The Next New Thing

For this assignment, I had to think pretty hard about a new media tool.  There are so many things already established in society today that I had to think outside the box.  For my new type of new media, I would create an application for smartphone users about food.  So majority of the world today uses smartphones, but what applications are there for food?  There are barely any in existence other than a few dietary ones and restaurant reviews.  So, I would create an app where you can take a picture of the food you are eating and it will display all the calories, ingredients and nutritional facts about your meal.  Using a futuristic database with almost all the foods in the worlds in it, the app will launch and with a simple picture, you will be informed of the food you are served.  This way people can watch what they eat in case of allergies, watch the calorie count of the day, and know what they are actually consuming.  I would call this application "FoodOHealth".

Our Class Wiki

For our class Wiki, I posted on the page of marketing in new media.  Right now there is only a bit of information but I will continue to research the topic.  My references are also messed up at the moment but I will learn to correct it as I go along.  This topic is quite interesting and I would like to get to know more about it.  Marketing in new media seems to be a hot topic and I would like to expand my knowledge on it.  What I am working towards is creating a page with a sufficient amount of data to provide readers with to give them a better understanding of how marketing is effected by new media.  This way people will be more informed how new media can affect marketing of companies in different aspects.

P2P Filesharing

In society today, many people share things via the internet. Whether it be music, textbooks, videos, or documents, people share things that seem relevant for others. File sharing is when you post and distribute these kinds of digital items on the web. The interaction of peers sharing these kinds of digital items through technology is called P2P file sharing. An example of P2P file sharing would be the website Napster. Before it was shut down due to legal issues, people would go on Napster and request for music. The music would be put up by users that already had it and be downloaded by users that want it. P2P file sharing is used very frequently today. I know I use it when I want music or to download a movie. It is quite convenient because I don't pay for it and can access my music that I desire. A really cool concept was introduced through a reading I saw. In the article, "Peers Find Less Pressure Borrowing From Each Other", Wendy Kaufman talks about how people share money via loans through websites. That is a really cool concept because nowadays, loans are getting harder and harder to get because of credit problems. "I went ahead and applied for the loan and I was able to get it funded in one week. And my rate was 6 percent. So it's half of what I had been paying. I thought it was a really great experience from beginning to end — really easy, you apply online and they gave you status updates." This woman seems to enjoy the loans from the website rather than getting loans from banks. They charged her half the rate the banks do and it was easy to get the loan. I see this becoming a huge success in the future, especially if I want to buy a house and need a loan with a lower interest rate!

Privacy & Confidentiality

I think that new media has impacted people's private lives.  What ever you put on the internet will be there forever, even when you delete it.  If you put your personal information on new media sites, many people will have access to it, whether you know it or not.  Some places that people put information are sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Instagram.  Many people have access to this information because they can easily hack the sites to obtain it.  Hackers have been smarter by using these websites to phish information using fake profiles and adding you. Your privacy is quite limited when you put up information on various websites.  Confidentiality can be traced by hackers as well.  People can easily track your IP address to find out who did what.  Hackers pretty much use new media to exploit people and make the internet an unsafe environment.  So people must be aware of what content they put on new media, especially social media sites and blogs.  You can be a potential target of hacking if you put a little too much information.

Advice

New media today is used all over the place.  Everyone in college is on Facebook and other social media sites on their breaks and off time.  If Baruch hired me to improve new media, I would definitely raise awareness of club activities.  I feel that paper advertising and fliers are not so effective.  I would definitely try to sync up with Baruch's database and email people about big campus events, especially with clubs.  I would love to sync up Facebook and other social media sites to advertise big events and have clubs participate in various activities.  I would also improve awareness of recycling and garbage disposal.  People seem to not get the message that they need to recycle to save the plates.  By having social media, we could improve this by making video campaigns to raise awareness.  The use of social media could also make people more active on campus.  I would like to incorporate a new blackboard system where it is user friendly for all professors and students.  Many professors don't use blackboard because it is so complex, so if we made a more user friendly one, more people would use it.  I would make more online classes available to students.  As you can see, there are only a limited amount of online courses and I feel that there should be many more.  People need to know about new media, so taking online courses could help them learn.