Tuesday, November 23, 2010

The Next New Thing

There are so many new media become so popular nowadays, and use by large amount of people, such as Social Networking sites, YouTube, Blogs, and Second Life. If we combine all four different new media together into one site, I believe it could be a very useful tool for education, especially for online courses, because we don’t see each other in class or face to face. Social networking sites can be use for professors post their announcement or assignment. They also can use for improve communication between classmates and professors, in which everyone in the class can find base information about each other. YouTube can be use for professors to upload their demonstration or video if necessary to help students more clear about their lecture. Blogs could be a place where student submit their assignment. And Second Life could be a tool for professor to train their student in virtual world about the things that happen in real world. Therefore, they just need to access one site and can do all they thing they want to do instead of go to few different sites.

In addition, if in that site, also merge with news service will be much better. So we can up to dates news about our environment. Also in that news service, it has different sections, such as news about business, political, science and others can separate from each other. It is easy for people to choose what kind of news they want to read about. For example, we are in business college, so people might pay more attention on the business news, so they can just click on the title of business news, they all the news about stocks, wall street will come out.

In this way, we can do maximum things together just in one sites. And in that sites not just for communication, we also can read different information around our society and experience them.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Our Class Wiki - So Far

In my wiki’s work, the topic that I work on is “How business is using social networking.” The reason that I picked this title is first, social networking becomes so popular nowadays. The most famous social networking sites include Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. There is large amount of people participate in those social networking sites, and I am one of its users. Secondly, as rapidly development of technology, social networking sites adopted by wide range of people. Not only individuals participated in those social networking sites, as well as companies. They become useful tools for companies to interact their customers. I have edited under the subtitle of “social networking and business connection” which I focus on Twitter. Twitter is one of social networking sites that adopted by many companies. The example that I gave is AT&T, which AT&T use Twitter to update company’s information in real time. I also have edited under the subtitle of “Disadvantages of the Social Networking Era.” I have pointed out two disadvantages. One is many employers’ use social networking sites to monitor their employees’ daily activities and check their backgrounds. Another one is using social networking sites, there is a risk for companies attack by virus such as spam, phishing and malware. Under the subtitle of “Facebook,” I describe how Facebook becomes a good platform for companies to communicate with their customers and answer their questions right the way. I also introduce new feature that developed by Facebook called “Beacon”, which send out the messages other Facebook members when Facebook user made purchase online automatically. In this way, companies can advertise their products to other people.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

About My Term Research Paper

For my term paper, I used many ways to do the research. I did a research on the database from Baruch library website. There are three different websites from the database that I think are very useful. They are JSTOR, SSRN and Alt-Press Watch. JSTOR and SSRN are good websites to look for scholarly articles and Alt-Press Watch is more like news paper. Another way to look for scholarly articles is from scholar.google.com. Also, I took the advantage from our course, since professors posted so many articles about social networking. I pick some of articles from our reading assignment to support my point. Also use Google website to find some information that I need for my topic.

In my research, loss of privacy on social networking sites is one of issue that people concern the most, and people start taking some actions such as provide rules and law enforcement to better protect users. Every year, there is a large amount of people participate in social networking sites. And social networking sites are no longer just for communication, it also contain entertainment such as they provide different games online.

I choose Social Networking as my topic because first, it is one of the most popular media in today’s society, and loss of privacy on social networking sites is a very hot issue nowadays. Second, I am a Facebook user. I am like many other social networking users: post photos, make comments, chat online. Therefore, doing the research on it, I can know more about social networking sites.

My major findings/conclusion is social networking can be use as different tools in different areas and benefit society from different perspectives. However, if you gain something, it means you will lose some thing. Same as social networking, people gain benefits from social networking, at the same time they also suffer loss of privacy and other disadvantage. In my research, I even found out that people are agree to take risk of loss their privacy from social networking sites in exchange benefit that they gain from it, because we are human being, and it is human nature for us to share, connect and communicate with other people.

Social networking is one of popular example of “new media.” It includes all five different characteristics that new media have which are Communication, Collaboration, Community, Creativity, and Convergence. Social networking allows people to communicate one another, send out messages, make change on their profiles work together as a group.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Privacy and Confidentiality

One of big issue in today’s society is privacy and confidentiality due to new media. Privacy deals with personal information and confidentiality deals with company’s information.

Nowadays people can steal information more easily because of Internet. Social networking sites become so popular in today’s society, they already adopted in many different fields. They improve people’s communication; make closer relationship between companies and customers; send out message easily and wisely. However, at the same time people need to face lost of privacy by using those social networking sites. It is easy for people to view what you post on your sites without your notice or permission. There are some employers looked at their employees social networking sites to see if they have proper behavior in their daily lives. And there are some cases that employees get fire or a person not get hire by the company because the photos that they upload or the word they post on those sites. Social networking sites also give opportunity for companies to collect people’s information without their permission. People can also steal other people’s information on social networking sites for illegal purpose.

We are living in a technology world which almost everybody is using computers. Many companies rely on the computer so heavy. They need to do the business or operation base on the computers. They will save all of information on their computers. These companies participate on social networking site to give out more information to the public and they also create company’s website online which customers can view company’s information online and make the purchase online. When you make the online purchase, you need to enter your personal information such as name, address, phone number and credit card number. The information that people enter will give hacker to steal these information. Also, because most companies will save all of information in computer, hacker can hack in the company’s computers and steal all of information. There are some people working as telecommuting which is people do their jobs at home through computer, it also give chance to hacker to hacker in the computer through Internet and steal your job information.

There are many new media are relying on the Internet, and it brings great amount of benefit to the society. However, there are also great amount of chance for people to loss privacy, for companies to loss confidentiality.

Advice to Baruch College

New media brings many benefits to the society. Many companies, schools, non-profit organizations and organization have adopted new media in their daily operation. I will suggest some social networking site, virtual world to Baruch College. From what I know, there are many clubs are using Facebook to connect and communicate with their members and update their daily activities. I think that is a very great tool to use because Facebook is easy to create and almost everybody has Facebook account. Many people might not check their e-mail every day, but they will check their Facebook every day. Also people can use book anytime and anywhere. Another great social networking site to be use in college life is Twitter. I think to use Twitter in the class can let people know their classmates quickly. It is good for brain storm. People can post whenever they want once idea come to their mine. And Twitter only allow people to post 140 characters each time which will make people to make long sentence short and catch the main point. Since Baruch College is a business college and business always has some risk. Virtual world can create different situation that might happen in the real world and teach them how to solve such problems if it really happens. It gives students different experiences in dealing different situations. So they will handle such problem more quickly and correctly.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Tweet Experience

Twitter, BB Discussion Board and in-class discussion all of them are present in different ways of communication. Twitter and BB Discussion are doing communication through online, and in-class discussion is doing communication face-to-face. I think in-class discussion provides most clear communication. We can ask or response directly and we also can add body language and face expression through our communication in order to make our sentences more clear. Twitter and BB Discussion are similar to each other. BB Discussion is more like blog, we can post our thought, feeling, questions and answers through BB Discussion. There is no limitation on how long we can write or how many characters we can post. Unlike BB Discussion, Twitter has limitation on the characters we can post which is 140 characters. It is more like conversation. I think twitter is freer than the BB Discussion Board and in-class discussion. What I feel is the things that we talk about in BB Discussion Board and in-class discussion are more close to the class work because the impression that both give to me is they are relative to school work. I will talk more formal in BB Discussion Board and in-class discussion, but not in Twitter. Twitter is kind of social communication which we can talk whatever we want. Our though, our feeling and even our complains. It is more about daily activities.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Virtual Worlds

Virtual world is a world that creates by its users online, such as Second Life. It is "a model that represents the reality." It allows users to create their own "avatars," design any kind of characters they want to be. Everything that appears on virtual world is "created, distributed, and consumed by the user themselves," such as building, object and fashion (Bakshy, Eytan, Karrer, Brian and Adamic Lada A. 2010). In Virtual world, users can assign different characters as they are in real lives. They can do anything they want that they might not or cannot do in the real world.

In virtual world, such as Second Life, people can create their own personality, who they want to be. They can design how they look like, what clothing to wear. They can buy lands, build houses and decorated them as they want, plant tree with different colors and own property. They can dance, jump, swim and even fly in the virtual world.

Virtual world can be used in many different fields. According to Linden Lab, there are "more than 1,400 organizations - including large companies, educational institutions, government agencies and even the U.S. military - use Second Life to hold meetings, conduct training and prototype new technologies more efficiently" (Tutton, Mark 2009).

For many companies, they use Second Life throughout their operation, such as IBM. According to IBM's chief technology officer - Rashik Parmar, IBM have used Second Life to meet up those leaders, gather information and ideas from the people around the world, instead of travel around. In this way, it will save a lot of time. IBM also created Sametime 3D which gives businesses opportunities to "share ideas and collaboration in a 3 D world" (Tutton, Mark 2009). In the field of education, there are some instructors set up their meeting in virtual worlds instead of classroom. It will provide more learning experience for students. They can distribute group work, share ideas, discuss topic and do the projects together. It is a good platform for people to meet up and gather things together. Second Life also provides job training for people. It gives out different situations that could happen in the company which give out experiences to employees dealing on those problems. So, it will help employees more quickly solve problems if they really come in reality since they already experienced them in virtual world. For disable people, there are limited of things they can do in real world, and might not accomplish their dreams as they wish because their disability. Second Life is a place where they can design a totally different life for themselves. They can create themselves as a healthy person, do the thing they like to do and achieve their dreams in virtual world. For instance, in the real world some disable who have difficulty to travel around, but they can walk, run, fly in virtual world. They can experiences the things that they can't experience in real lives.

However, virtual world is not all positive, it still bring some negative effects to the society. There are all of the sex, porn, drug and suicide that can occur in virtual world, because for the things that people cannot really do in the real world, they might want to get satisfy in virtual world. As the doctor explains that "if teenagers participate in an activity online, they are more likely to want to do it in real life" (Stern Allen 2008). Teenagers might also spend too much time on it, stay in their virtual world and isolate themselves to real world. Like man other online service, there are cyber crimes can occur in virtual world because you would not know the people you deal with online what their real personality are. It gives chance for those people to committee crimes.

I think virtual worlds is not popular as social networking now, but it will become more popular in the future, since there are more and more people participated it. In future, schools might provide virtual world course and let students participate in virtual world, take the virtual world as sample of real world and demostrate the different issues that occur in the reality in order to teach them lessons. It will also produces more activities and functions to the users, such as allows the users to write blogs and post them in their virtual world. Of course, there is need for regulation and rules to protect the users and give them a safety place to participated because some people are always tried to find some weakness part and take the advantage from it.

Citation:

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

Tutton, Mark (Nov 9, 2009). Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life, CNN.com

Stern, Allen (Aug 26, 2008), NBC News: " The Dark Side of the Web is Second Life". Center Networks

Monday, October 11, 2010

Social Networking

Social networking plays an important role in today’s society. Many individuals participate on those social networking sites, same as clubs, business, non-profit organizations, civic groups and political organizations as well. It not just improves our communication from each other also economic. 

It is easy to create a social networking account such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter online. You can post your information, photos, and videos on your account and share with their friends. You also can view other people’s profiles and leave comments. It is very convenience for you to access the account at anytime and anywhere with digital device and internet. Even your friends or family members live far away from you, you can still have close communication with them through these social networking sites. According to the interview make by Stephen J. Dubner, the result shows with the people participate on Facebook, it helped them “maintain or strengthen relationships: they used the site to look up old high school acquaintances, to find out information about people in their classes or dorms that might be used to strike up a conversation, to get contact information for friends, and many other activities.”

Social networking also brings benefit to companies. Many companies are “using the service to keep their customers and anyone interested in the company, informed in real time about a crisis” (Reardon Marguerite 2009).  AT&T is one of company using Twitter to communicate with its customers and update information about the company, such as in the case that happened at Silicon Valley and the San Francisco, AT&T had updated the information through Twitter to its customers about the outage. These online resources provide companies the ability to interact with customers and build up relationship with them. Another example from IBM, it has created “Beehive” (Dubner, Stephen J. 2008) – an internal social network site which to improve workers’ communication and build up the relationship between teams. Social networking sites also are good platforms for business to gather information from people and do the advertising for their business. 

 However, there is also some “dark side” of these social networking sites. There is risk for people to loss their privacy from those sites. People have to be very careful when they post their information or photos because there are some people trying to take the advantage of those sites to use for wrong or illegal purpose. It is easy for them to create a fake account and pretend someone else. Also many Employers view their employees’ information on social networking sites. There are some cases people not get hire or get fire because the information or photos that they post on those sites. Companies are also collect customers’ information by visit people’s site without their permission. Social networking has improved communication online, but also makes people feels less interested in face-to-face communication. There is high percentage of teens communicated through electronic medium and they feel they can talk more freely online. 

In the future, I believe those social networking sites will become even popular because those sites really bring much convenience to people’s life and they have already spread in many areas. I believe they will become one of major tool in education and business. Even there are some risks and disadvantages people wouldn’t stop using them because they still believe “the benefits we receive as a society provided by these tools far outweigh the risks” (Dubner, Stephen J. 2008) which I agree too. On other hand we can take some control, such as think before when we try to post information or photos, is it fine for everybody to see it. There are also some organizations and sites have put some effort to provide more safety place to user, such as Myspace joints Attomeys General together to make agreement on social networking to better protect children online. It is a good staring, and I believe there would be more rules coming out to better regulate the sites.

Citation:
Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum by Stephen J. Dubner. NYT Feb 15, 2008

"AT&T uses Twitter during service outage" by Marguerite Reardon, cnet News, April 9, 2009.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Social Networking Sites

Social networking is people communicate each other through online websites, such as Facebook, Myspace, Friendster and Twitter. Users can upload their photos, videos and information on those website and share with their friends or families.

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites which I like the most. I remembered when I was freshman, many of my friends asked me do I have Facebook, so they can add me as friend. Later I found out almost everybody has a Facebook account. Users can communicate with other people and they also can joint networks that create by organizations or clubs. Even in our college, many clubs create a Facebook account which can post all the information and activities on the account in order to communicate with their clubs members.

I know Myspace before I know Facebook. Back in that time, I heard people said that Myspace is for high school students and Facebook is for college students, because there are more high school students use Myspace and more college students use Facebook. I just created a Myspace account before I did this assignment. I think Myspace and Fackbook are very similar.

I never hear Friendster before, this is first time I hear it, and I also create a Friendster account before I did this assignment. Its background color is green which is attractive. On its home page, I feel a little empty, not as much as Facebook or Myspace. The first two thing come to my eyes are the Shoutout where you post your own word and ten different email addresses list where you can find friends.

I have a Twitter account too. I created it last semester because my English professor requests us to have a Twitter account. We post any things that we want to talk about, and leave comment for people or received comment from other people. It is kind of website more focus on express people’s feeling and thought. I like its design with a bird right next to word Twitter, it is so cute and different from others.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs
Blog is form as journalism, which is like “our day book, our collective diary, which records our common life” said by James W. Carey. It is place where a blogger can post his or her thought or feeling, or sharing some articles or news. Which other people can view it and leave their comment on it. According to (Kathy E. Gill 2004), primary characteristics of a blog include: 1. Reverse chronological journaling (format) – which is every journal that blogger post will be regulate by time. The latest post will be appears on the bottom, and the earliest post will be appears on the top. 2. Regular, date-stamped entries (timeliness) – which is every post will shows exact date and time next to it, and those posts are regulate by time. 3. Links to related news articles, documents, blog entries within each entry (attribution) – which is in a blog, blogger can post his or her journal, and also can links some other people’s work in the blog. 4. Archived entries (old content remains accessible) – which is bloggers can save their old work. 5. Links to related blogs (blogrolling) – which is one blogger and links to other people’s blog in order to view or leave comment. 
Wikis
Wiki is “a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change all content very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration.” (Rob Edmonds 2006) Wiki can be edit by many different people. People can work together by update their information in same topic. The system also allows users to link information, video and picture from other resources. Many organizations are also using Wiki in their daily operation. It provides an “opportunity for organizations to improve collaborative work and knowledge sharing.” (Rob Edmonds 2006) For example employees can add any idea or strategy on wiki, at the same time people can also view other people’s works. It can be a good place for a company to gather most information from different people.
Blogs and Wikis
Blogs and Wikis both are operate online. They are easy to create, and function. They can view by public, and allow people to leave their comments (for blog) or edit more information (for wiki) on their pages. They both can link other people’s resource to their own page, such as pictures and videos. They both can be another way of communication.
Convergence in today's networked world.
Convergence means that a media can be form by combining different functions together into one, such as from old media - journalism into new media - blogs. Blogs have same function as journalism which can record daily activities and journals. But it can post and review by people in any place with internet and anytime. Convergence in today’s networked world provide more convenient to people and users can update information more quickly through network.
How can blogs be used for collaboration?
Blogs are easy to create, and everybody can create a blog account. The main function of a blog is a blogger can make a post on his or her account and allow other people to view it and leave comments. Here is one of real example from my personal experience about blog. Last semester, I took an English class and one of main tool for that class is blog. During the semester, we posted our thought and feeling about each story that we read. We also can link other sources to support our idea. After posting, we shared our posts by viewing other people’s works, and leave comments on each other’s blog. In this case, discuss of story in class is one way, but blog can be another way of discussion by sharing thought and feeling about the story from many people.
Can you think of a new use for a wiki that has not been done yet?
Wiki is also a tool that people can edit information and share information. However, one of big problem about Wiki is that it is most of time it was written by non-professional people and easy for people to edit. So the information on Wiki might not be true and trustable. That is why when we doing research, our professors will always said that “do not use information from Wikipedia.” If writers can edit information base on academic research, and cite those articles or research in their writing, then the information will become more trustable.

Citation:
How Can We Measure the Influence of the Blogosphere? by Kathy E. Gill. Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem, May 2004.

Wikis at work: Up from the grassroots by Rob Edmonds E.learning Age; Oct 2006; p. 14-16

Monday, September 13, 2010

Description of research topic


Social Networking: A purposeful loss of privacy

Nowadays, the communication functions of electronic media are very popular in our society. Many people find out that social networking become necessary for their lives, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and so on. Because of huge improvement of technology, people are getting much easier to get online, and create an account for themselves. In my term project, I will list out few different types of social networking, maybe I will use examples that I list above: Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. I will talk how these social networking function and what are positive positives effects and negative effects about it. Positive effects could be easy to use, improve communication, share information with friends, convenience and so on. Negative effects could be loss of privacy- (I will focus more on it because loss of privacy can cause many different harm to people including personal life, and job), inappropriate use, reduce face-to-face communication and so on. I will also introduce different group of people using social networking, such as people, companies, and clubs. I decide to use some scholar articles and presses to support my points.

Describe new media


In order to consider as a New Media technology, it must contains five characteristics. They are “communication”, “collaboration”, “community”, “creativity”, and “convergence” (Linda Weiser Friedman and Hershey H. Friedman 2008). “Communication” means that the technology that can communicate to one each other, such as blog, which you can post information on your own blog or leave comment on other’s blog. “Collaboration” means that the technology can use work together by many people, such as wiki which many people can work on the same topic together and edit it or change it. “Community” means that the technology is relative to society, such as Facebook and Myspace. “Creativity” means that the technology is well creative, which we all know that media technology changes so rapidly from old to new, such as Flickr which you can upload your own pictures, write description, edit or remove easily . “Convergence” means that the technology combines with different functions into new one, such as from old media (book) into new media (Ebook).

Examples of New Media technologies are Blogs, Wikis, Social networking such as Myspace, Facebook, twitter, Virtual worlds such as SecondLife, Video clips such as YouTube and Social bookmarking. As I point out above New Media must includes five characteristics. New Medias are connecting with Internet and digital devices which provides much more convenience for people and more effectively and efficiently than Old Media.

Examples of Old Media are books, newspapers, magazines, journalism, radio and television. They are hard to move around and hard to update, edit or remove information. Old Media is less convenience, effectively and efficiently than New Media and it has limit of five characteristics that list above.

Cite:
Friedman, Linda Weiser and Friedman, Hershey H., The New Media Technologies: Overview and Research Framework (April 2008). Available at SSRN.