BLOG: Next New

A New Media that doesn’t exist that I think should, is a projector from a phone. I know there were rumors and concepts about it from the upcoming smartphones, but I don‘t think one has officially came out yet. This is really useful because, lets say I want to show a group of a video and its nearly impossible for everyone to have a good view of the video. With a projector coming from my phone, everyone in the room can see it and it will make life that much easier. I hope smartphones come out with this feature soon because this will help me out a lot in the future because I constantly show my friends new funny videos from YouTube.

Wiki So Far

I have created a new page for the Baruch New Media website. The new page is New Media and Religion. It is meant to be a wiki that discusses the impact new media has had on religion. When I was first looking through the new media sections, I noticed that the purpose of each section was to discuss the various impacts new media has had on the different aspects of the world. Since religion in my opinion fits under this category, I felt that new media has more than likely made an impact on religion and so I created a page for it. I am currently its sole editor and contributor. I have provided background information of new media and its impact on religion.
I then gave examples of different new media formats and how religion is the center of attention in these formats, that is I gave examples of websites, social networking sites, and virtual communities.

BLOG: P2P

 File sharing is exactly what its words suggest, the sharing of computer files. File sharing occurs between people by one person create a file of some sort and then sharing it with his/her friend or family by either attaching it as an email, posting the files on a website that has a download link, sharing the file visibly as in a picture through a website, and so on so forth. This is the less controversial way of sharing files because you are sharing with someone you know and more than likely you are not sharing it to many different users. You could be sharing legal or illegal material, but on the other hand it is to a very limited amount of users. 

 P2P file sharing is the technological innovation of sharing files of any type (.mp3,.avi,.docx...etc) amongst users on the internet. Anyone can share their files by using a torrent software and a website that supports it such as btjunkie.org. Then anyone who accesses the website and comes upon the link to the file can download it and during the download this person will be uploading it to other users, which allows for a faster download time. This in contrast to the old days file sharing is the sharing of legal or illegal material to a wide range of practically limitless amount of users.

Some examples of P2P file sharing are dvd movies, music, textbooks, software, and the list is only limited to all the types of files out there. This leads to the legal aspect of P2P filesharing, which according to $1.5 Million Fine for Downloading 24 Songs http://baruchnewmedia.com/w/images/3/35/IllegalMusic.pdf may lead to an exorbitant amount of fine. However in the case aforementioned, the defendant was given three opportunities to have a significantly reduced fine in comparison to the $1.5 million fine. The point of the case though is that there are severe penalties associated with illegal P2P file sharing.

BLOG: Privac

As the internet and all its tools and platforms expand, so to does the realm of what can no longer remain private and confidential. Social networking websites by their very nature are meant for you to reveal information about yourself. The moment you create it, you understand that some of your personal information will be exposed online and even strict privacy settings can still expose your information to the internet. However, there have been new innovations to privacy settings on social networking websites like Facebook where they allow the user to prevent anyone from finding them and the only way they can have friends is by initiating the invitation themselves. There are settings that also allow you to choose what information is displayed to which users that are in your network. These innovations have given users a lot of leeway in what they can keep private, however some users still complain that there is not enough privacy settings and more need to be created. One privacy problem that exists is that if you have added a friend accidentally or on purpose into your network, that user can copy and save all your pictures and videos into their computer and then upload it back on to the internet when and where ever they choose to. This naturally would be something users would want to avoid happening to their profiles.

BLOG: Advice

This is the best advice I and anyone should give to Baruch College. Online classes are a good platform to learn and study. Students can conveniently and more efficiently learn their subjects this way. Also in the case where students may struggle with material, they can use social networking websites and forums to discuss these issues and educate each other. Also the professor can post material via websites, and give solutions to home works in forums. If we have substantial funding we can really get creative and create a virtual class using programs like Second Life and students can attend lectures there. The main suggestion to come across though is to create more online classes.

Blog: Creativity and New Media

For this homework assignment I decided to create an avatar thinking it would be the simpler and less time consuming option to making a YouTube video. Boy was I wrong. Creating an account on Second Life in itself is very time consuming (plus their site runs really slow). After entering some personal info like email address, DOB, and picking an avatar I was asked to download the program in order to customize my avatar. This right away annoyed me. I hate downloading unnecessary programs on my laptop especially when I am never going to use it again. Then, after finally seeing there was no way around this download business, I had to run the program to customize. That took FOREVER. Not sure if its that wifi’s fault or the program (although I did try running other sites which worked just fine) but that got me even more annoyed. Anyway, when I finally got on the program and was trying to change my avatar’s clothing, I also kept getting pop ups about upgrading to the paid version of Second Life. Um definitely not. … 

So all in all, what you see above is product of frustration and maybe 10% reflective of me. 

BLOG: CREATIVTY

Creativity is so versatile that it is no wonder people have been using Web 2.0 features to make original works or mix and mash works already in existence with their creative take. Enter Brooks Barnes' New York Times article titled "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But why?" where he writes about the popular phenomenon of mash-ups featuring Disney and Nickelodeon characters who are manipulated to look like they are singing or saying whatever the mash-up artist thinks they should. Although Disney is notoriously protective over their trademarked characters they seem to turn a blind eye towards a mash-up on YouTube featuring Winny the Pooh characters rapping to a Soulja Boy song. The author posits the question of why Disney does not request that YouTube administrators take it down. 

I think that Disney sees the power of YouTube and understands that things are changing due to Web 2.0 and that they need to relent, in some ways, on the tactics of old. After all, Nickelodeon who is owned by Viacom openly encourages mash-ups featuring their characters and one SpongeBob SquarePants mash-up has "been viewed more than seven million times!" That's potentially free advertising revenue coming into Nickelodeon and when it comes to business the bottom line is always the deciding factor. 

Here's one of my favorite SpongeBob mash-ups, SpongeBob and friends perform Slayer's "Raining Blood" (disclaimer: the views reflected at the very end of the video are not shared by me, that thing with the baby, but it's the best version I could find).