The Next New Thing!

Picture this: Imagine a machine that allows you to lay down to transport you mentally to a virtually simulated world just like ours. In addition, you are able to interact with people virtually designed to behave the same as us. This machine can transport you to places such as Paris, Hawaii, Japan, Argentina, or wherever your vacation goals are located. Physically, your body would remain inside the machine but your mind and body can move in the virtual place you would like to visit. It's like a dream that you can fully control and sign on or off anytime. Multiplayers can be involved if they also have the same machine. A long distance relationship couple can both meet each other in this virtual world and go on dates. Although this might take a long time to develop, with technology constantly improve year by year, our future inventors can come up with this product.

Our Class Contribution- So Far

To contribute t o the class wiki, I have started by editing some grammar and punctuation mistakes under Sports and Investing. I am also doing additional research related to eBay( my term paper) and plan to add Amazon along with it. Also, continuing research on MMORPG games and its effects on our social media and society today.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is when a person is transmitting a computer data or a file through websites or an application. File that are share can either be shared publicly or privately. Some website and application such as Google Drive and Dropbox allows their users to share documents, videos, files, files, etcs. P2P file sharing is peer-to-peer sharing and its when content is distributed through torrenting, internet or any other media. In the article "Content producer should take advantage of P2P, not fear it, sites like Digg, Slashdot and BoingBoing, as well as host of smaller blogs, all played a part in bringing people into the massive swarm of sharers that helped the film reach more than two million downloads and an estimated 3m viewers. Some well known P2P file sharing would be Pirate Bay and BitTorrent. Users can share files such as textbook pdf, games, movies, tv shows to their peers. 

Privacy and Confidentiality

New media is a great way to connect and share with people in the internet, but there are consequences when it's posted. When posting anything to any social network platform, one should consider their privacy and confidentiality. Revealing any personal information and posting it on the internet can backfire on a person. There were YouTuber's that posted video's of how much they hated on their current jobs and when their company found out about the videos, they were fired. It is always best to double check the privacy settings and be aware of what is being posted on the internet.

Advice

You are hired by Baruch College to use new media to improve the College. What are some suggestions you would make using new media?

My advice for Baruch College is to offer courses that would include Twitter in their syllabus. Like the article we read, "New lesson plan: Temple professor invites students to tweet during class," by Emma Jacobs, Twitter was used in Jordan Shapiro class. This can help big lecture classes and students that are shy to tweet out their question or comment. If a student can not make it to a professor's office hours they can tweet them their concern or direct message them also. 
Another way Baruch can improve by using new media is clubs and different social networks during club hours. Clubs such as people that play the same MMORPGs. People that play the same video games can connect and socialize with each other. Students can connect with each other on a platform that can improve less shyness and more engagement in school's events and activities.

Creativity and New Media

New media fosters creativity in many different ways. I used to play a MMORPG game called Maple Story. The player you create in this virtual world would need to complete tasks/quest and may also party with other virtual players so that they can help you complete the quest faster. As you level increases the environment and quests will get harder. Players get to design their character and pick a "job" based on their stats they chose.




Here are the characters I played in the past. All these characters are unique in a way because of the jobs they are assigned.



Everyone starts off here, where they design their character but it has limitation to their equipments because they start off at level 1.



One of the main towns in the game, Henesys.



This is the Free Market, where other characters would sell rare equipment that they acquired.

Creativity

New media can foster creativity in many different ways. It can range from rap parodies to mashups and leading to YouTube videos. It shows that anyone that anyone's creative content can be shared online as long as they have access to the internet. In the article, "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?" by Brooks Barnes shows that Disney's has not remove viral mash-ups video of their character's such as Bambi, Simba and Winnie the Pooh doing the "Crank That(Soulja Boy)" due to copyright laws. "Our audiences can creatively mash video from our content as much as as often as they like," on the other side Nickelodeon is allowing Youtuber's to mash-up their content. It takes a lot of creative thinking to actually find a scene from the movie or show to mash up a rap song with. 

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

Virtual world can be used in many different ways. Mainly when we think of virtual world we think of escaping reality, the real world. In the article, “After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot?” by Diane Mehta, she interviewed Jacki Morie, a virtual world designer in telehealth care. Morie said, “Minecraft is a virtual world. It’s digital LEGOs if you will, but it’s a space for kids to exercise their imagination and to connect with others to also want to build and create things.” Morie is explaining how the game Minecraft is already prepping kids in this generation to want to innovate and network. Another virtual that I can include is the game Pokemon Go that was released this Summer. It was a virtual game on a phone that basically was synced with Google Maps and the player would have to travel outside to catch Pokemons that appeared on their screen. This was an innovated move by the game designer to help people connect both virtual and real world together. Another article that relates to use of virtual world, “In the Room 100, it’s Sid and Nancy All Over Again” by Saki Knafo. In the article Michael Brown, who has fantasized about living in the Chelsea hotel (a hotel where artists use to stay), developed a setting on Second Life replicating the Chelsea hotel before corporate management team took over. In the replica it shows the pigeonhole mailbox, but it was removed in real life. Brown did visit their once and he photograph the arts on the walls and simulated them into the virtual world. In this virtual world it also allows online avatars to meet in the hotel to do poetry reading. This shows that not everyone can accept change. People still want the old and Second Life lets people to relive Chelsea Hotel before they changed.

The pros for virtual world is that people can interact with others without revealing physical self. They dress up as avatar and interact with each other and that eliminates fear and shyness. The cons of a lag time, and lack of acuity. People feel more comfortable when they are in the virtual world that their creativity are endless. When people realize that they are back to reality, they know that they are limited in certain sources. A con is social awkwardness, networking with people in virtual world maybe easier for someone than the real world. I believe with the technology we have today, people would develop reality into the virtual world. There are already head pieces for gaming that brings the users into the setting of the game they are playing!

Blog about Twitter

Twitter discussion are more simple and straight to the point compared with Blackboard discussion. A tweet only consist of 140 characters so the person tweeting would have to limit their discussion whereas in Blackboard discussion the person can elaborate as much as possible. By using hashtag we can group a twitter discussion to certain viewers(like we did for homework). Blackboard you would have to click on everyone's post and manual reply.

In class discussions are better than Twitter discussions because you know who is talking in your group of classmate and the responses should be faster than Twitter discussions. There can be a tweet from a while back and you can retweet the tweet days or months later replying.

Social Networking Sites

When I log on to Facebook my impressions the top 3 icons on the top right. I usually check for any new friend request, new messages, or just random notifications. For Facebook it used to be very hyped back then where people would post on other's wall when they communicate and other friends will comment on the post. Now it's just if there's a birthday, people will post on their wall wishing them a happy birthday. When they find a viral video that relates to you they will @(insert your name). I personally mainly use Facebook for group messaging with friends.

When I first started Twitter, my first impression was that it was pointless and useless because who would care about what I tweet out anyways. I realized it was great for networking and connecting with people with similar interest. For me, I like collecting sneakers so I would follow people that are consistently tweeting updates on where a new shoe might come out earlier than its expected release date.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, Instagram is based on posting pictures or videos where followers can like and comment on them. When people use hashtag on their pictures, they try to reach out to people with similar interests. I have a few friends that are bloggers that uses #blogger , #ootd(outfit of the day) and it would attract people that are fashion bloggers to follow her page.

YouTube is probably well known as one of the top social media website. My first impression of Youtube is that there were so many different videos you can watch from different genre(vloggers, comedy, pranks, makeup tutorial, etc). I even watched a Youtuber that specializes in tutoring people in calculus ,when I was taking a calculus at Baruch.

Facebook is great with reconnect with your old friends. Twitter is a way to tweet about your daily activity or to follow people that tweets out stuff that interest you. Instagram and Youtube uses photos and videos to reach out to their followers.

Social Net'g

When we think of Social Networking, we think of the top websites such as Facebook, and Twitter. The benefits of Facebook as a social website is that it helps family and friend stay connected, and join group events with people that have similar interests. Social media also can help businesses and corporations innovate their customer service. For example, recently I used Twitter to tweet out to a specialty retail business about a problem I had with a product. They answered within minutes and we found a solution that satisfied us both.

In the article, "In India, Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers" by Heather Timmon we see how people in New Delhi, India use social media to contribute together and bring down hazardous drivers. "The traffic police started a Facebook page two months ago, and almost immediately residents became digital informants, posting photos of their fellow drivers violating traffic laws."(Timmon) Residents in the area where traffic usually occur, submitted photos of drivers who are breaking the law to traffic police's Facebook page. If indeed the picture proves the driver is breaking the law, they will receive at ticket for their wrong doing.

Many people my think social media is always on the positive side, but there is a "dark" side to it too. In the article, "Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private" by Rebecca Greenfield shows that the Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg's sister Randi Zuckerberg was not able to manage her privacy settings correctly. She intended to post a picture of her family, but only for her family and friends to see. Somehow the photo leaked out and someone ended up posting it on Twitter. This shows the negative side of Facebook and their lack on miscommunication on privacy settings. We all know that what ever is leaked on the internet, there is no such thing as taking back.

Social networking website are constantly new ways to innovate. There are more ways to communicate with people with similar interests, your friends and family, and possibility of a recruiting employers(LinkedIn).

Blog v Wiki

In today's society, we have numerous ways to network with each other. Media convergence is important to people in today's world such as for businesses. Blogs and Wikis are two forms of new media that helps communicate information across from one to another. Blogs are more of an one person's opinionated contribution about their personal life and where other people can provide feedback and comment on their post. While wiki is more of a group collaboration, where anyone in that group can contributed editing the page.

In the readings, "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid," by Michael Wilson we see that bloggers from the Bay Ridge, Brooklyn contributed information to help their community take down a crack house. The blogger's posted on BayRidgeTalk.com, on the events and drug activities that were happening inside and outside of the 93rd street crack house. After providing these information, people in their community filed complain to their local precinct and it led to an investigation to bring down the drug dealers.

In another reading, "An Internal Wiki That's Not Classified," by Noam Cohen, we can see that how Diplopedia helped prepared and organized memo and biographies for State Department. Unlike Wikipedia, where anyone can contribute to the page, people that contributed false information or vandalism on Diplopedia can be tracked down.

Blogs can be used for collaboration where two bloggers could write about the same topic and their viewers can look at both blogs to gather information for themselves. Wiki could have more restriction on what information are accurate letting notable users post on it.

Outline to Research Project

The research topic I chose was "eBay: Community or Bazaar?" I chose this research topic because I have a very high interest and also involved in the eBay community. eBay being a new media in today's society have impacted the way we shop and sell. For my research I am planning to look at most of the prospective, such as economic, sociological,technological, and also moral. I already have a few positive and negatives impacts off the top of my head, such as international sellers and how its good that we can get products for cheaper than our local retail store. It is a positive benefit for us the buyer, but negative impact on our economic growth. Since eBay is my daily hobby, I would have a lot to say how eBay affects me and will change the future.