WA police move into social media

by Kate Francis 10 April, 2011

West Australian police have introduced social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter in hope to connect with the community.

Social media will be a way of “reaching out” to the youth and its users, according to Media Liaison Officer, Sergeant Gerard Cassidy.

The W.A. police currently have a Twitter account, a website and are in the process of creating an effective Facebook page.

“We are constantly trying to keep on top of the new developments…technology is getting ahead of us, faster than we can come up with laws and rules,” Mr Cassidy said.

The W.A. police force need for social media sites is “strictly outgoing” and the sites are being used as a source of information for the community rather than keeping tabs on its users.

Other states are following the United Kingdom, which already uses the media sites to post images of fugitives on the run and as a means for issuing warnings to the community.

"W.A. has a resourcing issue when it comes to social media networking.”

There is only a team of three in charge of advancing the social media networks in Western Australia.

Queensland and Tasmania already have Facebook and Twitter sites running with 24-hour teams managing them. 

“I am not speaking on behalf of the Australian government but free speech… is never going away,” Mr Cassidy said.

“Australians would never put up with it.”  

Police make it clear that emergencies must go through either 000 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. Social networks cannot be used to put across vital information.

Downloads killing the video stores

by Reece Baker,  5 April 2011

Local video storeowners are being forced to close their doors because of lack of business due to online rental technology.

Roxy Video located in Perth’s northern-coastal suburb of Cottesloe, says it is facing near bankruptcy due to emerging technologies within the entertainment industry, allowing people to easily access online rentals from home.

The last video store of the suburb is telling its customers they will be closing later this month.

Some local Cottesloe citizens say they are sorry to see the video store closing its doors.

For long time resident Val Delassio, her weekly trip to the video store is a family affair.

“I still like the old customer service and I like to be able to go in and look around at all the movies on the shelves, I can spend up to a good hour in the video store,” Mrs. Delassio said.

“You can only see so much online and I’m old school, I like to still come in and do it.”

Mrs. Delassio said at least two days each week she gets in the car with her daughter for a trip to the local video store because of the advice and attention she receives.

She said some of the employees at Roxy Video on Eric Street, where she regularly rents videos, have kids her children’s age and employees are able to provide good advice on what games and movies they think her children would like.

"You get to know them over the years and you bond with these people, so it’s rather sad to see them all closing,” Mrs. Delassio said.

Store owner, Jackson Rolley, who has managed Roxy Video since 2001, said that the store was facing closure due to lack of business in today’s declining economy.

“Roxy Video needs to realign its cost structure due to the ongoing changes in our industry.

“Online services such as Quickflix are not allowing us to compete fairly in a technologically growing market,” Mr. Rolley said.

Quickflix, an Australian company, allows its consumers to browse an online catalogue of films and television series.

Once they decide, consumers have the product delivered to their door within the next day.

“There’s nothing we can really do about it at this stage, it seems as if people are just getting lazier these days, preferring to use the internet rather than face to face interaction,” Mr. Rolley said.

New gadgets creates new languages

By Melanie Dunn

Do you remember the days when the prime source of information was not a news App on your iPhone, but a bulletin on the television, radio or even an article in a newspaper?

And when you wanted to talk to someone that lived far away, you either had to ring them on the telephone or send them a letter through the mail.

In a world where technology is ever-evolving and people are relying on the media, the internet and social media for much of their day-to-day life, the idea of having to send a letter to someone for the purpose of keeping in touch may seem ludicrous to today’s youth.

The rapid explosion of social networking and microblogging websites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace has resulted in an alarmingly high reliance on technology for people to see what is happening in the world around them, as well as seeing what their friends are doing.

“These days people can’t live without technology and we almost feel ‘naked’ without it,” says Curtin University Communications student Samantha Clews.

“It’s a way of keeping in contact with people as well as a way of expressing ourselves,” Ms Clews says.

Similarly, the growth in social networking has been fuelled by the transition from internet on a computer to mobile phones that are also capable of connecting to the internet.

Through this increased internet and social media activity, a new language had begun to develop between users, sometimes known as ‘text language’.

Although convenient and quick to type, this particular way of speaking may be affecting the way that people speak verbally in everyday situations and as a result, their interpersonal communication skills are said to be starting to suffer due to dependence on nonverbal interactions.

In recent years, examiners have had to clearly direct students not to use ‘text language’ in their written examination papers, which is a clear example of how large an impact non-face-to-face interaction is having on today’s youth.

So this begs the question: why have forms of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and the products of the Apple empire (in particular) become so engaging?

“The increased user-engagement on Facebook is due to the proliferation of third-party applications; particularly ones that serve a useful function, such as travel planners or book-sharing programs,” according to Sandra Hanchard, a senior analyst with the Experian Hitwise website.

“Additional features for connecting users, such as ‘People You May Know’ has also helped increase user traction on Facebook,” she said.

So, it is popular due to the ability to keep in touch with one another and because there are applications that are actually useful for day to day activities.

We live in a society that depends on the swift communication of information in order to keep our lives rolling and today people cannot seem to live without some form of technology.

While it may be distressing to see how reliant we are becoming on technology, this cultural phenomenon can also be seen as a window of opportunity for businesses and politicians to promote themselves or a company.

“Social networking is now an essential part of peoples’ daily online routine, providing a level of engagement and reach that far exceeds most other content categories,” according to Will Hodgman, the executive vice president for the Asia-Pacific region for comScore in a press release.

“Understanding how to leverage this audience successfully is both a challenge and a significant opportunity for most digital marketers today,” he said.

It is likely that many Australian politicians have accepted the challenge as an opportunity to reach the young generations and convey their message in an effort to connect with them.

Certainly former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd embraced the opportunity and started using Twitter and, although mocked on television shows such as Rove and Yes We CanBerra! for this, he continued to use the microblogging site as a way to communicate with the people.

The reliance on technology by a global audience is growing at an alarming rate as the world becomes more modern and technologies are manufactured or updated.

Apple, for example, is almost singlehandedly responsible for the introduction of portable music devices of the 21^st Century, and has since then grown to become an important part of peoples’ lives, not necessarily through social networking, but through music.

The Apple iPod was a breakthrough in portable music technology and the company brought out different versions of the original design at a phenomenal rate.

It seemed that no sooner had the iPod Classic come onto the market, when they released the iPod Mini, followed by the iPod Nano, the iPod Shuffle, the iPod Touch and more recently, the introduction of the iPad.

One YouTube clip addressed the rapid release of the first few iPods (which at the time were becoming smaller in size), claiming they were all soon to be redundant due to the introduction of the iPod Invisii, an iPod that was so small that it appeared invisible.

Although somewhat satirical, it can be considered as a glimpse into the future when, not only will the original iPods be unavailable anymore, but other forms of media are wiped out in the technology boom.

In the near future, print media such as newspapers, magazines and books could be seen as redundant as these forms of media are becoming readily available for little or no fee online or on an iPad.

This change is becoming evident in schools as they are now embracing the technology boom by introducing the iPod Touch as an educational tool.

“Every Year 8 student at Warwick Senior High School has been given an iPod to use during class and school hours to research, access school-created information and download relevant applications,” the West Australian’s Jayne Rickard wrote On 27 October 2010.

The article quoted Warwick science Teacher Mark Weber as saying: “It is also about changing what we do in the classroom to embrace technology”.

It is clear that social networking and technologies are becoming fully integrated into our daily communication and this is especially evident if you happen to be sitting on a train or bus.

The odds are very high that there will be a large proportion of commuters listening to a portable music device such as an iPod, watching something on their iPhone or iPad, texting at the speed of lightning, or maybe doing a combination of the three.

Even at work, people always check their phones as soon as they get on their break and may even Tweet about how boring their day has been and how they would like to be at the beach, all in under 140 characters of course.

However, in many institutions and workplaces social networking and microblogging sites have been barred on computers.

This indicates that people are becoming so reliant on these sites that they cannot go more than a few hours without checking their accounts.

“I think that people now rely on these 'new' media too much,” says Curtin University  Communications student Tom Atkins.

“If you look at Facebook, you see people disabling their accounts in order to keep from going on when they have an assignment due,” he says.

Although it appears to be having a negative impact on peoples’ daily lives, there is also the issue of convenience when it comes to social networking sites, as Mr Atkins points out.

“I reckon people are using Facebook and Twitter so much, mostly because it's a quick and easy way to get in touch with each other, especially if people are on different phone networks to you so that it's not free to text or call,” he says.

So although we have the ability to call or text someone, we still are resorting to social networking and microblogging sites to communicate with one another.

When it comes to social networking though, in all its forms, is it appropriate to be divulging so much information to an internet site that over 500 million people can access?

Although there are privacy settings that can be activated so that certain aspects of one’s profile are not visible to someone that is not a ‘friend’, “people are realising that what they put on Facebook can be seen by anyone and everyone, no matter the privacy limits they have on their page,” says Mr Atkins.

“I think that although these social networking sites are incredibly popular now, their popularity will decrease with time though they'll probably need to be given an alternative, like one that contains Skype and Facebook possibilities but has no real privacy concerns,” he says.

This is what happened to one of the ‘original’ social media websites MySpace; it died out because Facebook came along and offered more than they could.

So it seems inevitable that social media will continue to grow in both popularity and content as technology advances and the impact that this will have on us as a population is likely to be both disastrous, in terms of interpersonal skills, and revolutionary, in terms of the increased use and dependence on particular media.

So yes, the idea of sending a friend a letter just to say ‘hi’ does seem quite ludicrous to today’s youth, but it is coming to a point where we have to embrace the change and adapt to the imminent technological lifestyle that is ever-evolving and is just beyond the horizon.

iDoc app to help new medicos

Resident at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and The University of Notre Dame Australia medical graduate, Dr Rhys Clark, has developed iDoctor, an iPhone application designed to assist training medicos to keep track of their professional development and patient caseloads.

The internationally-rated, 4.5 star iTunes application allows users to log hospital cases and export them to Excel and other spreadsheet programs. Data is saved in a procedural logbook, including the option to save details based on procedure performed, category-based patient identifiers, role, supervisor and an option to attach a photograph taken with the iPhone.

Dr Clark said once doctors had reached a required number of supervised procedures, it was simple to then email and print the spreadsheet for authorisation.

“Ticker wheels permit users to enter the procedures or operations specific to their speciality and these are saved for use next time a procedure is entered,” said Dr Clark.

Dr Clark said he saw a need for junior doctors to keep accurate records of their experiences on-the-go and iDoctor provided an essential toolbox of assorted logs to enable them to keep their CVs up-to-date with educational and professional development activities.

“As training positions become increasingly competitive and we move towards experience-based credentialing this app becomes vital in order to keep track of procedures performed,” he said.

“Before the application, I found myself often collecting patient stickers to keep records of cases I had been involved in for my surgical logbook or for follow up.”

During iDoctor’s development phase, Dr Clark asked interns, residents, registrars and consultants to test the application in their particular field. He then adapted the application to suit the changes suggested by colleagues prior to its release on the iTunes store.

Dr Clark said he also received feedback regarding tracking hours worked as many doctors reported they were often too busy to record overtime and were not keeping track of the wages owed to them.

“I have also missed out on many dollars owed to me. Often we will work late or be asked to take extra shifts beyond our normal paid hours. In order to keep track of these hours I also developed a logbook for overtime within iDoctor,” he said.

Dr Clark said he would continue to develop iDoctor as new software became available and valuable feedback from colleagues was received.

“I have plenty of other ideas but at this stage we are just focusing on rolling out this app and having doctors using it in their every day working lives,” he said.

Since iDoctor’s release in June, Dr Clark said he had been overwhelmed by positive feedback received from colleagues using the software.

“At first I got a real buzz when I saw people using it on the wards or in medical meetings, however this is now becoming common place,” he said.

“Many doctors have told me how useful they find it and lots ask for it to be made more specific to their specialty which we are looking at doing.”

Part proceeds from the sale of iDoctor will go to Australian Doctors for Africa, a charity providing volunteer doctors and nurses to areas of need in Africa.