The Next New Thing

New Technology improves every day where virtual reality would be helpful as the next new media. With virtual reality, you can use holograms or specially design glasses to see 3D images. This is very beneficial to the gaming world where images from the games are more realistic. Holograms are very useful when it comes to clothes and cars where it allows a person to see the image in person. While virtual reality requires a person to wear 3D glasses, this would improve the gaming world where you will get more exercises than from the Nintendo Wii. Also, virtual reality can help a person get over the fear of learning a new language. A person will be able to learn a new language a lot faster from virtual reality.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is the use of distributing and providing access to digitally store information like computer programs. P2P file sharing is known as peer to peer file sharing. P2P file sharing uploads and downloads data from other users. This allows many people to share files with other people in the world. Many people share files through an USB flash drive where information is stored in the flash drive and can be uploaded to other computers. According to the article “Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access?” by Eric Pfanner, the American entertainment has accounted a loss of $20 billion a year in sales. Many lawmakers have vowed to increase the scrutiny of the international markets because piracy has been widespread. Companies aren’t able to make a lot of money like in the past due to the increased popularity of file sharing.

Creativity

Creativity is the process of creating and experimenting something new to showcase a talent a user has. With the help of new media, users are able to go on Youtube and upload a video of their creativity which may inspire another person to improve on it. A lot of people have become famous from uploading a video on Youtube showing their creativity. From the article “1 + 1 + 1 = 1” by Sasha Frere-Jones, there has been a revolution in music. D.j. are able to mix together tracks with different beats to see how it will sound before using them. The music that d.j. are able to mixed together now unlike before is due to the revolution of new media. The music today are very similar to music from the past but most of the times, no one notices it.  

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds can be a great way to experiment with life. From the article "In Room 100, It’s Sid and Nancy All Over Again"by Saki Knafo, Hotel Chelsea was remade by Michael Brown in an online game called Second Life. This shows how powerful the virtual world is when you can are able to create a whole new 3-D world by what you see in your fantasies.  He took pictures of the hotel on his vacation last year to help him construct the virtual one. According to the article “iReport: 'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction” by Nicole Saidi, the virtual world allows people with autism are able to interact with other. This allows them to feel better and able to cope with their troubles to communicate.

The pros of a virtual world are it saves time to travel to the place and the cost of traveling there. Virtualization allows people to interact with each other without feeling insecure about the appearance. Virtual World may be a great experiment with life. An example is when a user of the virtual world is moving furniture around which may lead to a career in architecture. The cons of the virtual world would tie up technology. In order to set up a virtual world may be costly. If a user becomes addicted to the virtual world, they may lose connection with the social world.

Foster creativity would be a great plus to the virtual world. It allows users to use their creativity to collaborate from what they see in real life and incorporate that into the virtual world. I believe virtual world will continue to develop and the amount of users will increase. I believe the virtual will be more populated and there will be more servers to support them.

Social Networking Sites

Right now the most popular social networking site is Facebook follow by Twitter and Myspace. As Myspace started to decline, Facebook began to rise to the top. Facebook keeps everyone in touch with their friends and family. It is also a place to advertise. The news feed in Facebook allows others to socialize with each other. Facebook has information about a person like their relationship status, education, workplace and residence.

Myspace used to be one of the most popular social networking site. Myspace had a feature where you were allowed to list your top friends. Myspace allow the user to design their homepage unlike Facebook. The background theme could have been used as advertisement. In your homepage, you were allowed to set up a song for everyone to hear when they visit your page.  

Twitter is a social networking site that is getting more popular. People on twitter usually tweets about what is happening in their lives. This allows the followers to see what your personality is like and what is on your mind. If a person likes your tweet, they may re-tweet it.

Friendster is a social networking site I used to use. It is very similar to the previous social networking sites. The site allowed users to play online games which are different from Twitter and Facebook. People on Friendster socialize from forums and blogs which Facebook, Twitter and Myspace don’t offer.

Blog about Twitter

Twitter offers a very different experience than BB discussion and in-class discussion. Twitter only allows 140 characters which keep the “tweets” short and easy to follow. This is a concern for some people because they may not be able to tell their point of view with only 140 characters allowed by twitter. A BB discussion is more about a topic and people can post their responses in a detailed way. Twitter only allows a short response to someone post. In-class discussion only allows you to discuss a certain topic during the class time but you can discuss on twitter throughout the day. Twitter allows people to speak their mind and not a certain topic like a BB discussion and in-class discussion. Also, Twitter is more popular than blackboard so it is more accessible from portable devices like mobile phones.