Next New

I call it a "World Messenger". What it is, is a a website that works like an instant messenger where you log on and instead of just a screen name, you are given a number ID. this number ID will correspond to you and only you. This will allow users to randomly message someone provide they aren't already chatting to more than a set amount of people. This can open up people to meeting others easier. The twist on this will be that that when it is enable on cellphone as an application or program, you can use a function that will look for whoever has an account around you and let you talk to them to. Example: you want to strike up a conversation with someone sitting across from you on the subway. Use the app and it finds accounts around you and voila chat away.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

I have added a new topic called New Media & the Financial Market to which i introduced how new media helps people follow the stock market and how it affects the finance industry in general. The Page isn't complete as i am still researching. I am very surprise at the fact that normal people through a combination of better market tools and new media have traders. I.e. a cab driver who start trading on his iphone left his job to become a real trade. LinkIn has also become a great tool in how corporations recruit and network.

My Term Project

My term project is title "New Media Dating"". I discuss dating websites along with general social websites as well as online video games and the impact they have had on social conventions such as relationships. I chose this topic because it was something i never really looked at before and i felt it had change through the years without me knowing. I did my research using the baruch library databases along with general information i found on Google. When i did research, many things surprise me like the type of dating sites there are out there. In the end, i have a good understanding of why there are so many sites for dating, many which are just duplicated of each other as well as how popular topics in the real world can become a idea for the birth of a New Media.

Privacy & Confidentiality

With so many new medias out there especially social networking site like Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace, of course privacy will eventually become a huge issue. If you're not careful with your privacy settings, pictures and private information will end up going where you don't want it to. Cases have happen in the past where pictures on someone's Myspace costs them a job when the employer sees it or your family portrait becomes a billboard in Europe promoting some local business. Worse things can happen in the future if they haven't happen yet such as identity theft or even stalkers following you easily because you twitter every 5 minutes. There are though times when these things can be a good thing such as the cases where criminals get caught because they updated their Facebook and the authorities find out and track their location.

Advice

Finally I can put what I've learn in college to use!
IF Baruch asked me to help, the simplest thing would be a Wiki. There is always a line at to see a counselor, the questions these counselors asked are sometimes found on the Baruch website but its not that students are lazy but the websites are hard to navigate and information is harder to find than Waldo. If we had a wiki, information can be easily accessible. Time can be wasted less at the counselor and instead be spent deciding what is the right major or how i can fit these classes into my schedule. The addition of classes for the coming semester can also mean less time spent going back and forth on esims. While we are on the topic of esims, why not also put up a real-time counter for class availability instead of getting frustrated when a class is full yet it still says 10 seats open.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are fun but the most common ones to come to mind are video games like MMORPGs. MMORPGs presented a new way of gaming when it first came out, instead of playing by yourself or with a friend, you can now play with literally tens of thousands of other people at the same time. The virtual world is massive and lets many users explore things unimagined in the world. Creativity blooms and new thoughts and ideas are invented. Take Saki Knafo's article "In Room 100, It's Sid and Nancy All Over Again," where Michael Brown remakes the hotel Chelsea back in its glory day when it was a haven for artists. To remake such a famous hotel in a virtual world takes so much creativity as well as time. Now users in second life can walk through the hotel like it was the real thing...sorta. Although there is the fun and social aspect of it, there is also a dark side to virtual worlds. Some people can substitute virtual worlds with their own real worlds and become addicted to it. These situations are depicted alot in a comical way in TV shows like in an episode of The Office when Dwight starts playing Second life to get away from detach himself from the real world and even worse when he starts paying Second life on his Second Life so he becomes twice removed from the real world. Another example was from "The Big Bang Theory" when penny, unsatisfied with her life becomes addicted to an MMORPG becomes the accomplishments in the game fill the lack of achievement she had in real life. These may all be shows and are funny but there are cases of this happening in the real world, maybe not as extreme but there are a lot of them. Thinking about this makes me worried about our future and the virtual world. What if everyone becomes so addicted to the virtual world that it sorta becomes a real world like in the case of the movie "Surrogates" where everyone is gonna sit at home and have their Avatars do everything for them, is that the future of the virtual world?

Twitter Discussion

Wow, twitter discussions are hard.
It is so difficult on so many different levels especially if you're following more and more people. pretty soon, you get lost between different topics. In classroom discussions, there is a flow and interruptions are limited but there are just too many tweets on twitter that whatever you tweet gets drown in a pool of tweets. Blogs aren't as bad either as there it is pretty well structure with a discussions and comments to follow in order. Bb discussions are pretty good too with almost the same structure as blogs except its all on the same page.