New media is the term used to refer to anything digital or computerised that disseminates information or that is used for communication. This takes into considerarion the internet, your blackberry smartphone as well as that new computer game you just bought last christmas! Until around the 1980's media depended on print and analog models to get information out to a news-starved public, but with the growth and manipulation of various technologies (such as the digitization of photography and cinematography) within the last 25 years or so, there is now a marked difference in how news and other information is created, manipulated and disseminated.

New (digitized) media is being used to transform almost every aspect of human life. Let's take a look at digital technology's influence on the various ways in which we communicate.

Friday, April 16, 2010

"300" : A Cinematographer's Dream


Directed by Zack Snyder and based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, 300 recounts the battle of Thermopylae that took place in 480 BC between the Greeks and the Persians. 


Under the rule of King Xerxes (played by Rodrigo Santoro), described as the Persian God-king, several Hellenic city states have already been conquered and the ambitious king has now set his sights on Sparta, one of the last Greek states yet to bend to Persian authority. Refusing to sacrifice his freedom or the freedom of his people, King Leonidas of Sparta (played by Gerard Butler), along with 300 of his best soldiers, decide  to fight. Even though they are vastly outnumbered (the Persian army numbering about 100,000), the Greeks manage to successfully hold back the enemy in what has become one of the most famous last stands in history, until they are betrayed by Ephialtes (played by Andrew Tiernan) - a horribly disfigured Spartan who had requested to join the army against the Persians but was refused by Leonidas because of his condition. 

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Apple...iLike!

You've never seen anything sexier!

Manfactured by Apple, Inc., the iPad is a tablet computer considered to be a cross between a laptop and the smartphone. Even though more powerful, it is similar in the way it functions to the iPhone and the iPod touch and uses a modified version of the same operating system (iPhone OS).
Here's why you'll love it:

1. complete with 9.7 inch touchscreen, the iPad's liquid crystal display is fingerprint and scratch resistant;

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Nokia E63 - What a Way to Work!


Say 'hello' to the Nokia E63, the business handset of your dreams!

Features include:
  • QWERTY keyboard
  • 2 megapixel fixed focus camera with LED flash (so you can take a clearer, sharper picture even in the dark!)
  • 120 MB internal memory with 8GB micro SD card slot (store lots of files and folders!)
  • QVGA 320x240 pixels matrix display with 2.36 inch 16M-colour display (so you can edit and open attachments in Excel, PowerPoint, MS Word, PDF files, Adobe Acrobat and web pages!)
  • complete Flash support of HTML browsers and stores files on OVI (that way, you can access your Personal Computer files on your E63 handset even when your computer is not online!)