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!

PRIVACY ISSUES!

Do you have a private life online?

Last week we talked about identity issues and what kind of information such as; age, religion, relation, political preference and photos, you put on your social networking site. But, did you ever think of ‘who’ has access to all this ‘private and personal’ information?  

My conclusion last week was that we do not have to take life too serious when it comes down to the information on social networking sites. Moreover, we should make our own choice whether to trust or not to trust people and their information on their social networking page. It made me even a little bit more Liberated then I was before. But now, after some research about privacy, I slightly Lost this feeling…

The beauty of social networking sites is that we can communicate and share information with each other. However, when looking around on Hyves and Facebook this week, I was surprised about the amount of ‘private’ information people post on their profile. Especially, some people on Hyves put some very personal information, like photos of pregnancy tests and the ‘growing’ belly, dead and relational problems, on their personal profile.

Did you know that all this private and personal information is visible for the entire world? Moreover, did you know that even the social networking sites share your own personal information with third parties?

Facebook for example has been in the news several times related to the privacy of their members. In January 2011, the news website NU.nl published an article. Everyone could view all photos of others on Facebook, even when members had protected their photos. It was very simple via manipulation of the photos’ URL. In addition, according to Pers, Facebook also makes other personal information public for third parties. Now, Facebook is again in the news concerning the privacy of their members. Recent, Spits reports that Facebook continuous with sharing telephone numbers and addresses of their members with third parties. The information will be made public for application and website developers from for example; text-messaging and calling services. According to Facebook, members can easily prevent this from happening by adjusting the privacy setting. However, in practice these settings are difficult to find.

Putting information about pregnancy and a new born child seems nice and cute, but is it really wise to do so? Moreover, do you really want the whole world to know everything about your private life? I would not want to; before you know the whole world knows everything about you. Even people, who you do not want to know, have accesses to your personal information. My advice would be, although it is not as easy Facebook claims it to be, adjust and protect your privacy settings. Maybe you think I am exaggerating, but do you really want to share your personal information with the rest of the world?

Talk to you next week!

Click here for some tips to ‘protect’ your privacy!

Or, watch these videos about privacy and social networking sites: