QotW10: SL

Standing tall, standing high. I love flying

My very 1st object that I created on Orientation Island

I am falling from the sky through 9 clouds

This is sunset in Secondlife

This is so romantic, isn't it?

My name: G0d Tenk ( I want it God Tech but this is what they allow me G0d( numer 0 instead of letter o)
My cloth: Night Club ( I want to attract more females)

Hix, in fact, this is all I can do on my computer while it hangs continuously after 2-3 mins of playing. So sad!

If you are below 21yrs, below STOP SCROllING DOWN








The picture is captured while my curiosity led me to a nude beach.





Hix....hix.....



I am allowed to control a couple. I was shocked. Linden actually allows users to do ANYTHING(except kiling)

This,,,,,

QotW9: Stomp Storm

Scientifically, a storm must be formed under certain conditions. Once all the required factors being met, a storm is born with the initial power. Like a storm, Stomp has the power or the strong base for citizen journalism. STOMP provides the best-ever platform for Singapore citizens to report by videos, photos, blogs via SMS,MMS, email and web. However, in order to make a success citizen journalism website in the Web 2.0 age, STOMP need to have more activity users.
The idea of citizen journalism is that everybody is a reporter. As we take a look at STOMP, there are variety content spreading from Talk back chit chat to Stompcast... In fact, there are so many ways a citizen can become a journalist on STOMP. However, as we compare to what Dan Gillmor defined about citizen journalism- the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information, STOMP is still far away from a citizen journalism website (Gillmor, 2004).
In Singapore Seen, there are not so many new photos updated. It is probably due to some restrictions of content. Obviously, users must follow a number of rules and regulations as well.
However, there is a more free-to-discuss zone: Talk Back. I had eagerly clicked on Talk back to see how Singaporean voice their problems out before realizing that Talk back is a Vbulletin forum. So, the so-called Talk back is just a new name for Disscussion board which we can find everywhere on the Internet. Worse than that, the skin of the Vbulletin board is totally contrast and ugly as compared to the whole website.
The best content award should be given to StompCast, especially SPI series ( Singapore Paranormal Investigation). The horror reality show was filmed unprofessional intendedly. It creates a true user-generated content feeling to viewers. However, where does the show contents come from? Let's heard from STOMP

Hooked on STOMP's paranormal series? Want more episodes? Let us know in Talkback>>

So all you need to do is to ask for your content through a community board. Well, how user-oriented Stompcast is! See what Stompcast promised to users

In order to create an Ideal citizen journalism, we need to see the influence of STOMP on Singapore users. The more people surf STOMP, the more chance they will contribute and the more citizens contribute to STOMP, the more success its citizen journalism is. However, the statistic show that STOMP is not really as hot as it said.
An average of 6.3 pages is what surfers spend on STOMP. It means normally, people which surf around 6 pages on STOMP before they move to another web site. The cold hard truth is STOMP has more than 200 pages (Alexa, 2007).
Furthermore, STOMP rank 125 of all Singapore website (Alexa, 2007). It's not even in the Top 100 popular website of Singapore. How could a citizen journalism website be not in the Top 100 things that Singaporean concern about?
Below is a deeper analysis of where people go on Stomp.com.sg:

* talkback.stomp.com.sg - 32%
* singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg - 31%
* stomp.com.sg - 25%
# epl.stomp.com.sg - 6%
# starblog.stomp.com.sg - 4%
# stinkandspill.stomp.com.sg - 1%
# mmsing.stomp.com.sg - 1% (Alexa, 2007)
We can tell that people love chit chat more than being a citizen journalist.

II. How can we improve

Honestly, SPH has done a marvelous job to stir up the citizen journalism in Singapore. It has not yet succeed because of external factors which are beyond SPH ability. However, there are few things STOMP could take into consideration

1. Allow users to personalize homepage because we saw that not all users surf ever part of the website. With the homepage rite now, it is truly overloaded for audiences. There are so many things which they do not need.
2. There should be users who are editors, reviewers. We have citizen journalism but we also need citizen editors in order to make sure that reports are un-interpreted purposely.
3. Make a nicer skin for Talk Back. People are sometime underestimated the design of a community site while it is the key figure.

III. Conclusion
As David Carr recomend to "those of us who perpetrate journalism know in our hearts that it is a craft, not a profession, one that requires a finite set of skills to do competently and a lot of passion to do well", we need to cultivate Singaporeans' journalism spirit ( The New York Times, 2007). Once Singaporeans have the required set of skills, STOMP will be a better and truly CITIZEN JOURNALISM site.

References:
1. Gillmor, D. (2004). We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://download.nowis.com/index.cfm?phile=WeTheMedia.html&tipe=text/html#chap1

2. Alexa (2007). Related info for Singapore. Retrieved March 29, 2007 from http://alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=stomp.com.sg.

3.STOMP. Retrieved on March 30, 2007 from http://www.stomp.com.sg/

4. Carr, D. (2007). All the World's a story. The New Yorks Times. Retrieved March 30, 2007, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/business/media/19carr.html?ex=1331956800&en=223e434f8bf020ab&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Download Youtube videos to your HARD DISK

Guys, STOP! STOP all those presentations when we have to wait for the god damned slow Youtube video to load.
Here is the ultimate solution to get all Youtube and other video sites video.
First of all you need the best web browser in the world: Firefox. Download from the link on the right hand side of my blog

After that, Install the extension ( so called add-on)
Get it now because it supports for these following video sites: Youtube, Google Video, iFilm, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Myspace, Angry Alien, AnimeEpisodes.Net, Badjojo, Blastro, Blennus, Blip.tv, Bofunk, Bolt, Break.com, Castpost, CollegeHumor, Current TV, Dachix, Danerd, DailySixer.com, DevilDucky, Double Agent, eVideoShare, EVTV1, FindVideos, Free Video Blog, Grinvi, Grouper, Hiphopdeal, Kontraband, Lulu TV, Midis.biz, Music.com, MusicVideoCodes.info, MySpace Video Code, Newgrounds, NothingToxic, PcPlanets, Pixparty, PlsThx, Putfile, Revver, Sharkle, SmitHappens, StreetFire, That Video Site, TotallyCrap, VideoCodes4U, VideoCodesWorld, VideoCodeZone, vidiLife, Vimeo, vSocial, Yikers, ZippyVideos... and any other webpage with embedded objects.
Remember to install Flash support for your Firefox ( really , just access Youtube then Firefox will ask you whether you want to install Flash or not)
Have a good day

QotW7: Twitter , what are you doing?

I. The Online Community
One of the old traditions of online community is the combination of a forum and its portal. There would be a normal homepage with latest news, posts and statistics while forum is the heart of the online community. Users can interactive with each other through posts and replies. Then the revolutionary blog came with entries and comments. The existence of these social networks of strangers around the globe has formed many virtual communities. It is not that the world is a global village, but as McLuhan said, one’s village could span the globe. And technology must change in order to innovate and build stronger social online communities. The latest hottest trend in the world of Web 2.0 is Twitter – a new online community where people can know what other are doing.
I see Twitter as a new form of online community because of its nature, methods of communication and social networks.

II. Nature of an online community
According to Rheingold, an online community is “a social relationship aggregation, facilitated by Internet-based technology, in which users communicate and build personal relationships” (as cited in Lin & Lee, 2006). Twitter gives users a space to write whatever they like.They can connect to each other by updating friend list. The homepage is the collection of all latest entries by Twitter members. In this way, each member will be able to update with the whole communities.
III. How to use
Twitter appears to the combination of blogs, IM and mobile phone. Users are allowed to choose one of the above methods to update their contents. As the main question of Twitter is " What are you doing?", Twitter encourages users to instantaneously update their contents. Therefore, Twitter will definitely want users to utilize handphone as a main method to post entries.
Like I am in Vietnam now, I don't have access to Internet at the funeral site, I will still be able to post a live report on Twitter by using my mobile phone( I have to pay for international SMS fee)
IV. Social networks
As other online community, Twitter users will be inter-linked with each other through channels. In this way, Twitter will form many social networks within their big networks.
V. But
Personally, I don’t like Twitter. I saw nothing but a mixed of pre-existing online communities. The technology of moblogging or IM blogging is nothing new at all. Yahoo! has been integrated their blogs into IM for a long time. The sudden rocket speed spread of Twitter is caused by the aggressive. After a while, the question of how to keep users to come back is a big one for Twitter. Most of Twitter members are American while other countries like Japan, Korea ... mob blogging was an old fashion a few years ago. It will be not easy for Twitter to enter these markets.
VI. Wind of change
As Texas commentator Jim Hightower warned:" While all this razzle-dazzle connects us electronically, it disconnects us from each other, having "interfacing" more with computers and TV screens than looking in the face of our fellow human beings" (Fox, 1995, p.12), we will see more advance technology applied in online community which help to clear the gap between computer screen and human beings. Amanda Walker has already mentioned about that: " Every advance in communication changes the nature of reality as we experience it..."


Reference:
Lin, H., & Lee, G. (December, 2006). Determinants of success for online communities: an empirical study. Behavior & Information Technology, 25, 6, 479-488.


Online community. (2007, March 14). In Wikipedia, The Free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_community

Wellman.B & Gulia.M (1996)Net Surfers Don't Ride Alone:
Virtual Communities as Communities. Retrieved on March 14, 2007, from http://www.acm.org/~ccp/references/wellman/wellman.html

Bonus Mission #1: Coke Trick

QotW6: Who is who?

I. To surive is to surveil:
Managing a online community is a time-consuming and hard work. However, the joy of seeing the growth of your community can ease any pains. It sometimes becomes a good source of income for the owner as well. The happiness always pays a price: the threat of being hacked. Therefore, forum security is the most headache problem for every webmaster. One of the best ways to fight against hackers is surveillance: keep an eye on forum members.The reason is that most of the attacks come from a undercover member. Trust - in a person or in a system, such as a banking system - can be a means of coping with risk, while acceptance of risk can be a means of generating trust', Giddens writes
II. The required exposure:
As we can see from the above profile, an administrator can know a member pretty well. He can search on GeoIP member's IP in order to know where the member is living. For example, this is a free GeoIP service we can use from http://www.hostip.info/

We also able to find out members' characteristic as they exposed their MSN, Myspace, Skype, Yahoo ID.... Another way is googling email address. Even though a person hide all of his profile, he must provide a valid email address in order to register to an online forum. He might not fill his MSN ID on one forum, but he may disclose it somewhere else. And the Mighty Google will be able to trace his email address together with other information.
Hence, administrators require members to provide the above information. It will help administrators easily monitor their members' activities. If someone pose a threat to the forum, administrators will be able to ban IP or locating the attackers if necessary.
In this case, users have no choices but revealing their information to webmasters. Obviously, the information is claimed to be kept confidentially until someone hack into the database.
III. The Naked Crowd
Understanding the risk of being exposed, Internet users still reveal their identities. There must be some motivations:
- Personal branding: The idea of selling people as products began to appear in magazines like Ad Age as early as the 1970s; but the idea of personal branding didn't proliferate until the 1990s, when a series of business books emerged with names like Brand You, The Personal Branding Phenomenon, and Be Your Own Brand: A Breakthrough Formula for Standing Out from the Crowd. To invent a successful brand you have to establish trust with strangers, argues the personal branding guru, Tom Peters ( Rosen, 2004). People love to be famous. And of course, being recognized is an indispensable part of fame. The rise of social networking site urges people to show their pictures, videos, stories in order to be welcomed on every other sites.
- Social proof: As "we view a behavior as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see other performing it” (Cialdini, 2001), we will find our ways to join the stream of Blogging. Many people come to Blogs through friends, peer pressure rather than finding a place to record their daily lives. The spread of Blog is also contributed by words of mouth rather than advertising.
VI. Conclusion:
Surveillance is a sensitive word in many societies. It makes people feel lack of freedom. However, Web 2.0 is making people feel comfortable of being surveiled. RSS feed is a hidden form of surveillance. Through RSS feed, we can anonymously monitor someone behaviors EVERYDAY! Therefore, we should be careful of what we blog.


Reference:
Cialdini, R. (2001). Influence: Science and Practice. Allyn and Bacon: Singapore

Rosen, J. (2004, July 19). The Naked Crowd. Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm

Giddens, A. (1998). Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making Sense of Modernity. Stanford University Press

QotW5: Who Am I ?

- Who am I?
- Well,you are a newbie who joined our Internet Marketing forum on January. You focus on Community site building and viral marketing. Your birthday is 20th May 1985.
- No, he is not. He is an expert on our Hardware zone forum, especially Apple stuffs. He said that he was 30 years old.
- You are all wrong. He told me that he was handsome like Tom Cruise, rich like Bill Gates. He is going to marry me next month on Second Life.
- Okay okay, you all just know a part of his complicated mind. He is virtual. Leave him alone!

http://www.sfondideldesktop.com/Images-Movies/Face-Off/Face-Off.jpg

As Sartre said in Being and Nothingness: "The virtual world is different. It is composed of information rather than matter" (Donath ,1996). A person can have multiple identities AT THE SAME TIME. In our real world, he/she can't be a mad student and a quiet teacher concurrently. He either chooses to be mad at this point of time or smart at another the time. However, I can have multi personas at one point of time on the online world. It is like opening many browser tabs in Firefox or Internet Explorer. Each tab brings me to a totally different world. To name a few: Hardware Zone (IT talk forum), VNCNUS ( Vietnamese Community in National University of Singapore), IMS ( Internet Marketing Singapore), 360themes (as a webmaster) ...

Even though the above forums differer ed from each other in term of content, they required (in my opinion) the similar way to gain reputation: CONTRIBUTION. Online identity is never be trusted. Therefore, in order to gain trust from someone else, we must show how we can benefit them. Another motivation for contribution is common rewards include peer esteem, making social connections, and the natural pleasure of helping others (Masum, 2004). As a member of a forum, besides administrator position, people always want to have at least a moderator position. It's nothing but the power to control a box within the forum as if you are the bishop of a land. I was elected in a real election for the title of Moderator's Sensitive box (Sex Edu discussion) in 2006.There was campaign slogan: " Real Sex Ed builds life", give-away freebies ( clips, documents....) and of course a live Election Night. The more I contributed to the forum, the higher my reputation was. That's was how I won the moderation position in a community of around 10,000 Vietnamese students.

Besides contribution, I think BEING TRANSPARENT is an effective way to gain reputation as well. In the world where we TRUST NO ONE, suddenly when we find a peer who expose their personal life, photos, stories, we start to trust that AVATAR. We know everything can be faked but we still trust him/her much more than other members.

Transparence is like a playing with knife. Over-exposing personal information may lead to identity theft. Identity theft occurs when someone uses personal identifying information to commit fraud or other crimes (Forbes, 2005). Imaging that someone else use my identity to post nudity, political opinions which are not allowed by forum rules and regulations or even national laws. It's horrible to think of the consequences. Other sensitive information like personal email address, hobbies, cellphone number, real name, home address can be easily abused by credit card frauder.

In sum, Online Identity is nothing new or special. It's ourself or part of our inner mind. We should treat like the way we care about our name, fame in real world. We should protect it like the way we run the society.

Reference:
1. Donath. , J, S. (1996). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. MIT Media Lab. Retrieved on 20 February 2007, from
http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html
2.Masum, H, & Zhang, Y.C. (July 2004). Manifesto for the Reputation
Society. First Monday, 9, (7). Retrieved February
22, 2007, from http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_7/masum/index.html
3. Oxford Analytica (2005).Hooked on Phishing. Forbes Online. Retrieved on 20 February 2007, from http://www.forbes.com/business/2005/04/29/cz_0429oxan_identitytheft.html

QotW4: My little Community

I was lucky enough to own a community on the Internet. My little website has about8675 members within a month(and counting at the rate of 184 new members per day). On the Alexa ranking website, I am standing at 99,232th in the whole Internet world. Here is the report

My website was also featured in one of the biggest Vietnamese news website on Tuesday (24h.com.vn, 2007)

http://www15.24h.com.vn/news.php/55/138546

The success of my website has come from a very simple reason:"The Gift Economy". How could I consider my website as a "Gift Economy"? There are few reasons.

I. The Definition
Rheingold (1993) has described interaction in one online community (the WELL) as consisting of a gift economy, in which help and information is offered without the expectation of any direct, immediate quid-pro-quo. According to Rheingold's definition, every online community on the Internet is a gift economy. Without being an exception, my gift economy has the market of nearly 10,000 customers . They exchange their own Yahoo blog customized themes. And the most important thing is that all "products" are free.

II. The way it works:
Even though all "products" are free, there is still an unspoken rule : you have to give while you take. Kollock mentioned this rule as a obligation in his book "The Economies of Online Cooperation". Members in the community are encouraged to design themes or give comments on others' themes. The more themes a designer share, the more popular he/she is. And the feeling of being recognized has motivated members to contribute volunteerly. Each theme is the gift from a member to the rest of the community. And the only essential is this: the gift must always move (Lewis Hyde, 1983). From one theme, the design is spreaded around endlessly. Someone may use it or be inspired by the gift, who later create a new theme from the existing theme. This flow of ideas is the power behind my Gift Economy .

As the community grows stronger and stronger, the economy becomes more complex. There are competitions among designers. There are copyright infringements. All the characteristics of a real economy has been shaped in my small online community.

Reference:
Lewis, Hyde (1983). "The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property". 1983

Kollock, Peter (1999). 'The Economies of Online Cooperation; Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace" Retrieved February 8, 2007 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/kollock/papers/economies.htm

Rheingold, Howard. 1993. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: Addison-Wesley.Wikipedia (2007). Gift economy. Retrieved February 8, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

"QotW3: War of the Worlds”

"COPYRIGHT is so hot right now"

Ho Viet Hai

Introduction
The return of the web business in recent years has heated the topic of Copyright again. The easiness of sharing things online is like two sides of a knife. On one side, Internet users are sharing videos, photos or selling "lands", "houses" and even "avatar". On the opposite side, Copyrightedd materials are being sharing illegally everyday on the Internet. 3 years ago, in order to get a DVD Rip version of a movie, you are required to equipped yourself with hacking and cracking skills. Nowadays, everything is available at one click away on YouTube, MetaCafe or VideoEgg ... There is even a website named Eyespot where surfers can select videos to remix and create new works based on existed videos (copyrighted or non- copyrighted).
Entertainment industries, movies makers are getting headache because the simple word "Copyright".
Copyrights
There are many copyright acts. To name a few: the Bern Convention, the US Copyright act, the Canadian Copyright act, The Digital Millennium copyright act... However, in the age of Web 2.0, the Digital Millennium copyright act is probably the most referred one. The U.S government ambitiously want to maintain the laws on the cyberspace. It's a good thing to do as well as the hardest task. Copyright laws become obsolete when technology renders the assumptions on which they were based outmoded ( Digital Copyrights, 2001). In fact, sharing technologies always goes beyond Copyrights act makers one step ahead.
The Evolution of Sharing
Since 1990s, Peer to Peer network sparked off the wave of sharing files on the Internet. People were able to connect directly to their so-called "peer" computers in the same virtual network and download files. Millions of songs, software, ebooks have been transfered through Kazza, LimeWire, Bit-torrent..

Until 2004, according to Koleman Strumpf and Felix Oberholzer-Gee, “There were more than nine million simultaneous users on the major peer-to-peer (P2P) networks” (Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf, 2005). The users have also gone beyond the limit of files sharing to illegally copyrighted products sharing. There are thousands of website providing P2P links for users to download like:
TorrentSpy Demonoid

Courtesy of Userstyles.org Courtesy of AmigaOS

It's as simple as click, save the files and then wait till finishing. One of the cons of P2P is that the speed is slow. As P2p is slow, file sharing technology has evolved to the next level: Sharing in Web 2.0. YouSendIt started by offering free files sharing for files up to 1GB. Soon enough, users have used YSI as the new platform of sharing copyrighted softwares,songs, videos. YouSendIt had to revised their rules and regulations, limited file size down to 100mb. However, Rapidshare, a paid-service, is now the current leader in sharing markets.

Rapidshare tells everything the name. Users only have to click one click to upload their files, and of course, share them. Further more, Rapidshare offers a premium account with unlimited upload and download at bullet speed. Here comes the paradise of pirates: http://rapidsharelinks.org - the collection of all Rapidshare links. Even an old lady with a premium Rapidshare account know how to download the latest Windows Vista for FREE.

"Rapidshare is the most expensive website on the world because billions of copyrighted products are there for FREE"

It's great for users, it's bad for Microsoft or other corporations. As requested by businessmen, GEMA - one of the strongest collective licensing organizations in Europe representing the performance and mechanical licensing rights of 60,000 German authors, composers and publishers virtually without any competition was granted preliminary injunctions against the file-hosting platforms Rapidshare.de and Rapidshare.com (NewTeeVee, 2007). GEMA CEO Harald Heker said:

“These rulings will also be of major significance when it comes to dealing with Web 2.0 services like YouTube and MySpace in the future. They show that the mere shifting of the act of use onto the user and the alleged non-controllability of the contents do not release the service operator from its responsibility under copyright law for the contents it makes available on its website for downloading.”

The fight is now much crueler than ever before.
Where is the balance?
On one hand, if copyright laws was successfully imposed, there would be no place for third-world countries in this cyber world. Things are too expensive
On the other hand, if there was no copyright laws, big corporations would have gone bankrupt.

So where is the balance?

Let's take a look of the world music industry as a typical example.
According to ITFacts, in 2004, the top 10 countries where piracy is "at unacceptable levels" are Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Paraguay, Russia, Spain, and Ukraine. In China 85% of music sold is pirated, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said. In Indonesia the rate is 80%. Mexico, Russia, and Ukraine are all cited as having piracy rates of 60% or higher.
However, the same year ,BMI reported revenues of $673 million for the 2004 fiscal year, an increase of nearly $43 million, 6.8% over the prior year. The performing rights organization generated royalties of more than $573 million for its songwriters, composers and music publishers. Royalties increased by $40 million or 7.5% from the previous year. BMI President and CEO Frances W. Preston said both the revenues and royalty distributions were the largest in the company's history (Arstechnica, 2004)
A year later , Apple reported that the iTunes Music Store turned a profit in the fourth quarter of 2005, during its quarterly financial statement Tuesday. Customers are purchasing over 1.8 million songs per day, and the iTunes Music Store controls over 80 percent of the U.S. digital music market (Mac Observers, 2005)
Profiteers are still doing well despite copyrights violation. The fact would tell one simple thing: "Consumers are overcharged. Price could be cheaper". Lowering the price is one of the best solution for piracy crisis.
Lowering price would boost creativity
Either pirated or legal products, consumers still have to pay. They might pay for pirate CD softwares or premium account on Rapidshare. Hence, the difference is the price. As we see from the list of top 10 pirated countries, they are all poor. The poverty didn't show in the nation GDP but annual income per person. How could a farmer's son afford 1000USD for Abobe Photoshop and few hundreds dollars for future upgrading? Without piracy softwares, he would never ever been a computer experts. As Bill Gates was in Bucharest on Thursday ( 1st Feb 2007), the Romanian president Traian Basescu paid the Microsoft boss homage for the value of Windows. Well, paying homage is a lot cheaper than paying for software. Reuters reports had cited:

"Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania," Basescu said during a joint news conference with Gates.

"It helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world ...

It sounds unfair to Bill Gates, but it's the fact. Consumers are willing to buy copyrighted products as long as they can afford it.
Conclusion
There will be no ways to stop the PIRACY WAR. The Internet piracy websites is like a 7 headed dragons. When laws makers and enforces chop one head, another head will appears. Unless, there was a global operations to track down and stop all pirates in the world at the same time (which is impossible). The "dragon" is still the "dragon" while the business world still spins with or without him. The most important is to educate people to respect copyrights law because "if you don't want other steal your works, don't do it yourself first".
Courtesy of Borromeoturismo.it

Reference:
“Top 10 countries for music piracy: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Paraguay, Russia, Spain, and Ukraine”. ItFacts.Biz. Retrieved on February 2nd, 2007, from
http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P4228

Ken, F. (2004, March 9). “BMI posts record year, despite music industry doom and gloom.” ArsTechnica. Retrieved on February 2nd, 2007,, from
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20040903-4156.html

Janko, R. (2007, February 1st). “YouTube, MySpace Face European Copyright Clash.” NewTeeVee. Retrieved on February 2nd, 2007,, from
http://newteevee.com/2007/02/01/youtube-myspace-face-european-copyright-clash/

February 1, 2007.“Piracy worked for us, Romania president tells Gates”. Reuters. Retrieved on February 2nd, 2007,, from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020100715.html

COM125 Week2:TCP/IP- The Universal Language

In the world, we have 6,912 living languages (Ethonologue,2007). It's almost impossible to unite 6,192 different languages into one because of many factors like cultural, distance, political difference... If only, human can use TCP/IP to communicate as million of electronic devices are communicating with each other. What is TCP/IP?
According to Wikipedia,

TCP/IP is protocol suite combining of the "two most important protocols in it: the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), which were also the first two networking protocols defined. Note that todays TCP/IP networking represents a synthesis of two developments that began in the 1970's , namely LAN's [ Local Area Networks] and the Internet that revolutionalised computing.

Whether TCP or IP, they are both one of the most important invention which shaping and changing the world of Internet. The word "Internet" means a global and large network using TCP/IP. However, the inventors of TCP/IP like Robert E. Kahn of DARPA, Vint Cerf of Stanford University ,Hubert Zimmerman and Louis Pouzin have never ever imagined how it had influenced the Internet nowadays.
TCP/IP currently has 5 layers: Application, Transport , Network, Datalink and Physical layers. Let's imagine our Internet connection as a big Pipe ( like this FAT GREEN PIPE below)


Inside the pipe, there will be 5 different layers for specific uses of users.
If we go into the Application layer, you will see all the web applications are running at bullet speed. These application can be Web browsers, Photo uploader like Picasa.

If we accidentally fall into Transport layer, we will be hit by massive amount of traffic. There is a HUGE TRUCK of Youtube video overthere. Behind that truck, we can see tons of voices are transfered on a SBS Bus from Singapore to U.S.A. This Transport layer is mainly for Video and Audio streaming.
Network layer is originally designed to solve the problem of getting packets across a single network. Emergency cars and rescue services are working really hard to diagnose and fix network problems.
Data link and Physical link layer play the role of mover or transporter on the Internet. Virtual Private Network, encoding and decoding information, Frame Replay.. are some of the application using Data Link and Physical Link Layer.
5 layers in a Pipe, thing is just as simple as the pipe. However, since the Evolution of Internet, TCP/IP has changed almost everything in the world of Bytes.
The Standardization and Unification of TCP/IP have enabled alien networks to connect to each other. We can take a simple day of our life as an example.

Last night, after having a party, you friend have taken many pictures on his phone. He uploaded all the photos instantly to his Blog by using GPRS service from Starhub. You simply downloaded it the next morning on the bus to your PDA. The photo, later, would travel from your PDA to your laptop, then a community site. Some reporters were searching for clubbing pictures from Iraq using their satellite Internet Connection. They might find your picture and share with a friend on MSN. A guy living in Buffalo received the pictures and added some music, created a video clip, then post on Youtube.

On the journey, your pictures have been passed on an enormous number of devices. Even though they are totally different from each other like router versus cellphone, they have communicated to each other well enough not to distort the pimple on your face from the picture to the video.
TCP/IP is promising the new future of the "United World": every device is connected. Not only the Internet will be changed again but our society will benefit from this synergy. From 1970 to 2007, the nature of TCP/IP hasn't been much different. The difference is created users' demands. And Internet user will still be "the ONE" in this cyber world.

References

Ethnologue. Ethnologue, Languages of the World. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from Ethnologue Web site:
http://www.ethnologue.com/

Wikipedia, (2007, Jan 2). TCP/IP model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved January 26, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_model

History of the Internet. (2007, January 25). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 01:00pm, January 27, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_the_Internet&oldid=103255177

For Today Class

Hi guys, in this cyberworld, Identity is the TOP, the UTMOST, the ULTIMATE, the ONE which people are looking for. The sense of being recognized in the real world has been naturally injected in bloggers' blood.
Hence, I will help your to create the VERY first weapon of a BLOGGER: YOUR UNIQUE AVATAR.
Why? Simply there are lots of people who don't like to share their beauties to the rest of the world (except me). Therefore, Avatar was created as a kind of Hidden Identity. You can and you should use your Avatar as your LOGO, branded one!
Definition from Wikipedia:

Origin
The "avatar" derives from the Sanskrit word Avatāra, meaning "incarnation" and usually implying a deliberate descent into mortal realms for special purposes. The term is used primarily in Hindu texts. For example, Krishna is the eighth avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu the Preserver, whom many Hindus worship as God. The Dasavatara are ten particular "great" incarnations of Vishnu.

How?
I will only be able to help you to create an instant UNIQUE avatar like these two above.
All you need to do is to go to this website: http://imagechef.com, Type in your name. That's it!
However, remember to save the Avatar created because they will delete after a while. So, host it on any picture sharing website. The fastest way is using http://imageshack.us. Browse and Host. Nothing can be simplier!

Blog 101

A day in my life

Hi, as I declared that this gonna be A MAD SHOW ( not really like Mad.TV), I would like to introduce to all of you the very very production of Viet Hai Inc: A day in my life

Me,myself and I in the News

And this is THE MOMENT in my life, hugging May- MTV VJ

The COM 125 Daily

Want to learn how to do this cool thing?
here is the link to get it done http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp