Topic: Discuss the impact of the latest trends in the music industry for teenagers

Contributed by Khairul Syazwan (Wan)
As we all know that the music industry has largely influenced people, mainly the teenagers and young adults. Not only affected by the cultures and concepts of punk rocks, reggaes, etc, but also influenced by the lives of the celebrities. As a matter of fact, these teenagers idolised these celebrities, following their western dressing and mimicking the things they do.

However, not all are affected by the celebrities in the growing music industry. Firstly, not all cultures in the music industry are popular. In fact, some of these youths are influenced by the cultures that are found ‘underground’. For example, some of the teenagers here call themselves rude boys or rude girls whereas some are called the skinheads. There are also punk rocks and metal music that are vastly grown in these underground music industries. These categories of teenagers can be verified easily by their typical dressing.

Resource used: NBC Universal, Inc retrieved April 7, 2008 from http://www.accesshollywood.com/

Summary of the contents from the resource

This website tells teenagers like me about the latest news that has been happening in the music industry. Teenagers and youths nowadays are getting more interested on what has been happening to the celebrities, regardless from the music industry or the movies. As long as the word Hollywood is involved, every teenager will be interested.

These latest news such as the recent paparazzi case that involves Britney Spears, has caused a mouthful of disgust from many people, even some of her hardcore fans. Normally, for reporters, the more celebrities fall, the better the news is. There is also encore or unnecessary videos that are in the website, for example, the elimination of Chickezie, one of the American Idol contestants. Anyone will be able to watch this video if they miss it on the television.

In conclusion, this website breaks any latest news in the music industry to the people who are outside it. However, this news can affect the teenagers and even the young adults. Not only news, but this site published new albums of some bands and sometimes even announced the next upcoming band in the industry.

A Brief Evaluation of the Resource

Music industry has affected and influenced a lot of the teenagers here. By breaking the news of the celebrities, some of the teenagers look at it as just news. But some of the others find it disturbing and find it a need to critic or critique while the rest find it a new trend. An example is the bald cut from David Beckham back then and the present is the recent bald haircut from Britney Spears. Some of them think that Spears had gone mad while some find it cool to have her head shaved off and will then follow the trend.

Topic: Discuss the impact of online gaming on youths

Contributed by Li Wang Ho

Introduction


Online gaming has become a very popular hobby with teens and adults over the last couple of years as gaming has evolved and even video game consoles have the ability to go online and play with others now. However in the recent years more and more underage teenagers were playing online games and many of them become addicted to it that they lose focus on their own life and live in a virtual world everyday and eventually they become anti social and aggressive to others around them.

Some people argued that online gaming has its own advantages while others say that it only have bad influence on teens. I intend to find out more about the current situation and seek the truth behind what the mass thinks as I am a gamer myself and below are my research findings.


Resource used:Tenth Annual MediaWise® Video Game Report Card retrieved April 3, 2008 from https://www.mediafamily.org/research/report_vgrc_2005.shtml


Summary of the contents from the resource

This MediaWise Video and Computer Game Report Card is issued by the National Institute on Media and the Family, an independent, non-partisan, non-sectarian, non-profit organization. The MediaWise Video and Computer Game Report Card provide a snapshot of the interactive gaming industry with a focus on issues related to the welfare of children and teens.
The risk to children playing video games continues to grow as the gaming industry is even bigger than before and killographic and sexually explicit games are still been sold to millions of underage players. The accuracy of gaming ratings done by ESRB has not been as accurate as many games that are M-rated are getting more and more violent every year and yet they still get the M rating instead of Adults only rating for games like Grand Theft Auto.

Retailers are also to be responsible as teens and children are able to hold of games that are M-rated and even AO-rated games from shops. Some shops even allow the under age teen to change his birthday so that he may be able to purchase a rated-M game. From the resource a group of 213 gamers were recruited to play a online game which 75 of them were given a game with violent content and they were ask to play for 5 hours a day and they were asked to report at the end of the month. The teens playing the violent game were involved in serious argument with friends and partners than those who did not. They also mention that teens that play violent games tend to be more aggressive towards others especially if they have been playing for long periods of time.

In conclusion online gaming is a double edge sword that is both good and bad to teens if they brought a game that does not suit their age as children are easily influenced by what they see. Online games are excellent teachers as they can be used as allows the player to interact with others and foster teamwork, they can also coax the players into actual aggression and antagonistic attitudes over time depending on the game they play.


A Brief Evaluation of the Resource

It provides an overall view of the interactive gaming industry with a focus on issues related to the welfare of children and teens. The target audience is mostly parents to inform them of how gaming may affect their teens. It covers the gaming industry as a whole and talks about how gaming has affected teens and children and a Video Game Report Card Summary that grades the retailers. It also includes references from other sources like case study and surveys to support the document. It is accurate as it uses a lot of references from other sources to support its claims and it’s an authoritative source as the website is a organization. Overall the site is useful and its easy to navigate so my overall impression of the site is quite good as it does provides a lot of information on my research topic.

Topic: Discuss the impact of computer crimes on businesses

Contributed by Tan Lian Dai

Introduction

Computer crimes also known as cybercrimes are getting more and more and in different kinds of ways like internet frauds or scams, hacking, phishing, online child pornography and online credit card frauds nowadays which can happen in businesses or to individuals.

In my point of view in why people commit cybercrimes, I think that they are doing it for interest, for fun or maybe for money. On businesses, I think that it will cost the companies to lose money and reputation or funding for some security software.


Resource used: Heath, N. (2008, March 17). “Businesses may be forced to pay for e-crime police.” Retrieved April 4, 2008 from World Wide Web:
http://www.crime-research.org/news/17.03.2008/3252/


Summary of resource

Businesses will be forced to pay for funding a national police e-crime unit considered by the Home Office but private sectors have hit back saying the core funding part of the e-crime unit had to be paid by the government and follow by the launching of silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign which is backed up many organisation groups in the industry.

Fighting cybercrimes will not be a short process rather it will take a long time to have results shown and therefore should not be too reliant on the contributions from the industry. There were suggestions that businesses would have to support for the cost for the services that helped and protect them.


Brief evaluation of resource

The coverage of website is good as the information in the site are wide ranging as most of the cybercrimes that are known like internet frauds and hacking etc. are covered in the website. The links to other websites are useful as some websites are about law enforcement, forensics, security, legal issues and other kinds of information resources relating to cybercrimes. I personally feel that this website is good for people who need assistance on cybercrimes or people doing research about cybercrimes.

The website is a reliable source of information for cybercrimes as the authors or creators of the website are expertise in cybercrimes.

The facts in the website are accurate and the website is using research of cybercrimes as a basis. In my views about the websites sources, there are no political, ideological or biasness in any of the part of the website. As for references, the link of the source taken from, author whom wrote the articles and the dates of the articles are all stated and no grammatical, spelling or typographical errors were found.

The website’s information is up-to-date and well maintained by the authors of the website and is easily accessible as the connection speed is fast and the website does not have too many graphics or pictures, so the loading speed of the website after it has been connected is also quite fast.

Overall, the information are clearly stated, consistent as in the page layout and presented and arranged in a way where users can see and understand the content, as for the navigation part of the website is easy to use for users.

Topic: Discuss the impact of Blogging on Businesses

By Haris Lim

Introduction

Definations

Blogs are websites that feature its content on a articule by articule basis, with its most recent,updated, piece upfront on the homepage. Furthermore, all content publish on the blog are archived and saved on the "blogsite" and are viewable, unlike standard websites where older content are usually removed and updated.

Blogging is the act of writing facts, opinions and/or views about a subject or a varity of subjects. Blogs could be maintained by an individual, agroup of people (often called workgroups) or an organization. The nature of the blog is dependant on the author(s) intentions and it ranges from an personal online journal to an form or product marketing and customer interaction.

Current Situation

"Blogging is an explosively popular social phenomenon that is spilling into the business world," says Ezra Palmer, eMarketer's editorial director, the author of the report. "But thus far the financial and economic impact of blogging has been minimal." - from eMarketer.com . (2005, May 15) "The Business of Blogging" Retrieved 2008, April 7 from: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1003396

Many of us who have access to the internet would have at least heard of blogs. Services provided by organizations like "Blogger", "MySpace" and "LiveJournal". They have made the creation and maintenance of a blog a quick, cost effective and easy task to do. Blogging as stated above by Ezra Palmer is "an explosively popular social phenomenon" and many, including me, would agree to that statement. However the latter statement, "financial and economic impact of blogging has been minimal", remains to be proven true. I believe that measure impact of blogs and blogging is highly dependent on nature of the blog, the method of which it is used to achieve it purpose and mostly it's readership.

Resource Used :

Bloomberg, T. , Blourland, A. , Brooks, R. , Chaney, P. , Falkow, S. , Flitter, B. , Hallett, F. , Hussey, T. , Odden, L. , Spencer, S. , Taylor, D. , VanDen Heuval, D. , Walshm, D. , Weil, D. , Wright, J. (2008) Business Blog Consulting. Retrieved April 7, 2008 from http://www.businessblogconsulting.com/

Summany of Resource

The "blogsite" titled "Business Blog Consulting" is a blog "devoted to demonstrating how effective weblogs can be for communicating with customers and marketing to new customer prospects. You will find here lots of examples of business and corporate blogs, as well as resources to help you learn more about the topic." .

It features articules that relates to about anything related to blogs and businesses, an example is one of its blog post titled "Extraordinary customer service inadvertently becomes blogger outreach", [Link here], talks about how a company, Zappos, earned reputation among the blogsphere because of its good public relations. Furthermore, the post mentioned another company, "Spirit Airlines", receiving bad reputation from the blogsphere also due to its public relations.

Brief evaluation of resource

The resource coverage is some what limited to what the contributors can cover. They are a just a group of people, not a organization like CNN or ChannelNewsAsia where they have both the resources and manpower to find, report and cover a wide radius of events related to its interest.

The information posted on the resource are reliable as they do hotlink content that they are referring to in their post. Hotlinking, or direct hyperlink, allows readers to go to the core of the topic which the post is about, to see for themselves. Furthermore, they provide an email address to contact them should anyone wish to communicate. This shows that they are willing to be contacted and, probably, corrected if there are any inaccuracies on any of they're content published.

The information is up-to-date as per published as with any blog post, meaning as when the post was publish the information is accurate. As a blog can become quite large, older posts tend to be forgotten and not updated as it variable parts like hyperlinks destinations gets removed or renamed.

The information presentation is a generic 3 columblog site, site details, posts, and links. As usablity goes, unless the user has never seen a blog before, save a website, the information presentation structure is easily recognizable.

In conclusion, the resource is a reliable, moderate size site that is easily usable to users that have some experience with web surfing and blog reading.

Topic: Discuss the latest trends and developments on the use of IT and informatics in the entertainment industry

Contributed by Amin

Introduction

First of all, my topic is way too vague to be research on. I had a hard time just trying to find the developments of the industry. So, instead of relying on "totally" on the internet, I broke down the topic to more specified keywords. Such as, instead of using entertainment industry, I broke it down. Since the entertainment industry is so wide now. There is the gaming industry, theater, movies, music, gambling and even adult (yes, it is part of the entertainment industry even though some of us do not approve). So, as you can see there, my topic is actually the combination of the topics to that of my peers.

Moving on, we all know that technology have affected our way of life in one way or another, whether we like it or not. It is difficult to say what awaits us in the coming future, but what is substantially more exciting is figuring out how the people in the entertainment industry, will utilize these new found technology to please their consumer in order to win over their patronage. With that said, I have decided to use more than one resource because there is no such resource where they would say about the entertainment industry using the latest technology in general. Each resource talks about the different technologies used in the different catergories of the entertainment industry.

Resources used: Computer-generated imagery retrieved April 7, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-generated_imagery; Earfeast > blu-ray development retrieved April 7, 2008 from http://www.earfeast.com/software/blu-ray/; 4D Theather retrieved April 7, 2008 from http://www.simnoa.com/index.htm

Summary of resources

Well, Computer-generated imagery or CGI is no stranger when it comes to the entertainment industry. It is used so often that, I think now it is like a standard for them to use CGI in whatever project they have going on. Music Videos or movies use CGI to enhance the visual impression they want to attain. CGI dates back to the late 1920's where they first used 2D imagery. Then came, Star Wars which put CGI right on the map. Movies like, Terminator, The Abyss, Toy - Story soon followed. Companies started to open up specializing in only CGI.

Blu- Ray, a technology that has not really been commercialise but have already turn heads in the entertainment industry in the pages of the press with the interesting feud with HD-DVD, battling for sole supremacy for the future of the movie industry. A battle that would prove that Blu-Ray is the way to go, as production houses after production houses have pledged the alligance and loyalty to the Blu-Ray format.

4D theather, the next evolution of theather. It is a breakthrough for movies.

Brief evaluation of resource

The site on CGI is very informative as it shares the birth of CGI. It helps people researching have a better understanding on the material which helps especially when moving on to different application of CGI.

Earfeast helps newbies understand the formats availble by the Blu-Ray. It explains the introduction of Blu-Ray and also the significance it has when it is being commercialised. Basically, the schemematics is being run through so that people can further understand the power Blu-Ray holds. It covers from "Getting Started" to application and even the file systems.

The 4d theater resource is just a website from the manufacturers of the chairs and sensors. However, by studying the product and the capabilities these chairs have we can further understand or even imagine the workings of the cinema where every seat is a 4D seat. It also has schemematics of the product so you actually know how the chairs and sensors work. Even by looking at the plans of these chairs, you can imgine the future or the potential these chairs have to creating a more exciting future in the cinema industry.


Topic: Discuss The Development In The Market For 3G Mobile Devices
Contributed by Kalyne

Introduction
Handheld Mobile is a common form of communication through via email, phone calls, messages, multimedia and more. As technology is improving, they came out with a Third Generation (3G) Wireless Systems.

A Third Generation (3G) is a new mobile phone system. It offers a wide range of telecommunication services, compatibility of services, use of small pocket terminals with worldwide roaming capability, Internet and other multimedia applications, and a wide range of services and terminals.

3G mobile devices has impact the global communication and influence into the social world. It is a new handheld phone in market, it create jobs for many people and bring technology into another level.

Resource used
Third Generation Wireless Systems. (25 November 2002).
Retrieved March 27, 2008.
From World Wide Web: http://www.fcc.gov/3G/

Summary of the contents from the resource
In United States, the President executed a memorandum that articulated the need to select radio frequency spectrum to satisfy the future's needs for mobile voice, high-speed data, and Internet-accessible wireless capability.

A study plan, "Plan to select spectrum for Third Generation (3G) Wireless Systems in the United States". The Study Plan takes off an observation details to research on suitable aspect require to meet the needs in 3G mobile.

A Brief Evaluation of the Resource
The sites share more on 3G capabilities. A study plan is carrying out, "Plan to Select Spectrum for Third Generation (3G) Wireless Systems in the United States". The purpose of the study plans, is for the future needs in 3G mobile research for a better functions and needs in area.