Blogs vs. Wikis

In our New Media course, everyone has a blog and a wiki. The layout and design of the blogs are base on our own preference. When we visit each others' blogs, we can see different looks and feel on the pages. There is only one editor for the blog - yourself. We can share personal news, feelings and many different things on our blogs. People also can leave comments about your post after reading it. In "How can we measure the influence of blogosphere?" by  Kathy E. Gill, she mentions people blogging as Journalism. It is not like newspaper or magazine, but as the words of James W. Carey, "It can be practiced 'virtually anywhere and under almost any circumstances... To make experience memorable so it won’t be lost and forgotten is the task of journalism'".Writing a blog is like writing a diary. Nobody can controls what you want to write on your blog. Visitors can join to your blog as followers and have interaction with you like leaving messages or posting comments. Blogs can provide the latest posts, comments and opinions to the readers and writers. Therefore, this is the best way to make friends inside or outside of your network. On the other hand, wiki is different. Although both blogs and wikis are sharing information to the public, but all users in wikis can be editors and the page is no longer personal. Besides editing the page, wiki users also can create a new page while other users can add or delete things. Many companies would like to use wiki as an collaboration tool. According to Wikipedia, " A study of corporate wiki users found that they could be divided into 'synthesizers' and 'adders' of content. Synthesizers' frequency of contribution was affected more by their impact on other wiki users, while adders' contribution frequency was affected more by being able to accomplish their immediate work". A company's managers and stakeholders can make changes easily through wiki. It is a common used tool for project planning and management. If there is a option to leave feedback like blogs, people will enjoy it more because they can still have their opinions on wiki even though it might not be acceptable. As we can see, people can get information from blogs and wikis, but they are just playing different roles as visitors (blogs) and editors (wikis).

E-books vs. Books

Average College students spend hundreds of dollars for books every semester. In order to save money on textbooks, some students choose to buy used books while others choose to get the online version which is known as e-books. Students can save up to 30% buying an e-book than a regular text book. There are also some students who share their e-book with their classmates and friends for a low cost or even for free. File sharing is very easy and convenient, it became a common practice. File sharing will benefit the consumers but it will harm the producers. When the publishers are consistently losing profits, they will eventually go out of business and there won't be any text book nor e-book left. In another word, sharing e-books might benefit consumers in the short run but in the long run it will harm both the consumer and the producer.

Describe New Media

There are many examples that can be classify as new media. E-book, e-mail, digital camera, 3G network cell phone, Voice Over IP, and the blogs are all examples of new medias. All these new medias have direct and indirect relationship with a computer or Internet. There isn't a correct definition for new media, because as technology changes new media updates itself. According to the lecture notes from Prof. Alder in "What is New Media?", there are 5C's unique characteristics about new media (communication, collaboration, community, creativity and convergence). A new media might not have all of these characteristics, but it must contain more than two. Many companies started to do business online, also known as e-commerce. This way, the company can have more interaction with their customers through comments and reviews of their products. According to the business journal of McKinsey & Company's "8 Business Technology Trend to Watch", many companies are using consumers as innovators to their company. After the company review consumers' opinion, they can immediately make some changes if needed. Many companies prefer advertisement online through websites instead of newspapers, magazines or TV (old media). Having advertisement over the Internet is more cost efficient because everything is virtual. As people are going "green", they do not favor the "old media" because most of the time “old media” deals with a physical object. Like books, newspaper, and even music, you would need to have a compact disc in order to play it. Most of the time “old media” is an object. The advantage of the "old media" is that you can bring it to anywhere you want but it also can be a disadvantage. For example, you have an important document for the morning meeting. For some reasons, you forgot to bring it or it was stolen from someone, then you might get in trouble the next day because you didn’t have it during the meeting. Now, the "new media" comes into play. If you have a copy of the file in your e-mail or you saved it somewhere on the web, you still present the document during the meeting.

Something about me.

Hi, everyone.
My name is Yun Fei Huang. You can call me Faye. This is my first blog in blogger, but I think it is similar to Facebook and Xanga that I have. We can share news, information and our own feelings here. Hope we can have some fun through Blogger.
I am a transfer student from BMCC. I joined the Transfer Student Organization (TSO) last year and I have so much fun. I am an Accounting major and minor in Information Technology and Social Responsibility.
Media makes our life much easier. Computer is one of the important media tool. We almost need to use computer technology everywhere. Let's learn something new from this course.