Creativity and New Media

As I said in my last post, I believe that new media is a great source of inspiration for people to utilize and come up with creative new ideas. So I have taken inspiration from two different things that I have encountered on the Internet, a picture of Cristiano Ronaldo whose torso has been photoshopped out and the act of "deep frying" an image, which is to run an image through numerous filters to the point that the picture is grainy and almost unrecognizable from the original. I have combined both of these things and deep fried the picture of Ronaldo, which you can see below.

Creativity

New media gives people a completely different platform to express their opinions to a large audience and gain inspiration from others as well, and this goes a long way in helping to foster creativity. The biggest benefit is definitely being able to share your ideas so many people instantaneously. For example, according to "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?", Youtubers have uploaded mashup videos of Pooh and other Disney characters to Soulja Boy's hit single "Crank That". And companies have turned a blind eye to this, with Nickelodeon seeing these videos of Spongebob as fair use of its copyrighted content. The fact that they tolerate and even welcome these creative, humorous videos shows how they continue to encourage creative uses of their property. And why wouldn't they? It serves as a great, cost-free way to advertise their shows. And the use of new media platforms such as Youtube allows other people to view these videos and be inspired and even come up with new, creative ideas and content as well. One thing is for sure, none of this would've been possible without new media.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are computer-based simulated environments that can be used by people to communicate with one another as well as the environment of this modeled world. One of the most common uses for virtual worlds is in gaming, many developers utilize virtual worlds in order to immerse gamers in a completely different environment. Another use according to, "The virtual world moves into the classroom" by Joe Earle, is for educational purposes for students. Some schools started using virtual reality in order for students to conduct virtual field trips to areas like the French king's home and its gardens. In the article, "Going to the virtual office in Second Life" by Mark Tutton, the virtual community "Second Life" is attempting to appeal to companies trying to cut down on travel costs by providing a platform where employees can have virtual meetings from their own computer networks.

Although both of these examples show the benefits of virtual worlds, such as being able to save costs and go on educational tours of areas that may not have been possible before, there are some notable cons to this new technology. For example, interactions in virtual teams can be different and what works in face-to-face conversations may not necessarily work in a virtual one. It may also seem silly for traditional firms to use for meetings since they can just set up a video call instead of hosting it in a virtual world. In the future, I expect virtual reality to be utilized in many useful applications such as training employees and medical students, but the possibilities are endless.

Blog about Twitter

A Twitter discussion is very new to me, but in the limited knowledge I have about this topic, I find that it is actually quite a hassle given that there is a character limit. This prevents people from being able to fully articulate their opinions and are forced to be overly concise in discussion situations where further explanation may be necessary. In contrast, a Blackboard discussion has no character limit, so people have no limits on how much they can write, which is very useful in a discussion. But one downside to Blackboard is the fact that people don't receive notifications when someone comments on their posts. Maybe there is an option to turn on notifications that I don't know about, but as of now it is a big weakness since you may completely miss other people's inputs on your post.

An in-class discussion is the most fluid type of discussion among the three and people can get across their opinions at a much faster rate. But this may not facilitate more discussion, especially if some students are less inclined to speak out publicly. There is also less time for people to formulate coherent responses during an in-class discussion, so there is a chance that some crucial points go unmentioned entirely.

Blog: Social networking sites

We live in the age of social media, and it is inevitable that there will be various platforms that offer different services and differentiate themselves in order to draw you in to their platform.

Facebook is the most active social media platform in the world, and that didn't happen by keeping their offerings one-dimensional. They continuously updated since its creation, making the site and the mobile application platform smoother and visually appealing, expanded from only updating statuses to being able to upload photos and videos, and created a timeline where all of a user's relevant activities are posted by date. It is becoming harder to think of things that you can't do on Facebook as it continues to improve.

Twitter serves a more niche market, catering to a group of users who tend to spend more time on social media, as the each tweets are very short-lived and can be missed if you don't go on Twitter every couple of hours. My first impression is that the character limit on tweets can put off people that find it hard to keep their opinions short but it may be a plus for others that don't have the patience to read longer walls of text all the time.

Youtube is a rather different platform compared to others, as people don't necessarily have active interactions with one another. In short, people only go on it to watch videos but its purpose and usefulness is impossible to summarize in that broad sentence. It created video content creators, new ways to watch highlights of sports, TV shows and even serves as a place to discover new musicians and watch music videos. The fact that the site also places a plethora of recommended videos for you on the homepage based on your watch history makes it easier for users to discover new things of interest and spend more time as well.

Finally, Snapchat is the most "personal" way to connect and communicate with people out of all of these social media apps. Users can "snap" pictures to one another and this allows for people to be able to send different content to different people. Although you can post "stories" that post content which can be seen by all of your friends, the individual snaps make it very distinct from other social medias  and much more personal.

Blog Social Networking

The rise in social networking inevitably led to many different individuals as well as corporations adapting in order to follow this new internet trend and take full advantage of its benefits. These social networking sites have allowed people to post various statuses, tweets and pictures and reach a large group of followers instantaneously. It allows for people to keep track of what their friends are up to with little to no hassle. As for corporations, it has also given them an additional platform to advertise their products/services and this new form of advertising is much more cost-efficient compared to other traditional ways of doing so.

In the article "Dictionary word of the year: 'Unfriend'" by Doug Gross of CNN, he shows the vast influence that social networking has had on everyday life even back in 2009. The New Oxford American Dictionary has named the word "unfriend" as the word of the year in 2009. This newly coined term, which means to "remove someone as a friend on Facebook", predicts and illustrates the cultural significance social networks would have on our society.

In the article "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" by Frank Langfitt of NPR, he mentions how professional recruiters now find it easier to scout for new talent because of social networking, more specifically: Linkedin. Shally Steckerl says that he can scout a group of candidates in half an hour but that in order to develop a relationship with him, he would have to use the telephone. This shows one major weakness in social networking, even though it makes things more efficient, it minimizes personal interactions.

Blog v Wiki

Blogs and Wikis are both online mediums of sharing information, with the key difference being that Wikis are able to be edited by numerous people and blogs are usually managed by one individual. Essentially, people are allowed to collaborate in order to contribute to a wiki and it is not expected of one person to be fully responsible for it.

The trend these days heavily emphasizes the importance of convergence and collaboration. You don't have to look beyond Wikipedia, the most well-known example of a Wiki, to see that that a plethora of information can be successfully gathered in one place by allowing various users to edit the information. One way that blogs can be used for collaboration as well, despite being the work of a single individual, is the Blogroll. The Blogroll is a feature in Blogger that allows the user to link any other blogs that they feel is relevant, which can be used to connect different blogs together.

I also found it interesting that in Yahoo's Next Problem: Tumblr's Traffic Isn't Growing, Tumblr's audience of users plateaued since its purchase by Yahoo. The article also hypothesizes that Tumblr users who consume content simply moved onto different platforms such as Buzzfeed, showing that maybe blogs are on a downward trend.

By reading "WHAT MOTIVATES WIKIPEDIANS?", I was able to learn more about why these volunteers spend their time contributing to a Wiki. Some of the answers included the fact that these volunteers can enhance their own knowledge of the subject matter and even use them to prepare for a new career, but the most significant motivation seemed to be that these volunteers found it to be fun.