Media Geek Girl

Image via Wikipedia The impact of the internet tends to remind me of something a certain wise Jedi once sensed - a million voices crying out. But certainly not in terror. On the contrary, the internet has made it possible for anyone to be a producer or creator and have an access to an audience not previously possible. However, it is no secret that just as with every other platform or marketplace in society, some have more influence than others. In social media, blogs like ReadWriteWeb and Mashable, and individuals such as Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis have a certain credibility, not to mention a good dose of likeability, that gives them reach. This was recently driven home for me by Louis Gray's plug for this small and relatively young blog, which drove unprecedented pageviews and increases in subscriptions. (On that note, a warm welcome to all new readers and subscribers; please feel free to engage and comment as much as possible - I enjoy hearing your views! Although I aim t

Image by jidnet via Flickr IM has never been that big of a deal for me. Most of my friends have been using MSN Messenger since they first got on the internet , and have never left. That was chat for me - a critical mass sitting on one client, with IM not seeming to offer up much functionality besides. The only other place my friends would perhaps consider chatting would be Facebook following the launch of its IM product. Unlike many others on the internet , barely any of my chat contacts used GTalk , despite having gmail accounts. However, the introduction of Friendfeed's capability to be received and interacted with via IM a couple of days ago piqued my curiosity (cyjy in the blog announcement's example screenshot is me - how rad is that!). It has the very handy option of alerting you when your items are commented on, which though sadly is not likely for me at this point in time, is something I like to stay abreast of. Besides this, new feed items can be IMed directl

The November issue of 'First' hit the stands a couple of days ago, bringing with it goodies to celebrate its latest milestone - the 6th anniversary of its inaugural issue. One side of its regular fold-out poster is covered in the covers of its past few years (the other side is the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull DVD poster - I guess they knew that not too many people would want to display that...), while a cardboard tear-out makes for a DIY popcorn box/kachang puteh container. I was shocked, actually, to see the 'Six Years' boast on its cover, and had to do a double-take. It seemed like just yesterday that I was seeing the first issue of First with its cover of the then precocious Harry Potter, when in reality that was all of 6 years ago (this must be something like watching your child grow up). For those unfamiliar with 'First', it touts itself as 'asia's premier movie magazine' and looks kind of like UK's 'Empire'. Wh

Image by Travis Isaacs via Flickr Search has become such a common part of our everyday lives that google is well on its way to becoming a verb. I use the search box built into my browser as frequently as the next person, and am well accustomed to the no frills google search results. Which is all well and good, but I never thought that search could be fun - until I encountered Viewzi . Viewzi is a visual search engine that launched to the public around June this year. Currently, it offers 18 possible views of search results: the celebrity photo view, song view, album view, web screenshot view, simple text view, power grid view, google timeline view, site information view, photo tag cloud, video x3 view, photo view, 4 sources view, weather view, viewzi news view, amazon book view, everyday shopping view, recipe view and techcrunch view. According to its wikipedia page, there are still more to come including a celebrity gossip view, facebook events view and movie view (which I would l

Image via Wikipedia The new music video site that MTV debuted a couple of days ago has so far gotten positive reviews all around, and I can see why. It features a large library of videos that reaches deep into its archives, which should prove to be a hit both with my dad and my friends alike. Its clean homepage simply features three columns of 'Most Viewed', 'Top Rated' and 'Vintage Videos'. MTV. com's social network extends to the new site - logging in will allow you to rate or comment on the videos. Videos can also be linked to and embedded. But what seems to be most noteworthy about this site is its explanation for the stark absence of ads - it's not setting itself up to be visited. Peter Kafka of MediaMemo reports that according to MTV.com spokesman Tom Biro, the site is meant to serve as a "sort of white-label archive" that MTV Networks and others can draw from to build other sites. This is interesting to me - so far I haven't heard

Image by info_aesthetics via Flickr In my last post , I talked about the new always on, always available paradigm of news media. In this one, I'll share my primary ways of managing the crazy information flow. I've broken these down into three simple (and loose!) categories: filtering by machine, by man and by a combination of man and machine. 1. By Machine: Aide RSS Aide RSS has to be my tool of choice for immediately sussing out which news items are the most buzz worthy. Aide RSS assigns a ranking to each story, computed by a secret formula which is meant to measure relevancy and reaction. This quickly enables you to see what is 'Good', 'Great' or 'Best' and filter accordingly. I use the Aide RSS Firefox plugin that integrates with Google Reader, and have found the rankings to be really accurate. A fun and useful (or masochistic, depending on your personality) thing to do is to subscribe to your blog in an Aide RSS-enabled reader for an instant sense