Next New

         A new type of new media that I thought of is using virtual reality in order to help college students decide what they want to major in. By using virtual reality, students will be able to experience what it is like to have a career in different fields. This might help them make up their mind because sitting in lecture classes in college is nothing like the real world. It will be much more informative than watching a video because the students will be the person who is going through the daily functions.

Wiki So Far

         I have contributed to a few different pages on our class wiki so far whose topics span across a range of different categories. I decided to contribute content based on pages that are interesting to me or that I had learned information about recently and found worthy of sharing with others. For each paragraph of information I contributed, I tried to include an image that corresponds to the content either a company’s logo or a picture of what they offer.

            I have added and edited the New Media and Food page, specifically about the My Fitness Pal app, an easy and efficient way to count daily calorie intakes. On the Recruitment page, I contributed some information about the website Glassdoor and the professional benefits it offers. I also added the content under the Websites segment of the New Media and Fitness which consists of the Weight Watchers website as well as the Mouth Monsters campaign by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry.

            On the New Media in Social Networking page, I added content about Hootsuite, which is a social media management tool that is greatly beneficial to public relations professionals as well as business owners. For New Media and Micro blogging I edited the Twitter section to add some more information about how Twitter could be used as an efficient form of communication.

           I am especially interested in the New Media in Food, Beverages, and Hospitality Industries page because food is one of my favorite things. Therefore, it is interesting to see how far the industry has come because of new media and technology. I added information in the Instagram section where I mentioned Black Tap’s famous milkshakes and how their use of social media has caused their name and pictures to go viral.  I also added information to the Online Services section about the company Drizzly who is one of the first to instantly deliver alcoholic beverages.

             

P2P

            File sharing is the ability to share and transfer files between computers through technology such as file-sharing software or the Internet.  Streaming sites have become increasingly efficient and cheap, most even free in today’s society with the amount of pirated movies, music, and TV shows. “The slow download process, often using a peer-to-peer technology called BitTorrent, required patience and a modicum of sophistication by users. Now, users do not even have to download. Using a search engine, anyone can find free copies of movies, still in theaters, in a matter of minutes” (Stelter & Stone). This is such a problem because if people are just streaming illegally and not downloading, it is a lot harder to track these piracy actions.

            P2P file sharing is peer-to-peer file sharing where each member has equal accessibility and permission to share the files between each other. There are a huge number of P2P sites such as The Pirate Bay that allow people to utilize this file sharing technology.

            As discussed in the article Peers Find Less Pressure Borrowing From Each Other, Google is collaborating with Lending Club, the nation’s largest peer-to-peer lender. With the banks not having much to offer in terms of loans, people are increasingly turning to the Internet for help. “Laplanche says investors make a nice profit, but consumers still get lower rates than they would with a conventional lender because peer-to-peer lending operates like a marketplace” (Kaufman). P2P lending gives investors the opportunity to invest their money for a rate of return as well as the customers who get a loan for a fair rate. This method is also a more direct method because there is no middleman.

Citations:

1. Peers Find Less Pressure Borrowing From Each Other May 10, 2013 http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/05/10/182651552/peers-find-less-pressure-borrowing-from-each-other
2. Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Studios by Brian Stelter and Brad Stone. The New York Times, Feb 5, 2009, p. A1.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/business/media/05piracy.html

Privacy

            New media has so many benefits. However, the issue of privacy is one of the biggest disadvantages of new media. I actually did my research paper on the issue of privacy in new media and found that the loss of confidentiality and privacy has multiple advantages as well as the disadvantages that come with giving up privacy. Just to mention a few of the benefits gained by this loss of privacy when using new media, it allows us to form a community and collaborate with one another. Giving up privacy also allows people to receive comfort and advice as well as professionals to share important information and data. Lastly, we are able to personalize software, use matchmaking devices and companies are able to hire/ interview employees in a modern way. The disadvantages include the vulnerability and social consequences that come with the loss of privacy as well as your personal safety and information being compromised. We all leave an online fingerprint as was mentioned in one of our previous readings for class. This is comprised of anything about us online that is gathered into one giant fingerprint between photos, personal information and our use of social media.

Advice

         If I was hired by Baruch College to use new media to improve the college, I would suggest that they use video chatting in the different majors so students get the opportunity to witness what a day in their chosen profession is like through a live video feed. An example would be students getting to see what it is like as a stock broker who is trading on the market.  I also suggest that the college invests in new technology that allows tests to be automatically graded and uploaded onto Blackboard without the professor having to input them all one student at a time. This would consist of a scantron that also reads the student’s name or ID number and can correlate the grades with the students’ names as well as automatically generate important statistics such as the class average.

Creativity and New Media

        I created an avatar in Second Life, something I had never heard of before this assignment. Second Life is a virtual world online that allows you to create and customize an avatar of yourself and meet new people as you travel around the map. The destination I chose to visit was really beautiful and this software allows you to create your own profile and chat with people from around the world. The creators replicated reality in how they made their own currency system and everything. It also lets people's imaginations run free and allows them to create and build what they want while meeting people they would never otherwise have the opportunity of communicating with. This is similar to how social media allows us to communicate with people from around the world that we would not otherwise be able to interact with.

Creativity

        New Media fosters creativity because it has made technology today so much more user friendly. This allows everyday people to actually be able to turn their imagination into a reality when before they would not be able to figure out the complicated software to do so. An example of this is seen in The New York Times article, “Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?” New media has allowed people to be able to edit cartoons and songs and put together snippets to create “mash-ups.” In this article, they discuss how classic Disney characters such as Winnie the Pooh, Simba, and Bambi are turned into rap stars singing along to Soulja Boy’s “Crank That.” Also, while companies such as Disney are really cracking down on piracy, “Anthony Falzone, a copyright expert at Stanford, said, “media companies have been fairly tolerant of Internet mash-ups and parodies so far” (Barnes).

Citations:

    1.     Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why? The New York Times, September 24, 2007; available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html