Lithium05's Blog

I thought that Richards presentation on Twitter was very entertaining but useful to me since I was very anti-twitter (some parts of me still is to be honest).  It was very interesting to hear the business twist into twitter and why (after all the nonsense b.s. that alot of people post) businesses try to check on twitter statuses and try to fix any complains or negative reviews.  It’s a fast and convenient way of handling such matters.  Also to get insights on businesses, CEO’s, Chairmans, see their innovative ideas, thoughts, perspectives on the market today.  It opened my eyes about twitter, maybe I wouldnt want to stab that little twitter bird after all…

Next new thing…. I would like to make one up to be honest lol.  So hard to say, I think with technology rapidly growing in a rate that is faster than the moment we blink our eyes.  I think most of the new next big thing would be a collaboration of technologies fusing with one another to create an even more convenient way to live.  Since we are in a technology age, I hope the new thing is to be aimed directly at the elderly to help them back into the loop of the speed of technology.  Bigger Icons, font, adjustable monitors.  It’s easy to assume, oh he/she’s old she wouldn’t need to use a computer, is any helpful than ignoring that its an issue.

There is actually a presentation in class that dealt with privacy and confidentiality with facebook that was very good to address its issues and consequences.  Every comment, every picture everything that is posted by you or from someone else it cannot be erased, maybe comments in certain sites but overall once its posted someone must have seen it, even if its people you did not include in your circle of friends through these social networking sites.  Companies do searches online knowing there might be something out there that can hold against you, so beware in your weekend parties knowing it might be posted the next day ruining your chances to get the next big job.  Everything is an issue now a days and there are ways to prevent it, but it hasn’t been really used since the ways to prevent such matters is not addressed mainstream.

If I was hired in Baruch to improve the college, I would try to implement a system within the website, more specifically with blackboard (first to have it function properly instead of having a blackout in the most inconvenient times) but have a better interactive way for students to chat with one another about hw, exams preparations or anything else.

Put youtube videos that relate to certain classes, of tutoring or advice that can help students throughout their semester.  Blogs that can help better the staff of Baruch since I’m sure there are a handful of students who believe they wasted their money on certain professors that was not efficient in teaching the particular subject.

What kinds of technologies are part of the new media? How important is the Internet to the new media? Why and how are the new media replacing and / or enhancing the old media?

So many questions this time lol.  Just starting with technologies that help enhance new media are the web 2.0 tools that we encounter in blogs, social networking sites and so forth that help enhance the speed of communication and deliver information much faster in a collaborative manner.  Blogs, wikis, myspace, facebook, youtube are all sources of new media that helps deliver this communication to the masses.  The client-side/web browser technologies typically used in Web 2.0 development are Asynchronous JavaScript and XML Ajax, adobe flash, and javascript/Ajax frameworks and many others that help these websites become more interactive.

The internet is probably singlehandedly can deliver, capture, sort news faster than any other media that is out there today.  The only downside of this that the source can be somewhat faulty or not as credible as regular media sources such as newspapers and tv news.  Many of these news sites are entering twitter, going online like the New York Times, most journalists now posts their blogs online, there are so many ways of how old media is converting to new media now a days in a such a fast pace that it becomes hard to track.  Once again citing the New york times article Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid By MICHAEL WILSON of how blogs actually helped police solve this case and was live so to speak and faster news than old media tv, newspapers.  New media may somewhat enhance and may seem like its better than old media but until books, newspapers become so obsolete that they are never to be seen again occurs, old media will still be useful in today’s age in society.

Blogs and wikis are somewhat the same idea.  They try to reach out information to other people, they way that is managed however is a bit different.  Blogs tend to be a solo project, its your thoughts, expressing into your page that you control over and then other people leave comments on your page.  Wikis have the same idea, but it tries to be more objective than subjective.  It’s more of a collaboration with different types of people of a certain thing, it can be about our current president, Starbucks, a band, game, whatever it is it can be found in wikipedia with loads of collaborators updating the page with new sources and information.  Freedom in changing the information however varies a bit.  With blogs the only person able to change information would be the blogger him/herself.  In wikis it can be anyone, although now there are setting restrictions in how you add/change information.

Blogs can be great source tools to start a community to talk about a specific thing.  In the New York times there was an article Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid By MICHAEL WILSON that had a huge impact in a Brooklyn community with the collaboration of different neighbors helping to solve cases for police officers.  I’m not sure if this has been added as of yet, but it would be nice if they had wikis for new upcoming gadgets, the specs and so forth.

Most of us that think of “Virutal Worlds” we imagine gaming mmorpg’s or just killing time.  I can understand that it might not be taken seriously because of what its used mostly.  There are other instances like the article IBM’s Virtual World for its Employees: IBM Learning Programs Get a ‘Second Life’ by Ed Frauenheim Workforce Management talking about IBM’s new method of training its employees but through second life.  I’m not sure whether I was quite impressed or amused.  I guess it depends on what training it will be applied, because I am a firm believer that real life interactions are the most important interactions that we should keep it as our main priorities with our employees.  Although it can be taken as a “test drive” or blue print, if you make errors through this medium it wouldn’t seem as severe, and feel more willing to take another chance in fixing your problems.  Of course when theres a good theres always a bad.  Most of these virtual worlds can be very addicting and not many people can handle it.  Especially during an era where our kids are brought up through the internet, its online games, online hw, online EVERYTHING.  The level of resistance of playing your video game is a lot harder when your younger than when you are as a young adult.  There’s always someone who is willing to take advantage of people through false identity and try to lure you for important information.  Through personal experience I was very skeptical through these virtual worlds.  Like the old saying “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”? well I was very private, and never shared any private info, not even my name.  At some point I began to open up to a group of people, around my age, college, gamers, and it eventually lead to a community of us and began to talk outside of the game, and do meet ups.  It took a lot of skepticism to get over but sometimes it can help socialize in a weird weird weird way.  Was my intentions to meet people and have conversations besides a game? Of course not, but it happened strangely.  There are other people who uses these games, virtual worlds as an outlet.  Would I recommend it to everyone? Not really, I only joined for amusement but like everything else you must handle it with moderation.  I do like to socialize with my friends, hang out, go out to clubs/concerts to socialize with other people.  In between my hectic life, going out, traveling, I like to settle down in the middle of the night and play cheesy games.  Other people choose tv, reading a book… as for myself I like to make “f5″ faces in this cheesy little 2-d world at random people and do quests with friends.

Fyi to anyone randomly reading this, these posts are hw assignments so please don’t take me literally as these are my concrete thoughts that I think about day by day.  -_-;

AS FOR THE ASSIGNMENT GOES…. how are these social networking sites used?  There’s so many ways in using it, I think on a previous blog I mentioned its another way of keeping in touch with people especially those who moved away to a different location that makes it harder to keep in contact in regular days especially in my case we have the opposite time zones which makes it hard to communicate if it was via phone, e-mail.  Facebook/myspace are great ways of keeping in touch with family or meeting new people, who knows that some random person adds you and you can actually have a decent conversation.

One of the biggest upsides of social networking for example from the article Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting by Frank Langfitt is how it helps a person, especially in today’s economy to search jobs through small networks that you are aware of and connect yourself with larger networks.

Twitter is another website that gives you the most recent updates of whatever you are searching for, although I still think half of twitter is filled with random babbles of everyones life, it does serve some purpose.  Who would have thought that news breaks about the airplane landing on the hudson river would be first shown in twitter?

The bad… or what I would consider the ugly, is that most of these sites are very hard to regulate especially when it consist of harassment online.  I see this mostly with my little cousins myspace, in how they would all pick on this specific kid in class and posting pictures. Thankfully, someone brought it to the kids attention that its harassment and eventually deleted all the pictures and abusing comments on his page but it can be shown in a different page, or some other social networking outlet.  People can take your information and try to find a way to contact you, especially if you are very easy going adding strangers on these sites.  But like every new idea comes the good the bad and the ugly just like everything else we have grown attached to.

Now a days, you can’t just simply ask “do you have a myspace/facebook?” anymore.  It’s more like who DOESN’T have one, that seems to be a more reasonable question.  Most people would call it a waste of time, and I kind of agree.  I log on my facebook make quirky lil comments, see what my friends are up to (new shows, hangouts, clubs..e.t.c).  It makes it even more of a waste of time, playing these games (facebook applications) to pass the time during class.  It is a waste of time but it also brings us together in a weird way.  There are friends I lost touch, because mainly we were so busy in our lives that it becomes kinda of a hassle to try to keep in touch.  These networking sites help us at least for us to keep in contact and keep updates of each other, instead of summing up our random details of our day by the phone which is hard to pay attention when you are multitasking when you’re doing your hw, at work, checking email, and so forth.  It might be a new fad and can be quite annoying but I like the fact I dont have to feel so out of touch anymore with friends who are far away.

Well… certain people have confusions about what is old and new  media.  Mostly new media relates to the new technology aspects that is occuring today.  What is old may not be as fast pace or right on your hands when you need it like news papers, magazines, books and even television.  New media mostly revolves itself with the internet and being able to access to information or able to communicate in an accessible way.

What we used to think was new media before is now becoming old, but its not obsolete as of yet.  Radio to podcasts, Television transferred to online streaming/downloading,  telephone into VOIP such as skype or ventrilio,  journalism into blogs.  In some shape or another the world that we are accustomed to has been upgraded into a more accessible media than what we used to have before.