This is Mother Land-the place where I was created. I guessed Yong En did not put in much effort creating me because I didn't look as good as the "billboard" girl. Well, she explains to me that she has only 1 Linden dollar and could not afford to dress me up nicely. Hmmm, I seriously doubt that. There is always such a place known as the Freebies Warehouse in Second Life. She cought have brought me there! Yet again, she came up with the perfect excuse that it is hard for her to teleport from places to places given the fact how lag her internet connection was.


I guessed I didn't have much of a choice, did I? Everything just seemed to happen so fast! It was a blur and within seconds, I, Jogious Beck am being created. On the very day I was born, I suffered from what you people call it, pure embarrassment. Yes! I was naked, just like all these people from the picture shown. I apologised for not having the actual picture of myself because Yong En refused to take a photo of me being naked. Oh well, I don't blame her. It was embarrassing enough to be born naked and walk around naked for some time, and to pose for a photo as well? I can't do it!


This is my nursery. I learnt to walk, fly, run, ride a vehicle, communicate with other avatars and so on. I sort of hang around too long in here because I had yet to complete my tutorial and was unable to teleport to other places to explore. Now, this is a picture I took, with a guy in the middle of my nursery atrium. He's really cute! Look at that body *woo hoo* Okay, I really shouldn't be checking guys out. I have missions to complete or Kevin Suisei will be after me. After walking around in circles, I managed to teleport myself to Help Island! Finally, out of my nursery!!


TA DA! Presenting Help Island. Okay, seriously there's nothing much in there but there are really helpful people around. That's one of the volunteer in Help Island who taught me the works of Second Life, and most important of all, he taught me how to teleport myself to the mainland. You cannot tell how pleased I was. As you can see, both of us look really awkward in the picture. But thanks to my helpful volunteer, my real fun had finally began!


The first place that I went to was Butterfly Island. It was hotly recommended as one of the most popular place and I can see why. It is so beautiful! I am amazed by anyone who built the fascinating and dreamy water fountain. Of course, there's another reason why I chose to teleport myself here. It's an island for GIRLS! We can do our shopping here. However, the things are pretty pricey though. There's not much you can do with 1 Linden Dollar. I wish I knew where to find a nightclub or a party but my efforts seemed to be in vain. I did the next best thing, I went to Hollywood!


VOILA!!! This is the pathwalk where all the famous movie stars left their handprints. Oh my gosh! I can't believe I was actually in Hollywood. However, I think I'd feel much better if those "people" at the background of my photo are real. It was shocking to me that when I arrived, there was no one there at all. Come to think about it, of all the places I go, there seemed to a deserted place or a place with very few other avatar. Gee, I felt so....alone in here even though I have friends in my list.



Wow. Look at the beautiful horizon. If only there is someone there to share this beautiful view with me.

Background music: Lonely, I am so lonely, I have nobody, of my own...wooo~~~

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day for me to meet interesting avatars from all over the world out there. Maybe they will teach me how to dance and bring me to fun places to explore...well...just maybe. What? Don't look at me, I am created as a Pisces, I get emotional easily.

Signing off: Jogious Beck

1:57 AMi hate HOMEWORKY

"What is this? The SIMS? Hey! It's The SIMS! No?! Hmmm......" I stared at my computer screen in complete confusion. As I explored the Internet-based virtual world for the very first time, I was amazed and shocked by the functions of the program. Not only does Second Life consist the basic functions of a life-like game, just like the SIMS, its users, who are known as Residents, can explore, meet other Residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another (Wikipedia, 2007).

After a couple of hours of hands-on experience and consistent lagging, I began to notice the difference between Second Life and The SIMS. Basically, The SIMS is a simulation of the day-to-day activities of one or more virtual people (dubbed "Sims") in a suburban household located near SimCity (Wikipedia, 2007). Everything has been created for you in sequence and all you have to do is follow the hints to jump start the game. There will be a green diamond on your SIM that changes colour according to your SIMS mood, and if it has its expectations met. You get to choose and design your own character and after that, you'd be given a certain amount of SIM dollars to start off with your life. The player begins to earn money and unlock items every now and then. At the same time, building a strong friendship or relationship bond can earn you more SIM dollars. It's a game in all forms (PC-oriented, PlayStation, Nintendo etc) and it is designed to be just like the way you experienced life, full of ups and downs. However, one thing that distinguish the SIMS from Second Life was that it is less interactive. Players who plays The SIMS via PlayStation can interact with the second player. That's about it.

As compared to The SIMS, Second Life has no limitions. As quoted from Edward Castronova, "There will be a world that fits the fantasy of any life you want to lead," (World of Warcraft: Is It a Game? 2006). I guessed that's the gist of Second Life. In that whole-new virtual world that's ever changing every single day, people create places, items, services, products they fantasized. It's almost like Utopia in there where everything is perfect and just the way you want it to be. There are features in the program whereby you can fly or teleport yourself to a place, or a country. Unlike the real world, this only takes a few seconds. Besides that, you can socialize with people from all over the world and there is no boundaries for friendships.

We cannot see Second Life as an online game because from the way I interpret it, this is Second Life-your second chance to live life all over again. It is your world, your imagination, a place where you can be whoever you've always wanted or dreamt to be. It is a world filled with dreams, hopes and opportunities where we can't resist to not be a part of it. In the real world, there are many things that are beyond our control whereas in Second Life, you are your own boss. Besides that, there's no such feature in Second Life that your mood is determined by the expectations you need to meet. The player does not have to eat, does not have to go to the loo, does not have to sleep as compared to the SIMS. In this way, it actually saves a lot of time because there is so much to explore in that virtual world.

Unlike the SIMS, Second Life is "played" for real money. Whenever you log into the official website, there will be this page that encourages you to upgrade to premium membership. When upgraded to premium membership, you'd be charged immediately for the full amount of subscription plan specified-monthly, quarterly and annually. However, you'd be able to own land and at the same time, buy or run your own business. The Marketplace in Second Life currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world unit-of-trade, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges (Second Life, 2007). How fascinating is that? You get the kick moving your avatar around, socializing, exploring places, shopping and build stuff, you also make money out of it if you start a business.

After some comparisons with The SIMS, I conclude that Second Life is more than just an online game or for entertainment. Anyone with a vision and plan can make his/her dream come true in no time. After all, according to Joi Ito, "Yes, it's just a game, the way that the real world is a game," (World of Warcraft: Is It a Game? 2006).



REFERENCES:

Second Life. (2007, April 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11:40p.m, April 4, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second_Life&oldid=120268909

The Sims. (2007, April 2). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 1:43a.m, April 5, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Sims&oldid=119832651

Levy, S. (2006). In World of Warcraft: Is It a Game. Retrieved 12.30a.m, 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14757769/site/newsweek/page/3/print/1/displaymode/1098/.
Second Life (2007). In Second Life What is Second life?. Retrieved 1.15a.m, April 5, 2007 from
http://secure-web11.secondlife.com/whatis/

11:56 AMi hate HOMEWORKY

The global web is "shrinking" and linking the world together. Everything seems to be connected in every way. We would be notified in spilt seconds in whatever tremendous things that happened at the other end of the world. In no time, everyone will be talking about it, be it on the internet, or in a random cafe where you sip coffee and chit chat. Have you ever wonder why gossips tend to spread so fast? This is why! People talk about everything and comment on things that not even their concern. However, some opinions and suggestions of random people are good and that's the reason why citizen journalism existed.

As quoted by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, "Citizen Journalism is the act of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information" (Citizen Journalism, 2007). This is when citizens take action by acting as part of the media. People showed their participation and concern to a certain issue by providing the media with extra news or valuable opinions that could be taken into serious consideration.

In Singapore, our freedom of speech is pretty limited. A front page news could happen anywhere at anytime, but that does not mean our professional journalists, reporters or photographers would be at the right place and right time to film everything down. Thus, the Straits Times came up with STOMP(Straits Times Online Mobile Print) which allow our citizens to participate actively with the media. It integrates content and activities in the three platforms of print, online and mobile. These three platforms will enable STOMP to interact and engage with Singaporeans in exciting new ways (STOMP, 2006). Straits Times Editor Mr. Han Fook Kwang hoped that readers had found a place whereby they could express themselves, to interact with the news media and among themselves through STOMP (STOMP, 2006).

As you can see from the picture, the website contains many interesting news and hot topics. The topics discussed can ranged from serious news issue to where you can eat the best bak chor mee. At the same time, it also organizes different contests and so on for STOMP users to get together and know each other. After exploring the website, I found out that there is actually a STOMP ebay! I guess that is an interesting fact because not only it allows you to voice out whatever you think of a certain issue, it also allows you to sell your stuff and given the popularity of the website, there will definitely be other users out there who would check out your item. You can judged that STOMP could really be an ideal form of citizen journalism in Singapore. However, if you noticed, this website seemed to be catered for a younger generation. Serious issues like the wellness of Singapore or Politics are seldom touched on. It can't be blamed because an average Singaporean is only interested in coffeeshop debates, not the weighty national issues.

Besides that, Singapore is too strict with its freedom of speech. Everyone who writes about serious issues that evolves around the country wellness and government are careful with the words they used and the content they write. We never know when we'd get sued for blogging a random post about such issue with no evidence to support our content. Thus, it is hard to really bond the citizens and the media together because many people are held back in whatever they want to say.

Another thing to worry about is how trust is managed between the media and the citizens. Technology is so advanced these days that it has given us a world in which almost anyone can publish a credible-looking web page. Anyone with a com­puter or a cell phone can post in online forums. Anyone with a moderate amount of skill with Photoshop or other image ­manipulation software can distort reality. Special effects make even videos untrustworthy (Dan Gillmor, 2004). If all these are possible, who's to say that news cannot be distorted and do we believe whatever we read even if it's coming from a credible source?

I personally feel that Blogs, STOMP, Global Voices etc are the first steps towards the freedom of speech. The boundaries to voice out whatever you want to say still exist though. One may feel strongly about a certain political issue but was being deprived to voice out his thoughts due to the risk of being sued. His comments and opinions may be valuable and considerable, who knows, it might contribute to the wellness of Singapore. I think there should be an understanding between the Singapore government and its citizens. Of course, when we are given the space and freedom, it does not mean we can abuse it. It is important that we compromise and voice out only whatever that's appropriate. Lastly, to increase more national and political news in STOMP, I feel that Global Voices (which discuss about more serious issues)and STOMP could collaborate with each other. In this way, young readers could check out what's new in today's dating game, and at the same time, learn more about how other people feel about the political issues of Singapore and other national issues. The users who are more serious abut big issues could join STOMP as well and from there, they could learn about what issues are the younger generations concerned of and it would provide a better understanding between the young minds and the adults. There is definitely room for more improvement in STOMP and that we should not be restricted just by blogging to ourselves and our friends. Step up, voice out and be someone appreciated!

1:35 AMi hate HOMEWORKY

2:11 PMi hate HOMEWORKY

"Singapore is a safe place, relax la, no worries. No one will be that sick to watch you lor, not like you are a celebrity or what." Yes, a very typical Singaporean mindset. Of course, most of us did consider the danger of having our privacy invaded, but we often brushed that thought away, thinking, “So many people out there, I won't so suay be the next one to be watched la.” Well, we are wrong. Ever since the Tammy incident, we know that our privacy could easily be exposed to the outside world. It is no longer safe to keep your personal information in mobile gadgets anymore because you never know when it will end up in the wrong hands or overseen by somebody else. Now, even the internet itself is not privacy-guaranteed. We do not know what awaits us online and most of the time, we’d be taken back by surprise when we find out that our little space are being invaded.

Before we take measures about protecting our privacy, we got to start off by understanding what privacy stands for and how important it is to reserve our rights of being watched by anyone out there. According to Wikipedia, privacy is the ability of an individual or group to keep their lives and personal affairs out of the public view or to control the flow of information about themselves (Wikipedia, 2007). There is always a limit on how much information one is going to provide to another. I know that psychologists often tell us that it’s important to reveal yourself to friends, family and lovers in stages, but few boundaries still ought to remain. (Privacy Lost, 2006).

Due to the advancement of technology, I guess that not many people care about exposing themselves to other people. For example, there was a study done on the increase in vanity amongst college students. Professor Jean Twenge claimed that most of the students have the “I am special, look at me” mentality and that's why they are not afraid or shy to broadcast themselves in Youtube (Associated Press, 2007). Many people, of course, don't care if they embarrass themselves before strangers on the internet. It is now commonplace on a website to reveal hobbies, favorite foods and music, and pictures of children, in an effort to create an illusion of intimacy (The Naked Crowd, 2004).

Today, people obtain intimacy and trust by self-revelation rather than by shared experiences or fixed social status. They try to prove their trustworthiness by revealing details of their personal lives to prove that they have nothing to hide before a crowd (The Naked Crowd, 2004). I personally feel that it is true to a certain extent. For myself, I’m actually quite a private person. I only reveal information to the people I trust as I’m well aware of the fact that not everyone could keep a secret. Some might even threaten or use your weaknesses against you one day. By being alert and aware, the chance of my privacy being invaded is not high, just as long as no one plays a prank and hid a camera like one of those candid camera shows.

As quoted from Jeffery Rosen, “the age of the internet forced us to increasingly interact with strangers whom we will never meet face-to-face” (The Naked Crowd, 2004). Normally, I used to reveal myself more to people I knew online rather than my friends. It is strange but I always feel that by telling your problems to a stranger whom you know you’d never meet, your secret is safe with him or her. However, as I grow older, I learnt that some things are meant to be kept to myself. Though Singapore always encourages free speech and stuff, it’s not completely freedom out there. There was this case a while ago where two students were prosecuted for discriminating and humiliating a certain race group in their blogs. As we all know, a blog is supposed to be an online diary where we can choose to keep it private and pen down our most personal thoughts. I relied on blogging a lot since I’m too lazy to write in a diary book. I used to blog a lot in the past and not many of my friends knew that blog address. I wrote a lot based on my personal thoughts, and actually felt comfortable exposing myself as I never thought of it to be exposed to millions of internet users out there. However, after I heard about this incident, I knew that my privacy could be at stake of being invaded, thus, I ended up closing down the blog. Despite having a new blog now, I am unable to bring myself to pen down my inner thoughts just like before. With the knowledge that someone might read it, I felt uncomfortable exposing myself completely.

After reading through the articles and based on personal experience, I feel that it is true that many people simply do not care about their privacy being invaded. No one really bother to take action to do anything just as long as it does not affect their lives. The danger of being watched is no one will know when, how, where and who is watching them. You will be caught by surprise when you realized your personal information is being leaked out. It is crucial that one has got to protect his rights as an individual and keep his most personal information out of reach to anyone. Be alert, don't be......the next Tammy.

REFERENCES:

11:42 AMi hate HOMEWORKY

"Hi there! How's everything with you and Jeannie?"
"What's wrong with us?"
"You told me yesterday you guys almost broke up."
"No I didn't! I wasn't online yesterday, how did you know?"
"You told me!"
"I..."

Wait a minute. You could almost swear that you were not online yesterday. How did your class's number one gossiper know about the break up? Suddenly, it struck you. You share a computer with your younger brother and he was the only person around when Jeannie and you started a huge fight.

This is just the first warning sign of your online identity being used by someone else. A little personal information got leaked out, but it will not affect your life. What could be worse is that someone out there could be imitating you online right now, collecting enough personal data of you so he could hack your bank accounts, racks up debt in the your name, collects the cash, and disappears. You would be left holding the bag and it takes years for you to clear your name which was damaged by the credit-rating (Mitigating Identity Theft, 2005).

As we were growing up, our parents often remind us to protect our IC, our student passes or any other relevant personal documents. Not anyone is as nice and considerate to return you your ID without taking the advantage. So, is it safer to keep your personal information online? Can we rely on the security systems provided by the bank or credit-card systems online?

Before we pursue these questions any further, let's talk about online identity first. What is online identity? According to Wikipedia, an online identity is a social identity that network users establish in online communities. Most Internet users prefer to identify themselves by means of pseudonyms instead of using their real names online (Wikipedia, 2007). Identity is definitely necessary in virtual communities. In communication, knowing the identity of those with whom you communicate is essential for understanding and evaluating an interaction. Yet in the disembodied world of the virtual community, identity is also ambiguous (Identity and the Virtual Community, 1996). In the internet world, you could be anyone you want. Every single person you meet online should be given the benefit of doubt if he/she is worthy of your trust. Take mIRC for example, its a free and simple chat system which anyone can register. After going through the registering procedure and choosing your server, you get to create your own nickname. Its almost like the scenario in the youtube video clip whereby everyone is trying to be someone else. Sexual predators usually use the chat systems to lure ignorant teenage girls to their 'traps'. It is so simple to convince someone else to believe you, given that the chat system is a peer to peer sharing system, which means you can send music or picture files over to other people. Being able to see your 'photo' provides a sense of trust to the opposite, this is what we call 'a wolf behind the screen'. Besides that, people could also hack into MSN or email accounts of a renowned person and collect the victim's information from his friends. By doing so, they could either hack into bank accounts of the person or ruin his reputation by creating havoc under the person's name.

I was unaware of the importance to protect one's online identity until a good friend of mine trusted me with his ebay account. Due to his national service duties, he need me to help him check his ebay regularly in case there are messages about the items he's selling and if there's any problems regarding payments made for his items. I did as he said, check his account regularly, and that means at home and in school labs. When he found out I did check his account in school, he was mad. He gave me a whole lecture about hackers. At first, I did not understand why was he making such a big fuss about the issue especially when I remembered to log out each and every time I checked his account in school. After I attended the presentation by the guest speaker, I was stunned. I learnt about a program known as key logger which automatically records down your username and password. This way, hackers could easily steal your identity in ebay and take advantage of the available 'resources'. In ebay, you are charged a certain amount when you list each item. The money will be automatically deducted from your bank account. Thus, if anyone were to grab hold of your ebay username and password, that person could list as many goods as he wants to sell and you will be left paying the bill for the listing. Not only that, the hacker would also be able to assess to your paypal and he would definitely not hesitate to transfer all the money in your paypal to his own bank account. Ever since, I become very careful with usernames and passwords, and I never check ebay in school again.

Stealing of identity online has become a common crime these days. It is not easy to prosecute hackers and we never know whatever we download or information we filled in would end up in somebody else's hands. Therefore, it is strongly encouraged that we should never download unnecessary programs or give out information freely as the online security is not 100 percent safe guaranteed. Besides depending on security programs we download, we should also hold up our guard by changing our passwords regularly and keep a look out on websites we visit. It's the same in the virtual world and the real world, one's got to keep his identity safe in all ways possible.


REFERENCES:

Schneier, B. (2005, April 15). Schneier on Security: Mitigating Identity Theft. Retrieved 8.45p.m., February 22, 2007 from http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/04/mitigating_iden.html

Online identity. (2007, February 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 1:14a.m., February 22, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Online_identity&oldid=108207999

Donath ,J S. (1996, 12 November). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community, MIT Media Lab. Retrieved 12.45a.m., February 22, 2007, from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception

12:58 AMi hate HOMEWORKY

"You got to learn to share, don't be selfish..." my parents said this to me when I was a kid *I'm sure most of our parents said that to us* 15 years later, I still hear, " You got to share, don't be selfish..." However, its not my parents this time. Its the public who demands it now.

According to Wikipedia, Sharing is the joint use of resource. Besides that, sharing also figures prominently in gift economies, and is a key feature in the developing field of free software and open source software, with implications for economics. By looking at the definition alone, we can guess the most basic idea of what gift economy is. A gift economy is an economic system in which the prevalent mode of exchange is for goods and services to be given without explicit agreement upon a quid pro quo (the Latin term for the concept of "a favor for a favor") (Wikipedia, 2007).
People exchange without expecting anything back from the person in return. Sharing is a huge deal over the internet. Anything ranging from music and video files, forums, and advice could be shared among the public.

In the ancient times, sharing of food was practiced in a hunter-gatherer society (Wikipedia, 2007). By doing this, there were no particular individuals to rely on for the food source. The people in the society might not know one another and it was harder for them to be obligated to return the favor. However, a balanced reciprocity would occur within the group as a whole (Kollack,1999). When someone had done a favor for a person they might not know in a group, they would not expect the person himself to return the favor but they anticipate or believe that in future they would also be given the helping hand. Therefore, everyone in the society played a part in it to gather food daily and if they failed to find any, they would not go on an empty stomach as food souce was shared. Not only that, it helped to maintain the survival of the society and kept the community close together.

Today, we are sharing without knowing. I never knew about Youtube until the beginning of last year. It is a popular free video sharing website which lets users upload, view, and share video clips (Wikipedia, 2007). People could share tons of information over this website in video format. For example, we get to download shows that were not aired yet in our county from the uploaders and are able to watch ahead of time. Youtube also allows viewers to leave comments after watching a certain video clip a user upload. If it's a music video or exclusive scenes about your favourite band, you could leave comments about it or share your own experience. It is somewhat like a forum whereby people of similar interest will watch a certain video, they leave their comments and if anyone is interested in what they talked about, they could reply a comment to that. Besides that, uploaders could also get opinions from viewers about certain videos they make, on whether the image and sound is good, or if the viewers like the videos. The comments come about unexpectedly and with the comments, the user could post more videos based on the demanded interest or improve on their last home-made video clips.

2:58 AMi hate HOMEWORKY

Banh Yong En *Joanne*
I'm a February Baby


loves
hanging out with friends
shopping
music
draw
read
TV!!!
Love Coffee!!





DON'T JUDGE ME
homework assignments *who doesn't?*
EXAMS!!! Life should not be determined by that you know

EXITS

LINKS .

*My Personal Bloggie!*
*Woman's Blog*
*Faithy's Blog*
*Ah Ying's Blog*
*Friendster*
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