Next New

Media is always changing and society is changing with it. Nowadays people are more technological-friendly and are always looking for ways to facilitate their lives using media and technology. 
In an effort to help people interested in fitness, stay active and on top of their workouts and eating habits, I think a the development of a virtual GYM app would be great. The mobile app would be a platform where people can find fitness coaches, professional nutritionists or even fellow fitness driven individuals. Within the app, online coaches and nutritionist would get paid for providing fitness routines and diet planes to the users without having to schedule a in-person consultation. That would be a good way for fitness professionals to increase their business and community virtually.
Users would be able to interact with each others and share workout ideas, diet tips and their goal progresses. This app would be available all around the world so that people can look for a find fitness professionals that speak their own languages and join their workout groups - this would be helpful for people that would like to meet new people that share their interest for fitness and even motivate each other- it would be like having workout partners anywhere you are.

Wiki So Far

I have not yet contributed to our class wiki. However, I'm planning on contribute using my research about social media and its involvement in politics and democracy. I'm also in the process of researching a little be more about media and traveling. I'm really interesting in the creation of my own travel blog and I think the creation of it and the research of the topic itself could be an efficient way to contribute to our wiki class.

Blog: P2P

By definition, file sharing is the action involving the exchange of files and documents. While P2P filesharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. Waht the P2P technology does is to enable users share digital content by searching other computers with the same P2P technology that have the content the user is looking for.

In the New York Times article "Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Studios", the authors Brian Stelter and Brad Stone give us a P2P filesharing real example that involved the piracy of one of the most famous Warner Brothers films of all times, "The Dark Knight". Despite the antipiracy efforts Warner Brothers had taken to avoid illegal copies of the film be shared and reproduced, still millions of copies of the film were downloaded that same year. The file sharing technology used to share digital files such as movies, songs and TV shows is often a P2P technology called BitTorrent according to the article.

Some other examples of the P2P filesharing technology are BearShare, LimeWire and eMule.

Privacy and new media

The use of social media has increased dramatically in the las few years. Individual and businesses use social media platforms to share ideas, events and even to promote content. However, with the increase of social media use, the privacy risks associated to these sites have also increased. 

The increased user base of social networking sites, have tempted them to ask for more and more data for better user-base management. This data is a significant source of income for the sites, because this data is sold to advertisers. Nowadays, networking sites have become such big brands that people take their information security for granted. Availability of personal info is an opportunity for scam artists, identity thieves, and stalkers to use user’s info in a way that’s harmful. Even the Facebook messages which people use so carelessly is not end to end encrypted.

Fake debt collectors, account hacking, stalking and harassment are some of the privacy issues with the use of digital media.

Advise

As a media advisor at Baruch College I would first research the current media resources Baruch utilizes and analyze how these resources are or have been beneficial to the institution.  Next step would be to determine what sources have to be eliminated, added and what needs to be improved. Suggestions to improve the College using new media would be as follow: -Implement the use of blogs and social media to allow a fast and accesible way for alumni and general public to be involve in the campus activities. 

-Creat a mobile app for Baruch alumni and staff to help them interact better with one another and be informed of any events, announcements and schedule modifications of concern.

-Offer workshops when available to students to engage them in social media use as a tool for clearer and faster communication 

-And incentive students to join the social events at a discounted price if they follow/engage in social media activities such as following/liking or sharing information on their social media accounts.

Blog: Bog v Wiki

Blogs and wikis are both information sharing platforms that are available to anyone. However, the main difference between blogs and wikis is who the authors are. Blogs are created and run by individuals- the author of a blog is the one who decides what is being shared and how. Blogs are well known to have a more personal approach in terms of the information being shared.
Whereas, a wiki is a collaborative sharing platform that is more useful than blogs in terms of collaborative information between groups (eg. corporations and interest groups), in which every member gets to share information or even to edit existing info created by others as well.

In a blog, the author is generally allowed to post whatever they want. Whereas in wikis this is not always the case. According to Cohen on " Wikipedia to Limit Changes to articles on People" in 2009, wikis' "flagged revisions" feature will only allowed contributions to be added after they were revised by a volunteer editor. Cohen also states that millions of Americans visit Wikipedia every month. Therefore, flagged revisions would actually help prevent anonymous users from creating false content and/or from editing existing information with irrelevant, sometimes unreliable data.

Blogs, that are more personal than wikis, could also make a difference when it comes to the information being shared. In his article "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid", Michael Wilson explains how a blog actually helped lead to drug raid because users where sharing their personal thoughts and talking about what was happenings in the Bay Ridges' streets.

It can be said that both blogs and wikis can make it a lot easier for people to share and receive information.

Social Media and Politics: Contributing or Ruining Democracy?

I chose to do my project on "Social Media and Politics: Contributing or Ruining Democracy?".

I believe this is a very interesting topic to discuss, especially in today's world where digital media and social networking is available to almost everybody. I plan to start off by providing some background information on how social networking had changed and how its use has increased over time. Then I would discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the use of social networking in politics - how in contributes or ruin democracy. Discuss the concepts of privacy and publicly in social media and how the impact both positively and negatively the political system and whether or not it influences voter's decisions. And give some examples about the impact of social media in politics. Finally I will summarize my discoveries and give my thoughts about my findings.