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. 
"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.
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.
e in that virtual world.
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).
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.
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?
As technology advances, many people turn to the internet in search of their "kind" of people. They join online groups, forums, social networking sites etc to connect with people from all over the world. According to Wikipedia, a virtual community or online community is a group of people that may or may not primarily or initially communicate or interact via the Internet. There is not a need for strong bonds among the members in an online community. An email distribution list may have hundreds of members and the communication which takes place may be merely informational (questions and answers are posted), but members may remain relative strangers and the membership turnover rate could be high. This is in line with the liberal use of the term community (Wikipedia, 2007).
Truthfully speaking, the only online community I am more involved in is Friendster. Other than that, I guess I don't pay much interest in other kinds of social groups or forums that I could join. Due to this blog assignment, I had no choice but to join a social networking service known as Twitter. I was not sure in how it works and when I was done with the subscribing, I got quite annoyed that I have to keep updating on the same question " What are you doing?". After a while, I finally realised that it works just like a message board. I find it pretty interesting to be updated on what my friends were doing 5 minutes ago and so on. 
I feel that Twitter is definitely an online community because as noted by Rheingold, people in virtual communities use words on screens to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, find friends, lots of idle talk (Virtual Communities, 1995) amd provide information at the same time as well. That was exactly what we were doing while my friends and I were twiting away in Twitter. Besides that, it was mentioned also mentioned by Jan Fernback and Brad Thompson the structural process that is associated with community is communication. Without communication there can be no action to organize social relations (Virtual Communities, 1995). In Twitter, communication is on-going every now and then. At times it might lag and slow down a little, but the "chit-chattering" never stops!
"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.
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).
eriences 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.
e 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
For myself, I never posted a video or any comments in Youtube before. However, when I was younger, I used to be nuts about this British pop group known as a1. I logged into their official website often and checked their message board regularly. At first, it was really JUST a message board where fans simply leave their messages for the band. As time goes by, people began to talk about their own experiences with the band. Not only that, many offered to do favors like helping other fans to get autographs and pictures of the band when they dropped by in the county. A simple message board slowly developed into a forum. Fans shared information or asked questions about the band. I remembered that there was this time a1 dropped by in Singapore. As the band was always busy and never really left messages at the website, some fans who did not meet the band at all had their hopes smashed. They wanted so much to give the band their encouragement and support but they did not have a chance to do it. Thus, I offered to help by leaving a message at the website, asking the fans to write down whatever they wanted to say to the band. I'd write down their messages in a beautiful notebook and pass it to them personally as I was going to attend their autograph session. Before long, I get tons of replies to my message. I could not believe how thankful the fans were.
LINKS .
*My Personal Bloggie!*
*Woman's Blog*
*Faithy's Blog*
*Ah Ying's Blog*
*Friendster*
*Hotmail*
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