Creativity and New Media

I downloaded an Avatar Social App called IMVU which provide us with different social experience by customizing your look and meet other. This is the first ever app I have seen in which you could chat with other avatars in 3D. To get started, I downloaded the app and next thing you have to do is to customize your avatar by trying clothes, select the hairstyles you like and change up your look constantly. You can also position you avatar with different poses and post it publicly where your friends or other users can comment on it.

Creativity

One of the most revolutionizing invention is the emergence of New Media. It has totally changed the concept of how people used to interconnect. The concept of new media has emerged some amazing ideas and concepts that people would not have imagined before. As an example it has revolutionized the way companies used to advertise their product/services. The emergence of technology has fostered creativity for businesses to advertise and reach their audience. For example, a lot of organizations deliver their advertisements via snapchat, facebook, twitter, youtube and various other apps. Unlike before when mostly there was focus upon only Television commercials their medium of communication has gotten more creative as it directly reaches the consumer. According to the article "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers"companies rely upon what users have to say and then the deliver the product based upon comments and reviews they get from people. This consumer oriented approach is less risky for companies as they already know what people want. The product delivery has gotten more creative as companies can easily alter their product/service specification based on what the consumer needs. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/technology/internet/26twitter.html

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual world is an environment that allows users to construct settings online using video game like characters called avatars. The avatars survive on the 3-D worlds over the internet and live like just normal people do i the real world. According to the article "Naughty Aunties battle autism and virtual interaction" virtual worlds can be used to counter autism. For someone facing autism it gets difficult to interact with people socially, virtual worlds can autism patients to interact with others. A user can sit at the comfort of their couch and still be an active member of the virtual world out. The idea of virtual world sounds really cool and it can be used in various ways. For example students in a MBA program can have virtual world interaction with leaders of different companies to negotiate a deal. It could also be used as a collaboration tool to share ideas from different people around the globe. Users should also be careful of the pros and cons of the Virtual world. According to the article "Virtual world may impact real-world behavior"  just five minutes of role-play in virtual environments as either a hero or villain can easily cause people to reward or punish anonymous strangers. Some of the pros of virtual world is that it helps connect people and it also establishes effective communication. These two are key elements that can foster creativity. For example different people across the world can share different ideas for problems such as reducing crime and build up a virtual world where these ideas are implemented. With this approach different creative minds would be working on an issue and various solutions can be implemented and executed using virtual worlds. There are also some cons that needs to be considered such as the high cost and the fact that the technology is still experimental. It costs a lot amount of money to build this technology and the technology is still in a experimental stage, which means there are only speculations about how these would turn out to be in the future. I think in the future there may be some extensive improvements in the use of virtual worlds. It is possible to become part of class room or maybe even cars would be equipped with virtual world technologies to make the experience more memorable. However a lot of companies would venture investments in these worlds resulting in implication of virtual reality in everyday gadgets such as cellphones.


http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/28/sl.autism.irpt/index.html#cnnSTCText

http://www.health24.com/Mental-Health/News/Virtual-world-may-impact-real-world-behaviour-20140210

Blog about Twitter

A twitter consists of short discussion of ideas that can be tweeted anytime. The conversation has be short and precise of about 140 words. The comments are backed by hashtags that are easy to navigate to reach to a particular conversation. A BlackBoard discussion is nowhere near a twitter discussion. The discussion board is not backed by hashtags and it is not as easy to navigate. I would say the biggest difference is the twitter app. On BlackBoard to view or comment on discussions every time I would have to login to my blackboard account, whereas on twitter the mobile app makes it much easier and a lot more quicker to respond. On the hand an in class discussion is a direct live interaction with classmates. We do not have to sit behind our phone screens and read and analyse a discussion before commenting on it. It is instant and allows different ideas to flow in a short period of time.

Social networking sites

Personally I do not use a lot of social media websites. It has been recent that I had created a twitter account and so far it seems really cool. The best part I like about twitter I like is short conversations and topics that can trigger ideas. It is a short and efficient way of communicating important information is short sentences (140 words). I also visited Facebook and that is a totally different platform where basically a person actually lives in a virtual world. You can post/share anything you want. Also with a wider variety of options often makes it difficult to navigate the website. Another famous social media platform is called Instagram. Majority of the audience on Instagram is under 30's. Instagram is about images/pictures. Users post their pictures and based on their popularity they gain followers. Besides these websites there is a networking website that targets a niche marker, called LinkedIn. This is a platform that specifically targets professionals of different backgrounds to network with each other. This is unlike any other social media, it has specific criteria to match professional and recruiters.

Blog Social networking

Today people interact with each other more on social media than in person. Social networking has enabled people to interact with each other like never before. We do not have to setup meetings in person but instead the world has become a global village, where everyone is virtually connected. The use of social networking is evident today. Most of the companies today setup interview over Skype. They even reach out to candidates for jobs through linked in. The rise and rise of Facebook has become a platform for companies to reach out to audience like never before. Just an advertisement on Facebook can reach out to a wide variety of people in a very short time. A lot of corporations from multi national to small businesses have taken advantage to connect with people to sell their product/service. In the article Facebook search: Facebook adding search feature, Facebook search would allow advertisers to target specific groups according to their needs that would be interested in their product/service. There are a variety of benefits of that social networking has caused to the society. It has consolidated the globe into one single platform where users post, share and comment on ideas of each other. It has some great benefits on job recruiting, job searchers do not have to run after companies any more. The use of linked in has open doors for recruiters to reach out the candidates who are suitable for a job description. According to the article "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting", a groups of job candidates can be scouted in just half an hour. This saves time and money to reach out to different candidates through a different platform. But obviously everything comes with a good side and a bad side. Social networking has also made people victim of privacy issues. We have our entire life posted online and its open to public. Many people have been a victim of privacy issues where explicit content has been leaked online. There is a great potential on how these technologies can be evolved in the future. I personally think that in the future our online classes might be conducted on social media websites like Facebook. I also think that we will be in a wearable tech zone in the future, there are already smart watches that connects us to the world without using our computer devices. There should be more of wearable technology with video context that could make interactions more attractive between people.  





http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-01-15/news/chi-facebook-01152013_1_ceo-mark-zuckerberg-social-network-long-term-money-making-prospects

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf

Blog v Wiki

Blogs are weblogs that connects the person who posts the blog (the blogger) to the reader. It is a way in which information can be shared with the audience. This could be a personal interest for example a person can post a blog about photography. This would create interest of readers who would respond back to these blogs through comments. This creates a two way communication.
On the other hand Wikis are web content that can be created, modified and organized by multiple users. Wikis are web pages where multiple users can post, delete or view content on a web page simultaneously. Wikis are mostly collaborative where as blogs are not very collaborative. It allows multiple users to share knowledge whereas through a blog a single user shares opinion. In today's interconnected world, where information flows across the globe with click of a button. Blogs and Wikis have converged sharing information with click of a button. We no longer wait for morning news anchors to provide us with the daily dose of whats going around the world. But instead we have converged into the diverse web network to gain information. According to the article "How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere?" some analyst suggest blogs are to become the next generation opinion/editorial page. This is a a big step of collaboration and convergence as there is no need for a platform such as a NEWS network to communicate information. All that is required is a Internet connection and computer/mobile device. Blogs can be a work great for collaboration as it creates a two way stream between the blogger and the readers. An example is evident in the article "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid" where local residents of a neighborhood in Brooklyn turned words into action. It started with a blog about a suspicious drug activity that attracted readers to comment and collaborate with the ongoing situation.  As a result of which a successful drug raid was achieved. Similarly today it could be used in different neighborhood to minimize illegal activities, by collaborating bloggers with readers of similar interest.
I think a different way to use wiki today would be to make the wikis more mobile and user friendly. This can be done by enabling video/audio content to be added to wikis. This would allow those with visual impairment to also use wikis and it can reach a wider audience with a much attractive user content.

https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxiYXJ1Y2huZXdtZWRpYXxneDozZTliYzM1NjU0ZWQ1NjVi

https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxiYXJ1Y2huZXdtZWRpYXxneDo3MTQzZTUwNzE4YmU3ZDJk