Questions:
1. What is the role of the wireless operators in the LBS?
2. What is the key factor in the consumers’ subscription decision? Interest? Needs? Entertaining?

Direct Marketing, Mobile Phones, and Consumer Privacy: Ensuring Adequate Disclosure and Consent Mechanisms for Emerging Mobile Advertising Practices
Direct Marketing, Mobile Phones, and Consumer Privacy
The biggest legal issues in mobile communication are customer’s privacy and the fraud advertising. When content providers and operators promote the mobile content to users, they might create the fraud advertising in order to gain more revenue. Operators can make profits not only from downloads of content such as games and ringtones, but also from the text messaging. They charge the users per downloads and per message. The Jamster case is an example which reveals the potential fraud advertising issues in the mobile content business model. Some customers said they were misled to overuse text messaging service during the communicating with the content providers by the alleged false advertising.
The privacy issue has always been hot in the digital world, and so does in mobile communication. James Nehf indicates that the customers are not that “noticed” under the present notice-consent approach which the operators use inform customers. She provides 5 questions in the communication between the customers and the operators.
 

Question:
1. How to identify the misleading advertising from a customer’s perspective?
2. What is the actual profit do the wireless carriers make by selling the customer’s information?

This paper tries to convince us that there are many opportunities in the mobile content market. We can get some firm statistics from the paper. The number of the mobile users in Asia Pacific is growing at a very fast speed. The average time of the usage of mobile phones is growing at a stable speed as well. With more and more people using multimedia handsets, the services on mobile phone go diversely as well. Although voice services are still the biggest part of the operator revenues, the growth of the voice services revenue is slower than the growth of the data revenue. The major data revenue comes from the infotainment category including games, audio and video downloads, streaming video, information services. The author suggests that the media content market is a good opportunity to people.
Moreover, the author indicates that there are differences between different regions. There is stronger operator control in US than in other countries. The mobile environment in United States is a little bit different from the rest of the world. Customers get their handsets through the mobile operator in America while they buy the handsets from the independent retailers in other countries. The mobile value chain is an introduction of the mobile content business to us. The main players are content owner, designers/developers, publishers/aggregators, provisioning /hosting providers, and marketing/delivery agents.
In the other hand, the author doesn’t explain the reasons of the difference in the prevalence and intensity of data use between Japan and North America. The author provides us the stories in Japan and use is as an example to tell us how the mobile content business model operates, however; this paper will not be sufficient for company who wants to enter the mobile content market. The content business model seems flexible at this stage and all the players have an opportunity to enter in this market. Since no one wants to spend lots of money on little return, all players should be aware of how to profit from the business model.

Questions:

1. The mobile environment in North America seems so mature to us, but why is there a lower prevalence and  intensity of data use comparing with Japan and Korea? What result in this and does it suggest a large space for growing revenue?
2. How can we explain the differences in the mobile data business model and infotainment between different regions from the sociological perspective?

We can see some things from the comparison between the two surveys, however; we need to be careful when we understand the data. The data shows that the social network mobile subscribers are those who are younger and are more likely to have smartphones , assess the mobile internet, use SMS and mobile email. They are not only those who communicate, text, and social with their friends by cell phones more frequently, but also are cell phone users who utilize the entertainment services more often. These facts tell us that the social network mobile subscribers are those users who really utilize the multiple functions on cell phones. These surveys also present us a fact that only a small portion of users really take advantage of the technical convergence on mobile phones. Although people can listen to music and play games on cell phone, they don’t tend to do these activities on them. People still prefer using their portable music players such as iPOD and game players. Maybe this is because that the technical convergence is not successful.

Questions:

1. Although the online social network mobile subscribers access the entertainment services through cell phones, they are not necessary access those services to communicate with their friends. There is no data supporting that if they share the music and game with their friends by cell phones. Maybe those users are young users who are likely to utilize those services than older people.
2. Do smartphone users present the higher usage of the diverse formats of content comparing with other cell phone users?

Leubsdorf, B. (2008). Can Print Newspapers Survive?

 Vasquez, D. (Oct 7, 2008). What newspapers must do to survive?

Cook, T. E. (1998). Governing With The News. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Are the news media the political institution?

Cook discusses the politics in journalism in this chapter and he suggests that the news media can be seen as a political institution but is more like an intermediary institution like parties and interest groups, but not like the three constitutional branches of legislature, executive, and judiciary, which is called the “forth branch” of government by some people. Yet news media are still different from the parties and the interest groups because they don’t have clear rules and collective actions to reach a political goal like the latter. News media do affect our politics in an implicit way because they are not just mirroring the facts, but report news selectively to the public.

On the other hand, news media in modern US are more governmental than political because of the biases of the new media. News media have an emphasis on the official news and thus favors only certain political actors, political events, and political issues. 

Where the news companies should go?

Both Leubsdorf and Vasquez mention the crisis in the major metropolitan U.S. newspaper industry and give suggestions to media companies when they enter into a digital era. Vasquez indicates that the metro dailies should maintain the local advertising market share and develop their interactive strategies. Vasquez’s explains that journalism is not only about the newspaper.  His discussion on how to make the money from the websites is quite inspiring. I agree with his argument that online information providers can be a role which news companies can play in the future. News companies can collect the information which is important in human beings’ daily life.

What will the politics in journalism be like in the future?

We have read the how the journalism will be like from Leubsdorf and Vas’s articles and it seems that the metro news companies will be like the community information providers in the future when the big news companies will keep the same for a while. In the other hand, the digital technology benefits the civic journalism and almost everyone can be the contributor to post news and information online. It may seem like that there will be fewer biases of the news in the future; however, I wouldn’t say so. The credibility is an important issue in journalism, and it is also one of the reasons why journalists have preference on official materials. Although digital media can bring more channels for people and provide the news from different perspectives, how to keep the credibility is still important for companies who want to sell news. The big companies still own the advantage of credibility while the metropolitan newspapers maybe will lose its advantage of credibility if they become the community information providers in the future.

We have written five journal entries in this quarter. We explored the game design, website design, industrial design, everyday appliance design, and the design process in design companies. I enjoyed this journal entry writing experience and the whole course. We observe some design principles at the beginning by exploring the game design. After having some ideas about design, we analyze and compare the website design. Then, we observe a well-known designer and give comments to his works. We also go through the design process form the video in class and by observing a case study.  At the end, we analyze a product around us and give criticism to it based on what we learn. The whole observation is interesting and the knowledge of design is inspiring.

Besides, we read Moggridge, Maeda, and Norman’s books when we did our observation.  We especially enjoy Maeda’s book The Laws of Simplicity because he explains how those laws of simplicity can be applied into our daily life. We are the designers of our lives and applying the laws of design can make our lives be more enjoyable and pleasant. We learn the different key concepts of interaction design in variable fields such as the Internet, games, services, and etc. It is a challenge to design an enjoyable interactive experience, but we also see the fulfillment of the successful cases from many designers. Norman explains the mental models behind a product delicately. He gives examples of many bad designs around us. It’s surprising to see the fact that there are actually many badly-design products among our lives. He illustrates how a badly-designed product makes troubles and confusion to people. We know how to identify the well-designed and poorly –designed products by his books.

We learn how to make the flowchart and the wireframe when designing a website in class. This prepares us to work and communicate with the engineers. Moreover, we also learn a lot about the usability from the group project as well. We did the usability and desirability tests to explore the music player on a Sony Ericsson mobile phone. The practice and operation of the tests helps us understand how to evaluate the usability and the users’ feedbacks. This is an important step in designing because this is a method which gives us a thought about how the customers feel and use the products. The goal of the test is giving feedbacks and suggestions to improve the design.

I personally like the course design as well. The guest speakers give us valuable experiences and the reading assignments are appropriate. We learn the concepts and the knowledge in design from this class. Those concepts can be applied into our working environment and our daily lives as well.

Reference:

Moggridge, Bill. (2007). Designing interactions. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Maeda, John. (2006). The Laws of Simplicity. Boston: The MIT Press, 2006.

Norman, Donald. (1990).The Design of everyday things.  New York: Doubleday,

Neilson, Jacob. http://www.useit.com/

final_report_1204

After taking this class, we understand that digital technology does facilitate people’s communication, and we learn about how digital technology can be used in politics. Candidates, interest groups and political parties all can utilize the Internet to enhance the organizational maintenance and internal communication.  

Furthermore, although digital technology facilitates people’s communication, it also builds a barrier too. People who don’t have the access or the necessary device to connect to the Internet are blocked outside of the whole online world. Those people will spend more on communication with others.

Field workers regain their passion.

We can see that the operation of political campaign has changed with the new technologies from mass media to the Internet in Trippi’s book. He suggests the Internet would bring Americans closer to democracy because it gives the public more opportunities to join the political discussion and participate in the political events. People don’t have to stand passively watching the political advertisements from TV anymore and they can now speak their own opinions freely and openly to the public on the Internet. Since the Internet offers such a two-way communication channel for the users, Trippi also suggests that political campaigners can also take advantage of it. After the TV-dominating era which seems a dark period for field workers, they can now regain the passion to work for their beliefs on the Internet like what they did before the TV-dominating era. They can get acquaintance with “real” people on the Internet, make friends with them, and share their beliefs with them as well. These are what those field workers did before the TV-dominating era.  This means that they don’t barely think up slogans, refine the coverage topics, or build a perfect candidate image on TV; they can now communicate directly with again and even more conveniently through the Internet technology. The can find the voters and communicate with their supporters on the Internet without having any hardship in journeying. The Internet doesn’t only reduce the transaction cost of communication, but also creates a place where the public can express their opinions of politics openly and deeply.

Besides the field workers who help communicate the candidates’ political views with the voters, the interest groups and the parties can also utilize the Internet to strengthen the internal communications. Klotz illustrates us how these two kinds of groups can utilize the Internet in the chapter 6 in The Politics of Internet Communication. He indicates that the Internet benefits the groups of any beliefs and resource level. Since it largely reduces the transaction cost of people’s communication, the low-resources group benefits from it most. There is also one thing to be remembered that although the Internet helps the groups break the geographic and resource level limits, it doesn’t complete eliminate the differences between groups based on resource level.

Interest Groups and Parties can also benefit from the Internet technology.

The interest groups and the parties can both adopt the Internet as a tool to facilitate internal communication. Utilizing the Internet bring the efficiency of the organizational maintenance, the effectiveness of mobilization and the high-speed of mobilization to the interest groups.  The interest groups can also break the geographic limits on the Internet because online mobilization is not restricted to geographic limits. On the other hands, the political parties can also enjoy the same advantages of the Internet such as the information distribution and mobilization. Klotz also mentions that parties have to remember that their opponents also have the same opportunities to utilize the Internet. In my opinions, although parties have the same opportunities to access the Internet, they don’t have equal opportunities to utilize it well so far. Take the 2008 presidential election for an example; Obama wins totally over the Internet because his supporters are relatively younger and active over the Internet more frequently to McCain’s supporters. Obama has the predominance to apply the web campaigning and social media.

Articles:

Robert J. Klotz.  The Politics of Internet Communication.  Chapter 6: Party and Group Advocacy on the Internet

Trippi, J.  The Revolution Will Not Be Televised… Part 1(pp. 3-72)

Kaye D., Golan, Guy J. and Wanta W..(2008) ‘Intermedia Agenda Setting in Television, Advertising, and Blogs during the 2004 Election.’ Mass Communication & Society, 11:197–216, 2008.