THE END, AND THE BEGINNING!

Finally, after a long week of studying, no social life, and not a lot of sleep, the exams of the Social Aspects of New Media and Communication Theory are finished for now. Moreover, the summer holiday is coming closer and closer. However, there is only one thing left to do for this semester; finishing my blogging assignment!

During the time I was writing my first blog, I was very skeptic about all those popular Social Media networking websites like Facebook, Hyves, and Twitter. However, after this semester I learned a lot of new things about the up and down sides of Social Media. In addition to the knowledge gained during the different courses this semester, I learned the most about Social Media by just diving into it and experience the positive and negatives aspects by actively use it.  In the end I must say that I need to adjust my earlier opinion about Social Media. During the 14 weeks of blogging and experiencing Twitter, Facebook, and other new technologies more intensively, I also experienced the advantages of it. Although, my opinion is still skeptic, because a lot people indeed use Social Media very wrong (see my blogs about Privacy issues concerning Facebook, and the rumors spread around via Twitter), there are some real advantages of using Social Media and new technologies. 

The last mentioned one, new technologies is the topic with which I want to close off this final blog. During the course User Interface Design, as a group we needed to develop, design and evaluate a user interface.

As most of you will experience from time to time, while travelling with public transportation services, waiting on a bus or train to come is very irritating. Moreover, waiting is annoying, time consuming, and boring. However, we have found the solution for waiting; an interactive puzzle game called ‘Buzzle’.  This interactive game can be played, together or alone, on a billboard at a bus stop. It is the perfect solution for you to make waiting more fun. The game is very simple; try to complete a puzzle by moving the puzzle pieces to their right place with your hands. Moreover, the game has also a competition element it in.  Different cities in the Netherlands compete against each other by solving the most puzzles in a certain period of time. Special about this interactive game is that you can join the ‘Buzzle’ Facebook network to add your contribution of playing, see the statistics of other cities, other friends who also played, and many more.

Look at this video to get a good impression about ‘Buzzle’:

This was my last blog which I had to write for the course Business Information Technology. At first I did not like the assignment because I was unfamiliar with writing blogs and did not know a lot about Social Media, but in the end I think most blogs turned out quit well. I even enjoyed writing them. Therefore, I hope you also enjoyed some of my blog posts and for now I wish you all a very nice summer holiday and for the ones having exams; good luck.  

And maybe you never know I start writing blogs again.

THE END…

THE FUTURE!

Do you ever wonder how your life will look like in ten years’ time?  

Everybody thinks and dreams about the future from time to time; however, nobody can actually predict what will happen. This week I want to give it a try and give you a view of how our world will look like in the future; it will give you an impression of how we will live our lives in about ten/ twenty years’ time.

A couple of weeks ago we talked about the rapidly changing technologies and this week I want to go a step further with this. Today, not a long blog with text, but some interesting videos that caught my attention during the User Interface Design lecture and searching the web further on YouTube.

Can you imagine living in a world like this?

What do you think of these future visions of Microsoft and Samsung, is it a realistic point of view? According to these videos, our lives will highly depend on technologies or even better said; our lives will be digital in the future. With these points of views, it is almost impossible to ‘survive’ in these predicted digital worlds, without a certain amount of knowledge about technologies. However, 200 years ago people could have never imagined that working with computers and mobile phone would become such an ordinary thing. So, maybe in ten years’ time we will think the world, in the eyes of Microsoft, is just as ordinary as sending text messages with our mobile phones.

Although, I am excited and curious about the world in ten/ twenty years’ time, I do not want to miss reading my old fashioned ‘paper’ book and magazine from time to time.

Talk to you again soon!

REAL OR FAKE EMOTIONS, CAN YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE?

People express emotions in very different ways, via non-verbally and verbally expressions. An Italian person will most likely express 'sad' emotions in another way than for example an American person will do. Moreover, all the reality TV programs at the moment contain a wide variety of peope all expressing different emotions, but nobody actually knows if these emotions are real or fake. There are major differences in the realness of emotional expressions. In an interview conducted for the course Business Information Technology, Martijn Goudbeek explains how to gather and detect realistic and unrealistic emotions.  

Martijn Goudbeek, working at the department of Communication and Information Science at Tilburg University, is specialized in the production and perception of emotion, nonverbal communication, speech perception and speech acquisition, and the production of referring expressions.

Watch the following video as a result of our interview and learn how to gather realistic emotions.

Talk to you again soon!

THE PERFECT MATCH!

Finding true love, online or offline?

Let me start with mentioning the following names to you: Lexa, Parship, Be2, Match.com and Relatie Planet. What is the first thing that pops up in your mind when you see these names? I am sure you immediately recognized one of them.

Today, I want to talk about online dating sites and the effectiveness of online dating. With this subject I want to go back to The Social Aspects of New Media. As already mentioned before, The Socials Aspects of New Media is also a course that I am following this semester.  A couple of weeks ago we talked about the development of romantic relationships online and more specifically via an online dating site. This lecture made me curious about online dating and the effectiveness of these websites. Moreover, is it really possible to find ‘the man or woman of your dreams’ via an online dating site? In order to talk about the effectiveness of online dating and romantic relationships, you first need to know the definition:

ONLINE DATING: “Similar to newspaper personals (but with much more information), individuals construct a profile, describing themselves and often providing photographs of themselves and sometimes sound bites and videos. Users typically have to pay to use this service and once they identify a person whose profile they like, online contact is made through the system to gauge whether the other individual might also be interested. From there, individuals typically organize to meet face-to-face (Whitty & Carr, 2006)”.

ROMANTIC RELATION: “It usually implies an expression of one's love, or one's deep emotional desires to connect with another person. This is typically accompanied with intimacy, passion, physical contact (e.g., hugging, sex), compassion and affinity”.

In this online era, the popularity of online dating is increasing every day. Online dating even has to some extent taken over less traditional forms of dating such as personal ads in newspapers or magazines and video dating. In addition, there are many dating sites available on the internet. There are two types of online dating sites namely, the general dating sites and special interest dating sites. General dating sites are sites where everybody can subscribe and has access to. Some examples of these dating sites are Lexa and Relatie Planet.  

The special interest dating sites focus on specific target groups with specific preferences, such as vegetarians (Vegadates) or Christian (Christian Match) people.

Another, online dating bureau that caught my attention is not the one that matches two people together but people and animals. This online dating site, called verhuisdieren , matches pets with their future owners by character features instead of outer appearances.

Online dating is real business, people spend large amounts of money in order to find the perfect date, and at the same time the dating services receive money for matching people. When you just want to explore online dating; on many dating sites subscription is for free. However, for example to get more options, seeing other profiles or sending messages to other people most sites ask a certain amount of money per month. The following scheme shows some prices in euros:

According to Mashable, online daters should not be considered desperate anymore. Online dating is popular and it is becoming even bigger than the online porn industry. An important advantage of an online dating site is that the system is trying to find the perfect match for you according to your living place, length, looks, character, job, interests, hobbies, and etcetera. People try to present themselves in the most positive way at online dating sites; men tend to lie about their age and women lie about their weight. Nevertheless, there are people that seriously believe that they will find the man or woman of their dreams via an online dating site. Moreover, there are people that have actually found true love via the help of an online dating site. These people got married, got children and lived happily ever after

However, in the lecture we also talked about the reasons and motivations for people to find a partner via an online dating site.  People use an online dating site because it is a good alternative to the pub and the club scene, because they are shy or reserved, they felt that there are no other options left, it is more convenient, and because of the privacy it affords. Furthermore, another reason could be the high pressure at work. This leads to less leisure time, which makes people look for other alternatives way to find love. Moreover, the amount of romantic relationships developed at work are declining, due to that sensitivity about sexual harassments is growing (Whitty & Carr, 2006).

In addition, if you decide to search for the perfect match on an online dating site try the BAR Approach to find a match more successfully. With this approach you need to create your online profile in such a way that is represents both your most ‘attractive’ and ‘real’ self. Online daters claim to be attracted to honest and genuine people. Hence, the most effective profile is one that has a good balance between an attractive and real self (Whitty & Car, 2006).

What do you think of dating online, do you think it is effective and that you can build the same romantic relationships online as a romantic relationship developed offline? As from my point of view, I think that online dating is a good alternative for people who have troubles with presenting themselves and getting to know new people. An online dating site can help these people in making the first contact with a man or a woman. Although, in the end when meeting face-to-face a person has to do it on their own without the help of an online dating site. On the other hand, this should be easier because the face-to-face meeting is with someone you already connected and matched with on the internet. I am sure that there are people who definitely have the ‘luck’ to find true love via online dating. However, love is something you cannot ‘force’ to happen; it ‘hits’ you on a moment when you least expect it. 

Talk to you again next week!

Lastly, I do not want withhold these eleven interesting facts about online dating from you.

Reference:

Whitty, M. T., & Carr, A. N. (2006). Cyberspace Romance: the Psychology of Online Relationships. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

NEW, NEWER, NEWEST!

As we all experience from time to time; time passes by very fast!

The last weeks I talked a lot about the Social Aspects of Digital Media, however, this week I want to talk about the technologies that are changing very fast. In addition to these blogs I have to write for the course Business Information Technologies, we have to write a paper about the information systems within a company. Writing this paper made me think about the technologies of the past and how fast everything is changing at this moment. This feeling got even stronger when I visited Maastricht last Friday the 25^th of March. It was the day that Nintendo launched its new Nintendo 3DS and Apple launched the new iPad 2.  People were even waiting in line in front of the Apple store!

Can you still remember the first mobile phone you got? I will never forget that ‘beautiful’ turquois colored Swing telephone or endless playing snake on that Nokia 3310. Do you still know how you felt when you played your first game at that very ‘cool’ grey Gameboy? I definitely do!

Nowadays, technologies are changing very fast; without a Smartphone with an internet connection you are nowhere. In addition, when I received my Blackberry last August I was very happy, however, this hype already passed. Now, everybody wants to have an iPad and the competitor brands like Samsung and HTC do not know how fast they also have to bring such tablet on the market.

Look at the following examples; they illustrate what I mean with these changing technologies.

GAMEBOY/NINTENDO

MOBILE PHONES

PRINTERS

However, it is nice to see that all these technologies and systems become better and more advanced. No one can imagine anymore how it would be without sending emails, checking Facebook, sending Tweets and surf the internet via their mobile phone. Today’s society heavily depends on technologies, especially their mobile phone; without it people feel naked. Worse of all; it is true, when I forget my mobile phone at home, I will immediately return backwards to get it.

Although the systems become more advanced and the designs look a lot better than in the past, is the quality of these new systems still as good as they were? Or due to the fast developments the quality is actually decreased? The new Nintendo 3DS has been launched about one week ago and there are already users complaining about the system. Users experience a so called ‘black screen of death’. Furthermore, Nintendo warned that children under the age of six should not play with the new Nintendo 3DS because it could be harmful for their eyes. However, to me this seems conflicting because such a game computer is meant for children to play with, right? In addition, three days after the launch of the iPad 2 in America somebody claimed to have hacked the system.

Moreover, the amount of competitors in the different markets has been increased over the years. There are more and more competitors who want to offer customers the best products, but even more important the newest products with the latest technologies. Nobody wants to stay ‘behind’. But are these devices checked on flaws enough before they go on the market? Is there enough time to evaluate? Or is the competition faster and faster and does this has a negative effect on the quality?

The last example illustrated above is a new 3D printer, which seems very cool. As the video shows, the printer can produce physical objects within several minutes. At this moment it takes quit some minutes to produce a certain object. Most likely in the future within only two minutes you could have for example a new pair of shoes. Now, you might think; “A new pair of shoes within only two minutes, that sounds really good”.  However, if this printer can produce a new pair of shoes, how fast could someone like Kaddafi produce new weapons?!

In sum, I think that the increased competitors in the market puts serious pressure on the different developers of computer systems, mobile phones, tablets (like the iPad and the Galaxy Tab), game computer, et cetera. Furthermore, I think that this could have consequences to the eventual quality of a system. The market is moving very fast, this leads to less time for pre-testing and evaluation of new systems. Moreover, it puts more pressure on developers to produce new systems within limited time. I think this is an important reason why many users of for example mobile phone devices experience problems and why they not always work how they should work.

How do you experience the latest technologies?

Talk to you next week!

DREAMING OF A JOB AS MAYOR; TODAY IT IS POSSIBLE!

Today, a completely different subject! I want to avoid you to become bored about my frustrations about social networking sites. As from the start of these blogs I am on a journey to become ‘Liberated’ and find out the positive aspects of social networking websites. This week I was searching the web again to look for some interesting social networking sites, and I found a relatively unknown social networking site; FOURSQUARE! 

You might think; “Where did you live the past years, I already know this forever?”  I still want to grab this opportunity to talk about this social networking site, which I seem to like at this moment, and that is not something which happens very often. 

Foursquare is a location-based social networking website, which is mostly used via a mobile phone application. It is very popular in America. Users check-in via Foursquare on a certain location, where they are at that moment; this could be the library, the supermarket or a very popular club. Every time you check-in on a location you receive points, so the more you check-in on the same location the more points you earn. Furthermore, when checking-in on a ‘new’ location you get bonus points. With this application you can see where your friends are hanging out and if they are near, you can for example join them. The GPS system of your mobile phone is used to connect to your friends.

Pay attention, if you get the badge on the left, you have become the ‘SUPER MAYOR’ of a location. It means that you have checked-in the most at a certain location.  When someone else then checks-ins in at the location of which you are the ‘Super Mayor’, he/ she will get to know you, because you are mentioned as the mayor of that location.  Your own 15 seconds of fame! However, be aware that someone else can easily steal the ‘Super Mayor’ position from you. Being a Mayor means that you are a loyal customers of a certain location; you might get rewarded from certain businesses for being a loyal customer.

However, do not be sad if you do not have the ambition to become a Mayor; there are many other badges to earn. The badges serve like a medal, which you can earn for certain achievements. I selected some nice examples for you:

Another, nice thing about Foursquare is that you can give ‘TIPS & DOS’ to your friends. You could give tips to your fellow users about a certain location you have been to. This could be negative, in a sense of: “Never go there”, but also in a positive way. For example, you know a nice and cheap restaurant, which serves the best spareribs ever and they have a very good discount night a Thursdays. You can add this tip into your Foursquare account, and anyone else who wants to have a good and cheap dinner can see your tip and save this tip to his or hers personal ‘to-do’ list. This can also work beneficial for restaurants; they could generate more guests via Foursquare.

Furthermore, this location-based social networking website already has partnerships with well-known companies.  A good example to mention is that of PEPSICO; Foursquare gives them a live notification if someone is nearby a grocery store, restaurant or gas station, where PepsiCo sells their soda drinks. In turn, PepsiCo can then present these users with an offer which gets them in that specific location. This gives PepsiCo good insides in what is going on at the marketplace and the behavior of their target audience.  In addition, PepsiCo launched an application for the iPhone, called Pepsi Loot. With this location-based application in combination with Foursquare, PepsiCo is rewarding their loyal customers. Customers can collect points by checking-in and drinking a soda from PepsiCo, with these points fee music can be downloaded.

In addition, Foursquare did not forget the ‘die-hard’ Twitter and Facebook users; you can easily link the application to your Facebook and/or Twitter account.  Last but not least, some experts even call Foursquare the new Twitter.  I am not sure if that will be the case, but it is a nice application of which I am sure also becomes popular in the Netherlands. The competition element, earning points for checking-in, and receiving different badges for different achievements makes it fun and certainly not boring. Moreover, it is not only entertaining for the users, many companies could benefit from Foursquare. If someone check-ins very often on a certain location, it could generate more traffic to that place. This could in turn lead to more loyal customers and profits.

I really started to like this location-based social networking website; which is definitely a good step towards my goal to become ‘Liberated’. You should check and explore it yourself; www.foursquare.com, and do not hesitate to tell me what you think of it. I am curious to know!

Watch the following video and find out how to ‘UNLOCK YOUR WORLD’:

Talk to you again next week!  

Special thanks to: Mashable, Frankwatchers and the New York Times.



TWITTER; NEWS, RUMOR, OR GOSSIP?  

I hope you all survived ‘Carnaval’ last week!

Did you still remember my last blog about the privacy of social networking sites? And did you not randomly post all your drunk and embarrassing pictures of the last days? It could work against you.

Today, I want to talk to you about ‘Carnaval’. As some of you might know and noticed by my soft G, I live in the southern Province of the Netherlands; Limburg.  Here we all celebrated ‘Carnaval’ last week. Moreover, you could not have missed the fact that it was ‘Carnaval’, especially not if you are on Twitter.  For five days long (Thursday-Tuesday), the majority of the incoming Tweets contained messages from people having fun, drinking and partying.  

It is not the first time that I talk about Twitter, in this blog I want to talk about Twitter in a more negative sense: Twitter as a fast news source or a fast way to spread around rumors and gossip?

It cannot be denied that social media, such as Twitter, play an important part in bringing news. More often Twitter is the first one communicating about ‘breaking’ news. This was also the case with the flight crash nearby Schiphol in 2009. Twitter, was the first one reporting the crash.  Even before the crash was communicated on newspaper websites and television, the news was spread around via Twitter. Furthermore, Twitter played an important role in the Egyptian revolution.  Via Twitter people were asked to gather and demonstrate against the government.

Now, you might think what is the relationship between Twitter, news and ‘Carnaval’?  Here it is; last week I had to work outside on a big square where thousands of people were celebrating ‘Carnaval’. During work, my colleagues and I experienced a big ‘bang’ and felt the ground under our feed shake a little bit. After that we all saw a lot of smoke and small fire flames arouse from the back of the houses. These houses were situated around the square. The gas canisters of the mobile cafeteria were exploded and were on fire.  

However, what happened then was a lot of people Tweeting about the fire, and started to make things worse.  Approximately five minutes after the fire I already received Tweets with pictures about the fire. Moreover, someone tweeted that there were seriously harmed people. In addition, another person re-tweeted that he/she heard that there were three deadly victims. Not much later, I received a message from my friend, who was on holiday in Tenerife. She asked me if I was ok and did not get harmed, because she heard that there was a fire in the city center. In addition, another friend also sent me a message; she wanted to know what has happened. She heard that there was something going on, while she was celebrating ‘Carnaval’ in another village.  The news about the fire spread around very fast; partly thanks to Twitter.

In fact there was a big fire and the mobile cafeteria itself did not survive the fire.  However, people Tweeting about the fire made it a lot worse than it was. There were no seriously harmed people and most importantly nobody died. The next day, the local paper ‘Dagblad de Limburger’ reported in a short article about the fire

Watch the videos below to see the fire:

Did you know that Jody Bernal (@Jody_Bernal) died when he was on vacation in Switzerland?  In the beginning of March someone declared Jody Bernal dead via Twitter. News websites, like the ‘Telegraaf’, believed this Tweet and started to communicate the news via the newspaper website and even further via Twitter. This led to panic and confused family and friends of Jody Bernal. They had to read on the internet that he died. They did no hear a thing from him. In fact, Jody Bernal was not dead and he even did not go on holiday to Switzerland. He was planning to celebrate ‘Carnaval’ with his friends!

This fake rumor about Jody Bernal led to a lot of arousal in the media world. Well known newspaper websites like 'NOS' and 'Volkskrant' reported about the fake rumor that had been spread around via Twitter. They also reported about the 'Telegraaf' who had believed the fake rumor and started to spread it around.

The above examples made me question the ‘reliability’ of the medium. Can you trust every news fact that is published on Twitter? How do you know that someone is not exaggerating or spreading around a rumor to create panic amongst people, as was the case of the fire? However in this case the fire was made a lot worse than it was.  All those Tweets caused a lot of arousal and panic, even amongst people that did were at the ‘crime scene’.  But what would have happened, if people in de crowd notice this and started to panic, where should all those thousand people go to?

One thing is sure about Twitter, it is a really fast medium. However, I am not sure if this is always a positive aspect; in the case of the fire and Jody Bernal it is certainly not!

How do you think about Twitter as news source, is it reliable and can we randomly trust all news related Tweets?

Talk to you next week!