The Next New Thing

A new media that doesn’t currently exist is an app that can find parking spaces for cars. This ideal app should notify a driver whenever someone leaves a parking spot and the space is free. Showing other drivers in the area who may be looking for parking as well would be helpful. How this app would work is by detecting cars that are parked in the neighborhood and store its location information for others to view. Then when the car leaves, the app would let users nearby know that someone has left that spot. This would probably need help from the satellite for such information. This app would be helpful for people who spend hours looking for parking spots especially in busy cities such as Manhattan. Help with finding parking would also save time, gas and money. People won’t have to circle around neighborhoods to find parking. They can instead wait in their cars by a hydrant and be notified when a parking spot opens so they can turn on the car and drive to that spot.

Our Class Wiki - So Far

What I have done so far:

- I have added to the New Media and Transportation page. I wrote about an app called Embark NYC that shows the train schedules for every train even when you’re underground without service. 

- I have added information about the iPhone 6s camera and its new features.

- I plan to add information on Education in New Media. I plan to talk about how Chegg helps students learn and also how they can save a lot of money on books.

- I plan to add to the New Media in Entertainment page. I want to talk about how TV channels have their own app and how anyone can watch their favorite shows anytime and anywhere on his or her phone.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is when people share media such as music, movies, games, or books with other people online. P2P file sharing is when people share their content on a network for others to download. Some examples of P2P file sharing programs include BitTorrent, Naptser and Freenet. This way of sharing and exchanging media results in millions of losses to companies that produce these content. In the article “Should Online Scofflaws Be Denied Web Access? by Eric Pfanner, Pfanner states “The United States Congress held hearings last week on the growing problem of piracy, which the American entertainment industry says accounts for the loss of $20 billion a year in sales." Many people use file sharing because it’s free. If they want to watch a movie, they can just download it or stream it on the Internet. They don’t have to spend money buying the DVD or spend money buying a ticket to watch it in theaters.

Privacy & Confidentiality

With the rise of new media comes the question of security. Whenever someone posts something online, it will be on the Internet forever. People have the option to save or screenshot what you posted and repost them again. Once it spreads, everyone may have a copy of the saved file.

Also, it is very hard for a person to private their Facebook page because it is complicated to learn about Facebook’s privacy settings. Even if someone customized their privacy settings to the most private, there are still ways to work around the privacy settings. Some people may create fake profiles to befriend the person’s profile that they want to see. Others may know friends of that person that have access to that person’s profile information. In addition, Facebook’s privacy policy and settings often change. People may think they have set their settings to their preference but Facebook reserves the right to make privacy policy and setting changes, which means a user’s settings could be changed without being notified first. Moreover, having access to someone’s profile can lead to identity theft. Someone can steal one’s identity by using the person’s name and birthday.

Advice to Baruch College

I would create an app for Baruch that allows students to keep track of their classes. The app would include any class announcements, files/content needed for class, and reminders. Some students don't check their emails as often and sometimes miss out emails about canceled classes. Having an app that notifies students whenever a professor cancels class may be helpful. Instead of finding out there is no class being held at the time of class, students could find out earlier with the app's notifications. Also, it would be convenient to access any articles, slides or other files that the professor posted up from a phone. This way students wouldn't have any excuse as to why they don't have it with them in class. Reminders would also let students know when papers are due or when there is a quiz or test. It would be especially helpful to those who were absent in class. 

I would also create a Snapchat account for Baruch to keep students updated about events and activities. Although Twitter may already provide these updates, students may not necessarily buy into them unless they actually see the fun. Snapchat allows pictures and videos to be posted for 24 hours. Other students may also upload their pictures and videos to Baruch's Snapchat and I could review them before posting them. This would show students how fun activities could be and may encourage them to attend in the future. Creating a Snapchat account may provide updates for those who have Snapchat but not Twitter.

Creativity and New Media

I created an avatar in Second Life to explore its features. There were many activities to do. I could fly around and teleport to different places, play games, go to clubs and talk to different people. During my session, I visited Spain and Moscow. I also visited the University of Kentucky. It made me wonder how accurate the virtual Kentucky is but it is still pretty cool to visit another school so easily. There was also a chat feature that can be used to communicate with different users from around the world.Virtual worlds such as Second Life are fun and interesting because its users have access to a wide range of activities, different universities and a whole network of people around the world.

Creativity

Today, anything on the Internet is accessible to anyone. This allows new media to foster creativity. People can use existing media in combination with their own to create even newer media. For example, open source software is opened to the public and people who are using open source software can incorporate that software into their own applications. Therefore, new media encourages people to generate ideas from other people’s work.

People have demonstrated their creativity in the use of media by creating mashups. A mashup is the combination of two pieces of media into one. The article “Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?” by Brook Barnes published in the New York Times discusses an example of a mashup. It explains that a YouTube user had combined a rap song “Crank That” by Soulja Boy with Disney characters to create a parody. This is creative because people do not usually associate rap songs with Disney characters. When they are combined together in a video, it creates a funny visual. The article also stated that there is another version that uses SpongeBob SquarePants characters that has been viewed more than seven million times. This speaks about how popular these mashups can be. Anyone can create a mashup using any media and if they are funny or interesting enough, it can go viral on the Internet.