THE LONG TAIL

Chris Anderson outlines that the Internet affects heaps on business these days.

In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

Websites such as Amazon, eBay, and iTunes clearly are the most popular online sales site, but what are their gains? True, they do have strong demand but their supply don’t satisfy the needs of customers, but the rest of the market goes on for a long, long way – thus Anderson speaks of it as ‘The Long Tail’.

More than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles.

 

What Anderson’s research has shown is when the demand for niche products is served, there is actually less interest in the hits and the customer is more likely to be satisfied with their product purchasing outside of the big sites. With Music, Spotify is a good example. They have a wide range of music genres, and its free. 

Anderson shares a 3 point guide to how online entities are seeking to gain the most out of the Long Tail:

1. Make Everything Available

2. Cut the price in half. Now lower it.

3. Help me find it

The example of Spotify above successfully achived the 3 points.Therefore they are now growing bigger and bigger.

read more on Esther’s blog .

RICH GET RICHER

Networks are always growing, little by little, node by node. They don’t stay the same size.

Network nodes link with one another, and more likely linking with popular posts than old posts.

 

Actors with more links have a higher chance of getting new roles. Albert-László Barabási

 

this explain the point above. Producers are more likely to cast popular actors than others, simply because they gain more attractions from viewers and fans. This contrast the point when Rich get richer.
Its the same with the employing process. The one with impressive experiences in areas get the job , while the fresh new one don’t.

this is twisted.

okay-guy-job-experience

 

Overall, its all about preferential attachment. The one with more impressive links to the right areas will always comes first.

Interesting post by Mardy 

Narrative

Michael Joy, the granddaddy of hypertext fictions, in 1987,  published what is recognised as the first major narrative of this genre, afternoon: a story, which he created with Jay Bolter using the software and hypertext application, Storyboard.

afternoon-1-web

Hypertext offers readers and authors the same type of freedom, in a far more seamless fashion. Furthermore, the idea of narrative in hypertext expands beyond the written text, incorporating visual or audio content that goes along with the fictional narrative.

Miichael Joy talks about how paragraphs on different pages could go with other paragraphs in other parts of the book. Douglas mentions how interactive storytelling meets a desire that many readers have – a desire for the inexhaustable story. A book no longer has to stay the same every time you open it up. Sounds cool to me. Imagine playing video games like God Father, Grand Theft Auto, you are able to choose your path and experience new plots every time you play.

( Agreeing with Tim‘s view on this. )

 

corazon_de_oro

On the other hand, I’ve been too familiar with linear structure which there’s beginning and ending , and an interesting body part betweens.

Overall, It was mentioned that hypertext is quite a unique technology, and therefore cannot be compared to print media. The hypertext narrative must be treated as its own entity. We just need to balance the two and treat them equally, as they are both close and useful to us these days.

 

 

 

Networks

In lieu of the Australia Day Monday classes, I watched a video called ” Six Degress”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dcupE1PWj0

 

Six degrees of separation is the  that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, so that a chain of “afriend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.

Kevin Bacon also has a website, called Six Degrees, dedicated to donations all across the globe.

bacon_pkg

In fact, nowadays, people are connected through the internet, social media like Facebook, Tweeter, phones, apps, or anything that traveling is not required. So I believe that the fact that we are connected to each other thesedays, are thanks to the technology bring us together, and thats why ” the world is getting smaller.”

People-computers

Im so excited to see the changes that technology will bring to our world, as 10 years ago, I wouldn’t imagine sitting at home and being able to do everything on internet connected computer.

 

 

Barrier?

I got myself into a pretty funny / awkward / complicated situation yesterday that I’m still thinking about it and cant stop wondering.

So I bought this bag which is handmade by a friend of mine. cool bag and I love it.

photo (10)

 

So I was wearing it yesterday to go a little bit shopping for my little brother at home. I walked into Nike and as I walked in, the barrier beeps. At first i thought its okay, that barrier might have some technical issue that I dont know of. 10 minutes later I walked out and it beeps again. The staff said its okay and all,same with me. But then as I walked into other 5 different stores in Melbourne Central, it beeps everytime I walked in or out. I have nothing in my bag though, only a pen, a notebook and bottle of water.

I got cheked by the staff a few times yesterday and it was so embarrassing yet funny that I can’t figure out why.

So here’s a video I took of what happened ( sorry for swearing )

what’s wrong with my bag?

I got home and started to google it a bit but I can’t find any answer for what just happened to me. Is it the technology behinds the barrier, or the materials that my bag was made of ? I swear I didn’t steal anything though. Or its not my bag that did that ?

Anyone have any answer to this ?

p/s : the bag is made with leather and ropes, simple as that.

 

 

#iphoneography

The hashtag and the iphoneography.

I consider myself as an internet addict. I’m on facebook most of the time, take photos and comment on instagram, watch more than 20 videos on youtube per day, etc.

So that I find the hashtag thingy  so intereting and amazing. Myself as a photographer, I want the world to see my photos. So thats when hashtags comes in usefully. Its like a tool to connect people from all around the world.

And there’s another thing that i love – iphoneography . Thesedays, bringing a 10kg weight of camera and equipments to me is to tiring. So thats when an iphone comes in handy. You will be amazed by looking up online to see how other people take photos with their iphones. Stunning. Some of them even look better than photos taken with a DSLR camera. Nowadays with all the new apps , editing color and combining photos can be done on your iphone as well.

My instagram : Screen Shot 2014-01-23 at 6.42.00 PM

Here’s my photos taken with an iphone 5.

1480687_10200791742510722_1736287464_n 1467308_10200814292474457_1492966904_n 1441494_10200816618732612_1370039243_n 1560444_706564016042022_803662399_n 1525779_706563989375358_1516757444_n 1013358_706563959375361_328387562_n 1525576_706563932708697_677627241_n 1466281_10200622107709958_421293557_n

PHOTOGRAPHY

Finally I get to write something about me, not related to uni’s assesments.  Yay

Yes, I’m a freelance photographer, and an international student from Ha Noi , Viet Nam.

I take pre-wedding photos as my part-time job. Back in my country, I work for different magazines and fashion websites. Some of my works are published on Elle Vietnam.

Here are some of my shots.

734_510118609019898_946289083_n 1986_636030843095340_279458097_n 18728_509675599064199_1577895350_n 156029_557878597577232_596550297_n 482631_590610984303993_240169423_n 486044_556224531075972_1625394729_n 1381941_659161007448990_136517522_n  1424463_677206982311059_950539491_n 1455007_670385876326503_1206944776_n 1460114_673624752669282_247258695_n 1471355_686399428058481_1320218931_n

 

Now thanks to blogging in Networked Media, I now have a chance to express and promote myself on an online channel. It’s like having a portfolio showing my works outside of class.

I have come up with an idea, which I will post tips, tutorials about photography weekly on this blog, so that my followers and others who are interested in photography can have a look and try out , especially with retouching and blending color in photography. I will also blog about my shooting experience, tricks , ups and downs from the first day I started, 4 years ago, till now.

 

Ideas from Hypertext

There are many arguments both for and against hypertext writing.

Supporters argue that hypertext more closely follows the associative paths of the human mind. Detractors offer the argument that the linearity of print follows time sequence and the flow of narrative.

the_hyperlink_war-460x307

 

“The hyperlink war – LAURA MILLER , THURSDAY, JUN 10, 2010 01:01 AM +1000 “.

http://www.salon.com/2010/06/09/links_2/

And yes I agree with both of them. Since now hypertext plays an important part in life, people are so used to it that they depend on it. Myself included, and also affected by its advantages. Seems like my writing skills and my grammar not only not improving but also getting worse because I depend on it to much. One click then I’m lost in the internet with so many un-related information that attracts me and totally forgot about what I was reading/writing.

Not only hypertext but also with other social media,smartphones, tablets, with just one click, touch, press , Im lost in the most amazing and informative world of the Internet. And by that I cant never get anything done. Like finishing this post. Meanwhile writing down what I’m supposed to research and write about, I have other tabs having music playing, sports, photos, etc.

I also find a funny example of life these days getting lost in all the distractions in life and cant never get things done.

http://youtu.be/ncIJlSAO1VY

But you cant get rid of it . The only thing you can do is to control and balance yourself.

IFTTT

 

What is IFTTT?

IFTTT is a service that lets you create powerful connections, instagram post to blog, facebook status to tweeter , soundcloud trakcs downloaded to dropbox, etc.

Amazing right? Everything on the internet nowadays are linked together, which makes it so so useful to internet users, like myself. I’d love to show what I capture on instagram on my blog , and share a track that I’ve been listening all day.

For example, there’s this super quick way to share your new post on WordPress to Facebook.

–       Go on IFTTT ( or just click that hypertext )

–       Search worldpress

–       Go on the “ All Time” bar

–       Click to New post on WordPress to Facebook

–       Active both of your channels

–       Click use recipe

Screen Shot 2014-01-23 at 5.31.19 PM

 

Easy right? I love sharing things from my blog to my other channels, just so that my posts are everywhere on my friends new feed ( lol ).