About Someone Else's Project

The project I would like to talk about is Dorfan's ebay:Community or Bazaar? In his presentation, he mentioned ebay is found in 1995 and it allows anyone to sell almost anything. Ebay is also a community in which it has dicussion boards, forums, chatrooms,blogs,and guides. There is also ebay live that helps sellers with their online businesses as well as feedback option to allow buyers to write feedback to the sellers. He also mentioned that ebay can be a flea market with shady sellers, where shill bidding often occurs, and people have to aware about fake auctions. There are also buyers posted real items, but that item was not as described. Overall, ebay is a great online community. It gives people a virtual marketplace larger than can be possible in real life. I often used ebay as a way to buy something cheaper and also sell my used or unused items. I has experienced one of the situation Dorfan mentioned and that is fake auctions. The item I bought is a fake memory card for PSP in which the seller mentioned it is authentic. Except fake auctions, overall, I feel ebay is a great place for people to discovering cheaper items.

About My Term Project

My project topic is an analysis of blogs. Blog originally was a website meant to be like a diary or journal, and people usually created a blog as way to talk about their experiences or news, express their opinions or feelings,etc. The primary characteristics of a blog are: in a reverse chronological journaling format, blogrolling, links to related news and articles, different voices can be heard, etc. There are many different types of blogs, such as political blogs that talks about political issues or news, personal blogs that talks about personal experiences or lives, and as well as celebrity blogs that talks about celebrity gossip. The most popular celebrity blogs are Perez Hilton and Gawker, in which the news and celebrity photos are updated faster than any magazines or newspaper. In addition, people can earn money with blogs, especially those blogs that has many visitors. People can money from blogging through various ways, either from direct monetization or indirect monetization, Direct monetization is earn money directly from your blog, like advertising programs, affiliate programs, or paid reviews. Indirect monetization is earn money because of your blog, like book deals or have your book published because of your blog.

Our Class Wiki-So Far

In the contribution to our class wiki, I added new contents into corporate blog page. I created a new page in corporate blogs and that is: different types of corporate blogs. In this page, I talked about two types of corporate blogs: Internet blogs and external blogs. I also provided some examples for them and benefits of these blogs. In addition, I edited the other page created by previous semester classmate: The rise of corporate blogging. In this page, I added new contents into the benefits of corporate blogging.

The Next New Thing

The next new thing in terms of new media is to adopt virtual world into social networking sites, like Facebook and LinkedIn. If Facebook adds second life application, users can easily interacting with their friends or even someone they don't know through virtual world, similar to the way they are interacting with each other in real life. For instance, someone can have a afternoon tea with their friends in England and then shopping with some one else in France. They can also going to the club and meeting some new Facebook friends. On the other hand, LinkedIn can adopt second life into their site by providing a virtual interview room for the job applicants and recruiters.

Privacy & Confidentiality

What is privacy and confidentiality? According to Accurate & Reliable Dictionary, privacy means "the the quality of being secluded from the presence or view of others" and according to Wikipedia, confidentiality can be defined as "ensuring that information is accessible only to those authorized to have access". In the new media era, sometimes it is hard to protect one's privacy and remain confidentially. For instance, most of the people have shopped online before, and those data or information collected from us are stored in the database in which they are long term accessible by others. Those companies who has our information might sell our information to companies who sends advertisements, such as email spams. There are many websites, like facebook claims to protect our privacy and circulation confidentiality. we can find "privacy" and "term of use" underneath facebook's homepage where it lists the protection over user's information. In facebook, there is a privacy management, in which users can easily controlling on what portions of information can being access and who can accessing to their information. However, there is one thing facebook can't protecting our privacy or information confidentiality, that is the tag feature. Friends can easily tag you on a photo that you don't want to show to anyone. However, you have no control over it unless you ask your friend to remove that photo. In order for a person to have their privacy and confidentiality in the information age, they must have freedom to share and connect, ownership and control over the information. However, I feel it is impossible in the information age.

Advice to Baruch College

If I was hired by Baruch to use new media to improve college, I would make the following suggestions:
First, Baruch should add more online courses by adopting virtual classrooms, like second life. Instead of coming to the college, we can have a regular class through virtual world. The benefits of virtual classrooms are: it will increase the attendance rate. For instance, those who couldn't come to the regular class because they were sick can still be able to present in the virtual world. Virtual classroom will also promote class participation. It will encourages those students who are shy or afraid to speak up in front of the classmates to have more participation in virtual classroom. Second, I would suggest Baruch to adopt twitter or social networking sites for every class. It will promote collaboration. Students or professors can pose assignments on these sites in case someone missed the class. It also provides a platform for students
to discussing class materials.

My New Media Class-So Far

Technologies that are part of the new media are: social networking sites such as Facebook, my Space, and twitter, online publications like blogs and wikis, YouTube, online broadcast, online news, virtual world, etc. Among all these new media technologies, we can find one common ground between them, and that is the Internet. Internet is extremely important to the developement of new media, because every new media technologies are relying on the internet. Without the Internet, there is no way for us to access to these new media technologies. The innovation of new media technologies are to replace the old ones. For instance, YouTube or Hulu.com is the replacement of traditional television. According to the article, "Who needs a TV, I'm watching on a Laptop" by Laura M. Holson, instead of watching TV shows via traditional television, we can choose to watch any shows at any time on Hulu.com. Blogs or wikis are the replacement of newspaper. Now, everyone can become the publishers by using blogs and wikis. According to the article "celebrity Blogs: The Impact of New Media" by Melissa Gerry, more people are choosing to read news online, especially those news about celebrity. The celebrity blogs updates faster than traditional magazines, and most of the photos are uploaded within a few hours after they were taken.

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

There are many different ways virtual world can be used. For instance, it can be used in game field. Many people are now playing "second life" games as a way to accomplish their imagination or dreams. In second life, users can do things they cant do in real life, such as flying. Virtual world can be also used for job training. According to "IBM Learning Programs Get a Second Life" by Ed Frauenheim, corporates like IBM are now using virtual world for employee training. It helps to bring new IBM employee that is being separated by thousands of miles to be able to mingle, interact and share ideas with others before their first day on the job. Also, it helps new employees to learn real life working skills, so they can apply them into real life situation. Virtual world can be also used in medical education. There are now medical schools adopt virtual world into surgery practice. In real world, Students don't have much chance to practice surgery. However, in the virtual world, they can practice as many times as they want in order to be familiar with all the processes and be proficient in it. The dark side of virtual world is it reduces social interaction. Since people tend to spend more time on playing "second life", and they will probably has less time to interact with others in real life. In the future, I think some of the colleges will adopt virtual world for online education. In that way, students and professors can have their own virtual classroom and communicates with each others like the way they did in real classroom.

Twitter: Discussion

After I used twitter, I feel it almost looks like text messages. The difference is text messages can only send to one person at a time and only view by the receiver. But with twitter, your message can be view by a bunch of people, especially those who follows you with just one click and it is for free. I think I'll ask my friend, who serves in Iraq right now, to join twitter. So she can updates her status regularly, and her family or friends will know how she is doing over there.
How does twitter discussion compare to Bb discussion? To an in-class discussion?
The similarity between twitter and Bb discussion is both of them allows only register users to reply to the posts. However, the posts in Bb discussion are more private, in which some of the Bb sites only allows register users to enter and view the posts. While twitter allows everyone to find and view the posts. The replies in Bb discussion are more organized than twitter because you cant find replies underneath your posts in twitter. The difference between twitter and in-class discussion is that you can hear instant reply from the classmates in in-class discussion. While with twitter, other users must log in and views your tweets and then reply.

Social Networking

Basically, users (like me) are using social networking to keep touch with friends, classmates and find new friends. But there are some portion of people using social networking as a way to promote their products, especially those who runs a small business online. By doing so, they will send a bunch of friend request to the users, and once they accept his/her friend request, he or she will post a comment on that person's wall to provide a link to his/her website, and a brief description about what kinds of products he/she is offering. We can also using social networking in politics. For instance, users can create a group for the candidates they support and allows other users to join the group, so they can express their opinions and provide the latest news about that candidate. we can also use social networking as a way to learn something new. On Facebook, users have the option to pose questions and ask for help. Furthermore, companies can use social networking to hire workers. I feel social networking did enhance our lives and provide many benefits to society. Some small online business can use social networking as a way to cut their budget since it is free for them to promote on the social networking site. According to the article, "Social Networking Technology boosts job recruiting" by Frank Langfitt, social networking helps people to find jobs, like Linkedin. Instead of wasting your time on faxing resume to different companies, you only have to post your resume on social networking sites and wait for the call. Although social networking did provide some benefits to the society, there is also some dark sides about it. According to "Is Myspace Good For Society? A Freakonomics Quorum" by Stephen J. Dubner, some companies are now googling on applicant's profiles on social networking sites, and if they find some negative side about that applicant, such as unappropriate pictures, the chance they'll hire them is very low. In the future, I think some social networking sites like Linkedin could add a view screen feature, so the job recruiters can have a online interview with job finders immediately.

Check Out Social Networking Sites

The first social networking site I registered is Hi5. I haven't used Hi5 for almost 3 years. I remember the layout is very simple, which contains only profile, pictures, profile visitor counter and comment wall. But when I logined in this morning, I found out many changes has been made. For instance, it adds game application, friend updates on homepage, tag your friend, and what are you doing now features. The second social networking site I registered is Friendster. I used it for only a week, then totally forgot about it. The layout looks almost same as Hi5. The profile page contains your profile picture, basic information about yourself, comment wall, visitor counter and lists of your friends. The difference is you can create blog with friendster. Facebook is the only social networking site I use most often. Among all the social networking sites, I think facebook has the most popular features. I enjoy to play games on facebook, such as friends for sale, test your typing speed, who has the biggest brain, etc. Facebook is spreading out in the world , even my friends and relatives in China, France and Italy are using it now. I never used Myspace. So I signed up this morning. The only unique part I found in Myspace is the option to change layout. The layout in facebook, friendster, or hi5 are fixed.

Blog vs Wikis

Both wikis and blog provide for comments on each page or post. For instance, users can comment through talk or discussion page on wikis and for blog, there is a comment feature where viewers can directly make comments about the post. Also, both wikis and blogs allow the users to link its page to other websites (Hypertext).

The differences: Wikis have more contributors and the information or content are open to the public in which everyone has the ability to modify the content, while blog is a sort of online journal that can only edit by the author or identified group of authors. With blog, the blogger has the ability to modify its privacy, whether it can be view by public, certain groups of people, or the author only. When you view a blog, what you see first us what the author wrote last. But with wikis, you will typically see a welcome page first and the posts are not in a reverse chronological order.

Blog can be used for collaboration, such as reply to a post. According to the article, "Brooklyn Blog Helps lead to Drug Raid" by Michael Wilson, people collaborated with blog. The blog first started by one person posted about suspicious activity in its neighborhood and then more neighborhoods replied to the post. Because of their collaboration, it brings the attention to the police and helps to catch the suspects. Convergence is very important to today's network world. It helps people to communicate, to share information, videos, and pictures with others.

I haven't seen anyone use wikis for product reviews. It is frustrate for me to search for reviews about certain products via google, especially those skin care product. With wikis, it saves our time since we can find different reviews on its page or through the hyperlink people posted.

Old VS New

How do we distinguish "old" media from "new" media?

There are many ways to distinguish old media from new media. For instance, old media is more based on information collation, filtering, and economic interests, while new media is focused on the major public service, to improve the user experience. Also, old media is rely on professional editor to write the content and select what people should know, while new media allows the general public to choose what they want to know. With old media, the general public must follow a fixed timetable in order to access the information, while new media allows them to access the information anywhere and anytime. Examples are newspaper vs blogs or bbs, and Television vs Hulu.com.

Term Research Project

In my term project, I'll do an analysis of blog. First, I'll do a short explanation of what is blog basically about and also a short explanation about the different types of blogs, such as personal blogs, corporate blogs, general type blogs, media type blogs and device type blogs. Then, I'll explore its advantages and disadvantages. Finally, I will do a research on its impact on our daily life, such as how people earn money with blogs and how politcians use blog as a way to get closer to their supporters, and also the future of blogs.

What is New Media?

What is New Media? According to Wikipedia, "New Media is a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital, computerized, or networked information and communication technologies in the later part of the 20th century." Examples of new media technologies are web 2.0, facebook, youtube,etc. Among these technologies, we find common ground between them, and that is the internet. Internet plays an important role in new media technologies, without the internet, we can not access to facebook or youtube, and some other new media.

New media is also consider as a revolution of old media. According to the article, "Who needs a TV? I'm watching on a laptop" by Laura M.Holson, more people choose to watch TV shows via website, such as Hulu or youtube, instead from a traditional television. The benefits of watching TV show online is you dont have to worry about the time, because all the shows are already saved, you can watch them at any time you want. Also, the commercial time is much lesser.