#dangerada

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Huge data!

Everything we do online (and in some cases offline) somewhere is recorded and made into a database that is known as Big Data. Big data can be utilized for any number of uses,

“Everyday, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data–so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.” This interesting insight is provided on the IBM.com website. For those of you who don’t know, IBM are a massive international technology and consultation company, one of the many companies interested in utilizing big data. IBM being the huge company they are would be foolish to not investigate the use of this new method.

Big data can covers 3 dimensions having expanse variety of data categories, including structured and non-structured data (eg audio, text, streams etc), it has velocity of streaming at high speed even though it’s crunching huge numbers of data. Lastly there is a large volume of data, an extremely large volume of data, hence the name big data. These three dimensions that big data span over give it the edge of any other type of data analysis. SAS considers another two extra dimensions, complexity and variability. Complexity refers to the multiple sources and platforms that the data can originate from and be developed on. Variability refers to trends in social media that big data crosses. This is where the velocity and variety intersect at certain periodic points.

There are several advantages to businesses that utilize big data, they can use it to better understand their customers and in turn market their products or services better to reach them and grow their business. As well as determine the cause of failures and consequently address such failures.

SAS are an analytics software company, one of the world’s largest private software companies in the world. They posted this video almost a year ago 

A company that used SAS’s big data analysis techniques is UPS (United parcel service) they have already capitalized on these strategies and are reaping the rewards. UPS tracks 16.3 million packages a day for 8.8 million customers, averaging 39.5 million requests for tracking every day. This incredibly large number translates to 16 petabytes of data. This diagram shows the size of one petabyte. These 16 petabytes would be impossible to sort through until the alleviation use of big data.

(source: http://hwzone.co.il/hwzone.co.il/originals/news_images/PB-disc5.jpg)

Using tracking telematics sensors in over 46,000 vehicles, data is gained from the vehicles. Including speed, direction, braking, navigation and driver trainer performance. In 2011 the company saved over 8.4 million gallons of fuel by cutting 85 million miles from every day routes. This information would not have been possible without big data.

In a world with so much data, that is exponentially increasing, we need big data analytics to better understand the vast numbers of data. Without big data analytics the data will be rendered almost useless.

  References

Eric Lundquist. 2014 "Big Data Can Solve Small Problems." http://www.eweek.com/database/big-data-can-solve-small-problems.html Accessed 3rd May 2014

Author Unknown. “IBM” Accessed 3rd May 2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM

Thomas H. Davenport and Jill Dyche, "Big Data in Big Companies," May 2013.

SAS. 2013. "Big Data, What is it and why it matters" www.sas.com/en_us/insights/big-data/what-is-big-data.html Accessed 3rd May 2014

IBM, "Bringing big data to the Enterprise" Accessed 3rd May 2014 www-01.ibm.com/software/au/data/bigdata/

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New Media Politics - Everyone's doing it

It didn't take long for politicians to find social media, they adapted almost simultaneously with their voters and now social media has become one big voting campaign for politicians that choose to utilize it, and in 2014 you would be foolish to not include some form social media in your campaign strategy as a politician. 

As I log onto Tumblr to do this Tumblr post the first thing I see is one of my friends reblogging this imagine of Obama and Justin Timberlake.

(Image source: https://31.media.tumblr.com/be615ae1bc7cfdf728cf112458496957/tumblr_n4vd4xrsrb1qeqdkio1_500.png)

After a bit of research I found the relevance behind this post. "It's gonna be May" (Waxman, O. B, 2014) is a meme that is currently circulating the internet. The origins of this meme came from the NSYNC song "It's gonna be me," which evolved into "it's gonna be May" in the weeks coming up to May. Obama is very up to date when it comes to social media. This isn't the first time he's referenced memes before. 

(Image source: http://www.sparkpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/socialvibe_socialmedia_study_political_campaigns_obama.jpg)

Obama loves his social media, refer to this image below, this shows the "social media presence" of the major candidates in the 2012 US election. As you can seen, Obama is a giant among men in this factor. Obama shares everything online from tongue in cheek meme references to policy reforms. 

(Image source: http://jeffzelaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/politics-social-media.jpg)

However this is not the be-all and end-all of politics in this current age. Having a strong internet presence does a multitude of things, namely spreading information to the public as well as gaining young voters. 

Before I speak about the Australian equivalent of social media presence I will share a quick anecdote. A friend of mine said this to me one morning last year "I saw a selfie Kevin Rudd posted on instagram of him with a cut on his face from shaving, he's got my vote for sure" My friend wasn't joking, young voters care about these kind of things (sad I know)

(Image source: http://images.smh.com.au/file/2013/08/13/4657204/WEB_electionsocial.-13sug-6100px/images/rinsta2.jpg)

The Sydney Morning herald reports some interesting facts from Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott's twitter/facebook/youtube accounts. Kevin Rudd had 10 times the amount of followers on twitter during the 2013 election, but on all other platforms (facebook, youtube etc) Tony Abbott had more followers by a small amount. Kevin Rudd's social media strategy was to be "the loveable funny guy" or as I like to call it "the meme-savvy old guy" posting selfies and building a (false) one on one friendship with his followers. Tony Abbott used a different social media strategy, using it for relaying information solely. 

Where did Kevin go wrong? Did he not do exactly what Obama did? Why isn't selfie Ruddy the PM opposed to Abbott? The answer is simple, at the end of the day politics hasn't changed a whole lot. The internet has provided a method of communication for politicians that has never been so accessible before. However the (majority) voters still vote for the same reason.  That or American's love memes a whole lot more than we do

References:

Waxman, O. B. 2014 "Barack Obama’s Facebook Page Joins ‘It’s Gonna Be May’ Meme." http://time.com/84527/barack-obamas-facebook-page-joins-its-gonna-be-may-meme/ Accessed 2 May 2014

Sydney Morning Herald. 2013 "Federal Election 2013 Social Media Stakes" http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/social-media. Accessed 2 may 2014

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Just like English, but easier

The internet savvy have created an entirely new language to make their lives easier yet again, shortening absolute everything from smh to lmgtfy ("shaking my head" and "let me google that for you") and even soa (stop abbreviating everything....ironic)

 This is not exclusive to English any language can make use of this new short-short hand newspeak, and they do. However, it is mainly English speakers (55% of abbreviation) who are slowly condensing their language more than any other. 

(image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/WebsitesByLanguagePieChart.svg/512px-WebsitesByLanguagePieChart.svg.png)

But where did this obsession come from and where is it taking us? We have always abbreviated things (ER, DIY), bringing our social communities online only heightened the development and growth of our "lazy communication". We us internet slang for the same reason we use 'old style' abbreviation, because its easier and we begin to recognize them, starting with people saying "brb," "gtg," "lol," etc and eventually evolved into more than that. People started making new terms for things that had never existed, such as "pwned." These terms came about the same way viral videos do, people say them and share with others for whatever reason, be it at joke or because there really is a reason behind it, but eventually it becomes accepted vocabulary. 

Twitter had a big role to play in this, limiting the amount of characters users could use in a single post to 120. This forced them to abbreviate absolutely everything in order to convey their entire message, however this transposed onto other platforms where there was no word count. Whether the users were used to it, preferred how it sounded/looked, did it subconsciously etc varies, but it has become a part of our everyday lives that is only expanding

However, is this good or bad? Is hearing someone say "lol" in person, instead of actually "lolling" slowly ruining the fabric of our social relationships and thus are human blueprint? Maybe it's not that dramatic, however, things are definitely changing

BBC reports some interesting statistics, stating "While 58% of people communicated via texts on a daily basis in 2011, only 47% made a daily mobile call," as well as "39% of adults now own a smartphone, a 12% increase on 2010." and lastly "The average consumer spends 90 minutes a week accessing social networking sites and email." We're spending more time on our devices, for some more than in the real world. Of course we're going to bring some of our net-speak with us into reality, whether this is a negative or a positive is a personal preference.

The virtual age has brought with it an entirely new language, which helps people speak more quickly, while losing clarity. There is a balance in between the two, although rarely. Netspeak is not a negative if you embrace it, however if you don't you will be left in the wake of the tech savvy

References Sauter, Theresa. 2014. Week 6: New Media Communication. April 13, 2014.http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fcontent%2FlistContent.jsp%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1%26content_id%3D_5232448_1

Authour Unknown, Texting overtakes talking in UK, says Ofcom study. 2012. Accessed April 13, 2014.http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18873041

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The Virtual Employee

The creation of new media has not only brought an array of new possible experiences for the consumer, but has opened new doors for the producer. These 'new media enterprises' capitalize on their consumers engagement in their product or service to help enrich said experience. The consumer are used as a statistic or in some cases, as a virtual employee - without them knowing it. These big online corporations have engaged thousands of consumers world wide to perform repetitive, monotonous tasks whilst getting "paid" (rewarded minimally). It sounds a little bit like a sweatshop, and it is in a way. However it is also very different from a sweatshop.

These consumers are not unwillingly 'working', the virtual workers play games or perform tasks in turn for rewards or money. For example, assisting in sorting google images as a game can constitute as 'playbor' which is a term which encases the idea of playing as a type of labor. However sometimes this playbor is very monotonous and becoming less playful and more labor intensive. Fuchs, 2014 states "The boundaries between play and labor have become fuzzy and the exploitation of playbor has become a new principle.” It is arguable that some playbor is just helping people make ends meet, even with the terrible rate of pay, people use this source of income because it is easy, although not effective

However, new media enterprises are not all negative, at the end of the day, no one is being forced into doing anything they don't wish to do. The draw card for most people is the rewards. This is evident in video game beta testing, 

Image source: http://cheatscodeforgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/videotesterbanner.jpg

Beta testing started as a profession where someone would professionally test video games for a wage. However the new media enterprise has changed this, video game companies are now releasing a free 'testable' version of the game for the consumers to play, much like a demo version. However they collect data from these games and people report bugs before the game is released, and in return the player earns rewards, as well as getting to play a free game.

This was evident in the 2013 video game, World Of Warplanes. On the website they posted on the beta launch page, "We’ve prepared a number of opportunities for clever pilots to both practice their skills in refined testing conditions and also collect many advantages along the way, which can serve as a head-start when World of Warplanes officially launches." This shows the advantages of playing the beta, although glitchy, the game had its advantages of being a 'tester.'

This can't possibly be a negative practice, there are absolutely no losers in this situation. Of course with the exception of the original beta game testers who would get paid.

 Image source: http://fundir.org/img/2!2,xyu5hu-cz__4ysyfwdxn/foto_pobudka_nr564_9.jpg

There are negatives as well as positives when it comes to any new technology, where some people may be exploited others are given new opportunities that also help enrich the companies methods of productivity. There is a fine line, but in the case of a win, win scenario, there are no losers. 

References:

Fuchs, Christian. 2014. “The Power and Political Economy of Social Media.” In Social Media: An Introduction, 97 – 125. London: Sage Publications. 

Auhour Unknown., 2013. "The Open Beta Advantage." http://worldofwarplanes.com/en/news/8/the-open-beta-advantage/ Accessed March 29

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A Completely New Way Of Life - Out of Thin Air

The world is changing around us at a rate like never before, the same amount of change that used to occur in 30 years is happening in 10. We are living in an age where everything is instantaneous and things are only changing faster.  Put yourself in your place in 2004, you were probably listening to American Idiot on your iPod Classic, texting on your Nokia and playing PlayStation 2. You never would have thought you could do all of these activities (and more) on a device that fits into your pocket. You probably never even imagined a video-camera phone, let alone a video-camera-computer-tablet phone. Now put yourself in your place in 1994, you were lucky if you had a phone, you were probably listening to CD's and you thought Super Nintendo was the most amazing invention ever.  These are every day examples of how the world around us has changed so dramatically and how the change is increasing more and more quickly. Social boundaries are being pushed and reformed thanks to social media.

Smart phones are revolutionary tool used to access social media. Smart phones incorporate all of the same features you could find on a computer, as well as a few others (camera, map, phone). Our entire lives have been packed into these devices. Everything is dictated by a screen (Amber Case 2011), in 2014 everything can be done on the go and via your mobile, as the all-mighty Apple say: "there's an app for that." However, Smart Phones themselves aren't social media, they are only tools to access social media. 

(Source: http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/18ixq53rt8m5cjpg.jpg) The whole concept of social media revolves around the entanglement of multiple sites, platforms and users, (Alice Marwick 2013). Everything is connected and there's always hundreds of ways to share whatever you're doing via whatever platform you may choose.  Twitter, Tumblr, Instragram, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Reddit and even Tinder are all examples of social networking platforms, but the king of social media platforms is Facebook. 10 years ago facebook had only 1 million members, by March 2013 the number of active members had increased to 1.11 billion. To give you an idea of the growth since the previous year, active members increased by 23%, daily users up by 23% and mobile users increased by 54%. (Yahoo News 2014) (Source: http://darin.cc/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Facebook-King.png) Much like with any technology there will always be the naysayers, and the appreciators. In this fast growing world surrounded by these new social mediums sometimes it's hard to keep up. Although it isn't mandatory to be involved, it is becoming second nature. Wedding invitations are being sent via facebook and the news is now accessible online more than in papers. 

Where will we be in 2024? It is impossible to know for sure, what we do know for a fact is that social media isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Reference List Case, Amber. “Amber Case – We are all Cyborgs Now”. Ted Talk Video. Posted January 2011.  Accessed March 13, 2014. http://www.ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now/transcript

Marwick, Alice E, (2013). Introduction. In Marwick, Alice E, Status update : celebrity, publicity and branding in the digital age, (pp.1 - 19). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Sauter, Theresa. 2014a. “KCB206 Study Guide 2014”. Accessed March 15, 2014. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fcontent%2FlistContent.jsp%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1%26content_id%3D_4831512_1%26mode%3Dreset

Yahoo News. 2014. “How Facebook Has Grown.” Yahoo News. Date accessed, March 14, 2014. http://news.yahoo.com/number-active-users-facebook-over-230449748.html