Creativity

As you can see from the previous blog, Virtual worlds foster creativity. I put my personal touches to the avatar. When I was exploring the virtual world in Second Life, I noticed the different avatars. Everyone put their own different touches to how they want their avatar to look like. Another way new media fosters creativity is through mashups.  Mashups are defined in our class notes as “digital data is in digital form (bits).”  Mashups can be manipulated easily and the streams of bits are independent of their “natural representation.” In Brooks Barnes article (Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But why?), YouTube users are posting mashups of snippets from several Disney cartoons.  Brooks states “the postings (called mash-ups) are made by editing together snippets of animated movies and TV shows.” Youtube users are showing their creativity by making their own versions. Some users have turned famous Disney cartoon characters into rap stars. If you want to take a peek at their creations click on the link below:  “Soulja Boy Pooh”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=316BF17k5d8

Creativity and New Media

I had a lot of trouble thinking of what I can create using new media. After speaking with the Professor, and asking her for some advice. I decided to create an avatar because I have made youtube videos before but have never created an avatar. This assignment was not so easy, I can easily say that this assignment was the hardest assignment of the semester.

Here are a few pictures of my avatars:

My avatar walking around:

My avatar on a boat:

 I first began by downloading Second Life and then making an account. I had a lot of trouble downloading it because the new version of Second Life was not compatible with my Macbook. After finally getting the program to work, I started creating my avatar. There are so many customizing tools you can use to make your avatar. I could change the face around; add hair, makeup, lipstick, etc… I could also change the avatars clothes. The coolest feature was when you can make your avatars fly. I had a lot of fun using that button.  You can also teleport your avatar to different places.

After using Second Life, I understand why people become addicted to virtual worlds. It took me a while to create my avatar because changing every feature of the avatar is tedious work. I had to focus on every detail on the face and the body and also I was new to Second Life and was working very slowly. I think I won’t ever use Second Life ever again because I rather spend my time doing something fun outside then sit in front of a computer all day.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

According to google.com, a virtual world is a “genre of online community that often takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment.” Users can interact with each other and use and create objects. Virtual worlds allow users to be creative and create any type of fantasy world they want to be in. Virtual worlds are a representation of reality and are simpler than the real world.  

Virtual world have many benefits.  Virtual worlds are much more creative, and very personal. They can be used for business purposes and users can virtually meet each other if they are very distant from each other. Virtual worlds are also very good for training purposes. Usually to save labor costs, companies have training videos, where new employees can be trained in a virtual classroom. This makes the learning process very easy. Also, through virtual worlds you can go to places that you have never seen before. One time I saw my brother play some video game on his PS3 (I forgot the name), the character was walking on foot through the streets of Manhattan. I thought it was really cool because everything was so detailed, it was unbelievable! Dave Itzkoff writes in his article, “I’ve been in that Club, Just not in Real Life,” about real life examples of people who have visited the lower east side through virtual worlds. I think that is why virtual worlds are so cool; you can visit places you have never seen before!!

There are also several disadvantages to virtual worlds. Virtual worlds can become addicting and they can take over your life because they are very time consuming.  You might lose your friends and family because you have minimal face to face interaction Virtual world users can do illegal things and make the avatars do improper things. In Saki Knafo’s article, “In room 100, It’s Sid & Nancy all over again,” the user tried to kill somebody.  Another disadvantage of virtual worlds is that computer savvy people will find it very hard to navigate a virtual world.

Virtual worlds are eye openers. People get to see things they have never seen before. Virtual worlds are going to be the most popular upcoming Social Networking sites in the future. They will be a very competitive field of creativity.  People will be competing with each other to make the best and most “real” looking virtual worlds. People will be perfecting their ideas on how they can improve their virtual world. I think virtual worlds in the future will become even more REAL looking. I think that is crazy because we might not know the difference between virtual worlds and the real world if everything starts becoming more “real” like.

Social Networking Sites

FACEBOOK:

I have been using Facebook since senior year of high school. I love Facebook because it is the fastest way to stay in contact with my friends and family. Not only can I load photo albums and comment on my friends walls. Facebook has so many applications that you can take advantage of if you’re bored. I am addicted to the Tower block game on Facebook. I love it! The newsfeed keeps me updated on what my friends are thinking and usually what they are up to. Most college students have Facebook, but now even younger kids have an account.

MYSPACE:

I used to have MySpace back in junior high school. It was my addiction before Facebook. On my MySpace you can personalize your background and adjust the color of the font, etc... It is very different from Facebook because you have to add special codes to customize your page. MySpace is very slow compared to Facebook, and you cannot comment on other peoples comments like we can on Facebook.

LINKEDIN:

Although I have LinkedIn, I am not so active on it. This social networking site is more for professional networking. You can search for jobs, recruiters, and other contacts. My employer added me on LinkedIn and suggested that I should be more active on it to “network.” I have not become accustomed to this site because it still is too complicated for me.

TWITTER:

I created a twitter account when it started to get popular. I was not too fond of it because all you do on twitter is update your status every second of the day. There are other fancy tricks you can do on twitter, like adding tags, but I find twitter a waste of time. You can also customize your profile, add a picture, and follow people.

Twitter and Blackboard Discussions

I have never liked the idea of twitter. Facebook was enough to keep me busy but people who have twitter, are always TWEETING. You can tweet about anything. The big difference in tweeting and blackboard discussions is the character limit. You can write so much on twitter statuses as compared to long discussion on blackboard discussion boxes. You can write one word or a couple of words at a time when you tweet. Usually, most students do not go back to old discussions, but on twitter you can comment on older tweets.. Blackboard discussions on the other hand are helpful among classmates and the professor. Twitters are helpful in the fact that you can add tags and search for topics that interest you, (you cannot do that on blackboard). Another difference between twitter and blackboard discussion is that twitter is faster. You do not have to go through the hassle of logging in you blackboard, then look for your class, and then clicking on discussions. Overall, twitter is a faster and creative way of interaction among people. Call me old school, but at the end of the day, Twitter is not my thing.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

A few examples of social networking sites are Facebook, Twitter, etc… Social networking sites can be used in the corporate world. Companies can create websites that show the history of the company, the product lines, etc… A company may use social networking sites like Linkedin.com to build business relationships with colleagues and potential clients. Companies also take advantage of Facebook to advertise and promote themselves and the business.  According to Frank Lanfitt, “Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting,” professional recruiters have started hunting for job candidates using social networking technology — like the kind found on the popular sites MySpace and Facebook.

Some advantages of social networking sites are that they help you keep in touch friends and family. You can also find jobs, as I stated above.  Social networking sites are also used to share multiple points of view. For example, Blogs allow you to express your ideas and people can interact with you and comment on your thoughts.

One major dark side of social networking sites is loss of privacy. Facebook and twitter are great ways for people to stalk you. Twitter and Facebook lovers update their statuses every second of the day. They are bound to be stalked if tell the entire world what you are doing and where you are. People need to take more precaution when they list their personal information online. According to Jeffrey R. Young, “They're Back, and They're Bad: Campus-Gossip Web Sites," students have more ways that ever to post anonymous attacks on classmantes, thanks (or rather, no thanks) to new and expanded online forums promising to be bigger and juicer than the infamous Juicy Campus, which drew fierce protests from harassed students before it shut down earlier this year. Social networking can harm you when bad rumors are spread.

I think in the future, it is going be really hard to protect our personal information because everything will be digitized. It is very easy for anyone to hack into something and steal your information.

Blogs v. Wikis

The new media is changing the way how we receive information. Blogs and wikis have become very popular on the Internet and both are very useful tools because people are able to express themselves and share their opinions.

A blog is an on line journal where bloggers maintain ongoing posts about their lives and the world around them. People write about topics that interest them and comment freely on everyday news. According to Melissa Gerry’s article, “Celebrity Blogs: The Impact of New Media,” blogs have become more popular and it was estimated that more than 7% of Internet users had created a blog and more than 30 million people look at them on a regular basis. Wikipedia.com defines a wiki as a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of Interlinked web pages via a web browser. Basically, on a wiki users can edit and add content on a wiki page.

Blogs and wikis are similar because both are a way of communicating. Blogs are more opinionated than wikis because wikis are a collaboration of facts by different individuals. Blogs and wikis both allow users to edit pages and leave their comments on the Internet. A blog is similar to a journal where a person can talk about anything, while a wiki is website that allows its users to collaborate and edit contents on that page. Blogs can also be used for collaboration. One example is our class blogs. The Blogroll that we added to our blogs allows the entire class to connect with each other and comment on each other’s blogs. Blogs are organized chronologically and wikis are organized by content.

A wiki that has not been created yet is wiki page only for student notes. Students would be able to collaborate all their class notes into one big study sheet on a wiki. Students and instructor can add/edit as they please. This would be great because if a student misses a class, they can refer to the notes on the wiki page to catch up.