The Next New Thing

We have different kinds of social networking sites. People like to use Facebook to share their experiences. My space has music, movies, games, and more functions for fun. People can use Skype for video chatting. Twitter provides most recent news. Some other social networks have large memory, high speed, and so forth.  However, those advantages don’t go together for one social network site. Each social network site’s system is set; the users can just design the look of it. I hope the next new media can allow the users to design the system by simply clicking the choices as those advantages above ,or more.  The users don’t need to have excellent computer skills. Each advantage is designed as a separate choice. The internet user can just add the advantages which they want into a social network site. For example, I can choose a system with video chatting, text messaging, music, movie, no commercials, virtual games, and high speed.  People can use more customized social network site in the future. 

Our Class Wiki - So Far

I am one of the contributors of How Business is Using Social Networking. I added two kinds of content already. For the Types of Social Networking Used in Business, I contributed how YouTube used in business. I described that YouTube is a web video type media.  It is accessible to everybody. People can upload, download, create, or recreate the videos. The process is easy, and with little or no cost. I used Coke cola, Home Depot, PWC, and Con Edison as examples to show how different types of business utilize YouTube. Most of those companies use YouTube to show their advertisings. Also, they can use YouTube to make visitors to know more about their companies, and attract potential workers. For the Disadvantages of the Social Networking Era, I contributed the negative effects of social networking to customers’ privacy. It happens when companies use consumer’s information for illegal purposes. For instances, companies sell their own customers personal information, such as name, phone number, address, to other companies. Companies disclose customers’ business transactions to others, such as embarrassing videos.  I will provide more contents, such as the social networking media itself as a company. Google and Yahoo, they are social media based companies. I will use them or more similar examples to show how social networking creates new business.

About My Term Research Paper

My term paper is New Media and Access for the Disabled – Boon or Bust? I chose this topic because I feel disabled people often don’t have equal opportunity as nondisabled people in various aspects of life. I think our society should put more attention on them, and try to eliminate barrier between disabled and nondisabled people. That was the first reason for me to choose this topic. Based on my understanding, new media and access are not assistive devices. Before, I only knew about how IT created assistive devices can help disabled people, such as, wheel chair, can, robot, and so forth. I had no idea about how new media and access can help disabled people before. I wanted to figure out it. This is my second reason for me to choose this topic. I focused on physical disabled people only, because they the majority of disabled people, and they have more restrictions.  After I chose my topic, I started my research. I used Google scholar for scholar articles. I also used our Baruch database, such as LexisNexis Academic, Factiva, FactFinder, and so on. They have both scholar and non-scholar resources. I also use information from Census Bureau for statistical data, and other presses which are more interesting, but less creditable than scholar ones. I focused on economic, educational, political, social, and shopping aspects of new media and access influence on physical disabled people on this term paper. I have found new media and access provide more benefits than disadvantages to physical disabled people. The main benefit is eliminating mobility problems. New media and access allow physical disabled people to work online at home, to make friends online, to take online courses, to vote online, and to purchase things online. They enable physical disabled people can do things which they can’t or have problem to perform before. I also found some disadvantages, such as less interaction between people, and less critical thinking.  What I have found through this research paper is that these disadvantages occur when physical disabled people totally give up moving outside.  If physical disabled people treat new media and access as complement of offline activities, the disadvantages will be eliminated.

Privacy and Confidentiality

The scope of privacy and confidentiality is large.  They cover property, embarrassing events, salary, bank account, marriage status, sexual activity, financial performance, health condition and so forth. New media make our life convenient; it also increases privacy and confidentiality invasions.

People can use their cell phones, digital cameras, and video cameras to take picture or record anything interest them.  The thing can be someone does something embarrassing. Without the person’s permission, people who record or take pictures can post it online. The video or picture can be viewed by people in world wide. People may criticize the person, laugh at the person, and leave comments. The person in the picture or video loses privacy.

  The monitoring of work issue is all over work place now .We use computers to complete our tasks. Employers may monitor employees’ email and performance by detecting the computers. Employer argues that the monitoring is for ensuring employees’ obligations to the company; but employees argue that the monitoring is violating their privacy known as personal knowledge.

Consumer privacy is also a big issue. The sellers own our information in online database when we purchase things online.  They usually use the information for legal business purposes, such as mailing the product, billing, and other customer services. However, sellers may also use our private information for some illegal purposes, such as disclosing customer’s information, and selling the information to other companies.  The information includes consumers’ address, phone number, social security number and so forth. If there is no protection to the privacy of information by company; consumer may receive junk mail, disrupting phone call, theft of identity, and so forth. Also, such purchasing online activity may make customer lose identity and credit card account information when they get hacking by others.

The privacy of essential body knowledge, it means the knowledge of the professions .In an organization, there are different kind of professions perform different jobs in different departments. There may have competition between departments, and inaccessible information between them. If the knowledge or information is accessed by unauthorized people, there would be fraud, manipulation, stealing of information for their personal interests. Such actions can be done by virus, hacking, and worm.  The privacy of profession is not only necessary for the professions to keep their security roles, data, and knowledge; but also necessary for eliminating illegal actions in the organization.  

Advice

We have e-book on e-reserve of our Newman Library. However, we don’t have all the books which are on shelf on e-reserve. We always see students are waiting in front of the reference desk for borrowing books. There is only one quantity of one kind of book on shelf; students need to wait two hours for borrowing the returned book. If our library can scan all books on e-reserve, books will be more accessible to students.

Currently, students and professors are using Baruchmail which is Hotmail. I recommend using Gmail which has larger storage than Hotmail. The speed of search is also faster. We can tag emails with Gmail, but not with Hotmail. I can set Gmail in iPhone and iPod touch directly; and I need to enter the website and log in for Hotmail. I can also use Gmail account to make phone calls which is free to U.S. and Canada.  

The follwing two suggestions are for better utilizing the existing new media in Baruch.Our Baruch students should take at least one course about using database. Our Baruch database has very comprehensive accesses to different websites, such as ABI/INFORMS Global, JSTOR, American Accounting Association, Business Source Complete, CIAO, Credo Reference, and etc.  Those websites provide business, scientific, international policy, news and all other scholar or non-scholar information to students. Most of those databases are not free if we access them off campus. Therefore, it is better for students to learn how to use those databases . It makes us to utilize the exsting new media better.

We have standing computers on almost every floor of the Vertical Campus, and some are outside of Library cafeteria. There are no many people using them. People rather go to the third floor of library or computer labs for using computers which takes longer time to wait, and need to go further. The big difference between the standing computers and others is their keyboards. The keyboard is hard for typing, sometimes they stuck. It is also hard to use the ball mouse; the direction of the arrow is hard to control. It is easy to click wrong link with the ball mouse. The keyboards make the standing computers useless.  If I am hired by Baruch, I would like to change the keyboards to regular ones; I think the use of standing computers will be more effectively and efficiently. Even though keyboard is not new media, but it helps us to access new media better.

Compare Twitter discussion to BB discussion board to in-class discussion

Compare Twitter discussion to BB discussion

                Both of them can be used for collaborating between professors and classmates.  We can post questions, opinions, and comments on them. We can also read, visit, and leave comments on some else’s postings. The contents of both of them can be viewed online. We can search particular person’s posting by typing his or her name on the search engines of them. The contents of them can be also viewed in the chronological order.  The steps of posting and replying are easy for both of them.

                The differences of Twitter and BB discussions are followings. The BB discussion can only be accessed by the professor and the classmate in the same class. The Twitter discussion can be accessed by anybody search for it online or anybody who use Twitter.  The number of characters to post on the BB is not limited; the contents can be very long or short. The number of characters to post on the Twitter is limited to 140 which are really short. We can delete the posting on Twitter, but we can’t delete the posting in the BB discussion. We can organize the posting on the BB by date, Ascending, or descending orders by clicking the button. The order of the posting on the Twitter is organized chronological order automatically.

Compare the Twitter discussion to the in-class discussion.

                The in-class discussion can only take time during the class hour, and take place in the class room. The Twitter discussion can take time in anytime people available to use the internet, and any place people can connect their computers, cell phones to the internet.  For the in- class discussion, students can ask questions and get responds right away. For the Twitter discussion, people need to wait for the responds when people have free time to post their opinions. For the in-class discussion, students who are too shy to speak up, or feel afraid to answer wrong may feel uncomfortable, and less likely to share their opinions.  The students who are shy can post their opinion on Twitter which is much easier for them.

                 

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

What are different ways these virtual worlds can be used?

A game for kids

                Children can play games in cartoon world for fun and interacting with other players.

                Examples: Virtual Magic Kingdom, Disney’s Toontown.

Creating music mixes

                People can create music mixes in their favorite ways. The music can be rated and purchased by   others.

                Example: Coke Studios

New media entertainment

                Customize audios, videos, TV shows, and websites of entertainment.

                Example: Muse, Worlds.com,

Romance

                Online dating and romance life

                Example: Virtual Ibiza, Moove,

Building and architecture

                Build things in the virtual world

                Example: Active Worlds, Cybertown,

Medical care

                Practice the medical process in virtual world for preparing to do the process in real world.

                Example: World of War

What are the pros and cons?

Pro

                It enabled the connection between people who have the same interest; even they live in different places.

                People can have fun when they are playing games.

                People can create the more desirable world.

                People can improve their skills, such as making music, writing, creating games, designing things, and so on.

                People can feel free when they communicate online in virtual world.

Con 

              People reduce the face to face interactions.

                People like the real world less and less.

                They like themselves in the virtual world better because they get better accomplishments in the virtual world.

                They do less daily activities in the real world, and spend major of time in the virtual world.

Be specific. How do virtual worlds foster creativity?

The creativities are various. “In fact pretty much all of the virtual world itself, from building to objects to fashion, is created, distributed, and consumed by the users themselves.” (Eytan Bakshy,Brian Karre,& Lada Adamic, 2010)

3D expression of the virtual environment is created by presenting characters, clothing, building, and objects with 3-dimension.

The virtual world and games help children to enhance creative imaginations when they create their own strategies for the games.

There are many readings are about virtual life; the writers and authors use their knowledge of virtual life to create more textual contents.

Artists can utilize virtual world to show their creations instead of showing real creations to the public.

The architect can visualize their designs of building by using virtual life.

People can create or recreate music in their favorite way.

What do you think the future of virtual worlds will look like?

People spent more and more time online, the real world and the virtual world will be seamless.  Some activities will be hard to be defined whether as virtual activities or real activities. People will utilize the virtual world more for performing the activities in the real world better, such as to show the structure and change of DNA by using the 3-D expression of the virtual world in a class room. This kind activity will be very general in the future.

Citation:

Eytan Bakshy, Brian Karrer, and Lada A. Adamic,(2010),Social Influence and the Diffusion of User-Created Content . Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, July 6-10, Stanford, CA. Retrieved 10/18/2010 from Baruch Newmedia

Social Networking

The ways (corporate and otherwise) that these technologies can be used.

Social networking can be used to enable connecting between people.

                The connecting can be between family, friends, classmates, co-workers, teachers, and strangers. The connecting can be sharing of knowledge, information, experiences, caring, asking questions, and so on.

Social networking site can be used in libraries.

                It helps people better utilize the resource, and make research in the libraries. For example, people can use del.icio.us to collect the resource owned by the library, bookmark, and annotate the contents. People can use e-books to read books on computer or cell phone. The e-books usually can be found in the database of the library. People can also search references, scholar resource, press, and so forth in the database of library website.

Social networking can be used by students and professor

                Students and professors can massage each other by e-mail, blog, Facebook, and so on. It helps students get helps from professor immediately when they have problems, such as homework questions, exam problem, and anything else. It also helps professor to make announcements to students immediately, such as cancellation of class, sending PowerPoint of the course, and so on. It provides “the additional layer of communication will make the richer class discussions” according to Jeff Young (2009). Jeff Young encourages students to pass notes, and links of related materials by twitter; therefore the students who are too shy to talk in class can put his or her opinion on twitter. This way is also can be done with Blogs and  Wiki.

             They can also use blog and wiki as course websites to show more information about the course, to post online homework, to encourage discussions and collaborations between students and professors.

  Social networking can be in legal investigations.

                Educational institutions can use Facebook and My space to investigate students’ behaviors. For instances, students may start drinking under age 21, gambling, fighting, and so on. They can be found through the pictures, posting texts, or videos which posted by students.

Social networking can be used for business operation.

                The company website shows the history of the company, the personnel of the company, the advertisings of new products, and the system of online purchasing, and so on. It enhances the collaboration between the company and customers. Through the information provided by the company, customer will know the company better in order to trust the company.  The company also can attract new customers when search for the company online, get customer to purchase online, view comments of customers leave on the website. Also, we can make online banking transactions through the websites of banks.  The international business companies can make deal, collaborate and sharing idea with each other online. The e-commerce and e-business are also supported by the social networking sites.

Social networking can be used to share knowledge and information.

                People can search online for the things which they don’t know, and post the things they know. Since, the basic information online is free and accessible, the sharing is enhanced. The people can be experts or non-experts, their information and knowledge are all over online, such as Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and so forth.

Social networking can be used for political activities.

                People can elect online for their favor candidates. People can know more about government agencies by looking at their websites. People can express their opinions on political issue online. People can participate in political activities in websites. For example, the essembly website allow political interest people can engage in discussion, and take action online, and  Policosmos allow voters and candidates to elect politicians online.

The benefits of these technologies to society

                The benefits of these technologies to society can be strengthening relationships within the community, even within the world; encouraging creativities by using blog, games, and so on;  helping students to improve the academic performance by searching information online, collaborating with classmates and teachers; making information free and accessible to the whole world; encouraging political participations in the community; enabling mew form of business; assisting the disabled people to perform daily activities better; and so on.

The "dark side"

   The dark sides may be online sexual predators, cyber bullying, loss of privacy, identity theft, virus, digital divide, internet gambling, internet addiction, violation of copyright , e-waste, less face to face interacting, and  wide sharing of disinformation and misinformation.

Make sure to include your opinion of the way these technologies might evolve in the future.

                In the future, I think there will be more cheaper or free information available on the networking sites. Currently, the copyrights of certain information discourage the sharing of information, such as some news articles on the New York Times Online are not free. We can find all the publishing books on Google or other databases contain e-books. It is going to be more difficult to protect our personal information when I rely more on online activities in the future.

Citation

Jeffrey R. Young ,(2009),The Wired Campus: Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class -- via Twitter, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 8, 2009. Retrieved on 10/08/2010 from Baruch New Media.

Check Out Social Networking Sites

Impressions of Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, and Twitter.

Facebook

The tool bar of the Facebook shows home page, my page, search for friends, and my account. I can organize my face book by those tools. My home page shows the activities of my friends, the letters from the Facebook system to me, the people recommended by Facebook who have the same friends as mine, the commercials, and the requests from friends.  Those are the things important to me, and the Facebook system makes it convenient for me to find them. I can protect my personal information by using the privacy setting. I can choose the language of the system, get help by clicking the “ help “, learn more about Facebook by clicking “about”. It is a really user friendly, and organized network media. I think the nature of facebook is to enable connection between people by showing personal experiences and stories. If I want to know somebody more, facebook is the right media for me to do so.

My space

The tool bar of MySpace includes home, mail, profile, friends, music, movies, photos, video, games, events, and more.  It has more tools than Facebook. The extra tools are good for amusement. I can upload or download my favorite music, movies, video, and games. On the tool of event, there are information about concert, sports, nightlife, shopping, impact, festival, and art. I can find the tickets there if the event requires thicket. I can choose that “I’m going” or “I want to go” for the event.  I can plan my schedule on the calendar under the tool of event.  Under the tool of More, there is more things for fun, such as TV, comedy, and so on. On the home page, I can see the activities of my friends, requests, mail, notifications, advertising, recommendations, and my visitors.  I can design or change things in MySpace by using the tool bar or “My stuff”. I can use help tool to know more about my space. The safety tips show us how to use or chat safely. The language of the system is English only. I think Myspace ecourages online friends to be friends in real world by attending the same event. Beside online collaboration, it provides more fun, such as game   or shows.

Friendster

When I sign up for this account, the system helps to design or organize it step by step. The tool bar of the Friendster shows home, profile, friends, photos, classifieds, games, and fun. The classified shows the advertisings of for sale, vehicles, personals, real estate, service, classes and community. We can search them in different countries, and different locations. The tool of fun provides apps, blogs, gift, and so on. On the home page, I can see the activity stream of all events, the people who are on Friendster, the suggestions of other networking medias, and bulletins. We can choose the language of the system, such as English, Chinese, Japanese, and more.  It also has about us and privacy links. I like the advertising part, it enables me and my friends to look and discuss about it on friendster.

Twitter

The system also helps me to set it up step by step. The tool bar of twitter shows home, profile ,find people , setting, and help.  The setting tool allows us to change the language of the system. On my home page, I can see who am I following, my followers, and which list am I on.  Also, the twitter twit button allows me to show whatever I want others to follow.  There are also My direct messages, favorites, retweets, lists of my timelines which I build myself, trending worldwide, following and RSS feed. Twitter is a wonderful tool for getting news in the world. I learnt that our Baruch college is using twitter to show the emergency news in order to allow us know the news at very first time.

Comparison

All of Facebook , MySpace, Friendster and Twitter are free and easy to sign up. They allow user to design them in favorite way, and enhance social networking between friends, family, classes, businesses and community. They are all user friendly, the “help” allows people to know how to use them better. However, each of them has at least one characteristic which outstands from others.   Facebook is all about experiences of individuals; it is the best tool for us to know others’ personalities and stories.  MySpace shows a lot more ways of amusement than others. Friendster has very comprehensive advertisings of sale, vehicles, personals, real estate, service, classes and community which others don’t have. Twitter provides most updated news of the world in highest speed compares to others.

Blog VS Wiki

Differences of blogs and wikis

Blogs: a form of online journal by individual or corporation.

Wikis:  a collaborative website for individual or corporation.

Blogs: It shows online diaries. According to Melissa Gerry, “people are able to write about topics that interest them and comment freely on what is going on in their lives and in the world around them.” (Melissa Gerry,2006)

Wikis: It shows sharing on knowledge and information which is useful for research.

Blogs: It is written by one author. The visitors can post comments.

Wikis: It can be written and edited by multiple authors.

Blogs: updated slowly by one author’s post.

Wikis: updated fast by the changes from multiple authors. According to Ezra Goodnoe, “Content in a wiki can be updated without any real lag, without any real administrative effort, and without the need for distribution — users/contributors (with wikis, they're one and the same) simply visit and update a common Web site.”( Ezra Goodnoe,2005)

Blogs: the post is from one’s view point.

Wikis: the post is from multiple view points from different users.

Similarities between blogs and wikis

Both of them enable written discussion and online communication.

Both are open to the public.

Both are easy to set up by obtaining username and password.

Both can be used for classroom website.

Both can post text, pictures, and links.

Their layouts can be designed by users.

Both are free to use and access.

Both can be showed in different languages.

Both enable collaboration and sharing.

Both are accessible in world wide.

Convergence

It means voice, video and data networks are merged into one network.  It has more efficiency and less cost.

The cables, computers, and staffs for the voice and data systems can be reduced by convergence. The performance of them can be maximized. Since, the devices are reduced; the IT control is easier to be implemented.

Collaboration of blogs

Everyone can have a blog account. The users can post anything they want to share, discuss, or ask on their blogs; it can be text, picture, or links. The visitors can leave comments on the users’ blogs. The collaboration is formed between the users and visitors by post and comments.

Individual can create blog in order to share anything he or she wants to share with friends or family members.

Companies can create blog for information sharing and collaboration inside or outside of the companies. The employees or managements can discuss their new ideas about company products, comments on business operation. It enables the collaboration inside the company. Companies can show their new advertising and new products to customers on their blog. Customers can also leave comments on the blogs. It enables the collaboration outside the company.

Professors can ask students to create blog for class discussion on a given topic. Students can leave comments on each other’s post. It enables the collaboration between professor and students, and the collaboration among students.

The community can create a blog to discuss about the events in the community, such as an election. It enable to collaboration in the community.

These are few examples of collaborations of blog.

New use of wikis

The Wikis system can notice the visitors the misinformation and disinformation on their contents automatically. People tend to not believe the information on Wiki, because everybody can put information on Wikis, most people are not experts on the field. It is a problem for visitors, if them gather information for making important decision, doing homework, and so forth. It is very wonderful if Wiki can notify the visitors about the quality of information.

Research topic: New media and access for the disabled - boon or bust?

     According to US Census Bureau of 2000, there is 49.7 million people are disabled. The disability includes vision or hearing impairment, problems of basic physical movements, and cognitive problems, and so on. The disabilities restrict the individuals from performing daily function, getting work, and participating in the political and social life. Those restrictions create inequality between normal people and disabled people. The new media and access try to eliminate those restrictions, and the barrier between normal and disabled people. I will focus on disability of physical movements. There are different types of physical movement disability. They generally include muscular dystrophies, brain and spinal injuries, cerebral palsy, arms and legs injuries. I will provide examples to show how the new media and access help physical movement disabled people. Such as blogs give opportunities to share information and communicate with friends or other people in the community without going outside. E-Card is an electronic greeting card. We can send them over the internet without going out to mail a real card. To the receivers, the e-card also show s message, and it is much faster to get it. The social network sites include Myspace, Facebook, and so on. Those sites also allow the conversation between family, friends, and colleagues online. E-mail, Googledocs, and Texting allow people to send documents over the internet without physically bring the document to the receiver. Video sharing sites, such as youtube allow people to view video online without going out to buy them. People can engage political activities in political website, and discuss about the issue via the website. People can work at home with access to the company by computer. Those are the few simple examples which are the positive side of the new Medias. They help the physical disabled people perform things easily with computer at home without moving around. The negative side of the new media may be eliminating face to face meeting between friends, and people in the community. People get physically movement disability will do less and less movement when they spend major of time on the internet. Those are the general examples which are not based on research. I will explain the positive side and negative side with specific examples with scholar resource in my project.

Describe New Media

Examples of new media

Blogs, Facebook , MySpace,Twitter,Webcams, Second Lide
Wikis, Google Docs, Skype,Social Bookmarking, Mashups,Youtube,E-book, e Cards, photo sharing sites,virtual worlds, podcasts, and video sharing sites.
New medias enable people to share, edit, create contents with internet. The activity online are cheap or free.

Differences between old media and new media
Exemples of old media: Newspaper, magazine,TV, radio
Old media is  independent. There's less sharing and less communication among people or community.
Old media is changeless.It is hard to edit or criticize them.
Old media is slow. The information provided by old media is updated slowly.
New media updates in real time basis.
New media creates "collaboration" in community or organizaiton over the internet , such as Wiki.
New media connects people in the "community",such as Blog.
New media promote "creativity", such as photograph, cretive commons.
New media enable web-related "communication" online, such as Facebook, Myspace, e-mail(Friedman,Linda W. and Friedman, Hershey H.2008).
New media converges with other technologies, Such as online newspaper, eCard.
The old media lacks the characteristics of new media