SOMEONE ELSE'S TERM PROJECT PRESENTATION

The project I would like to talk about is Jennifer Wong's project on Gold Farming. Ever since I started college I haven't spent a lot of time playing a lot of video games, but I love video games. Anyways, Jennifer's project on Gold Farming is about how countries such as China, Philipines, and Malaysia , hire people to play MMORPGs in order to generate virtual gold and then sell it for actual money. I looked up some exchange rates and I saw one site selling 500 gold for $6.50. Now I'm not even sure if the website I found comes from people who exploit the practices of gold farming, but I'm sure this is an average exchange rate.

The working conditions of these Gold Farmers is comparable to that of a sweat shop. Long hours, low wages, and unsanitary sleeping and eating conditions. The people hired to play are forced to work 12 hours a day with little or no breaks. And what's worse is that they cannot even escape because they give up their citizens card.

I particularly liked this project because it was video game related and like I said I like video games. I thought Jennifer did a great presentation; it was clear, concise, and interesting.

Youtube will ruin your grades!!!

As college students I know we're all pretty busy people(at least most of us), sitting in front of the computer working/studying for tests, papers, and projects. And as a college student I know we all get pretty distracted just even sitting in front of the very tool that's used to prepare for these tests, papers, and projects, the computer. We can't help it sometimes. I find myself looking at youtube, online shopping, and fmylife most of the time, even when something is due the very next day. The funny thing is I don't even like youtube or online shopping that much (with the exception of fmylife), but I can't stop visitng these sites before something important is due the next day. Does this happen to anybody else? What websites "distract" you?

My Presentation

My presentation was about how organizations use second life. I talked about how Second Life has been used as a tool to help achieve goals for teachers, businesses, and interest groups. I started off by giving a basic description of Second Life, its currency, it functions, and its prices. After I talked about how teachers, businesses, and interest groups use SL. I didn't want to hold the class up as they knew after I finish they'll get to leave class so I didn't show the whole clip of the video. Either way I believe they got the point without me having to waste their time. I believe I gave an affective presentation overall.

Swine Flu

This morning on the radio I heard that a Queens school had cases of the swine flu. Queens is a fairly large part of New York City so I didn't think much about it. But when I found out that the school was a close to my home, I was surprised and a little scared. This virus came at a very unfortunate time. This virus has probably been around for a month, within this one month time span many students from all over the U.S. have gone to Mexico for their spring break vacation, which is how these students at the school were infected.

The swine flu is a strain of the influenza(Flu) virus that originated In Mexico. And what's scary about it is that influenza such as the swine flu, is very easily spread and can cause death, but not to worry it is treatable. In case you are worried, I found ways to protect yourself on Wikipedia.

"Recommendations to prevent infection by the virus consist of the standard personal precautions against influenza. This includes frequent washing of hands with soap and water or with alcohol-based hand sanitizers, especially after being out in public. People should avoid touching their mouth, nose or eyes with their hands unless they've washed their hands. If people do cough, they should either cough into a tissue and throw it in the garbage immediately or, if they cough in their hand, they should wash their hands immediately.

Some physicians in the US are recommending the use of masks when in public.^[84] The purpose of a face mask is to effectively cover a person's mouth and nose so that if a person is around someone who is infected, there is a decreased likelihood of transmission. Recommendations to protect against the avian flu indicated that using a face mask with a rating of N99, N100 or P100 in the United States or a rating of FFP3 in Europe should be effective in protecting against transmission.^[85] While face masks with these ratings provide 99% or greater efficiency in protecting against flu transmission, N95 or FFP2 face masks provide about 94% efficiency.^[86] N95 and FFP2 rated face masks may therefore also be effective."

I know wearing those masks will probably make you look silly, but it'll save your life and a lot of trouble.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30398682/

OUR CLASS WIKI - SO FAR

In my attempt to contribute to the class wiki i tried to start a page. My assigned wiki page was New media in Politics. I have read a lot during the elections on how politicians have tried to reach voters, and one of the methods was to use social networking sites such as facebook and myspace. In researching the topic, I did the typical google search, but i also used the Baruch library database, and found a lot of good articles.

I find that the class wiki is very unorganized. For instance in my assigned page New media in politics, I see a section in the middle about how President Barack Obama had used new media in the elections, after that there is a section on international politics and New media, and after that there is again another section on how Obama used new media. So other than just trying to post sections and pages onto the class wiki, I wanted to help edit and organize the information within the page.

ADVICE TO BARUCH COLLEGE

Blogs
If there was a Baruch blog, students can utilize the blog to discuss general topics, ask questions, etc. Also there can be course specific blogs related to Baruch, such as a CIS, English, accounting courses blogs. Blogs are also a good way for students to get to know each other, which i think is a good method of getting to know one another for socially challenged people.


Second Life
Virtual worlds have been a big success as a method of teaching students. Colleges such as Harvard has used second life to host class room discussions, debates and other class activities, and has proven quite successful. Baruch could use virtual worlds in similar fashions that otehr colleges has used them and also Baruch can easily build its Virtual Vertical Campus building since the Interior of the VC building is almost identical at every floor.

Old VS. New

New media has 5 important characteristics called the 5 C's
Communication
Collaboration
Community
Creativity
Convergence

Youtube for example allows users to communicate with via comment box, message box, and even video responses. People have gotten together from all over the world to do some sort of video collaboration. Here's one of my most favorite collaborations.


But collaborations don't necessarily have to take place in one room, such as this collab: Youtube Madlibs.


And community wise, the community in youtube is exactly like a community you can find in the the area around your neighborhood. You know ,laughing with one another, and fighting with one another, here is an example from the youtube page of the new transformers trailer.
Flash11l19 (1 day ago)
Die motherf*****
Christopherno1 (1 day ago)
lol grow up kid and get a brain
xerpent888 (1 day ago)
f*** you motherf*****! do you know how to make a good movie a**hole?
vangelisxcbuy (1 day ago)
this will be epic
trumpxcard (1 day ago)
effin agree with you.

Don't use just feel the love within this community!!!!!

And typically a media has to be digital and a website to be considered New Media. A newspaper, a book, or tv does not count. If a website does not have one of the 5 C's it might not be considered a new media.

MODELING REALITY WITH VIRTUAL WORLDS

Virtual Worlds are becoming a popular tool for organizations to use in todays world. Universities such as Harvard, Texas State, and Stanford are using second life as a way to simulate an actual, and physical classroom. They use it to teach, in a more interesting and interactive ways.

Virtual worlds offer users the ability to interact and communicate in ways that aren't possible with other applications or internet sites such as facebook, or instant messaging. With a character that represents the user, called an avatar, users are able to personalize and have fun with creating their avatar to show others. People have actually made money on virtual worlds such as second life, by creating clothing for avatars they are able to sell it to users for real money.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

Social Networking is just another means to keep people connected. It could be people you know or people you would like to know. Corporations can use social networking applications or websites to keep the workers always in reach of each other incase they need to contact one another. My initial reason for signing up for facebook was not because my friends were using it or because i'm just following the trend, but because I know in college it's hard to do good unless you make friends with your classmates and ask for help, and with facebook, it made it really easy. THANKS FACEBOOK!!!!

To me Virtual worlds would be an evolved form of social networking websites. If you could somehow merge facebook and secondlife together... I don't know, you think of the possibilities.

MY NEW MEDIA CLASS - SO FAR

Blogs, Wikis, Virtual Worlds, and P2P. These are just some of the technologies that are classified as new media. They are all related to the internet, that is why without the internet, what we call "New Media" would not exist, but that of course is the obvious. The internet has given us new means to spreading information in extremely creative ways.

New media has enhanced the old media we use now by making everything more interactive, and collaborative. It's hard to talk about a news article in the news paper with others, but with New Media it is very easy to express one's thoughts and emotions about news just by posting on a blog, or a website.

BLOGS vs. WIKIS

A Wiki is more like a database of information that is written objectively. It is written and can be edited by any user. There are many specific Wiki's such as the Harry Potter Wiki or the Lord of the Rings Wiki(the one wiki to rule them all) that specialize in information that pertain to each wiki. They will typically only have pages that relate to the wiki's topic. You wouldn't find a page of Ron Weasely on the Lord of the Rings Wiki and visa versa.

Blogs on the other hand, are used in many other ways. Blogs can be informative, but the content is usually of personal matters. A blog typically contains an opinion of one single author and cannot be edited by others. Some use blogs as a diary, or some use it to keep people informed about events that are happening to them. Just like wikis, there can be specialized blogs that usually have information pertaining to one general topic. Motley moose specializes in politics and has a community that can write on its page. Users collaborate to post events and information and opinons on politics

CHECKING OUT SOME SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, are all social networking sites that aim to connect people all around the world.

Facebook was first designed exclusively for college students. You wouldn't expect to find people that aren't in college or did not go to college. After awhile, Facebook started to look more like Myspace, First Facebook decided to make its page available to the public. After that, random friend requests started pouring in from people i didn't even know. My female friends in particular would recieve on average 5 friend requests from people they didn't know. Now I'm not sure if that's normal for other social networking sites, but to me Facebook wasn't meant to be like that.

Also they started to create applications for Facebook, similar to myspace. So now i have my friends, my 11 year old cousins, people i don't even know, sending me virtual flowers and cards, asking me to take online quizzes to see if I'm dumb, and many other silly things. Nevertheless the site still has the best design, it is very easy to navigate and very clutter free. I'm sure once people find out that employers check employees Facebooks, that they start to remove their "how dumb are you quizzes" from their pages.

Myspace, the social networking site where you have a page, and behind that an annoying background that has way too many colors, people posting videos, pictures, advertisemnts, and just the most annoying things that make your myspace page 100 feet long.
Myspace i would have to say is used by many stalkers. There are people who friend just about anyone and everyone. Particularly men who friend all the pretty women they find on Myspace. One good thing i would say about myspace is that they allow unknown Musicians to be heard. So if you're trying to get your name out there you can put up a sample of your music and events of upcoming shows.

One thing i noticed about Friendster is that when searching for people there is one thing that stands out under each name, relationship status. That to me made Friendster like a combination of Facebook and a match.com. You might say "great that's like two sites into one!", but who actually likes to admit they've been on eharmony or match.com, not that i have anything against people who do.

WARNING - Will make you Hungry!

Whenever a day like valentines day, or an anniversary comes around, I typically like to do something very sweet for my significant other. Of course, rather than buying jewelry or an Ipod which isn't that "meaningful", and other than the fact that I'm poor, I tend to rather do something memorable and meaningful, such as cooking dinner. I'm no professional cook, but I like to cook try and cook fancy meals at the least, and a website i usually check for the best recipes (which is "coincidentally" related to New media) is FoodGawker.

White Chocolate Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies

Oreo Brownie

Food Gawker, according to their website,

"...is a gallery where food bloggers can showcase their food and photography skills. It's a place for you to discover new sites, dishes, recipes and ingredients to inspire your own cooking..."

This community of food connoisseurs and photographers link their pictures and recipes straight from their own blogs or a website. And just like other community sites, you must first create a user name to submit recipes. There are pages and pages of recipes which or organized just like a blog in reverse chronological order. They have everything from entrées to desserts and recipes from different countries such as France and India. And the pictures are very amazing to look at and it always makes me hungry =)



Sausage and Spinach Stuffed Shells

Sleek Macaroni and Cheese

So if you're into cooking or you need ideas for a dinner you should definitely check out this site. and if you're interested in cooking dinner for me. I'm a Capricorn and I love long walks on the beach. lol....

New Media and Food (Wiki)?

What is New Media?

Wiki's, Blogs, Facebook, etc. These are examples of the types of new media that is popular right now. While there is no exclusive definition for New media, it is the term to describe an emerging development of things that are digital, computerized and networked. A similar term to New Media is the term Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is using the internet's capabilities to enhance creativity of how material and information circulates the web. New media and Web 2.0 share the characteristics of having a network and dynamic.

Term Research Project Description

Topic: How Organizations use second life to run activities and events.

Description: Many well known colleges and organizations use second life to host some kind of event. Retailers such as American Apparel, Dell, Best Buy and many more have a virtual store inside second life. The makers of Second Life, Linden Labs works with colleges and organizations to teach them how to become familiar with the benefits of Second Life's virtual world.

If you don't know what Second Life is: http://secondlife.com/whatis/

Welcome!



ONE DAY THE VIRTUAL WORLD SHALL BE MINE!!!!!!




AHOY MATE!