The Next New Thing

The next new thing I suggest would be a motion detecting mirror that displays different articles of clothing the user chooses and share it via social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Each article of clothing will have a serial number assigned to it so it can be scanned into the mirror’s database. The motion detector will detect where you are standing from and adjust the size of the clothes to fit you. The user will have to use a pointing device with buttons to put on, remove, or switch articles of clothing. There will also be indications on each article of clothing to let the user know if it is available to wear or it is in the wash. The user will be able to mix and match outfits without having to physically try them on and making a mess before finding the perfect outfit without any problems.

Our Class Wiki – So Far

So far I have only edited some of the already existing pages in our class wiki as well as added an image. It’s a start, but I will be adding more to the new media pages focusing on social media. I have researched about social media and have been working on what I will be contributing and editing any of my classmates contributions if needed.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is essentially sharing digital information with other people. P2P file sharing is the same thing, but through a peer-to-peer network. A lot of file sharing is done through the web to share all kinds of digital files such as multimedia files, documents, and programs. Some examples of P2P file sharing are BitTorrent, FastTrack, eDonkey, and The Pirate Bay. P2P file sharing is completely legal. A lot of people think it is illegal and it’s not these file sharing services that are, but what files are being shared.

Citations:

1. The BitTorrent Effect by Clive Thompson, Wired, January 2005.http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/bittorrent.html

Privacy & Confidentiality

There are a lot of issues with privacy with new media and how it is vulnerable for information to be exposed. New media uses the Internet to share information. This information could be personal information people do not want to share with everyone. A good example is the default settings for social media websites. They are usually public and not set to private so anyone can see their information they provide like their birthday and photos. 

Facebook is public by default and a lot of users complain about their information being public. They usually don’t know how to change their privacy settings. Twitter and Instagram privacy settings work the same. You can allow who can follow you and only your followers can see your tweets. It is fairly straightforward. People should just be careful with the information they put on the Internet and check the privacy settings.

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?

I would suggest Baruch utilize social media to make announcements of fun events and promote them. There are already clubs and student organizations who do that, but it would be interesting to see an official announcement from the school. They could also use it for alerts and immediate announcements since students tend to check social media before they check their emails. I really think it would get more students to be involved and interact with people in school. Of course they should still maintain professionalism and send emails since there are some people who don’t use social media.

Creativity and New Media

I have seen some of my friends post these kind of pictures on Facebook and they were quite humorous. I didn’t take the time to check it out, but I recently did and it’s called Bitstrips. You can make your own avatar and then create various events through a picture like the one I created below. I looked through it and this one caught my eye. You can edit it in many ways to make it what you want it to be like your facial expressions, caption and etc.

 

 

Creativity

With different technologies arising people can share their ideas faster and easier on the web. In the article “Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?” shows what some people on YouTube have done with new media to make a parody. Today there has been a lot of people making parodies of videos for the laughs. Some parodies have become viral and has accumulated millions of views to date. There are also people who make videos to share on YouTube. These videos ranges from vlogs (video blogs) to short films to how-tos. Ryan Higa and Ray William Johnson are great examples of how they utilized new media to make creative videos to share on YouTube. 

More recently, there is an app called Vine. People can make 6 second videos to post online. People have utilized this app to make videos people can relate to easily. People can easily edit the video too so they can get really creative and manipulate what they record.

 

1. Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why? The New York Times, September 24, 2007; available athttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

What are different ways these virtual worlds can be used? What are the pros and cons? Be specific. How do virtual worlds foster creativity? What do you think the future of virtual worlds will look like?

Virtual reality is known to us as another ‘world’ in a computer, the web, or a server. People have created many worlds for people to use. These worlds can be games you play on different systems ranging from mobile to gaming systems. It allows people to experience from a third person view the possible things allowed in each virtual world. With virtual world we can conduct experiments or experience things that aren’t possible in the real world.

A virtual world can be used to experience new things. In the article “A Second Life, Can Virtual Words Get a Reboot” by Diane Mehta says that businesses can take advantage of 3D virtual worlds. They can be used to provide their customers with a 3D model of things to demonstrate how their product or service can be used. If virtual worlds where people can go on and experience it as if it’s real at a low cost then people can try things from the comfort of their own home. It will be like connecting to a system and your senses will be your controls instead of input devices we use now.

An advantage of virtual worlds is convenience. If it becomes ubiquitous for people to go on to a virtual world they can probably live a different life. They will be able to experience things they wouldn’t be able to experience in their own lives. A bad thing about virtual worlds would be people getting addicted. They can have a new life and live however they want or be someone they’re not. In the NYTimes article “Budget, No Boundaries: It’s the Real You” by Ruth La Ferla, people can have a different life with an avatar that represents themselves in a virtual world. People can become addicted and spend more money than they should be on a game.

With virtual worlds people can collaborate easier with people they can’t reach. Businesses would also be able to come up with more creative ideas with virtual worlds. They can utilize virtual worlds to visualize what they’re working on and see things from a different perspective. In the future, I think virtual worlds will become ubiquitous and virtual reality will be more common. It appears to be coming in the near future as technology advances faster and faster.

1. After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get A Reboot. April 30, 2013. http://www.forbes.com/sites/dianemehta/2013/04/30/after-second-life-can-virtual-worlds-get-a-reboot/
2. No Budget, No Boundaries: It’s the Real You by RUTH LA FERLA, the New York Times, Oct 22, 2009 p. E1. Available at:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/fashion/22Avatar.html

Blog About Twitter

Twitter is a social site where people can communicate with each other in real time. We can also use what we CUNY students know as BlackBoard to have discussions. An in-class discussion is effective as well.

Using Twitter is only limited to 140 characters and that’s excluding tagging the person’s user name that you’re talking to. You’ll essentially have to use abbreviations and utilize shorter ways to type something to get your point across. I say it makes people get straight to the point instead of beating around the bush. For Twitter and BlackBoard discussions people can’t really interject what you’re saying. If someone does say something before you can say something it will basically be posted before you if you don’t send your post first.

BlackBoard discussions have more room to type out what you want to say. It’s more or less like a forum type of discussion where someone starts a thread and people can reply. The person who started the thread can also reply. Similar to Twitter you can quote the person’s reply you’re replying to so people will know who you’re referring to.

An in-class discussion would be less organized when it gets out of control. If conducted in an orderly fashion the discussion would be effective. People can raise their hands and speak when called upon.

All three of these kind of discussions are pretty much exchanges of thoughts and/or information. On Twitter it’s really limited unless you share links. BlackBoard you can share more thoughts and information so there can be bigger discussions. With these two discussion you can look back at what has been said in exact words. On the other hand in-class discussions wouldn’t be since only key ideas would be jotted down. All three discussions are effective, but it is a matter of participation whether or not the discussion gets anywhere.

Social Networking Sites

There are a large variety of social networking sites available to us for free. The ones I will be talking about will be Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Tumblr. I personally have used all four of these sites and I still use three of these. Guess which of the three I don’t use anymore.

Facebook has become one of the most popular among these four right after MySpace. Facebook has a news feed and sidebars. There is also a chat along with a ticker showing the activities from your friends. Your profile is fairly easy to manage and you can display your personal information as well as your interests. Facebook is a social site where friends and family share photos, videos, links and etc. I think Facebook is a good social site to share things among your friends and family. It’s also a good site for me to keep in touch and be able to contact people instantly.

MySpace is a music centered social site after it was relaunched by Justin Timberlake in 2013. It’s a music discovery website sort of like radio sites such as Pandora and Spotify. People share music, music videos and information about artist tours. I personally don’t use MySpace since I’m not as into music as others and I discovery my music through friends. I have stopped using MySpace when I was introduced to Facebook and that was before MySpace was relaunched.

Twitter is a microblog kind of site and I personally think it’s good for those who like to share moments of their lives with others. It is fairly straightforward on how to use Twitter for personal use. The tweets are public by default, but you can set them to just followers and you would have to approve the people who want to follow you. I have used Twitter before and I have it linked to my Facebook account so my tweets show up as status updates on Facebook. You can also use Twitter to have short conversations with others by tagging their usernames. There’s also retweeting as well as favoriting a tweet similar to sharing and liking a post on Facebook.

Tumblr is a blogging site and I also use this site. You can make posts such as blog, image, video, quote and etc. Using it is pretty straightforward too. You can reblog and like similar to Facebook and Twitter. It’s a good website to blog as well as discovering things you are interested in. Tumblr is filled with a lot of people who just log on to browse through things and reblog almost everything. I think that’s what a majority of Tumblr users have become and they don’t really use it to blog. Good thing there’s a limit to 250 posts a day so there isn’t so much spam.

I personally think all these sites are good except MySpace. I say that because I am not really into music and there are better ways for me to find music that I prefer. I use Facebook and Tumblr, but I rarely use Twitter. Facebook is used by a majority of my friends and the people I meet so I will use it to maintain contact. Tumblr is used by some of my friends, but I like to use it to write about my thoughts as well as share my photography. I started to use Twitter because I thought it would be fun to use as well as keep up with news from different companies with it, but it soon got too much to handle. There were more tweets than I could look through whenever I checked Twitter.