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COMPUTER APPLICATION IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES
April 30
2012ANI SARAH BINTI RIDZWAN GA01267; MASNANI BT ABD CHAIR GA01282; NURUL ADZLINE BTE RAKMAN GA01318; NURUL SHAHIDA BT MOHD NAZERI GA01322
EPPD1063
Table of ContentsMajor Industry Trends – Nurul Syahida Bt Mohd Nazeri GA01322.........................2
CONVERGENCE.................................................................................................................................3
New Media Wins Advertising Share from Traditional Broadcasters.................................................4
Market Analysis................................................................................................................................5
........................................................6
The "Business Critical" Market.....................................................................................................8
Improving Workflow Efficiency........................................................................................................9
Tiered Storage Strategy.....................................................................................................................9
Storage Infrastructure Trends..........................................................................................................10
Conclusion......................................................................................................................................10
New media – Masnani Bt Abd Chair GA01282..................................................11
History............................................................................................................................................11
Definition........................................................................................................................................13
Globalization and new media......................................................................................................15
As tool for social change..............................................................................................................17
Interactivity and new media.........................................................................................................18
Is Nokia's Ovi Finnish'd? – Ani Sarah Binti Ridzwan GA01267...................................................................................................................................20
TOPIC 9 – COMPUTER APPLICATION IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES Page | 1
MAJOR INDUSTRY TRENDSNURUL SYAHIDA BT MOHD NAZERI GA01322
Major Industry Trendshe term “media” refers both to
various forms of communication, and
to the organizations behind this
communication, including the press and
news-reporting agencies. It can also refer to
different types of data storage. This review
looks at the media in all its communication
activities.
TOne hundred years ago, the media was simply
composed of the printed press. Today, there
is a vast range of communication channels,
including TV, radio, cinema, and the internet,
as well as print. However, common industry
trends can still be identified, despite the
increasingly diverse nature of the market.
TOPIC 9 – COMPUTER APPLICATION IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES Page | 2
MAJOR INDUSTRY TRENDSNURUL SYAHIDA BT MOHD NAZERI GA01322
CONVERGENCEonvergence has been one of the
buzzwords in the industry for many
years. It relates to the emergence of
digital technology, which has allowed media
organizations to deliver text, audio, and video
material over the same wired, wireless, or
fiber-optic connections. The development of
the internet has played a critical role in media
convergence, as it now allows people to read
newspapers, listen to the radio, watch TV, and
download music and movies (and play both)
on their computers, or, increasingly, on
handheld devices. Consumers are now
watching movies on their mobile phones, and
making phone calls from their personal
computers. Technological advances also mean
that consumers can watch TV programs on
demand, that is, when and where they want,
rather than when the TV schedulers decide to
broadcast them.
C
The development of in-flight entertainment
(IFE) provides a vivid illustration of the way in
which the media has been transformed over
the past 30 years, and of the convergence of
technologies. In the 1970s, IFE consisted of a
movie projected onto a screen. Today, most
airlines offer personal televisions, usually
located in the seat backs, featuring live
satellite TV broadcasts. Some airlines offer
video games and audio-visual entertainment
on demand, allowing passengers to stop,
start, and skip through programs, and to
select movies stored in the aircraft computer
system. Touch-screens and/or handsets allow
passengers to choose from a variety of
features and content, including feature films,
news, and TV programs, as well as giving them
the option to select video games and web-
based content, create music playlists, and so
on. The more advanced IFE systems allow
passengers to make hotel or rental car
reservations in advance from the aircraft seat.
Back on the ground, trends over the next few
years, in terms of convergence and
technological developments, mean
manufacturers are likely to focus on
increasing demand for personalized
entertainment, with much of the industry’s
attention focused on developing services for
mobile phones. In April 2010, Nokia, for
example, released its N8 phone, which
features a camera and acts as a portable
entertainment hub. The phone provides
access to web TV services, while an HDMI
connection enables the owner to plug it into
their home entertainment system and get HD
video playback with Dolby Digital Plus
Surround Sound.
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MAJOR INDUSTRY TRENDSNURUL SYAHIDA BT MOHD NAZERI GA01322
TOPIC 9 – COMPUTER APPLICATION IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES Page | 4
MAJOR INDUSTRY TRENDSNURUL SYAHIDA BT MOHD NAZERI GA01322
New Media Wins Advertising Share from Traditional Broadcasters
earch Engine Marketing Professional
Organization (SEMPO), a trade
organization for the search-engine
marketing sector, reported in April 2010 that
internet search engines are continuing to
steal advertising market share from
traditional broadcasters. SEMPO said that
around half the companies it surveyed are
reallocating budgets to search-engine
marketing from print advertising. More than a
third (36%) are shifting money away from
direct mail, and almost a quarter are moving
budgets from conferences and exhibitions and
web display advertising.
S
Sara Holoubek, outgoing SEMPO President for
2009–10, said, “Difficult market conditions
caused by the recession resulted in a
relatively slow year for the industry in 2009,
which was improved by a significant upturn in
the fourth quarter. This momentum has
continued into 2010, and we are expecting a
return to double-digit percentage market
growth in 2010.” Part of the appeal of the
new media to advertisers is that audiences
can be targeted much more effectively than
using traditional media. Earlier research from
SEMPO has found that advertisers were
expressing strong interest in new search-
targeting technologies. These include “search
retargeting,” or targeting search ads to select
groups of users based on the websites that
they have previously visited, or based upon
whether an individual has visited an
advertiser’s own website before. The search
engine Google is striving to increase its
advertising revenues, and is using targeted
marketing as one means of achieving this. The
company believes that: “by making ads more
relevant, and improving the connection
between advertisers and our users, we can
create more value for everyone.” The
company added that: “Users get more useful
ads, and these more relevant ads generate
higher returns for advertisers and publishers.”
Google is also seeking to increase its
advertising revenues by offering mobile
advertising, including ads that appear within
mobile phones’ web browsers.
Other companies have been offering
personalized online advertising for some time.
The social networking sites, MySpace and
Facebook, have targeted ads at individual
users based on their profiles since 2007, while
retail sites such as Amazon and iTunes
regularly recommend books and music to
their users, based on their past purchases.
TOPIC 9 – COMPUTER APPLICATION IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES Page | 5
MAJOR INDUSTRY TRENDSNURUL SYAHIDA BT MOHD NAZERI GA01322
Market Analysis
Impact of the Recession on the
Media Industry
he media industry earns a large
proportion of its revenues from
advertising, and is, therefore,
highly influenced by the economic cycle.
Advertising and marketing budgets tend to
suffer first when the corporate sector
comes under pressure. The recession in
2009 certainly hit the industry hard, with
one UK agency describing the downturn as
the worst the media had faced since the
Second World War. However, signs of an
upturn emerged in 2010, with global giants
such as Procter and Gamble (P&G)
pledging to increase their media spend
over the year. In 2009, P&G reduced its
spend by 13%. This was a more swingeing cut
than that made by the biggest 100 advertisers
collectively: as a group, they decreased
spending by just over 11% in the United
Kingdom, according to Nielsen.
T
The downturn in ad spend has certainly had a
severe impact in the United States. In April
2010, for example, the publisher of two of the
country’s most popular dailies, the Chicago
Tribune and Los Angeles Times, and owner of
television stations, including superstation
WGN, filed for bankruptcy. Reports said that a
2007 buyout saddled the publisher, Tribune,
with too much debt as the economy and
advertising revenue declined. Meanwhile, the
struggling New York Times accepted a US$250
million loan from prominent shareholder,
Carlos Slim, in 2009. The newspaper has
suffered as readers and advertisers flee to
other platforms. In 2009, burdened by debt
and a steep slide in newspaper advertising,
the Miami Herald was also reported to be up
for sale.
TOPIC 9 – COMPUTER APPLICATION IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES Page | 6
Technological DevelopmentsApart from convergence, other technological developments are likely to have a dramatic impact on the media industry over the next five to 10 years. 3D TV was launched in 2010, although viewers will struggle to enjoy the product until 3D TV channels are also launched. However, Samsung, which was among the first to launch 3D TVs, says that the new hardware will add depth to the picture of normal broadcasts and Blu-ray films. For several years, the industry has talked up the arrival of 3D TV in the home to little effect. Many, however, believe 2010 really is the breakthrough year for the technology, helped in large part by the growing number of 3D movies at the theatre, and the success of James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar.
COMPUTER APPLICATIONNURUL ADZLINE BTE RAKMAN GA01318
he future of storage and how it's used is being determined today by the IT industry, where most of the
components used in professional production and distribution systems and networks come from.
TAs the broadcast industry moves to file-based systems, storage is a key component in how facilities implement video servers into their workflow. Manufacturers have two options: use off-the-shelf IT solutions and tailor them for broadcast, or design custom storage systems into their products.
In the past, the highly specialized nature of broadcast had precluded the use of off-the-
shelf technology — mainly due to performance reasons. However, with the advances we see today in the IT industry, some manufacturers have qualified specific high-performance computer storage systems for use in broadcast. The advantage here is in quicker time-to-market with new technology, generally lower costs for performance and more flexible solutions.
When we look at the storage landscape it's important to focus on two major elements—the physical storage media (e.g., internal data processing technology and form factor) and the workflow that it will ultimately be deployed in.
he IT industry designs storage for many markets, with two major customers, the PC market and the Enterprise market for mission critical type applications, driving most of the revenue. In many cases the design guidelines for these two markets are very
different. The PC market is primarily focused on price while the Enterprise market demands high performance and reliability. Recently, however, new technology advancements have helped to create a new category between these two —the "Business Critical" market.
TWithin the Enterprise drive market there are several major trends that are driving the use of certain types of physical storage:
TOPIC 9 – COMPUTER APPLICATION IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES Page | 7
COMPUTER APPLICATIONNURUL ADZLINE BTE RAKMAN GA01318
1. The Enterprise market is currently moving from Fibre Channel (FC) drives to serial attached SCSI (SAS) drives just as the PC market recently moved from parallel connections to serial SATA drives. Driving this migration is the fact that aside from the obvious cabling advantages of serial attach, serial clock speeds can be higher than parallel connections and SAS provides a direct point-to-point bus connection vs. a shared bus connection with FC SCSI drives resulting in better overall performance. This means stored material can be accessed much faster. For editors and program distributors, this results in better productivity.
The performance of a drive is determined by its clock speed and its rotational speed (today Thomson uses 15,000 rpm SAS drives in its Grass
Valley K2 Media Server). This determines how fast you can process and move data on and off the drive. In a video environment, the faster the storage system the better, but more importantly, it must be deterministic and consistent. In the IT industry, if you have a few millisecond pause in data transfers, nobody will notice, but in video, it can mean black frames.
Video servers are designed with appropriate buffering to avoid these delays up to a certain point, which is why your storage system must be deterministic. An area that can cause these delays is disk failures in a RAID protected system — both FC and SAS drives provide good performance and deterministic behavior whereas SATA drives are not as predictable.
2. The latest version of SATA drives — SATA 3Gb/s, running at 7,500 rpm, have made a lot of improvements over first generation SATA 1.5Gb/s drives. In addition to clock speeds doubling to 3 Gb/s which doubled the transfer rate to 300 MB/s, features such as hot-swap capability, improved MTBF (mean-
time between failure) and Native Command Queuing (which enables the drives to internally optimize how commands are executed for better performance) opens new markets for SATA drives. While SATA drives continue to get better, they still lag behind that of Enterprise SAS drives for high-performance, high reliable mission critical markets.
TOPIC 9 – COMPUTER APPLICATION IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES Page | 8
COMPUTER APPLICATIONNURUL ADZLINE BTE RAKMAN GA01318
TOPIC 9 – COMPUTER APPLICATION IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES Page | 9
The "Business Critical" MarketThese advancements have created a new class of SATA drives, which can be half the cost of SAS drives and becomes a practical consideration for use in lower performance video applications. Seagate, which supplies a large number of drives to the broadcast and video production industry, calls them "Business Critical" drives; indicating a class of drives between Enterprise SAS drives and the low cost, lower performance and less reliable PC drives.
We consider the broadcast market to be a "Mission Critical" market. While a disk problem will not result in a fatality, it can result in lost revenue with make-goods. Most broadcasters demand that their server system be as reliable as possible, which has driven the almost exclusive use of Enterprise Drives in professional video servers. However, new advances in these Business Critical devices make them an ideal choice to support some types of video production and less demanding playout applications. These SATA drives will also be available with a SAS interface. This allows you to pick a storage system and populate it with either drive, based on your application and budget. These should begin appearing in the community later this year.
COMPUTER APPLICATIONNURUL ADZLINE BTE RAKMAN GA01318
Improving Workflow Efficiency
he overall concept of servers has moved facilities from a baseband video infrastructure to a file-base
infrastructure, bringing with it a long list of benefits that this type of IT-centric architecture affords. Broadcasters and production studios are seeing more and more success with cost savings and workflow efficiencies in migrating this way.
T
The whole idea of a tapeless facility goes back to implementing a workflow that gets
out of real-time 270 Mb/s (or 1.5Gb for HD) video and into a data file that can be as low as 8 Mb/s for transfers many times faster (15-25 Mb/s is typical for SD and 50 Mb/s for HD). The most benefit is realized by making the conversion (encoding) as early in the process as possible, preferably during the ingest process.
In addition, with file-based workflows you have the option of working with a low-resolution, browse-level version of the file (1 Mb/s or less) for QA purposes, editing, quick review or archiving. This allows you to cost-effectively develop internal networks where hundreds of journalists and producers can access the same file at the same time, while keeping bandwidth requirements low.
Tiered Storage Strategy
nother option for tapeless workflows is to implement a tiered storage strategy, in which
you have three types of storage; on-line, near-line and off-line.
A On-line = Enterprise drives, highest
performance, reliability and highest cost. Usually configured in a SAN system.
Near-line = SATA drives, moderate performance, good reliability and lower cost. Usually configured in a NAS system.
Off-line = tape archive; lowest performance and lowest cost. Storage robotic systems can be small as a desktop or as large as a bedroom.
. For example, in a news production environment, you might want to store footage on-line for one week, move it to near-line for 30 days and then to off-line. This reduces the amount of on-line storage without the large performance penalty of tape.
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COMPUTER APPLICATIONNURUL ADZLINE BTE RAKMAN GA01318
Storage Infrastructure TrendsThe storage infrastructure is what ties everything together. Today in the Enterprise market we have FC and GigE connections. FC has always been the performance leader but is costly to implement.
Gigabit technology has been predominate in the IT industry and we are seeing its performance advance to where it is a good alternative to FC while coming at a lower cost (with cheaper switches and cabling). Today FC has moved from 2 Gb/s to 4 Gb/s performance. Ethernet is predominately 1 Gb/s, but we're seeing cost-effective 10 Gb/s switches (actually a few 10 Gb ports on a 1 Gb switch) being
implemented. New technologies such as iSCSI (SCSI commands over Ethernet) and TOE cards (TCP/IP engines required for off-loading the system CPU) make GigE a good option for high performance, deterministic video systems.
For the most common server implementations 1 Gb/s performance is certainly good enough, but when you want to move a massive amount of data in and out of a server, the more bandwidth you have available the better. This is where 10 Gb/s Ethernet becomes ideal. Often a high performance ftp network will be mostly 1 Gb/s with a 10 Gb/s backbone. This allows most devices to talk to the network via 1 Gb/s but gives some devices the option of 10 Gb. For example, if you need to move data to a very fast archive system with multiple tape drives in the 120 MB/s range, then you can easily max out a 1 Gb/s connection.
Conclusionoing forward, as storage demands increase — which is a certainty given the need to support multiple channels of HD content sent to a variety of distribution platforms — IT-centric technologies will continue to provide the solutions broadcasters
require. Some applications are still being developed, so no one's sure exactly what technologies will be adopted most. What is clear is that many vendors serving the broadcast industry have recognized the efficiencies to be found in off-the-shelf IT solutions. While some still cling to proprietary architectures, it's the most open approaches that will provide the fastest return on investment and ultimately be most successful.
G
Roger Crooks is Product Marketing Manager for Servers and Digital News Production Products at Grass Valley.
TOPIC 9 – COMPUTER APPLICATION IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES Page | 11
NEW MEDIA – MASNANI BT ABD CHAIR GA01282
New mediaew media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th
century that refers to on-demand access to content anytime, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community formation around the media content. Another important promise of new media is the "democratization" of the creation, publishing, distribution and consumption of media content. Another aspect of new media is the real-time generation of new, unregulated content.
N
Most technologies described as "new media" are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulated,
networkable, dense, compressible, and interactive. Some examples may be the Internet, websites, computer multimedia, video games, CD-ROMS, and DVDs. New media does not include television programs, feature films, magazines, books, or paper-based publications – unless they contain technologies that enable digital interactivity. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, is an example, combining Internet accessible digital text, images and video with web-links, creative participation of contributors, interactive feedback of users and formation of a participant community of editors and donors for the benefit of non-community readers. Facebook is an example of the social media model, in which most users are also participants.
Historyn the 1960s, connections between computing and radical art began to grow stronger. It was not until the
1980s that Alan Kay and his co-workers at Xerox PARC began to give the power of a personal computer to the individual, rather than have a big organization be in charge of this. "In the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, we seem to witness a different kind of parallel relationship between social changes and computer design. Although causally unrelated, conceptually it makes sense that the Cold War and the design of the Web took place at exactly the same time.”
I
Until the 1980s media relied primarily upon print and analogue broadcast models,
such as those of television and radio. The last twenty-five years have seen the rapid transformation into media which are predicated upon the use of digital technologies, such as the Internet and video games. However, these examples are only a small representation of new media. The use of digital computers has transformed the remaining 'old' media, as suggested by the advent of digital television and online publications. Even traditional media forms such as the printing press have been transformed through the application of technologies such as image
TOPIC 9 – COMPUTER APPLICATION IN MEDIA INDUSTRIES Page | 12
NEW MEDIA – MASNANI BT ABD CHAIR GA01282
manipulation software like Adobe Photoshop and desktop publishing tools.
Andrew L. Shapiro (1999) argues that the "emergence of new, digital technologies signals a potentially radical shift of who is in control of information, experience and resources" (Shapiro cited in Croteau and Hoynes 2003: 322). W. Russell Neuman (1991) suggests that whilst the "new media" have technical capabilities to pull in one direction, economic and social forces pull back in the opposite direction. According to Neuman, "We are witnessing the evolution of a universal interconnected network of audio, video, and electronic text communications that will blur the distinction between interpersonal and mass communication and between public and private communication" (Neuman cited in Croteau and Hoynes 2003: 322). Neuman argues that New Media will:
Alter the meaning of geographic distance.
Allow for a huge increase in the volume of communication.
Provide the possibility of increasing the speed of communication.
Provide opportunities for interactive communication.
Allow forms of communication that were previously separate to overlap and interconnect.
Consequently it has been the contention of scholars such as Douglas Kellner and James Bohman that new media, and particularly the Internet, provide the potential for a democratic postmodern public sphere, in which citizens can participate in well informed, non-hierarchical debate pertaining to their social structures. Contradicting these positive appraisals of the potential social impacts of new media are scholars such as Ed Herman and Robert McChesney who have suggested that the transition to new media has seen a handful of powerful transnational telecommunications corporations who achieve a level of global influence which was hitherto unimaginable.
Scholars, such as Lister et al. (2003) and Friedman (2005), have highlighted both the positive and negative potential and actual implications of new media technologies, suggesting that some of the early work into new media studies was guilty of technological determinism – whereby the effects of media were determined by the technology themselves, rather than through tracing the complex social networks which governed the development, funding, implementation and future development of any technology.
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NEW MEDIA – MASNANI BT ABD CHAIR GA01282
Definitionlthough there are several ways that New Media may be described, Lev Manovich, in an introduction
to The New Media Reader, defines New Media by using eight simple and concise propositions:[4]
A1. New Media
versus Cyberculture – Cyberculture is the various social phenomena that are associated with the Internet and network communications (blogs, online multi-player gaming), whereas New Media is concerned more with cultural objects and paradigms (digital to analog television, iPhones).
2. New Media as Computer Technology Used as a Distribution Platform – New Media are the cultural objects which use digital computer technology for distribution and exhibition. e.g. (at least for now) Internet, Web sites, computer multimedia, Blu-ray disks etc. The problem with this is that the definition must be revised every few years. The term "new media" will not be "new" anymore, as most forms of culture will be distributed through computers.
3. New Media as Digital Data Controlled by Software – The language of New Media is based on the assumption that, in fact, all cultural objects that rely on digital representation and computer-based delivery do share a number of common qualities. New media is reduced to digital data that can be manipulated by software as any other data. Now media operations can create several versions of the same object. An example is an image stored as matrix data which can be manipulated and altered according to the additional algorithms implemented, such as color inversion, gray-scaling, sharpening, rasterizing, etc.
4. New Media as the Mix Between Existing Cultural Conventions and the Conventions of Software – "New Media today can be understood as the mix between older cultural conventions for data representation, access, and manipulation and newer conventions of data representation, access, and manipulation. The "old" data are representations of visual reality and human experience, and the "new" data is numerical data. The computer is kept out of the key "creative" decisions, and is delegated to the position of a technician." e.g. In film, software is used in some areas of production, in others are created using computer animation.
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NEW MEDIA – MASNANI BT ABD CHAIR GA01282
5. New Media as the Aesthetics that Accompanies the Early Stage of Every New Modern Media and Communication Technology – "While ideological tropes indeed seem to be reappearing rather regularly, many aesthetic strategies may reappear two or three times ... In order for this approach to be truly useful it would be insufficient to simply name the strategies and tropes and to record the moments of their appearance; instead, we would have to develop a much more comprehensive analysis which would correlate the history of technology with social, political, and economical histories or the modern period."
6. New Media as Faster Execution of Algorithms Previously Executed Manually or through Other Technologies – Computers are a huge speed-up of what were previously manual techniques. e.g. calculators. "Dramatically speeding up the execution makes possible previously non-existent representational technique." This also makes possible of many new forms of media art such as interactive multimedia and video games. "On one level, a modern digital computer is just a faster calculator, we should not ignore its other identity: that of a cybernetic control device."
7. New Media as the Encoding of Modernist Avant-Garde; New Media as Metamedia – Manovich declares that the 1920s are more relevant to New Media than any other time period. Meta-media coincides with postmodernism in that they both rework old work rather than create new work. New media avant-garde "is about new ways of accessing and manipulating information" (e.g. hypermedia, databases, search engines, etc.). Meta-media is an example of how quantity can change into quality as in new media technology and manipulation techniques can "recode modernist aesthetics into a very different postmodern aesthetics."
8. New Media as Parallel Articulation of Similar Ideas in Post-WWII Art and Modern Computing – Post WWII Art or "combinatorics" involves creating images by systematically changing a single parameter. This leads to the creation or remarkably similar images and spatial structures. "This illustrates that algorithms, this essential part of new media, do not depend on technology, but can be executed by humans."
Globalization and new mediaT
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NEW MEDIA – MASNANI BT ABD CHAIR GA01282
he rise of new media has increased
communication between people all over the
world and the Internet. It has allowed people to
express themselves through blogs, websites,
pictures, and other user-generated media.
Flew (2002) stated that as a result of the
evolution of new media
technologies, globalization occurs.
Globalization is generally stated as "more than
expansion of activities beyond the boundaries
of particular nation states". Globalization
shortens the distance between people all over
the world by the electronic communication
(Carely 1992 in Flew 2002) and Cairncross
(1998) expresses this great development as
the "death of distance". New media "radically
break the connection between physical place
and social place, making physical location
much less significant for our social
relationships" (Croteau and Hoynes 2003:
311).
However, the changes in the new media
environment create a series of tensions in the
concept of "public sphere". According to Ingrid
Volkmer, "public sphere" is defined as a
process through which public communication
becomes restructured and partly dis-
embedded from national political and cultural
institutions. This trend of the globalized public
sphere is not only as a geographical
expansion form a nation to worldwide, but also
changes the relationship between the public,
the media and state (Volkmer, 1999:123).
"Virtual communities" are being established
online and transcend geographical
boundaries, eliminating social
restrictions. Howard Rheingold (2000)
describes these globalised societies as self-
defined networks, which resemble what we do
in real life. "People in virtual communities use
words on screens to exchange pleasantries
and argue, engage in intellectual discourse,
conduct commerce, make plans, brainstorm,
gossip, feud, fall in love, create a little high art
and a lot of idle talk" (Rheingold cited in Slevin
2000: 91). For Sherry Turkle "making the
computer into a second self, finding a soul in
the machine, can substitute for human
relationships" (Holmes 2005: 184). New media
has the ability to connect like-minded others
worldwide.
While this perspective suggests that the technology drives – and therefore is a determining factor – in
the process of globalization, arguments involving technological determinism are generally frowned
upon by mainstream media studies. Instead academics focus on the multiplicity of processes by which
technology is funded, researched and produced, forming a feedback loop when the technologies are
used and often transformed by their users, which then feeds into the process of guiding their future
development.
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NEW MEDIA – MASNANI BT ABD CHAIR GA01282
While commentators such as Castells espouse a "soft determinism" whereby they contend that
"Technology does not determine society. Nor does society script the course of technological change,
since many factors, including individual inventiveness and entrepreneurialism, intervene in the
process of scientific discovery, technical innovation and social applications, so the final outcome
depends on a complex pattern of interaction. Indeed the dilemma of technological determinism is
probably a false problem, since technology is society and society cannot be understood without its
technological tools." (Castells 1996:5) This, however, is still distinct from stating that societal changes
are instigated by technological development, which recalls the theses of Marshall McLuhan.
Manovich and Castells have argued that whereas mass media "corresponded to the logic of industrial
mass society, which values conformity over individuality," (Manovich 2001:41) new media follows the
logic of the post-industrial or globalized society whereby "every citizen can construct her own custom
lifestyle and select her ideology from a large number of choices. Rather than pushing the same
objects to a mass audience, marketing now tries to target each individual separately." (Manovich
2001:42).
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NEW MEDIA – MASNANI BT ABD CHAIR GA01282
As tool for social changeocial movement media has a rich and
storied history (see Agitprop) that has
changed at a rapid rate since New
Media became widely used (Chris
Atton). The Zapatista Army of National
Liberation of Chiapas, Mexico were the first
major movement to make widely recognized
and effective use of New Media for
communiqués and organizing in 1994. Since
then, New Media has been used extensively
by social movements to educate, organize,
share cultural products of movements,
communicate, coalition build, and more.
The WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999
protest activity was another landmark in the
use of New Media as a tool for social change.
The WTO protests used media to organize the
original action, communicate with and educate
participants, and was used as an alternative
media source. The Indy media movement also
developed out of this action, and has been a
great tool in the democratization of
information, which is another widely discussed
aspect of new media movement.[19] Some
scholars even view this democratization as an
indication of the creation of a "radical, socio-
technical paradigm to challenge the dominant,
neoliberal and technologically determinist
model of information and communication
technologies." A less radical view along these
same lines is that people are taking advantage
of the Internet to produce a grassroots
globalization, one that is anti-neoliberal and
centred on people rather than the flow of
capital. Of course, some are also sceptical of
the role of New Media in Social Movements.
Many scholars point out unequal access to
new media as a hindrance to broad-based
movements, sometimes even oppressing
Ssome within a movement. Others are sceptical
about how democratic or useful it really is for
social movements, even for those with
access. There are also many New Media
components that activists cite as tools for
change that have not been widely discussed
as such by academics.
New Media has also found a use with less
radical social movements such as the Free
Hugs Campaign. Using websites, blogs, and
online videos to demonstrate the effectiveness
of the movement itself. Along with this
example the use of high volume blogs has
allowed numerous views and practices to be
more widespread and gain more public
attention. Another example is the on-
going Free Tibet Campaign, which has been
seen on numerous websites as well as having
a slight tie-in with the band Gorillaz in their
Gorillaz Bitez clip featuring the lead
singer 2D sitting with protesters at a Free Tibet
protest. Another social change seen coming
from New Media is trends in fashion and the
emergence of subcultures such as Text
Speak, Cyberpunk, and various others.
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NEW MEDIA – MASNANI BT ABD CHAIR GA01282
Interactivity and new medianteractivity has become a term for a number of new media use options evolving from the rapid dissemination
of Internet access points, the digitalization of media, and media convergence. In 1984, Rice defined new media as communication technologies that enable or facilitate user-to-user interactivity and interactivity between user and information. Such a definition replaces the "one-too-many" model of traditional mass communication with the possibility of a "many-to-many" web of communication. Any individual with the appropriate technology can now produce his or her online media and include images, text, and sound about whatever he or she chooses. Thus the convergence of new methods of communication with new technologies shifts the model of mass communication, and radically reshapes the ways we interact and communicate with one another. in "What is new media?" Vin Crosbie (2002) described three different kinds of communication media. He saw Interpersonal media as "one to one", Mass media as "one too many", and finally New Media as Individuation Media or "many to many".
I
When we think of interactivity and its meaning, we assume that it is only prominent in the conversational dynamics of individuals who are face-to-face. This restriction of opinion does not allow us to see its existence in mediated communication forums. Interactivity is present in some programming work, such as video games. It's also viable in the operation of traditional media. In the mid 1990s, filmmakers started using inexpensive digital cameras to create films. It was also the time when moving image technology had developed, which was able to be viewed on computer desktops in full motion. This development of new media technology was a new method for artists to share their work and interact with the big world. Other settings of interactivity include radio and television talk shows, letters to the editor, listener participation in such programs, and computer and technological programming. Interactive new media has become a true benefit to everyone because people can express their artwork in more than
one way with the technology that we have today and there is no longer a limit to what we can do with our creativity.
Interactivity can be considered a central concept in understanding new media, but different media forms possess different degrees of interactivity, and some forms of digitized and converged media are not in fact interactive at all. Tony Feldman considers digital satellite television as an example of a new media technology that uses digital compression to dramatically increase the number of television channels that can be delivered, and which changes the nature of what can be offered through the service, but does not transform the experience of television from the user's point of view, and thus lacks a more fully interactive dimension. It remains the case that interactivity is not an inherent characteristic of all new media technologies, unlike digitization and convergence.
Terry Flew (2005) argues that "the global interactive games industry is large and growing, and is at the forefront of many of the most significant innovations in new media" (Flew 2005: 101). Interactivity is prominent in these online video games such as World of Warcraft, The Sims Online and Second Life. These games, which are developments of "new media," allow for users to establish relationships and experience a sense of belonging that transcends traditional temporal and spatial boundaries (such as when gamers logging in from different parts of the world interact). These games can be used as an escape or to act out a desired life. Will Wright, creator of The Sims, "is fascinated by the way gamers have become so attached to his invention-with some even living their lives through it". New media have created virtual realities that are becoming virtual extensions of the world we live in. With the creation of Second Life and Active Worlds before it, people have even more control over this virtual world, a world where anything that a participant can think of can become a reality.
New Media changes continuously because it is constantly modified and redefined by the interaction between users, emerging technologies, cultural changes, etc.
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IS NOKIA’s OVI FINNISH’d? – BOB FAULKNER – REWRITE BY ANI SARAH RIDZWAN GA01267
Is Nokia's Ovi Finnish'd?
May 14, 2009
vi is Finnish for "door" and the Ovi Store was expected to be Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK)’s doorway to the world of Internet services. Now
some reports (one each from Reuters andTechFlash) say that plans may have changed rather dramatically.
O
Nokia told TechFlash that it plans to close its Kirkland, Wash., facility as part of its recent restructuring efforts. Kirkland was the home of Nokia’s 2007 acquisition, Twango, which was the basis for its media sharing services. A spokesperson told Reuters: "Ovi Share… is planned to be maintained in its current state" -- apparently meaning no more investment or development is expected to take place. All this is a far cry from the company’s plans of just a few months ago.
At last December’s investor meeting Nokia was expecting the Ovi Store to be the gateway to accessing what it expected to be a €40 billion Internet services market in 2011. In their view, 1 billion people use a Nokia device every day, and Ovi would be the service brand that would bring them together.
Nokia officially announced the Ovi Store at the Mobile World Congress in February. While the store was not officially intended to "open" until May, it has been available for access for some time. However, while other media-sharing and social-networking sites are generating
tens of millions of unique visitors per month, Ovi.com commanded only about 70,000 unique visitors in April, according to statistics at Compete.com. Not a scientific comparison, to be sure, but it gives some idea that Ovi wasn't keeping the folks at Facebook up at night.
But aside from the social-networking aspects of Ovi Store, there is a more important issue that comes into play relative to Nokia.
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IS NOKIA’s OVI FINNISH’d? – BOB FAULKNER – REWRITE BY ANI SARAH RIDZWAN GA01267
Nokia has been quite late to the party when it comes to the War of the Smartphones, in more ways than one. It only got its first touch-based device (5800) out the door earlier this year and it is largely a me-too unit. The company’s long-awaited N97 is not expected until next month.
However, two critical success factors in
smartphones will be applications and their delivery systems, just as
they were in the early days of the personal computer and video game industries.
Unfortunately, Nokia is well behind the curve here as well.
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Application software developers will gravitate to the platform that provides them with the greatest opportunity for success. If you look at the iPhone community as an
IS NOKIA’s OVI FINNISH’d? – BOB FAULKNER – REWRITE BY ANI SARAH RIDZWAN GA01267
While it is certainly not a perfect analog by any means, compare the iPhone developer interest with Nokia’s recent experience. At the company’s Developer Summit held late last month the company attracted all of 345 developers. Granted, it is a difficult economic environment and that may have had a significant bearing on attendance. If that is indeed the case we should see subdued attendance when Apple holds its World Wide Developers Conference in early June.
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IPHONE NOKIA
APP STORE OVI STORE
IS NOKIA’s OVI FINNISH’d? – BOB FAULKNER – REWRITE BY ANI SARAH RIDZWAN GA01267
What may also be holding developers back when it comes to the Nokia platform is the simple lack of scale. The amount of advanced hardware in the hands of subscribers is limited as are the resources developers have to throw at any opportunity. If you look at Nokia’s overall strategy that developed as the handset market evolved, it seems to be based upon the assumption that the aforementioned 1 billion subscribers can be leveraged as if they are an asset that will attract developers for the “next” platform.
The billion Nokia devices out there are, for the most part, simply making phone calls (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The market Nokia is trying to enter is, in fact, a separate market and in this new arena Nokia is really starting far closer to square one than it may think.
This situation reminds me very much of the early days of the high-speed broadband market as cable companies rolled out cable modems and telcos countered with DSL. Both were a refreshing alternative to the days of dial-up and its king, AOL.
The cheerleaders for AOL insisted that the cable companies and the telcos would be forced to cut a deal with AOL and offer AOL’s services via the new high-speed pipe. After all, the logic went, AOL had the customers. Yes, they did and in retrospect. But building applications for the Internet as a whole, instead of just AOL, proved to be more attractive to developers. So we see just how well that worked out for AOL.
— Bob Faulkner, special to Light Reading
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