Facebook A Haven for Cyber-criminals

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook Inc. in July 2004 for university students to socialize online. The idea was spread quickly which caused many users to join in a month. Users started increasing every month. In 2006, the website removed limits of registration which also increased the number of users to millions. The total market share of the company is 157.45 billions of dollars. The company is trying to grow so it can become the internet. It has many different projects and is investing in social media applications to get as much as information of people and trying to keep people connected through different ways. People use Facebook to stay in contact with relatives and friends so they can notice what is happening in the world they live in. They share experiences and matters about the persons they care. If you can use and control Facebook’s popularity then it will benefit in succeeding your small business. Facebook has been involved in building products, which will provide users with value for users, advertisers, and developers.

The Pros and Cons of Facebook

In the past, we had limited options to connect with people. Making a phone call or sending a text message seemed to be the most convenient ways to communicate. However, those ways of communication faced a major problem which is having a big family and a lot of friends. In 2004, 19 years old Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg came up with an idea. He thought about the best possible way to keep all of his colleges in touch without wasting time and money. His creativity led to owning one of the biggest social media web sites in the world. That web called Facebook. According to Facebook’s most recent annual report, it hast over one billion active users. Not only that but, the company reported that there is over 600 million people who uses Facebook on the daily (Aaron Smith, 2012). After knowing the huge response that Facebook got, I will be discussing its Benefits and problems.
Owning a business with over 600 million daily customers is every business owner’s dream. However, that requires a gigantic amount of hard work. In other words, keeping a customer satisfied is almost as hard as gaining new customer if not harder and that is what Facebook managed to successfully do. What is on Facebook? Thomas Krivack answers this question in the article: Facebook 101: Ten Things You Need to Know about Facebook “Simply put, if people have an interest, it is part of Facebook. (Krivack, 2008)” whatever interest you have, there is always someone else who shares the same interest. Sharing your interest makes life more fun. If you are a new user, you can simply type a name of a TV show, game or certain cuisine that interests you and get back thousands of users who have the same interest. From there you can massage, friend or subscribe to the individuals that you like. The best part is users are sorted according to the network. Therefore, Facebook is your easy way to make friends if you are new in town or a freshman in collage. Facebook expands the idea of similar interest by having a feature called groups. That feature allows people to communicate and share ideas in a larger numbers without the need of being friends. In Facebook, you can find different types of groups with different approaches. That benefits the user. In other words, you can like and share different thoughts with multiple groups of people at the same time. 

Facebook: A Haven for Cybercriminals

Facebook is considered to be a website that allows people to connect with one another without picking up the telephone or texting them. To many this is a harmless website to keep in touch with friends that they were once close with, and have now drifted away from. Or possibly even a family member who lives across the country and plans to come home for the upcoming holidays. But with these harmless connections, Facebook comes with some serious potential dangers that the website does not clearly announce when registering to become a member.
Facebook asks for the following when signing up to become a member: name, email, generate a password, birthday, and gender. None of this information is verified and Facebook takes the future members word for it, and allows them to gain access to the website as long as their email has not already been taken. Underneath the registration process in very small print users are requested to view the “Terms” and “Data Use Policy”. The website does not require a user to even click on the links to proceed with registration, which means a user has the option to bypass the useful information all together. Inside these “terms” Facebook states “We do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we cannot guarantee it” (Facebook). By posting the Terms and Data Use Policy, Facebook is taking absolutely no legal responsibility for what happens on its website.
Due to Facebook not verifying every single one of its members the danger of a sexual predator is not that uncommon on this type of social networking website. Young children that pretend that they are at least thirteen years of age could end up being a victim of a sexual predator due to “not knowing any better”.

FTPT/16/B2/05  P.K.S.D.EKANAYAKE

Mobile Recordings for New Media

  

 

At a time when the new medium is progressing, the image and the sound begin to dissipate in the cyber space.  So, we have to move forward with this technology. Images and sounds we take from ourselves can be edited and uploaded to this new media. How can we do this? 

 

let's see what we need for this. You can do this easily with your mobile phone. If you have a mobile phone (Smart Phone), we only need a mini-tripod for this. To capture the sound, we can use a small microphone. You can buy it for a small amount and buy it at a very small price. If you have all these things, you can now  make a mobile recording. You do not need any special knowledge about handling this equipment. Now you need creative ideas.  

With the advancement of technology, it can be seen that mankind can be  made into the world with the wold. In this way, the advantage of mobile recordings is that whatever information you need can be freely released to your website. Because there are both audio and video signals the information you are revealing is accurate. And this will help us to share our creative ideas with creative ideas. information for education, new research knowledge. The advantage of this is that you will open this code space. Another advantage of this is that you can broadcast your information directly lice on your phone. 

 

There are advantages and disadvantages of this mobile recording. That is , it can be used individually. This can happen by releasing unnecessarily inconvenient information to the internet. However, technology can not be avoided and can be avoided if the technology is both an advantageous and an easy alternative to us. We must decide how we use the technology we have.

  P.K.S.D. Ekanayake -  FTPT / 16 /B2 / 05

What is Computational Photography

Computational photography is a digital image capturing and processing technique that use digital computation rather than a optical processes. Computational photography. 

1. can improve the capabilities of a camera,
2. make new features that couldn't happen with film based photography
3. reduce the cost or size of camera elements. 

Examples of computational photography include 

1. in-camera computation of digital panoramas

2. high-dynamic-range images, 

3.light field cameras - Light field cameras use modern optical elements to capture three dimensional scene information which can then be used to 

1. produce 3D images

2. enhanced depth-of-field

3. and selective de-focusing 

Enhanced depth-of-field minimize the need for mechanical focusing systems. All of these features use computational imaging techniques.

The definition of computational photography has evolved to cover a number of subject areas in computer graphics, computer vision, and applied optics.

How to connect Social Media And Blog for better Reach.

Part 01

Making traffic for your blog posts is the key method to reaching much more readers.it is better way to popularize your thinking,creative works or any material you are post on the blog.Properly sharing your blog posts via your social media channels will help deliver a steady stream of visitors to your blog.This way of promoting is called social media cross promotion.

what kind of social medias you can use to promote?

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Pinterest

Instagram

What Is Actually Social Media Cross-Promotion?

To effectively cross-promote your blog posts, you can’t simply put on the same message on each social network; you have to specifically make your message to fit each platform or audience.For example, if you’re promoting a new blog post, you may have to address your Facebook friends in a different way than your business contacts on LinkedIn. On Twitter, you’re restricted to 140 characters, so you have to keep your message short and simple. On Pinterest, your image is the primary way to draw attention.Each social network offers different options for promoting your content. The number of characters allowed differs and image sizes vary. You might add hashtags to turn posts into searchable content or add @ handles to connect directly with your followers.

Promote Through Facebook

You can promote through Facebook using Profiles,Pages or Groups.Facebook posts can contain up to 10,000 characters, but only the first 480 characters are visible in the timeline; the rest are hidden behind the See More link. So add the most important of your message into the first 480 characters. Keep in mind, too, that Facebook posts with fewer than 50 characters have shown to be more engaging than longer posts.

Promote Through Twitter

Twitter was the first social network to introduce hashtags and @ handles for better search and networking options. The platform recently made changes to the 140-character limit to give posts a little more space. Although Twitter is stretching its 140-character limit, it remains at its core a short message service.Tweets with fewer than 140 characters work best. To get more retweets, be sure to include images and links.

Promoting Through LinkedIn

LinkedIn lets you post on your profile, on company and showcase pages, and in groups. You can also republish your blog posts on LinkedIn Pulse or SlideShare. On your  page, your update can contain around 600 characters. Any text beyond the first 150 or so characters will be truncated and readers will need to click See More to view the complete post.

Promoting Through Pinterest

On Pinterest, the image is the most important part of your pin. Use the description to convey what the pin is about. Pinterest gives you 500 characters to describe and comment on your images. You can collect your images in albums to sort them by topic or brand, and post images of any size.

How to promote using Instagram

Instagram presents images in a single stream. The lifetime of an image post on Instagram is much shorter than on Pinterest. Most interaction takes place within the first few hours of posting.Instagram provides a unique square size for images, which is 1080 x 1080 pixels. Captions can be up to 2,200 characters, of which only the first three lines are displayed in the news feed. (If the first paragraph is less than three lines, Instagram will cut off at the end of that paragraph.) To expand a truncated post, users have to click the More link.

You can use these medias to getting better results for reaching more viewers.lets meet another time to discus and more know-hows in another part of this post.

Damith Neelawala

FTPT/16/B2/25

10 Emerging Technologies That Are Revolutionizing The Media Industry.

1. Chatbots

Facebook recently opened their Messenger bot platform to outside companies, and publishers like Fusion, Complex and TechCrunch have seized the opportunity to innovate in the news bot space. These news agency bots have found new ways to automatically dish up the latest headlines to users based on their interests and search history. Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella believes that chatbots will become the next big thing as we move away from relying so heavily on apps.

2. Virtual Reality (VR)

The ultimate level of news interaction? Being right in the center of the action. VR promises to transport the viewer into the middle of an experience to form a better connection to the story. The New York Times VR app is a good example of VR, and its launch was accompanied by sending 1.2 million Google cardboard viewers to subscribers. The all-engrossing VR video experience builds a deeper level of connectedness and empathy with news stories.

3. Anti-ad blocking

While our latest report found that 69% of users are not currently using an ad blocker, according to PageFair, ad blocking could still account for around $21.8 billion in lost annual revenue. PageFair, Source point, Secret Media and Admiral have heard the industry’s cry, and are pitching their own technological approaches to publishers hoping to fight off parasitic software. Some of these approaches offer “ad reinsertion” software, while others look to serve different types of ads that fit in better with a user’s experience. Forbes has been testing technology that blocks ad-blocking users from their site entirely, but still offers users an incentive to white list their site by promising an “ad-light experience” once they turn off their software.

4. Automated journalism

‘Robot journalism’ lends a helping hand to journalists and publishers by interpreting and analyzing data to produce content. Automated journalism is also used to test headlines, source information, and identify trending stories. The Washington Post has developed Bandito, which provides real-time testing to identify the best performing content and make improvements to stories that don’t quite ‘hit the mark’.

5. Social outreach apps

Journalists can go beyond the usual suspects of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get consumer perspectives. Social outreach apps bring a fresh take on how the media industry engages with its audience. Qanda allows anyone to provide video answers to questions, which enables journalists to get authentic video interviews from as many people as possible, without being physically present.

6. Drones

The Federal Aviation Administration has given permission for drones to be used for commercial purposes, so we can expect to see the last few years of drone reporting tests from publishers like the Associated Press come to full fruition. Drones are a much cheaper option than helicopters, and an effective way to capture footage that more cumbersome machines aren’t capable of. The use of drones is also important for the safety of journalists - data can be collected in dangerous war zones or natural disasters without risking additional human lives.

7. Data journalism/visualization

Text with visuals is the perfect marriage to satisfy an increasingly mobile audience. Presenting data in interactive and bite-sized chunks is key to engagement. Scrolling is the new clicking, so transitioning between different multimedia data sources should be effortless. ‘Scrollytelling’ is a visualization tool that reveals more data as the user scrolls down the page. A great example of interactive data journalism is The Dawn Wall by The New York Times, which charted one of the most difficult free climbs in the world.

8. Live video platforms

Facebook Live is touted as the next frontier in audience engagement. The media industry has boldly gone where most have yet to tread. E! already has a daily talk-show on Facebook Live, with other media outlets set to follow. Another live video platform that’s transforming reporting is Periscope. Paul Lewis, a journalist from the Guardian newspaper, used Periscope to livestream scenes from the Baltimore riots. Periscope and other live video platforms enable the media industry to capture the news as it happens, without the need for bulky camera equipment and a filming crew.

9. Wearable journalism

Wearable technology is changing the way consumers access news. The Apple Watch makes getting the latest news as easy as telling the time. Wearable journalism is ideal for quick updates until viewers have the time to get the full story. From clothing to contact lenses, wearable journalism presents the opportunity to deliver content in trimmed-down formats without losing the essence of the story.

10. Text-to-video creation

Video is becoming the king of content for news and media agencies to grow and maintain audiences. Publishing enough videos to satisfy viewers is no easy task, and most publishers don’t have the teams or equipment to meet video consumption demands. Automated software that converts text articles into premium branded videos is an efficient way to meet the supply of the ever growing demand for short and informative videos.  These ten emerging technologies demonstrate the advances that are radically changing the media industry. They’re worth investigating to find out how they can improve your content creation and distribution processes. Who knows, after you’ve adopted some of these technologies, you might wonder how you ever coped without them. 

W. M. I. R. Rupasinghe
FTPT/16/B2/18

 

Role of the new media in Racist Violence

New media has become most influential and effective tool in contemporary world and widening its scope to all over the human behaviors. But in most common world new media is using to spread the racism and the violence of the society, it was responsibility to create lot of conflicts, clashes, blood shedding events. New media has challenged the idea of citizen journalism but it has been always paid professional, well planned and versatile mechanism. 

This condition is also similar in Sri Lanka as well as the world. Racism is not only a religion or ethnic issue but it is political and social issue which contained and become dominance ideology in late capitalism. Racism is a way of avoiding and neglecting the main social and economic issues and bring the barbarous moral values forward. It has created lot of bad and horror experiences along the human history brought great endanger in public.

New media has become the most vital component of create, structure and enlightened the the racism and violence out of other media formats. It is fast, easily adaptable to the situations, can be handled by unprofessional team also, less regulation rules, can be spread as viral. 

 

We experienced the tense situation between Buddhist and Muslim in Teldeniya area on last March – 2018 which was heavily suррorted and blessed by the new media, lately government haррened to banned new media alone the country for 2 weeks.  This witnessed that how new media has influence and manipulate the рeoрle´s mind to create racist violence.  

 

In international arena we can find cases like Rohingya issue, Rohingya muslims (or Burma рeoрle) – who are ethnic minorities in Mynmar are victims and mistreated by Buddhist majority. Since 1948 Rohingya рeoрle are not acceрted as citizens in Mynmar and had to migrated to Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Indoneisa or Malayasia. But most of these countries blocked and turned down the entries of refugees and this рeoрle greatly helpless by torturing, murder, allegation by Myanmar security forces. This critical situation is a good platform to oррoturnist headers in both parties to form racist media campaigns in the country. In case social media is banned and restrict in the country and some social media networks are only available in day time.      

 

Social Media and Syria’s War

Syrian activists began trying to mobilize international and domestic support for protests against the regime of Bashar alAssad even before the outbreak of serious mobilization in the middle of March 2011.  e uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt that transformed the Arab world in January 2011 also inspired Syrian activists, who drew on the same tools and methods used by other Arab activists across the region.  ey posted videos to YouTube, adopted similar slogans (“the people want to overthrow the regime”), created Twitter hashtags (#mar15), and attempted to portray an image of a rising nonviolent Syrian protest wave through online media.

Small protests in Damascus and elsewhere were lmed and uploaded to YouTube to create the impression of Arab Spring–style mobilization.  is impression did not necessarily react the reality on the ground at the time, where protest remained dangerous and rare. However, it did set in place a number of key activist nodes and networks that would be pivotal in the coming months. It also established patterns of media reliance on activist generated online content in the absence of journalists present on the ground.

 

W. M. I. R. Rupasinghe
FTPT/16/B2/18