Critique on Three-Dimension Television from Economical Aspect

Background

Three-Dimension Television (3D TV) is a television type with Stereoscopy Technique. Images modified by Stereoscopy Technique produce an “illusion of depth” to people, and 3D images can be seen with a pair of special glasses.

Due to the fact that the movie Avatar had a very successful box office record in 2009, 3D imaging technique was then heated up and many electronic products companies were eager to grasp a share in the market by developing this cutting-edge technology. So many 3D TV were then being pushed into the market.

Stereoscopic image of a piano, the viewing angles of the two pictures are slightly different

Nevertheless, according to the statistics on the internet [link], there was just a low purchasing rate recorded in some technology leading countries such as Japan, America and England. People in those countries do not appreciate this technique and are not passionate to own a 3D TV. This significant contrast does not create good impact on the economy. The following paragraphs will detail the reasons why this newly invented television technique cannot become popular, followed by an economic analysis.

Reason 1: 3D media is not common in the society
Because of the mentioned reason, electronic companies put a considerable amount of time and effort to invent and improve 3D television technique. Under a rapid developing progress, fully developed 3D TV had been prepared for the citizens. However, 3D media cannot keep up the pace. Media producers did not provide enough peripheral supports, such as 3D television channels, 3D movie recordings and 3D games, to this newly invented stuff. By common sense, consumers always wish the products they bought can be fully utilized. But in this case, there is no such opportunity for them. Properly they would not think that it is worth to buy this product.

Reason 2: 3D is not a major consideration for making the purchase decision
Besides a small amount of people with technology fever, most people in the society are not enthusiastic on special technologies. For this reason, we may know that 3D will not be the leading factor for people to enjoy a TV program. Instead, being a common leisure of the general public, the content of TV program would be more important than brilliant technologies. Therefore, having great 3D technology equipped cannot generate enough momentum to encourage people buy a 3D television.

Reason 3: Price is high for the general public
3D TV can be sold from around HKD$ 15000 to HKD$ 70000 in Hong Kong (Prices of Sony’s 3D TV were takes as a reference of the market price. [link]). When we compare the price of 3D TV with the income of a general Hong Kong citizen, we can easily notice that the price of 3D TV is relatively high. Many people agree that watching television is just a basic entertainment. Ordinary citizens may not be willing to pay for an item using nearly a whole month of salary. Therefore 3D television is deemed to be an unpopular product.

People watching 3D television

Economical analysis
A basic economic theory is that the market will be most efficient when it is at equilibrium, which is supply equals demand. In short, we can say that success can be reached if the equilibrium point is reached. If there is too much supply or too much unsatisfied demand in the market, the product cannot be counted as a good element for the economy. In the situation of 3D TV, its supply is extraordinary high compare with the demand.

In addition to the above points, we need to take into account the cost of Research & Develop. Given the enormous investment in Research & Development, it may be not beneficial to the company even if the market is at equilibrium because there exists a possibility that the company still cannot recover its cost (still have not breakeven) at that particular point. 3D television technique was still immature in 2009. But after the hurricane of Avatar, the electronic product companies devoted a lot to the invention and the improvement of new 3D television technique. A very significant amount of resources had been spent. But still, those companies would get a far way to break even. 3D TV actually cannot provide positive impact to the economy. 3D television can be considered as a failure at this stage.

Conclusion
Owing to the aforementioned reasons, at this stage, 3D TV cannot become popular in the society. Having just a few numbers of interested consumers thus leads to inadequate demand. In reality, 3D television cannot produce positive effect on the economy of the society. Launching 3D television technique in a hasty way in 2009 should not be considered as a good option for the economy. However, fortunately, the above mentioned bad reasons have the room to be eliminated as time passes. Maybe 3D TV can demonstrate their value when peripheral supports are ready in the consumer market in the future.

References

1. Wikipedia – 3D television Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_television Retrieved on 22nd November, 2010
2. Wikipedia – Stereoscopy Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy
3. Retrieve on 22nd November, 2010
4. A&T (sam的多媒體園地) – 認識「3D TV」廬山真面目 Website: http://sam52888.pixnet.net/blog/post/4629445 Retrieved on 22nd November, 2010
5. 中國經濟網 – 叫好不叫座 3D電視遭遇”寒流” Website: http://big5.ce.cn/cysc/zgjd/kx/201011/05/t20101105_20538191.shtml Retrieved on 22nd November, 2010
6. Sony Bravia Website: http://www.sonystyle.com.hk/ss/product/tv/index.jsp?lid=topmenu_icon_bravia Retrieved on 22nd November, 2010

The 'unreal' images change the 'real' world

There have been a few decades since computer graphics made great impacts on our life. Computer generated imagery (CGI) is now being used widely in different areas such as the movie and the design industry. As we all know, these images are unrealistic – they are just polygons, vectors and programs. But who cares about the factuality of the graphics? CGI can really help us in many aspects so we ought to make good use of this tool. In this essay, I will investigate how the CGI technology aids us and reveal its limitations and anticipation.

Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the application of the field of computer graphics, or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media [1].

Indeed, there are a myriad of examples of CGI technology used in our daily life. Computer aided design (CAD) is one of the applications of CGI [2]. In the field of design, designers wish to visualize the thoughts in their mind so they traditionally need paper and pen to draw what they want. Nowadays, CAD software packages enable them to make a detailed 3D objects which is all-angle visible. It makes the process of engineering and manufacturing of the products become easier and more convenient because 3D models are easier to be understood by manufacturer than hand-drawn 3D-pretending picture.

 Figure 1 3D designs by using CAD software [3]

Moreover, the CGI technology typically benefits the movie industry. As an example, the movie, ‘Toy Story’ is an animation generated purely by the CGI technology. The characters and all the background in the animation are all 3D models which can be treated as some virtual objects. All the motions and movements of the objects are manipulated based on computer programs.

Figure 2 A scene from the movie Toy Story [4]

The above ‘Toy Story’ example is an animation that people can intuitively figure out the graphics involved are not real. But what if some ‘realistic elements’ are added in the movie so that people would intuitively think that ‘the movie is so real’? Let’s see the movie Avatar as a further example.

Avatar is a 2009 American epic science fiction film which mainly consists of the CGI technology to visualize and simulate the imaginary amazing world in the movie [5]. Owing to the state-of-the-art CGI technology, not only images are generated, but also a tremendous income is also generated. Until May 4 2010, worldwide revenue of $2,777,490,390 USD has already been earned from the movie [6].

The graphical models in the CGI technology in Avatar are very similar to the things we encountered in the real world, or even more gorgeous than what we observe in the real world. Nevertheless, not like Toy Story, we think that the movie Avatar is very ‘realistic’ because the images used in the movie fit comfortably to our intuition, without a diametrical conflict to what we observe and experience in our daily life. In other words, we will ‘believe’ the unreal graphics in Avatar but not in Toy Story.

So, something wield springs up in my mind. In what mentioned above, it seems that the CGI technology is so powerful that we can purely generate a ‘realistic’ movie without any human interventions. However, something contradictory to our thought is that the movie Avatar still needs actors and actresses to generate 3D models! Without anyone acting in the movie, the CGI technology is incapable of creating creatures that moves so smooth like humans. What the directors of the movie Avatar have used to capture the motion of humans in an attempt to create human-like creatures is that they install motion sensors in every single joint of the actors and actresses [7], and meanwhile transfer the sensors’ signal to the virtual camera in order to perform motions of the computer 3D models [7]. In fact, generating a series of human actions does require a lot of human resources. Without capturing the motions of human in the real world, it seems that it is extremely difficult to generate some complicated movements of a 3D model purely by manipulating the movements of the 3D components and adjusting the positions of the joints of the 3D model. Knowing that these kinds of movies still involves human manipulation is very important because people will feel bad if we intuitively ‘believe’ that the whole displayed world in the movie Avatar is real, but the movie actually contains no ‘real’ things. We are pleased to know that there is still a little proportion of ‘real things’ (the motions and gestures of the  haracters) in the movie, corresponding to what we ‘believe’.

Figure 3 The tricks behind Avatar [8]

This fact inspires us to think of a very thought-provoking question: Can the CGI technology generate a perfectly unblemished video (or animation) containing smooth and human-like motions? In my own perspective, this dream is nearly impossible in the near future. In the field of computing, it seems like we are continuously using computer graphics to imitate the real world. In fact, I think the machine cannot perfectly simulate the real world because the world is perfect due to its imperfectness. What I mean is that there exist some blemishes in the real world as some random noises and flaws will emerge in the real world. The images generated purely by the CGI technology are highly imitative and with regular pattern, but thanks to these seem-like merits, the images cannot present the imperfect random events naturally. So, we can observe that CGI is more commonly used in the movies having imaginary characters which are less likely to be contradictory to our intuition, in order to make the character more ‘realistic’. Iron man, Spiderman and Transformer are some of the typical examples substantiating the idea that the CGI technology aids mainly the imaginary characters in the movies.

Based on the computer technology now, I think it is too soon to say that computers can one day perfectly simulate a virtual world that the unreal graphics can make us ‘believe’ the ‘unreal’ is ‘real’. Believing what we are seeing still seems agreeable in the sense that if we see something realistic, there must be at least some human manipulations involved (e.g. the motion generating aspect in the movie Avatar).

Are people going to endeavor to make the ‘realistic’ video described above? May or may not be. But at least, it’s clear that amazing images can be made without human intervention if human-like motions are not required. Believe it or not, both of the following images are based on CGI that they are purely vectors and polygons drawn by using graphical software. In the first glance, or even deeper examination, we will conclude that the two girls are real if we are not allowed to use any computer program to examine the factuality of the images.

Figure 4 The realistic women created by CGI [9]

But what if the CGI technology eventually advanced to a level that it is capable of simulating human and even the whole real world? If the CGI technology can really simulate all movements and motions that humans can do, a very interesting phenomenon may appear – the virtual idol. What I mean is a tailor-made idol who can act, sing and even do anything that human can do, but can only be seen on videos. He or she may be very handsome or very pretty, having multitudes of talents in different areas. He or she (or should I say ‘it’?) can be the main character of a movie and interact with other movie stars. The essence of this issue is in the question – would people still like to become fans of the virtual idol even they know it is not real at all?

Would people choose to ‘believe’ in a very realistic virtual object even when they are told that the object is completely made by CGI? This is really an intriguing question aiming to examine the reaction of people dealing with something which is completely unreal. But sadly, the answer will only be released at the day when CGI can impeccably simulate the real world.

Reference

1. Wikipedia Computer-generated imagery. [online], available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-generated_imagery
2. Wikipedia Computer-aided design. [online], available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_design 
3. John S 2010, designer. The 3rd and 4th assignments’ illustration of the course ‘Introduction to 3D Modelling’. Course number CD 85-215-56-01 (01). HKU Space.
4. Photos: Top ten CGI films to keep the kids quiet over easter. [online], available at: http://www.computerweekly.com/galleries/235560-2/Toy-Story-Top-ten-CGI-films.htm 
5. Wikipedia Avatar (2009 film). [online], available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film) 
6. Total Lifetime Grosses of Avatar. Boxofficemojo. [online], available at: http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=avatar.htm 
7. Taking movies beyond Avatar -- for under $150. University of Abertay Dundee 2010. [online], available at: http://www.photoxels.com/tag/avatar-movie/ 
8. Avatar Showtimes Clips and Trailers. [online], available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq_nRfoBSm0&feature=fvw 
9. Brain 2008. Spring Fling. [online], available at: http://librarybrainblog.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/spring-fling/

Influence of Smartphone in the business sector

Thanks to the advanced technology, smartphone has become a new milestone. It is not only improved on the performance but also the functions. According to Vercillo (2010), there has been 96% increase in smartphones sale between the third quarters of 2009-2010, which is a huge number of smartphone sales ever. In reality, smartphone is widely applied in business world. In this essay, how smartphone is influencing the phone company and business firm and how consumers treat smartphone.

Firstly, phone companies will earn more profit. Smartphone has started to replace the mobile phone market. In the past, the smartphone was not as common as today. The improvement of the internet network, the apps and software of smartphone being introduced and so on are the associated factors that contribute to the popularity of smartphone. In Hong Kong, the population of having a smartphone is double than the global rate, which is 48% (TNS Global Telecoms TNS Insights Survey, 2010). As Hong Kong is a business city, it is not surprised that there is a high rate of usage of smartphone. Moreover, the quality of the smartphone is being improved, for example he battery life, increased in memory and speed of loading data. More people will tend to get the smartphone, rather than the traditional mobile phone. Therefore, the sale of smartphone in future will definitely be increased, which means the phone company would have more profit. However, there are disadvantages to the phone company with smartphone being more common. Since there would be more smartphone to be produced, it will increase the competition between them. In order to gain the profit, they have to spend more time and money on inventing the new product or improving the quality of supported service, for instance the apps and updating the software. They may also need to have better marketing strategies on selling their product. The sale of the traditional mobile might be affected by the smartphone. Therefore, the mobile company has to work hard on maintain the competitiveness.

Secondly, smartphone assists business companies in different way. Businessman can easily access internet with a smartphone. In fact, smartphone users normally use email, mobile internet and Microsoft Office (TNS Global Telecoms TNS Insights Survey, 2010). They are no longer limited by the place and time to run their business. Also, the business companies can use smartphone as a channel to promote their company. Most of the banks have made their own apps to serve the customers, like Bank of China, HSBC, and Bank of East Asia. Also, H&M, Chanel, Hugo Boss and Pizzahut Hong Kong allow customers to do the ordering through the Iphone applications. Festival Walk and Langham Place has their own apps as well. In this way, it not only promotes their company, but also increases the sale. Therefore, smartphone is a useful tool for the business company.

Yet, there are technical limitations sometimes. The consumers who use the smartphone would have certain knowledge of using smartphone. The business company would not be able to target the customers who do not smartphone well. So, the business companies need to give clear instructions. Sometimes, even if the business companies provide different services through the smartphone, it might not be used by everyone. The banking application is one of the examples. According to Zetter (2010), there are some banking applications that expose customer data. In order to protect themselves, the customers would not prefer using apps to do any transactions. It is obvious that the technical problems still exits sometimes, regardless of the advanced technology.

Smartphone does bring conveniences to consumers. Consumers can browse all the updated information from the web or apps whenever they need, particular those who are in finance or stock market. They can also contact, send e-mail or even holding video-conferencing through smartphone as it is a reliable tool with high speed. Smartphone’s user is usually businessman (Vercillo, 2010). It can be noted that smartphone does assist customer on their business.
Nevertheless, it is not everyone who would choose to use smartphone. It is more common for people to use smartphone, but it is still more expensive than the traditional mobile phone. Also, consumers do need to be affordable to use some of the services sometimes, like browsing the web or downloading apps. In general, people with older age would not use smartphone since they are lacking of the knowledge or not used to high-tech products. Therefore, financial and age could be the factors which affect people to choose smartphone.

In conclusion, smartphone has become more common and the trend will keep being increased. The sale of phone companies benefited a lot from it. Yet, they still have to spend resources on maintain the competitiveness of their product. Also, smartphone also assists busniess firm in certain extent and the technical problems of using smartphone is still being improved. From the consumers’ side, getting a smartphone or not is still depending on the purchasing power and the background that they come from. Therefore, smartphone is highly related to us nowadays, especially on the business aspects.

Reference

1. TNS Global Telecoms TNS Insights Survey, 2010, Smartphone usage set to dominate Hong Kong mobile market, Retrieved 20 November, 2010 from http://www.tnsglobal.com/news/news-DB5EF16289044655A787385A433A896F.aspx
2. Vercillo,K. , 2010, Nearly 100% Increase in Smartphone Sales in Past Year, Retrieved 20 November, 2010 from http://www.tnsglobal.com/news/news-DB5E F16289044655A787385A433A896 F.aspx
3. Zetter, K. 2010, Smartphone banking apps expose sensitive customer data, Retrieved 21 November, 2010 from http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/ 11/smartphone- banking- apps-expose-sensitive-customer-data.ars

Google Search: Financial and Business Aspects

Google is a global technology leader, focused on improving the ways people connect with information. Through innovations in web search and advertising, Google is now a top Internet destination and possesses one of the most recognized brands in the world.  Available to anyone with an Internet connection, Google maintains the world's largest online index of web sites and other content. A report from Hitslink, an analytics firm, states that Google has close to 80% of worldwide search traffic and market share. Those numbers indicate the importance of Google in the digital world.

In the late 1990’s many new search engines appeared, most of which are used today. These include Yahoo!, Excite, Inktomi, AltaVista, Google and others.  Among these, Google occupies over a half of the entire search engine market. On a user level, the procedures of search engine operations are very simple. All the user has to do is to input necessary parameters of the search. In other words, the user says the search engine what he or she wants to get, e.g. “Happy Valley”, “flight to Hong Kong tonight” or “CCST 9003. However, how search engines decide which page match which query is a real science. Search engines have their own technologies, algorithms, and formulas, which are typically kept secret. Those criteria that the search engines use and are widely known include the occurrence of the search query term on the page text, the title, the meta tags, in the liking text inside the page, in the URL address (Uniform Resource Locator), the headings, as well as bold and italicized font (Nymark & Ramzan, 2008). It is important to note that all search engines are unique, and have their own formulas and algorithms, but they perform the same function; they fetch relevant results that match the user’s query. Google uses page rank to decide which site will come first in the search result.

In order to build up a huge database of the web-sites, Google uses its crawlers named “Googlebots”. Googlebots is an automated web-browser, which follows every link it sees. It visits a site and all its internal pages, gather them, and bring back to the server for index. Next Google processes these pages and creates an index, much like the index in the back of a book. The index is parceled into manageable sections and stored across a large network of computers around the world. When a person types a query into the Google search box, his query is sent to Google machines and compared with all the documents stored in Google’s index to identify the most relevant matches. In a split second, Google system prepares a list of the most relevant pages and also determines the relevant sections and bits of text, images, videos and more. What a person gets is a list of search results with relevant information excerpted beneath each result.(Google, 2010).

Since search engines are huge projects from technological point of view, they must have big capacity servers to operate normally. These servers, in turn, are expensive assets. What Google does to cover these expenses and to gain tremendous profits as well is that it provides context advertising. Google’s advertising program is named “AdWords”. AdWords is a separate vertical bar that returns text advertisements only for a certain keyword or phrase. For a search query of “Hong Kong tourism”, there will be 8-11 advertisements in the AdWords that appears on the right of the search result. These advertisements will be related to hotels in Hong Kong or other tourist facilities available in Hong Kong. This online advertising is very effective because it is targeted and covers very narrow segment of the market; the exact segment the advertiser wants. Google AdWords has received extremely high praise from advertisers who found it a very cost-effective and targeted advertising option, as it allows for easy display of ads to promote goods and services on both Google search results pages as well as collaborating sites. Considering the vast popularity of Google, it is easy to reach a wide audience there. It is    also worth mentioning that Google generates most of its revenue through its advertisements program. Out of US$23.6 billion revenue of Google in 2009, US$22.9 billion came from advertising.

Google AdWords network operates by allowing advertisers to bid on an endless selection of keywords that they believe may be typed into the Google search engine in search of information. When an advertiser bids on a specific keyword, and they bid a high enough price, the result is that their ad will appear in a special segment of the search engine results pages for that keyword which is located both above the regular search engine results and along the right side of the page as well. If an advertiser does have an ad appear in one of these places, and a search user happens to click on the advertisement, traveling to the advertiser’s assigned page, then Google will charge the advertiser a certain amount, which is dependent upon the advertiser’s bid amount.

The Google Company has seen a continuous growth in its revenue, market share, profits and share value ever since it has been set up. Even the economic recession that caused many high performing companies to shut down could not impede the growth of Google Company. Google has positioned itself as the leader of search-related advertising. Google has been complemented by the fast growth in search-related ads sector.  According to Piper Jaffray’s survey search related ads is the fastest growing sector of the online ad business. Furthermore, Google has almost twice as many search ad click-throughs as runner-up Yahoo. In December 2009, Google had 16.5 trillion ad click-through, compared with Yahoo's 9 trillion, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. These figures show the dominance of Google in online advertisements market but it should be not be forgotten that too much dependence of a company on only one single revenue generation project can be detrimental for company’s stable future.  It is also possible that in future, Yahoo and Microsoft may be able to create a technology that gives them a competitive edge over Google in online advertisements and suddenly Google will see a sharp decline in its revenue. 

Furthermore, while applauding the increase in revenue of Google we should bear in mind that Google’s traffic acquisition cost (TAC) has also increased considerably in last couple of years. TAC can be considered as a direct measure of how much it costs Google to drive visitors to its search site and other services from other Web sites, in order that it can then serve them advertising. Included in TAC is the amount of money that Google pays to other companies to ensure that Google is the default browser in their devices. An excellent example of TAC is the US$2 million per month that Google pays to Apple so that its search engine is the default choice for Mobile Safari on the iPhone. TAC could also be used as an indicator that Google's trying hard to keep its traffic up, and that the strategy appears to be working.(Google, 2010) 

Nevertheless, there have been concerns from various quarters regarding the adverse impacts that Google has created in the business world. Google has a market share of close to 80% of worldwide search traffic and people believe that Google takes negative advantage of this situation. They believe that Google can be a dangerous monopoly. Through various acquisitions Google is strengthening its dominance over search and online advertisements markets. Google is fast becoming the “information gatekeeper”. Google's dominance gives it unprecedented control over information. If in the future Google's stock price declines, the company can seek to recoup dollars elsewhere by misusing the information collected.  Marketers are hungry for demographic information, and they're willing to pay for it. Google provides the door, checks who's coming inside and can pass that information onto marketing paparazzi. The temptation to mine the information will be huge, and that temptation will increase as Google matures, its growth slows and its stock falls to earth.(Wilcox, 2010). The Google Company's core business is about search and advertising, which relies on the content of other people and businesses. People complain that Google doesn't own the information from which it makes nearly all its revenue, rather Google is the middleman of the information, which it takes for free.

It should also be noted that due to Google’s dominance of search engine markets, many search engines have experienced a drop in their revenue and some had to go out of the business. This may seem fair enough to an economist stating that the most efficient company has the right to stay in the business in the long run. But let us not forget that it takes a herculean effort to setup a search engine. A great amount of intellectual resource is put in by computer software engineers to develop a search engine. As stated before the algorithms and the formulae that conduct search are not available off the shelf. Rather they need to be ingeniously developed by software engineers. Google’s dominance has prevented the efforts of these engineers to be justly rewarded. The specialized dedicated resources of other search engines are not being utilized to their optimum level and these search engines are unable to collect high revenues.

Google is an excellent example of a company that has harnessed technological superiority to reap financial gains. Google dominates the search and online advertisements market not because it was the first firm in the industry, rather it was the technological superiority that enabled Google to outdo the big firms that were in the industry before. With surprising tact and tenacity Google has been able to dwarf giants such as Microsoft and Yahoo in revenue generation and market share. For Google to ensure its financial dominance it has to focus on its technological aspects. It needs to make its search engine more efficient so that people continue to prefer Google over other search engines. This will motivate businesses to compete for a place on AdWord advertisement and subsequently Google will continue to generate revenue. The key areas of technology where Google needs to focus to improve its search engine is relevance of the search, comprehensiveness of its stored data, freshness of data that is being crawled and the speed of the search. Furthermore, Google should also take into account the overall impact that it generates around the world. It should address the negativities that are being associated with it. Google should kick start a proper campaign to change its image as an “evil monopoly”. It should take steps to build trust amongst online users so that they use Google search engine without the fear being exploited. 

References

1. http://epubl.ltu.se/1402-1773/2008/286/LTU-CUPP-08286-SE.pdf 
2. http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html 
3. http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_googlenomics?currentPage=1
4. http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/web_services_browser/why_google_succeeds_part_1.html 
5. http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//economicimpact/pdf/google_economicimpact.pdf
6. http://www.1stpageprophets.com/pay-per-click/benefits-of-google-adwords-ppc.html 
7. http://www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=220257 
8. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/dec/17/google-and-the-new-digital-future/?page=1 
9. http://internetbusinessmodels.org/googlebusinessmodel/ 
10. http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Google-is-a-dangerous-monopoly-more-than-Microsoft-ever-was/1266994170

How Computer Games Change the World (3)

Societal Impacts

The Societal impacts brought by computer games are the most controversial, and perhaps, the most important argue regarding its influence. Many people believe that the invention and widespread of computer games bring adverse effects to the society. To sum up, there are mainly three common viewpoints on how computer games can cause harm to the society, including addiction, linkage with youth aggression and antisocial behavour such as spending less time to communicate with others in person.

The first point argues that computer game causes addiction, especially among teenagers. In fact, the emotional 'high' experienced after successfully completing certain game objectives can create a feedback effect, which, if unchecked, can lead to emotional dependency (Zwaa, 2008). Many people believe that, this not only reduce the time teenagers spent on obtaining knowledge from textbooks and revising, but also, in extreme case, reduce their sleeping time, thus harming health and affecting their normal lives. This causes severe threats to the society, as teenagers are leaders of the future world. Moreover, a research found out that the average game player age is 34 and the average experience of game playing is 12 years (Entertainment Software Association, 2010). This means that the working force available to the society will diminish as adults become addicted to computer games, which is a great lost to the society. A more detailed description of the addictive effect of computer games has been included in Joseph’s part already.

Compared to the first viewpoint, the second viewpoint sounds even more persuasive. Many people believe that there is a close linkage between violent computer games and teenage aggression. Their major argument is mainly about desensitization of violent or bloody content. These people believe that violent content could be transferred and stocked in minds of anyone who plays it, and as they continue to play those kinds of games the initial reaction about violence eventually decreases. At last, they become more and more immune to this violence, which make them feel that killing and slaughtering images were just normal. This violence continually plays in front of every teenage boy while they are playing their favorite cold-blooded character, killing and slaughtering lots of people mindlessly (Ferrer, 2008). They claim that at the end the computer games with violent contents will transform innocent schoolboys into cold-blooded killing machines. Reasons why this point is invalid will be given in the latter part of this essay.

The last point states that once teenagers are too devoted to playing computer games, they spend less time making new friends, interacting with family members, and less “out-going”. We often hear complains from parents that their children spend more time “talking” to virtual characters in computer games than to them. This is not very healthy as the ability to communicate with others in the real world is an important key to the whole-person development of the children.

These three viewpoints, on the first glance, seem to be strong and persuasive. However, I personally share the same viewpoint with Henry Jenkins, a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Professor Jenkins listed eight very interesting misconceptions of the general public on computer games, and give very effective counter-arguments (http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html). Many of these counter arguments can be used to explain why I believe that the above three claims about computer games are not necessarily valid. For the argument regarding the addiction of computer games, as Joseph has mentioned, all depends on the players’ self-control and time management. Thus, I am not going to emphasis much on this point. Instead, I want to focus on the other two viewpoints, including the relation between aggression and violent games, and the antisocial behavour caused by video games.

In practice, there has been no research proving that computer game with violent content is a primary factor of aggression and violence. Similar, there isn’t any case describing that these computer games are capable of transforming a normal human being to a serial killer (Jenkins, 2004). Besides, Professor Jenkins states that, there have been classic studies of play behavour suggesting that even apes can make basic distinctions between “play” fight and actual combat.

Eric Zimmerman, a famous game designer and play theorist describes the ways we understand play as distinctive from reality as entering the "magic circle." He stated that, “The same action — say, sweeping a floor — may take on different meanings in play (as in playing house) than in reality (housework). Play allows kids to express feelings and impulses that have to be carefully held in check in their real-world interactions.” (Jenkins, 2004). Thus, the argument that playing violent video games too often can cause desensitization of violence act, or a lack of empathy for real-world victims is not valid at all.

However, there are children that behave similarly towards virtual sceneries or characters and the real world. This is a kind of emotional disease, which is hidden in some people. In such case, violent video games can trigger violent actions. But for the majority, gaming has no such effect (Jenkins, 2004). Concerning the viewpoint about social isolation, it is not very accurate to say that computer games cause users to be socially isolated. Again, according to Professor Jenkins, almost sixty percent of frequent gamers play with friends, more than two-third plays with siblings and twenty five percent play with spouses or parents. (Jenkins, 2004) In fact, there are much video games designed for the purpose of social interactions, such as the multiplayer sports game of Nintendo Wii. According to Talmadge Wright, a famous sociologist, conversation about game content, which is called “meta-gaming” provides a context for thinking about game rules and rule breaking (Wright, Boria, & Breidenbach, 2002). This in terms stimulates communication and interactions. In fact, players not only conflict and combat on the explicit screen, but also cooperate and battle implicitly in the real life as a person. Gaming strategies can also serve the purpose as a conversational content among friends and enhancing their relationships.

I believe computer games have brought certain important positive impacts to the society, and one of them is globalization. Through multiplayers gaming, such as online games, players from all over the world interacts with each other frequently. Gradually, we become more and more comfortable to interact, such as playing, arguing and cooperating with people with different races, cultures, social backgrounds and economic classes because on the gaming scene, the only thing that matters is the gaming skills of players (Zwaa, 2008). Gaming itself eliminates the differentiation based on other factors. This eventually facilitates globalization and smoothen the development of a truly harmonious global village.

However, I have to admit that there are still some negative societal impacts of computer games that we cannot ignore. For example, the popularity of computer games cause children to spend less time on sports, thus worsening the already severe problem of obesity.

Reference

1. Barer, R.H. (1969). Patent No. 3659285. United States.
2. Winter, D. (1999, October 28). The Site of the First Video Game. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from Welcome to the PONG-Story: http://www.pong-story.com/intro.htm
3. Enterainment Software Association. (2010). Industry Facts, Retrived November 23, 2010, from Entertainment Software Assoications: http://www.theesa.com/facts/
4. Ferrer, P. (2008). The impact of video games on the socriety. Retrieved November 23,2010, from Helium: http://www.helium.com/items/1230702-the-impact-of-video-games-on-society?page=1
5. Zwaa, X. (2008). The impact of video games on society. Retrieved November 3, 2010, from Helium: http://www.helium.com/items/929805-the-impact-of-video-games-on-society
6. Jenkins, H. (2004). Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerolution/impact/myths.html
7. Wright, T., Boria, E., & Breidenbach, P. (2002). Creative Player Actions in FPS Online Video Games Playing Counter-Strike. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from http://www.gamestudies.ord/0202/wright

Conclusion
The above four passages discuss the impacts of computer games on three different aspects, including individual, economic & financial and cultural. Undoubtedly, no matter positive or negative, from altering individual’s lifestyles to creating new business opportunities and occupations, the invention of computer games greatly changes the world. At least, it has become an important element of entertainment, and perhaps, an essential part of life to many people. Whether these impacts are good or bad all depends on what perspective you use and what dimension you are investigating on.

As individuals, it is difficult for us to affect the technical, economical and cultural impacts of computer games. However, we can ensure that computer games to bring good influence to our personal lives by good time-management and self-control. Bare in mind that computer game is a kind of tool, and whether it brings benefit or harm to yourself all depends on how you manage it.

Last thing I want to add is that while we, as game players, affect the direction of development of the computer game industry; the industry is changing us at the same time. Therefore, the impact of computer games to the world is somehow bi-directional. Never underestimate the influence of yourself, and never underestimate the power of computer games.

How Computer Games Change the World (2)

Financial and Business Changes
Besides great sales, the computer games development has greatly influenced the financial sector as a pioneer of creating new business, new careers, and new promotion methods.

First of all, online games have established a fast and sustainable business in trading virtual items. With the rise of online games in late 1990s, trading virtual items became a significant part of Internet trading business. Unlike traditional commodities, virtual products traded, which are mainly rare equipments in MMORPG, online game accounts, and “Webmoney” credits used in online games, do not have a real shape. This feature enables fast trading via Internet. In a virtual product trade, a buyer pays to get a code from the seller, and then the buyer inputs the code in the online game to get virtual items. It only takes several minutes for the buyer to get the code after payment, whereas for trading real products usually it usually takes several days to get the product. Furthermore, trading virtual items is a sustainable business because of the great demand of virtual items. Usually the equipments in MMORPG have a valid date and the online game charges for a certain amount of “Webmoney” every month, so players always need new equipments and “Webmoney” if they involved in the online game. These consumable factors keep players buying virtual items, thus maintain a sustainable business. As the online game player population is increasing, the demand of virtual items is also likely to keep increasing.

Second, the computer games industry provides youths with better career opportunities. As a variety of new jobs related to computer games have emerged, youths have more choices on choosing their jobs. For instance, in South Korea and China, some skillful young computer games players become professional gamers and enroll online game tournaments like World Cyber Games as a career. They work as “e-sport” athletes and gain from their game performance. Also some computer science students become professional game programmers or game designers so that they can design their ideal games. These new jobs give the youths who have strong passion in computer games better career choices because they may find their careers enjoyable. On the other hand, the youths’ talent can also be fully revealed in corresponding jobs. Professional gamers can utilize their fast reaction as well as skillful moves to perform a wonderful game to audience, and game designers can show their creativity in designing a new game.

Third, the computer games promotion shows a possibility of effective and low cost marketing among online game players via online game community. Advertising in online games is effective because the advertisement is exposed to all players, and the majority of computer game players have similar demographic characteristics. For example, regular online game players are mainly aged from eighteen to thirty-four, and 60% of the players are male. Therefore it is effective to have advertisements or campaigns targeting such majority players. On the other hand, compared with advertising in magazines or in MTR station, advertising in online games has relatively low cost because the promotion is mainly conducted through network, which requires much less expenditure.

In conclusion, the computer game industry has brought vigorous new elements to current business world. However, there exist some safety risks in computer game business. For example, some criminals can make use of the loopholes in trading virtual items to commit frauds, and some intruders can steal someone’s account and sell it to other player. But judging from the new business, careers, and promotion methods provided by computer games industry, more business opportunities is favored rather than risks.

Business and Economics Changes in another prospective

The development of computer games has provided many business opportunities to the world. Many companies have successfully targeted this potential market and made a lot of profit. Similarly, individual game players have also used this golden opportunity to earn some money. But what big changes were actually brought by the introduction of computer games for both individuals and companies to the business market? For easier understanding, I would take an online game called “Audition” which was developed by one of the Hong Kong game developer, Gameone Online Entertainment Group How Computer Games Change the World 8 Limited [1], as an example on how computer games change the business market throughout this part.

From companies’ side, the most significant change to the business world is the launch of different online games that require regular subscription payment, as there were no firms that will focus on the online games business before. Apart from subscription payment, some online game developers have also introduced “virtual items”, such as virtual money, inside the game that require real dollars to purchase. Therefore, in order to play such kinds of online games, game players need to pay certain amount of fees. There are two common ways for the online game companies to charge users, one is by periodic payment such as monthly payment, and another one is by selling game credit points through some game packages which are usually available for sale from convenience stores. For the example of Audition, it is currently selling game packages to sell its virtual items like virtual clothing and virtual money to game players from places like 7-11 [2].

Besides the launch of charged online games, computer games developers also finance their budget to advertise their products through channels like magazine, television or even Facebook. Audition has also invested substantially to their advertisement. They have launched their first television commercial at TVB on June 13, 2008 [3]. Also, setting up interest group and links at the advertisement column at Facebook. All these promotion activities have helped Audition to gain popularity and hence more potential players would be attracted to try the game and make money contribution to the company.

The introduction of computer games not only brings financial changes to game developers, it also brings business opportunities to individual game players. For instance, trading virtual items in reality is the most common one. Sometimes the virtual items even cannot be purchased by real cash, but can only be obtained by luck or continuous playing individually. These virtual items were usually regarded as “rare” or “valuable” inside the game. This has, however, boosted the trading of virtual items between players in reality by cash. In the game Audition, the virtual clothing and other virtual items that used to customize the virtual character are also transferrable inside the game. Therefore, this created demand and supply of the virtual items between players. The potential buyers and sellers usually search their needs from online forums like Discuss.com and Uwants. After they have found their buyer/ seller, they will negotiate the trading details and make transaction subsequently.

Apart from trading virtual items between individual game players, the rise of computer game also lead to different kinds of public competitions. Some game developers would launch regular computer competitions or tournaments that open to the public, usually there would be a prize or reward for the winner. For example, Audition had launched a competition for the 12th ACGHK 2010 at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre during July 30 to August 3 this year (2010). Winner has got a prize, which is a guitar simulator and a few virtual game packages [4].

To conclude, the development of computer games not only brought a commercial opportunity to game developers such as launching charged online games and sales of virtual products, but also provided an environment for individuals to trade virtual items and to participate in open games competition.

Reference

1. http://www.gameone.com/intro.php
2. http://news.hk.9you.com/article/au/readnews1.php?artid=807
3. http://shop.hk.9you.com/au/
4. http://news.hk.9you.com/article/au/readnews2.php?artid=2134

How Computer Games Change the World (1)

Introduction
A computer game, or a video game, refers to an electronic game, which involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. (Baer, 1969) A video device can be a television, a computer, or portable gaming device, etc. The oldest computer game in the world is the cathode ray tube amusement device, a missile-firing game invented by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann in 1947 (WINTER, 1999). At that time, the device could only show very simple dot and line graphics on the cathode ray tube instead of a monitor or television set and only scientists who pursue their studies in physics know how to “enjoy” the game.

Nowadays, however, various computer games have become a major mean of entertainment for most people in the world. These computer games are loaded with fascinating graphics and ever-evolving complexity of the game systems. In the United States, sixty-seven percent of the American households play computer games (Entertainment Software Association, 2010). Economically, the U.S. computer game software sales generated 10.5 billion USD in 2009 (WINTER, 1999). These data imply how popular and powerful computer games have become that not only can it cause an influence to an individual’s life, but also a change to the world.

Similar to other important forms of media, such as movies and televisions, computer games have always been the central of arguments in different aspects, particularly the adverse impacts of violent or pornographic games. It is very controversial to judge if computer games bring a positive or negative impact to the world in general. In fact, the change computer games brought to the world can be described in 3 dimensions, including personal influence, financial & business changes and societal impacts. This essay explores how computer games change the world, both positively and negatively, by having a detailed investigation on each of these four impacts. As the impacts of video games in the four aspects are written by four different HKU students, some of the ideas may be contrasting or even contradicting. We believe that this is a mean to demonstrate diversity of thoughts, and the exchange and interactions of different viewpoints will have dynamic effects on each other, which I believe, is the core value of the whole common core education (general education).

Personal Influence

As the computer games become popular, we should think about the personal impact on the game player. Generally speaking, computer games have both positive and negative effects on the player. To judge computer games are good or not, that’s all depends on the player’s self-control and time management.

First, different skills can be learnt from different types of entertainment computer games. The action games require the player to have high concentration and fast reaction; also because of the high levels of action, it can improve the eyesight and hand-eye coordination of the player. Strategy games can train the player’s logic reasoning ability and problem solving. Sport games
can develop the player’s sport sense while the player no needs to be on the field. It can avoid overtraining so it is very useful to use sport game as a tool to train athletes before match. In nowadays computer games, smoother graphic reality and better sound quality provide a higher level of entertainment to the player so that they will enjoy the games more and maintain concentration for a long time. It is a good idea to use computer games as a teaching tool. Schools are encouraging students to play education games in different subjects. That education video game is improving student’s academic performance by increase the concentration on learning. Playing computer games can release stresses as the player can do anything they what inside the game and get rid of the real world. “Video game training” also use by different professionals. For example, flight simulators are used by cadet pilot for training in order to reduce the risk and also save air fuel. By the same token, military are using RPG game to simulate the combat zone situation. As the Nintendo Wii released on 2006, computer games are not limited by just using hands and eyes. Players are able to use full use of their body to play computer games and doing fitness.

As for the negative side, addiction to the computer games has already been a big issue. Just like our parents always tell us, spending too much time on computer games could lead to bad academic result. Also it might cause potential health disease like Myopia and heart attack .The extreme case is death, a South Korean player died due to nonstop playing 50 hours of online game. The affection on mental health is even worse, as anti-social behaviour is build up on the frequent computer games user, as they are lack of social skill and not good at public speaking. All this is because of they spend the time in computer games instead of joining social events. Playing violent video games can cause aggressive behaviour. This is extremely danger for countries that allow people to have guns like the US. Once the player can’t control his emotion, the society will pay a heavy price whilst gun violence occurs. To put it simple, the positive effect of the computer game mainly maintain in personal aspect while the negative effect could affect the whole society.

Reference

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_behavioral_effects
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm

Comparison between smartphone OSs

The number of smartphone user increase quickly in the past few years. There are two main factors that will affect the performance of smartphone. They are the hardware of the smartphone and the operating system (OS) of the smartphone. In my critique, I will focus on the OS of smartphone. I will compare different smartphone OS and find their pros and cons.
 

There are four major smartphone OS. They are iOS, Android, Symbian OS and Windows Mobile. I will talk about their pros and cons one by one and compare them.

First, I will talk about iOS. iOS is developed by Apple Inc. and is used in the products which are produced by Apple Inc., for example, iPhone. It is proprietary operating system and no one other than Apple Inc. can change or modify the system. Also, iOS do not allow user to install third-party naive applications. If iOS users want to overcome the limitation that set by Apple Inc., they need to jailbreak so that they can remove the limitations. Although there are some disadvantages of iOS, there are some advantages. Its performance in entertaining is extremely powerful. You can always see someone use their iPhone or iPad to play games or watch movie. Moreover, many applications are available for the user of iOS. Overall, iOS is a powerful operating system but it is inconvenience to use third-party applications.
 

Then I will talk about Android. Android is developed by Google. Since it is an open source operating system, it can be modified by Smartphone manufacturers to fit with their products. This system is used by many smartphones made by several famous brands such as HTC, Motorola, etc. As Android is an open source operating system, a large variety of applications is available for Android users. Also, as Android is developed by Google, Android users can use many Google features very well. For example, Android smartphones use Google map and checking Gmail without using Internet browser. However, the number of applications that provide for Android users is still not very much. Moreover, Android use visual keyboard to typing words.
It is not convenience for users to type when compare to real keyboards. Overall, it is suitable for users who always use Internet.

Now, I would like to talk about Windows Mobile. Windows mobile is developed by Microsoft. Windows Mobile is a proprietary operating system. Its functions are very powerful. Moreover, it is designed for business usage and therefore it is very suitable for people who always do business with others. However, since it is designed for business usage, its performance of entertaining is not very good. The resolution of the image of the phone use Windows Mobile is not very high and its video player is not very good. In addition, Windows Mobile is not user friendly, it is difficult to use when people first using it. Overall, Windows Mobile is suitable for businessman but not suitable for people who want entertainment.

Lastly, I will talk about Symbian OS. Symbian OS is developed by Symbian Foundation. It is an open source operating system. Since Symbian OS is one of the oldest mobile operating system, it is almost fully functional. It is mainly target on photo taking, listening music and entertaining. Moreover, due to the longtime of development, it provides more software for Symbian OS users. However, the Internet service of Symbian OS is not very good, it do not have many support of different Internet service. Overall, the market share of Symbian OS is decreasing. It is not competitive when compare with its competitors.

To conclude, different mobile operating system has their advantages and disadvantages. If we want to buy a smartphone, we should choose a suitable mobile operating system due to our requirement and personal needs. Different people will have different user experiments in different mobile operating systems because of their different personal needs and their requirements.

Discuss Smart Phone in a sociology percepts

Introduction

In Hong Kong, It is common to a person using a smart phone, and it is important to state that the popularity of smart phone is increasing. For example, when we are on the street, normally we can see people using Iphone, Samsung galaxy series, etc. It means that smart phone do attract people to use it selves. With the increasing popularity of smart phone , a lot of questions are also raised: Why smart phones are so attractive? How the smart phone change the society? In this essay, this phenomenon will be discussed in a sociology percept. First of all, the reason for the extra high popularity of smart phone will be discussed. The essay will then be followed by discussing the effect of smart phone on the society.

1)The reason for the high popularity of smart phone
There are two reasons explaining why a lot of people choose smart phone rather than mobile phones, mainly ,in terms of security and convenience .

1a) In terms of security
Owing to the fact that Hong Kong is a city of business and a lot of people are working in the business aspect, people need to handle a lot of data of their work and transfer the data to their client through their self phone. Moreover, as some data of their work may be confidential, it Is necessary for the phone to be secure enough so that all the data can be confirmed not to be stolen. For smart phone , since some smart phone are known to be secure, many businessman choose it to help their work. Take blackberry as an example, owing to the fact that the operating system of blackberry are set to be very secure when compared with other phones, blackberry attracts a lot of people to use it . Apart from blackberry, the operating system - Symbian, which is invented by Nokia, is also secure so it attracts many people to use it rather than mobile phone.

1b) In terms of convenience
In the smart phone market, apart from some brands which are very famous in data security, there are also some brands which are famous in the large variety of applications. They are : IPhone OS , Android and Windows mobile. These Operating system provide a large variety of applications. This large variety of applications convince user to do their job. For examples, google maps and bus routes searching application. These applications are very convenient to user to get their job done. Moreover, IPhone OS and Android provide a platform for user to create their own application. This allows applications to have a much higher variety. The characteristic of smart phone that having a lot of applications do attract people very much since it can convince them very much.

2)The effect of smart phone to the society
Since the popularity of smart phone is on the increase, more and more people are affected by this kind of gadget. Therefore, it is important to look at the effect of smart phone on the society.

2a) Boosting the development of application
In the past, application mainly are developed by big companies and people seldom join the development. However, the situation has changed once the smart phone such as IPhone and android system released. Smart phone boost the development of application. The reason is that , as mentioned in above, some smart phone ( IPhone and Android) opens a new platform for user to develop its own application so as to fit their requirement. That is to say, everyone is now have the chance to join the application development. This converge of labor do help the development of new applications.

2b) Open a new market and create new jobs
As mentioned before, some type of smart phone open a new platform for user to share their application. This new platform also create a new market, that is , application market . Take IPhone as an example, Apple company gives a platform called Apple Store for IPhone users to buy applications so as to evaluate their phone. A market is formed which people can buy applications there. Moreover, apart from opening a new market, this new platform also create a new business. Since there is a high demand for applications in the market, some people choose to develop new applications and sell it to other people so as to earn money. This states that Smart Phone do create a new business .

2c) Creating a culture of movable business
Some Smart Phone ,such as blackberry ,are said to be very secure and a lot of businessman to choose to do business through their smart phone. This create a new culture of mobile business that people are now use their selfphone to do business with others. For example, people may sign a contract through smart phone. Therefore, people can now do business everywhere. That is to say, Smart Phone convince businessman to do business in outdoor.

3) Some critical thinking about Smart Phone
Although Smart Phone is said to be very secure, and convenient, it is important for us to think some questions: Do Smart Phone really that good? Do smart phone really secure? Actually, there are many unknown area that we do not know well about smart phone. It is important to state that we should not trust smart phone very much. Even though everyone said that they are secure, it still has the chance of information leakage. Moreover, since your mobile phone always access to the open network, information may be stolen and changed, which may cause a big problem in both economy and personal privacy. Therefore, everyone should think deeply whether they should believe their smart phone too much.

History of smart phones

Nowadays, many companies are trying to develop outstanding mobile phone. They are going to make the phone smaller, lighter and have more functions. And they are called smart phone. According to Wikipedia, the definition of a smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary basic feature phone.

There are many types of smart phone, for example, Symbian, Android,Apple, etc. They allow the user to install and run more advanced applications based on a specific platform.

History of Smart Phone

Why do they exist? Thatʼs because everyone is chasing the most convenience device. For example, people can run lots of program,taking photos, surfing on the Internet, chatting with friends on their cellphones. It helps people connect to this world in a more efficient way. Of course, they have their own history.

1) Simon
The first smart phone Simon presents in 1992, which is developed by IBM. It is already having calendar,address book, world clock,calculator, note pad, email,send and receive fax and games.

2) Nokia 9000, Nokia 9210, Nokia 9500 and Nokia 9300
Nokia developed a lot of smart phone products. In 1996, Nokia made its palm sized smart phone called Nokia 9000, which is a Personal digital assistant (PDA). Then Nokia was trying to improve their products. So, the first color screen phone with an open operating system called Nokia 9210 was released in around 1996. Then, Nokia added WiFi and GPS in the phone9500 and 9300 respectively.

3) Ericsson GS88
Ericsson then joined the smart phone race. It released GS88, which is the first cell phone,which can be labeled as smart phone. In 2000,the touchscreen smartphone R380 using new Symbian OS was released.

4) Microsoft Windows Powered Smartphone 2002
After two years, the next company Microsoft also released the“Microsoft Windows Powered Smartphone 2002”. And there are two smart phones released in the same year. They are Palm OS Treo and BlackBerry from Handspring and RIM respectively. For Palm OS Tero,there is a full keyboard. It also has wireless web browsing, email,calendar, and contact organizer with mobile third-party applications that could be downloaded or synced with a computer.

5) Nokia N95
After 5 years, Nokia is back, It releases the Nokia N95 integrating many features, for example, GPS, a 5megapixel camera with auto focus and LED flash, 3G and wi-fi connectivity and TV-out.In 2007, one of the most important companies, Apple Inc., has introduced iPhone. This amazing device can be easily found in everywhere. It is the first mobile phone that mainly uses touchscreen in the control. The OS used in this phone can support swiping, tapping,pinching, etc.

6) Android
Another similar product Android was released in 2008, which is a cross platform OS. Google and also some software developers back android.The first phone to use the Android OS was the HTC Dream. It has integrated Google’s proprietary applications including Maps,Calendar, Gmail, etc.

7) iPhone
Apple has its 2nd generation iPhone. It created the AppStore which is similar to Android platform OS. But for downloading through AppStore, it is not necessary to connect to the computer. iPhone and iPodcan download the applications if there is a wifi network.In terms of platform, there are so many platforms launched by large companies, for example, Nokia launched Ovi Store, Palm launched Palm App Catalog, etc.

Operating System
Apart from the history side of smart phone, the next sub-topic that will be talked is operating system. There are a few important operating system, they are:

• Android
• Blackberry OS
• iOS
• Windows Mobile

Conclusion

Thatʼs maybe the start of the smartphone race. Each compan ywill then develop more powerful smartphone. The operating system must be very creative and helpful.

A Study of the Roles and Impacts of Computer Games in the Economy

Computer games are enjoyed by a wide range of people, irrespective of age or sex. Beginning with the relatively simple games in the 1950s, the computer game industry has been developing rapidly (Brookhaven National Laboratory, n.d.). Especially after the spread of internet services and personal computers, computer games are a regular part of our lives. Successfully adapting to consumers’ demand and expectations, the computer game industry currently supports the various countries’ economies. This critique will discuss how computer games contribute to the economic growth and a contemporary financial issue the computer game industry is facing.

The computer game industry creates jobs for professional developers and players. In order to produce games of high quality to attract consumers, computer games essentially require complex algorithms. This implies that the game industry requires skillful programmers to handle the algorithms. According to Simply Hired (2010b), programmers in the U.S. annually earn $72,000 USD. This is much more significant compared to the average college graduate salary of $46,000 USD (Simply Hired, 2010a). By paying high salaries to programmers, the computer game industry contributes to stimulating the economy. Not only the developers but also professional players play their significant roles in the economy. Professional gamers can make money either by contributing to the producers or to the consumers. In the former case, professional players test games to find bugs and to improve the quality of the games by commenting on the games. In the latter case, professional gamers can carry out the real-money trading which is to exchange the virtual items, virtual currencies or characters and real money, which can be seen among players in massively multiplayer online games. Professional gamers can also make money by creating and editing strategy guides to give hints and solutions to specific computer games so that other players can complete the game more easily. In addition to programmers and professional gamers, the computer industry relies on and pays market analysts, customer service representatives, and foreign language translators (Crandall and Sidak, 2010). Without the computer game industry, a great amount of people would come to be unemployed. In these ways, the computer game industry is crucial for many people to keep the current income levels.

The computer game industry stimulates money flow by advancing technologies. For example, the demand for faster CPUs for computer games led to the creation of microprocessor architecture called the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture (CBEA) by STI which is an alliance formed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM (IBM Research, n.d.). By applying the high-performance processing to game consoles, the CBEA allowed the fast portrayal of images, which successfully relieved consumers’ stress and contributed to the image quality improvement. This project to invent the CBEA cost $400 million, which must have stimulated money circulation in the world (QJ.net, 2006). Moreover, according to the IBM, the CBEA is also applicable to cryptography, physics, and scientific workloads. In this way, the strive for satisfying consumers’ expectations led to spending a great amount of money, and successfully developed the technology which is further applicable in other fields. Technological developments in the computer game industry will conduce to the age of high mass-consumption, and eventually to the economic growth (Nordtveit, 2010). By enhancing the liquidity of money, innovation of technologies enriches people and the nations.

ROM image leakages and emulators would cause the functional decline of the computer game industry by financially advantaging consumers and disadvantaging producers. In the same way as game consoles load their software, emulators can load ROM images extracted from the commercial software on the computer. While sharing ROMs on the internet is illegal, there are thousands of websites that allow people to download ROMs. Even though copyright holders and game managing organizations try to restrict the illegal activities, they have difficulty preventing the spread of ROMs. This problem is related to the economy because producers will come to gain fewer revenues to produce new games. As consumers try to minimize spending, they will not pay the computer game companies for the software or consoles. Instead, players will download games for free through the internet and play on their computers as long as the quality of the games is almost the same. As a result of the decrease in the demand for the computer games in the market, game companies will have to lower the price of the games in order to induce consumers to even if only slightly pay for their goods and services. It is also possible for game companies to decrease the quality of their games because of less monetary resource available. Although this appears to be disadvantageous to players as well, they can enjoy other entertainments such as anime and social network services such as Facebook. The illegal activities excessively empower consumers and fiscally damage the computer game industry.

The world’s economy cannot be successful without the computer game industry. Many people rely on the jobs in the fields related to the computer game industry in order to afford their needs and wants. Technological developments in the computer game industry further boost the economy as they involve a great amount of monetary tractions. Yet, the industry’s significant role in the economy is interrupted by players’ illegal activities that economically ravage the producers and hamper money flows. While computer games can be replaced with other entertainments for general players, the industry is essential to maintain the current standards of living in many countries. The governments may need to protect the computer game industry from the illegal activities in order to ensure the prosperity of their nations.

References

1. Brookhaven National Laboratory. (n.d.). The first video game?. A passion for discovery. Retrieved on November 23, 2010, from http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham4.asp
2. Crandall, W.R., and Sidak, J.G. (2010). Video games: Serious business for America’s economy. Entertainment software association. Retrieved on November 24, 2010, from http://www.theesa.com/newsroom/seriousbusiness.pdf
3. IBM Research. (n.d.). The Cell project at IBM Research. IBM research. Retrieved on November 23, 2010, from http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/
4. Nordtveit, B.H. (2010, October 6). CCGL9005 session eight: Growth theories [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://broadening.edu.hku.hk/mod/resource/view.php?id=299
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The perasive use of Smartphones: The impact on Society

Technology has always had an impact on society. First came the PCs that changed our life as we knew it. Then came along the cell phones that transformed the way we communicated with each other. And finally came the smart phones that enabled us to do most of the things both the inventions did by just using one device. Nowadays there is an increased trend that more and more people have started to use smart phones. Their pervasive use has affected the society in many ways.

The web browsing facilities of smart phones have enabled people to bring their work with them anywhere. For some people it has provided a means through which they can enjoy more quality time with their family while at the same time engage in business ventures.

How the pervasive use of smart phones has affected the human behavior?

Smart phones have now transformed our social interactions.  In recent years, more people are spending more time on their smart phones than on any other things. Although they provide us with a lot of facilities, their pervasive use has made us ignorant.

There was a time that people in public areas or on public transport vehicles actually used to interact with each other and share a healthy discussion. Every day to work or to school, people used to have a healthy chat with the person sitting next to them. The pervasive use of smart phones has put an end to that as people are more interested in blogging or playing games than talking to each other. Although their increased usage for social networking sites has allowed us to stay contact with our distant friends, they have isolated us from the people around us. For instance, on our way to school or going to work, how many of us would have really talked to the person sitting next to us? We may know people from as far as the United States or Canada but this too is at the expense of people right next to us.

The need to be in style and to be associated with a particular social group has also led many people to purchase a smart phone. The type of phone a person owns has now become a symbol of status. In general, the costlier the phone is and the better its applications are, the wealthier the person is considered. They have transformed the way we interact with people. The cell phone is now a fashion custom, decorated to reflect the owner's personality, his friends, his job and much more.

What impact has the pervasive use of smart phones had over the PCs?

One of the most popular things Smartphones are used for are blogging and for accessing social networking sites. This is especially common amongst the teenagers. Both of this has resulted in a boost of social networking sites.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams is reported to have said that 46% of active Twitter users regularly use a mobile device to tweet.

According to a survey conducted by Compete, a web analytics firm, out of all the people using Facebook ,  an increasingly large number of people (66 percent) are using their smart phones to read news feeds,  post status updates (60 percent), read & reply to private messages (59 percent) and post photos (44 percent). This shows that now more and more people are accessing the internet from their smart phones rather than from their PCs. This fact has been even more pronounced ever since the integration of popular applications such as YouTube on smart phones, which now provides access to apparently infinite music and video libraries and do so at great speed.

Along with their entertainment capabilities, many smart phones have also put their technological abilities to a more productive and constructive use. It is now common to see that smart phones are nowadays being used as a scheduler, keeping track of a person's appointments. Navigation has also been aided by the increased integration of internet applications into mobile phones. Many smart phones are now equipped with internet based tools such as Google Maps and even GPS to help people to stay on their course, hence fueling their use over PCs further.

I believe that although the smart phones have provided us with many useful applications, their pervasive use has made us ignorant of the people around us. Social networking sites do connect us to the people around the globe but this too is at the expense of the people around us, people who we meet in our daily lives. Their pervasive use has made them a part of our daily live. We use them to store our contacts, our appointments and all our daily lives work, making us more and more dependent on them day by day. They have also changed the way we think. It's not about who we are anyone but what kind of cell phone do we own. The pervasive use of smart phones has now made them a part of our personality.

The Role of Smartphones in Medicine

Nowadays, we always discuss about Smartphone with friends or others around us. By the way, what is Smartphone? How smart is it? Simply, Smartphone is a combination of PDA and cell phone. In other words, it has features not only like those we can find on a computer but also making phone calls. Smartphone allows us to install and run many applications. It also let us access Internet. These features make Smartphone popular and become a useful device among different fields, especially in the medical field.

To satisfy health care practitioners' desire, many medical apps are developed and released. For example, medical calculators, clinical resource apps, medical dictionary apps, and apps for patients scheduling, prescription drug reference and electronic health record. We can read reference books, dictionary and patients' records on our Smartphone and thus not much space is taken up for storing the materials. In the old days, doctors and nurses need to write up all the data by hand, and stored them in paper form. The data could be ruined easier simply by a drop of water; as time goes by, ink might run out causes lost of important information about the patient's history. In the case of any emergency, it requires to search for the whole data base store which could be time consuming. However, medical apps can solve these problems now and physicians can search data anywhere and anytime. It also provides a better communication platform for physicians to transfer messages. They can just send out important information to the system through apps, and other colleagues can notice it immediately wherever. It seems convenient for physicians to have a Smartphone.

Nevertheless, in 2009, Software Advice surveyed health care professionals about their preference of Smartphone. According to the survey results, email, note taking and prescription drug reference are popular software among the respondents. They seldom do the clinical related tasks such as checking the medical image viewing and patients' records which are the top two tasks that physicians desire to do with their Smartphone. There seems to be a contradiction because those clinical related tasks are too slow to run or integrate with Smartphone. Therefore, they cannot work with Smartphone on a clinical base.

Apart from this, the growing popularity of Smartphone leads to security problem. Many people do many things with their Smartphone such as checking emails online. This would probably provide an extra platform for hackers to steal personal information from our phones. Furthermore, there is lack of software for securely managing the patient's record at present. If physicians handle the health care information with Smartphone, the patients' record could be leaked out easily. Potential danger of physical theft of Smartphone is also a concern. Smartphone is valuable and can be sold for a good price after all. However, it sometimes may not be stolen by others, but physicians lose it themselves; just like the staffs lost the USB which patients' information was stored a few months before. Therefore, it is not possible for physicians to use Smartphone as a "medical" device.

Like cell phones, long term exposure to Smartphone is harmful for our health. According to the report from Environmental Working Group, the top 10 Smartphone with highest radiation averagely emit 1.53 W/kg radiation, which nearly reach the upper legal limit, 1.6 W/kg. Some may probably argue that we can choose some Smartphone with low radiation. However, we would mostly choose the model based on the functions or appearance of Smartphone. Moreover, from the same research, there is a relationship between prolonged cell phone uses and brain cancer, salivary gland tumors and migraines. Health care professionals are "healer" but not the "killer". They should do no harm to themselves.

At last, Smartphone is an evidence of advanced technology. It is convenient for us to do things whenever and wherever. It also helps us to enhance the relationship with each other. There is nothing wrong with Smartphone, but it is not suitable to use Smartphone as a "medical" device now unless Smartphone has larger loading capacity to run the medical apps, can be protected securely, and emit low radiation. One more important thing is that there should be emergency measures in case of damaged medical apps, system or Smartphone. In the future, Smartphone would become a useful medical instrument.

Reference

1. EEZIPC.com. (n.d.). Radiation from SmartPhones . Retrieved from http://www.eezipc.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68&Itemid=57
2. International Business Times. (2010, June 23). E-Records Could Be Hazardous to Your Health. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/30165/20100623/electronic-health-records-hazardous-to-health.htm
3. Software Advice. (2009, July 30). Which Smartphone Will Own the Healthcare Market? Retrieved from The Medical Blog: http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/medical/smartphone-survey-results-1073009/