The Next New Thing

The world around us is always changing. Everyday there people have new ideas and they hope that they can make it a reality. New Media is also constantly changing, now with more than its fair share of mediums. One suggestion for a new type of new media would be one where people would be able to use their minds to write. This new technology would utilize a crown like device which a person would place on their head, and it will be able to detect a persons brainwaves and translate what they are thinking into written words. This technology would be beneficial because it could possibly be used on people who might have trouble speaking their minds, but with this technology they would be able to communicate their thoughts easily just by thinking it.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

During this semester I have chosen to add on to the New Media and Video Consoles wiki. I started contributing to the class wiki by adding on a new section onto the wiki describing the current status of the video gaming. In this section I was looking to give non-gamers a view of how far the gaming industry has evolved and how they have integrated cutting edge technology to create a whole new and far more interactive gaming experience that even a non-gamer will enjoy. In order to provide the most accurate and relevant information to the wiki and make it better rounded, I have been searching through the Baruch databases and gaming webpages for the latest information. Whether it be the competitive landscape of the industry to the next big game to be released, I will try my best to make the wiki as complete as possible.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is the process whereby users share or distribute files that they may have including movies, documents, photos, or computer programs through a variety of different methods which include removable storage devices, the internet, or stored on a central mainframe. As noted by Chris Nuttall in a Financial Times article, with so many shows debuting at once its impossible for a person to watch all the shows, but file sharing allows users to catch up on missed shows thereby creating the ratings that producers expect.

P2P File Sharing is short for Peer-To-Peer File Sharing, which as the name suggests is the sharing of files from one person to another without the use of a centralized server. One of the first P2P technologies as noted in a conference paper titled "Online Piracy And The Emergence Of New Business Models" by David Y. Choi and Arturo Perez, was created by Shawn Fanning who introduced Napster, a software program that he created in his dorm room as a method to find music which allows users to copy files stored on someone else's hard drive through the internet. Napster was a huge success and spurred on other ventures by Apple which created what is not iTunes. P2P allows users to download large files at higher speeds than normal. One drawback is that P2P software tracks of how much a user downloads compared to how much he/she shares. A user must download and share at a 1:1 or higher ratio, or run the risk of having their download speed decreased.

Some examples of P2P file sharing include the use of torrents such as BitTorrent, which is one of the most successful P2P programs. These programs allows users to quickly upload and download large amounts of data. They provide a free and quick method of downloading movies which can take up to hours to download in just minutes. Another example of P2P file sharing is the internet in general which allows users to surf the web and search for a file that someone else has uploaded and then save it directly to their own computers. 

Privacy & Confidentiality

New media has grown at such a fast rate that we have learned all the positives that they have to offer, but at what cost? We have been so mesmerized by all the ease and ways in which we can use them that we have overlooked the importance of the privacy and confidentiality of the information that we post on these sites. New media poses the threat of privacy invasion because the information you post is available to millions of users around the world. While there are privacy settings on sites like Facebook where we can limit the access of certain unknown users, there are always ways for them to get around these safety features. With the massive amount of information individuals post on the web through new media, there is a higher chance that someone will be able to access your private information or any conversations that you have with your friends. You must be careful of the things that you post online because you never know who is reading what you write. If you are applying to a job, some employers may check your social network sites and there have been cases where recruiters decide a qualified candidate due to something posted on their web page.

Advice to Baruch College

There are numerous ways in which a college like Baruch can use new media to communicate with its students and faculty or make searching for information easier. If I were hired by Baruch, I would recommend that they provide students with a live online chat or a forum where students can post questions and find answers. Having a live online chat medium will help to alleviate the long lines at offices at the school such as the bursar, registrar, or financial aid office. One of the things students hate most is having to stand on a long line in order to ask one question which will take less time to answer than the wait. Forums or blogs will allow students to post questions and get answers from others who may have asked the same questions and found an answer. Utilizing new media tools like chats would allow for higher turnover and in turn higher satisfaction from the students who are the "customers" of the college.

About My Term Research Paper

Social media is always changing and evolving, allowing users to do things that they would normally not do in a relatively short period of time. My term project is about the evolution of social media and the impacts that it has had on our personal lives as well as for businesses. I chose this topic because as a student I too am an avid user of social networks and other forms of social media. I felt that since social media is part of my everyday life, this would be a great way to get a better understanding of the evolution of social networks and educate myself further on the uses that it has. I started my research by using the Baruch databases and Google Scholar. I then found what I felt were the most relevant articles, blogs, and journals and read them. Through my research I learned that social media is not just a place to post comments on someones wall, but that its uses are only limited to what the person using it. All in all social media is not what I thought of it to be, but it is actually something far greater.

Creativity and New Media

Hi Everyone. So for this assignment I wanted to show the 5 C's of New Media in a more humorous way, so I created a PowerPoint Presentation with a cartoons that depicts each of the 5 C's. After creating the PowerPoint Presentation, I uploaded my file into slideshare.net which is a slide hosting service that allows you to upload different presentations such as PowerPoints, Word Documents, PDF's. With over 12 million visitors a month SlideShare has become a great tool for sharing and downloading presentations, so in a sense it is like a YouTube but for presentations not for videos.

http://www.slideshare.net/madskilz123456/cis3810-creativity-and-new-media-7406164

Creativity

Creativity is at the heart of every successful product or service. It is what makes these products or services unique and demanded by customers. Take Google for example, it thrives off the creativity of the people that it hires. They understand that the key to their success lies in the hands of their employees and they value the ideas that they have to offer. Google individually-taylor's its compensation packages and provides its employees with state of the art facilities with gourmet chefs, on-site doctor, shuttle service, roller hockey, outdoor volleyball court, pools, and even gym, dry cleaning, car wash, and hair stylist services.
New Media has fostered creativity in that it has given corporations new mediums to market and extract customer preferences. Companies have integrating social media marketing techniques by marketing through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. They also use Social Networking sites to gain ideas for new products or product upgrades from the customers themselves. This low cost medium of gaining valuable information such as product preferences directly from the customers allows a company to save on R&D costs and because the ideas come directly from the customer, there is a good chance that the product or service will meet the needs of the customer.
Lets look at the article, "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers" by Clarie Cain Miller. In the article she notes how companies monitored Twitter to find out what their customers like and what they wanted changed and how Twitter followed suit. In the article she notes how Twitter added features such as Lists and Retweets which were features generated by Twitter users. Another user generated feature of Twitter was its hash tags which are hyperlinks and allow users to click and see all posts on that topic. Not limited to Twitter, Ford Motors also noted that customers were modifying the Sync on their cars and has invited university students to design new features for its Sync system.
In conclusion, creativity is not something that only a select few individuals possess, but it is something that we are all born with. With all the new media tools that we have to choose from, it is easier for us to put our thoughts out for everyone to see. They allow us to express ourselves either as ourselves or as an anonymous commenter but it encourages us to throw our thoughts and ideas out in the open where someone can take it and turn it into something better.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are a form of online communities where an individual can create an avatar and interact with other avatars created by other individuals in a host of different 3D virtual environments. There are many ways in which virtual worlds can be used including the following: commercial gaming, online community building, education, political expression, and military training. The pros of using virtual worlds is that it allows the user to customize their space and live a luxurious lifestyle without breaking the bank. Anyone can live like a celebrity either by purchasing a mansion, clothing, or shoes without the hefty price tag of the real product. As noted in "No Budget, No Boundaries: It’s the Real You" by Ruth La Ferla of the NY Times, for $40 you can purchase a host of simulated wares, from several pairs of high boots to a house. Also noted in the article is how one woman who like all people lives off a budget has an online inventory of over 40,000 items including shoes, handbags, and other extras.
A second pro about virtual worlds is the ability to bring people with common interests together. As shown in the article "iReport: 'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction" by Nicole Saidi, a virtual world created by Davil Savill who has a type of autism known as Asperger's Syndrome, has allowed other individuals with autism to create an avatar and interact with others who have autism. Autism patients have difficulty socializing and communicating but through interactions in the virtual world. The article notes how through chat sessions Savill learned how people used symbols to express themselves and enhance text through the use of smiley faces, or angry signs.
One of the cons about virtual worlds is that you do not know 100% who you are actually talking to. Virtual worlds have become great places for predators to pose as someone else and lure others into meeting in person. Virtual Worlds do not provide us with the interpersonal interactions that we get from face to face communication with others, which can lead to decreased social skills and withdrawal from society.
Virtual Worlds definitely foster creativity, as they allow us to perform a multitude of functions by allowing us to model our homes, and even create our own life-like replicas of our favorite destinations. The sky is the limit with virtual worlds because the goal is so that you can do what you won't normally be able to do in real life. Virtual Worlds have become more widely used and in the future maybe we will be able to as in the movie Surrogates, leave our bodies and physically control the avatars ourselves as if our world is the virtual world.

Blog about Twitter

Twitter is a great way to get your thoughts out in the open and project them to millions of people around the world within seconds. Limited to just 140 characters, we must carefully choose our words to maximize the impact of our tweets.

As compared to a BlackBoard Discussion a Twitter discussion is definitely much more limited and narrow. Because we are limited to 140 characters we cannot express our thoughts deeply, but in a BlackBoard Discussion we are not as limited in our posts. Additionally, on Twitter there no uniform structure in which the posts and comments are ordered; the tweets and replies are placed in the feed in the order they are received, but this does not guarantee that the comments are for the previous posts. On the BlackBoard discussion board you have a structure where there is one post and when individuals comment there is a sub section that is created where all comments can be hidden.

Having an in-class discussion allows the students to voice their opinions and have an interactive face to face discussion of their views with peers and the professor. It allows for instant feedback and a possible debate on differing views. On Twitter, we are able to voice our opinions in a limited way, where everyone who is
following you can see. Your privacy is limited and you must be careful what you say or it may be used against you. An in-class discussion can also create a sense of being for a student because they get a chance to interact with others and possibly forge new friendships, whereas on Twitter there isn't the personal aspect of speaking to someone in the flesh.

Social Networking Sites

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Flickr. These are all sites that each of us have either used in the past or are currently using. They all serve the same function which is to allow us to keep in touch with our friends and family albeit in different ways. Facebook is a site more for mature users such as college students and adults. For new users the site may be confusing because of the layout and the various functions that Facebook offers, but after some use the navigation becomes second nature. MySpace is a site more geared towards younger users like teens. The web page is easy to navigate with everything clearly labeled on the task bar on the top of the page. Twitter takes the status update concept of Facebook and simplifies it. Twitter's web page is very simple and easy to navigate, where you can Tweet on the type bar at the top of the page and check your tweet feed underneath it. Flickr allows users to connect with others not through the use of status updates but through the use of photos. Flickr allows you to upload photos that you can share with others and also to look at photos that others have posted. The webpage for Flickr is simple and easy to use. I haven't used Flickr before but when I checked out their site I found it easy to figure out how to upload photos and how to add friends and browse photos.

Overall, I find that most social networking sites are easy to use and navigate. Even if they are complex after some time, they eventually become easy to use. Most of the sites have the same layout for their webpages where there is a toolbar on the top of the page which is clearly labeled and allows the user to search, post, or upload things to their site. The use of each of these sites vary slightly whereas Flickr is mainly for uploading photos and twitter mainly for short updates. Even with these differences the overall goal is to connect people through the use of these social media mediums and all of these sites do a good job at that.

Social Networking

Social Networking...it's growing at an enormous rate and is not limited to just one use. It can be used for many other reasons besides staying connected with your friends. These technologies can also be used my corporations to recruit or screen potential employees, market new products, and to solidify the communication between different levels of management. Technologies like social networking provide benefits and downsides for society. One of the benefits, helping corporations recruit potential employees, as mentioned earlier is exemplified in "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting"  by Frank Langfitt, where a recruiter Maureen Crawford-Hentz states, "Social networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting - ever."  Site's such as Linkedin allow individuals to post details of their past and current work experiences for prospective employers to look at and potentially contact. Some of the "dark sides" of social networking are the advents of cyber bullying. This is shown in the sad case where a mother of a colleague of a young girl created a Myspace account and posed as a 16-year-old boy and befriended the girl and then denounce her causing her to commit suicide. Additionally, as one blogger commented on the blog "Is MySpace Good for Society" on Freakonomics, some people become addicted to the information on the computer and withdraw from personal contact. Such withdrawal has major drawbacks in the development of an individual in both their psychological and social lives.

Overall, Social Networking is a great technology and while not perfect, the pros outweigh the cons and it will continue to evolve. Maybe in the near future social networking sites will all integrate and become one big social network where we can track comments and posts across networks so that we don't have to log into multiple accounts in order to respond to different friends because having multiple accounts can cause confusion between distinguishing which comments or posts are for which site.

Blogs vs. Wikis

What are Blogs and Wikis? They have been around for quite some time now, but until now they have been in the shadows. Blogs and Wikis are being used more and more in everyday life be it in our personal lives and in our professional lives.
Blogs and wikis are similar in some ways and different in others. One main difference between them is the fact that blogs are posted by a "blogger" and cannot be edited, but wikis are created by an individual and can be edited by anyone who may want to add or change the information on the wiki. Another difference between them is that blogs are used to extract information as noted in a New York Times article titled, "Wal-mart Tastesmakers Write Unfiltered Blog," which notes how Wal-Mart, who has strict policies, created a blog called checkoutblog.com that differs from traditional corporate blogs by allowing its buyers to write unedited comments to help them better serve their customers. Wikis on the other hand are used for providing information, where a user will create a wiki page with information on a certain topic and others are welcomed to edit and update the information to make it more accurate.

Similarities between the two social media tools is that they can be accessed by anyone in the world, they can be edited easily, they provide updated information, the information they provide may not be reliable, and they both bring people together. An example of how blogs can be used to bring people together is shown in this New York Times titled, "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid," which depicts a story of how bloggers in the Bay Ridge area posted comments about suspicious activity that was occurring around their neighborhood. The posts by the bloggers and their concern for their neighborhood brought them together as these individuals who were strangers came together to bring the events that they observed to light by going to the Community Board meetings and precincts to voice their concerns.

As shown by the previous example of how the blog brought the people together which ultimately ended in victory, tools such as blogs do promote collaboration by encouraging others to voice their opinions on certain topics. The option to post a comment anonymously also helps one to voice their opinions if they are unsure of what others might think of their thoughts.

The Evolution of The Use of Social Networking: Personal and Business

In the beginning there was sites such as Xanga, and MySpace that we all used to connect with each other through the web. Now sites such as Facebook and Twitter among others have popped up and revolutionized the way in which social networking is to be used. They have continually improved their interfaces and ease of use that now even older individuals are beginning to use Facebook. Additionally, businesses are even using social networking sites to advertise by posting promotions or new products on their Facebook pages or through tweets. Now that almost everyone has begun using social networking sites for various reasons, what's next?