Creativity

This is the age of user created content.  Social media is dominating the internet and most of the content on these social media websites are user generated.  Ideas are sprouted and shared around the world through the internet where new ideas grow.  Being able to share content with others through new media springs "what if" questions and leads to individuals or groups creating their own ideas to share with the internet.  In the article "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why", we see the birth of a widely popular mash-up on YouTube.  Being inspired by the rap song, the creators probably thought to themselves "what if" Disney characters were to rap and dance like they do in the rap video?  This further led to many other parodies showing up on YouTube.  Many other animated character have been part of the soulja boy mash-ups.  As new media continues to allow users to share their ideas instantly around the world, more people will continue to speculate on these ideas and begin to create their own.

Creativity and New Media

As I mentioned in my last post, the game Minecraft is the definition of creativity.  Like second world, you have an avatar and you interact with others in-game.  The difference is you not only control your avatar, but you create the world around you as well.  The screenshot below shows just a glimpse of what me and my friends have built, block by block.  Now that's creativity.
http://imgur.com/pDIjk

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are becoming more and more common as technology continues to advance and as more people are connecting into the internet.  Businesses are looking for innovative ways to connect their employees.  They have have many offices around the world and are looking for an innovative way to connect the offices.  Live chat  and e-mail have been here for a long time now.  They are effective ways of communication but imagine a form of communication that uses digital avatars to represent you.  In the article "Going to the virtual office in Second Life",  Tutton tells us that over 1400 companies are using the virtual world "Second Life" as a form of communication.  Not only do companies benefit from virtual worlds.  Individuals with disabilities can benefit because they are put into an alternative reality where they can do anything they can imagine.  In the article "Naughty Auties battle autism with virtual interaction" Saidi shows us how virtual worlds help battle autism within children.  The article states  "For people with autism, we've found it's a very nice way of setting up situations they might come across in their everyday lives.  For people who have social, emotional, communication problems we can get them familiar with an environment before they actually try it out in real life." This alternate world can be an amazing stress reliever removing yourself from the real world and into the digital world where you can relax and have fun.  With less responsibility and consequences in a virtual world, users imagination can run wild and creativity explodes.  Minecraft is a sandbox type game that is basically a huge digital lego box.  Within days, users are creating amazing structures.  Virtual Worlds and MMORPG's are not just all fun and games though.  Addiction can become a big problem as well.  People are sucked into these worlds that they forget that it is just an alternate reality.  They become extremely engulfed in their virtual world and avatar that some people even begin to have health problems. 

Articles Cited:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/28/sl.autism.irpt/index.html#cnnSTCText

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/28/sl.autism.irpt/index.html#cnnSTCText

Social Networking Sites

Currently, the most popular social networking site is Facebook.  Before Facebook became a social networking giant,  many were on Myspace.  I personally had a Myspace as well.  As a social networking site, it did well in keeping up with friends and being able to view their own unique profiles.  Myspace did a great job letting users create their own layouts using HTML coding.  This is one feature that Facebook lacks.  Each Facebook profile looks almost identical with the blue and white layout.  The new introduction of their "timeline" layout does improve on this letting users post a picture as a banner for their page.  Myspace lost my interest because it became infested with ads.  The ads were so overwhelming that it drove away many users.  Facebook capitalizes in this area with ad free (almost) social networking.  Twitter is another great social networking site with little advertising.  In my eyes twitter will always be just a "status update".  Without the other features that myspace and Facebook has, Twitter has become extremely popular because of it's simplicity.  As the widgets continue to grow on Twitter these one line "status updates" are become more and more dynamic.  One social networking site that isn't all that popular is BlogTV.  This site allows you to host your own free live video blog and other come into your chatroom and you can have interactions with them.  I think live video feed is a great idea but BlogTV won't ever be as big as Facebook will be.  It would be extremely interesting if Facebook adds a feature for live video streaming letting users who visit your page watch, and interact with you.

Blog about Twitter

Twitter, class discussion, and discussion on blackboard are much alike.  On Twitter, users are the equivalent to students in a classroom or users on blackboard discussion.  You are able to post opinions about a certain subject in real time and other twitter messages will receive that message just as if you were sitting in a classroom listening to a fellow classmate talk.  The twitter feeds update automatically and seamlessly without the need to refresh.  This provides another feeling of being in front of the person listening to them talk.  There are limitations to twitter as opposed to being in a classroom though.  Twitter allows you to only enter 140 characters per message limiting the amount of space you have to express your thoughts.  Although you can continue in a new tweet, it just seems to be a hassle an it may come out as an unorganized thought.  Blackboard discussions on the other hand do not limit you to the amount of characters you may enter but it does not provide the seamless refresh that twitter does.  For communication small thought through a digital world, Twitter is your best bet.

Social Networking

The power of social networking within a professional standpoint can be extremely beneficial yet also corrosive.  As a business, you want to have as much advertising as possible to be heard and known to advertise your product or service.  Because of this, there is no better form of advertisement than free advertisement such as word of mouth and word of click.  Expending advertisement to social media exposes your business to a whole new crowd that is virtually infinite.  As more and more people post about you or your product, the more exposure you obtain.  The potential growth of this is exponential.  As we see in the article "The Media Equation",  Obama's 2008 campaign reached out to Facebook for help raising money and earning support.  The article states:  “Other politicians I have met with are always impressed by the Web and surprised by what it could do, but their interest sort of ended in how much money you could raise. He was the first politician I dealt with who understood that the technology was a given and that it could be used in new ways.”  With this Obama was able to generate a database with millions of names of supporters who can be engaged almost instantly.
Social networking can also cause much problems when it comes to rating products and leaving feedback on products of services.  In the article "Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom?", Kostakos says "If you have two or three people voting 500 times, the results may not be representative of the community overall."  This kind of interaction with the site will most definitely skew the reviews one way.  It seems as if voting habits play a big role in whether to trust reviews or not.  A big company who relies heavily on this voting system is Amazon.  Because of the problem that may occur when it comes to rating products and writing reviews,  Amazon began letting users rate the review on its helpfulness.  

Articles Cited
The Media Equation
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/business/media/10carr.html?_r=1

Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom?
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/23477/?a=f

Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and Wikis can both give extremely vital information on a subject that you are looking up.  Both blogs and wikis have content that is user generated which can provide an extreme amount of information.  There is a key difference between blogs and wikis though.  The main difference is that blogs can provide opinionated biased posts where as on wikis, you would not want that.  Wikis are known as a go to place for facts and not what peoples are.  As stated in the article "Wikipedia: No Longer The Wild West", Caterina Fake purposed if there were no guidelines and no content management, wikis would devolve into chaos.  I see wikis more as an online encyclopedia and blogs more as journal entries.  These journal entries express ones feelings and usually come with a comment section where other users can express how they feel about the topic posted.  Unorganized opinions on wikis would not be allowed.  This is seen in the article "Pentagon Keeps Wary Watch as Troops Blog."  The blog the troops kept expressed their feelings and thoughts about war.  These posts would not be allowed on a Wiki due to the fact that a post may sway the public into a biased opinion.  Wikis are not suppose to evoke but instead provide information.  They are both extremely important this day and age because it allow us to gather information easily and effectively.  Whether we want an extensive knowledge base or different views on a product or subject, we can easily get this information on a variety of blogs or wikis.

Articles Cited
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/26/wikipedia.editors/index.html?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/us/09milblogs.html?ref=politics