Social Media World Forum

Social Media World Forum 2010 (#SMWF)

September 1, 2010 by mhisham · Leave a Comment 

Social Media World ForumSocial Media World Forum Asia returns to Singapore this year. Previously known as SocialNetworking Forum, this event is brought to you by Six Degrees, a UK based events & exhibitions company, specialising in social media related conferences and exhibition.

One of the highlight of this year’s conference include a a twitter & email question and answer session. It will include the following social media mavens;

  • Reynold D’Silva, Global Brand Marketing Manager, Skin Care, Unilever (@reydsilva)
  • Lawrence Law, Regional Marketing Manager, Relationship and Digital Marketing Asia, Diageo
  • Liva Judic, Media Reputation Strategist (@merrybubbles)
  • Laurel Papworth, Social Network Strategist (@SilkCharm)

Attendees may send in their queries about any matters that is close their heart or interests and key takeaways from the various on-going sessions. They may send an email to Richard@SixDegs.com & tweet questions with #SMWFQ hashtag. With the hashtag, they may see all the questions, answers and follow-ups by the panelists as well as others on twitter.

Speaking at this year’s event are several notable personalities. The following list are not exhaustive so you may refer to the event site for the complete list.

Brian Solis

Brian Solis isThe Conversation Prism a marketing executive, author of Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web and a co-founder of the Social Media Club.

He goes on twitter with the handle @BrianSolis while his website is http://BrianSolis.com.

Together with Jesse Thomas, he created the Conversation Prism, as can be seen on the right(image from Wikipedia). The Conversation Prism, is an attempt to lay down before the eyes, the synergy of communications and engagements which takes places between social networks.

Jesse Thomas and Brian Solis have both identified that the conversations and social networks will continue to evolve as new social networks come up.

 

 

Shalabh Pandey

I first met Shalabh Pandey when he presented at a barcamp event at Ngee Ann Polytechnic in 2009. I was excited to know that social media can be used as a conduit to further a social cause; in his case, “Collaborative Ways to Change the World”. Shalabh is the author and founder of ChasingTheStorm and consults for organisations on digital marketing strategies. ChasingTheStorm celebrates underdogs and achievers alike and features original content.

Here is a video showing his interview with Orsiso CEO & Founder, Thorben Linneberg. For this video, I assisted Shalabh to turn the video-recorder on and off! ;)

Since then, social causes in social media have been one of my focus. After I attended the Social Networking forum last year, I wrote a lengthy article looking at four different organisations, involved in using social media to either provide awareness or financial assistance to their wards. The four organisations are Oxfam, Kiva, Ammado & Unicef. You can read my article here http://mhisham.org/?p=473.

I am really looking forward to the upcoming forum. Here are some useful information about the forum.

  • Event: Social Media World Forum Asia
  • Venue: Suntec City Convention Centre
  • Date: 22nd to 23rd September 2010
  • Twitter: @SMWF
  • Twitter Hashtag: #SMWF & #SMWFQ

If you are driving, here is a guide on suitable carpark locations around Suntec City. http://mhisham.org/?p=335


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Explaining the Gaming with Antivirus Shootout Methodology

September 1, 2010 by mhisham · Leave a Comment 

Comments

There have been several concerns about the shootout post I did yesterday. They are valid concerns. My overall aim is not to put down any particular antivirus, rather, it is to show that, with antivirus, one is still able to have it installed and turned on.

Installed & Turned On

I mentioned installed and turned on because some users would prefer to uninstall an AV if it became too disruptive, especially when it warns you that the game you are about to launch have behaviours similar to keylogging programs. This is especially true for BlackShot as the game was included with GameGuard. GameGuard is used by the game to monitor for cases of cheating by Blackshot gamers. Since it records keystrokes in-game, most of the antivirus will flash a warning. One way to overcome this is to include the blackshot launcher into the Exclusion List. I also mention turned on because some users will temporarily turn off their antivirus when they are about to play their games with the reason that it will slow down the computer.

Baseline & Benchmark

So, my shootout was really to show that having antivirus on-board do not really affect gameplays. The video that I have embedded show that I do a benchmark on my baseline so that I have a standard of system performance before installing any of the antivirus products. I used Cinebench R10 which measures computing performance as well as graphic performance. Let me emphasise that I do not benchmark antivirus performance, I benchmark the system performance before and after installation of antivirus.

Application Checksums

Symantec Norton 360 & Kaspersky PURE are two of the antivirus that did not fair as well during the shootout. I need to clarify that both products employ an application checksum checking mechanism. This means that, given a set of whitelist(kaspersky) & quorum(symantec), a particular application can be identified as safe to run or run with caution flags. This may be the reason why the performance under benchmark as well as gaming, did not fare as good as the first two products which does not have these services – yet.

Conclusion

Given the statements above, and the shootout post I did, I still believe it to be necessary for everyone, to have antivirus on their system and to have it continually updated. Hardcore gamers are much more powerful machines need not be unduly worried about the antivirus affecting their gameplay performance. Casual gamers like me, can probably live with the slightly sluggish performance when we turn on every settings on the game to the maximum level. Nothing beats having a clear thought that the system is safe from online malwares.

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Gaming With Antivirus Shootout

August 31, 2010 by mhisham · Leave a Comment 

For a long time, I have wondered how would enabling full antivirus protection, affect the gaming experience. I decided that I shall not waste more time pondering and to effect the tests immediately. I do not have any suitable computer to test out the games; so I first called on Lenovo for assistance. My main requirement is for them to provide a suitable medium range notebook that I can use for gaming. This is part of the aim. I want to make casual gaming an enjoyable yet safe experience.

Lenovo Ideapad Y460

Lenovo Ideapad Y460

So this is the notebook that Lenovo, through Text100, loaned to me. The configuration for this notebook are as follow;

Windows 7 Home Premium

Intel Core i5-430M Processor @ 2.27GHz

Ati Mobility Radeon HD5750

4GB Memory


With this  basic configuration, I am all set to effect the tests. Just for reader’s benefit, the Lenovo Ideapad Y460 is retailing at $1,399.

Here’s a short video, detailing how I go about creating the baseline to use as the benchmark. Although I mentioned using Futuremark 3DMark & PCMark, I did not use them, prefering to depend on Cinebench R10. Also, although Avast was mentioned, I did not use that, I replaced it with Kaspersky’s latest antivirus, PURE.


Cinebench Screenshot

Cinebench Screenshot

This is a screenshot of the Cinebench R10(latest on website is R11.5). This tool measures two main components – the CPU and the graphics processing power.

Here are the benchmarks.

1 CPU Render xx CPU Render Processor Speed-up OpenGL Shading
Baseline 3432 7818 2.28 4914
Symantec Norton360 3397 7673 2.26 4784
Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 3407 7748 2.27 4859
McAfee Total Protection 3370 7771 2.28

4848

Kaspersky PURE 3384 7695 2.27 4824

Higher numbers represent best results.

From this table alone, we can generally assume that, Trend Micro Internet Security Pro and McAfee Total Protection, comes the closest to the benchmark. These antivirus products have been chosen because they offer continuous realtime scanning & protection, continuous network polling for new updates(especially for Norton 360 & Kaspersky PURE who depend on crowd-sourced database). At no time, did the notebook hang while the Cinebench tests were conducted. It should be noted that all the anti-virus have had their database updated, prior to the tests. For Kaspersky PURE, it should be noted that database updating can take as long as one hour. Tests was conducted only upon successful update of the database.

Crysis Screenshot

Crysis Screenshot

Testing benchmark alone is not enough. I need to feel for myself how it feels like, putting the notebook towards the rigorous testing of playing actual games. Crysis and BlackShot was chosen for this test. Crysis, in highest configuration, maxes out computing power as well as the graphic card capabilities. BlackShot is an online First Person Shooter(FPS) game which depends a lot on network reliability.

The tests was conducted over a period of 5 days, testing at various times of the day & night to ensure that I have a mean gauge on it, to discount network latency that may occur from time to time.

From my own experience, there is not much effect of the antivirus on the gameplay. This should be good for all the antivirus products mentioned as there aren’t any critical point of contention.

A point to note, that for Kaspersky PURE, it somehow affect the video playback during the cut-scenes of Crysis. Thereafter, a little bit of buffering during game play was experienced. This is not experienced when tested with other antivirus.

In summary, it is generally fine to leave the antivirus turned on when playing games, be they computing & graphic process or network bandwidth dependent. Please be reminded again that this test is conducted using a medium performance range of notebook series. I think it is a safe practise to leave the security products on, so that we can play game without worrying that we are opening up our computer to virus attacks. Besides, certain games make use of Internet browsing engine to display in-game statistics. This is an avenue for malware or spyware to intrude into the computer.

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