Our Class Wiki - So Far

As my contribution for our class wiki I plan to expand and elaborate on how new media is used and very important to the food, beverage, and hospitality industry.  I chose this to be my focus because some family members and I are in the process of opening a restaurant and bar here in the city. That being the case, one of my responsibilities is to develop and manage our social media pages.  My goal is to explain how social media and other forms of new media have become a great and inexpensive marketing tool for people in the hospitality industry.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is when people share digital information, such as computer programs, music, movies, documents, and e-books.

P2P file sharing is when people make use of software that connects them to a network where files can be shared between theirs and other peoples computers. 

Bittorents and napster are examples of P2P file sharing. According to "ONLINE PIRACY AND THE EMERGENCE OF NEW BUSINESS MODELS," by David Y. Choi from Loyola Marymount University "The 
software allowed a user to download files from a multitude of users, rather than a single 
individual, on a bit by bit basis, therefore decentralizing the source of the file from any single 
storage."

privacy in new media

Privacy in new media is a very real and serious issue. Now that people have very personal information up on social media websites, it has become very important to try and protect your privacy. Kids post pictures of themselves at party's, drinking when they are underage, or just behaving in ways that they would not want everyone to see or know about. It is a known fact that many schools and employers are looking at potential employees and potential students Facebook pages and other social media pages before making a decision on them. It is very important that people don't post things that could be potentially harmful to themselves or others and that they make sure that they have their privacy settings set so only people they want to be able to view their profiles, posts, and pictures can view them.  I believe on Facebook, for instance the default profile setting is very public and anybody can view your page. This can be unsafe and not good policy to allow complete strangers to get a glimpse into your personal life.

Advice to Baruch

There are many ways in which Baruch could utilize social media effectively.  I think if teachers made a Facebook page for each class they taught it could be a great tool for professors and students to communicate regarding the class. Not only would it give professors an easy way to reach the class but it would also allow students in the same class to talk to each other through messaging but also through instant messaging.  If multiple students and/or the professor were logged in at the same time they would be able to have a real time conversation, almost as good as meeting in person. It would also allow students to post questions that they are having trouble with and other students or the professor could help them work it out.

Another way that new media could be used at school is if the schools it self used a social media site to let students and faculty know about cancellations and other information that needs to get out.  I believe this would be beneficial because people seem to constantly be on Facebook  twitter, and other social media sites. So if they received notifications through one of them they would likely see it before they saw it on the Baruch website or through the Baruch e-mail.

Creativity and New Media

I created an avatar in second life. I made my avatar a plane so I could freely fly around the virtual world.  I did this because I though it would be interesting to see everything that is made available through this virtual world. I have come to find out that there is much more to than I could see in one sitting but what i found was interesting.

Creativity

In the article put out by The New Yorker, called The New Math Mashups we see an example of new media fostering creativity. With new software, people have been able to take apart songs piece by piece and rearrange them piece by piece with other songs. So they are able to take the lyrics from two artists link them up and then take instrumentals from another artist or two and put it all together so it sounds as if it is the way the music was originally intended to be heard. This is a new and creative way for people with minimal equipment  with no studio, to make music and make music they thought was OK to start with, that much better.

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

There are many different ways in which virtual worlds can be used, from enabling users to escape their own reality's and live out their fantasy's, to taking the place of impersonal conference calls for big organizations. The virtual world Second Life is used by IBM for the later, creating a more social and more personal place where people in different parts of the world can conduct business and hold meetings.  There are both positive and negative affects of virtual worlds. On one hand they allow users to bring to life things from the past, as seen in the New York Times article "In Room 100, It's Sid and Nancy All Over Again," back to life which creates enjoyment for people. Another positive is disabled people are able to go into these virtual worlds and live as person who is fully capable. The article on how people are using Second Life in order to bring autistic people together and their families in order to gain a better understanding of the issues that they face also seemed like a great use. The down side I see to this is that although it may provide some the sensation of doing things that they never could before, the reality is that they are still sitting in front of a computer screen, so to me it is creating sort of false senses of happiness. Virtual worlds foster creativity because they allow users to basically design and create the world they want to live in, whatever that may be. I think the future of virtual worlds will look like what ever people can imagine.

Blog About Twitter

From what I can tell, being new to Blackboard and Twitter, there are some similarities when having a discussion. Both allow for naming topics and writing about them as well as responding to other peoples posts. However twitter seems to do this more interactively. As far as these being compared to in-class discussion, to me there is no comparison. Despite the fact that these interfaces allow for discussion they loose all of the personal interaction which means there is no body language to help convey ideas, you can't hear someones tone of voice which can also alter the meaning of a sentence. To me there is just nothing that can replace actually interacting with people.       

Social Networking Sites

Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and Instigram are all social  networking site however they all have their own unique characteristics and capabilities. Facebook for example allows users to send messages and pictures both privately to their friends or put just put them out for anybody to see. Where twitter allows people to make comments on specific topics and is not as orientated towards your own friends. Myspace allows for its users to basically design their own webpage with all the things that interest them and share it with the world. Then there is Instigram which just allows users to share photos.  

Blog v Wiki

Blogs and Wiki's, though both useful web 2.0 tools have similarities but also are very different. Blogs are a more personal, where people can go and discuss a topic and comment on other blogs, where wiki's are a more structured approach at information sharing.  Also blogs do not allow for people to update or change what you wrote, they can comment on but cannot change your comments. Where as wikis can be updated and edited by users of the wiki.

Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid was an example of a collaborative effort by a community in Brooklyn to get rid of a neighbor hood problem. Blogging about the crack house gave people an ability to maintain anonymity well still sharing and expressing there concerns about what they saw going on in the neighborhood. This goes to show there is a wide variety of uses for blogs.  

As far as a new use for a wiki, I believe it could be an effective tool in the financial industry. Working in the financial industry often times when people are out sick or go on vacation someone who has never performed there duties is required to do so. I think utilizing a wiki to explain how to do each specific task could be an effective way to provide an entire firm the details of each employees day to day tasks making life much easier for someone who is covering someone else.  

Project Topic

For my project I am doing an analysis on electronic books, newspapers and magazines. I plan on analyzing both the good and bad sides to these new forms of media. There are potential risks from not having hard copies of these different media outlets. I believe there is also tremendous upside to e-versions of media, such as the convenience, the ability to to publish and distribute new news stories, books, and magazines in a matter of seconds.