Studies in Media

Software A Windows PC 386, with 120 MB Hard disk and 4 MB RAM. Even my mobile phone is at least 3 times faster than the first PC I owned. What software could possibly run on that ancient PC? Well, you will be surprised to know, a lot many. I bought my first PC to start my own business in graphic designing. If I remember right, I used CorelDraw 3 and Pagemaker 4 for my designs. And I did not have a colour monitor. It was all done in black and white and we used to use a colour chart to specify the colours that had to be printed. I used to mostly deal with a lot of screen printers, so the designs required mostly spot colours. There was, of course no Internet, and we used to refer to design books for ideas and Pantone Colour charts for colour combos. Surprisingly, CorelDraw and Pagemaker, both used to run very smoothly on that PC with 4 MB RAM. Then came something called AGP card - Accelerated Graphics Port, which changed everything. It was a card which had to be inserted into the P...

Is 'New Media' always digital? Is it really 'social'? Well, in contemporary times, probably yes. But then, wasn't print a new medium when it was invented?  And radio, and then television? With every 'new' medium, there have been social, political and economic changes, because we have been exposed to different thoughts, ideas and challenges with each of them. With every new medium, there have been changes in how we receive, use and disseminate information. The difference between the 'older' new media and the newer ones is that the content is now stored in a binary form. It is now digital, rather than analogue. Instead of storing data on tapes and records, we now store data in microchips. Instead of data being 'fixed' it is now in a state of flux. This enables content to be converted from one form to another easily and equally easily distributed allowing trans-mediality. Apart from the way content is stored, even the way in which it is p...

An interesting development. Click --->  Microsoft puts Office 365 in the cloud, confronts Google Recently Nokia chose Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS over Google's Android. Though I personally feel that they are a bit late, because Google is not going to sit idle till the new Windows powered Nokia phones come out (In 2012!). And now this development is going to generate a lot a heat. Let's enjoy the war, because whatever the outcome I am sure the consumers/users will benefit. Probably at a little extra cost, though.