My new media class - so far

My New Media class is going great so far. Every single week you write blog, tweet, work on your wikis, and so on. It’s a class where you learn bunch of new things about new technologies, how to work with it and etc. Once we had an online class which was basically read an article and tweet about it, which I personally though was a great idea. However, there were some students in class who never used twitter and for them might have been little confusing but I guess that was one of the reason why professor made us tweet about the article so students can get use to twitter. Also we work on our wikis and contribute to our favorite wikis as well. All required assignments are posted online and its all of the assignments are done online. The discussion that we have in class is great, student involvement, and the video professor uses from the show “OFFICE” as an example is the best. Overall this class is going great.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Second life is used beyond just gaming. Second life/virtual world are a place where you can basically do anything that you may not be able to do in real life. It is a place where can interact with people all over the world just like social networking sites but in virtual world you can fly if you want to just like we show in “Office Video” in class. You can dance, kiss, hook up with people, make house, and so on. In virtual world you can buy virtual goods such as buildings, vehicles, devices of all kinds, animations, clothing, skin, hair, jewelry etc. From personal experience, virtual world is pretty awesome and fun. It’s a great place to meet people and talk about it, built houses, invite friends to your house, have party and so on.

These are the different ways you can use virtual world:

You can use virtual world as a medical research or research tool in general to observe how people are acting, treating each other and so on.

You can use SL for virtual tourism where you can show around people about different things such as built model of NYC or museum, park, school, etc.

Businesses can use virtual world to promote their products as well. Also they can use Second Life to hold meetings, conduct training and prototype new technologies more efficiently just like they mentioned in IBM Learning Programs Get a ‘Second Life

You can use virtual world for education purpose where students can learn or share and take a part in activities that are sometime hard to do in classroom. Also you can use virtual world to show upcoming students libraries, Campuses, classroom, and so on.

Another way to use virtual world is for military training where you can recruit potential soldiers.

Cons of virtual world are sexual harassment, use of language because there is no control, security, gambling, strip clubs which might be not safe because kids can have access to it as well.

Pros of virtual world are meet people with similar interest, collaboration, creativity, alternative lifestyle, and so on.

Virtual world forest creativity because there is not limitation on what you create, the possibilities in the creation of an avatar are endless. In virtual world you can even try to be someone else for a while. Virtual world let you do anything.

Future of virtual worlds? Well the future of virtual worlds will increasingly function as centers of commerce, trade, and business. Businesses are already using second life to sell or advertise their product and making pretty good amount of money. For example, “In Second Life alone, transactions have reached a rate of 2.7 million US dollars per month”. Also more and more people will join virtual world and do things that they might not be able to do in real life.

Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/11/05/second.life.virtual.collaboration/index.html
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.3336
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/11/1117_secondlife/image/opener.jpg

Twitter Discussion

Discussion on Twitter is very different from the discussion that we can have it on either blackboard or in-class. Twitter is limited to only 140 letters which can be sometime hard to explain to others what you feel. Also if you are replying to someone after few days, it is better to re-tweet with short original tweet so that other person might know what you are tweeting about. I personally like twitter but sometime its difficult to go around and see who replied and tweeted if you have many followers or if you are following many people. Using twitter as a one of the discussion tool i believe is not good idea because not everyone can contribute to it, especially someone who is new.

Discussion on blackboard is very easy and pretty straight forward. Anyone can read and contribute to it without any problem unlike Twitter. One of the reason is because in blackboard, only you class members are able to see it and write it. There is no out side party/students are allowed other than your classmates. And you can write as much as you want unlike twitter.

In-classroom discussion is one of the best tool. One of the reason is because you can explain material in details without worrying about text limit. Also you can improve communication skills because you are involved directly face-to-face when you interact. Also not everyone is tech savvy person. There are students who do not consider communicating online just because they do not feel safe.

Social Networking

It is very important what you post, write, picture you upload in one of those social networking site of your. Because businesses these days would like to know what kind of employee they are hiring and one way to find out is that corporate they check if that individual have any social networking website and find out information about them/their background.

If you look at it from different prospective Social networking is a great tool to build your professional network. Also a lot of businesses are involved with social networking and one of the reasons is because of the billions of users.

Social networking has both positive and negative effects on society no doubt about that. As mentioned in the article “AT&T uses Twitter during service outage” by Marguerite Reardon talks about how AT&T uses twitter to inform their customer about the service outage due to any reason. It is one of the fastest ways to inform their customer. But I was wondering how did they inform their customer who lives in San Francisco about the service outage when they had no internet, phone service, nothing, than how?

According to the article “Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting” by Frank Langfitt, says that recruiters have started using social networking technology to look for job candidates. Recruiters says "Social networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting -- ever" because with just a keywords they can find the potential candidates for the jobs that recruiters are looking for.

According to the article “How to Find Job Posts on Twitter” by C.G. Lynch talks about how many recruiters and employers have begun posting job openings on twitter. Simply employees can search for the job that they are looking for by putting the symbol “#” in front of the phrase such as #jobs, #career and so on.

Definitely there is a dark side of social networking sites. Most of the time you do not have control over the information flow. Plus teenagers these days spends tremendous amount of time on SN sites and waste time most of the time. It is very addictive and we tend to communicate more online than face-to-face, we missing out our real life communication. We tend to stay home a lot and miss out the different opportunity that’s out there in society.

No doubt these technologies will evolve in the future. SN has great potential to evolve in the business world. Businesses/corporate can have virtue meetings. Reduces time, improves speed, messages can be spread in a second. Employee can have job interview for someone who lives in different country and so on.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10216712-94.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf
http://www.cio.com/article/497918/Twitter_Tips_How_to_Find_Job_Posts_on_Twitter

Social Networking Sites

Social networkings sites are mainly use it to keep in touch with your friends and family members living aboard or in the same country. In 2007, I started using MySpace which was one of the most popular social networking website at that time. I joined MySpace because of my friends were talking about and so I joined as well. As time passed, I learned that MySpace had great features such as you can add comments, graphics, loop the music, add different design templates, you can take all different kind of survey and paste your result in your profile and so on.
However, after one year in 2008, few of my other friends recommended me Facebook and so I joined that social networking site as well. It came to my attention that Facebook is much better than MySpace because it has chatting options, you can tag your friends in picture, and main thing was that it was much easier to find you friends because your real name is used instead of made up name or something like you can do it MySpace. Also Facebook was much faster than MySpace. I believe it is because in MySpace you have so many graphics and applications in your or your friends profile which takes longer time to load the page and sometime it’s annoying. Unlike Facebook, it is very quick. However in Facebook, you do not have an option to change the template of your choice or loop music. Facebook looks much more professional than MySpace does. Security settings on Facebook about who can view your profile and who cannot is very good. You have control over everything mostly. Ads are not annoying either in Facebook.

Recently i started using Orkut which is mix of MySpace and Facebook. It allows you to chat, add graphics, allows you to control the profile and content in it, add application such as games, recommends groups to join, and so on. It is simple to use, easy to access it, easy to find friends, uses your real name just like facebook. You can also see recent visitors to your profile. It is basically just like other social networking sites.

I have started to like twitter from past few weeks. It is in a form of text message. You can write whatever you want with limited to 140 letters. And people who follow you can add comments to it and so on.


One of my most professional Social networking sites that I believe is LinkedIn. It is well organized, designed and great to use. It is very different from facebook or MySpace. In LinkedIn, all information about the individual is provided clear and neat. Their work experience, what they like, their educations are all listed there. Some individuals even have their resumes put up there. Nowadays a lot of companies use LinkedIn to hire employees. Therefore it is highly recommended to everyone to use LinkedIn and provide all kind of information regarding your work and education. You never know you might get a call from top companies and get a job.

picture sources:
http://www.flamemultimedia.com/images/online-social-networking-2.jpg