An Inconsequential Application

Tomorrow, I start my first day in the working world as an intern.

As I’m at this juncture, between a student and a working adult, I can’t help but reminisce about my past three years in this foreign land.

I think these three years contained some of the best and worst moments of my life.

I was going to write an ambiguous, emo tweet about the past three years, but I think a proper post does it more justice.

I started my Singapore journey with a perceived inconsequential application to SP. I was actually aiming for TP’s Law and Mangement course. In fact, I thought I was a shoe-in because of my steller O level results and the constant reassurances by the International Applications woman that I would get in.

In the interim, I applied to SP just for fun. My mum told me that I should get more experience in applying for stuff, so I did. But it really wasn’t a serious thing. I just picked what I thought sounded cool, including Biomed, Video Game Design and Aeronautical Engineering. It just so happened that I clicked on Media and Comm before any of those.

And then TP rejected me. Then I got into SP. Then I cowered in fear because I didn’t know what Media and Communication was, but had no time to find out because I got my acceptance 4 days before on-site registration closed.

I went into DMC and I loved every second of it. The course played to my intense love for communicating and creating things centered around the English language. Every new module was exhilirating for me, mainly because I was so suaku, but also because I got up every day to do something I loved doing.

Most times, I felt very lonely because my friends and family were back in Brunei. But I made new friends, experienced new things, learned about a whole different culture. And the best thing is, these friends, experiences and culture were all that of my native Singapore – something I’ve been isolated from for the majority of my life.

A large portion of this fantastic journey has to be accredited to the friends I’ve made here.

All the people I’ve met have all contributed some way or another to my Singapore Experience.

I thank God for those experiences because they’ve helped me grow and understand that life is so much more than the little inconveniences of the day-to-day. Even the bittersweet ones.

To tie this back to NCT, we say we’ll miss each other, but goodbyes are hardly an option.

We’re all but a nudge away.

Thank you, SP for the amazing memories.

They’ll always be close to my heart.

The World is Flat

Some time last week, I had my turn at seminar tutorial during NCT. My topic? Globalisation.

Initially, I thought the topic as totally drab and boring. The topic was definitely past its peak – A faded away trending topic.

But as I began to read my assigned text, I realised that I may not be as well-informed as I thought I was.

From what I understand, the biggest phenomenon of globalisation is outsourcing. That’s a term we all understand and laugh about, but how well do we know the impact?

Like many other frustrated customers, I have been greeted by the Indian lady when I make calls to customer service. That’s nothing new to me. What is news to me is that each call center in India gets 700 applications daily to be call operators, but only 6% are ever hired. Technology has made outsourcing a simple affair and I never realised the huge crowd of people vying at the other end for a job thousands of miles away.

What is news to me is that being a call center operator is a highly desired job in India. I never knew that Indians were willing to do whatever it takes to get a job, including going for Language Neutralisation Classes. This basically is a nice euphemism for accent bleaching classes.

In these classes, the native Indian accent is replaced for an American, Canadian or British one. I’m not sure about you, but I would be hesitant before stepping into that rabbit hole.

Here’s something to think about: Is globalisation bring us together? Or in reality, driving us apart?

From what I can see, it has made mankind more tolerant and open to other races and cultures. But at the same time, it’s made it even more clear where the balance of power lies in our world (ie. The West). In order to advance ourselves, we need to sacrifice parts of ourselves, like our culture, our accents and our beliefs, and pander to them. I feel that this has the effect of driving the social gap between our different cultures further apart.

Regardless, I would most probably lose out to these individuals in India because I can’t give the same level of commitment that they can.

Countries like China and India are slowly taking away our jobs because there are hordes of people there who are more qualified, more efficient and work for half the price. Reuters just recently cut 1/4 of its staff and outsourced Wall Street flash headlines to a Bangalore Newsroom. That means jobs of journalist lost to someone half way across the world to someone who was willing to do it for a lower price.

How to  compete like that?

I am personally very troubled by this issue. I fear for the day I will stop being a competitive and marketable asset because people elsewhere are more marketable and more competitive.

I suppose the only logical solution is to work it harder, make it better, do it faster and make us stronger ( I totally plagiarized Kanye West), but it’s true.

As media and communication professionals, we make our bread and butter through our creativity. Considering that creativity is probably the only thing that cannot be learned from a book, I think we need to push the envelope and push our creativity to the limits. If we fall short, someone else is always willing to take our place.

Focus

I learnt a new word the other day: Continuous Partial Attention.

What this entails is basically skimming incoming data and just picking out what is relevant. The rest of the information is discarded due to the bombardment from many sources of information.

This is the symptom of Web 2.0.

It has become necessary for us to receive information from multiple sources simultaneously in order to be on top of everything. Even on a recreational level, I would engage in as many sources of entertainment at once in order to optimize my fun time.

My daily power down routine includes watching videos while playing my Facebook game while playing my DS while eating while doing my nails.

Impressive, I know.

I think the pro of continuous partial attention is that it allows us to entertain more streams of information by letting our brain auto-filter things that are irrelevant. The obvious con would be that we aren’t able to focus or give careful consideration and thought to the information we receive.

While I think it is certainly not optimum to flit between information without consideration, we don’t have a choice. If we want to keep ahead, it’s necessary to adapt ourselves to achieve the most out of our continuous partial attention.

Maybe the next evolutionary step would be having two heads to handle to handle the processing? Until then, the next challenge we all have to overcome is processing as much information from as many sources possible in the least amount of time.

A new Olympic sport anyone?

Are social media making things more important than they really are?

Long title, but that’s the first reaction I had when I saw Google’s new header.

I first found out about the moon having water through Twitter. I thought the information was interesting, but hardly ground-breaking. In all honestly, who cares about what’s happening on the moon? We’ve got enough problems down here on Earth.

Even so, the moon as water. So what?

Next thing I know, it’s suddenly a trending topic on Twitter? Mashable has 2 posts dedicated to it? Google has a header (to be fair, Google has a lot of silly headers)??

When we studied journalism, we learned this effect where newspapers could actually control what is important or not based on what it highlights. I totally agree with that, considering how often Britney Spears appeared in the newspapers was proportional to how hot the issue was.

Is social media the new newspaper? Will it have the control to make us believe what’s important and what’s not?

Dude, get the VoIP out of here

So today, our tutorial group went through the topic of VoIP.

Now, if you know me, you’d know that VoIP is the bane and boon of my existence. Which is why I’m so passionate to talk about this topic. I know it sounds totally hyperbolic, but VoIPs are my only connection to my home.

Let me explain.

I came to Singapore in 2007 to start my polytechnic education.

The whole ‘YES I’M ALONE IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY THAT HAS A NIGHT LIFE’ euphoria wore off pretty quick with the stark realization that the stereotype of Singaporeans being party animals was trump by the stereotype of them being Kiasu bookworms.

Long story short, I was lonely, but I wasn’t exactly eager to go on MSN with my parents. In my mind, my freedom needed to savoured, even for a while longer.

So began the cyber side-stepping: regardless of whether my parents were online, I just appeared offline; when my parents messaged me to go on Skype, I would feign ignorance.

To my immense surprise, my 40+ year old parents worked around my childish disobedience.

They discovered Pfingo.

It’s a VoIP by Starhub that allowed my parents to call my HANDPHONE without cost back in 2007. The service was so successful that Starhub started charging for it. While the paying economic model isn’t working out too well now, Pfingo was one of the pioneer SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) services in Asia that was free.

Although it was laggy and irritating, they got to hear their daughter’s voice every night at no cost. Unbeknown to them, their daughter was happy that there was a connection back to her family far away as well.

Despite the obvious drawbacks of lagginess and poor voice quality, I can get daily calls from my family without having to fork out enough money to support a child in Africa.

While the services may not be free 100% of the time (make sure to read the terms and conditions), I think the costs definitely outweigh the benefits.

What is a little distortion compared to having a conversation with your loved ones, right? On top of that, there has really been a clear improvement in the voice quality of VoIP services from 2007 until now. So in the near future, that may not even be a issue at all.

Plus, my mum’s VoIP convos are always a create conversation starter. It usually goes something like this:

Mum: Cheryl? This is mum.
Me: Yes?
Mum: Cheryylll. Can you hear me?
Me: Yea, I can hear you. I’m here.
Mum: I can’t hear you. CHERYLLL???
Me: YESSSS??
Mum: Why are you shouting at me? That’s very rude!

-___-

So yes, my freedom may be negated just a little bit, but I’m happier this way.

Pat Law in the House!

Miss Kwa invited Pat Law from Oglivy 360 degrees to give us a talk today.

I met Pat the other day at the Yahoo! Event. I remembered her especially because I thought she looked hot and because she hung onto the ® in Yahoo!’s signage and it gave a slight, but noticeable squeak.

She came to lecture today to educate us about how we can use tools to evaluate what’s being said on social networking sites.

I’ve always felt that when we use social networking sites, we are usually think of ourselves as the insignificant. While I may have an opinion and I may complain/blog about a company/brand, so what? No one important is going to care about what I say.

Apparently I’m wrong. Companies hire PR firms like Oglivy to improve their brands. And it’s undisputed that the only way to improve a brand is to first know what’s being said out there. Following that logical line of thought, it is clear that media monitoring online is the most effective and efficient. Nearly everyone is online and if you know how to look for it, their opinions about your brand are there.

I think the best characteristic that makes media monitoring via social networking sites most effective is the perception that no one really cares what you’re saying. When a consumer has a gripe with a brand, and doesn’t really have the guts to stick it to the man company, he just quietly blogs or twits about it.

In essence, we are all keyboard warriors.

The whole keyboard warrior-effect gives users the perception that they’re blogging into a vacuum, where no one will read it other than themselves.

Even if a blogger does acknowledge that he’s being read, to him, they’re just aliases on his computer screen. The effect of being unable to visualize these aliases as flesh-and-bone human beings causes people to be very liberal about their opinions.

When a company puts all these opinions together, they get a large wealth of information that can help them angle their campaign in the right direction. They’ll know what needs to be addressed, what are their strengths and what emerging markets they should start looking into.

Perhaps this is the idea of Wisdom of the Crowds at work again? Companies using the aggregated opinion of many to find the most accurate result of how to proceed with a campaign?

Pat spent most of her time telling us about some of the tools she uses to gather more information. #nct on Twitter to find out more, because I feel very reluctant to relinquish the power of my newly acquired spying research tool.

Just know though. You can hide nothing from these tools. Be careful.

P/S: On a side note, Google has just released Google Dashboard. It was released because there has been a lot of dissent about the amount of information Google has on each of its users.

In response to that, Google lets you view all the information it has on you using Dashboard. Go take a look. It will shock you how much Google knows about you.

The future in your pocket

Let’s talk about the Mobile Revolution.

Alexander Graham Bell would be shocked at how technology has violated his beloved telephone to become the mega-monster we see today. With SMS, MMS, GPRS, Mobitwitter, MSN mobile, MS Mobile and what have you not, why would anyone need to TALK ever again?

When Alexander Bell invented the telephone, he hoped to bring people together by letting them speak to each other verbally without physical presence. Little did he know his gadget would be so effective that people don’t even need to talk anymore.

To illustrate how much mobile phones have aged over the years. Unlike people, it gets sexier the older the gadget gets!

I absolutely loved this video. I think I owned/played with half the phones on my list. Yet, my knowledge about mobile technology is very fuzzy. Back in Brunei, at least one of my friends always had the most current gadget of that year. This gave me a lot of opportunities to handle the most current mobile technology.

Well, if I could actually TRY it. Unfortunately, DST only provided 3 services ever: Calling, SMS and recently, GPS. There are still no such things are data plans and most mobile software isn’t compatible with DST.

When Ms. Kwa showed us this video, my face became a Colon Capital O = :O

Tell me that does not make you even a little bit scared.

This is Augmented Reality. Overlaying digital information and images onto real life. Maybe what we have now isn’t so advanced, but regardless, it is still very impressive. Mai and Hazwan showed us videos of using your handphone to find where’s the nearest landmark or which houses are for sale. All delivered real time to your handphone and overlaid onto reality to help you make the most informed decision.

I feel that augmented reality is really blurring the lines of what’s reality and what’s virtual. If we ever reach the level of the Sixth Sense, there will really be no distinction because it’s convenience and value will ensure that it’s the next plateau of normalcy. Drawing a watch to tell the time and using ur hand to as a keypad will be the expected behaviour that everyone exhibits.

After prolonged usage to such technology, can we be so confident that we remember what’s real and what’s not?

Stephie comes to school

Ever heard of Fashion Nation before? If you haven’t, what’s wrong with you? I kid, I kid.

In any case, Stephie Tan (author of Fashion Nation and her own site, Stephiesays) visited NCT class to give a talk.

Her talk essentially talked about using New Communication Technologies to open a whole career path for her. Her online presence in fashion was good enough to let her quit her day job working in a bank.

She talked about using Twitter and Facebook and her blog as a platform to showcase her writing and her shop. From there, she got jobs with publications, both offline and online.

We’ve all heard of these selected few, chosen by the God of Internet, to bestow his blessings of fame, fortune and a cozy life.

Xiaxue is one of them. So is my favourite make-up guru, Michelle Phan. Kenny Sia, Cheesie… The list goes on.

I’m pimping these few blogs because I do frequent them often. They really cheer me up after a gloomy day. Even their editorials. I think that’s the mark of a good blogger. A person who’s blatantly selling you something, but you enjoy the process either way.

What the Internet provides is a very flat hierarchy, where you don’t need to best qualifications or the best anything to capture the attention of millions.

But I think we must all be a bit realistic.

Not everyone is blessed with the amazing power to enthrall millions. Not everyone is touched by the almighty hand of the God of the Internet.  Not everyone can achieve Internet stardom.

What we common folk can do however, is use New Communication Technologies as a means to an end. It is undoubted that headhunting is a sport done online nowadays. Why let all the potential opportunities slip you by, right?

Creating a professional identity by networking, interacting with others and building an accessible online portfolio of your work is only going to help you.

Stephie is a great example of how putting yourself out there (and by there, I mean the Internet) can help you open doors that weren’t there before.

I’m going to resolve to put my work out there more and more. I should always practice what I preach.

Facebook

On Thursday, Shirley and Amanda presented on Facebook and Mai and Hazwan presented on the Mobile Revolution (will talk about this in the next post).

To be frank, I’m the biggest user of Facebook and mobile technology that I know, due to the fact that I have no life most of the time. Yet, I couldn’t really distinguish between a Page, a Group and a Profile.

Differences that I got from a website.

Pages are supposed to help businesses interact with their consumers better than groups. It functions like a profile page and looks like a profile page too, except that others can post content on paged too. A fan needn’t be a user of Facebook to post content, which includes those luddites out there as well. The biggest pull factor for a company to set up a page is social ads.

From Facebook themselves:

Ads will be getting more relevant and more interesting to you. Instead of random messages from advertisers, we’ve launched Social Ads. Social Ads provide advertisements alongside related actions your friends have taken on the site. These actions may be things like “Leah is now a fan of The Offspring” (if I added The Offspring to my music) or “Justin wrote a review for Sushi Hut” (If Justin wrote this review on the Sushi Hut page). These actions could then be paired with an ad that either The Offspring or Sushi Hut provides.

Wow, talk about peer pressure on a whole new level! Now fb is using your ‘friends’ to support a company/business/celeb. Clever.

I can certainly see the business potential on having such a system in operation, and I think it can really work. I admit to clicking on the ads at the side when it has things that really interest me, such as upcoming concerts and stuff. If I get more information about that, then all the better.

It definitely see the potential in this. Definitely less privacy invading than Beacon (care to be a fan of XXX.com, even if you don’t know what XXX.com is?), but I do still feel quite unnerved that Facebook is using MY profile to promote anything.

Just because I list Gossip Girl as a show I like, doesn’t mean I want to promote it necessarily. I actually feel that if you want to use MY influence to try and persuade my friends, I should get paid for it or something.

Fine, if I really like a product, I may pass on the payment.

But I think they should inform me if they want to use me to promote ANYTHING. A notification would be nice right? It’s just the not informing me part that irks me the most right now.

I understand that most people won’t want to be used to promote anything without any gains, but is keeping users ignorance the answer?

Wisdom of the Crowd?

So on Monday, we had our first seminar style tutorial.

I think one of the most interesting things I learned on Monday was about the Wisdom of the Crowd. It’s a very interesting concept. The aggregated wisdom of many is more accurate than the expert opinion of one person.

This concept started out with this guy wanting to prove that poor and uneducated people shouldn’t be allowed to vote cause he thinks them to be not fit. To prove this, he had a ‘competition’ in the town market where the townsfolk could try and guess the weight of a cow (voting = cow?!?).

And he thought he was right. No one got the weight of the cow correct.

However, when he was plotting the results on a graph, the aggregated result from all the people revealed the correct weight of the cow. The criteria that has to be met in order to achieve Wisdom of the Crowds is: Aggregation, Diversity of Opinion, independent and decentralization ( I didn’t understand this too. It means that people make decisions based on their own expertise)

Wisdom of the Crowds is still used today in our Web 2.0. We see it at work on Youtube and Amazon and even search engines, like Google.

If many people give a video 5 stars on youtube, you take it to be an entertaining, well-made video right?

On Amazon, when you buy Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series, they recommend you other chick lit. This is based on the aggregated number of people who bought those books too, so Amazon thinks it’s likely you’d like it too.

I find Google’s use of Wisdom of the Crowds to be the most fascinating. Have you ever wondered why when you search certain key words, some sites are ranked higher than others? Those sites are determined by the amazing power of Google to be more credible. And most of the time, they’re right.

How high up a website gets listed is based on the number of times it’s been tracked back. Every time a person refers that homepage, it is putting that website higher on the list. This is because Google determines that result to be the most accurate one you were looking for, based on the aggregated result of everyone’s referrals.

While I do think the idea of Wisdom of the Crowds in NCT to be a flawed one, due to the spam bots that roam happy and free, I can’t deny that most of the time, Google seems to know what I want.

I think the reason for this is self-fulfilling prophecy.

When I watch a video on Youtube, my thought process goes while I wait for the video to buffer:

“Wow. This video has 456789976545678 hits. Wow, it has a 5 star rating.”
*watches video*
“Wow, that video is amazing!”

I sincerely cannot guarantee that I wasn’t influenced by the hits and the ratings.

I believe that we perceive a site/video/content as good because everyone else thinks it’s good. This doesn’t qualify to be Wisdom of the Crowds at work because it lacks the objectiveness required.

I think that the Internet is operating on a system based on everyone’s aggregated opinion, but in reality, it’s just popularity and peer pressure at work.