The Internet is getting old. Here we are clicking on computer screens, tapping on pieces of glass — reading, looking at pictures, watching videos. This is supposed to be high tech? It’s just a new way of doing old stuff.
Luckily, some truly new stuff is coming our way. Soon, games, entertainment and the news will be a whole new experience.
I’m talking about Oculus Rift, a virtual reality system that was recently bought by Facebook and is being developed in partnership with Samsung. Facebook released a new prototype on Saturday with major audio advances. And Samsung has released Gear VR, a system powered by smartphones.
Oculus started out as an immersive way to play video games, but it turns out that may be just the tip of the iceberg.
How about strapping on the head gear and taking in a concert? You wouldn’t be stuck in a chair like an ordinary member of the audience. You could fly around the venue and look at it from multiple angles, maybe go on stage and get the view of the performer.
Rolling Stone imagined such a thing in an interview with Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab:
“Now, because cameras are so cheap and can be so tiny, you can flood a concert hall with them — imagine that every single person at the concert had these cameras on them. If they were networked, it could all be stitched into one unified 3D model of the concert.” So you could view the show from almost any angle. Add in haptic feedback (which the Rift doesn’t have), and you could even experience the sensation of slamming into someone in the pit.
A demonstration of a concert similar to this took place in April at the Sundance Film Festival.
I press a button, and suddenly I’m in the back of the audience, slowly revolving counterclockwise around this circuit. I’m free to turn in any direction so I can inspect the artists when I move past, or watch Beck on stage.
Or how about if you didn’t want to just watch a TV show, but actually be part of it. One fan has created a VR of Jerry’s apartment from Seinfeld. You can’t interact with the characters, but I predict that won’t be far off.
NBC went on the road earlier this month with an Oculus Rift experience that allows fans to sit in the judges’ chairs in The Voice. Imagine interacting with fellow judges Gwen Stefani, Pharrell Williams, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton.
And soon it will be possible for virtual reality to take us on virtual travels. Marriott Hotels is already offering something like it:
Suddenly, I’m drawn into the map. The terrain lines warp around me, creating a tunnel. With a whoosh, I shoot through the wormhole onto a black-sand beach. The sky is blue, the palms are swaying, the ocean laps at the shoreline. For a moment, everything is completely, utterly serene. I am in Maui.
Journalists had better pay attention to virtual reality because people will soon expect more than just being told about an event — they will want to be there and have the reporter give them a guided tour.
If it can be done with travel and concerts, why not with major events such as a royal wedding or the opening ceremonies at the Olympics. Many people would be willing to pay to be virtual spectators.
The next step might be to make it possible for sports fans to take the virtual seat of their choice at the Super Bowl or the World Cup final.
Something similar could be done with documentaries. We could walk among the penguins in Antarctica, run with the rebels in Syria, watch the votes being counted in the Scottish referendum. Or experience life as a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. Oh wait — it’s already been done by Nonny de la Peña from USC School of Cinematic Arts:
With his hands tied behind his back and muffled sound deliberately made to sound like he had a hood over his head in his ears, one participant quickly ended up in a stress position.
In our times, people line up to buy an iPhone whose most amazing trick is the ability to swipe an image and make it seem like the wind is blowing through picture of trees. In the future, we’ll feel the chill of the wind on our bodies as we trek along on a virtual expedition at the North Pole.
Apple showed off its new iPhones and Watch on Tuesday, along with a new payment system called Apple Pay.
They prefaced the announcement by showing a video of how people currently pay for things. Oh, the tedium of digging in a purse to fish out a credit card only to have it not work the first time. If only someone would deliver us from this vexing problem.
Then they showed Apple Pay in action. A tap of the iPhone along with a satisfying beep — and that was it. Ahh, payment satisfaction at last.
Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Another way might be: Holy cow! Money is going to be slipping through my fingers faster than ever!
Actually, that may a side effect that Apple is hoping you’ll overlook. They’ve partnered with all the major credit card companies plus most of the big U.S. banks to take a cut of every transaction. As CEO Tim Cook pointed out, the transaction business numbers in the trillions of dollars every year in the U.S. alone.
He also noted, of course, that Apple is working hard to bring its payment system to other countries. Hold onto your wallets, Canadians!
Oh, and by the way, one of the first things you could buy with Apple Pay is an Apple Watch, which also uses the new system. You won’t even have to bother pulling your phone out of your pocket. A simple flick of the wrist and you’re done.
And Apple’s not the only company coming up with innovative ways to rack up our credit bills. On Monday, Twitter started experimenting in the U.S with a Buy Now button.
If, for example, you see a T-shirt on Twitter that looks cool, there will be no need to ponder whether you actually have room in your drawer for yet another top that will hardly ever be worn.
Just tap a button and buy now!
According to The Associated Press, Twitter’s experiment will include partners such as the musical groups Soundgarden and Panic! At The Disco, retailers Home Depot and Burberry, and nonprofits The Nature Conservancy and GLAAD.
I have to wonder how these initiatives can possibly work. I don’t question the technology, but haven’t consumers already been sucked dry? Isn’t the middle class already up to its eyeballs in debt?
A political science professor at Thompson Rivers University called for a “war of ideas” during a forum last week looking at how an international terrorist organization managed to recruit a former student of the Kamloops institution.
Unfortunately, Derek Cook had few answers and managed to raise some wrong questions.
Social media was seen as a culprit by Cook and others who took part in the gathering on Thursday. The interconnectivity created by the Internet has brought about amazing things, but also terrible things.
It has helped bring together like-minded people from around the world, whether their interests are stamp collecting or barbaric acts of cruelty.
Groups such as Islamic State have used that connectivity to recruit new members, and persuade them to take part in battles in Syria and Iraq. They aim to carve out a new nation made up only of people who adhere to their specific brand of religion.
Cook says young men steered in that direction are being “conned,” and that it is up to the media and others to show them a different path.
“It has to be a fight about belief systems.”
Cook appeared to be unaware, though, that the battle has already begun. And there’s a lot more to it than the satire that he said he has seen.
For example, the U.S. State Department is turning the tables on Islamic State with a video on YouTube that aims to turn off potential recruits with scenes of decapitated heads, crucified corpses and public executions.
A voiceover in Arabic mocks IS recruiters by suggesting you can learn skills such as blowing up mosques, setting off suicide bombs and “crucifying and executing Muslims.”
It’s part of the State Department’s “Think Again Turn Away” campaign, which also makes use of a Twitter account and a Facebook page.
YouTube, of course, has taken down or blocked any videos from the terrorist group, just as Twitter has gone through a lot of trouble to delete the accounts of anyone associated with them.
In fact, Islamic State was forced to use a little-known social media alternative called Diaspora to publicize it beheading videos. They’ve since been booted off there as well.
Still that doesn’t mean they have been silenced. Supporters, for example, will sometimes hijack popular hashtags to get their message out on Twitter.
And ABC News has reported that a well-educated American may be behind the group’s social media campaign.
The FBI is quoted as saying his expertise includes a “college degree related to computer technology” and that he “was previously employed at a telecommunications company.”
Even so, if you were worried by revelations of social media snooping by the National Security Agency in the U.S., don’t forget that their primary targets are Islamic State and their sympathizers. The same social media tools used by IS for recruitment are also used by Western investigators to track them down.
“You can have a sense of actually knowing someone, a sense of intimacy with someone you’ve never met,” said J.M. Berger, a counterterrorism analyst who monitors the Islamic State’s online presence, in an article published by the Wall Street Journal.
So, yes, the battle for hearts and minds on social media has already begun, and there are major players taking part. It’s really not much different from the propaganda efforts that have been a part of every war.
Are these wars of words helpful in any way? Forums like the one held at TRU demonstrate that words are always important. And if they prevent even a few drops of blood from being shed, then the more the better.
Before there were icons and logos, there were flags. For centuries, people have been devising simple shapes and colours to symbolize complex ideas.
With hundreds of countries in the world, there are bound to be some oddly coincidental similarities among their flags. Here are some that I found.
There are many others that also have similarities, but this is because they share histories, ethnicities or religions. I haven’t included them.
Thailand and Costa Rica are on opposite sides of the world, yet their flags are the same — with reversed colours.
The flag of Poland is the reverse of Indonesia and Monaco, which are identical. Singapore is also the same except that it has a moon and stars.
The flags of Italy and Mexico are almost the same except Mexico has a decoration in the middle. Ireland is also close except that it ends with orange instead of red. Côte d’Ivoire is the reverse of Ireland.
India and Niger have close to the same colours with a round object in the middle. Hungary is also close, but with a plain centre.
The flags of Romania and Chad are the same. Andorra is also the same except it has an emblem in the middle. Belgium is close — starting with black, instead of blue.
Netherlands and Paraguay are close to the same, with the addition of an emblem for Paraguay.
Ghana and Bolivia have the same colour combination but different embellishments.
Austria and Latvia are red with a horizontal white stripe in the middle. Lebanon is similar but also has a cedar in the middle.
Bangladesh, Japan, Laos, Palau and Greenland all have a big dot.
Somalia, Vietnam and Morocco have a big star on a one-colour background.
Three flags use maps of their territory: Cyprus, Kosovo and Antarctica.
Bhutan and Wales both have dragons.
Basque Country and the United Kingdom have crosses on top of each other.
Malaysia and the United States both have a blue canton and stripes.
And finally we have Nigeria in west Africa and Norfolk Island — a territory of Australia in the direction of New Zealand — with nothing in common except, you guessed it, their flags. That’s an evergreen that distinguishes the Norfolk Island flag.
Moms and dads, if you were to advise your children to learn just one skill in order to have a successful career — what would it be?
It’s taken a while, but I’m finally convinced. The kids should learn as much computer programming as they can. Even if it just means figuring out the basics of marking up copy for a website, it’s the one thing they’re all going to need to know if they have any hope of holding on to a well-paying, stable job.
We’ve reached a point where pretty much every business and organization, large or small, has a website and a presence on social media. Many have their own apps.
Currently, it’s common to have someone on staff who specializes in taking care of this kind of stuff. But I predict that in the near future, nearly everyone will be expected to contribute in one way or another. If you’ve got an update for the website, you’ll just have to go ahead and do it. No one will do it for you.
And while many content management systems have evolved to the point where it’s easy to make updates without having to mess with code, there are still times when it helps to know some HTML. Are the paragraphs jammed together instead of having a space between them? Maybe there’s a <p> tag missing.
Knowing HTML will become as common as knowing your ABCs.
If this sounds daunting, it shouldn’t. Take a few lessons in HTML or CSS — the building blocks of web design — and you’ll wonder why you were ever scared of it.
Luckily, encouragement for web literacy abounds on the Internet. Firefox, for example, has modified its start page to show just how easy it is to do a bit of coding. Want an orange background? Just type in the word “orange.”
It’s part of an effort by Mozilla — the open source organization behind Firefox — to promote Maker Party, described as a “global campaign to teach the web.”
It consists of thousands of events taking place in virtually every nook and cranny of the world. An unfortunate exception is our hometown of Kamloops. There is still time to add events to the list, though, and there are many bright people in the city who could organize one.
Even if nothing formal is put together, there is no reason why web savvy people can’t take the time to show friends and family some of the basics. The Webmaker site also has plenty of online training and resources available. You can also check out the free lessons at W3Schools.
It won’t be long before special events like the Maker Party will seem archaic. Children in elementary school will be taught HTML soon after learning the alphabet. And they’ll consider it to be one of their easier subjects.
Before he was beheaded by extremists in Syria, I had never heard of journalist Jim Foley. But having worked with journalists most of my life, I feel like I know a little bit about him.
For example, most people might think he was crazy to risk his life reporting from a war zone, a place where barbarism has become the norm.
Maybe. More likely he was an idealist with a streak of eccentricity. I’m thinking he was someone who believed the world is a better place if we can act and live out our lives based on knowledge — as much as that’s possible — of what’s really going on. He was willing to go to great lengths to carry out that belief. Maybe he was a little bit crazy, but we owe a debt of gratitude to people crazy enough to help us better understand what’s happening around us.
It’s because of people like Foley that I have greater confidence than ever that journalism will survive and thrive well into the future.
This is in spite of recent articles like the one by U.S. writer Clay Shirky who again sounds the death knell for newspapers. And in spite of the fact he has some good points. For example, it’s only a matter of time before newspapers lose their flyer business to some Internet equivalent — just as they lost the bulk of classified ads.
This will be particularly hard on free-distribution newspapers that depend heavily on the selling point of blanket coverage. Even so, the death of newspapers will not mean the death of journalism.
Determined journalists will simply find new ways of funding their passions.
A case in point is the crowd funding partnership between Huffington Post and Beacon Reader to pay and train a citizen of Ferguson, Missouri, to be a journalist for a year in this city torn by racial strife after a police officer shot and killed an unarmed teenager.
Local resident Mariah Stewart has been covering the Ferguson protests as a citizen journalist with the support of readers through Beacon’s platform. With HuffPost readers’ support, we can make sure Stewart can continue her work.
The Beacon Reader is itself a great idea. You pay $5 a month to support the writer of your choice and get access to all the content.
I’m not saying this is some sort of golden path forward for journalism, but it does demonstrate that innovation is by no means dead.
Of course, some journalists have pointed out that Huffington Post should go ahead and actually hire a full-time reporter (with benefits!), and is instead using a gimmick to cheap out.
But what did you expect? Idealists with a streak of eccentricity seldom agree.
I was all set to dump on the Washington Post for inserting “Buy Now” buttons in the text of its articles. Turns out it was a mistake — but still scary.
A “Buy Now” button was spotted on the Post’s website last weekend in a story about the creepy new cover for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Not only did it appear to be endorsing a book exploiting a JonBenet Ramsey look-alike, but it also called into question the authenticity of the article. Did the writer really mean what he said, or was he just trying to sell a book?
Making things worse is that the “Buy Now” affiliate is Amazon — owned by Jeff Bezos, the new owner of the Post. Could this really be how Bezos was going to save journalism? With cheesy buttons that send a few pennies to the paper whenever someone buys a book?
The buttons only appeared briefly, and were misplaced, a Post spokesperson told Mashable. They should have been over on the side, where they have been for years.
But even over on the side, affiliate links raise questions. With the Washington Post there is a level of trust that keeps the articles credible despite the presence of these links.
A run-of-the-mill blog, on the other hand, doesn’t have that kind of reputation. I’ve seen glowing reviews of software, only to find an affiliate link at the bottom. This has been going on for so long that readers seem to have learned to accept it as the price they pay for a free-wheeling Internet.
It’s getting to the point where the entire web needs a giant “Buyer Beware” button on it.
The good news is that ABC News was inundated with complaints, and has issued an apology.
When we realized there was no news value to the live stream, we took it down immediately. Our intention was not to be insensitive to his family, friends and fans, and for that we apologize.
It’s good to see that there are still some lines that can’t be crossed. It’s still bad, though, that ABC even contemplated aerial photography of the Williams home. What could they possibly have been hoping for?
The answer, most likely, is that they knew there would be nothing of any real consequence to show, but they figured the promise of aerial shots would give a nice boost to their page views and help make them more money from ad sales.
An example of the kind of thinking that goes on in newsrooms these days comes from a New York Daily News memo made public by Jim Romenesko. It was written by deputy managing editor Cristina Everett:
Thank you to everyone who did a great story [sic] with keeping our stories SEO strong with the * Robin Williams dead at 63 * header for the first 24 hours. Starting tomorrow morning, we can scale back on the robot talk (meaning no death header) just as long as the stories continue to start with his full name and include buzzy search words like death, dead, suicide, etc.
In case you’re not familiar with the term SEO, it stands for search engine optimization. This is the voodoo art of writing headlines in such a way that they will appear at or near the top of Google search results.
And the New York Daily News was indeed rewarded for its efforts. Their story ranks first if you search “Robin Williams dead at 63.”
Should we be mad at the media for resorting to these tactics? That’s a tough call. Statistics clearly show that people, especially those in their 20s and 30s, want their news from the Internet. The news industry is trying to respond to this demand, but is struggling to find a way of generating enough online revenue to pay the bills or even make a profit.
Advertising remains one of the big ways to make money, and advertisers demand that their ads be seen by as many people as possible. So news sites scramble to increase the number of clicks on their stories by every means at their disposal.
That doesn’t mean we have to like it, though. When they go too far we should complain. And we should also be willing to reward responsible news sites by paying for subscriptions, memberships and the like.
Otherwise, we might find we’re paying too a high price for “free.”
If you haven’t had fun with Google autocomplete, you’re missing out on a popular Internet pastime. People have been posting their results for years.
One of the best-known recent examples is a map of Europe by Randy Olson showing autocompletes for the phrase: “Why is [country] so . . .?”
You can do the same for other places. For Canada, the top result is “bad at soccer.” It might have something to do with the second result: “boring.”
For B.C., it’s “expensive” and for Kamloops, it’s “smoky.” Wildfires are a big worry in River City.
But what if autocomplete didn’t come up with a harmless result. What if, instead, it was actually defamatory.
If you type in Albert Yeung, you get “triad” next to his name — and the Hong Kong entrepreneur maintains that this association with criminal gangs is bad for business.
So he went to court, and got a judge to agree that he can sue Google because it refuses to remove the autocomplete. CBC has the story from The Associated Press:
Judge Marlene Ng disagreed with Google’s lawyers, who argued Yeung was better off asking the websites where the defamatory information was published to remove it. She said Google had the ability to censor material.
Google finds itself in an awkward position. The company is so successful that it has become synonymous with search. That means its autocompletes are seen by millions of people every day — and a bad one could indeed affect a person’s reputation.
The U.S. firm is already trying to figure out the best way to deal with a European “right to forget” law requiring it to remove information about people if they make a request.
And The Associated Press notes this isn’t the first autocomplete case to go before a court.
Last year, a German court ruled in favour of a nutritional supplements company and its owner who sued Google to remove autocomplete terms suggesting links to Scientology and fraud.
Google makes the bulk of its money by gathering data about users and translating that into ad revenue. But that data is turning into a double-edged sword.
No longer can the company claim to be an disinterested bystander. They’re in this up to their necks.
For many websites, revenue from advertising depends on getting as many visitors as possible. The higher the numbers, the more they than can charge for their ads.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that we’ve been subjected to a phenomenon called clickbait. These are the linked headlines you see on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere that present tantalizingly unanswered questions — the idea being that many people won’t be able to resist the temptation to click so they can read the rest of the story.
Here are a couple of examples I just made up:
“You’ll never guess what crazy thing Kim Kardashian did last weekend”
“Seven secrets about kittens that will blow your mind”
Newspapers and magazines have long tried similar tactics to lure people into buying their product. There is no clicking involved, so these types of headlines are known as teasers.
But the Internet clickbait really does seem a lot more shameless, likely because there is so much more competition.
It’s reached a point where there is a backlash of sorts brewing from readers who are tired of being manipulated. One such effort is a Twitter account called @SavedYouAClick, run by Jake Beckman.
When he sees clickbait on Twitter, he reads the story to get the gist of it. He then retweets the clickbait with a couple of words that save you the trouble of clicking and reading it yourself.
So if he saw one of my examples above, he might have reworded it like this: “Went skinny dipping RT @newsonaut You’ll never guess what crazy thing Kim Kardashian did last weekend.” The one about kittens might prove tricky for him.
Other Twitter users have followed suit, and saving us a click has become quite popular.
You might think what Beckman is doing is a harmless pastime, all in good fun. But one of the worst clickbait offenders, BuzzFeed, has raised the alarm in a lengthy article called Please Stop Saving Me A Click.
Charlie Warzel presents a number of reasons for why we shouldn’t be worried about clickbait, but here is his biggest:
But perhaps the best reason — especially if you happen to work in media — not to police clickbait is simple: Everyone’s at least a little bit guilty of trying to get others to care about their work (and why not?!).
Well, yes, as I said, clickbait is nothing new when you think about the teasers that have been vying for our attention at newsstands for decades.
Still, I can’t help but root for efforts such as @SavedYouAClick. They help readers by raising awareness about how the media works. And in a sense they also help the media by forcing writers to become better at their craft, and not resorting to lazy formulas.
Oh, and Beckman has an answer for BuzzFeed: “No. RT @BuzzFeed: Please Stop Saving Me A Click”
