Creativity and New Media

I didn't fully made this avatar myself. This is an avatar of myself, which actually made from an app called "Bitstrips" which recently became popular among young adults. First you have to choose your gender and such. I didn't actually start out from scratch. What this new media does is that your friends are able to help you make one yourself and tag your second life avatar as you. My friend actually made my avatar then I tweaked a little bit by changing the way my avatar dressed like. The face, hair, glasses, and other parts somewhat actually do resembles me. This app is actually fun because you can actually make a picture that includes your friend that you tagged in, and just write a short caption to the picture. It's actually a simple app or new media to use to create an avatar. Also, in some ways you do get to be creative with this app because you have find the right picture from the app and be creative with the caption so people think it's funny or catch their attention.

Creativity

New media has provided many new possibilities for ordinary people who don't have the talents or the necessary equipments to invent something. But with the new media that we have today, some of the restrictions are finally gone, for instance we are able to share our homemade videos to the world to see, without forcing a television network to show it to the mass amount of people.

With new media such as YouTube it gave new tools for ordinary people to be creative. The YouTube community or other online communities, has an "unspoken rule" where the one who are the most creative will have the most attention. So the online community will somewhat push people to be more creative, which leads to more creativity among the online community. People no longer has to make videos that has to fit into the norm where people just make normal boring videos.

One great example is an article from the New York Times "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?" written by Brooks Barnes, talks about how Disney and other big media corporations tolerates individuals but not other big companies who are their competitors. Individuals can make a normal boring video into something abstract, funny, and creative; thanks to the new media that we have today. One the main reasons I think big companies tolerates it because it actually provides some awareness or promoting their own company without doing anything beside letting individuals remixing or spoofing their productions.

Without all these new media, there wouldn't be as much creative as today compared if we only stick with the old medium. I think new media do provide some creativity to individuals, not because they were forced upon, it's actually because it's fun and you feel accomplished when your works gets noticed.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual world is still a new innovation for our world. Virtual world were recently created by companies solely to make profit out of it. Though, it also changed some people's lives and the way they behave. The virtual world is constantly evolving and changing, trying to adapt to many new sectors of people lives. It still hasn't fully developed to all parts of a human's life yet.

Virtual world has changed the way children grow up nowadays compared to our times. In the Forbes article "After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot?" written by Diane Mehta, talks about how virtual world changed our lives. One great example she wrote about was "But Minecraft is a virtual world. It’s digital LEGOs if you will, but it’s a space for kids to exercise their imagination and to connect with others to also want to build and create things." It was changed how kids will grow up from here on out. Up until now, children were only limited to building legos from their imaginations with limited resources. But with Minecraft, children can now have more creativity since there's no limitations on what they can build or anywhere they can build it at. They can destroy or build pieces from outer space and so forth instead of just having limited pieces that can only build from the floor to the top. Minecraft provides creativity for children while they are growing up, might also provide innovation for children when they get older. There's actually a lot of benefits for the children, the only negative thing about it probably is that kids may spend too much time on it instead of studying.

Virtual worlds has not only changed the way children lives, it will soon also change the way employees will interact with one another that are further apart from different part of the world. For instance the article "IBM Learning Programs Get a ‘Second Life’" written by Ed Frauenheim, talks about how second life world changes the way modern companies will soon interact with one another and shows how there's going to be a lot of great benefits from it. Taken from the article “New IBM employees separated by thousands of miles will be able to mingle, interact and share ideas in the virtual world before their first day on the job,”" said by Ted Hoff, talks how it benefit IBM greatly. Instead of wasting a lot of money on traveling expenses, employees can now just meet up with each other in virtual world before making crucial traveling expensive meetings. Employees can now understand with one another before actually meeting up together in person. They are able to share ideas faster and probably give them more creativity since they are in a new environment. Though, there's some negative effects of using second world/virtual world for employees. Hackers can hack into the virtual world and pose as an employee and ask other employees for personal information that can hack the company itself which can result in big troubles. Virtual worlds are not security proof yet since it's still a new technology innovation.

I think the future of virtual world will greatly changed. We are still only at the beginning process of it, so there's still a lot of things to be added onto the virtual world. It has changed the way people live such as children growing up. It also foster creativity in some ways. Sometimes people can behave another way online that they wouldn't of behave in person. I think the future of the virtual worlds will surely capture a lot of different parts of the markets/people's lives. I think it will greatly foster new innovations due to the creativity they gained from experience.

Social Networking Sites

Facebook is the most widely used social media website in the world. This is also my current top social media website that I use. Majority of the website designs are sleek and simple. It is very easy to navigate through the features. A major plus for using this website is that all your friends or peers uses it so you are constantly able to to contact them when you need them. You can also create group pages to have a community within that group to talk about what's interest that group. Facebook is also a great to market to a specific market when you need to promote something.

Myspace 2.0 looks a lot better than the old Myspace, I got to admit that. But I still won't use it, probably because I'm prejudice against it. But the new Myspace looks so tech-savvy and appealing. I think the social media website is great for Musicians or Artists to promote themselves since it actually start out as a music social media website. I think the features are great too and looks catchy compared to the simple looking Facebook.

Twitter is a great way to communicate with one another fast, when I say fast, I mean FAST. It's basically like texting except you are able to communicate with everybody else in the world unlike texts, where you're able to communicate with one person or few person which looks confusing and complicated. You're also get up to date information with the particular interests you have, just by searching up the hash tag for that particular topic. If you are an attention seeker person, you can tell the whole world what you're doing up to the very second and people can reply back to you.

Tumblr is another social media website that I use often but not as much compared to back then. Tumblr is a great way to advertise or promote something as well. I think majority of the users are teens or young adults. Tumblr is a great way to share cool information or things that you like other people to explore. It is also a great way to advertise yourself on the website if your content deemed cool and people reblog your posts. Tumblr is also like a diary, where you're able to express your thoughts just like a journal onto a post where everybody can see it, or you can set it to private where only people with passwords are able to see it.

Blog About Twitter

Twitter has revolutionized the way we communicate in the modern world. In the past it would take weeks or even months for mail to be delivered across the borders. Now it will just take a few seconds to send a message out to everyone that follows you. Twitter can be used in different ways depending on the environment or situation you're using it for. For instance, Twitter can be used in a school environment such as the CIS online course that we are taking right now. We are using Twitter for an easier way to communicate with one another in the class. We get constant updates of when a person in the class post a tweet and be able to reply it quickly.

Twitter also make some people, creative. Unlike typical e-mails where you can type as long as you want, the messages known as "tweets" on Twitter, are only limited to 140 characters. So users have to choose their words wisely and be able to send out the message behind those words. Also, a lot of users use Twitter to spread awareness of something. Such as hash tags, where you are able to constantly get up to date news from all over the world if a user wrote something with that particular hash tag.

Unlike Blackboard discussion, using Twitter is particular more fun and interesting. You're able to see all your classmates posts and comments all in a single page while Blackboard you have to click it individually one by one which is pretty annoying. Also you can't hash tag something, to see all the same topic posts, we have to create new threads for each topic. While in-class discussions, it is fun to have a conversation with one another but it's a hassle to remember everything. Humans aren't great at mulch-tasking, so it's hard to communicate with one another and copy everything down at the same time.

To me, Twitter actually has a lot of perks, that I don't particular use. If you're in the professional world where everything is fast paced, I think it's a great idea to have a Twitter to keep up to date with all the things that are around you. You can also use Twitter to stalk a celebrity, since they are always constantly tweeting what they are doing.

Social Net'g -Post not finished yet-

Back in the days, people weren't able to communicate with one another who were halfway across the world within few seconds. Companies only way of means to advertise was through television, the radio, or through word of mouth. Then there were social media sites that were created this past 2 decades. Social media websites such as Xanga, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and lots of more are/were constantly updating their features and layouts to attract more users. Social media websites became a powerful tool today for big corporations as well as small ordinary individuals such as me and you.

There are actually many benefits for having social media websites in today's society. First and foremost it will benefit the social media company itself as the company grows bigger. Corporates can use social media websites for promoting themselves or spread a message to all users of the website. Advertising on a social media is actually cost-efficient and save a lot of company compared to advertising somewhere else. It's actually easy to advertise themselves on a social media website compared to television or other means, because the company can actually specific target their intended demographics for their advertisements on a social media website.

Another benefit coming from social media is job recruitment. In the article, "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" written by Frank Langfitt, talks about how social media can help out job seekers and their potential employers. In the article it said "Such sites also help job hunters market themselves online by setting up profiles, listing work history and specific skills." employers no longer don't need to manually check for every resume that they receive in person or through mail. Social media websites such as LinkedIn automatically filters out all the unnecessary information that they don't need. So it saves time for the employers. Job seekers don't need to go to every firm to apply, they just simply update their information.

As always, there's always a dark side to everything. Social media websites aren't actually safe from everything. In the news article, "BBB: New Wave of Phishing Scams Uses Facebook Info for Personalized Spam", talks about how social media aren't actually safe to use at all. Not everybody use social media websites with good intentions. Now how do hackers grab your information in the first place? The article said "Scammers find your information through Facebook or other social media accounts." Hackers use social media websites to obtain information and try to hack into your personal accounts.

Social media websites are always constantly evolving. Otherwise, hackers will eventually find loopholes to hack your information and sell them to other people or try to hack into your own personal accounts with an ease of a button. Social media will not only improve their security, but also to add more features to retain their users and attract more users. They are always on the move to compete against other websites to gain more money for the company. Social media websites has their pros and cons, but in today's world, I think you will need to be involve with some sort of social media because that's how you're going to be able to communicate with others and stay on top of everything.

Blog v Wiki

The internet recently just surfaced to the commercial world not long ago. One thing that the internet provided us, is many new ways to communicate with one another. Some of they are blogs and wikis.  Blogs and Wikis are a new type of medium where we can express or share our thoughts and resources. They didn't exist couple decades ago, so they are still constantly evolving and becoming more innovated with their features. Even though they look like they are "identical twins" platforms, they are actually different in many ways. 

First off, I will start with blogs. Blogs are a way for a journalist or even an ordinary person to write what's on their mind. Blogs are usually used as a diary or journal for some people while some people use it for commercial purposes such as providing music news and other source of outlets. Blogs can also lead to collaboration that you did never expect. For instance the New York Times article "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid" written by Michael Wilson, talked about how a Brooklyn neighborhood collaborated with each other through blogs. Taken from the article, "But peering turned to blogging, and blogging turned to action, as neighbors started filing complaints with the 68th Precinct station house and attending Community Board 10 meetings and generally making noise until a narcotics investigation began, leading to the arrests.", it made the bloggers more aware of the problem within their own community. Without these blogs or a way of communicating with the whole neighborhood, there would of never be drug raid on their own turfs. Blogging provide a way for bloggers to communicate with one another without physically getting in contact with one another. Blogs don't necessarily don't need to be a person's own journal/diary, sometimes it could be a blog about something they want to change. 

Wikis in the other hand, are meant to share information. Wikis originated from the encyclopedia. While encyclopedias are only written by the authors that collaborated on the book and stay in that format/edition for a while, wikis are always constantly getting updated. People from all over the world collaborate and share their information on wikis, they can edit, add, change, or delete things from wiki. It's more of an open-space environment where anyone can contribute to the article/topic. Though, while Wikipedia has a very bad reputation in the education world, many people still uses it. The news article "How To Use Wikis for Business" written by Ezra Goodnoe, talks about how wikis can actually be beneficially for businesses. Quoting from the article, "Thousands of people police the site, fact-checking and editing as necessary, so the quality of the content generally remains high." even though some professors or teachers complain how unreliable WIkipedia is, there are many people who volunteer their own free time to police their own professional fields/topics. So the reliability of most wikis are trustable. A new use for wiki would be collaborating on hosting a new event or making a change in the world such as the Occupy Wall Street movement. 

In conclusion, blogs are mainly used to post their own personal entries while Wikis are for sharing information. Blogs and Wikis are a great way for people to communicate coming from all over the world. Not only that they are able to communicate or share their expertise, they are also able to collaborate on things that they care about. Such as the neighborhood collaborating on a drug raid or people from all the over sharing information on a particular topic. Should hop on the bandwagon if you like to share information to the world or want to do some collaboration writing.