Contemplating New Media

We often hear of stories in the news that a local pizza shop has an option for people to "Pay it Forward" by putting sticky notes on the wall with the amount they gave for homeless people to eat with. Even the MTA allows people to swipe others in with their unlimited cards. If we could take these acts of kindness and combine them with an electronic money transfer system like Venmo or QuickPay, people could give larger amount of money at a time. For example, if I go to pay for my milk at my local farmers market, that store could have a collaboration with the Venmo or QuickPay that allows me to transfer an amount for the homeless and those in need. While I only see this working on a smaller scale, it will encourage people to give more money to pay forward than they usually do. It is already apparent with the quantity of people who choose to take part in these things that having that option available will encourage people to donate. With that fact and the ease of not having

So far I have scrolled through the Sports wiki. I am unsure of how to contribute (not in my understanding of how it works) to the wiki because it seems like a ton of random information on a site with a seemingly organized outline of  the specific topic. In regards to making my own wiki, I'm not sure I can follow the same style that the sports and YouTube one have so far. In terms of research, once I have ascertained which topic I will choose, (they all seem very vague so I'm going to choose subtopics in two or three different subject matters) I'm going to go back and try to see what topics each section has not mentioned yet and try to add more original aspects to each. Besides that, I will also revise some portions that I feel do not have adequate information.

File sharing, in terms of torrents, is the uploading of "metadata" that is being streamed to through a network. Sites like The Pirate Bay and Pass the Popcorn are torrent websites that allow users all over the world to download content (in the case of pirated content this is illegal). The peer to peer aspect of these sites is in the file sharing of multiple users. For example, on The Pirate Bay, a the more people who "seed" a download, the faster it is for other users to download the same content because they are getting different bits of the file from that many more people. If a file needs to be downloaded and only one person is seeding it, they are taking the the whole file (the metadata that Google refers to) and this will take much longer. As mentioned in the Wired article by Clive Thompson, "Cohen realized that chopping up a file and handing out the pieces to several uploaders would really speed things up." This is the entire concept of peer to peer f

Considering the fact that most social media sites sell our data and private information, it does not come as a shock that privacy is becoming a growing concern. While we may ask questions like, "what information is being traded?", "what information do companies retain?", and "How is it being used?", what its really comes down to is what we we put on the internet ourselves. While sites track our age, pages, interests, contacts, gender, shopping styles and so much more, we accept the personalization aspect that these algorithms using the information bring. We do not, on the other hand, get a say in who gets to use it. As we sign our rights away when we click the Terms & Agreements button, we need to consider that while we know our information is being sold, whether we actually have a choice in the matter with Web 2.0 taking over the corporate world. Having networks and means of communication is vital in the work place and in school now. So much so t

If I were hired by Baruch College to use  new media  to improve the College one main suggestion I would make is to organize it's YouTube page. The playlists on the channel are an odd assortment of recruitment videos, commencement videos from the past two years, a random video on Baruch and Social Media (ironically) and then a good majority of ECON 1001 review session videos. There is no system behind this set up at all and I think it would be best if Baruch made a second channel where review sessions can be uploaded appropriately. First of all, the page as made in 2009 and if one scrolls all the way down, they will find that the page was mostly used to upload videos of conferences and panels, then a trend emerged of videos on how to get a job. The trend then moves on to computer tutorial videos about 7 years ago when computers used to be big and bulky. They probably still weren't used as commonly in the educational respect as they are now - which is amazing because tha

New media often fosters creativity through interactive outlets. Considering the basics, there is social media such as Twitter, Instagram an Facebook. My theory is that the challenge of such outlets is to be more creative with less words. No one wants to read a paragraph text on Facebook and no one wants to read a diary entry under an Instagram post. Twitter is basically a culmination of those view points.  Twitter took the limited characters feature and make is a challenge. Rather than it inhibiting the extents of it's users messages, in aided in and fostered their creativity. We have hundreds of Buzzfeed listicles dedicated to the hilarity of twitter users tweet on certain trending topics. Tumblr posts that are most popular are the ones that have threads containing short quick humor or clever comments. Somehow, society took the limitation of characters, whether explicit like in Twitter, or a societal norm like on Facebook or Instagram, and formed that into a challenge to be as

  (Please full screen, select highest quality, and raise volume a bit before playing Thanks!!!) For this assignment, I created a short video using Windows Movie Maker. This software allows me to compile pictures videos and text, and format and edit them into a video presentation. In this video, I created a little summary of my Pinterest account. First I took screenshots of different elements and portions of my Pinterest web page. Then, using Notepad, I organized my story line and sorted out the order in which I wanted my pictures to go. Then I went through the process of assessing which music best fit my project. I decided light and whimsical went best so I "borrowed" the song Airplanes by B.o.B. off the internet. All that was left was putting it all together with captions, altering timings, adding effects, and about two hours worth of editing. While an hour would suffice, Windows Movie Maker brings out my OCD and I have to make sure all fades, captions, effe

Virtual Reality originally came out to the world as a tool to create a virtual world in which we can game, create, and visit fascinating places without physically having to be there. While this is all still true, it has become much more than that. Virtual reality has expanded into the educational and corporate world and enables professionals to collaborate with one another with a faux presence. Mark Tutton of CNN says the, "ability to collaborate effectively using virtual tools may now become an increasingly important skill as technology offers more options than, say, video conferencing." With technology expanding, i think that Virtual worlds add back the face to face aspect of communication that we seemed to have lost with social networking like texting, Facebook and Twitter. In the virtual classroom, students can teleconference with professionals from around the globe. Teachers can consult with other teachers. There will be no physical limitation to the access to inf

As someone so only uses three social networking sites, I seem to be far behind in the Social Media game to many. However, I use what I find to be necessary or convenient for me. After all, social media apps are meant to cater to our needs and it isn't necessary for us to use all of them. The needs I have in my apps are: can I communicate with people?, is this app aiding to my quality of life in any way? and, Is this app updating me on things that I would like to be kept up do date on? The Social Networking sites I use do not have to answer all of these questions but they should answer at least one of them each. My three sites are Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. I occasionally look through Reddit threads and will go into that. First of all, Pinterest is a highly interactive site that allows one to post links from their own or other sites in order to create Pin boards. These boards serve to organize ones interests into many different topics and subtopics. For example, if I li

Twitter, Blackboard, and in-class discussions, in the context of a professional environment, all allow for different formats of conversation.While Blackboard is a great forum for classroom discussions pertaining to very specific topics that all happen at allocated times, Twitter and in-class discussion are held in much less formal manners. For example, I can tweet at a person, respond to them, or retweet a person's tweet, and I can carry the same message in each of those choices because it is not as limited or as professional as Blackboard. This is an advantage we have with the different formats of tweeting on twitter. Blackboard also has the disadvantage of not being an app or having an easy to access website. If I have the Twitter app, or if I'm logged in on my computer, I can get notifications about who liked, retweeted, or responded to my tweet. Blackboard, however, requires me to log on to portal, the find my class then go to discussions, find my recent post, an

Being a Baruch student means that standing out in a professional setting requires having more than a good GPA and a few volunteer activities under my belt. I have to have a social network and be connected with individuals who I can help and who can help me. Social Networking is more than just updating our Facebook status now. It means connecting to people from various parts of our life. Whether it be work, family, school, or friends, social media has enabled us to expand our social network across the globe. When I update my LinkedIn and connect with my old boss, this allows anyone looking someone who has experienced in the field of accounting to see who I worked for, how long, and further investigate the company that I was with to see whether I am qualified for the position they want to fill. If I tweet a review of a book or movie, I might get a respond from a professional film reviewer/critic who is looking for insight on people's opinions of the piece. Even more simple, if I

In this era, where our every thought absolutely must be shared with the world instantaneously, we see a rise in blogs and wikis that can be created by just about anyone. Blogs and wikis are two of the medias we use as platforms for our discussions, the voicing of our opinions, and the sharing of news, whether personal or otherwise. A blog is an informal web page run by an individual or a group of individuals for the purpose of logging continuous chronological updates. They are often personal and opinionated but can be focused around just about anything. On the other hand, a wiki is a not run by any one individual and is often looked at as a formal resource that can be updated for the purpose exposure of information to the world. Wikis offer the controversial freedom of collaboration with anyone who can access it. This takes away from the credibility of the information provided within them and adds to the question of what authority is publishing the information. Besides their d

YouTube as a Multi-functioning Entertainment and Educational Platform I am exploring the anthropological and educational use of YouTube as an entertainment focused platform as well as the evolution of the site and how it grew to be much more than an entertainment medium, and how it's users shaped it into what it is. I'd like to research how certain fields used it to promote subjects or even none collegiate subjects.