The Next New Thing

Our world is changing every moment, that's including new media. People are always trying to make something NEW everyday. As today, one idea popped out of my mind about making friends while I was taking the train. I was thinking that might be a good idea if people on the SAME train are able to find and know each other over the internet, or people could find someone they meet on the street. 

On the internet, I know that there are many websites for people to find friends within the colleges, within the interests, etc. However, I have not heard any websites which would help people to find someone they meet on the train or on the street. I think it will be great if there is a website for people to go and let others know where they have been on that day specifically and a group of people will gather together, for example, if one person is taking the N train today at train # 001, when that person comes home at night, he or she will log into the website and locate them on train # 001, other people on that train will do the same thing, by that point, people who are on the same train that day will meet again on the internet and whoever they have good impression on that train, they could send friend request for APPROVAL. Is n't that nice?

Our Class Wiki - So Far

Recently, I decided to change my Wiki task from Graphics editor for all contents in Wiki to contributor of the topic "How business is using Social Networking". The main reason was because I just finished up my term paper which was about the Social Networking site = Facebook, therefore, I want to add more things about the Facebook in the business.
I will try to be the graphic editor for all content, but that will not be my main task.

P2P File sharing

P2P (Peer – to – Peer) file sharing stands for Peer – to – Peer file sharing, it is basically means by using this Peer to Peer (network protocol ) to share files (audio, images, videos, documents, etc.) for computer users. People get connect with each other easily because it could be implemented through variety ways, for example, users can search for shared files within the network and download directly from other users on the same network.

However, file transfer could be slow or sluggish at times when files are too big or there are many people downloading at the same time. BitTorrent actually solved this problem for computer users. It is a computer program that increases people’s downloading and uploading speed. As Chris Nuttall mentioned in his article: “Valley View: File sharing joins the mainstream” that the major reason for BitTorrent to be the most popular application is it has the ability to breaks up a large file into pieces and spread them around users who download them and upload them to others.

Privacy & Confidentiality

Privacy and confidentiality is one of the major issues for the new media because since our technology now is so advanced, people should know how to protect themselves through the internet. Because of the privacy and confidentiality, we cannot rest assured to use new media. However, privacy and confidentiality also helps people to be more vigilant, they start to realize what kind of informations that they can put and willing to put up on the websites. Once people deeper understand about privacy and confidentiality, new media can foster creativity and communication to help people to live on this world more easily.

Advice to Baruch College

 Baruch College seems almost perfect, perfect Professors, perfect and convenient campus buildings, perfect learning tools for students to use, perfect location, perfect workers, perfect and clean classrooms for students, etc.

            However, there are always some things imperfect. One of them seems to me is the posting wall. In the vertical building, posting walls are on every floor. Everyone in Baruch can post their flyers on those walls. It could be convenient for people to check the latest events or books for sell around the campus, but it might be more convenient and easier for people if they use twitter or facebook those social network websites to post the events and books for sell.

            First of all, flyers on the wall are getting more and more every hour, sometimes they fell on the floor and maintenance workers have to take care of them. Secondly, it causes people to ignore old flyers more easily because flyers are increasing every minute. Thirdly, it causes maintenance workers have to clean that wall every week, especially during the beginning of each semester, cleanning becomes more frequently, because people are trying to sell their books, therefore, they post flyers on the wall.  Finally, it also wastes a lot of papers and inks. People post many flyers everytime they post and post more than one time every week.

            If Baruch is going to use the social network websites to generate those informations, our life would be more efficient. People post their events on Twitter or Facebook just by few clicks on their phone or computer, other people would receive them more quickly by just few clicks also, unlike posting on the building walls, people have to walk and run up and down the stairs to post flyers. People would be able to check the latest events out everywhere by use their phone or computers, unlike today, people have to come all the way from their home to Baruch and check out the latest events. Also, if people have any questions about the events, people could post comments or reply the events immidiately. That is not only saves money, also saves papers and inks.

About my Term Paper

As I said before, my term paper is about the social networking site: Facebook and tried to find out how does it affects our life today？that is actually my topic, I chose it at the beginning because honestly, I thought it was going to be easy since it was the site that I was most familiar with, compare to other social networking sites. However, as I searched through different websites and sources online, I found out that in fact, there is a wide range of effects, not as simple as I thought. Therefore, as I went through the paper, many ideas and resources were spinning in my mind and there were few times that I got stucked and did not know what to write because of too many things all together. Finally my mind went back to normal, and I finished the paper.

The most impressive thing that I found was that Facebook have the ability to calm one’s temper, such as some ordinary mischievous children could sit in front of the computer peacefully for more than half of the day or even whole day. Facebook really changed a lot of people's life, even though there are so many negative outcomes it creates, people still love it. This is New Media's attraction. People will not struck down by those negative effects. As human beings, we always pursue the progresses, not regresses.

Therefore, one day in the future, maybe ten years later or hundred years later, the problems and the issues that we are facing right now might disappear. At that time, the world would be a brand new world, compare to our world today and inevitably, the problems would be new also. 

New Media and Creativity

Second Life is a great tool to communicate and play also. Therefore, I took some time to play around with it and I found out it is really interesting.
Below are few pictures that I took while I was in that virtual world.
Really Great Experience
Chat with real people but in 3D body

Creativity

 Today, new media fosters creativity; it brings us a whole new world and life.

Websites like Second Life, 3D world indeed is really attractive since it combines our real life.

Websites like YouTube, our new exciting way to explore and discover the world through the videos other than newspaper or radio.

Websites like Facebook,create game apps, survey apps and a lot more efficient ways to keep people from all over the world together and communicatein,

Websites like Twitter, always in progress to create better and convenient place for people to communicate. As  Claire Cain Miller mentioned in her article "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers" that in order to improve the website more efficiently, Twitter is now privately testing an official retweet feature that will fix some of the problems with retweets by eliminating redundant posts, clarifying who wrote the original post and preventing people from changing other people’s words

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual world is a new way for people to interaction with one another. It is a life outside the real life and as people get used to it, it could be used in many ways. For instance, Second Life. As mentioned in "In Room 100, It’s Sid and Nancy All Over Again" by Saki Knafo that Second Life is a multiuser virtual environment, a computer program that lets online users construct settings and hang out in them, using video-game-like characters called avatars. Second Life brings a great opportunity for hospital employees to improve patient care and hospital efficiency because of those functions and abilities,  "Second Life has increasingly being used to train medical and nursing students in clinical skills",Stephanie Simon said in "Avatar II: The Hospital". Virtue world is also a great tool for business; many companies out there begin to use Second Life to communicate.

Virtual world also becomes a part of our real world for some people, especially for kids. In Brian Hindo's article, he mentioned that many companies are trying to make money by create the similar new products that link real-world toys with the Web. That causes a lot of kids spend much of their time and money focus on the virtue world.

Virtual world could be attractive because people could use their imagination to create their own dream world and connect that world with our real world. In the future, everyone might be depending on the virtual world to live on this real world.

Social Networking Sites

Facebook - It is the site that I go most often.

• More difficult to navigate and update
• Many applications being developed, such as find people, make connections, email, instant messaging, image/video sharing, make comments, etc.
• It is a social networking Portal which beckoning you not to leave but rather to stick around and communicate within the network.
• It appeals to people looking to reconnect with old friends and family members or find new friends online.
• It limited 420 characters per update.
• People have to send Friend Request to the person they would like to follow.

MySpace -

• More difficult to navigate and update
• MySpace but more geared to adults than teens,
• Many applications being developed, such as find people, make connections, email, instant messaging, image/video sharing, make comments, etc.
• Unless your MySpace is set to private, viewers from all over the world have access to your page.
• It seems less secure than other three sites, because one could pretend someone to be on MySpace and sometimes ruin someone’s reputation or even their life.

Twitter - I think this site is much easier to navigate than other three sites.

• It get more immediate responses and it seems to live somewhere between the worlds of email, instant messaging and blogging.
• It is a big community, when you tweet; it reaches far beyond your inner circle of friends.
• Anyone can follow anyone unless blocked.
• Limited functionality; find people, send brief messages, direct replies, image/video sharing, etc.
•   Limited to 140 characters per Tweet.

Blogger -

• Easy to use
• No text limitation to New posts.
• Ready-made themes and widgets available
• Anyone can view
• In order to follow someone's blog, you could add that person's blog URL to your blog list.