What is second life?

Hi,

I never knew what is Second Life before. As it being discuss in the class (transient spaces), I have learnt what is second life. Second life is a 3-D virtual world that being created by its residents. A resident is the person whose has sign up to become the member in the Second Life. Since it open for the public in 2003, it has developed explosively and today it has been occupant by millions of residents from around the world.

There are no fees to join Second Life. In the Second Life world, a resident can create anything that they think is important to them. They can build anything with their imagination and with the building tools in the Second Life world. Once you have build something, you can simply sell it to other residents. They can buy it from you and all of your creation will be under the IP Rights control.

It was great exposures to learn something new in Transient Spaces class as it build my understanding about new technology. It was a pleasure to learn how to use new software to build a website. As an international student that studying abroad, I think this new knowledge can be use in my country, because the latest technology like Second Life is new to us.

I hope I’ll be able to become one of the residents in the Second Life world after this!

Cheers,
Nurul
To know more about Second Life, you can visit Second Life website at:

http://secondlife.com/

Blogging boosts your social life!

Hi,

I found a good article on how blogging can improve our social life. It is a research done by James Baker and Professor Susan Moore from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. From the research, it is found that blogging can make someone feel less lonely and yet they feel well connected with people and the community.

This research also found that besides being connected with online friends they also could meet their online friends face to face. Blogging has become one of the most popular social networks nowadays.

To read the full article on this, here is the link:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/03/2178512.htm

———————————————————————————

The research, from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, found after two months of regular blogging, people felt they had better social support and friendship networks than those who did not blog.

Researchers James Baker and Professor Susan Moore have written two papers investigating the psychological benefits of blogging, regularly updating personal web pages with information that invites others to comment.

The first, published in the latest issue of the journal CyberPsychology and Behaviour, compares the mental health of people intending to blog with that of people not planning to blog.

Moore says the researchers messaged 600 MySpace users personally and directed them to an online survey. A total of 134 completed the questionnaire – 84 intended to blog and 50 did not.

“We found potential bloggers were less satisfied with their friendships and they felt less socially integrated, they didn’t feel as much part of a community as the people who weren’t interested in blogging,” Ms Moore said.

“They were also more likely to use venting or expressing your emotions as a way of coping.

“It was as if they were saying ‘I’m going to do this blogging and it’s going to help me’.”

And it seemed to do the trick, as the researchers’ second study shows.

This study, which is yet to be published, was conducted two months later.

The researchers sent out questionnaires to the same group of MySpace users – this time 59 responded.

Bloggers reported a greater sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people and feeling more confident they could rely on others for help.

All respondents, whether or not they blogged, reported feeling less anxious, depressed and stressed after two months of online social networking.

“So going onto MySpace had lifted the mood of all participants in some way,” Ms Moore said.

“Maybe they’d just made more social connections.”

Blogs will change your business…

Hi All,

By reading at the title, it gives me some idea of what

blogs can do besides changing an opinion with others.

As a new blogger, this gives me some thought about

what bloggers can do with blogging. Here are some

paragraph that I found interesting and if you want to

read more about it, here is the link

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931001_mz001.htm

Cheers,

Nurul
—————————————————————————–

This is just the beginning. Many of the same folks who developed blogs are busy adding features so that bloggers can start up music and video channels and team up on editorial projects. The divide between the publishers and the public is collapsing. This turns mass media upside down. It creates media of the masses.

How does business change when everyone is a potential publisher? A vast new stretch of the information world opens up. For now, it’s a digital hinterland. The laws and norms covering fairness, advertising, and libel? They don’t exist, not yet anyway. But one thing is clear: Companies over the past few centuries have gotten used to shaping their message. Now they’re losing control of it.

Want to get it back? You never will, not entirely. But for a look at what you’re facing, come along for a tour of the blogsphere.

What is blogs?

Hi,

I found an article about blogs and blogging. There are

7 things that we have to know about blogs. For us, who

did not have an experience having a blogs before,

these 7 steps may give you some insight about it.

Cheers,

Nurul

———————————————————————————
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7006.pdf

Step 1

What is it?
A blog—a shorthand term that means “Web log”—is an online, chronological collection of personal commentary and links. Easy to create and use from anywhere with an Internet connection, blogs are a form of Internet publishing that has become an established communications tool. Blogging has evolved from its origins as a medium for the online publication of personal diaries to a respected vehicle for editorials on specific topics. In their latest incarnation, blogs represent an alternative to mainstream media publications. The personal perspectives presented on blogs often lead to discourse between bloggers, and many blog circles generate a strong sense of community.
Step 2

Who’s doing it?
Although online journals have been around longer than the term “blog,” they gained momentum with the introduction of services that allow users to publish blogs easily, without needing to code HTML. Today, thousands of people use services including Blogger and Moveable Type to simplify, automate, and accelerate the online publishing process. Blogs are showing up in venues ranging from entertainment and commerce to news and politics. Many blogs are the musings of a single author; others focus on a particular topic and feature the voices of several authors. There are group blogs, family blogs, community blogs, and corporate blogs. WarBlogs (a product of the Iraq war), LibLogs (library blogs), and EduBlogs (targeting education) are just some of the emerging types of blogs. In educational settings, faculty are using blogs to express their opinions, to promote dialogue in the discipline, and as an instructional tool, and students are increasingly using blogs both as personal commentaries and as a required part of certain courses.
Step 3

How does it work?
A blog can be thought of as an online journal, and maintaining a blog is as simple as using an online e-mail program. Bloggers enter posts into a blogging application, add formatting or hyperlinks, and
save the post. The application adds the entry to the blog, making the content available online and alerting users who have subscribed to that blog’s content. Entries can include text, hyperlinks,
images, or multimedia. Visitors can read postings, submit comments, find blog entries by date, and search the site by keyword. Most blogs allow visitors to subscribe using an RSS feed or another
service. Effective blogs tend to be updated on a regular basis. Most bloggers solicit feedback, fostering two-way communication between readers and authors. Readers can provide feedback by leaving comments on the blog page itself or by posting a response on their own blogs and linking back to the original post—a feature called trackback. Trackback notifies bloggers when one of their posts is referenced by another blog, making it possible to determine the popularity of a post based on the num-
ber and diversity of incoming links to a post. Through linking, commenting, and feedback, good (or at least popular) ideas spread quickly through the informal network of blogs (the “blogosphere”), while unpopular ideas are simply ignored. Being referenced by a popular blogger brings instant attention and often credibility, and repeated linking enhances the reputation and authority of a blogger. Through this system of recommendations and referrals, a collaborative filtering capacity has emerged in the blogosphere.
Step 4

Why is it significant?
Because blogs engage people in knowledge sharing, reflection and debate, they often attract a large and dedicated readership. Blogs are becoming an important component of the Internet landscape, providing authors and readers with an avenue for unedited expression, reaction, and connection, without the censorship of mediated chat rooms or formal media outlets. The simplicity of creating and maintaining blogs means that open discussions can be established almost immediately, making blogs an ideal venue for far-reaching discussions among the Internet community on new or timely topics. Blogs foster the growth of communities, and the dynamics of collaborative filtering and recommending/referring may provide new ways to evaluate, vet, and critique student-created knowledge.
Step 5

What are the downsides?
Because blogs are often produced and maintained by individuals, they can include biased or inaccurate information. Users visiting a blog might see it as factual or authoritative when, in fact, it is the online equivalent of a soap box: a place to speak and to be heard. Unlike chat rooms, blogs are unmediated and therefore offer a different type of venue for individuals to express themselves and air their opinions, ideas, and attitudes. While this may be acceptable for a personal blog, it might be inappropriate for a blog hosted on an institutional server. Intellectual property is another area of concern for higher education, given the implications of hosting blogs that might include content that has been used without proper attribution. Blogs are also highly volatile. Bloggers can edit or delete posts and this transient nature can make blogs difficult to archive or index. In addition, the time-limited relationship of students to
institutions influences the length of time a student blog should be hosted, yet removing posts from the blogosphere once a student has graduated could confound those who linked to the post.

Step 6
Where is it going?
Blogs are proliferating at an exponential rate. Estimates suggest as many as 50 million people are now blogging. Because blogs are easy to create and modify, they occupy a unique niche in cyberspace—that of highly personalized discussion forums that foster communities of interest. Blogs are public and long-lived, and they weave themselves into close relationships with other blogs. As such, they may serve as an educational tool for reflection, knowledge building, and sharing. Blogs continue to benefit from several years of experimentation and evolution, both within and outside of education. By carefully
evaluating their strengths and weaknesses, educators are learning to set guidelines and expectations to maximize the benefits of blogs. Structured exercises and clear goals are further enhancing the value of blogs in education.
Step 7

What are the implications for teaching and learning?
Put into practice with an understanding of their benefits and limitations, blogs are an increasingly accepted instructional technology tool. Blogs can be used for reflection about classes, careers,
or current events; they can also capture and disseminate student and faculty-generated content. RSS feeds make blog content accessible through newsreaders, allowing bloggers to increase the sharing of this information among interested individuals. Blogs offer students, faculty, staff, and others a high level of autonomy while creating a new opportunity for interaction with peers. Blogs provide a forum for discussion that goes beyond coursework to include culture, politics, and other areas of personal exploration. Students often learn as much from each other as from instructors or textbooks, and blogs offer another mechanism for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and acquisition.

Shah Rukh Khan’s promotion of fairness cream raises hackles

Hi,

As I’m searching for information, I found this one that can be use in my thesis later. It’s about Shah Rukh Khan (a Bollywood actor) promoting whitening cream in India and all around the world..Just thinking why, non-white wants to become fairer. This is one of my question for the thesis..hope this article will help me..

Cheers,
Nurul

—————————————————————————————————————–

NEW DELHI (AFP) – The actor is clearly telling him it will boost sex appeal but the advice has raised hackles here among those who say such products reinforce age-old prejudices that equate fair skin with good looks.

Regardless, the “sex sells” policy seems valid — promoters say sales of “fairness cream” have shot up.

“The advertisement has worked very well for us,” said a spokesman for India’s Emami group, the Kolkata-based company which makes Fair and Handsome cream for men.

Emami launched the cream in 2005, labeling the product after the popular Fair and Lovely, which has catered to Indian women for decades and continues to be the largest-selling fairness cream in India.

Skin-lightening products — positioned as fairness products in India — for men are a niche but rapidly growing part of the lucrative male grooming sector, estimated to be worth more than 11.5 billion rupees (286 million dollars).

The total market for skin-lightening products in India is estimated to be worth nine billion rupees. Nearly one-third of users are said to be men.

Since the launch of Fair and Handsome — which the Emami group claims to be the world’s first fairness cream for men — nearly half-a-dozen products have been vying for attention.

This year has seen the launch of several new fairness products — the latest being Fair One Man by pharmaceutical company Elder Healthcare.

“There is a huge growing awareness among Indian men to look good. Being an actor who wants to look good, I felt there was a need for this cream,” said Elder Healthcare managing director Anuj Saxena, who is also a television actor.

Saxena’s company is targeting turnover of more than 100 million rupees this year.

“The men’s fairness cream market is nascent in India, but is already one of the biggest in the world,” he said.

Market research companies estimate an annual growth of more than 10 percent.

The Emami group — which started the trend — says it sensed opportunity when market research showed many users of skin-lightening products targeted at women were actually men.

Elder Healthcare’s Saxena, who has acted in popular soaps for Indian television, says being fair is beneficial.

“There is enormous pressure to look good in the entertainment industry, and being fair helps,” he said.

Wanting to look light skinned has “always been the case here. Look at the matrimonial ads. Everyone wants a fair bride or groom,” he added.

But critics balk at the use and promotion of fairness creams, which they say perpetuate deep-rooted prejudice.

“These products and their advertisements reinforce an old South East Asian bias that you have to be fair to be beautiful,” said leading advertising consultant Prahlad Kakkar, who refuses to make such commercials.

“Sunscreens, skin-whitening, fairness creams — they are all the same.

Regardless of the massive sums involved and glamorous advertisements, some professional dermatologists are skeptical about such products. They think consumers are wasting their money.

“These creams are not medicines, but only cosmetics which contain a tiny concentration of skin-lightening components. They are partly effective at best,” said Anil Malik, a skin specialist at Fortis hospital.

visit malaysia…

hi,

Here are an example of visit Malaysia promotion in Youtube.

 

 

nice pictures…

Hi,

I found some interesting pictures, it called long exposure photography. It is interesting because when taken correctly long exposure photography can appear very professional even with the most basic of cameras.

Here are some examples…

My expression

Hi everyone..

This is the first time I’m having my own blog!
Actually I wanted to start having my own blog before but I don’t know from where to start..
As I enrolled in Transient Spaces class, so I got an opportunity to have one!

It’s good to have our own blog as it can give us more spaces to share our own feelings about something without any boundries…and we can share opinion with others too..