Final Blog Entry!!

For my last blog entry of the semester, I do not have a general theme, but I would like to touch on various topics.

Lamar Bone

Cartoon Characters as facebook profile pictures- I noticed a lot of my facebook friends were changing their pictures to cartoon characters, which I thought was pretty funny, and I decided to look it up. It turns out that doing this is intended to create child abuse awareness. It is similar to the "I like it on the..." campaign which was to create breast cancer awareness. I think this is a fun way to use social networking in a good way. I even changed my picture to a photo of Assistant Principal Lamar Bone, a character from Nickelodeon's cartoon series Doug.

According to David Murphy of PCMag.com, there is some opposition to these types of facebook awareness campaigns. He noted that he read someones facebook status that said "Putting up a picture from a cartoon is not going to end child abuse. If you would like to be a part of the solution, click the link and support Prevent Child Abuse America." 

I'm not sure I see the need for this negativity, he has a point, but any type of publicity towards a cause is useful I believe.

New Media and MLB Off-season

I am an avid major league baseball fan and this time of year is extremely exciting for a baseball fan to follow because it is the off-season, and many teams are making trades and signing free agents in order to improve their team. New Media outlets such as twitter and blogs have totally changed the way that fans can follow the moves of their team in the off-season. Its almost pathetic how much I check blogs such as MLBTraderumors.com, Federal Baseball.com, and Nats Insider on blogspot.com. I check it more than I check my e-mail or facebook. You never know when an earth shattering transaction can happen such as The Nationals acquisition of Jayson Werth, signing him to a 7 year 126 Million dollar contract. Since I am constantly in touch with the new media feeds I was one of the first one of my friends to hear about this.

The Newest member of the Washington Nationals, Right Fielder Jayson Werth

Also, a lot of discussions happen on reporters twitter feeds, and I am contemplating creating a twitter account just to consolidate the various reporter's information.

Final Thoughts-

Overall I found this course to be useful and informative. I feel like New Media is contributing more and more to society by the minute, and I am glad to have a strong foundation in New Media skills and knowledge going forward into the business world. I am sure that we will see amazing new advances in this technology in the coming years. I hope you guys enjoyed the semester as well and thanks for reading my blog!

-Will

Presentations and My future presentation

I would like to take this blog entry to talk about some of the presentations from the semester that I particularly enjoyed.

First of all, Kit did a great job discussing the elements of new media and sports. This is a very interesting topic to me personally because I was an intern with the Washington Nationals marketing department, and I know they have devoted time to promotion via facebook and twitter. Kit did an excellent job showing the effects that new media has on marketing of teams, but also athletes lack of discretion via new media platforms. Good work Kit.

Although many were not in class to see it, Tory did a terrific job presenting about youtube and fame. I had some prior knowledge of youtube phenoms such as Justin Beiber and the guy (?) who threw a tantrum defending Britney Spears, but Tory gave some knew examples, and even added that she was contemplating an attempt at fame via youtube as well. Youtube is one of my favorite sites on the internet and is a great use of new media technology, and this presentation showed the influence that new media now has on pop culture.

Meghan's presentation on licence plate recognition was really interesting and clearly well researched. It showed how new media can affect law enforcement in a positive way. It was amazing to see how far the technology has come. Well done Meghan.

I was impressed with all of your presentations, whether I mentioned them or not. This brings me to my next point... does anyone have any ideas they would like to give me for my presentation. I am the last one to present and the options are limited. I have a few ideas, but any suggestions would be welcomed! Thanks in advance.

-Will

Wikipedia Donations

If any of you have been on Wikipedia lately I'm sure you have noticed the large banner on the top that reads "Please Read: A personal appeal from Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales". I figured it had to do with donating money and I think there was a similar campaign last year to raise money for the site. I was curious and clicked on it. It reads as follows:

"I got a lot of funny looks ten years ago when I started talking to people about Wikipedia. Let’s just say some people were skeptical of the notion that volunteers from all across the world could come together to create a remarkable pool of human knowledge – all for the simple purpose of sharing.
No ads. No agenda. No strings attached.
A decade after its founding, nearly 400 million people use Wikipedia and its sister sites every month - almost a third of the Internet-connected world.
It is the 5th most popular website in the world - but Wikipedia isn’t anything like a commercial website. It is a community creation, written by volunteers making one entry at a time. You are part of our community. And I’m writing today to ask you to protect and sustain Wikipedia.
Together, we can keep it free of charge and free of advertising. We can keep it open – you can use the information in Wikipedia any way you want. We can keep it growing – spreading knowledge everywhere, and inviting participation from everyone.
Each year at this time, we reach out to ask you and others all across the Wikimedia community to help sustain our joint enterprise with a modest donation of $20, $35, $50 or more.
If you value Wikipedia as a source of information – and a source of inspiration – I hope you’ll choose to act right now.
All the best,
Jimmy Wales
Founder, Wikipedia
P.S. Wikipedia is about the power of people like us to do extraordinary things. People like us write Wikipedia, one word at a time. People like us fund it, one donation at a time. It's proof of our collective potential to change the world."

 

I think its a little corny but it does have a point. As much as teachers hate when students use wikipedia as a reference, I think its a very valuable site, and evidently a very popular site as well. I wouldn't go as far as to actually donate to it, but I would be pretty upset if I had to pay to start using it. I'm sure it would be a lot different if that was the case.

 

What do you guys think about this? Would you consider donating to it? Would you still use Wikipedia if it charged a fee?

 

 

Deactivating Facebook

Well I went through with it. As much as I like having facebook in my life to see whats going on and to keep in touch with my friends, I decided that it was best to deactivate the facebook. I am in contention for a job that I am very interested in, and I have a ton of work coming up the next few weeks thats really important that I do well on.

I figured instead of de-tagging all of the pictures that may be offensive to my potential employer and going through wall posts from friends that were somewhat distasteful, It'd be easier to just deactivate the facebook.

Also, I spend a deceivingly immense amount of time on facebook. For example, when I go to leahy to do work or write a paper, It takes me at least 20 minutes to actually start doing work. I always do my usual rounds of my e-mail, ESPN.COM, MLBtraderumors.com, and the most time consuming, Facebook. I don't think I even realize how much time I waste on facebook.

I noticed while deactivating my facebook, the website asks why you are leaving facebook, and reminds you that your "friends" will miss you. It is very easy to reactivate your facebook, which is good for both the user and the company. I will miss some aspects of facebook, but this was the best choice for me right now.  Here is an interesting graph on time spent on the Internet, facebook is pretty high up there.

Have you guys ever deactivated your facebook or considered it? If so how did you feel about it?

New Media and Crime

I remember someone in class presented about facebook and crime (sorry I can't remember who!) and I wanted to blog about it and talk about the ways it can affect our lives as college students in smaller ways.

As some of you may know the popular bar "Thirsty Turtle" in College Park, MD had its liquor licence revoked yesterday due to a court verdict based on results of a sting operation planned by local police. The operation involved 2 undercover student police officers that presented the Thirsty Turtle bouncers IDs that indicated that they were not 21 years old but were admitted into the bar anyways. The turtle came into question after a violent incident in mid October that began inside the doors of the College Park bar; however it may be worth looking at it from a new media perspective...

The Thirsty Turtle has an active facebook page that has over 5,203 "Fans". I would have to imagine that some, if not most of these followers are not 21 or over. It was not stated in any report, but I'd have to imagine that in performing their due diligence the government investigators may have looked at some of these fans linked to the Thirsty Turtle; finding that some of them are not 21 and have frequented the establish enough to become a fan on facebook. If I was a detective on this case, I would absolutely exhaust Internet resources in order to at least gain a feel for the public image of the bar.

This brings me to my next point, should the Thirsty Turtle have had a facebook page? Sure it was good for promotions and free marketing, but I speculate that it may have cost them in the long run.

What do you guys think?

Facebook Birthdays

Since today is my 22nd birthday, I'd like to take some time to talk about something positive Facebook brings to everyone, birthday recognition. I really do enjoy getting wall posts for my birthday and I know that if it wasn't for facebook, I would have no idea when anyone's birthday is, and a lot of people would have no idea when mine was either. I have a few thoughts on some of the posts i've gotten so far today:

I'm pretty sure some people just automatically write happy birthday on their "friends" wall regardless of their relationship to the person. For example, one of the first posts I got this morning said "Happy Birthday!" from a girl who I am not sure if I have ever met her, and if I have, I don't remember where or when. Nice gesture I suppose. Secondly, I think its interesting to get a post from someone you haven't talked to in like 8 years. Once again, nice gesture, but kind of random. Thirdly, I really appreciate the funny/personalized ones. It's really easy to just write happy birthday, but I like it when someone throws in an inside joke or something, it's a lot more meaningful that way.

I remember on my first facebook birthday how excited I was to get all these wall posts, and I think I tried to respond to all of them, but it just takes forever. Now I think the common thing to do is to make a status "Thanks for all the birthday wishes!" or something along those lines. In fact, I'll probably put up that status later today.

On the reverse side of things, I am a very inconsistent facebook birthday wall poster. I probably should write happy birthday on people's walls more often because it really is a nice thing to do, but I always forget. So sorry if your reading this and I didn't post on your wall, I'll try harder next birthday

I bet a lot of you guys feel the same way about these points I've brought up, and honestly I love the fact that facebook has basically revolutionized birthdays. People actually know when its your birthday now, and its an easy way to hear from a ton of people at once. A lot of negative attention is put on facebook, but I am glad to be able to share a little way that facebook has brightened my day

Blog post Friday October 15th

Hey everyone sorry that I didn't check in last week I was at home for a few days to go to the Phillies playoff game with my dad and I couldn't find a good time to sit down and write a good blog post. For you sports fans I did get to see Roy Halladay throw only the 2nd No-hitter in Post-season history, which is a once in a lifetime occurance, so I don't mind taking the 0 for the week on the blog (no offense Professor Akhavan!)

Anyways, It was a busy week with writing this paper and taking other mid term tests, ect. I can't believe we are already halfway through the semester, I don't know about you guys but I feel like it has gone really fast. I didn't mind writing that paper, it was a good chance to review our assigned readings and reflect on the decreasing standards of privacy in the evolving technological world.

My mom saw "The Social Network" and said it was awesome. Now that my fall lacrosse season is ending maybe i'll get chance to see it. Speaking of facebook, I think their new groups idea is pretty good. My best friends from home and I usually keep a running thread on the inbox feature, maybe we will now begin a group. I hope everyone had a good week and I'll see you guys on tuesday

-Will