A behind the scenes look at SixthSense

Recently at TEDIndia convention this year, the inventor/creator of SixthSense, Pranav Mistry gave a talk on how idea of Sixthsense came about. He also demostrated several tools that helped the physical world interact with the digtital world. He also provided a deeper look into the device, SixthSense to the audience.

He also revealed that the software behind Sixthsense would be an open-source software, meaning that it will be opened to  users as they can develop their software for the device too. This will further increase the possibilities to all kinds of improvements or add-ons.

I feel that this guy is truly a genius!

You can check out the video here.

Interesting video and a must-watch!

cheers,

-vera-

google and globalisation

This week in nct tutorial, the topics discussed were 1) is google making us stupid and 2) Globalisation (the world is flat).

There was the discussion on whether google was making us stupid because nowadays, we are all reliant on the internet to give us information to everything that we need. From my vantage point, although, I feel google can make us feel stupid, because it holds the key to all the information that we need/want, I feel that sometimes we too just can’t rely on it too much. Google is a good way of providing us with information, since, it is a wealth of information. It is good in the sense that we can get differing viewpoints about a certain topic, while compared to a book, it only contains a one-sided view, usually from the author. But, to a certain extent, I would prefer books because it offers a more in-depth explaination of the topic compared to the condensed version of the topic found online. Thus, from my viewpoint, I would use google and the book to have a more balanced viewpoint.

The next discussion that we had was on globalisation. We are now in the era of globalisation 3.0, with technology and telecommunications enabling us to connect or communicate with one another across geographical boundaries. An interesting question that came up in this discussion was the topic of outsourcing jobs.  A thought that struck with me was the mindset of Singaporeans and the jobs that they choose to do. To be honest, I agree that we are too picky with the choice of job that we want. We have a whole array of job options, yet we pick and choose the one that we deem the best for us, which is usually the one that is the most stable and that offers a comfortable income to lead a good life. Because of this, jobs in the construction sector often have to be outsourced to foreign workers.

In other countries, such as Australia or UK, I am amazed by the fact that plumbers or electricians do earn a decent living  doing these jobs and some of them have been really successful today. I remembered that when my sister’s pipe in the bathroom of her London apartment broke down, the plumbing cost was very expensive, simply because it was really hard to find a plumber in UK or Australia, as the number of people doing such jobs were only a small number. For me, the reason why people do not take on such jobs is because of the perception that the job entails.

Well, in my opinion, I find that we can learn how to find fulfillment in our jobs because, at the end of the day, we are still making an income anyway (whether a large or small) and that we have a job. And I applaud all electricans, plumbers or odd job labourers out there becuase you truly deserve my respect for being willing to take up such jobs!

-vera-

 

Pat Law comes to nct lecture

This morning during nct lecture, we had the privilege of listening to Pat Law, who came to share more about social media and several tricks of the trade with us. It was again, another eye-opening experience with for me because I must say that her lecture was a wealth of information!

I now know that there are many websites where you can gather information about yourself, which can be traced back to years ago. Everything is stored in the internet for millions of years. And knowing that fact is really freaky, thus I will pay more attention now to how I behave on the net. Oh, and I learnt some websites that is quite good for knowing information about people.

An interesting takeaway that I had from the lecture today was the fact that we should continue to collect information as we listen. There is the five step process of social media: 1) Listen, 2) Plan, 3) Engage, 4) Amplify and 5) Optimise.

A new twitter website that I was introduced to at this lecture is twitterfall. This is especially good for events, where you can see a particulartrend being talked about through a list of tweets containing that hashtag or trending topic. Simply amazing if you want to broadcast it to an audience in a room to show them what is everyone twitting about.

Pat also taught us how to use websites like Google reader where you can suscribe to page feeds and updates can be sent to your email or you can set up a folder for that feed for the updates to be stored in. Other sites which she showed us were Social mention and Daymix as well as popuri.us.

So for now, I think I would be exploring the wealth of information she has shared with us today. I think the information that was shared would help me to enhance my experience with social media and the internet.

Thanks once again, Pat for taking precious time out of your beezy schedule to have a lecture with us. It was such a great experience and really insightful!

Tschuss,

-vera-

 

corporate reputation seminar 2009

This afternoon, I attended the corporate reputation seminar 2009 (organised by Reputation Management Associates and Toby James solutions), with my fellow course mates, Gerlynn and Andrea. It was quite an eye-opening experience for me particularly as I saw how people interacted with one another. It seems to me that everyone nearly knew everyone, but then again, I remembered being told by people that the media industry is a small world.

The seminar was aptly named, Corporate Reputation in Uncertain Times, given the current economic climate in Singapore (although it is improving). The seminar was held at M Hotel at Anson Road, which was a very fitting venue since it was quite conveniently located at Tanjong Pajar which was easily accessible by public transport.

Compared to last year, where the topic of corporate reputation was the only topic that was touched on, this year, the seminar had more topics which were discussed. Other topics such as personal branding and social media (with the impact on businesses) were also discussed. A panel of distinguished speakers from various fields were invited to speak about the topic of corprate reputation and how it affects companies and why it is so important to have good corporate reputation.

A thing that I have learnt from this seminar is the power of social media and how businesses should harness it becuase it is powerful. And companies should utilise it as a tool to engage with their customers regularly because it is the platform that discussions are ongoing about your brand. For instance, you can usually find what people are saying about your brand through the bloggersphere. Because news spreads faster online than through mainstream media, companies will be able to manage a potential disastrous situation from happening rather than allow it to esclate into something bigger. Becuase companies show themselves to be pro-active in helping their customers, this will help in their corporate repuatation and strengthen it further.

An example of how social media is evidently so powerful was showcased during the Sichuan Earthquake. Even before the US geological systems were informed about the earthquake in Sichuan, this piece of news was already circulating on twitter. That for you, is the power of social media. News spreads fast as information is pushed from one person to another creating a chain of dissemination. Of course, one must be discerning of the information that one reads online. If you are worried that the information may be a myth, you can check credibile websites to ascertain if the information is the truth or is indeed a myth.

Another thing that I took away from the seminar is the lesson of personal branding. I learnt that first impressions count and that each of us have our own unique brand personality, and the key to having a great personal brand is being likeable. So my note to myself is to try to make myself likeable by having attributes like being warm and friendly and so on. The key lesson here is that every time we speak or act, we are selling our own personal brand of who we are ultimately.

Here are some photos!

 

Note:  From left to Right: Andrea, Gerlynn, Vera and Prof Michael, a speaker at the seminar.

 

Note: From Left to Right: Gerlynn, Vera, Andrea

 

I would like to thank my lecturer, Ms Kwa, for giving me the opportunity to attend this seminar and to Reputation Management Associates for organising this seminar to help companies understand why corporate reputation is so essential to a company as well as to showcase the power of social media and its effects on corporate reputation.

once again, thank you for reading this blog post. your time is very much appreciated!

-vera-

Stephie Says drops by school

Last week, we had a guest lecturer, Stephie Tan or better known as Stephiesays.  She came to speak to us about social media and how through the use of it, it has led her to where she is today. Stephie is the author of Fashion Nation and has her own site, stephiesays. It’s amazing to see how social media can really help you carve a career of out it.

A phrase that struck with me after the lecture ended, was the phrase, interest-driven. Basically, she encouraged us to blog about our interests, what we really liked. I think that when you blog something you really am passionate about, it will somehow be expressed in your writings. This way, it will keep readers interested and keep coming back for more.

I think with this lesson, it will allow me to be bolder in my blog posts . Hopefully, it will spark interest in the readers to keep them interested and thus attracted to my blog.

So with that, I wanna thank Stephie for her wise words of wisdom and teaching us how to harness the power of new media in the stuff we do!

Do check out her shop. she has a new campaign called wearable happiness, which has awesome accessories and clothings!

-vera-

minority report and technologies

I have just finished watching the show, Minority Report. It is a recommended show if you want to catch a glimpse of what technology is in the future.

Basically, the story fast-forwards itself to 2054, and there is the pre-crime lab is created to catch murderers before they commit a crime. All these information is gathered through precogs whom are wired to inform the pre-crime lab detectives that a crime is going to happen in the near future. Thus, armed with these information, detectives from the lab goes out and seize the “murderer” before the crime happens.

The technology in this show is simply amazing.A main component is that there’s the use of biometrics.  In this case, its iris recognition. For instance, in order to gain access to a place, you will need to scan your eyes before entering a permise. What’s more, from the scan of your iris, information about you can be generated. There’s this scene  in the movie whereby detective John (played by Tom Cruise), enters into a place, and advertisements are generated for him, based on what he needs, like an escapade or a beer. So imagine, you eyes would be the most important organ  in future. Because, it will be the key to knowing everything about you, that is if this kind of technology is put into place in future.

A thing that scares me is the lack of privacy and freedom. In the show, while John is being on the run from the police, (the precogs predicted that he would commit a murder in the near future), every move that he makes is traced to the exact location and time. This is really frightening to me as you would then have to be aware of what you do since everything is scruntinzed, and there is no privacy or freedom at all.

Moving on, today’s lesson on augmented reality was really scary too. A video was shown, and already, as of  the present, technology has been developed to a great degree. Imagine being able to choose what kind of products you would wanna buy, with the characteristics of the product or even recommenations of other products being shown to you at your fingertips, through the use of augmented reality. Or when you loo at a person, the person’s characteristics show up in a “cloud” form. This is indeed frightening.

Here is the video that was shown in class today, to describe this type of technology (its called sixth sense), as well as what is augmented reality. Watch it because it will surely blow your mind away!!!

A quick mention: blood:water mission

There’s this organisation that I really like called Blood:Water Mission.

It’s a non-profit organisation and is founded by the Grammy Award winning band, Jars of Clay. Basically the aim of the this organisation, is to address the HIV/ AIDS and water crisis in Africa.

The members of Jars Of Clay recently received an award for their blood: water mission efforts in Africa.

To find out more about their cause and what they are doing or how you can help, you can visit their website: http://www.bloodwatermission.com/

Do check them out!

-vera-

wisdom of the crowd

we had our first seminar-style discussion or rather a presentation in nct tutorial today. My partner and I presented on wisdom of crowd. To be honest, I did not know how much was taken away from that presentation, but i sure hope that my classmates took home this:

When independent decisions made by a group are averaged, that decision is better than the decision made by an individual or an expert. In order for this to be successful, 4 elements need to be present.

They are 1) Diversity of Opinion (meaning that everyone should have their own opinion on the topic even if they are eccentric interpretations), 2) Independence (that a person should have their own opinion and not be influenced by another person’s opinion), #) decentralisation (meaning that people are able to have specialize and draw on local knowledge) and aggregation ( which means turning private judgments of individuals into a collective decision).

It is amazing in the sense that big companies such as Google, Amazon.com, Wikipedia are using the wisdom of crowds in their businesses and they have been really flourishing. In essence, this shows that wisdom of crowds work if the 4 elements are satisfied.

I am still marvelled the way concept works. I think we are wired to be better at decision making as a group rather than an individual I guess.

Want to find out how wisdom of crowd came about?  Here’s a link to this video done by NOVA science:

Hope that you will enjoy it!

-vera-

Italy

I couldn’t sleep yesterday night, so I channel surfed and found the channel bbc knowledge.  It’s a relatively new channel considering that it was added to starhub list of channels a few months back.

I was pleasantly surprised because it showed this travel show called Francesco’s Italy: Top to Toe. The episode that I watched yesterday was on the Northern Italy, or also known as the Romantic North. What is so interesting to me is that Francesco visited places such as Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Mantua, Milan and Portfino. With the exception of Verona and Milan, I think the rest of the places that were visited were lesser known to me.

This is a good show if you would like to see lesser known places in Italy, such as places that are not really visited by tourists, thus I would highly recommend this show to you.

On another note, as I was watching the show, it reminded me of the art, Italy is so famous for. No matter where you went, be it the Sistine Chapel in the Vactian City, in Rome or Giotto frescoes in Padua (wherethe host visited), there was always beautiful murals or paintings done by artists. This paintings often take years to complete. It always intrigues me how the artists from the past eras could complete such works because it took alot of imagination and painstaking effort to do so.

Imagine back then, when technology was nearly non-existent, which meant that artists had to do everything by hand, which required loads of effort, time and discipline. And because of these artists’ efforts came beautiful murals or paintings to which people can still enjoy today when one visits Italy.Thus, I am grateful to these artists for creating such beautiful works so that people can enjoy and appreciate them today, adding to the rich history of Italy.Your art is priceless.

current music: Draw the line by David Gray

first nct lecture

Today, i had the first nct lecture of the new semester. It was interesting and fun as I learnt new things such as who invented the world-wide web and the different search engines such as dogpile, which is a meta search engine and polycola, which basically gives you results from both yahoo and google which I find awesome.

I am looking forward to learning how to use social media to as a branding tool, because it’s apparently what companies are doing nowadays.

Moving on, during nct tutorial tomorrow, we will be watching clips of minority report and see how technology is evolving to  impact our lives. I cannot imagine life without technology because of the world we are living in today, everything is connected in someway or rather. As the phrase goes, “it’s a small world” after all.

Alrighty, I am going to continue reading to own a dragon by don miller. Going to finish the book soon.

Adieu,

vera