Who got our attention?

I guess most of the people in these days are multitasking. Not only teenagers or digital natives are multitasking, but also digital immigrants. Like my parents, they like to read newspaper and listen to the radio at the same time, or watching TV while doing housework.

For me, my computer allows me to do almost all the things at the same time. For example, I open my Firefox browser and msn at the same time. Sometimes I will open iTunes also. I normally pay attention to all the things that I opened, not continuously to all the things, but on a serial basis. Like, I check who is online in MSN when the Firefox is loading. But if one thing grabs my attention, I will definitely ignore all the others. When I am watching youtube, I will forget to check who is going online unless people talk to me. 


In the attention economy nowadays, artists are those who always need others’ attention, if no one cares them, it would be seen as a failure of their career. Because of the new format of the attention economy, the artists now using youtube channel to promote themselves. To show the other side of them which does not show in traditional media. This helps us to know more about the artist and this is a low cost way for them to promote themselves:

Not just artists, companies need to promote themselves and gain public's attention. Therefore, Facebook is really a good and no-money cost way for them. There are a lot of Facebook fans page created by the companies, they use such pages to update the latest products, events and promotion. If some people read and found these information useful, they may share on their walls in order to tell their friends. One of my favorite company fans page is Kiehl's Hong Kong, this page provides me information about promotion and new products released. I do not need to search though the internet by myself or keep checking the shop from time to time. I can know all the information I need with a click. It is really convenient, right?  =]

Computer games

I am not a person who really enjoys playing video games or online games. Since I was a kid, I am always the one who loss in video games, then I give up playing video games. I knew that I was not born with such talent.  =P

My small restaurant  =]

When Facebook is popular, I started to play the games on it, like Restaurant City and Hotel City. These games require zero technique when playing (That’s why I play these games). Moreover, they have the function of maintaining relationships with friends. For example, when we were having dinner, some of my friends would say, “I need cream! Does anybody here can exchange ingredient with me?” Then someone may yell, “I got cream! I need your leek, I know you have!” Then everyone will keep talking how their restaurants are, what ingredients they need, etc. You may argue that this is a kind of problem solving technique, as every player has different ingredients and limited resources; we need to find our own ways to get things we need. But I would say the function of maintaining relationship would be more important applying on this game, as we end up playing happily and can exchange all the ingredients successfully after our gathering.

Oh,by the way, I found a video on Youtube that is a narrative of a video game addict, just for sharing. I understand that playing games is really fun for some of the people, but it is just a leisure tool for relaxing and having fun. =]