After all this..

After all this, I have something to tell....

Remember the first time I attend the class, there were some people like me, missed the first class and so they would need to ask what to do and catch up. Then I remember when my classmates were talking about posting diary and articles on their blogs, many of them doubting how come some people doing that as routine which they could never do that.

BUT, in fact, I personally have more than 3 blogs.. its not like routine (hmmm.. its bit crazy if you asked me to post something but I couldnt really think about something to write) but.. haha yes, I have many blogs.

Oh, but I also found some people wrote a bit of diary in their school blogs as well.

After this cutie, I have to move on and start doing my tourism economic research report which I hate the most. hahha.. Did I tell that I'm majoring hotel management before? Yer I know its nothing related to this subject, the IT multimedia thing, but I love computer. Actually I wish I choose to do IT as my major.. (was thinking to do interior design or web design).. Anyway, have fun everyone, and my dearest tutor & lecturer. ;)

You such a fun guys!

THE LAST OF LAST, SHARE MY POLAROID AND FUJIFILM INSTANT FOTOS!

LOVE & PEACE

Essay

Marc Prensky's "Emerging online life of the digital native" and Dave Weinberger's "A New World" both present different views of contemporary internet users. In light of your own experiences with new technologies do you think they are accurate portrayals? Discuss why or why not with specific examples.





Internet has become one of the things that most of people cannot live without nowaday. Marc Prensky's "Emerging online life of the digital native" and Dave Weinberger's "A New World" both reflect this phenomenon by different views. This happened to most of younger generation and as well as some adults. It is not hard to understand why would the number of Digital Natives grows so rapidly. This new technology makes digital migrant abandoning the traditional activities and changes our daily life style. Digital migrant has their own online identities and enjoy living with those what brought from the new digital native which included varied activities, communicating, educating, sharing and collecting.




Varied activities is one of the biggest reasons that why people immigrate from the reality to the digital world. These activities are included online games, buying and selling, brain storm/puzzles, arts, creating and more online recreation. Some youths deem that online games are part of their living essential, and grade up their levels is their daily routine. They enjoy the self-achivements and the reputation in the digital native which they may not obtain from the reality world. Also they can make up an ideal identity and choose to be any characters they want to be. Some of them may just enjoy the moment they team up with their online buddy and fight with the virtual enemies. Migrant is also doing business online. They do buying and/or selling or just window shopping. In the market of digital world, people can find almost everything they're looking for, and the price is usually cheaper than the reality. There are plenty of online shops. For example, amazon, yahoo shopping and lots more. Or they can participate and enjoy the auctions which could be eBay or Yahoo auction. Moreover, they have more choice as the market is globally, and sellers gathering here from different countries. There are also puzzles and brain storm for any ages of migrant to participate. They can whether join in a game room to play with other migrant or just play by themselves privatly. Digital migrant can also do art things such as drawing, scratching, building web sites and other online recreations to statisfy their interests or just to kill their spare time.






Secondly, communicating is another important reason cause people immigrate to digital world. As letters take time to write and deliver, communicate through internet has become a better choice. It is easy to access and fast to arrive. The most common communication tool that supplant tranditional letters is email which sent instantly. In addition, there are some other communication softwares that convenient to migrant for instant live chatting such as MSN messenger, Yahoo messenger, ICQ, Skype and Google talk. They can do private or group online chatting, leave offline message or even voice chatting and web cam. This definately make the digital natives distance less. In the reality, its being expensive to have long distance communication and so that makes people feel time is limited. However, in the digital world, communication tools make it easy, cheap or even free, and its world-wide communication. Migrant who doesnt have a cam, there are many of facial and mood icons that help expressing their emotion. Furthermore, there are other communication tools that don't have to be installed. Currently, the most popular tool is Facebook. It is used globally. Migrant can not only communicate with their friends but also meet other new friends. They can even choose whom to be their friends and reject others without being too rude. The chatting room, which is all about meeting strangers and become friends. There is a phenomenon happened as I've noticed that some people meet in the digital native, and turn into a relationship even they never really see each other before. This is also happening in the online games.



Last, the digital natives achieve sharing, collecting and educating. Some migrant would join a forum or several forums, and usually there is a theme. Migrant would share and post any latest information they know in the related forums, and/or share their related experience and knowledge. While these migrant are sharing, the others are learning from it. Sometimes this would happen as a Q&A form. For example, several migrant joined and became a member of a computering forum. Some of them could be experts, they're there to share and try to resolve others problem. Once if any members got a difficulty about computering, the others may be able to help. It is convenience and fast to get the suitest solution rather than looking in the old edition books. Or they would just share the latest news about computering. The educating resouce in digital world are numerous, but migrant only learn whatever the things they're interested in or for their own purposes. On the other hand, migrant share intimate details of their personal and emotional lives by using weblog. They may share their journey, or just diary. Originally this would just be a plain text form, however as the technology has been improved a lot, migrant can now create albums to share their photos and videos so that they may present diary with the combination of their words and photos. Migrant also sharing and collecting musics, movies and so much more in the digital world. The statistics are that 40 billion songs have been downloaded in 2008. They use different software, and peer to peer (P2P) for downloading and collecting different types of files. They're fast, cheap or free and last longer.


Digital world brings many of benefits and changes. The migrant can do both things that they're doing in the reality, and those things that can not be done in the reality. Its so hard for migrant to get back to the old way they live. Digital world has become part of them, or even the whole world. Some people may say that they can live without the internet, but internet doesn't delegate the whole digital world. And funniest thing is, they still cannot help themselves to surf internet by using their mobile or smart phones. The others, they will tell undoubtedly that they can never or impossible to live without this digital world.





by Liyen


Reference
Sean Adams, 2009, "95% of music downloads in 2008 were illegal - DiS reacts and suggests two solutions"(http://drownedinsound.com/news/4136081-95-of-music-downloads-in-2008-were-illegal-dis-reacts-and-suggests-two-solutions)

choose a good laptop - plus mini laptop, CULV

Talk about laptops, it definately wont be the mini laptops for me.
But I'll 'try' to be objective to talk about how to choose laptops. ha!



so, here is the question.

what would you concern when you buying a new laptop? Its performance? specification? weight? size? appearence? brand? or price? or maybe you know nothing about laptops so just get the newest one or whichever that media say its good?



If you have a preferred brand, everything becomes very easy.

but if now, I have my own steps to help my friends to figure out which laptops suit them best.





1. think about what you'll use it for?

Are you going to play online games? graphic design? daily use? some office works? sufering internet? If you do play online games or doing graphic design, please concern the graphic of the laptop and don't even think about CULVs or mini laptops. If not, most of the laptops can satifying your needs.



*the online games I talked about in here mean the one that need install into your laptop (e.g. WOW) , not the web online games.





2. Size & weight

Choose the best size for yourself.

Warm remind, screens that below 11" laptops (inc 11") will hurt our eyes.

I'm the person who cares about the size and weight very much. 12" laptops are always my first choice and no more than 2kg. but if you don't care about size, skip this step.





3. Make a budget

How much would you like to spend on it? make your own budget.

Normally I'd ask my friends their budget first then start my searching and give advise. However I found that sometimes their requirement will over the budget so.. I put this in step 3. You can pretty much tell the price range once they tell their enquiry. if they want a better graphic, you'd say it will be more expensive because normally laptops are with standard or basic graphic blah blah blah. If they tell you they would like the brand to be vaio for example, you can tell them its gonna be much expensive than Acer or Asus and so on (this happens in Taiwan, vaio are so expensive and become one of the brands that I'd not to buy).





4. Compare the specification

Yer, in the budget range, choose the ones that have better specification. Of course you'll compare all specification but if you don't understand those things just check the common ones.



CPU

If you care about the speed of your laptop, choose the one that has better CPU. Duo Processor? I love it. Runs so smooth and speedy (as this 3C killer is using duo processor laptop for 4 years and still quite fast). It was expensive when I got the duo processor laptop but now they're all quite chaep.



Memory, storage, display.





5. Go to shops

Go to shops? doesn't mean go and buy it straight away after all these simple steps. Go to shops to feel the laptops you may buy. Try their keyboards, the touch pad (?) and see what they look like. You know on the websites they're all been edited and look so fatastic in the photos so you may want to have a look the real ones.



6. Seek the feedbacks

Seek the feedbacks from other users online.





step 7 only suit for now..

Check the system, buy the one that is Windows Vista PREMIUM so that you can get free upgrade to Windows 7 after it release.









after all these steps, the thing that disappointed me a lot is their size and weight. Its so hard to find 12" laptops that I like. Well... I saw one by Fujitsu and the price is... making me cry :_( Ha.. I think I may get the Acer 3935. and I checked the price, from AUD$2299 inc GST. wt....???!! guess how much in tw? AUD$1XXX. much cheaper. guess I have to wait until I go back Taiwan and get one over there.





Mini Laptop




Here I'm not gonna tell you their features, disadvantages or something like that. Nor introduce any mini laptops that you can find in stores. Here, I just want to share the mini laptop by Fujitsu which I don't see many in Australia.




pic: mini laptops compare

Yes, 3 of them are mini laptops. From left to right, they are Asus EeePC, Toshiba then Fujitsu. I know once you put the Fujitsu next to the other ones, they look like normal laptop size. However, Fujitsu's price is not 'mini' at all. Its price just as expensive as the normal one but the specification are just as other mini laptop. Well.. I don't think it is worth to buy but I just want to show how amazing that the size is. (seriously I think if a mini laptop is over AUD$400, dont even think to buy it. its not worthy!)







CULV



what is CULV? its "Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage" which is laptop with low voltage. This is the laptop that I would say between netbook and notebook. It definately works better than mini laptop, and we could say that it almost a normal laptop. the only difference is the CPU. But let me tell you, CPU for me matters a lot. If you just use it to run some website, MSN, Facebook, Microsoft office, CULV is a good choice. Its light, good at temperture control, long battery life and cheap. Bad news is, the warranty is shorter than other laptops. But it such a pretty baby ay?


The laptop 3C killer is using - Acer TravelMate 3020



Seriously, I never seen it sell in Australia, even I visited Acer centre once and they couldn't repair my laptop because they didn't have any TM 3020 pieces here. The best thing was, it came with 2 batteries so you can charge both of them and bring them with you, then you dont have to worry if there is no outlet on the wall. However, 3C killer is not only good at killing 3C products but also knows a bit of tricks. Yer, she disappeared her second battery. 3 years+, the room is just that big but no one could ever found it. Sigh! anyway, my slim baby got duo centrino processor bluetooth mic (which has already gone). When is the next 12" good slimmy gonna be developed? I'm still waiting......

Clean Feed

The truth is.. when I was searching clean feed, 9 out 10 were NO CLEAN FEED, not the CLEAN FEED. seems like no clean feed got more support.







What is the 'Clean Feed'?
The Australian Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers [ISPs] to censor the Internet for all Australians. This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and slow down Internet access.
Despite being almost universally condemned by the public, ISPs, State Governments, Media and censorship experts, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is determined to force this filter into your home.





just found this from the nocleanfeed.com





well.. seriously i think once you decide to use internet and put up all your personal detail on or.. you know, register some websites with your real information, well.. you should have think about hackers, stealing, and all those things might happen to you. Clean Feed? I don't think this will work, if it does, then we don't need to worry about sooooooooo much, right? and seems like people fighting this for kind of their freedom right, but once your detail get hacked, dont yell or scream or complain. you want to enjoy something from internet, you also may need to pay something back. well.. its not really as people always think "it wont be me". ha.. hackers or viruses are all the same for me and I never really care. as long as I can keep my computer alive and work well, I'm happy.









This gathering was in Brisbane.
How come I didn't see that?

Except CLEAN FEED, I think Australian Gov should think about the usage.
Well.. I'm not sure if Australian has this problem too or not really.. but seriously, limited the download usage is very very annoying and scary. why would I say its 'scary'? here I have a true story or should said my friend's experience to tell. He was living with a usage monster, and they were over the limited usage of the month, normal there would be 2 options (this is very depends on the supplier or the company). I'm pretty sure they were using BigPond which is taking penalty plus over usage fees. (I know the TPG will slow down your speed, very slow) ha.. unfortunately, they didnt get any notice when they were out of limited usage so they just download whatever they want as usual. Guess how much for the bill (inc penalty and over usage fee)? over AUD$3000. that WOW me a lot!!! No kidding.

anyway, that is all about internet. part of my life.




Reference
fotos above are from http://au.wrs.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0S0zu9jJ8pK0G4A.DgW5gt./SIG=122ta4v7d/EXP=1254848739/**http%3A//www.flickr.com/photos/ocarr/3104746380/

hi there, 3C killer

here I am.. again. let me share another story of 3C killer.
well.. this just happened last night.
while 3C killer tried to force herself doing some assessment works, she decided to move her laptop from her little messy room to the living room. don't ask why because you should know how easy it is to be distracted when there are full of interesting stuff surrounding. anyway, she decided to sit on the seat that she used to sit, which was the one facing to the TV but far away from the power outlet. The only way to sort this out was using the outlet from her room as her room just facing the living room. but, once she decided to do that, she should be very careful each time if she wants to leave her seat. however last night, she wasn't careful enough. just the moment she stepped on her charger cable, @$%#%^%.. the laptop dropped on the floor.


another tragedy.


but, yes! she is still using her laptop typing this story.
fortunately that she loves her laptop so much and her laptop does too, it still works.. but not too well.
next article, she is going to share and introduce some laptops.
just because she thinks its time to buy another one and did a bit research.



ciao!

political participation via internet

* sign e-petition

This was one of the online petition that I've signed which called "Say NO to United Nations' abolishment of Traditional Chinese in 2008". (the petition has closed)

let me introduce this petition shortly. simply it was popular to argue that whether the traditional chinese should be kept or not. As China this huge country is using simplified chinese, some people (not taiwanese for sure) thought that traditional chinese is not neccessery blah blah blah. and how stupid this arguement was all about. sigh!

* comment for a major news site

Look at what I found at ifood.tv

This article is talking about Ken Moorish (one of the farmer?) picked this apple from a golden delicious apple tree. But no one had the heart to eat it.

and this is my reply:

wow! I've seen this kinda apple few times... in Snow White Cartoon. ha.. well seriously this apple remind me that fairy tale. In one of the version, its the green apple but once the witch put the toxic on it comes red, just like this one. hmmmm.. i'd love to try this apple if i could.

*What is Barak Obama up to?
Well.. from my researching, he is apparently requiring people in USA to get health insurance.

From here could be the most difficult tasks for me so far.. because I dont know anything about Australian political things.. :( oh no! lets see what I've found.

Local Representatives of Central Brisbane: Lord Mayor Campbell Newman

The last time he spoke in parliament was on 19/05/2009. and i try to read a bit of his speech but such a tough work for me, and i dont understand anything he talked about so.. i'll save heaps of my words. well.. i dont even know what should i commence about his speech. so......

hopeless as I am about the political things.........

free softwares. why bother to pay?

download free software???? well.. I didn't pay any fees on any of the softwares in my laptop except the viruses protection one. of course some of them are illegal to do but.. you know, who would really love to spend hundreds on just a software? they are way too expensive.

here are some softwares that I think is quite useful.

K-Lite Codec Pack
Its a multimedia player, free, easy and plays most types of films.
click to download.

utorrent (BT)
P2P download-ware. you can find almost anything you want, from software to films, songs, albums.. anything. and its totally free (just dont download from the sites that need to pay)
click to download.

RealPlayer11
Its a media player, however, I never use it to watch any films or listen any songs as I use K-Lite and iTunes. but it has an attractive, great new function which is downloading films. yes, if you want to download films from youtube, myspace, any other websites, real-player 11 can do all this for you by clicking "download this film" button. well.. sometimes it shows error but works most of times. and the best thing is, the film wont be .flv so that you dont need to install a software just for watching the flv films (and the flv films are all in low quality in my opinion)

Orbit Download
don't like to use real player to download films? well.. orbit is always a good option, and my favorite one too.

WinRAR

GoldWave

some converters

hmmmmm...... well.. I use free microsoft office, free CS3.. some others which are not popular in Western but.. I have to say, I love all these lovely free software for helping me mess up my laptop :D