The Next New Thing

     With technology rapidly growing I think if there was a way that we could live inside a movie/gaming environment it would be awesome. I am not talking about having an avatar but our physical body in there. We can do this by creating holograms in a very big open space and pretend that what is happening in the movie or game is happening right in front of you. This will surely cost a lot but if someone comes up with this idea it will progress technology and how people will not only watch movies or play games but experience them. People already made the Oculus Rift, which is a goggle like equipment that you wear and what you will see through it is what is displayed in the game. However, this will only fulfill your sensory and hearing perceptions and will not fulfill your other 3 senses. If we do this in an open environment without wearing a goggle like equipment this will maximize the experience.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

     Honestly, I have not posted anything on the class wiki yet. I would like to make a page on some of the famous apps that many people use such as Instagram, Snapchat, Flappy bird (and how it became a trend for a while), etc affects people. I have tried these apps before so I know how they work. I started doing research and will add onto these wiki if it has already been created. It will be interesting to see what I will come up with and I will try my best to contribute to the wiki as soon as possible.

P2P File Sharing

     File sharing is when someone gives access to online information such as videos, images, documents, and audio. File sharing has become very big and almost everyone that uses the internet uses file sharing. A type of file sharing is P2P or peer to peer file sharing. An example of peer to peer file sharing is Bit-torrent, 4shared, Pirate Bay, etc. There are no limits on how much information you are able to download. However, the information you download are not reviewed by anyone and can be "illegal." It would usually take hours to download a movie but on Bit-Torrent you would be able to download it in 20 minutes. Many people began noticing this and began to use Bit-Torrent and that is why there are over 20 million downloads as of 2005, 4 years after the first version was available. Companies such as Motion Picture Association of America began to start suing people that download the movies and this is why people began to be more careful of the content they download. It is the information that is illegal, not the program itself.

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

Privacy & Confidentiality

     With new media this opens a whole new ballpark to Privacy and Confidentiality. It is much harder to protect the things you post onto your new media. Unless you block your profile from people, your page will be shown to everyone. People will be able to see your name, birthday, phone number, address if you post it up. There is a lot someone can be able to do with these information. For example, on this YouTube video, Sam who has 1.8 million subscribers, got access to females Instagram profile and pretended to tell them that he knew them. He then asked the females to give him their number and this was a way that people can pick up females. The females actually gave him more information by giving him his number and this can be very dangerous. They can take their identity and this is called identity theft. With 1.8 million subscribers people will now know that they will be able to do this and might even try it themselves. This just goes to show that your information is not safe unless you make it safe. However even if you block your profile, it will secure your account a little bit but hackers has found ways to bypass this and steal your information. With new social media sites occurring rapidly the new social media sites will have flaws within their system and hackers will figure it out ways to get through them.
   

Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDZXzpiQ_ME

Advice to Baruch College

     You are hired by Baruch College to use new media to improve the College. What are some suggestions you would make using new media?

     There are so many people at Baruch that uses social media which includes students and faculty members. It will be easy for the college to engage in social media. If we do plan on engaging in social media we must first tell the students and faculty members. We can do this by posting fliers around the school, like they did with CUNY first just to gain followers or subscribers. Then by using social media we can tell everyone future events that are happening around the school. We can make some events exclusive by posting a RSVP link and the only way you can RSVP is by following Baruch on their social media website. This makes people follow Baruch and create more awareness. Baruch can also post official announcements on their social media sites if school closes or something happens in the school. They can also post summary of articles in the Ticker and tell people if they want to read the details of the story to pick up a Ticker at Baruch. There is a lot of things Baruch can do with social media and these are just a few examples.

Creativity and New Media

     Growing up I loved playing the game Sims. It is a game where you basically create as many avatars as you want, buy a house or create your own, and begin to live your life. In the first snapshot, I just finished creating my avatar. I tried to make it resemble me as much as I could. I then moved my avatar into a house and bought a guitar. I always wanted to learn how to play the guitar but never had the chance. However, as you can see in my 2nd snapshot I am able to make my avatar learn to play the guitar as if that is me learning. This is why I enjoy playing this game; you can do anything you wish you were able to in real life and convert it into a second life in Sims.

Creativity

     When Twitter first started in 2007 many people began to become engaged in it. We call this new media. It was another way people used to share information and have conversation. What is really amazing about new media is that it fosters creativity.With just 140 characters people had to think about what they were going to say and their true feelings. Companies looked at what the trends will be in their customers and give them what they want. People on twitter became the one creating ideas for products and there will always be new ideas because people are creative with their imaginations.
     Twitter also has hash-tags. You put a hash tag in front of your post and it groups it up with other people that used the same hash tag. An example given in Twitter Serves Up Idea From Its Followers by Claire Cain Miller "man conferences announce the so-called hash tag at the start of the event so attendees can mark all their posts the same way and people can search Twitter for everything written on the conference." Sometimes people like to create a new hash tag and other people may copy that hash tag and all of the sudden it becomes a trend and everyone uses the word. This also counts as creativity because a lot of people are trying to do this and some of them actually do become a trend.
    In the future, more and more new media will be created. Creators of these new media will find new ways to foster creativity. It is interesting to see what people come up with and it is only a matter of time before we see it. This can happen tomorrow, in a week, in a year, in 5 years, etc. We will have to wait and see.

Sources:
1. Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers by CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, the New York Times, October 26, 2009. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/technology/internet/26twitter.html