Pseudo Professional Movie Producer and More Tools for the Lazymen

I've only ever created two fanvideos in my life, a few years back when I was still a fan of certain Japanese idols and just discovering the wonders of Windows Movie Maker.

The first one was produced in the school library. I was bored and got to fiddling around with whatever I had on hand and before I knew it, I was creating something new out of my favorite episode of a particular drama.

I had everything I needed right in front of me: my friend's external hard disk (filled with the episode of the drama I wanted to work on and a mini selection of music), a lot of time to kill, my overactive imagination and pretty commendable patience for slow tasks, and...Windows Movie Maker on the library computer.

After installing the required codecs and stuff, I was good to go. I selected the episode, tweaked and made up the storyline in my mind, went through the songs and found one that seemed appropriate for what I wanted, dumped everything into Windows Movie Maker and started playing around.

From a one hour long episode, I ended up with a five minutes plus music video with a mini storyline of its own. I added in subtitles of my own, played with the fading and transitions effects to make it look relatively smooth, and by the time my friends returned, I had my very first fanvideo for them to comment on and edit.

(Pardon the song's crappy English, I would have gladly corrected the singers but they neglected to seek my opinion whilst writing the lyrics. And if the song sounds weird, I blame Veoh, my original version sounds a lot better.)



Just for the fun of it, my second fanvideo was more lighthearted. I was watching a variety segment and felt kind of sad for what happened in the end to the girl in the video, the original video was kinda mean. So I played around a little and gave the video a new purpose, (less mean more sweet)...and hey, judging from the comments, I think I fulfilled quite a few fangirls' dreams. ^^V



Windows Movie Maker had allowed me the thrill of creating my own videos, of 'producing' a clip that features some of the finest young actors in Japan at the moment, of solidifying the thoughts I had in my mind whilst watching the original dramas and shows and presenting them to others. In a warped sense of the word, I could say, "Hey I produced a clip that insert actor's name here acted in!"

It was an undoubtedly thoughtful and gratifying process, juggling and blending the original video's audio and the overlaying music to best bring the story across; deciding when to kill the music to emphasize on the significance of certain scenes; cutting and adding extra scenes in so that emotional parts of the scene matched with the emotional parts of the music, so on and so forth.

And at the end of it, viewing the resulting video, the only word that came to mind was...satisfaction. =) A pity I no longer have time to play with it.

Now to the more serious stuff.. Google Tools.. o.o

Yes Google has introduced a mind boggling amount of tools that greatly aid people in their search for information. It's kind of led to our reliance on Google for information, be it the frequent abuse of Google Scholar for research, Google Maps for directions, etc. I've taken to responding to questions that I can't answer with, "Google it!"

With such a wide array of tools to use, Simply Google, is a useful application that nicely consolidates all of Google’s specialized searches in one easy-to-use page.



Simply type in your keywords in the respective search boxes you were aiming for, the whole list is laid out there for you to choose from. Simply Google is regularly updated and maintained so it's pretty up to date.

Another application that I found very interesting and useful would be Babelplex. Of all the things Mr Choy showed us in class, I think I was most impressed by the amount of languages Google features. That list was simply...impressive! Searching for particular subjects in different languages churn up whole new results at times, and then again there are those times when you've forgotten what a certain word should be in another language.

Babelplex acts as a cross between a search engine (Google) and a translation tool for 35 language combination. Think of a collision of Google and Babelfish. Select the function to translate English to perhaps Chinese, type in your keywords and you'll be returned a screen that is split into half, with the results for your keyword in English on one half, and results in Chinese on the other half.


If you ever found the need to, you could even select the option to translate English to English, and then search for two different subjects on each half of the page to compare them or speed up your search process.

With these tools, there is, simply put, less of the possibility that anyone can get away with claiming they couldn't find any research on the Internet.

Just Google it!

Classrooms (Real and Imagined)

Sometime last week, my little sister happily announced over dinner that her class had an extra free period during Maths that day.

Me: Free period? Maths? Orhhh.. Teacher absent is it?

Sis: Nope. The internet connection in the computer lab was down. =)

Me: o.o?!?!

It turned out that her Maths lessons now consists of having each pupil sit in front of a computer in the computer lab, navigating themselves around learning websites which has interesting programs teaching and allowing students to practise their mathematics skills through engaging games. The teacher then walks around facilitating students' usage of the computer.

About a decade ago, the age whereby I myself was in Pri 4, classrooms looked something like that...



Teachers still used chalkboards and each student relied mainly on their textbooks and exercise books.

In my secondary school, classrooms started to look like this.



Chalkboards were substituted with whiteboards. Teachers started to rely more on overhead projectors and a little bit of computers. Once in a blue moon,
we were taken to the computer labs for certain lessons. A rare treat!

At that time, our imagined classrooms of the future would probably be what we have now.

Currently, for certain schools or subjects, some classrooms already look like this...



Where each student sits in front of a computer and interacts more with the computer than the teacher. 'Blackboard' now refers to a provider of products that enable universities, schools, and corporations to host their classes on the World Wide Web.


At first I naively thought such technological advances in the classroom came with age. I'm growing up and progressing up the educatinal ladder and thus with each advancement, classrooms are more well-equipped! Until I realized that children in Primary schools or even pre-school have classrooms that are very well-equipped technological-wise. *Cue the awe and disappointment.*

Before long, we can expect to see...



And nope, this is not the farthest we could go with integrating digital wonder into the classrooms.

Imagine a future where the desks and seats have been substituted by workstations such as the RM Delta (click to read more about it, it's pretty interesting), specially designed for future classrooms.



The high utility of technology in classrooms may or may not be beneficial to the essential act of teaching and learning, as can be seen in this article questioning the wiseness of schools that have spent too much money digitalising the classroom with gadgets and technology, but the thought of a tech-savvy classroom filled with jawdropping gadgets that people of the older generation could only dream of is still an ideal that people are working towards.

At the rate we are going down the path of technological advancements, the future digital classroom is indeed something worth beholding. As far as imaginations go, a good guideline would be the government's vision for 2015.



Every student will own a slim tablet of their own, containing everything they need to succeed in the classroom.

Or perhaps there wouldn't even be future digital classrooms. With technology, learning is becoming very much an individualised process, so what's to stop it from being such that students of the future can all learn at home using their own computers and laptops and tablets and whatnots?

Classes will be taught through interactive web programs, e-learning where virtual lecturers provide students with information needed and best of all, these lectures can be repeated as and when needed (e.g. when studying for exams!) Assignments can be submitted online, students' usage of 'class hours' can be monitored online, etc.

Seems like in future, instead of teachers, we'll be needing more IT experts to ensure that all these technology function properly, cuz by then, the malfunction of the computer or an Internet downtime wouldn't mean just a free period, it'll mean a whole free day void of learning.

E(volved)-Marketing

With technology, everything around us is evolving.

The Internet has led to evolved models of e-business, e-commerce, so on and so forth. Most (if not all) aspects of setting up and maintaining a business are being shifted online. Marketing joined in along with the shift and now, online marketing is an essential ingredient that no company should lack in the recipe to being successful.

The evolution in marketing has resulted in Internet Marketing—The End of Traditional Marketing as We Know It. Building on to WEB 2.0, it's also called Marketing 2.0.

So what determines the success of E-Marketing?

The most important key to any form of successful marketing is personalisation. There are little details to take note of to remind your customers (or potential customers) that you acknowledge them as individuals and are reaching out to them not as part of a nameless group of strangers but as unique people with a possible interest in what you have to offer. It is to your benefit that you build and maintain relationships with clients through the Internet.

- If possible, include names on all e-mails sent to current and potential clients. It would definitely be a lot more personal than a mass sent email addressed to 'whomever it may concern.'

- Make sure your e-marketing content (newsletters, etc) makes sense. Sending out ill-thought of materials merely annoys clients. Ensure that the tone of your materials is warm and perhaps even appropriately humorous. Make these materials something that your clients look forward to receiving.

- Make clients feel welcomed at your website. To the virtual visitor, your website is your office. It must be friendly and easy to navigate. Make clients feel at home.

- Focus on getting customers to come back. Never be tempted to trick customers into dealing with you by using unorthodox methods like misleading offers or coercion. You could earn a few dollars that way, but in the long term, never forget that on the Internet, it is so much easier for dissatisfied customers to spread complaints and ruin the name of your company.

- Clearly identify the actions you would like the visitors to take. For a primary goal of selling a product, your call to action would probably be 'Buy this product now...' or something similar.

This evolved form of marketing could possibly make or break a company so it would be wise to pay attention to the little intricate details and not bank on old methods that worked fine with traditional marketing.

Never be too awed by an evolution not to work it for the best. =)

Resources:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Simple-Ways-to-Ensure-eMarketing-Success&id=1909268
http://www.phoneplusmag.com/articles/241echannel2.html
http://www.thewisemarketer.com/features/read.asp?id=19