed it and performed the security scan on my computer. Thankfully, nothing out of the ordinary was found.

Anyway, lesson learnt. Always trust your common sense NOT to follow any instructions or prompts that seem fishy. And always install an antivirus software, no matter whether you are a Windows user or not.

Week 7 - Google

I've briefly touched on the usefulness and importance of Internet and Google previously, but I think that writing a post purely dedicated to Google would do more justice to it.Google is more than just a search engine. It has since developed into so much more. With countless of features that it has, Google now not only provides you with search results for images and web pages, it also translates for you, provides top news stories for you, gives you directions with maps, suggest videos, books and scholarly articles that you might be interested in, and connects you with others through the use of Google Mail and Google Groups (like how Mr. Choy connects and share documents with us students through the COM125 Google group). That is not all; there are so much more Google provides for Internet users that totally revolutionized the whole web navigation idea.

Google had even developed and launched an independent web browser Google Chrome that has a minimalistic graphical user interface (merging of address bar and search bar), aiming to be a secure, fast, simple and stable web browser around. It has since gained popularity among Internet surfers, being the third most widely used browser and passed the 10% worldwide usage share of web browsers, as of January 2011. Here is a video showing 10 features of Google Chrome.



So now you see why people like using Google. It's like a one-stop station where many of your online needs are served. For both work and entertainment purposes, Google has indeed made our lives better. Still not persuaded? Google on the usefulness of Google. :)