The Next New Thing

As for as new media goes, I think the next new thing that would be pretty useful would be technology that just links you in. Not just a virtual world but something that you can transfer your brain waves into making it almost like an alternate reality. Linking it together to making the virtual world just as real as the one we live in.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

Though I have not yet started on my contributions, I have researched New media and dating. Websites such as eharmony, adultfriendfinder and perfect match seem to be the most popular. As we approach new technological advances online dating has become a new way to just meet people. It takes all your information and matches you with someone who you might like taking away the unpleasant experience of meeting someone you might not like on the spot. How positive it may be on society remains to be seen but I will still be progressing my research to find out.

P2P File Sharing

First of all, file sharing is distributing digital information. It ranges from computer programs to music to just files. P2P is another form of file sharing, otherwise known as peer to peer. Its one user that distributes to a whole community allow anyone to use the information. In Content producers should take advantage of P2P, not fear it they tested out how the results would be if they released a movie into the community. The results was almost reassuring as they had "2m downloads and an estimated 3m viewers in the 18 months since the film's release." It has become a popular way to distribute information and only continues to grow. Some of the more popular ways such as bittorrent, allows users to put in information for everyone to download.

Privacy & Confidentiality

New media is great for our society, it helps us stay connected with one another and find and reconnected with old relationships and friends. However, one problem that arises with it is privacy. The internet has become a new and faster way to steal someones identity. By using assorted viruses or programs, stealing information has become a bit easier for hackers. Just look at commonly use social media websites such as facebook. You have to enter private information just to make an account. This affects our youth the most, with social media coming to age, our kids and teens are using such technology without regard of the risks of just entering this information may do. One thing that could prevent some of the abuse of the internet is using the privacy settings. However, kids are more concerned about finding their friends and obtaining more instead of using such precautions. They don't worry about predators or identity thief. This doesn't mean that we should just let them do this, we should take safety seriously and teach them about the risk and help them apply these settings.  

Advice to Baruch College

One of the benefits that we have now a days is that we can be connected to each other without actually being there, thanks to new innovations and technology. What Baruch could do to use it to its fullest is probably using these networks and tools more often. For example, Baruch has a facebook page that they use, which indeed does help for announcements and such but it's not used to its fullest. We can also use facebook to have discussions with classes; this in turn may actually help with the students who are too shy to speak up in the actual class and actively participate. We also have another problem when it comes to promoting or advertising that Baruch is part of facebook, cause actually knows about it. If more people knew about it I'm sure that the school students would be more informed about the activities going on in school.
Somethings else Baruch can do, concerning the online courses is possible make some of them with web casting. Doing this is a great way to have class without actually being in class which is one of the sole purposes of the class. Its a nice way to get the lecture without mixing up the meanings or interpretation, which may happen with just youtube videos or reading the lectures. Overall, Baruch has learned to utilize some of the new technology up and coming which helps the students as well as the faculty stay updated and tuned in.

About My Term Research Paper

While learning about this course I found it widely interesting how Social networking affected all of us, so to satisfy my curiosity I used this to help find my topic for my term project. Some of the things I learned is that social networking is a great tool to help advertise in businesses. They use great marketing tools to just get you sucked in, especially in the most popular sites like twitter and facebook. I feel as if my paper describes new media not just how its good for us but also allows us to see how it may harm us. What I can conclude is that social media is closely related to the loss of privacy and when combining that with some addictions of some of these sites can be a devastating combination with identity thief and social awkwardness.

Creativity and New Media

For this assignment, I chose to use secondlife.com. This website allows you to create an avatar and basically live life how you can in reality, you share information regarding twitter, facebook and personal interest. Basically allowing yourself to live in a virtual world. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Help%20People%20Island/35/84/23
In the link above you can see that even in the virtual world with all the unbelievable capablities whether with a unicorn or mystical creatures you can still visit places like clubs and other places you can see in the real life. You can also interact with all the other people online to dance, sing and other things. By creating your own avatar you get an image of yourself with the infinite capabilities of the internet.

Creativity

New media certainly does increase creativity, it impacts society and how people want to live their lives. In the article Disney tolerates a rap parody of its critters, but why? it says " YouTube videos that turn Bambi, Simba and Winnie the Pooh into rap stars?" basically allowing people to use their creativity to take animated characters and pretty much change their personalities or the way they act. New media just allows us all to change the way we want to do things from making videos or songs you can use new creative ways to accomplish the same task.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Nowadays you look at companies and corporations that do a lot of business overseas simply have their meetings in their own buildings and office. They call this a video conference, what it does to help is it cuts down the time and money for traveling to other countries or even other states to just be able to have a conference anywhere with a webcam. In the article "Going to the virtual office in the second life", they use this as an innovative way to cut budget cost. You can also use the virtual worlds to teach online classes; students get to be in the class without actually being in the class, they will still copy notes and lectures just not be there in person to do it. 

The pros of virtual worlds are great way to save time and money with the traveling and all. It helps some of the people who are too shy in reality to really do what they wouldn't do, like speak up in a controversial issue or just offer an opinion they might be hesitant about because they fear they will look inferior to others. The cons would be taking the personality straight out of the interaction, or whatever is left of it. You can't really judge how the other person is feeling and you stare at a screen besides getting to actually know a person. In the article "I've been in that club, just not in real life", you see this person living his life on a computer. Its not really a nice way to live your life, I mean you might even be more daring cause its computerized, but its not the same as just experiencing it first hand.

These virtual worlds can do a lot to foster in on creativity, for one you can use a computerized world to accomplish things you would never do in real life or just not able to do. For example, if a person is handicapped and missing legs, in his own virtual world he can climb mountains or just enter into marathons in the virtual world.

The future is looking bright, when you look at virtual worlds they will probably make more innovations to just make it more lifelike. What better way to feel like you're connected then actually connect you in. Technology is limitless nowadays, if they can create virtual worlds for you, I'm sure someday they will be able to connect you into it using your brain wave frequencies to make it seem like you are actually like there like the movie Surrogates.

blog about twitter

Twitter is a simple website that allows you to talk about your daily activities or what you're thinking. When compared to blackboard for discussions it's less organized and when you look at twitter there is a limit to what you can write as oppose to blackboard people can write paragraphs to support their points and ideas. Classroom discussions are more out there and usually not all the students get to talk at the same time as oppose to twitter you are more likely to pay attention because most of the tweets are short, sweet and to the point. The only problems you may get sometimes are that twitter will not be able to be more detailed to explain a certain subject.

Social Networking Sites

There are 4 major social networking sites that we use now a days that have become very popular, being facebook, myspace, twitter, and tumblr. Through these sites you can see how each of them have evolved to improve the other ones. One of the oldest ones, Myspace is a network  that has the friend's of your friends listed while finding out about ones personal life and being able to comment to one another without even having to leave the comfort of your own home. Twitter though is basically a service where you talk about how you feel or even a short message to everyone who is following you, roughly 140 characters so people can know what you're thinking or where you are. Facebook, being the more popular site among these is a mixture of myspace and twitter. It allows you to leave comments on all your friends pages while at the same time writing on your status what you're thinking about or how you're feeling. Tumblr is a bit different, this is a blogging site that allows you to use it like a dairy, journal or even like a site that allows you to  post whatever you want.

Social Networking

Social networking is defined by using sites to basically connect with other people. It allows us to talk to other people without even leaving the privacy of our own homes or even see what they are up to without having to call or talk to them. Some sites you may know are facebook, myspace and twitter. We use these in our everyday lives and have come accustom to having them around. However, these sites aren't just for personal use, today businesses like marketing corporations use them to research on their targeted demographic as a way to basically reach out to them and see what they like without even having to pay the huge sums of money of advertising and surveys. Its a great way for the company to do business online and also answer any questions the consumer may have. Other companies use social networking to hire their potential employees, they type in a simple term for marketing researcher and as many as hundreds of names may pop up that are qualified for the position and more. On an article social networking technology boost job recruiting by Frank Langfitt he says that "Social networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting — ever." Pretty much talking about the ease it has made recruiting to find not just people qualified but the talent level in mere minutes. Though these sites are great for businesses it also is great for society. It allows them to connect with people across the world in China while you're sitting at home and saves you all the cost of a long distance phone call. Using these sites you may also find and reconnect with lost friend you may not have seen for a while. Thought there are many positives of social networking what are the negatives? In the article Antisocial Networking? By HILARY STOUT she says "Children used to actually talk to their friends. Those hours spent on the family princess phone or hanging out with pals in the neighborhood after school vanished long ago." Pretty much talking about how social networking takes away from the personal face to face interaction. Now a days kids just say hi and bye and it isn't even in person they say it through texting or facebook. You take away all the outdoor activities kids use to do and replace it with staying indoors to talk to people virtually. If this isn't bad enough social networking also increasing privacy risk for hackers to get your information and potentially steal your identity. Soon enough I think social networking can might as well and take over the whole internet at the rate its going. It dictates us almost, gets us so addicted that we cant stop, its like a drug. So before you go on saying how great social networking is remember everything else it does as well.

Blogs Vs. Wikis

When looking at blogs and wikis you can safety assume there are vast differences and similarities, for one they are both 2.0 web technology which allows you to interact with people, rate or comment without directly being there. However, blogs and wikis are also very different. Blogs are mostly more opinionated or can be used as a type of journalism. While wikis are almost like a page that just gives out information through other sources or users.

Blogs can be a way of simply expressing yourself, whether that be personal or professional, its a way of saying things on your mind without getting condemned. In an article found on http://www.associatedcontent.com "Through blogs, people are able to write about topics that interest them and comment freely on what is going on in their lives and in the world around them." Though blogs are used by some as almost a personal diary that everyone can read, it also is used on a more professional level with newspapers and companies expressing their thoughts or opinionated information. Blogs are often used as a collaboration by posting a question or opinion and then followed by many others questioning, challenging and just overall posting a discussion where everyone pitches in order to make the blog a discussion board.

Wikis on the other hand is information shared by everyone. In an article on http://www.informationweek.com  "the simplest online database that could possibly work." It can be operated by anyone and everyone to put together information in one place. Different from a blog is that wikis are mostly used as a source of information and is not usually a place for discussion. It can be changed and updated by almost anyone and though not always true since it is updated by people like me and you it is more often useful in looking up information. A new use for wikis can also be used as making group projects for school by just putting in the data and then having the students add in their own data to complete it.

The emergence of these two web products have been huge on the community as it has been some of the most popular known things to do on the web. By creating blogging people have a new way to create discussion boards and communicate as well as expressing themselves. Wiki helps make search for information a breeze when everyone pitches in to put their own input on what they know about the contents in the database.

Social Networking: better or worse than the real thing.

Social networking is the interaction of people using technology. Examples of such are sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Xanga. It allows people to find one another and get connected without even having to meet face to face. Now the question is, is this good or bad. My concept of the idea is that though it helps us get in contact with lost friends or distant families, people also use it to talk to their neighbors. They take the face to face interaction out of the equation and as result we have people sit indoors all day on their butts talking to people through Facebook instead of the traditional hanging out for a bite to eat and open discussions on their lives over a hot meal. I'm sure there are many pros and cons on this debate but, do you think that the pros really outweigh the cons?