Thursday, November 26, 2009

Japanese man marries virtual girlfriend

Social change looms large for the younger set ... this young Japanese man has married his virtual girlfriend, a fictional character from the Nintendo DS "love simulator" Love Plus.

I'm going to refrain from further comment but please don't let that stop you ...

Thursday, November 19, 2009

"Intelligent" and "less intelligent" queries and the results in Google

It's time for some more humour.

You know how, when you start to type your query in on the google search box, the site comes with auto-fill suggestions?
Also, you will know that there are intelligent ways of asking questions and less intelligent ways of asking questions: of course you know that - you lot are smart intelligent Master's students :-)

Now, you can have fun with the auto-fill suggestion box, using less and more sophisticated search terms. The results can be hilarious.

See this site for some ideas.

Thanks to one of my favourite blog authors, Stan, at http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/ for inspiring this post.

Profit and the internet: seven misconceptions

This link leads to a pdf of a very useful article on misconceptions surrounding making profit using the internet. Use this article to talk about your website, or for your portfolio (or both!). It was originally published in MIT Sloan Management Review; Summer 2001; 42, 4; by ABI/INFORM Global.
Remember always to cite the original source in your work.

E Commerce and web site design: academic article

This link will take you to an academic article by H. Joseph Wen, Houn-Gee Chen, and Hsin-Ginn Hwang, called "E-commerce Web site design: strategies and models", published in the journal Information Management & Computer Security 9/1 [2001] pp.5-12

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Cloud computing: the future?

You may recall the excellent seminar on the TED talks series by Kevin Kelly where he explores the future of the internet (posted here on this blog site). In that seminar he mentions "the cloud" as the whole of the interactive web. Here is an article from the Sydney Morning Herald discussing the recent release of a white paper by Microsoft outlining "privacy concerns businesses should consider prior to leaping into the computing 'cloud' ".

Hmmm, why am I not surprised that Microsoft would not be too keen to promote confidence in the Web?

As was discussed in class after watching the TED talks clip, it's interesting to consider what would be the repercussions for the software giant Microsoft if more and more people use the Web rather than the more traditional, Microsoft marketed programs on sale. Now, equally interesting to consider, are the repercussions and significance for the Web if Microsoft are (as I imagine) attempting to undermine public and corporate confidence in the Web. What effect will the Cloud have on the various economic models created by ICT?

Very interesting food for thought and discussion.

Newspaper article: In Qantas's airport of the future, chips will abound but staff may not

Click here to read an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about a $200 million project by Qantas aiming to improve customer service and introduce more automation in airports.

The management of this process, and its outcomes and implications, will be interesting to follow.