Brian's Blog

To demonstrate how new media fosters creativity, I decided to use an iPhone app and combine it with a passion of mine, weightlifting.  Using this app, I was able to photoshop my face onto the body of a bodybuilder.  The app allowed me to create a cutout of my own face from one of my photos and transfer it onto another image.  It was as easy and simple as copy and pasting.  This was only possible with new media.

In the article The New Math of Mashups , from the New Yorker Magazine, the author of the article says "One of the thrills of the mashup is identifying two well-known artists unwittingly complementing each other’s strengths and limitations".  The author is describing how individuals are able to strip different songs and combine different elements of each song, using digital software, and often create something even more enjoyable to listen to than the original two songs.  In the example mention in the article, an individual combines Madonna's voice with the addition of the Sex Pistols' guitars.   New media is able to foster creativity because it allows people to become more innovative as ever and continuously expanding imaginations.  Because of new media, people now have to the access to make their imaginations into reality.  People are able to access new information and tools.

Virtual Worlds can be used in a varie ty of different ways.  For example, Virtual Worlds can help make things easier and more efficient in the workplace.  In the article  Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life , the author Mark Tutton says " Virtual community Second Life is seeking to tap into that market by creating a new tool that allows businesses to have virtual meetings on their own computer networks".  He explains how offices can now collectively host conferences and meetings remotely without the travel expenses, with the help of Second Life.   Ironically, virtual worlds can actually improve communication and social interactions.  In the article iReport: 'Naughty Auties' Battle Autism with Virtual Interaction , the author Nicole Saidi says " visitors can practice social interaction and find information about the condition. The graphical representations of real people create a "comfort zone" that can coax users out of their shells and get th...

Comparing Twitter and Blackboard discussions is an interesting topic but it seems as though the two are very different.  One way is that Twitter discussions are more social than Blackboard in that Twitter users can like and retweet others' posts and respond to them in a very quick manner.  Their use of hashtags also make it easier for people to find posts regarding a certain topic.  The users of Blackboard mainly consist of students and only those who are in a certain class can view that section's Blackboard. However, in-class discussion are entirely different from both Twitter and Blackboard discussions.  The obvious difference between them are that both Twitter and Blackboard are online and in-class discussions are face to face in the classroom.  Because of this, in-class discussions are quicker because there is instant communication between people.  Online discussions take longer because people do not respond instantly.

After looking at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin, I have different impressions about each of them.    My initial thoughts on Facebook is how simple it is to navigate through the site.  Everything is very easy to find and very easy to learn how to use.  Facebook allows users to share their thoughts, videos, location, etc., with others.  They also have to option to tag friends they've added in other peoples' posts and videos.  It is also possible to create different groups exclusive to those that have been added to it. Twitter is a great platform to share news and other events.  One of the things about Twitter that stands out most to me is the hashtag function.  It is so easy to filter out and focus on certain posts about certain topics.  Because of this, I think it is more useful to share news and current events.  The layout of the site seems to be more difficult to navigate than Facebook because of the many different tools...

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others play such a big role in today's society.  It has gotten to the point where companies use these platforms to search for potential job candidates.  One platform, Linkedin, is an especially popular job recruiting tool that many companies have implemented in their search for the best job candidates.  In the article Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting , the author Frank Langfitt, says "t yping keywords into a search engine, Crawford can scrape the entire network to dig out high-quality candidates that she can't find elsewhere."  Here, he explains how effective Linkedin is with just a simple keyword search.  In addition to job recruiting, social networking also useful for marketing.  Social networking allows companies to reach a much wider audience than they would without it.   On the other hand, there are consequences to using social networking as well....