Our Class Wiki - So Far

The first 4 rounds of the South American World Cup Qualifiers has just recently passed. I am still researching on the 16 games that took place and will post the details in the sports section of the Class wiki.

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is the act of sending any file over any network from one computer to the other, In a sense creating multiple copies of it distributed to the user that demand it. P2P File sharing is an advancement on File Sharing on a larger scale. P2P file sharing works by a system of Seeders and Leechers. The Seeder is the user that uploads the file, while the leecher, downloads the file. The way P2P file sharing works (particularly on BitTorrent) is by cutting up the file into multiple pieces. The Seeder then uploads the files to the leecher that is downloading it. Once the Leecher has the file, he automatically becomes a seeder of that piece and uploads it to anyone else that wants to download the file. If there are multiple seeders, the download speed can be significantly faster. Clive Thompson interviewed Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent. He explains the nature of BitTorrent and how it literally changed the way people watch TV. He called it the worlds largest TiVo since users are now able to download their show at amazing speeds when they miss it simply by searching it on a torrent.

Privacy & Confidentiality

I actually spent a great deal of time writing a paper for this class on this topic. The main issues with privacy these days are confidentiality, reliability and vulnerability. How confident can you be that the information you post will not leak to someone that you didn't intend it to. How reliable is the information that is posted up? looking at a screen is different from actually looking at the person face to face. For all we know the information could have come from a 5 - year old, rather than the 30 - year old they claim to be. Vulnerability because any information that is posted is in a sense public. How willing is a person to share information with someone else?

Advice to Baruch College

Since New Media has become a dominant factor in the world today, I personally I would suggest some of the textbooks to turn into e-books. Of course the option should remain to buy the physical copy of the book, but an e-book would greatly be useful. A second thing would be to have group pages for the class on Facebook, administered by the professor (this would eliminate any cheating on the group page). This way a student can conduct a forum in which the professor and their classmates can participate in.

Creativity and New Media

This was a Salsa skit that a couple of my classmates and I performed after rehearsing only 1 hour prior to actually performing. By the way, this is in Baruch...

Creativity

There is no doubt that these days, any type of Media has been recorded to digital format. Digital format is the representation of bits in the form of 1's and 0's and depending on the fragmentation can be interpreted by many different representations of itself. It is due to this that "mashups" are so easily created. This is why programs like Photoshop can take any picture and completely customize the picture to have anything the user wishes to put on it. It's how video and music editing software works. This allows the user to have this new sense of "Creation". In the music world, they would call this a "remix". Associating the old with the new to create something that's neither, but simply an expression of the users creativity. According to Brook Barnes from New Times, "Mashups" have been recognized as fair use of copyrighted material. Companies like Nickelodeon even offered praise to certain users whose "mashups" were exceptionally good. Even Disney, who has always held strict policies on their characters has allowed the use of their characters to be remixed with "Crank That" by Soulja Boy.

Blog about Twitter

Twitter is a back and forth conversation website. Like i said in my previous blog, Twittering can take at a minimum 5 seconds to post anything, A phrase, a quote, an emotion, an action, even a word. The fact is that Twitter accepts anything. If twittering can take 5 seconds then replying can be just as fast and with mobile apps and WiFi nearly everywhere. It can literally take 5 minutes to have a full blown discussion. Similar to a discussion on blackboard but probably faster. Granted emotions are hard to display without facial or bodily expressions, but that's what smileys are for ^_^ A class discussion would probably be more effective in that you can actually see the person. But its limited to how many people can participate in the discussion. Rather a twitter discussion can even involve a third party from the other side of the globe.

Social Networking Sites

Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and hi5 are all social networking websites that were pretty popular at some point. Obviously the reigning king and queen are Facebook and Twitter. But they all did have their distinctive feel. I at one point did have an account on each; (The only active one I use now is Facebook). hi5 was never popular in the US, but in other countries, particularly Latin America, it was pretty extensive. hi5 allowed for complete HTML customization similar to Myspace, another popular website, until Facebook destroyed it. hi5 and Myspace were praised for the customization that you can place into your profiles. But at some point, all the widgets and apps, and the annoying song that would play, seemed just too much. In my opinion Facebook did a great job keeping the layout standard forcing its users to be more creative to show uniqueness. Twitter became a phenomenon because it's simple and so fast. You can let the world know you have socks on in less than 10 seconds.

Blogs vs. Wikis

Blogs and Wikis are two of the most significant sources of information on the internet today. Wikis are part of the most largest Encyclopedia to date. Blogs can be considered the most accurate primary source, being as how the source of it comes from the blogger himself/herself.

Blogs unlike wikis have no control on grammar and content, unless it violates the rules of the blogging website due to profanity, nudity or things of that matter. However even so, blogging websites give free control to the blogger in that they may post whatever they feel like, Even if it's just one word. What you would most likely find on a blog is literally a diary of the blogger. Blogging their personal feelings and the daily events they go through. Blogs help fill the gap in what is going on in the world through the eyes of the average citizen of the internet. NY Times, Michael Wilson wrote in his article "Brooklyn Blog Help Leads to Drug Raid" how a neighborhood blog helped the police find two crack houses, and managed to identify the suspects. Knowledge like that is incredibly powerful, because it can be used as a witness source to testify against the crime.

Wikis are more controlled than they were when they were initially created in 2001. Wiki's could have been considered as blogs because they had no rules in terms of grammar, content or structure. The problem with that was that being one of the biggest encyclopedias to date, it has to hold some integrity, which became a problem when inaccurate or completely false information would get posted. For example when "Wikipedia entries about Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd falsely stated both U.S. senators had died." According to John D. Sutter in his article "Wikipedia: No Longer the Wild West". Even in their controlled nature now, Wikipedia still offers a ton of information disposable at the hands of anyone that can view it. Perhaps sometime in the future it can even offer complete online courses.

Term Project - Social Networking: A purposeful loss of privacy

For my project I want to go in depth on how people choose to display their lives through social networking websites. While yes it may be true that these websites expose too much and leave nothing for privacy, At the same time what better way to show one's creativity, passions, and ideas, than to expose them to the whole world. While these users are offering up their privacy, in exchange they may just be obtaining so much more.