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.