Our Class Wiki - So Far

For the class wiki, I have decided to focus my attention on New Media in Music. Music is a big part of our lives and New Media enhances it. Music recognition software like Shazam and Soundhound make it easier for us to identify our favorite songs and share them with others. There are also new ways in which the music industry ties into new media. YouTube is a great start for aspiring artists to show their talents, this was already written in the wiki, but I do appreciate the fact that it is so easy for us to share what we love to do on the internet. Some of the great artists on YouTube I listen to are Kina Grannis, David Choi and TylerWardMusic.

P2P File Sharing

Napster, Kazaa, you probably heard of these two names before. These two services used to be the most used P2P file sharing programs that were used by consumers all around the world. P2P basically stands for Peer to peer sharing. One user uploads a file, for example an MP3, other users looking for the same file, downloads it, and like a pyramid scheme, each user then has the opportunity to share these files with other users that want the same thing. What starts with one user uploading a single file, can end up with an extremely large amount of other users using and sharing the same thing. File sharing is basically the same as P2P but does not necessarily need to involve two different users. One of the more "advanced" P2P techniques is Bittorrent. This alternative compared to the other services such as what used to be Napster and Kazaa, is very effective for all kinds of users with different internet speeds. According to the wired.com article, The Bittorrent Effect, "The problem with P2P file-sharing networks like Kazaa, he reasoned, is that uploading and downloading do not happen at equal speeds". What this means is that your download and upload speed, which are given by your ISP or Internet Service Provider, are not the same speeds. For example, I am using the Verizon Fios plan with 25 mbps download and 15 mbps upload. This means you are transferring data UP TO that speed. However, one of the main concepts of file sharing is uploading and how fast these speeds are from user to user. How bittorrent relieves this problem is with multiple uploaders at the same time or "seeds". A good torrent file with many seeds will give you the maximum download speed possible since there are many users uploading data to you. This means that users with slower internet speeds will be able to achieve decent download speeds because of the many seeds available. This is why bittorrent is starting to become a very popular alternative for people to use nowadays, and especially since Napster went legit and Kazaa basically stopped providing services.

Privacy & Confidentiality

With social networks being so popular in these times, almost everybody you know has one. From your friends to your bosses, it is very common to be able to find their profiles on these networks such as Facebook. Though this may seem pretty "cool" and convenient at first, is it really? Are we losing our privacy by putting up profiles of ourselves on the internet and update our lives so everybody can see? Many people have no problem with that, they like to keep their friends and family updated with their lives, but some others think the opposite. In my opinion, even though you made profiles in these social networks, there is still privacy. It is just up to you to keep it. Of course if you update your status every two minutes about "what is happening", and checking in to all the places you go on foursquare, the privacy you have is very low. However, if you limit those kinds of posts and set your privacy settings, I do not see the problem with social networks and privacy. Yes, the privacy issue is very important, you may lose many things because of it. For example, you can lose your job, a friend, a significant other, and many more. However in the end it is all up to the user, no one is making you post the things you put online, only yourself.

Advice to Baruch College

In Baruch, one of the main problems I see is the lack of available computers during busy hours. I think making a Twitter account that updates what is going on, which labs are open and closed, at what times, makes it a little easier and more organized for students to find available computers more efficiently. The twitter can be updated by the lab monitors that are working for that hour.

There also seems to lack community within students in the school. Even though the school layout was apparently built for the purpose of the increased interactions of the students, I really do not see it working. Maybe use those televisions around the school to put a "cloud" like twitter updates from different users. Students can use a hash tag such as for example #baruchcloud in their tweets. Students should also be allowed to voice their opinions on different things in the school using this. 

About My Term Research Paper

The topic that I chose to do for my term research paper is Social Networking: A purposeful loss of privacy. Most of the research I did was through Google Scholars, I also used some news articles via MSNBC and other sources I got from regular Google. In the research, I learned that the issue of privacy is not only other people looking through your content but it also contains the problems of viruses and worms as well. Almost like the email problem where you can download a viruses without even knowing it by just opening a mail. I chose this topic because I thought privacy is a very important issue that everyone should know about. Especially now that almost everybody has a profile in at least one of the social networking websites such as Facebook, we need to be aware of the issues at hand. After writing the paper, it seems that there are many different ways in which the privacy issue can affect all of us. From losing your job or even scholarships to losing your data on your computer, it should be part of our everyday life to be aware of these problems. My paper helps contribute to the field of "new media" by bringing awareness to people and how "safe" or "private" their profile actually is.