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.

Social Networking

Somedays...i can be a real facebook addict. I would check facebook every 15 minutes and look at the same things i did 15 minutes ago. Some of my friends are even worse, they would update their facebook statues every 5 minutes just to let everyone know what they were feeling. That's one thing great about social networking sites, we can still connect easily with hundreds of people even though they're so far away. In Virginia Heffernan's "Being there: The Subtle Art of the Facebook update," she shows us how facebook updates have become not what they are doing at the moment but an artform and a declaration of the mood the person is in. Instead of asking "how are you" to all of your friends, they have now told you every minute how they feel should they update their statuses and if you care enough to check. There are however problems with so many people knowing your status. Opposite to Frank Langfitt's "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" where Alfred LaSpina got offered a job through LinkedIn, employers can also be divert from you because of what you post. Many cases have happen in which someone was not offered a job because of what employers found on their facebook or myspace. It would'nt be a surprise if employers start using social networking websites as their main source of background checks in the future.


Sources:
Heffernan, Virginia. Being There: The subtle art of the Facebook update. The New York Times Magazine, Feb 15, 2009, p. 25.
Langfitt, Frank. Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting. NPR, March 16, 2008.

Check Out Social Networking Sites

Social Networks might feel like any new technology whether they are digital cameras, mp3 players, netbooks, etc, once the first one comes out, there are gonna be imitations. They might all be social networking websites but they generally have something big to differentiated themselves from the pool. Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, LinkedIn are all social networking sites but all have different functions. Friendster might be a good site for someone who is new to social websites and just uses it to network as it is sort of a slimdown version of facebook. Myspace feels more catered to musicians or someone who is creative since the site is open source so if you're not creative, you're gonna end up with a boring profile. LinkedIn is more for the professional so you wont find drunk pictures there. Facebook is well rounded and feels like it caters to all individuals. It wont hurt however for someone to join different websites as a musician might join myspace to promote his music but also join facebook to connect to friends.

Blogs vs. Wikis

Whats the difference? Who uses what?
Wikis tend to be crowd source meaning that multiple users can edit and post new topics on the site whereas Blogs are generally like a journal written by one person. There are however blogs that are run by multiple people. One such blog is Gizmodo.com which is a blog about new and upcoming electronics and anything that may appeal to techies. It is updated constantly by different writers that work on the site. Each writer offers their own unique touch and identity to the blog.
The biggest difference between wikis and blogs is that wikis are meant to have factual information posted while blogs can have opinions and emotions attached.

That might be one of the reasons companies would want to have their own corporate wikis than blogs. I doubt managers and executives would want to know what an analyst in the tax department thinks about James Cameron's "Avatar" but they might be interest in knowing when their company is expecting to file their tax returns. In Gardiner Morse's article "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on making the most of company wikis" in the Harvard Business Review, Jimmy wales talks about how more and more companies are starting to use wikis but many lower level employees are afraid to edit postings from managers. Transparency is important in companies and it would be very helpful to the company if all post were as correct as they could be. One way they could resolve this problem is to just let a couple of lower level employees write the wikis for the company with the information past down from higher-ups. This way, the employees could correct each other while having their correct information from Managers.

Wikis are constantly growing and there is always a new type everyday but they can also learn alot from blogs if they haven't already. Many blogs have post about How-to's and Recipes for cooking, etc and wikipedia has copied them and created wiki-how-to's, etc. One thing i haven't seen wikis developed yet from blogs is tourism. Many people post pictures and reviews on their blogs about vacations they went on and local specialties they can visit. A wiki can be created to have a where to visit in a city.

Gardiner, Morse. "A conversation with Jimmy Wales." Harvard Business Review (April 2008): 26 Feb, 2009.

Old vs. New

What can we really call new? Something that came out recently or something that is so innovative that it changes the way we do it. Does the New replace the Old? NO! New media differs from old media just because its a new way of doing something. Lets take for example like reading the New York Times. Some of us might have the newspaper deliver to our homes everyday and read it on our way to school or work but now, the news is online and updated every second and its free. Does this mean the paper form is obsolete? Of course not! It might not be as popular anymore but its still alive. Some people prefer to read it because they have free time on the train and there isn't any internet available . You can only have so many Taylor Swift songs on your ipod to listen to before you get bored and want to catch up on the news written on free newspapers.

The difference between New media and old media can be summed up like a simple equation. Think of Old media as a variable X and New media as X+1. In this case the 1 is internet. New media is basically any old media that can be done with the addition of the internet.

Social Networks and Relationships

New Media has become an unprecedented force in social interaction. 1 in 8 couples married in the U.S. met online. Dating sites like eharmony have made millions in revenue and terms like "facebook stalk" have been use to use to describe clingy boyfriends/girlfriends. How has this trend come about? what happen to meeting someone in a bar or talking to someone face to face? have we become so immerse in the internet that we even try to find a spouse online like how we look for a jacket on the Gap website?

What is New Media?

When we hear the words New Media, some of us think of the internet but it goes so much beyond that. New Media has taken over so many aspects of our lives that we don't even realize it. One day you decide to create a facebook account because all of your friends have one and the enxt thing you know, you're checking it at school, at home, at work, and on your phone. Now facebook is just one example of New media. Other examples are Twitter, Youtube, Hulu, Podcasts and Wikis.

The one thing all of these New medias have in comment is the internet. They are all connected through the internet and need it to function. One big effect of new media is how we have watch videos. When i was younger, i would just sit in front of the TV watch whatever was on. When my parents got cable, i thought i had the whole universe in my hand in the form of a remote and the ability to watch so many programs. If i wanted to watch cartoons at 2 in the morning, there were 8 different channels that ran cartoons 24/7. When websites like sites like youtube and hulu became popular, it was like a revolution in watching TV. Suddenly we could watch any show we want at anytime we want. If we wanted to just watch one scene from a show, we can just search for it online and voila! there it is. TV has essentially become extinct because of this. Lisa M. Holson writes for the new york times that she gave her TV away because she could watch whatever shows she wants online at anytime and She no longer has to remember what time her shows are on. Youtube has also now enable us to make our own videos and be the stars in our own videos for others to enjoy. This has enable creativity to soar and open teh doors to new ways of interacting with the world. In Clive Thompson's article on how youtube change how we think, he explains how self-created videos on youtube like MadV's video onhas usher us into a new era of interaction and media and we can only imaginie where it can take us 100 years from now.

Thompson, Clive. "Clive Thompson on How Youtube Changes the Way We Think." Wired (12.22.2008): 19 Feb 2010

Holson, Laura. "Who Needs a TV? I’m Watching on a Laptop." New York Times (2008): n. pag. Web. 19 Feb 2010

1st Post

Yeah, finally got a blog.

Never really cared for these things cause i thought of them as being narcissistic but its not bad.