About Someone Else's Term Project

I totally can compare myself to the presentation about the negative effects of New Media and Social networking sites. I do feel like Facebook has been eating me up with its applications. In the past, I have never touch blogging like Xanga and MySpace like all my other friends did when I was in middle school. Once high school started, Facebook just hit me like a wave. It turn worst for me when gaming applications started coming out. I would say that I am part of the mass that cannot stay off the internet for a day.

When I recall the statistics of cyber-bullying and predators, I can't really see that happening to me as the predator or prey, although I do see it on the news a lot. I just have to say that the preys are weak minded, even though that's a harsh thing to say. The only trap that I might get trapped by is the useless spam that randomly pop-ups time to time.

About My Term Project

That was one of the hardest things that I had to do for classes. I'm pretty knowledgeable in my own experience but finding material was hard. Figuring out a design for a topic like this totally racked my brains so I just went minimalistic as possible. I did have trouble trying to find the right words to say but it really helped me to talk about a topic I have interest in. Seeing that many people in the class didn't know most of the advance tech that I know about, it was pretty hard to find the right words to convey my meaning. The only thing that I felt safe explaining about was pretty much what MMORPG means since I had to describe this term to many others. I hope I did well for this presentation for my topic. That was a killer 10 - 15 minutes standing up there.

The Next New Thing

The closest invertion that can come out as a type of new media would be like an improvement on MMORPGs, Second Life, and and video conferencing would be how people would describe as virtual reality. My predictions of how it would be used would be the same as most people. They can directly connect to the Internet with just a controller and visors. It would just be like interactions like in SecondLife but there would be real life things inside the VR such as message boards and projectors that will shows post, pictures, and videos. The best outcome of this is if the visor can access the internet via wireless.

Privacy & Confidentiality

When it comes to privacy and confidentiality, we don't want leakage of sensitive information. New media likes to get involve with new things and that include information as well. We have seen that new media has brought communities together both big and small. We have also seen how information can be transmitted quickly and effortlessly without moderation, such as rumors on twitter and facebook as well as viral videos on youtube and other video hosting sites.

Everyone would want to keep their sensitive stuff for their own if it has a lot of value to them. Personal information is a big problem that can be used maliciously but that's not the only thing that can spread. Take Apple for example. They had plans for a new generation iphone but didn't release any information about it. Yet a small thing let out a huge leak about it on the site Gizmodo. I'm sure Apple wish for this to happen but with people like me, everyone will soon know.

Advice

Since Baruch already has twitter and facebook pages, a new addition to publicizing Baruch could be related to videos about our clubs. People can record what they do whenever there is a meeting or event and we can mash up parts of if to show how diverse we are and the leadership and communication skills we have. They can also post videos on the Baruch's website to show locations in the buldings and "how to do" videos like on our wiki. These videos will be very helpful for freshmen and first time visitors.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

I have edited information and contributed to contents of the MMORPG and P2P pages, although i only put myself to be a contributor to New Media and MMORPG. I have some of my own history in content about MMORPG and P2P so it is pretty easy for me to find information about them. I have put up some links that leads to websites that I visit and the homepages of programs related to torrenting. It looks like there more be extra sections I can include into these two topics when I have time to do so.

My New Media Class - So Far

There are just two descriptions that can sum up what this class has taught me, online communication and research. Twitter, blogging and blackboard has help me connect with the class. The wiki page we work on and the articles we read for our assignment are the research that helps us understand what we are suppose to be researching on and learning in class. The articles we read are intriguing but outdated. My own research on Second Life and Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games is becoming a problem, since the databases aren't showing any results leading to contrasting information between the two. The sources from forums seem to give more arguments than articles within the library's database and from articles found by Google Scholar but I won't be able to use them since they don't have citations. It would nice if I could use that information. This innovative hybrid class is more interesting than my lecture classes and it gives ease to helping us understand the material related to New Media.

Twitter: Discussion

Kinda late for this but I still don't really like twitter that much. Of course, twitter does make it much more faster to comment to others but 140 letters might be limiting in some instances. It does beat using BB's discussion board since BB itself is so annoying to use. I can check tweet pretty quick on my sidekick if I have service. BUT it is also annoying to keep track of who is replying to whomever they are talking to and about what tweet that are replying about. It is also more productive that in-class discussions but that might be because we need to tweet in order to recieve credit.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

When it come to virtual worlds, the main thing people can do is meet up with other people to discuss anything they want in a serious or stress-free environment. Of course, the setting of the virtual world affects what people will be discussing. Rarely would there be any business people discussing there current phase of their project during a fight with a dragon in an MMORPG or dancing in a virtual club. Second World is providing a free virtual world that fosters a place where creativity can thrive. For a small fee, users can create a setting that might be a replica of the real world or fresh off their own imagination. In the article, "iReport: 'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction" researchers are able to use the creativity to set up environments that might happen in real life so that autistic people are able to experience the situation beforehand.

As more and more people are able to access the internet, while possibly closing up the digital divide, more meetings might be held in these virtual worlds. The reasons for these interactions may mostly appear beacuse of locations or people might just get lazy about going to their office when technology improves to be much more faster and effcient. Not everything might have to be in a virtual world. Online webcaming or video phone/conferencing might be the next big boom, provided that there is a fast AND constant access to the internet or whatever service provider (such as phones).

Social Networking

Like in my previous post, Linkedin is a great way for companies to find new workers for their job force. For a fee, they can see resumes posted by the users in Linkedin's community as sort out the people that they want to hire from key words. This helps them lower the amount of work needed to be done in order to scan for potential employees.

Twitter has also been a hot thing that was recently developed and is spreading around as much as blogs are. In a recent article in the NYTimes by Claire Cain Miller, twitter has helped people in their protest as well as their praises. Just recently over the weekend, "one author noticed that Amazon had reclassified books with gay and lesbian themes as 'adult' and removed them from the main search and sales rankings, a protest broke out on blogs and Twitter." Because Amazon was able to see this, they quickly tried to rectify the situation before it got out of hand. In another article by Laura M. Holson, David Puner "will often scan what others are saying about Dunkin’ Donuts and re-tweet the most positive comments." Since he has more than 20 thousand followers, this tweet would most likely be re-tweeted and the process could continue for who-knows-how-long.

"Tweeting Your Way to a Job," by Laura M. Holson, The New York Times, May 20, 2009. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/fashion/21whiz.html

Putting Twitter’s World to Use by CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, The New York Times, April 14, 2009, p. B1. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14twitter.html

Check Out Social Networking Sites

The first social networking site that I have ever used was Facebook. I have never touched xanga or Myspace in my entire life even though many of my friends have. When I first got into Facebook, it was when one of my friends sent me an invitation. At that time, Facebook didn't seem to be too sophisticated as much as Myspace was. Now, Facebook is just filled with many groups, causes, and fan pages each with many or few followers, although I should also point out that it is littered with hundreds of applications and ads as well as spam and hackers.

I have just recently tried Google Buzz with my Gmail account. From what I'm am looking at when I try to have interest and use it, all i see is something that seems to be a copied version of Twitter and modified to include other applications such as Google's own Picasa as well as Twitter and Flickr. At this moment, I don't see any real usage With Google Buzz.

On the other hand, Linkedin seems to be a well developed site. You are able to input your personal information regarding with jobs and education. There is also an option to upload your resumes. Although I am also new at using this, this site seems to be an efficient way of finding connections with other employees and managers. There not much useless ads floating around unlike Facebook and allows the user to upgrade his account for other features, for a reasonable price if they are interested at all. The basic account is enough for new people to show their work and educational information.

Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and wikis are both utilized by companies in order to promote the sharing of ideas and planning among its workers. The ways that blogs and wikis do this is different but the concept is the same. The main thing that is focused upon in both types of communication is who gets to be the authors of it. In an article published in the NY Times on March 2008, Wal-Mart had tried to use blogs that only praised their accomplishments and good deeds but ended in failure. The only way for their blog to survive was to allowing regular buyers to makes posts where they weren't really censored. And of course, anyone can comment on these blog posts but they cannot change article itself.

Wikipedia is not a corporate wiki but uses the same style to produce its pages. Instead of just the corporation's employees making the pages for their wiki, anyone who signs up on Wikipedia can become an editor/author. The problem that Wikipedia did face was intentional changes on articles to make them inaccurate. In an article on CNN, Wikipedia "says it will try assigning editors to some of its entries." This makes Wikipedia not as free as what a user-only edited Wikipedia but does allow more accurate articles. Overall, anyone can become an editor on Wikipedia but can only become an editor for corporate wikis if they have permission.

Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write a Blunt and Unfiltered Blog, NY Times, march 3, 2008, p. C1, at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/business/03walmart.html
Wikipedia: No longer the Wild West? by John D. Sutter, CNN.com/technology, August 26, 2009. Available at http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/26/wikipedia.editors/index.html

Term Project Description: Comparing MMORPG's and Second LIfe

I will be comparing Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games with Second Life, a 3D virtual world. This is going to be a hard subject to research on since i doubt the Second Life nor MMORPGs will have many scholarly articles written about them, let alone having even any articles describing them. The points that can really speak for themselves is that in both situations you are in a virtual world. What I would need to compare is how does using Second Life, in terms of setting, communicating, moving around, shopping, and related aspects, allows Second Life to be separated from the MMORPG group. Although I seem to have a gist of the differences, like I said, the hard part is finding articles, especially scholarly ones, to back up my theories.

Old vs. New

The is one major difference that separates new media from old media and that is the internet. With the internet, people can communicate with anyone around the world. Most of the new media that we use consist of using the computer to share information with other people whether you know them or not. The easiest example of old media to show this would be newspapers. Newspapers are distributed around a local area and contain articles that can only be commented through gossip or sending letters to the newspaper publisher. The counterpart new media would be blogs, which contains news that can be commented by anyone around the world who is interested in that particular article. Many distinguishing features between new and old media also includes who is able to access them and who can contribute to them. The internet contains all these features that makes new media possible.

What is New Media?

Hmmm... first blog post for me. If I were to describe what is new media, I would say that it is anything on the internet that is not just text and pictures on a web page made by a single webmaster. Since new media spawn based of the internet, you would pretty need access to the internet, a form of a computer to use the internet whether it be a desktop or a cell phone, and any peripherals to the computer to deal with multimedia like scanners and cameras.

Of course the internet would be a huge part of new media. New media doesn't consist of a single individual, it is form from contributions of many users of the internet. Everyone would read a person's work or look at their pictures / videos and share their own whether it be in text or a form of media.

New media is affecting our lives daily. It could mean the replacement of some old media such as newspapers and television, or it could improve a type of old media and even integrate it. Such an example is how a Chicago newspaper publisher will use blogs for their content. Another is how some people watching TV shows replace their TV with a computer. Even I watch my TV shows on my computer nowadays.

"Publisher Rethinks the Daily: It’s Free and Printed and Has Blogs All Over" by Claire Cain Miller.The New York Times, January 22, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/technology/start-ups/22blogpaper.html
"Who Needs a TV? I’m Watching on a Laptop ," by Laura M. Holson, New York Times, December 3, 2008; Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/technology/personaltech/04basics.html?emc=eta1