Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

A virtual world is a computer based stimulated environment where allows multi-players to interact with each other. User can create a personal avatar and independently discover virtual world. 

Throughout the years, virtual world is mostly applied to games such as second life, the Sims,..  

Nowadays, virtual world can also be used in business environment as a communication tools between each other. The way we use it also indicates a part of our personality. In architecture, we can also applied this virtual world in sketching a model. For example, in the Sim allows users to build house in the way they want. Doing so can give a users of how the actual house looks in advanced.   

Besides that, virtual world stimulate the creative ability of human. It allows users to use it there ways. They can do whatever they want in this world that they can't do in the real world. In this virtual world, users are free to blow their mind. This is where we can release our stress and do the thing we want. There is not too much rules in virtual world compare to our real world, in other words, we can make our rule and we are the ruler :). Besides that, an article on WSJ Avatar II - the Hospital shows us that "Health-care facilities are discovering that practicing in virtual world can have a major benefit in real life".  This application of virtual world is very interesting, people can have the chance to practice their job and experience the feeling without existence patient. It can help hospital saves a lot of money in training their new staff.  
Those advantages of using virtual world may benefit the users, however, they do have their "black side". A research shows that, virtual world actually effects the way users behave in the real world. According to the article Virtual world may impact the real - world behavior "Researcher suggests that how you represent yourself in the virtual world of video may affect how you behave toward others in the real world". So, if you play game with too much violent actions, it can effect your behavior in a negative way. Also, virtual world is actually not the real world, however, there is some problem in this unreal world may cause bad result in real world. For example, you make friends in the virtual world and there is some problem between your avatar and your friend's avatar - it will not just be the problem in virtual world anymore! Anything has good and bad sides so we should use it in appropriate way :) 

Even virtual world has some disadvantage, we can also utilize its technical advantages to benefit the future of new media. I think with the constantly develop of virtual generation (pictures, videos), virtual world will have a bright future. It's just about time :)             

References:

Virtual wolrd may impact the real-world behavior.health24. http://www.health24.com/Mental-Health/News/Virtual-world-may-impact-real-world-behaviour-20140210

Avatar II - The Hospital. WSJ. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703909804575124470868041204 

Blog about Twitter

Discussion in twitter has some thing similar as well as different to blackboard discussion. Both of them allow user to comment on other user's posts. However, Twitter give users sensitive respond by sending directly notifications to users via app. Blackboard discussion requires user to login and it sometimes do not show notification to let users know about their post's status.

An in-class discussion is a direct-respond discussion which requires everyone to engage in the topic and need a direct response to question. We actually don't have enough time and source to fully respond to topic. In compare with twitter discussion, in-class discussion is more responsive. Twitter discussion don't require user to quickly reply to the tweet and easier to understand since it's not verbal discussion.

So in turn, about the responsive ability: in-class discussion > twitter discussion then blackboard discussion.

Social Networking Sites

Facebook 

Long time ago, I used to think that Social networking is Facebook. After taking New Media class, I changed my mind: Facebook is social networking and it is only one of a bunch social networking sites. Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites that used over the world and it actually changed my life. Back to about 7-8 years ago, when yahoo is in its time and 360 blog or blog plus are so popular, no one had ever thought that those sites would slowly disappear. But they did! And Facebook almost took over their place since then. Facebook is the combination of those sites where we can contact others, share our opinions or something interesting, interact with other people... Facebook brings everyone closer by making it easy to access and sending quick notifications to users. Now, you can even transfer money via Fb - what a revolution! Fb does has disadvantage, it makes your personal life becomes less personal as you thought. There is sometimes you can accidentally bring virus to your computer. However, the number of people start to use Fb probably never less then the number of people stop using it.

Twitter 

I figure out there are many differences between Twitter and FB. Twitter is also one of social networking sites. It allows users tweet with a maximum of 140 characters. That is the main different between the two sites. Besides that, even Twitter looks more simple than Fb, it's actually take my time to figure out how it works (by this, I mean FB is obviously easier to use for new users). The most comon thing you can see on Twitter is tweets while you can see a lot of pictures, videos on Facebook. The thing I like about Twitter is hasgtags which are the convergence of all the related topics which contain the same hashtag. For example, If you wanna find some information, conversation relate to our class, you can try hashtag #3810NET2.

Instagram 

Instagram is one of my favorite social networking sites. This site allows users to share photos (they offer you an app to edit your picture). Users likely to use pictures to tell their story. Nowadays, as most of teenagers are trying to stay away from Facebook because their parents are starting to use FB more, they most likely choose Instagram as a place to share their personal story. Instagram is a very personal place since they have a function for users to decide to set their accounts private or not. If you want to follow someone and they allow you to do so, then can see their Instagram.If not, there is no way you can see their information. This privacy function is the thing I like the most about Instagram. Instagram appears with a very simple template and easy to use function. Instagram-er also use Hashtag to converge their story the same way as Twitter and Facebook does. 

Youtube  

I personally think Youtube is a social networking site. Long time ago, Youtube is not listed in social networking site since it's just a place to share video. Nowadays, V-logger turns Youtube into a social netwroking site. According to Wikipedia, "V-log is a video blog or video log, usually shortened to vlog /ˈvlɒɡ/, is a form of blog for which the medium is video, and is a form of web television. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata". Nowadays, Youtube also adds more functions allow users to interact with other users by comment or like, .... Even Youtube havent had hashtag function yet. I believe it will update soon. 

      

    

Social Networking

Social networking can simply be defined as a network of social interactions and personal relationship. It is a dedicated website or application that enables users to interact/communicate with each other by posting, comments, sharing information,... Nowadays, social networking becomes familiar to all the generations. 

Here is the list of some popular social net working websites:

Facebook

Twister 

Instagram

Flickr

Google+  

Click here to figure out more 

In this information generation, social networking can be used in many perspectives. 

In business, most of companies use social networking as a marketing tools. According to Forbes in 25 ways to build your social media presence , "When it comes to social media, everyone wants in other action...  Not to mention the countless other little sites on the web today. Everyone wants to gain social media recognition for their business.". It's very normal when a company uses Facebook or other social networking to spread out their advertising campaigns. Every single company seems to have a social media account where most of their current activities are kept updating (includes news, promotions, events, ...). Social networking is not only used to marketing but also to evaluate company performance and collect customer information. It is one of the most important sources used in analyzing information. Besides that, social networking is changing business behavior as well as customer behavior. It shifts most of the business activities as well as business forms from offline to online. Nowadays, trading on social networking becomes the trend. Many people find a lot of money from social media everyday. For instance, youtuber earns a lot of money from their channels. 

Social networking is also a helpful tool for recruiters to find their potential talent employees as well as a place for the job hunter to seek for their dream job. It helps matching the demand - supply of jobs in our society. "Social networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting — ever." said Maureen Crawford-Hentz recruits for Osram Sylvania from Social Networking Technology boosts Job Recruiting.  One of the characteristics of social networking is it's the group of people have some comon interests. You can find jobs from social networking directly by job postings or indirectly by creating your social network with other people. Nowadays, most of charity organizations utilize social media as a place for fundraising activities. A lot of the activities benefit the society mostly host with use of social media.

In the nearly future, social media may overrule the internet. It is changing our world everyday. It changes the way we communicate, do business and it also effects political.    

Even though social media gives us a lot of advantages, they do have their "black side" that should be concerned. 

Security threat is one of the "black side" of social media that should be called in account. In this information generation, your information is never certain for a real security as you though. When using social networking, your information can be taken anytime and this may cause some unexpected problems to your personal life as well as to people around you! "With so many users, Facebook is a target for scams; it can also expose your personal information far beyond your group of friends." - according to Social Networking Threat  

One of the most popular victims of social media threat is teenagers. They may be the aim of Sexism, racism, and homophobia. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education - They're back and they're bad: Campus Gossip Websites "...some college administrators see controversies over gossip sites as a chance to talk about the damage that sexism, racism, and homophobia can do".

Not any specific websites, social networking is itself very dangerous.We should be careful when using it.

Everything has their opposite side since nothing is absolute. However, social media is not itself good or bad.  It's good or not depends on how we use it, so in order to improve our world, we should try to make things better and eliminate the bad behaviors by warning other or reporting it.  

Conferences:

Rampton, John. "25 Ways to Grow Your Social Media Presence." Forbes. Forbes, 29 Sept. 2014. Web. http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2014/09/29/25-ways-to-grow-your-social-media-presence/

"They're Back, and They're Bad: Campus-Gossip Web Sites," by Jeffrey R. Young, The Chronicle for Higher Education, Sept 4, 2009, p. A20+. Available at: http://chronicle.com/article/Theyre-BackTheyre-B/48220/

Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting by Frank Langfitt, NPR, March 16, 2008. available fromhttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6522523&sc=emaf

       

Blog vs Wiki

What is blog? 

Blog is a web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual or small group which is usually written in informal or conversational style. A blog is a frequently updated, can link to other articles and other web sites. 

According to Kathy E. Gill in "How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere?" , Primary characteristics of a blog include: 

"• Reverse chronological journaling (format) 

 • Regular, date-stamped entries (timeliness) 

 • Links to related news articles, documents, blog entries within each entry (attribution) 

 • Archived entries (old content remains accessible) 

 • Links to related blogs (blogrolling) 

 • RSS or XML feed (ease of syndication) 

 • Passion (voice)" 

What is Wiki? 

Wiki is the web page that allows multiple users to create, edit, modify and organize web page content in a collaborative manner.

Wikipedia defines Wiki as "A wiki (/ˈwɪki/ wik-ee) is a website which allows collaborative modification of its content and structure directly from the web browser. In a typical wiki, text is written using a simplified markup language (known as "wiki markup"), and often edited with the help of a rich-text editor.^[1] " 

Blog vs Wiki:

Here is the brief compare between Blogs and Wiki

Blog	Wiki
Usually managed by a single author.	Multiple authors (Users)
Entries posted is edited by author	Pages can be edited by a group or team
Chronological Content:            Comment on Posts            Responses to comments            Posts/ Entries	Pages:            Edited            Changed            Added
More about opinion sharing and posts become stale over the time	Knowledge sharing and constantly updated
Links to other blogs and outside	Link to other wiki pages
One to many communication	Many to many communication
Discussions takes places in type of comment and responses	Discussions can take place on pages or directly through editing

Convergence in today's networked world:

In today's networked world, convergence plays a very important role - Its where everything collides. The convergence of Media is a typical example. For long history, there are many old types of media from such as books, newspaper, journals, radios, televisions which are distinct technologies belonging to separate industries. .... nowadays, that such forms collides on internet. The combination of digitization and computer networking has resulted in the breaking down of these tradition media forms. The integration of all media, enabling the immediate and global exchange of every kind of content   

Blogs, used as a collaboration: 

We all know that the typical characteristic of wiki is collaborative manner by users; in contract, to blog, this characteristic is limited. However, blog can be used for collaboration like wiki but in the different ways. Comments section under the post can allowed other users to give their opinions or suggestions to the blog's author. It's not the directly way to count as collaboration but this way has collaborative characteristic as other users can distribute the knowledge to author - they do work together to improve the topic.. Another way is to give the authorizes many people so that they can access to the blog and modify the entries. 

Wiki and new uses

We can use wiki for online business forum where users are allowed to post there businesses (house rental, services, jobs, job seeking, ..). We can also use wiki to do survey or feedback/ getting information, -  where you can give a topic, ask a question and allows other people to distribute their answer as opinions. For example, if you wanna open and new business and you want to know the location most of the customer expect your business to be at, we can use wiki to do survey by asking question: "Where do you want our new store [your business] to be at ?" or you can organize a game by asking customer to guess the new location that your business will be at - By asking this question, customer will likely tell you their expected location, other customer can vote too. 

References:

1. Wiki. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
2. How Can We Measure the Influence of the Blogosphere? by Kathy E. Gill. Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem, May 2004. available from:http://faculty.washington.edu/kegill/pub/www2004_blogosphere_gill.pdf