IMS assignment (2)

I’m getting myself cofused again, as i understood it people are finding it hard to stay inside the 2,500 words, I’m finding it difficult to write even 1,000 about my chosen behaviour and technology, I think I’m messing it up gradually making it worse and worse! It’s hard to knw how much detail I should go into, should I explain exactly how RSS works and the specifics behind it or just explain what the organisation would need to know preliminary to possibly using it?

Never before have I found searching for information so complicated which is quite ironic since I’m writing about RSS, I’m very good at searching for information and usually find loads, but it’s not happening this time……

IMS assignment

I have started thinking about starting my IMS assignement and have a whole host of ideas I could use. my problem is deciding which to use. I am very interested in most aspects of online behaviour but (as with all of my assignments) really want to focus on something innovative and interesting, this as it has in the past could raise a number of problems. less theory, less guidence and less of a clue about what I’m writing!

I find Widgets really interesting, as a mac user I LOVE widgets and use them alot (mostly to play random arcade games) a sports company seems to be the perfect company to use as sports fans support a certain team and throught the use of RSS could select the teams that they wanted to follow (personlalisation)

Really going to get cracking on the assignement tomorrow, would at least be good to know exactly what I was going to write about…

Businesses Are Changing….

In IMS last week we were looking at how changing technology, specifically the internet have been changing the way businesses work.

We looked at HSBC.co.uk and noted the ease of use of the website and the number of things you can do on it. The most prominant feature is the ease of use and the fact that it allows customers 24/7 access to their finances. We felt that the website kind of disintermediated the cause for bank branches as I and the other members of my group did use the online facilities for most aspects of banking. Branches are still needed as we felt that people still require some advice from an experienced member of staff regarding their financial options. Also cheques (which are being used far less now than before) can not be paid in or spent online.

It was interesting to see the green campaign that HSBC were proposing by suggesting that their customers used online statements rather than recieved them in the post. This in turn would dissintermediate hsbc’s need for staff in this department.

It appears that as all banks are moving online their brand and presence is less obvious, this could of course mean that customers will not remain as loyal as they appear to have been in the past. Locality of branches is no longer an issue, nor are closing times so customers who have selected their banks as a result of these fatcors may re-think their choices.

Personally I find banking online extremly convieniant and I can imagine rather than getting a birthday cheque in your birthday card, you would recive and automatic online transfer of money, less personal but far more conveniant.

Lots of Work to do…

Well it’s that time of year again when all you can think of is deadlines and assignmemts! I always find it really hard to keep up to date with eveything. I haven;t started my speech for P&I, I only really have notes for Campaign Planning and my dissertation is having to take a back seat for a while – even though it’s obviously the most interesting piece of work I have this year as I have chosen the topic!

Finding distractions from work is getting hard now, my washing up is constantly done, my room is spotless and in a minute me and my housemate are going to watch the 6th episode of the current series of lost, our reasoning being “when we watch it we can’t watch anymore because there arent any, so we won’t have that distraction anymore” I’m sure we’ll find something else to distract ourselves with, like me and suddenly wanting to write in my blog!

My Online Behaviour

In IMS last week we were asked to monitor our online behaviour for two days and then consider our use of computer mediated communication.

I found that I used the internet ALOT and for a lot of reasons, my interactive behaviour includes using myspace, hotmail, internet banking and my university forums and message boards.

I use sites such as myspace in order to keep in contact with friends and it generally annoys me when people suggest the only reason to have a myspace account is to ’show-off’ how many friends you have, what your comments are about and what ‘photoshopped’ picture you have as your avatars. I understand that for many this is the purpose of myspace and that includes people like my cousin who constantly sends me messages saying “new pics. comment my pics” – I obviously never do.

I have tried to keep up with the CEMP forum and keep up to date with reading it but find it too seems to be getting very competitive, “I’ve done 7 posts, well I’ve done 20″ when people talk like this it annoys me, I personally read it, keep up to date and if I feel I have something worthwhile to say I will say it, I don’t want to post some random pointless comment just to fill some space and time. I don’t use “instant messengers” at all, I find that talking to someone via the internet is boring, if I want to talk to my friends I phone them, most of the time the only people on messenger are trying to waste time and distract themselves from doing what they should be (Uni work etc.) they therefore keep (busy) or (away) in brackets next to their name and occasionally get annoyed when you do try and have a conversation with them, why their logged in, in the first place is beyond me!!

Now that I do internet banking I don’t think I could live without it, it’s convenient, fast and you don’t have to worry about shielding your pin or waiting in line to do it.

The language I use on the internet is very much the same language which I speak, I don’t use text-speak or anything as I have a pure hatred for it, and in fact worry about the day when people will no-longer know how to spell words properly and just write things like l8er m8

I do however use smiley faces on occasion and find that I punctuate more than necessary just so the other person can tell I’m happy or excited, I feel that sometimes this is necessary as without seeing someone face to face it is hard to guess what their thinking.

When playing WoW I do find that it is necessary to change the language that I prefer to use as time to type is very limited and feeling like part of the group in WoW is important (you want the guild on your side in case you need there help at some point!)

Okay, I think I’ve had a bit of a rant here but think that I have done what Mike asked us to do…..
An Interesting Seminar Mike, thnks!! LOL,

Videogames

Well in IMS we seem to be talking about video games alot, as I thought we would, in my opinions they are one of the most interactive things in technology!

I started an account on Second Life just to see what all the fuss is about, everything is VERY slow as there are so many people on the server, I was still changing my appearence about an hour after first logging on, I’ll try again at some random time when there won’t be so many people online. It would be good to explore the second life ‘world’!

We were talking about video games in an IMS seminar the other week, in my group we were discussing the ’social constructionism’ of games. The majority of people I talk to say that playing games just takes up time whn there are more important things to be done, but who’s to say what is more important? I know alot of people who play video games and to be honest it seems to be teahing them things rather than stunting their intelligence.

My brother for example plays World of Warcraft about 8 hours a day and yet still gets on fine in school, not only that whan I see him playing and taking charge of large groups of people in the game I see how much his leadership skills have developed as a result.

I think the debate about videogames is complex and on-going and always be but personally I don’t think that videogames can cause anymore harm to the world than people have already….