Addiction to Online Gaming

The link to this article can be found here: Addictive Online Gaming . The online article basically addresses the problems of online gaming and addiction that is associated with the it. In particular, the game "Everquest" and its online players seem to neglect their duties in life and instead use there time to imerse themselves in the mystical online fantasy world of "Everquest".

Although I have never played the online game "Everquest", I had many experiences playing other online games such as "Half-Life: Counter-Strike" and "Warcraft III". There was a point in time where I was near addiction. I probably spent more than a few hours a night playing those video games, but when these gaming habits began to affect my school life that was when I decided to pull out before it was too late. One of the addictive componants of online gaming may be the fact that you know when you are playing that you're not playing the game with aritifcial intelligence but you are playing with real people on the internet which makes the competitive level and satisfication of winning becomes more intense.

The best way I found to control online gaming addiction is to learn to have self-control and limit yourself to an hour or two a day in playing games and have others around you to help you strictly enforce this. I guess gamers must take a step back from the game and analyse their surroundings to see how things are going in their lives outside of their online world. If everything is falling apart around them (including relationships, and school or work) while their online persona seems to be altogether, maybe its time to recollect and focus on whats more important in life, such as family and friends that exist in real life and not in the online gaming world.

As a advid user of instant messanger programs such as ICQ and MSN Messanger, I found the follow article of interest : Instant Messaging . This article basically states the impact instant messaging programs have on communication, and the pro and cons of instant messaging in the commerce world.

Lets talk about the pros of instant messaging first, as seen through my personal experience. One of the things that I enjoyed about instant messaging is that it allowed me to communicate with many classmates of mine that I simply did not have an oppurtunity to communicate with at school either due to different social groups or either person being shy. Instant messaging, ICQ in particular allowed me to develop deeper relations with people that I already communicate with on a regular basis on a telephone or in person as well as people that I seldom communicate with or not communicate at all. By being able to communicate with people that I seldom communicate with at school or at work, I began to develop friendships online with them which in turn lead to a beginning of a friendship in person.

Other advantages that I found in instant messaging included the ability to conduct online transactions (e-commerce) with much more ease as I now have the ability to communicate with people around the world instantly, with out the hassles of long distance chargers, to discuss about our business purchases. This ability made transactions with much ease and time efficiency. The example I mentioned is also an advantage of instant messaging in the commerce world as well, but of course it is done in a more massive scale of trades and transactions compared to my puny little ebay transactions. Many business save vasts amounts of money via instant messanging since it cuts costs of long distance communications through the telephone.

The ability to work on group projects and exchanging computer files is much more efficient and meeting to work on a project with classmates late at night no longer seems to be a problem because we can meet online rather than in person to work on our projects. The disadvantages of working as a group online is that conversations seems to be impersonal for it is only text that we are communicating with. We are lacking face to face conversations, sarcastic remarks can be mistaken as insults or worst yet, compliments can be mistake as sarcasm since each online user can not read the body language and listen to the tone of voice in which the conversation was conducted in. Although online users have smilies to accomadate with the body language that instant messaging lacks, it is not the same. There are just somethings that you can and cannot do in a group online and then there are just some things that can only be done in more efficient means in face to face interactions but face to face interactions has its drawbacks as well. The mentioned problems of impersonal conversations on instant messaging programs not only apply to working on group projects but also in just normal communciations on the internet.

There are a few risk of instant messaging to keep in mind however. Since online file sharing is easier, the risk of being infected by a computer virus is now greater as well. Another thing to be concerned about, whether you use instant messaging as a business tool or a personal communications tool, the risks of being hacked into has now increased as well. The fact that you get to communicate with many strangers and people you do not usually talk to in real life, instant messanging allows decievers and liars to take advantage of the internet atmosphere to lie about themselves and who they are. You may befriend a person who you think you might know online, but in reality he or she is someone completely different.

All in all, I still find that the advantages of instant messaging to be quite helpful in life, although you must protect yourself to ensure your own safety while using instant messanger programs. Sending computer files has never been easier on the internet, working on a project with classmates no longer require you to juggle your schedules so you can meet together all the time (there are still some things you must do in person), e-commerce transactions no longer require email which is a send and wait for reply thing, which is anything but instant or long distance phone calls which is anything but economical.

As my group website project was based on how mobile phones affects the workforce and the world that students face, I came across an intresting article about upcoming mobile phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson concerning their newest mobile phones that will be released for the market. The link to the press release can be found here: HowardChui .
Reading and viewing pictures of upcoming models from these mobile manufacturers sometimes amazes me what a cell phone can now do, aside from just making a simple phone call.

Take Sony Ericsson's P800 for example. This is not only a triband mobile phone which means it can operate any place in the world that has GSM network support but it is also a Personal PDA all in one. It sure sounds like the best of both worlds for gadget freaks like myself because of the "wow" factor involved in such a gadget but as I take step back and really think about it, I ask myself do I really need a mobile phone with PDA functions? Do I even NEED a PDA? I hardly even use my agenda, and a PDA seems much more time consuming to use to write down my to-do lists and appointments than a simple pen and paper.

Like I said, I am a gadget freak but at times I need to take a step back and ask myself the ever so popular shopper question "Do I really need this?". The Sony Ericsson is expected to retail around $1000, maybe a bit more, and it simply is not the phone for me. However, I can imagine the functions that this phone offers may appeal to a niche market of business users who can certainly use the convience of having to carry only one mobile device that has the functions of a cellular phone and a PDA than two seperate devices. The mentioned business users will probably be able to make use of what this new phone has to offer and can even afford the hefty price tag that comes along with it without feeling a hole in their pocket afterwards.

I am a regular visitor of a mobile phone forum and there are many experiences that I have encountered that proper usage of netiquette is required to maintain a healthy relationship in that particular internet community. As long as you abide by the forum rules you will not encounter any problems with the moderators who enforce the rules of the forums. When no such problems occurs with the moderators of the board, everything is fine and you can continue and enjoy being a member of the forums and can post a message in a thread whenever you want.

Recently however, the forums have encountered a member that frequently posted messages of lewd sexual content which was not allowed according to forum rules for it is a forum community dealing with mobile technlogy and not of such crude subject matter. The member in question was then given a few warnings by the moderators to stop posting such threads and messages on the forums. By not abidding by the rules, this member was clearly disturbing the well understood netiquette of this forum of abidding by the forum rules and because he was posting such distrubing subject matter repeatly on the forum community, he was clearly disturbing other members of the forum and myself. After ignoring repeated warnings from the moderators, this particular member of the forums was banned from the forums completely and he know longer had the privilege of posting messages and threads within this community.

Due to the fact that this member was posting messages and threads that was against the forum rules and began posting such threads without consideration of other members of the forums discreation, including myself, he conducted inproper netiquette and resulted in being banned from our little mobile forums community.