Blog: Social networking sites

Visit Facebook, Twitter - and TWO other social networking site of your choosing.
Compare your impressions of these 4 sites. Note that you probably should register and log in to get the complete picture.

Social Networking Sites of my choosing:
Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Link In

First, all of these websites are types of new media. It's used by many online users who made accounts to post contents to the public or for their friends and famiky. My impression of Facebook is that it's a social media website and app where you can post and share contents to the public or to your friends and family. As for Twitter, it's a social media website and app where you "tweet" or post/repost a message that's limited to 140 characters. Instagram is more of a photo concentrated concept where you can post photos of anything you want. Some businesses take advantage of that and uses Instagram to promote their products by uploading pictures of the products. And lastly, Link In is a application and website where you can upload your resume and that will allow employers to look at them quickly. There are options to add other people to your connections and that will help you because in business connections are everything. You can also check out other people's resume.

Blog: Next New

Suggest a new type of "new media" that doesn't currently exist. Describe it.

A new type of media can be a type of new media where people can interact with the use of internet like blogs and social websites. But this new type of media allows people to scan each other on their phones to add people and will automatically give them their information like hobbies, interests, major, occupation. It would be like Facebook but a more advance version. You can add people in real life and get to know them then say bye. But then after you say your goodbyes, you can look them up because you scanned them onto your "X new media" app onto your phone. 

Blog: Wiki So Far

I have not contributed anything to our class wiki yet however, I will be looking forward to adding content under "News" since I did my term paper on print and online newspaper. My goal is to research deeper into details and concentrate on news and the perspectives of the people who uses this type of media.  

Blog: P2P

        In "Digital rights management", the website stated that illegal file sharing is to make downloading easy and cheap. The concept of easy and cheap may cost you viruses that can be attached to the illegal file sharing website. File sharing is the practice of sharing or offering access to digital information or resources, including documents, audio clips, videos, graphics, computer programs, images and e-books. It's a service thats multipurpose that has evolved from removable media from network protocols, such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP).  Operating systems also provide file-sharing methods, such as network file sharing (NFS). One of the most popular, but controversial, method of file sharing is called peer to peer or P2P file sharing because of the use of peer-to-peer software. P2P also allows users to directly access, download and edit files. It allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program. There are times third-party software whom facilitates P2P sharing by collecting and segmenting large files into more compartmented pieces. Examples of P2P file sharing would be BitTorrent, Gnutella and DC++.     

Blog: Advice

You are hired by Baruch College to use new media to improve the College. What are some suggestions you would make using new media? 

If I was hired by Baruch College to use new media to improve the College, I would suggest an idea relating to marketing. I would develop an app, in this given example I would just call it “BCText”. BCText will be an application that would be distributed to the Freshmen who first enter Baruch College. It will be a mandatory application they will have to sign so they can get into the system. Basically, BCText is an application that allows students to access all of needed textbooks, books, texts, articles that are given by professors within that school. You can easily type in the professors name and lists of texts from that specific professor would show up. It’s easy, convenient, and helpful. If everyone signed up for it, the cost of texts, textbooks, books, and articles would be a lot cheaper. 

Blog: Privacy

In this post, discuss how the issues of privacy and confidentiality are related to new media.

New media is a growing source that is convenient to everyone because of the speed of technology that’s taking over the globe. Information can travel at the speed of light, which makes it easy for security to protect sensitive information. People who are intelligent enough can use available fast technology and resources to hack into systems such as credit card companies. In the article “Target works on security-heavy credit cards, after breach”, by Dara Kerr, she talked about the company target who works hard on security to protect credit card users. They said that credit cards with credits that encrypt personal information are harder to hack. It’s clear to say that  if you have a credit card, try to change it to a card with a chip to prevent yourself from being hacked. 

Creativity and New Media

I'd like you to show me how new media fosters creativity by creating an example. This assignment is up to you imagination. Whether you want to create a YouTube video or show me snapshots of an avatar in Second Life that you created, I will leave the definition of "creativity and new media" up to you, and let you surprise me.

Creativity and new media allows you to personalize your own blogs such as Instagram. You can post aesthetic photos of landmarks, food, content you like and think are interesting. You can even promote products if you have the permission to do so. Being creative on Instagram can really impact on how many people view, follow, and like your page. You can coordinate your blogs appearance by uploading only black and white; monochrome pages exists on Instagram and it makes it look pleasingly aesthetic. Viewing other Instagramer's pages can allow you to get ideas of what to post and that can help your own page become more interesting. Being influenced by media outlooks, it can mould your ideas into a better one.  Ideally, this would be a position where Instagram bloggers could spur their creativity to the max; whether it be something as simple as a dinner plate or something as scenic like a mural. 

Creativity

Create a new post on your blog with the above title. In your post, cite at least one of the assigned readings and discuss how new media fosters creativity.

In the business industry, creativity is definitely required in order to attract customers. No one would like to see the same thing again and again from different companies. Each company suppose to have their unique style in advertising their products and services. It would be uninteresting if it’s just the standard advertisement that wouldn’t make consumers interested or amazed. Technology has greatly influenced how the marketing industry works. Online marketing is extremely well known and is mostly used as of now in the 21st century. People buy and sell products online. New media has has changes the worlds view in marketing or online marketing. Creativity is a must if you want to be successful in the industry right now. 

New media fosters creativity by allowing everyone to have access to new media if they have the equipments such as a laptop, tablet, or mobile device with internet. A young teenager can download a bunch of apps and come across something like a singing app. He or she may discover his/her creativity and talent through a simple app. Access to the internet and websites makes it easy to create personal websites that can either become blogs or websites that can help others. Blogs can range from a food blog, adventures, integrated ideas from their own experiences can spark creativity. People can easily be capable of creating their own styles and implementing their interests into new media. By doing that, they can create blogs, their own websites, app, etc. In the article “Exploring place through user-generated content: Using Flickr tags to describe city cores”, it explains the point of tagging is to organize content for person means and are driven by idea of social contribution and desires to share with others. This tagging system can help with creativity and expose a certain content even more than without tagging. 

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

What are different ways these virtual worlds can be used? What are the pros and cons? Be specific. How do virtual worlds foster creativity? What do you think the future of virtual worlds will look like?

Cite at least 2 of the assigned readings.


     The virtual worlds can be interpreted in many ways. Relatively speaking, virtual experiences in particular are used to display behavioral fiction-tropes such as a hero avatar or a villain. In the article, "Virtual world may impact real-world behaviour", the article proposes a case-study which involves 194 undergraduates to participate in two supposedly unrelated studies to the decision of being randomly assigned to play as Superman or Voldemort. "They were asked to taste and then
give either chocolate or chilli sauce to a future participant. They were told to pour the chosen
food item into a plastic dish and that the future participant would consume all of the food
provided" (2). From this study, the people who performed the study revealed that people that played Superman poured, on average, "nearly twice as much chocolate as chilli sauce for the '"future participant"', meanwhile people that played Voldemort "nearly twice as much of the spicy chilli sauce than they did chocolate"(2).  From this research alone, this case-study not only shows that the people that played their depicted avatars are "equivalent levels of self-reported identification with heroic and villainous avatars, alike", but also, "People are prone to be unaware of the influences of their virtual representations on their behavioral responses." Although this could be either pro or con to the matter, but in this case, it is definitely beneficial to apply implications that the virtual environment opt them into a certain entity, however it is a constraint for people as "powerful imitative effects can occur when people put on virtual masks (3)". Because of these avatars portraying either heroic or villainous behaviour, it is true to believe that virtual experiences do foster creativity as it festers the mind and depicts a sort of imitative reality that manifests and exploit open-mindedness to imaginations. In the future, I believe that not only will the virtual worlds be adaptive to people's imitations and expansion of creativity but also become something that may detrimental to societal health as it can disrupt social interactions/behaviours if exploited too much of the virtual environment.
       In contrast,  the article: "No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You",  discussed that this driven social networking site is called depicted by "Ms. Rayna, an avatar on Second Life" splurges on luxury brands by free-spending cohort. In this case, although players can trade physical monetary for virtual currencies,  people spend money, practically thousands, on a game for fun. Not only does this hurt the players financially, but also rely on virtual experiences over actual. In addition to this, although it is "fueling a robust company between avatar-to-avatar"(4), it demonstrates that the lifestyle of these self-driven avatars are used to depict their persona. Provided that this foster creativity, it is unhealthy to believe people to spend a lot of money for virtual currencies to vamp their character. Lastly, I believe this trend of social-networking sites with avatar customization will cease as it becomes more apparent to people that finances are too important to spend on virtual avatar-customization.

             


Cite:

1) "Virtual world may impact real­-world behaviour"
https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxiYXJ1Y2huZXdtZWRpYXxneDoyOWIwYjc5ZTNlZjBhMTU4

2) "No Budget, No Boundaries: It’s the Real You"
https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxiYXJ1Y2huZXdtZWRpYXxneDoxYzc0N2M4MmYxZjFlZGQ5

Blog about Twitter

Twitter and Blackboard discussions are both open to the public however, Blackboard is limited to only students. People may feel more obligated to update their twitters compared to Blackboard discussions because it's for their own interest and curiosity. While Blackboard discussions on the other hand, behind every student's mind is that it is work, this is what I have to do and there is no self-interest.

Twitter discussions allows you to comment on any posts you want. It allows you to extend tweets of your liking and interest. Your posts are more available to people who follow you. Company discussions on Twitter or companies that you follow on Twitter can give you a wider scope on the company based on what they tweet. As for personal discussions, you can have your tweets be exposed to your family and friends. 

Blackboard discussions allows you to discuss topics and contents that are related to your course. For educational purposes, it's convenient for students to ask one another for opinions and ideas. It helps students improve on their assignments, classwork, test reviews, etc. 

Blog Social networking

What are some ways (corporate and otherwise) that these technologies can be used? What are the benefits of these technologies to society? Be specific. Is there a "dark side"? Make sure to include your opinion of the way these technologies might evolve in the future.


        Now that technology has become a daily activity for people,  they're always looking down to their phones to check for the latest Facebook, Instagram, Twitter updates of their friends or celebrities that they follow. Technologies to society can bring people together even if they were across the world. Long distance relationships or family members can be reached easily by using social media and makes everything incredibly convenient for communication and updates on how they're doing.

        Lately on Facebook, 'Memes' has been really popular. A meme is basically a virally-transmitted post that contains a picture with a caption inside the photo that's intended to be funny. Facebook users enjoy reposting memes and tagging their friends if it was related to them. It's a fun activity. Facebook is one of the world's largest social media. Their mission is to give people the power to make the world more open and connected. Facebook is used to stay connected with friends and family, to share and express what matters to them, and be updated to what's going on in the world. 

        However, Facebook or any other types of social medias can or may cause negative impacts on people. An example would be cyber bullying. Cyber bullying can cause the person to be suicidal, emotionally unstable, or can be diagnosed with a disorder. In the article "Facebook Exodus", it says "One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised." What this statement meant was that, social media isn't always good. There are some "dark sides" to this new social technology. To add onto the part about privacy, in the article "Who Cares About Facebook Privacy? Students Do", they quoted "the authors speculate that the increased privacy interest could come from public attention devoted to the subject, from more changes in Facebook’s default settings, or from prompts that Facebook shows users." Privacy is another effecting component to social media. Everyone has a different standard in privacy. Some people like to be publicized, some likes to be private to only friends and family.   

        In the future, everyone will probably have a phone with downloaded social media. There may be a high chance that people in the future will be more anti-social in real life compared to their online interactions. 
      

Cites: 
"Facebook Exodus" by Virginia Heffernan, NY Times, August 26, 2009 
"Who Cares About Facebook Privacy? Students Do" By Marc Parry, NY Times, July 29, 2010 

Blog v Wiki

Create a new post on your blog with the above title. In your post, answer the following questions.

Compare and contrast blogs and wikis. Comment on the importance of convergence in today's networked world. How can blogs be used for collaboration? Can you think of a new use for a wiki that has not been done yet? Cite at least 2 of the assigned readings.

Blog’s a specific entry you post by date. Usually, it contains texts that is related to news, commentary notes, and personal reflections. It’s more suitable for individuals rather than a group. If you’re doing a group project, then maybe Wiki is the better option to choose from. Blog is updated in reverse chronological order. The newest entry is always at the top. When you make a post, only the blogger can edit and delete it. However, commentary exists like in this article about Wal-Mart “We are real people, and that gets lost in the to and fro of business,” said Nick Agarwal, a Wal-Mart communications official who helped develop the blog. “It puts real personality out there in a real conversation.” Having a blog has it’s type of disadvantages as well. As stated in the article “But all that uncensored rambling has its potential drawbacks, like irritating suppliers or consumers.”, it can cause mild defamation if the comments aren’t always positive.

As for Wiki, it’s a website that is suitable for collaborative authoring. Meaning, you can have as many people edit a page. Wiki isn’t a site that is crafted by people with phD’s or experts that are very knowledgeable. Everyone has the authority to edit the page or page. Wiki also has this unique software called wiki engine. In the wikipedia website, it stated the definition of wiki engine as “A wiki engine is a type of content management system, but it differs from most other such systems, including blog software, in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader, and wikis have little implicit structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users.” 

Blogs and Wikis are similar because they are both simple and easy to use. Anyone is capable of making a blog or wiki. Everyone can express their own ideas to the public. Both site does not require you to be a rocket scientist. The editing process is pretty straight forward in both web browser. You’re also capable of linking your website to other websites. 

In this current generation, where and when technology is growing rapidly, social media is is taking over in communicate and how we connect to one another. Social media keeps everyone updated as if it’s a everyday journal to everyone’s lives. You can walk out of your house and see people on their mobile devices. You can walk around in Manhattan, New York and probably catch people using Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram. Social Media is everywhere. In this generation, it’s our new way of communication. In a way, it’s kind of sad because we’re so ingrained into our phones and sometimes we forget how to communicate in real life. Simple things like eye contact may be hard for some people nowadays. 

As for the question “How can blogs be used for collaboration?”, blogs can be used for collaboration. Let’s say you want to host this pop-up store that’s originally located in California but you want to host it in New York. You can create a blog and post it on the store’s website so consumers would know and be aware. You can post it on another social media such as Facebook if the store has one. This way, creating a blog about the pop-up event would attract consumers and inform them about it. The blog can have pictures on what items there would be, location, hours, directions, etc. 

Cites : 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/business/03walmart.html

A Little About Myself

Hello !

My name's Yu Hong but ever since I was in kindergarten, I was known as Jamie. One of my aunts gave me the idea of having an American name and thus, I was always known as Jamie to my friends and even family.

I came to New York City at the early age of 3. I was born in Foshan, a city in China.

A quick fun fact about Foshan, Foshan is known as the home of the Cantonese forms of Chinese opera, kung fu, lion dancing, and dragon boat racing.



Here's a Quick Tour around Foshan !

This is China's Energy Efficient Gymnasium that was finished built recently.

" The structure consists of three arenas, main arena, sub-arena and citizen’s arena. All the three domes or arenas are functionally linked together. Water spaces have been provided outside the arenas which provide an option of natural ventilation except for a few humid months when artificial cooling is used. This magnificent eco-friendly architectural design is surely something the locals can boast of."

(http://www.ecofriend.com/eco-tech-ge-s-new-software-gives-autopilot-capabilities-to-locomotives.html)

This is Foshan Zu Miao. I came here a couple of times when I was a baby and a teenager when I visited a few years ago. Zu Miao is one of Foshan's Ancestral Temple. It was built in the Song Dynasty and still exists even now as one of the finest attractions and cultural relics of Foshan.

Currently, I reside in Brooklyn, Bensonhurst, where it was populated with mostly Italians, Jewish, and Chinese people. But now our neighborhood's changing and it's more lively and diverse !

I recently decided my major even thought I'm a junior in Brooklyn College. I want to study marketing and psychology. After graduating in Brooklyn College with a BA, I am planning to go for a MBA. Along my journey to complete my courses with good grades, I will try to find internships to gain experience in the marketing field.

Thanks for reading !

Online Newspaper

What is Online Newspaper ? Online newspaper is considered as new media. It's a mixture of multiple types of media all together and it can be easily accessed and searched. Within many social media and other platforms of new media, they are partially the reason why traditional newspapers are changing into digital form.

In my research, I will be discussing about online newspaper from multiple perspectives. I will discuss about how it plays in the economic perspective, sociological perspective, technological perspective, and the educational perspective.

Have you heard or tried Ice cream on a Fish Waffle before ?

What is Taiyaki Ice Cream ?

By looking at this picture above, you can already tell why people love Taiyaki Ice Cream. The interesting concept with the fish shaped waffle engulfing the delicious looking soft serve did its job well attracting customers. And of course, it's not only the appearance that appeals to consumers, the taste of their well known Japanese green tea and black sesame flavors are quite popular as well. You can find this place in NYC Chinatown.

The address and Yelp page will be linked on the side !


Click Here for their Yelp page !