The Next New Thing

New media refers to the way of how easily people can get access to various information. Apparently, internet is considered the fastest way of viewing information. Mobiles and any other devices that contain internet service should be the form of new media. The problem is how we can make it more convenient to use. Base on the current developed devices we have, such as iphone and ipad, I believe the next new media will be the evolutionary of the above devices. For an abstract idea, I think technologist may think of a way to compress all the function into a device that is even more smaller and easier to carry, such as watches and glasses. Moreover, there may not be physical screen anymore, where only the fluorescence will be displayed.

Wiki so far...

I will create a new category named Culture. On this section, I will introduce one traditional opera called Glove Puppet, played by a media company called Epili from Taiwan, China. 

The company gets rid of the traditional way of playing puppets. They re-create a new way of performing the show like TV show series. So far, the company has published over 50 TV series, in total about 1850 episodes. ( most episodes can be found on YouTube by typing the world 'epili', or 'The Wulin Warriors' as it's teh recent series.)

One attractive point of these shows is the characters, which are completely approach to real. The backgrounds are also made from real objects--trees, sands, water, even the houses. 

More importantly, the story lines of these shows come from reality, which means they reflect real real life. They take a certain proportion in Taiwanese culture.

Also, I believe there are English translation for the shows; and by any chance if you would be interested, pay more attention to its background music(mostly are instrumental).

Below are some pictures about the characters:

  

P2P

File sharing is a practice of providing access to stored information. File sharing can be done on many ways; for example, the P2P networks and other hosted website service on internet. A common known file hosting service website, RapidShare, allows users to upload documents through email, so that others can easily download from the webpage.

Peer-to-Peer(P2P) network on the other hand, is another way of sharing information. Users can share their files without the need of a central server under P2P. Example of a P2P software would be BitTorrent, where provide users the access to the P2P network once the program is installed. 

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Pfanner, Eric. Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access?" The New York Times, April 13, 2009, p. B4. From

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/internet/13iht-piracy13.html

Privacy and Confidentiality

Privacy and Confidentiality are big issues for all internet services. While we are creating online user accounts, usually private information are either required to fill out, or as an optional.However, if a user's PC is not well protected, these information can be stolen easily. In addition to that, if a service provider did not have strong security over their clients' privacy, information can also be disclosure when facing hackers attack.

Generally, privacy protection is the duty for both online users and service providers. Users are strongly unrecommended to post their personal information online. For service providers, if they are not confident about their security, they should not provide users a chance to fill out their personal information. Since confidentiality depends on high secure of client information, there's no need to take such risk. 

Advice

One suggestion that I have for Baruch is to open more online course section. In this case, Baruch or professors should improve the way of communication. Email is not efficient enough for sending courses tasks. Professors could create a Facebook group and schedule in a certain hours for which students could have direct communication.

Another opinion is that Baruch should encourage students to join the Facebook group and Blog, as well as to follow the Twitter(far from my knowledge, I don't know Baruch has a Twitter), so that students can learn what events are taking place on our campus, not just they will learn only from email about these events. Therefore I do believe the Freshmen seminar is absolutely important, and should be acted actively. 

Creativity and New Media

Well, I tried to build a avatar in Second Life but I believe my system is not good enough to meet the requirement for the application, so many lags while I run the program. So I used a new virtual world apps called Twinity. Here is my avatar(actually not built base on my own identity but just for fun).

There's a character modification function in the game just like Second life.(ex. the tag [ME])I randomly made adjustment on the character, which you can see the result from the image. You can also change outfit on this menu. Then I chose a emotion of sadness[blue] from the bottom right corner. I think the game is fun though, may be I will rebuild my character in the future.  

Creativity

Creativity is a form of abstract ideas that differentiate from the standards. Once the idea is tested and approved, it will become a design for many matters such as buildings. Yet many creativities we saw today are in the form of new media tools such as virtual worlds and online games.

One way to foster creativity is to allow all people around to work with the tool. For example, Twitter watches and learns from other users modifying their services by outsourcing their product. Then the Twitter programmers can add features from these people's ideas into the application, and thus improving it. 

Virtual worlds, on the other hand, provides more features while creating objects. Everyone is an engineer in the virtual space. People can build a house that need not to follow the rules in reality:the heights, width,shapes for example.

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Miller, Claire C.. Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers. New York Times. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/technology/internet/26twitter.html>

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds are online communities that enable users to interact with each other through the web, as well as to create objects. 

There are two common ways of uses for virtual worlds. One is to provide a community for online communication only; and the other one is game based. Yet the virtual worlds we mostly seen today are online games based, which have some business purposes on it. "In most virtual worlds, memberships are free, but players trade real money for virtual currencies, used to buy products, save up in an account or eventually redeem for real money. " stated on a article No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You.

Depends on the background for the virtual worlds creation,they can bring many positive effects such as recreate a world in the past days for memorial purpose.According to Mr.Bard,a user of Second Life, says “The old mailboxes are still here...firmly installed behind his desk.” Also, they serve as some places for relaxation and entertainment. However, virtual worlds are not real after all. We can see how many teenagers has found online games as way to escape the various pressure, not to mention there's is a possibility that ones' privacy may be violated.

Instead of saying foster creativity, it would be better to use the term interest while using virtual worlds. Virtual world can help people gain interests on computer technology, so that they have the motion to learn more.

It's not hard to predict how virtual worlds will look like in the future. Some movies and cartoon shows are already give us a sense of how it might be. Soon people can enter the virtual world and touch everything inside with their own hands, and maybe fighting monsters also.   

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--Laferla, Rufh.No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You. NewYork Times.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/fashion/22Avatar.html>

--Knafo, Saki. In Room 100, It's Sid and Nancy All Over Again. The New York Times.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/nyregion/thecity/03virt.html>

Blog about Twitter

Twitter discussion allows users to post their thoughts in words with 140 bytes limit. Because of this limitation, it requires multiple tweets to express one's ideas.

Blackboard discussion don't have words limit, students can express their ideas more clearly. Yet Blackboard is used in certain purposes or tasks; moreover, there's an issue of time matter. Response may be delayed sometimes.

In class discussion occurs only when students and teachers speak to each other. Twitter discussion cannot be in class discussion, but class participation. Also, answering common questions is not considered in class discussion. Debate and group meeting are more likely to be class discussion.

Social Network Sites

Facebook

When log in to Facebook, the homepage first appears on the screen, where you and your friends' posts are displayed at the center. Then you can switch to your personal homepage and check posts that belong to you only. On the left pane of the homepage, you will find many application tags. On the right, you will find a list of your friends, which you can click open and close.

MySpace

I do have my account registered last year, but I forgot the user ID and password. The reason I wanted to sign up for a account is its music playing feature, which differentiate it from other social network sites.

Twitter

Though the content and page format is varied from Facebook, but their main functions are pretty similar. Friends are now called followers in Twitter. You can still post and reply messages like Facebook, but Twitter provides a easier way to search for users' posts, such as using the "@" and "#".

PengYou

It's a Chinese word, which means "Friends" in English. I use this site very often for keeping contact with my Chinese friends, since Facebook is not available in mainland China. Yet I would say most of its functions are similar to Facebook, including its contents and page format.(Actually I think they are absolutely the same except for the page/banner color and languages.)

Social Networking

Social networking serves two purposes: first is to provide users a place for global communication; second is for business use. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish which one is the primary purpose because many social network providers have multiple business other than the social network service. 

Social networking also benefits the society in two ways. First, it improves global communication. Unlike email that require users to click-open or click-submit a message each time, social network users can have the messages displayed on the screen right away. There's distance and time limitation. Users can share their favorites at anytime. Moreover, it compromises those who have little intentional to speak. Secondly, social network helps business growth. Facebook for example, earns millions of dollars each year only from advertising; yet they still have their own developed tools that can help them generate profits such as games. 

Still, two opposites arise against the benefits that social network provides. Although it has the intention to improve communication, we live in a community and still need to face other people around us. We can't bring a little device and typing words while the two people are sitting on the same table. Speaking skill is important, no matter how unwanted one would speak. The other biggest issue about social networking is the privacy. This topic is till under debating nowadays because of the ethical issues involved. While users posting things on these websites, "few of these users realize that the information they post, when combined with new technologies for gathering and compiling data, can create a fingerprint-like pattern of behavior." according to a article called Leaving "Fingerprint":How Online Social Networks Are Redefining Privacy and Personal Security. Many users do not have the skill to check whether their personal information is being gathered for other purpose uses, even though some researches shows that "the majority of young adult users of Facebook are engaged with managing their privacy settings on the site at least to some extent", says Danah Boyd and Eszter Hargittai. 

Excluding all of these matters, we do see how social network has been evolved in recent years. For example, users can have the option to speak on these websites, which means you don't need to dial others' phone number anymore as long as you as you have a microphone.

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-Leaving "Fingerprint":How Online Social Networks Are Redefining Privacy and Personal Security
<<http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2262>>

-Who Cares About Facebook Privacy? Students Do

<<http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/who-cares-about-facebook-privacy-students-do/25877>>

 
 

Blog v Wiki

The only thing that blog and wiki have in common is their purposes—to share information. However, blogs are closely to journalism, while wiki is more like a collection of content pages. Blog is usually managed by one user. Only the blog owner has the right to edit the blog page contents, such as posting new articles and deleting others comments. Moreover,stories and articles on a blog webpage are usually closed to daily life.Like James W. Garey said it is "our day book, our collective diary, which records our common life." Wiki on the other hand, is completely opened to everyone. In the last few seconds a new content may be inserted into a wiki page, a moment later the content may be gone. Therefore, it's hard to find the consistency in some wiki pages.Usually information displayed on a wiki page is knowledge based. One important concept have to be mentioned is the business purpose of wiki. In the article How to Use Wiki for Business, it states that wiki has existed for decades, but not for business uses until the past couple years. To conclude that, blog is a place to find life experience, where wiki is more relevant for learning.

The reason for convergence becoming important is the development of advance IT technology nowadays. In the past people can only share their knowledge through  physical texts. Such redundant way of communication seems a little bit out of date in today's society. People tend to look for a faster way to learn and acquire information. That's why wiki becomes popular.

I don't think collaboration for blog is a good idea because it's not what a blog does. Today we already have pages like wiki,forum and some other community websites, making blog become collaborative also making it become something else.

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---How Can We Measure the Influence of the Blogosphere? 

http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill/pub/www2004_blogosphere_gill.pdf

--How to Use Wiki for Business

http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=167600331

Project Description: Is Social Networking Good or Bad?

Social Networking is a common way of communication among internet users. People can talk and share their experience with others throgh different social network providers such as Facebook and MySpace. The issue is wheather it is good or bad. With the functionality of these websites, internet users can easily post everything that is relevent to them at anytime. Also, better than sending emails, users can talk with their friends in different continents. However, are these convenience enough to make social networking become a positive way of communication? The answer is definitely not. As we go deeper in this topic, in comparison to face-to-face communication, we should have a better judgment of Social Networking.