The Social Network (Movie)

So I finally got to take a break this holiday weekend and watch "The Social Network."
Originally I thought this movie would be boring but I was completely wrong. After the first half hour I felt immersed in the story. I kind of felt a connected to the characters and felt bad for them when something went wrong or when they were arguing.
I thought it was really impressive on how much Mark accomplished in one night creating "facemash," writing all that code while hacking Harvard's servers.
Something I found weird was that in the original plans Mark mentioned that Facebook shouldn't monetize because people didn't like it but now it does have ads.  Then the side story between Mark and Eduardo; did Mark really screw Eduardo over because he was jealous that Eduardo got into the "Phoenix Club?" even though Eduardo was part of this project from the beginning and financed it a majority of the way.
Regardless, it kind of worked out in the end; the Winklevoss' and Eduardo got their settlements and Facebook is the success it is today.

The Next New Thing

I think the next new media will be use of holograms.  The world would be equipped with these projectors so people  can be with each other without being physically there.  This can be used for meeting, classes, and work.  People can stay at home and do basically anything any where in the world.  The use of holograms can allow someone to be at multiple places at one time.  So a person can teach 2 or more classes at a time in multiple places.  Another business use of holograms is that it allows you to collaborate and participate with people from other offices.  The use of holograms can let people dress their holograms in what ever they want so they can express themselves in a way they would otherwise not.  In addition the use of holograms can allow people to test clothes before they buy it.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

So far I've been doing a little research on new nedia and sports.  More specifically I've been looking into what type of new media are being used in sports in the game itself and outside of the game to keep their fans up to date.  In addition I've been looking into how these leagues use new media express their thoughts and ideas.  Lastly I'm looking into how 3rd parties are handling their websites and how they use new media to bring together fans.

So far I've done a bit on research on 3rd parties and how they incorporate blogs, social networks, new feeds and chatrooms to share information and express their ideas.  As for the research on the leagues and how they use new media; I found that they have blogs, forums, rrs feeds, twitter podcast and more.

About My Term Research Paper

First off let me start off by saying how good it feels to finally finish this paper on eBay.

I did my research by first starting with the scholarly research aspect with http://scholar.google.com/.  Next I used google to find some articles to back up a few of my claims like how eBay is looking into implementing web 2.0 so the community can stay connected to eBay all the time.  When it came to looking for news articles I used the schools database "LexisNexis" although I felt the results that were generated wasn't that helpful. (maybe my search terms weren't as effective as I thought.)

Something I found in my research is how eBay may change the way people shop.  With ease and convenience traditional retailers must adapt or close their doors.  Something surprising I learned while doing this paper is the niche markets within eBay.  People sold things like old magazines to supplement their incomes.  And in some cases those sales generated a nice cushion.

I choose this topic because I'm a frequent user of eBay so I was thinking why not.  I would be nice to know more about a company I take for granted.  Then again they use me as well to general revenue so... I guess we can call it even.  Also in my other CIS class we were talking about whether the Internet helped form communities so I thought I could use some information from there as well in my paper.

My major finding and conclusion was that a majority of people I polled said eBay was a community.  Due to the fact that they do more than just provide a service (please refer to my paper for a more detailed explanation).

In my opinion my paper relates to new media in that it shows the growth of old media.  In my case we have traditional brick and mortar store (don't really think it's old media) to e-tailers (old media) to newer versions of e-tailing like eBay (new media).  I feel eBay is new media because it's internet based technologies that covers 4 of the 5 C's.  Communication, collaboration, convergence and finally community.

Privacy and Confidentiality

Privacy and confidentiality go hand in hand with new media.  This is because new media allows people to come together and share anything they want to anybody they want.  The question is where to draw the line.  Since this is subjective, the line would be different for each person.

We first look at privacy and how it’s related to new media. Everyone wants privacy but they post all their information on the Internet. Some people feel that having stricter privacy setting will make them feel safe but there are so many ways around this. An employer can just look at your profile though your friends account.  Another thing someone can do is save the information and sends it to others. There is a trade-off between privacy and the use of new media, especially social networks. Having a high privacy setting may allow you to have some control of who sees it but you also miss out on those who you might have met if it was on a public setting.

People want confidentially as much as they want privacy. Although, I feel companies handle this sufficiently. When it comes to sensitive data they use encryptions to makes the site secure. On top of that companies normally have privacy and confidentially agreements that state what they can or can’t do with your data, not that a lot of people read it. You might be thinking what does this have to do with new media, but when you register for these websites, social networks etc., you still have to provide this type of information.

Advice

Before we get into how we could use new media to improve the school we should look at a brief definition on what is new media. New media is constantly changing from the increase in technology so it's hard to define. But if I was to sum it up it would be a type of technology that allows people to come together, share information and work together.

Following the corporate idea of using Twitter to update their stakeholders, the school can create a Twitter account to update the students on closing, holidays and other emergencies.  This will create a conversation between the initial school and the questioner, but then others can help and reply to others as well, lessening the burden on the faculty replying to the students.  The next thing the school can implement is some type of internal peer-to-peer system where students can get access to applications, class notes, lectures etc. Having all the information on some server reduces the paper usage from printing all things that would eventually be outdated and reprinted.  This follows the idea of just-in-time production.  Another thing the school can do is create some type of customizable forum.  The forum itself will contain subsections that will contain everything from classes, to student organizations, to departments etc.  In order to post within each subsection the moderator will have to set the settings on who's able to post what within each section.  For example the "Careers Center" might let all students post withing their subsection.  Then the professors might only allow his/her students post within that section.  Now end users can customize how they want to see the information on the forum.  For example a person might put all the "discussion board" threads form all their classes on the homepage because there are frequent updates. Then the user might put new assignments on the top corner so they can see all the new work without missing the deadlines.  I feel this is a good thing because this allows students to get all their information in one place.  An added benefit would be to make this viewable through various devices this way people can have access to the information whenever/wherever.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

There are numerous ways to use virtual worlds, either for professional reasons or just for fun. In the article Avatar II: The Hospital moderators use Second Life as a training ground to prepare their nurses for the worst case scenario. Other professional uses include developing virtual worlds on private databases where employees can use their avatars go to meetings. Some people turn to virtual worlds just to enjoy themselves and reinvent themselves in a virtual world where anything they want they can have. In the article No Budget, No Boundaries: It's the Real You Eric Spangenberg, a consumer psychologist, mentioned that a virtual world is "the newest manifestation of how people live vicariously: if I can't afford a Bentley, my avatar can."

A big pro of virtual worlds is that it allows people who are shy or have a certain medical condition to express themselves in a way they normally wouldn't. Meeting can be held in virtual worlds where employees from around the world enter and participate. Another pro of virtual worlds is that it allows people to make virtual prototypes thus reducing the cost of making physical models. For example when you have a meeting about a new building you want built in a certain neighborhood; you can actually construct it there and see how it would look.

Although virtual worlds can be a good thing they can also be used for bad. Since it's located on the internet anyone can basically do anything. When this happens, children might be exposed to material that they shouldn't be seeing. Since virtual worlds are on the internet everything is anonymous which may also pose a problem. People can pretend to be someone they're not and pull off scams without getting caught.

I think virtual worlds foster creativity because services like Second Life allows people to recreate places they've been or want to be. It allows people to recreate situations that they could get into in real life and allows them to find solutions to these problems. Virtual worlds allows people to express themselves and dress their avatars in a way they see fit and lets their avatars go to places they like just to meet people and have a good time.

I think the future of virtual worlds might be something more realistic, where the individual themselves can be involved. This would be practical for training people especially for military like task. I feel that virtual worlds now are more like a video game on a computer because you do everything from a keyboard and a mouse. In the future I think you would be able to go into a room of some sort and you'll be surrounded with holograms and stuff where you can carry out whatever you want to do.