Creativity and New Media

This is called "Charac Chat" which is similar with Second Life.

I can meet my friends here.

This is my closet. I have a lot of clothing that I can dress up.

Also, I can choose my hair style.

Creativity

New media plays an important role in our life. One of them is that new media fosters creativity. For example, companies are able to differentiate their products or services to offer thier consumers. Accoring to Professor Hippel in the article "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers", he says consumers often come up with ideas for products, and companies wait on the sidelines to see if they have mass appeal. Companies have to figure out what the consumers wants or needs and have been the most active in relying on others to innovate for them. This is the large part because new media easily makes people being creative.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

A virtual world is a simulated 3-D environment where interaction takes place between avatars representing real people logged in. It is difficult to give a specific definition of a virtual world but most research agrees that virtual worlds have the following key characteristics. Its features are Shared Space, Graphical User Interface, Immediacy, Interactivity, and Persistence. It's using different feilds such as SecondLife, World Of Warcraft and Minecraft.

According to "In Room 100, It's Sid and Nancy All Over Again" by Saki Knafo and "I've Been in That Club, Just Not in Real Life" by Dave Itzkoff, both are in New York Times, talking about the second life. The human-like avatars in these ‘worlds’ can be customised to the extent of having body parts missing, disfigurements or bodies vividly coloured. The avatars are animated automatically and can be seen to look around – all of which add to the realism of the experience.

A virtual world offers major opportunities for enriching learning in the vocational training and education (VET) sector. Its 3-D perspective allows interaction in a very realistic way. Its 3-D perspective allows interaction in a very realistic way. One walks into buildings and undertakes activities. While photographs and videos can offer something of a similar experience, this is restricted by the photographer or video maker.
For newcomers, Second Life can be a little daunting. Whilst most students involved in the project took to it enthusiastically, some of the mature-aged students felt quite unsafe when not on the project’s private island. Strange avatars, conversations and activities were often confronting and sometimes disturbing. Whilst most regular and long-term Second Life residents strive towards a safe community within the world, there is an element among avatars which enjoys causing disruption and discomfort to others. There is a complex abuse report mechanism within Second Life and avatars are encouraged to report any abuse. Reports are investigated and offending avatars can be confined to what’s called ‘the cornfield’ for a set period.

I think that virtual worlds will be used a great deal of places like office, hospital or school in the near future. For example, a meeting can be held in virtual worlds. Every characters represent a real person. They can share their agenda or perspectives as well as a real meeting. Plus, I have met a girlfriend in the character chatting place which looks like the second life. Virtual worlds are very near to us.

Blog about Twitter

Twitter discussions are totally different that blackboard or in class discussions. First of all, Twitter discussions are much more limited. For example, we have to express our thoughts only within 140 characters. How can we express our thinking as 140 characters? It is impossible. In class discussions, there is no limit to speak.

Plus, in class discussion can allow the students to speak up their opinions and have an interactive face to face discussion of their perspectives with other the professor students. It gives the students to instant feedback.

Social Networking Sites

Facebook is the one of the most famous social networking site in the world. I have been using Facebook for about 1 year and I usually spend 1 hour on facebook everyday. I can communicate with my friends and find my friends' freinds. Facebook enables users to customize their personal privacy settings such as status, what they like and etc,.

 When I visited Myspace, I thought it looked like Youtube or HULU. A lot of videos are in the main page of Myspace. Also, I have to see an advertisement to watch a vedio and it is little bit slow. I don't like this website.

Twitter allows users to write short thoughts. Tweets limits only up to 140 characters typing. I think 140 length is not too much or short. It's easy to read and not going to be bored. Twitter's web page is very simple for the beginners.

Have you heard about Cyworld? Cyworld is so called Facebook in South Korea. You can buy songs to decorate your page. It also has avatars and "mini-rooms", small, decorate-able, apartment-like spaces in an isometiric projection also feature.

Social Networking

As I mentioned below, a social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

According to some professors in a Freakonomics Quorum, they think social networking technology has changed our lives for the better off, but also concern about dark side of social networking. For example, ther is a great deal of benefits of social networking such as they continue to be adopted by more diverse populations, providing a venue for online socializing, as well as for coordinating in-person meetings., and which made us more comfortable.
On the other hand, social networking also can devalue the meaning of “friend.” Furthermore, we can imagine this being a selfish and media-driven world in which everyone vies for attention and no one takes responsibility for one another.

According to Frank Langfitt's Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting, Social networking sites are affecting the labor market as well, because recruiters evaluating young professionals applying for jobs are now hacking into applicants’ profiles, and making hiring decisions based on profile photos in which applicants are drunk or inappropriately dressed.

Blogs vs. Wikis

New media is a broad term in Media Studies that emerged in the later part of the 20th century to encompass the amalgamation of traditional media such as film, images, music, spoken and written word, with the interactive power of computer and communications technology, computer-enabled consumer devices and most importantly the Internet.

Blogs are a new interactive way of posting your opinion. Bloggers not only communicate and provide the readers with personal news, but also information about business.


Wikis are a collaborative website that allows creation and editing of inter-linked web sites that can be directly edited by anyone that has access to it.  There are usually many authors, editors and contributors.

Blogs are also a new way for collaboration and recently through many blogs being posted it can also help catch criminals as told in the article, “Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid” Michael Wilson talks about how police were helped by a blog that mentioned drug trafficking which finally led to the Drug raid. Convergence is important in the new media because the new ideas are growing rapidly and we should catch it and utilize in the best way possible.