The Social Network

These days, when you think the term ‘Facebook’, it is likely that even your grandparents are engaged in the global phenomenon. The Social Network has enlightened many generations of people and has failed to deter any further usage of today’s most popular social medium. Although critically acclaimed, has the product of director David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin become the sole depiction of the Facebook chronology?

A dramatic movie with famed Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake as infamous Napster founder Sean Parker and a market full of people whom wish to unravel the history behind their most frequented website is an equation set for a cornucopia of success. Halfway through the movie and we forget that the story is allegedly true. We become so engaged in the merciless portrayal of Zuckerberg that at the end of the movie, we question his actual demeanor and seek desperately for answers; that is, until we receive a new notification on Facebook… all else fails when instant gratification ensues.

The Next New Thing

I believe the next new thing would have to deal with accessing the cyberworld with a virtual avatar of yourself in which you can deal with real life technical issues while being in said cyberworld. Your actions in the cyberworld affect what will happen physically happen to a machine for example. If it needs fixing you would go into this cyberworld and fix it through the cyberworld. We would connect to the cyberworld through glasses that have a wire which can attach to any electromechanical appliance. Your thoughts would be the driver to what your avatar would do.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

For the class wiki I have been updating topics that have had some new news and updates. I have also replaced and added a few pictures. I have been working on the Sports and New media as well as Mmorpgs and new media wikis. Examples of things i have added is updating outdated information such as games that were labeled as P2P games are now F2P games.

About My Term Research Paper

My project is affects of new media on sports and to research this topic I went through different websites to see how players, leagues, and fans are using different types of new media. I found that as everyone was getting more used to using new media, it became a more accepted and used. I chose this topic because I thought it would be interesting since I watch different sports but never thought about what they do on their websites was a form of new media. With access to new media, sports can easily expand their fan-base at little to no cost using free websites such as twitter, facebook, and blogs for their marketing strategies. Also, the use of new media was banned for players in sports before,during and after games which was an interesting rule change. The integration was of new media was more than I expected it to be. I think that my paper can contribute to new media because it shows how large organizations as big as national sports can be easily integrated with new media.

Privacy and Confidentiality

With the use of new media what do we sacrifice? We sacrifice privacy and confidentiality not only to the public, but your boss, and even your friends. With sites like facebook, there is information we submit that is stored. Hackers can possibly be studying your habits and steal your facebook account. Even application companies on facebook are taking advantage of your information. Recently Zynga and other companies sold off facebook information from subscribers outside sources. Another incident recently is where a school teacher blogged about being a prostitute before getting a job as a teacher and being suspended by the school she was working at. There has been an increase of cyber bullying and it leads to many issues at home.

Advice to Baruch College

 There are many things that can be done to improve the college experience and the addition of new media is a good idea. For starters, Baruch College has facebook pages for various things such as bursars which questions can be answered without being there. One thing I dislike about the school is the lack of connectivity to internet when I borrow the laptops from the library. When I do get a connection it is slow. Often times I would go to my classroom only to find out it was canceled without any email or prior notice and it frustrates me so I would suggest professors to use maybe twitter or something the moment they cannot make a class. Many of the textbooks we get have ebooks but not all, it would be nice if all books could provide an ebook which would help greatly with the use of new technologies such as the e-readers. They could possible do a test run for a class which could be done through the internet with video conferencing.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

There are a couple ways the virtual world can be used. In the article I read "Going t the virtual office in Second Life" it was used for virtual conferences to connect international members, working in group projects, and even file sharing. I would even guess people create their alter egos and create a life they wished they had inside the virtual worlds.

Pros - I think that some pros to virtual worlds is convenience. It saves money for companies that need to talk to people across country and even overseas. The file sharing was a great pro when involved in a project. On a personal level, some might feel more comfortable being able to talk in virtual worlds better than face to face.

Cons- I think that the alter egos might be a little awkward to see sometimes, especially if someone knows you. The fact that it is hosted online means possible hacking opportunities as well as impersonations. Files could be stolen and important company project info might be at risk.

The fact that you can create an avatar that doesn't look like you is creative in itself. But it also stated in the article that even though some companies have used it, they started to create their own versions. The use of virtual world promotes creativity towards technological innovations.

The future of virtual worlds is a coin toss. It can lead to both good and bad things. It will probably end up being more and more realistic as time goes on.

My first twitter discussion

My first tweet was an interesting experience. I never realized just how short 140 characters really were. It was hard to condense what I wanted to say in that limited space.

I think that a twitter discussion might be easier since you can easily see what multiple people say at once compared to a BB discussion where you must slowly scroll through every response. Twitter seems a lot more fast paced and convenient.

I do not think twitter can ever replace a a real class discussion since its not as detailed and in order for someone to get their point out might be required to do so in multiple tweets.

Check Out Social Networking Sites

Facebook
Facebook is the one I am most familiar with. The interface is simple and clean so there isn't much confusion to how to get anything done. This originally started as a website mainly to connect college students. They have decent privacy settings to prevent people you don't know from contacting you and disturbing your privacy. There is also a messaging box on the bottom right to talk to anyone that is currently on that you want to. The increasing number of facebook apps make it enjoyable to stay on, longer than you would expect.

Myspace
Myspace is similar to facebook, but it is more about customization and your own personality more so than functions. The amount of customization is alot greater than facebook. It doesn't have the amount of apps that Facbook has. The security options don't seem as secure as Facebook. There are many video/movie clips on myspace to be viewed now.

Friendster
I do not like that before you even get to browse the site that they force you to create an account or login. That is very frustrating to not know what a site has to offer before joining it. So when I created an account, i tried looking for friends and there were none that even used it. It is definitely not as mainstream as facebook or myspace. The search is very inefficient and doesn't make much sense.

LinkedIn 
My previous religion teacher invited me to LinkedIn and from what i got from it, it is a purely professional networking site. The interface takes some time to get used to. This provides educational/occupational information of different individuals. I even used the search function to find a professor that went to a different College and it was able to find him. There is a good chance that LinkedIn can be used to recruit/hire/interview talented individuals to work for various companies. There is an "upgrade" that you can pay for that makes you more accessible.

BLogs Vs WIkis

Blogs
A blog is an online website in which it is one person's opinion on anything he wants to comment on. It can be about recent news, his different interests, or even about his local community. The one person can update this blog, and it is at his/her pace. You can call a blog an online public diary which other people can post their reactions to your blog post in the form of comments. Although blogging seems great, there are those who post negative comments about other people reveal in an NY Times Op-ed article  "Stung  by the Perfect Sting". In the Op-ed it stated "Liskula Cohen, a 37-year-old model and Australian Vogue cover girl, was surprised to find herself winning a “Skankiest in NYC” award from an anonymous blogger."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/opinion/26dowd.html?_r=1


Wikis
Wikis are a form of an online database which content is user/community generated. Wikis actually started out as an open source project and now runs purely on donations. Unlike blogs, wikis can be updated often by many different users. Although this may increase the rate at which it is updated, it can also mean that information is incorrect as well. Like the blog, it is open to the public. Wikipedia is not the only place that have wikis, some websites create their own wikis which only have information they wish to provide, maybe about their company or a genre their site follows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Wikis at work: Up from the grassroots by Rob Edmonds E.learning Age; Oct 2006; p. 14

Convergence and Collaboration
Today everyone expects things to get done fast and efficient. The convergence of old + new media does just that. Wikis make information accessible and easy to find instead of having to search through books, it has become a one stop shop of information which saves people time. Information is often posted right after reported on many blogs and gets the community involved in sharing their opinions on said topic,issue, or news.


New uses of Wikis
I cannot think of a new use for wikis at the moment but I did like the idea that one site did. This site is called www.Teamliquid.net and they are a e-sport dedicated website, specializing in starcraft(an RTS). They created their own database of information people new to this area can access and look up information. They call their database a Liquipedia ( http://wiki.teamliquid.net/ ).

The affect new media has in sports today

The project I am going to write about is the interaction between new media and sports today. How does new media affect sports? That will be the main question I will attempt to answer through my research. With the introduction of new media, many athletes themselves have created their own facebook profiles and fan clubs, and even created their own twitters. The chance to improve the market base or fan base can even be through the use of new media. Many opportunities arise with new media being incorporated. I will research different blogs, wikis, and even facebook pages to see how they use new media. I believe this will help in my understanding of what the affect of new media on sports is. Here are some examples of community and athletes using new media.

http://www.thejetsblog.com/
http://www.metsblog.com/
http://www.facebook.com/#!/OchoCinco?ref=ts

What is new Media?

New media in our generation is common to people who have grown up with it. Some examples of  technologies of new media is smart phones which utilize the use of internet, wiki's which is a user generated website of information, and even facebook which is used to connect people through the web. You can also say that new media is a more modern way of old media. If reading a book is old media, then reading an ebook is new media. The basis of new media is often based off old media.

Citations
http://baruchnewmedia.com/notes/n_oldvnew.htm

http://baruchnewmedia.com/notes/n_whatisnm.htm

New to blogging - Daniel Wu

This is my very first blog so I really have no clue what to do. I am Daniel Wu.