The Next New Thing

With the wide spread of internet and technology today, almost nothing is impossible to create. All we need is great and interesting ideas. As New York City is a place of mix cultures, a variety of people with different cultures and languages can be found easily.
I have an idea to create a new kind of new media: a small device connected to the internet that can translate into many different languages. All people who speak different languages can carry it on the street, and they can understand to each other. The little device will translate automatically. It should have an option for the users to create a file for the conversations; and that file can be archive directly to their own computers or send to their social networking sites. After all, the main purpose of the device is translation among people who can't speak other languages. In addition, this device should be cheap and easy to access for users, just like the internet.
This is just a little idea, there's still room  to expand it and make it better. What do you think?

P2P File Sharing

New media is broad in today's community. P2P file sharing is one of them.
File sharing is which users can store or save files like documents, music, photos, videos through the network, and they can get these files at any computer that has network connection for free.
P2P file sharing is quite similar to the file sharing. The only difference is that P2P is between peers. For example, one peer can distribute a file from his computer network, and other peers can get that file from their network.
Some examples of P2P file sharing include Bit Torrent, Napster,  and Open Nap.
File sharing is fast and convenient to share files through the network. Yet it has some negative aspects too, its legality. Brian Stelter and Brad Stone's article "Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Studios" points out that illegal copies videos like Batman were downloaded millions of times; this means a huge loss of revenue to Hollywood studios. As a result of piracy, copyrights law suits are brought.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

Throughout the semester so far, I have contributed few things into our class wiki.
The first topic was "New Media: About". I wrote some comments about the website.
Secondly, I added a subtitle under the Business section "How Business Recruiters use social networking". It explained how some of the companies use social media to look for talented workers.
Thirdly, under Critical Issues I added another subtitle "New Media and Privacy Tips". It showed some safety tips to protect and control personal information when using social networking.
References were created for each of the above topics.
Lastly, I added two images, the logos for Facebook and Flickr including some additional notes in the Some of the New Media section.
Some of the material I posted on our class wiki were found when I was doing my term paper. The topics are closely related.
Later in the semester, I will investigate few more topics for contribution.

Privacy & Confidentiality

Privacy and confidentiality are important factors in the new media. Nowadays, loss of privacy on the social networking is becoming a big issues. The more information is lose, the less the users are going to trust the new media. Studies show that the younger online users have less privacy concern than the adults. Young users give out a lot more personal information on the social networking sites such as their name, home and work address, phone number, and etc. This information can be easily spread out online. Therefore, users should be aware of all information given out, they should always limit the access of their sites to strangers, only allow people they know. The social networking companies also must be careful when storing online users' private information. To keep a good and long term relationship between the users and new media companies, both parties have to deal all information carefully.

Advice to Baruch College

             New Media is a powerful tool not only good for communication, but also for education. Using the new media, college like Baruch College can improve a lot. 
              As a student here, I see that Baruch College is using Blackboard and email a lot on the interaction between faculties and students. There are many other types of social networking can connect these two parties like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, wiki, and others. Once students joint to the college sites, the college can post information on it to keep all students informed about the college. For instance, the college may post the class cancellations due to Hurricane Sandy just happen a week ago.
              In addition, with the new media, I would like to advice Baruch College to open more online classes. Lots of students at Baruch College are in the work force. The more online class are offer, the more student register for them, and it can reduce the density in school during the school days. 
             As you can see, the new media has a potential growth in the future; Baruch College should consider using more to improve better.

Creativity and New Media

No long ago, I created an account on Flickr, and I found out that there are lots of things that I can do here. On this site you can find fabulous photos!

For instance, you can upload your own photos online through the web, mobile device, and email; discover more photos by adding your friends; and share your photos with your friends through other social networking site such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and so on.

Once that you sign in, you can do more like changing profile, organizing and creating albums, adding more friends, joining in a group, and exploring more pictures.

Isn’t this a great innovation for everybody to share photos here?

Absolutely! This is creativity and the new media!

  

Above information and pictures are collected from Flickr.com.

Creativity

New ideas come from creativity; and new media helps these new ideas to spread out all around the world. Online users can share their creative ideas by making videos, photos, blogs, and post them through the social networking. For instance, Brooks Barnes’ article “Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?” discuss that the rapper Soulja Boy posted a mash ups called “Crank That” on YouTube which became very popular over the summer in 2007.

Although new media brings a nice platform for user to show and share their creativities; however, there are some negative aspects raised related to it as well. On the same article, the author argues that piracy lawsuits can be brought by using other’s property. Therefore, users may be very careful when selecting materials to create their new ideas.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Nowadays, technology is expanding rapidly and huge. The virtual world is an imaginary environment, where people can create a second life. It’s a very creative site, which is a nice place for interaction. People can meet more people (worldwide) in there than in their real life; they are not afraid of doing anything there. They can gain more freedoms.  

The article “At Hearing, Real and Virtual Worlds Collide” talks a little story about a real life hearing case was imitated in the virtual world, Second Life. The potentials of the online virtual world are discussed by the politicians and the witnesses.  

Pros: In there, people can get anything they want such as things that they can’t afford in real life to satisfy themselves; they can also do whatever they want like working, communicating, entertaining, learning, and so on. This is a very good place to relax, get rid of the stress from the actual life.

Mark Tutton explained that organizations and companies should take the advantage of using the online virtual worlds as a tool to grow their business and communication between employees and customers. “Going to the virtual office in Second Life”. 

Cons: In my personal opinion, I don’t really like the virtual world. The reason being is that people may get used to it a lot; and they will forget about the real world. This is just like game, as people play it a lot, they will be addicted. After all, it’s only the fate world; people will have to get back to the real world. In addition, the face to face communication will be declined as more people use the virtual world online. 

As the social networking is growing, the virtual worlds are going to grow as well. In the near future, the virtual worlds are going to become more and more affordable until everyone can use it like the internet.  

Social Networking Sites

Consider this comment: “MySpace is for little kids, and Facebook is for young teenagers.”

MySpace: is the first social media site that I created an account with, when I was in high school. During that time, almost everyone in school has MySpace account. This is the reason I opened my own, and now I don’t use it anymore. In MySpace, you are able to add friends, write comments, post blogs, upload pictures, and so on.  

Facebook: Soon after I opened MySpace account, I opened a Facebook account as well. I didn’t use it much at the beginning. Yet as I became college student, I start using more. The reason is that in college, people don’t use MySpace anymore, they use Facebook mostly. You can do a lot more in Facebook such as update status, add photos and videos, play games, create groups, add friends, and etc. 

Twitter: I have heard a lot about Twitter before; but I didn’t create an account until now, which I need to open one for the class purpose. I found Twitter quite interesting. You can follow anyone easily just by doing a click on “follow”, and start discussing fun stuff by creating short tweets. I just read an article, which you can even look for jobs through Twitter. Isn’t it fascinating?

Flickr: its main use is for photos and videos. Billions of photos can be found on this site, the page is colorful. You can share and save your pictures online, once an account is created. You can also find and add more friends through Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and other social media sites.  

TWITR: Blog About Twitter

Twitter discussion: is short and brief, it’s limited to 140 characters per tweet. It’s pretty similar to a conversation between people. You can easily and rapidly to create another tweet. The discussion can be directly set toward a specific person or group, simply using the symbol @. It can be set up for public or private.

Blackboard discussion: has enough space to write anything you want, not limit on words. It’s used mostly in schools. It’s pretty much like the email. A title or subject should be created, so people who read it have an idea of what the discussion is about. Anyone within the group can read and post the comments.  

In class discussion: is the traditional way to discuss an issue. It may not be so great, that you can say anything you want, but the time is limited. Not everyone within the class has a chance to speak, or someone may not fully finish his/her thought.

Social Net'g

Social networking is considered as a new opportunity to create and communicate with people who care about a specific issue. It provides great benefits to not only a group of individuals, but also people within the companies, such as a unique community, thoughts sharing activities improvement, good news celebration, and so on. However, the “dark side” of the social networking is the privacy issues, misleading information, and too much power to the consumer.

“What’s next? Your future in social networking”, a special interactive report written by Maclean stated that social networks are not only Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube; but also new ways to communication and doing business. The report also indicates that the social networking can reduce business cost.

In the corporate level, the social network may be used to find jobs; Frank Langfitt wrote a story about Osram Sylvania found its talented employee Alfred LaSpina through Linkedin in his article “Social Networking Technology Boots Job Recruiting”. Linkedin is a site that allows people to put information in their profile, so that recruiters can see and hire workers easily.

On the other hand, the loss of privacy is an important issue. People may input their private information like their real name, date of birth, and address on the site, while other people may steal this kind of information to commit frauds. Consequentially, many consumers start losing confidence on the social media.

In sum, the social networking has its good and bad factors to the consumer. It is a powerful tool that can help people to success, and also may lead to failure.  People must be very careful when working on the network.  

Blog vs Wiki

           Blog and wiki are identical tools that provide a platform for not only individuals, but also a group of people to communicate to each other.  The difference between them is that the blog is where a single person creates and controls the information, and the other people can comment on it; while the wiki is a place that anybody in the group can edit, add, link, and make changes to it. Basically, the blog is mostly used for sharing, and the wiki is more likely used for coordinating.
          In the article called "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid", Michael Wilson wrote a story of how the neighbors share comments about what's happening and what they thought about the drug dealers in the area on the neighborhood's blog, which helps the policemen to investigate and arrest the suspicious quickly. This shows that the blog is being used in a helpful way to improve the security of the community.
          Gardiner Morse illustrated the usefulness of the wiki for the companies in his article "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on making the most of company wikis". The writer stated that within the same company, employees can add their ideas and knowledge on the wiki to improve the company's productivity. The wiki is a fast way to collaborate and communicate, especially when people are far away from each other when they have to discuss some important issues.
           In conclusion, the blog and wiki are pretty similar, but they have their own benefits. The blog is good for the individual, while the wiki is good for a group of people.

Social Networking: A Purposeful Loss of Privacy

For this project, I will be doing a research of the loss of privacy in the social networking. First at all, I will find out a little bit of the history of the social networking, and its advantages and disadvantages that the social network bring to humanity. Secondable, I will explain in depth about the issue of the loss of privacy and the impact for not only invidually, but also socially. Thirdable, I will provide some suggestions on how to protect privacy on the social network.