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.