8. Creativity and New Media

So here is a beat I made a while back with Beaterator for the PSP:
http://soundcloud.com/thedaebu/keep-it-ill

Beaterator is basically a composition tool and a portable studio. I composed the beat by combining piano rolls of different instruments and timbres. Beaterator allows me to construct songs without the need for instruments to play and the skills needed to play instruments. It gave me the ability to use my creativity that would not have been expressed otherwise. This is the only one I made with Beaterator though; I use Fruity Loops to make songs because there are more things I can do with it. But, I recommend Beaterator to anyone that has ever wanted to make music but was never able to before.

7. Creativity

New media has allowed people to be creative in ways that would have never existed without the use of new media. In the article "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?," Brooks Barnes writes about how media companies such as Walt Disney and Nickelodeon are allowing videos of animated characters owned by the companies set to the music of rap music to be posted online without consequences. One video has cartoon characters look like they are rapping the song "Crank That" by Soulja Boy. Thought the "mash-up" videos may induce legal trouble, the creativity needed to create them would not have emerged were it not for the ability to edit videos from a home computer. As new forms of media are becoming available to more and more people, the creativity will also grow.

6. Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

One way in which virtual worlds can be used is helping employees get together for meetings and conferences. In the article "Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life," Mark Tutton writes that companies are using Second Life to help personnel in the company collaborate more easily. The major managers in the company could confer with each other while being on different continents instead of traveling to a certain location.
The pros of virtual worlds are that they help people communicate more easily and help in creating virtual situations for training and learning purposes. In the article "Avatar II: The Hospital," Stephanie Simon writes about how Second Life is used to train nurses make swift decisions in dire situations. Some cons of virtual worlds are the risks of privacy and that they can be mistaken to be the real world.
Virtual worlds are able to induce the creativity in people because of the vast number of activities one can do in them. Second Life has been used for many purposes such as for businesses, promotions, and artists. Virtual worlds will eventually look like the real world but with even more content because of the unlimited space available in virtual worlds.

5. Twitter

The main difference between a BlackBoard discussion, Twitter, and an in-class discussion is the exposure the messages involved in each have. In a BlackBoard discussion, people would only be able to read the messages of others if they happen to choose a certain thread and read what was written. In Twitter, messages would be more accessible to people because they are out in the open. In an in-class discussion, everyone in the class would be exposed to messages whether they wanted to or did not want to. So to get a point across, it would be better to do it in class.

4. Social Networking Sites

Myspace is the poor man's Facebook. Facebook has all the features that Myspace has and more with an easier interface to use. Even with some of the changes that Myspace made inspired by some of Facebook's features, Facebook is easier to use and the layout is more clean. As for Twitter, it is basically a combination of Facebook's status update feature and personal messaging systems, except that they are not private at all. Another type of social networking sites I frequent is forums. On the forums, I discuss with other users about anything from sports to current events to personal matters. The only difference between a forums and Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter is that the posts on a forums are classified into subsections and furthermore into threads.
The main thing that differentiates these sites from each other is the type of users that they appeal to. Myspace seems to be more about promotion purposes, Facebook seems to be more about personal life things, Twitter seems to be more about updating, and a forums seems to be more about discussing specific things.

3. Social Networking

Social networking technology has helped people connect find things that they would not have been able to do without social networking. In his article "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting," Frank Langfitt writes about how an employer used Linkedin, a website made to be a virtual network for professionals, to reach out to an employee at a different company for an open job position. Social networking has helped employers cut out the intermediaries to get contacts and has provided employers access to a huge network of contacts.
Social networking technology has also helped society become more efficient. In the article "In India, Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers," Heather Timmons writes about how social networking technology has helped traffic police with their job. The New Delhi police began a facebook page to have people express their opinions suggest their changes about the traffic. Eventually, people began to uploading photos of lawbreaking motorists onto the site which has helped the traffic police to issue more tickets and made drivers more cautious.
But, there can be a dark side to social networking technologies. In the article "Who Cars About Facebook Privacy? Students Do," Marc Perry writes that the "engagement with privacy settings increased significantly" from students between 2009 and 2010. Apparently, some troubles have come up concerning the privacy of facebook users and caused the users to be more cautious.
As for ways these technologies may evolve in the future, there does not seem to be anything that has not been done already.

2. Blogs vs. Wikis

A blog is basically a web page where people write about "news." In the article "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid," Michael Wilson writes about how people discussing on a blog about drug problems near their homes helped in actually getting rid of the drug problems. In the article "Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write Unfiltered Blog," Michael Barbaro writes about how consumers talking about products on Wal-Mart's corporate blog helps determine what products go on the shelves. What is similar about both of these articles is that people collaborating on blogs have benefited one party or the other. Talking about the drug problems actually led to them filing complaints and eventually having the police run raids and consumers talking about products helped Wal-Mart's consumer research of what products are selling.
A wiki, according to wikipedia, is "a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser..." Wikis are used to show some kind of information on some subject.
Blogs and wikis are basically the same thing except that blogs are used for "news" and wikis are used for "information;" blogs are more subjective and wikis are more objective.