Someone else's term project comments

One of the presentations that stood out the most was Pedro Orellana's presentation on P2P file sharing. It is very controversial, and it was different. I didn't expect anyone to make a video form of presentation. If it was a video, it would usually be a clip from Youtube or something.

Pedro explained how P2P worked and how file sharing really started with Napster. Napster was all over the news years ago, but some people weren't really paying attention. Speaking for myself, I was very aware of the situation because I have been downloading off Napster since it came out. I was actually saddened that Napster had to shutdown. He explained the different P2P sharing softwares available today and how Limewire is perhaps the only one that choose to stay indifferent in the matter of piracy. I feel what Limewire does is great for the consumers as well as corporations. It shouldn't be the software's fault but the consumers fault if they choose to download illegally. Pedro also explained how the chances of getting caught is actually very slim. This was known to me already but kind of lightened my day hearing someone else say it. I do know a few people who have been caught downloading copyrighted material illegally and they have been fined with a hefty price. But people still do it...and of course people will always think about getting caught.

Pedro gave an enlighting and pleasant presentation. It was something new and it kept the audience on their toes.

My Term Project Presentation

My Term presentation consisted of a powerpoint analyzing online auction sites such as eBay and Swoopo. I asked the question if eBay and Swoopo were new media. First I explained what new media is. I explained how new media can be thought of as digital media. Everything has become digitized and made to be easily distributed and shared. New media can be described by the 5 characteristics: collaboration, creativity, community, convergence and communication. Then, gave a list of types of new media such as online video streaming such as Youtube and Hulu. Also there are online radio like Podcast, and finally, online auctions such as eBay and Swoopo. I gave a brief history of both websites and explained how each online auction site works. I explained how different they were.

For Swoopo:
•Buyer registers an account with Swoopo
•Buyer links Paypal to their Swoopo account
•Items are auctioned off by Swoopo
•Buyer bids on an auction with a starting auction price of 15 cents

For eBay:
•Buyers and sellers must register an account with eBay
•Sellers start an auction with his/her own starting auction price
•Multiple buyers may bid on a certain item within the auction time frame and the highest bidder wins at the end
•Buyer pays seller the ending price
•Seller gives the Buyer the item that was auctioned and pays eBay any applied transactional fees

I then explained how each are or are not new media. Swoopo is not new media because there isn't a community in that website. Users are unable to interact with each other and cannot discuss the products offered by Swoopo. Also, items are auctioned off by Swoopo and not the users of Swoopo, which doesn't give the power to the users of Swoopo. eBay on the other hand is new media because they are a form of community. Sellers and buyers can discuss the items before and after the auction and items are auctioned off by the users of eBay.

I concluded my presentation by suggesting how Swoopo can become new media. Swoopo can incorporate discussion boards or the ability for users to interact with each other. Or have a side business where users of Swoopo can auction items as well. They dont necessarily have to change their whole business plan.

Our New Media Class - So far

For our class wiki I have worked on New Media in Entertainment. Specifically, I have worked on Online TV and other online video streaming websites. I have created a pretty thorough explaination of what Youtube is and gave a brief history of Youtube.

And of course I have created a Bio page, etc...

The Next New Thing

Hmm...if there was to be a new type of "new media" that doesn't already exist, I'd have to say some sort of eye contact lense technology that will allow color blind users to see colors. Of course the eye contact lense will have other features like make the real world turn black and white, sepia, 2D, etc...I am colorblind and sometimes I wonder if I am missing out on colors that people see perfectly fine. If there were a product like that out today, I would definitely buy it because coming from a color blind person, the ability to see colors seems priceless.

Advice to Baruch

If i were hired by Baruch College to use New Media to improve college there would be many suggestions. For starters, i'd suggest the utilizaion of virtual classrooms. I'm not saying students should study on their own pace and hand in a paper by a certain date and everything will be all right. But i mean starting an actual classroom over the internet. You must sign into the classroom by a specific time and everything will be taught thru instant messaging. With the logging technology, we can save notes with easy and refer back to professor's lectures. Of course, everyone would have to have internet and perhaps broadband connection. Perhaps add those to tuition.

On a side note, how about laptops for every baruch student?

And for students who don't want to purchase or can't afford textbooks, why not offer an electronic version of the text for free. We do get $100 dollar worth of printing so why not let us have the option to use that money towards text books. Not everyone has Pell grants that they can use to buy text books.

Also, I would replace the Ticker newspaper with some sort of electronic newspaper. Perhaps send the ticker newspaper to everyone's school or personal email (optional of course).

When it comes to buying food at the cafeteria, why not have some sort of lunch card system. A baruch credit card maybe. Everything is digitized and no one will need to carry cash.

Those are just some ideas, i'm sure there are many improvements.

Old VS. New

Perhaps the best way to distinguis new media from old media is by noting the five C's of New Media. These C's or characteristics are Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Community, Convergence. New Media such as blogs and wikis allow people to communicate with ease over the internet and collaborate with each other on projects. Data, information, pictures, videos and audio has become digitized meaning it can be easily manipulated with creativity. People can do mashups of different works and create something of their own. Also since there are so many technologies, these technologies can be put together or converged into something new. For example, sending a picture from a cell phone is a convergence of two technologies. With the Internet, information can be sent to anyone without an issue of distance and location.

Another way to distiguish new media from old is by thinking what is the "electronic" equivalence to a physical medium. For example, a magazine's electronic equivalence is an e-zine. Or the Amazon Kindle is the new media form of a newspaper. Podcast radio has replaced old standard radios.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtualization can be a great tool for both corporations and any person on the street. This is supported by the reading article, IBM Learning Programs Get A "Second Life." For companies like IBM, they started using a virtual world program called Second Life to train their employees. Training programs are often very expensive as they need to get instructors and allocate appropriate amount of trainees to get trained, and most importantly have enough space to train them all. Well, with second life, everything is done in a virtual world so there won't be a space issue. All employees can log onto Second Life and learn through the virtual world. One can use the virtual world and apply learned knowledge in the real world.

For society, virtual worlds such as Second Life can be great for people who lack communication or social skills. Autistic individuals would greatly benefit from this tool because they dont have to be infront of another individual to speak to them. They can communicate with other people behind their own computer in the comfort of their own room. These individuals can then apply social skills they learned over these virtual worlds and apply them in the real world.

But with all good, there has to be a bad. Virtual worlds can be abused and used inappropriately. There has been complaints that people tend to do things in virtual worlds they woul dnever get away with in real life. Like loyal husbands would have prostitutes in the virtual world. There are no "law enforcement" in virtual worlds, so it's pretty much do as you like. You can create your own avatar and make yourself look however you like. Also, virtual worlds can be addictive. People can spend countless hours on them and lose their side of reality. Some people get less social and stay home to play virtual world games and softwares.

In the future, I do hope this technology can be used in many professional environments such as a doctors office or clinic's office. Perhaps at a lab, instead of testing on live animals, they can test on virtual animals to get a accurate reading and experiment.