Creat ivity and New Media

I could say this is the hardest assignment in the whole class! Apparently I just found out trying to be creative is really hard when you don't know what to do. So I decided to go with the easy task and create an avatar on Second Life since I have been itching to do so ever since I heard about it.

To start this off, here's my avatar:

I noticed there really isn't a lot of customize options for you to pick such as changing your hairstyle, facial details, color, and etc. Since I used to play this rpg game called "PerfectWorld" where I can customize every feature of the avatar from the face to the body. PerfectWorld is a massive online role playing game where it is similar to WoW (World of Warcraft) but it's free to play.

My avatar in "WOLF MOUNTAIN SKI RESORT":

Another thing about the graphic that seemed so familiar to me is the fact that there's another RPG called "Runescape" which have similar graphic design to SecondLife.

So far from how I tried SecondLife, I couldn't see what's so popular with this game since visiting places you have never been is great. But I would rather go there in reality and experiences it for myself instead of looking at it through a computer screen.

Creativity

Like what I mentioned in my previous post regarding "Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds", Second life foster creativity since you can create your own second life on their server and you can do whatever you want with your avatar on it. This will lead to people trying out things that they never had a chance to in their real life. Another new media that we used in class is twitter. You may ask how twitter foster creativity? According to "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers" Twitter are outsourcing the design of the website to its users. So this gives everyone a chance to change Twitter into something they like or prefer. It would lead to new ideas that would satisfy a lot of people since they're the one using it so they know what they want and how they want it.


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

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

          The topic of today's blog is "Virtual Worlds." But before we start talking about virtual worlds, we have to ask ourselves the question "What are Virtual Worlds?" Virtual Worlds are online communities that exist only on the internet. Users can interact with each other on these virtual worlds. These worlds can have a genre of being a game or even to the point of being business related. When I saw this topic of virtual world, I immediately knew what I'm going to write about. I'm going to write about "Second Life" which I have just recently heard of in my cis2200 class. It's amazing on how I only just found out about "Second Life" since it have been out for around 5-6 years and it is popular among everyone. Second Life is a online 3D virtual world where users can interact and socialize with each other. Now it have been developed to the point where businesses are going virtual.
           There are many pros and cons of virtual worlds. Virtual worlds can also foster creativity which I will get to in the next sentence. According to the article, "Toys with a Second Life" by Brian Hindo, companies are making little plush animals that come with codes that activate an online version of the toy in a virtual world. This is an example of how virtual world foster creativity. You would think to yourself, who would spent money on virtual things? Apparently in this case, people do spent money on things that they can't physically touch. This lead to the article, "Going to the virtual office in Second Life" by Mark Tutton, where businesses can have virtual offices. Parmar recently held a meeting with 12 technical leaders from across Europe and Asia by using the new Sametime 3D instead of flying everyone to a central location. This will show the pros of virtual worlds since it allow businesses to save money, time and energy to have international meetings in virtual worlds. However, there are also the negative effect of virtual worlds, since from time to time, we would have these "addicts" that neglect their real life and focus entirely on their virtual life. My friend told me that he read an article that an Asian couple neglected their nine months baby just to be in a cybercafe on Second Life taking care of their virtual baby. Of course, the real nine months baby died due to neglects. It's amazing to see how people can just throw away their real life for a virtual life.


Sources cited:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_53/b4065091329372.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/11/05/second.life.virtual.collaboration/index.html

Blog about Twitter

In my opinion, I still like posting on BlackBoard discussion board rather than having a Twitter's discussion. Having a discussion on Twitter confuses me, since I can't really directly view the conservation between classmates and join in with my own opinion since I would have no ways to search up what they have been talking about without missing any relevant things. While comparing Twitter to an in-class discussions, I would have to say Twitter is more of one to one while an in-class discussions is one to many.

Social Networking Sites

          The following social networking sites that I will be talking about in this post are Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and Xanga. All of these are social networking sites that were once or still popular among us. In my opinion, Xanga is one of those social networking sites that died. Xanga is a blogging site like bloggers.com. Facebook, Myspace and Twitter on the other hand, are still relatively popular among us. But it seem like Myspace is dying out as well.
          I'll start off with Twitter, Twitter's interface and usability is simple and you can get the up-to-date twitters the moment you log in. I don't particularly like Myspace due to their interface since it's messy and unorganized to Facebook. I guess that's one of the reason why I moved on from Myspace to Facebook. In my opinion, Facebook is so far, the best social networking site out there due to it's simplicity and usability.

Social Networking

          Social Networking is one of the new items that we considers to be a new media. Blogging is not social networking so www.blogger.com is not a social networking site. Social Networking sites are Facebook, Myspace, Twitters, and etc. According to "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting"

by Frank Langfit, Professional recruiters recruits/scout people using Social Networking.

Maureen Crawford-Hentz is one of those recruiters that scouts recruits for Osram Sylvania. She stated that
"Social networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting — ever." It changed how recruiters scout people in today's era. It improved it to be more efficient and effective than before.
          However one of the benefits to society is that Social networking technologies improved and changed the way recruiters scout people in today's era. It also came with a price. There is a dark side of everything. The dark side of Social networking technologies is privacy loss. According to the article "Who Cares About Facebook Privacy? Students Do" by Marc Perry, students do care about their privacy. According to the researchers, students and other Facebook users manages their privacy setting to an extents. I can imagine that as time passes on, I can see Social networking technologies as a threat to our privacy since pretty soon, we will have sites that can look up all our information with just a click.

Sources used:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/who-cares-about-facebook-privacy-students-do/25877