Entry 5 : THE POWER OF IMOVIE

When I first got my macbook, I was amazed by the applications that Apple provided. Applications such as iPhotos, iTunes and iMovies provided me with the tools to create works of my own! I was particularly curious with how iMovies work and decided to give it a try. To my surprise, it was relatively easy to use as I started creating videos of my holiday trips, birthday video cards, music videos and even a wedding montage for my relatives! iMovies indeed make my dreams come true, as I was a director, a producer, a videographer all in one.
As this video was created for our Music Module, this video that I created was a tribute to the famous cartoon band, The Archies, using their hit single, Sugar Sugar as our theme song. Although the entire process of filming the different scenes and synchronizing them to one full clip was a rather tedious task, I really enjoyed it and watching the fully completed piece done all by myself gave me a sense of satisfaction.
All in all, I hope you enjoy this MTV that I have created, hoping at least it will brighten up your ever gloomy day! :D

Entry 4 : E-commerce and you!

Electronic Commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods and services on the internet. E-commerce has grown extraordinarily with the widespread of internet usage in the 21st century. Today, e-commerce is one of the most important facets of the internet to have emerged in the recent times.

E-commerce is lucrative to many due to its numerous benefits such as low cost set-up and the absence of time and geographical barriers. However, as attractive as e-commerce sounds, we too have seen a fair share of dot-com failures in the recent years.

So what exactly does it takes for a dot-com business to take off and be profitable?
Let me now share with you the top 10 key factors which contributed to the success of e-commerce business.

1. Identifying And Targeting The Correct Consumer Group
Successful e-commerce website understand the importance of identifying their target audience.
By identifying and understanding more about the targeted consumer group, they are able to structure your website in a manner that makes maximum impact.

2. Clean And User Friendly Website
Majority of the consumers looked forward to hassle-free, convenient and yet enjoyable shopping process. Thus, the web content of a successful e-commerce websites are always fresh and informative. Navigation are easy and quick, products are arranged nicely and checks out are easy and hassle-free.

3. Do Not Let Your Customers Forget You
By having a good relationship with your customers, you would be able to retain old customers and even attract new customers through the words of mouth. A successful e-commerce website often develop innovative ways inform their customers about new product and the latest updates to the web stores. At times, they would even give away freebies as a way of rewarding their visitors for their allegiance.

4. Increase Your Web Presence
A successful e-commerce website is able to leave a long-lasting impression on consumers. Many successful e-commerce website do so by increasing their web presence. These websites make their presence felt by carrying out intelligent marketing over the internet. One method is through search engine optimization. Search engines are like spotlights. If they shine on you, people notice you. Majority of buyers visit webpages after spotting them coming in first three or four pages of search engine result.

5. Make your “Hot Sellers” most Visible
Successful e-commerce website always create their online store in such a manner that when a visitor leaves your online store, he/she is aware of the specialty even if they do not intend on purchasing these products. In this case, your online store will be the first thing that comes to their mind when they need to purchase that particular items which happen to be your specialty.

6. Create a web store with a difference
Visual memory is more enduring than textual memory. Thus, a successful e-commerce website often has more plentiful relevant product images. Most people find it easy to browse through pictures rather than reading lengthy product description. Product pictures are very helpful to customers and is definitely a good way to bringing in more traffic.

7. Build Robust Backend Operations
Back end operations are like the backbone of an online website. A successful e-commerce website comprises the existence of a strong back end platform. All back end operations are expected to be accurate, reliable, secured, scalable and provide real time data.

8. Learn faster and better
Business is all about speed. As such, a successful e-commerce website conduct unbiased assessment of its online business and cover up any mistakes and rectify them before your competitors come to know about it. To err is human, but failing to cover yourself and allowing your competitors to exploit your loopholes, is suicidal and is a major threat to E-Success.

9. Surprise Your Customers
Successful e-commerce website understand the need to innovate and add life to their business enterprise. They often perform regular enhancements to their online storefront. Some add incentives by providing surprise offers and price discounts. Constantly innovating while remaining focused on your business goals will lead to success in your online business.

10. Strong Business Planning
Successful e-commerce website understands the importance of strong business planning. They have complete knowledge of your revenue source, break-even duration and other important strategic details from the beginning, and decide on the milestones that are to be achieved. You should know the right moment to expand your business and plan for future sources of revenue.

Let me now end my entry with the top 10 e-commerce websites. Are you able to associate which the above successful key factors to the website?

1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Youtube
4. Yahoo!
5. Windows Live
6. Blogger.com
7. Baidu.com
8. Wikipedia
9. Twitter
10. MSN

Entry 3 : IN THE WORLD OF SOCIAL NETWORK

Facebook is a social network service and website launched in February 2004. Within a short span of 7 years, Facebook has attracted more than 600 millions active users. A January 2009 Complete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network service by worldwide monthly active users. Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-decade "best-of-list". Quantcast estimates Facebook has 135.1 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in October 2010. According to Social Media Today as of April 2010, it is estimated that 41.6% of the U.S. population has a Facebook account. So what exactly is it about facebook that makes it so much popular and attractive than the rest of the fellow networking sites?

Curiosity killed the cat and I have decided to compare Facebook and Friendster. Friendster is another social networking site which used to loved by many, however, this is before the birth of facebook.
1. Target Audiences
In terms of audience, Facebook became of the primary websites in the West, because it was originally a social servicing site invented for Harvard, than later for Yale and many other prestigious campuses. Friendster, on the other hand, has a huge share of subscriber across Asia (about 90% of the traffic). This is especially so in Philippines, where it still retains its top position amidst the heavy competition from Facebook and Myspace. However, since the Facebook fever is rampant, more than half a Friendster account is closed or deleted by the owner. They (member Friendster) move en masse to the Facebook.

Currently, Facebook is the most visited social networking site as compared to Friendster. With an Alexa rank of 2, compared to Friendster’s 2,501,611 , Facebook has the most number of unique monthly visitors worldwide.

2. Interface
The no-nonsense Facebook homepage emits an air of friendliness. It is incorporated with major friendly applications, such as Farmville, and the unique video and picture tagging technology. These features made the site more fun, as people can now play various games such as poker in their sites. In addition, it allows more interaction as you and your friends can play the same games and compare the game scores subsequently.

To combat the competition from Facebook, Friendster has revamped and released a brand new display with green design. It has also introduced new Games Section for its members to play with. However, the games are limited and it allows little interaction with you and your friends.
Friendster still pales in comparion with regard to features such as applications, games, video and even picture tagging. This is definitely hampering its popularity than its rival, Facebook.

3. Security
To control privacy, Facebook has advantages compared to Friendster. Facebook has built-in privacy settings. These are designed to help you protect personal information and your account itself from crooks that are up to no good. As part of the new privacy settings change, the Profile Information section has been revamped and broken down into a granular level of access based on the information you can enter. Here you can control who has access to things you have entered in Personal Info, About Me, Religious views, Political views, your wall posts, video posts, photos, and comments.

In contrast, these security features are lacking in friendster. There are a lot of posers and scammers registered in Friendster than in Facebook, which makes it more vulnerable to scam and the likes. The harsh path that Friendster has taken looses its credibility in the networking arena.

Personally, I still prefered Facebook due to its user-friendly interface, fun applications and not to mention, majority of my friends are on Facebook. Unfortunately, Friendster is losing some of the precious users, if they could improve by making revisions of some applications and design they had embedded on the program, it would certainly assure its longevity to last for another five years.

However, as of now, Facebooks marks the giant of all networking sites.

Entry 2 : Youths cannot live without the web

Recently, BBC news reported about the youths in society today. A survey of 16 to 24 year olds has found that 75% of them feel they "couldn't live" without the internet. Well, I guess I am one of them as well. Imagine yourself without internet, how are you possibly going to be expose to information about your surroundings and your world?
For instance, I tend to surf on daily blogs that I am interested in. By doing so, I use this sites as a filter to get news that I deem interesting. At times, I will browse through Channel News Asia or BBC News to retrieve information around the world. Just take Ris Low for example, how it BOOMZ to such a big news was because of the presence of the internet. Everyone began watching her interview on you-tube that resulted in noise and feedback. In this case, Marshall McLuhan (1967) Media determinism “The Medium is the Message.” Reason being – ‘What’ we say is not as important as ‘How’ we deliver it. The medium in this case the internet has the power to change the way we live and experience the world which is the noise and feedback that is introduce every single day.
On the other hand, the Spiral of silence theory by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1974) states that the media work simultaneously with majority public opinion to silence minority belief. This can be seen in the recent Ris Low incident ; who got discriminated by the majority public. Tons of newly edited you-tube videos were created to mock her even further. For the minorities that supported her, I guess her family would be part of them will not be able to counter back the media or anyone else. Her supporters might voice their anger in blogs or forums defending their BOOMZ UNIVERSE!
Lastly, lets look at the negative impact of the internet that affects youths these days. Due to the vast amount of information we can get from the internet. It has become a threat to us. Well, a recent BBC News reported that a survey of children's web habits shows that "sex" and "porn" are among the top 10 most-searched terms. I guess this is one problem parents should be worried about more than how well they are doing in their studies. Would you want your kid to grow up as a peeping tom/flasher/rapist even he/she has a PHD or someone without any qualifications but has good moral values? Think about it, studying isn't all that important afterall.