Nicholas Pooran's Blog

Jersey Shore Beach Paradise? Tutorials Out of curiosity I decided to create a Second Life account to see what it was all about. Not sure how surprised my teacher will be but I needed to see it for myself.  I created a free account and installed it on my laptop. My choice of a zombie avatar stems from my love of the AMC series, The Walking Dead. There was a tutorial on how to move around while playing. You learn how to walk, jump and fly just like in any game. You're able to customize your character's body and clothes to your liking and move around collecting free items and notes you keep in your inventory. You can teleport to various locations and chat with other players. There weren't that many people online from what I saw. There is much more you can do in Second Life. So consider this a preview and go find out for yourselves!

The fact that new media even exists is as a result of our ability to be creative! Linda and Hershey Friedman's concept of convergence in "New Media Technologies: Overview and Research Framework," tells us that the user is no longer a separate entity but can be the creator of content as well and the consumer. YouTube celebrities are the epitome of creativity in the age of new media. Coming up with innovative, new ways to share content and information on topics of interest that bring an entire community of users together is no easy task and takes great initiative!

Virtual Reality can be used to create better gaming experiences and enhances success in training and new ventures such as medical or military training and even for training astronauts. The creation of a mock environment where theories can be tested and played out without danger to real people or wastage of resources in something that may not work is the greatest advantage of this technology. In the article "Avatar II: The Hospital," Stephanie Simon conveys the use of this technology to help nurses to simulate emergency situations in which they would have to act quickly to save lives. The mental preparation that this allows is simply invaluable. Virtual games can also be used as a great escape for those who need to take a breather from their everyday lives. However, having access to this technology may be expensive and time-consuming and for people who use it as an escape may find themselves less inclined to interact with reality. Second Life is great example of a virtual worl

Facebook has always been characterized by a strong presence of family and friends and strong focus on memories such as pictures and videos of events. You can chat with your "Friends" or poke them or wave at them. On the whole it seems more fun. Though young people made it famous, it seems the older folks have taken over and made it their own. Though young adults may still have a Facebook account they prefer to actively use Instagram or SnapChat because it allows them the privacy they want to have with friends that are their own age. I have neither of latter at the moment so I will not be saying much about them. Twitter started out as a more serious platform to share thoughts and views and to promote discussion about news and current events. Twitter later provided the feature of sharing pics to diversify capability and keep customer bases interested and growing. There's great importance placed on what's trending and getting involved by chiming in. LinkedIn feels less

Social networking gives us the opportunity to stay in contact with family and friends, stay up to date with current events, allows us to network in our professional lives and share our opinions and feelings. For businesses it provides a wide range of possibilities to promote and improve their business. Social networking can be used a means of recruiting, advertising and pubic relations. LinkedIn is a great tool used my many Fortune 500 companies to contact potential employees. The article "Social Networking Technology Boost Job Recruiting" emphasizes the role that LinkedIn plays in revolutionizing the way we search for jobs and the way recruiters single out the best of the best. The dark side of such a powerful technology would be privacy concerns and the risk of being hacked or having your identity stolen by cyber criminals. The BBB article, "New Wave of Phishing Scams uses Facebook Info for Personalized Spam" highlights one way we could be at risk. Users are bein

A wiki and a blog are both instruments of web 2.0. Both allow some form of collaboration and community where information sharing and expression is possible in a way that was never available before. It can happen in an instant and it's free or cost close to nothing to create. A wiki is a website that allows users to add, edit and link content and change the layout of a webpage collaboratively. The information on a wiki is constantly changing because users are continuously updating the information. This ensures that there is a better quality of information available to users. According to the article in InformationWeek, "How To Use Wikis For Business," "Content in a wiki can be updated without any real lag, without any real administrative effort, and without the need for distribution." A blog, on the other hand is a website that is created and updated by one user or group where entries are made in a timely fashion and comments made from others are approved by

The purpose of this analysis is to emphasize the effects that Facebook has on users and society as a whole. Exploring earlier forms of similar platforms and applications that came after Facebook is key to understanding the success of the social media giant. This will help shed light on the good that Facebook does for us and the bad that users should be aware of. Though Facebook provides opportunities to connect with friends and family, express ourselves, promote our business, obtain entertainment and information there are multiple things that some of us do not consider when we decided to indulge in the exciting new thing that it was and still is for some. The time wasted, the risk of abuse and cyber bullying, privacy concerns, risk of becoming addicted and antisocial and misinformation are the many problems people take for granted in this age of new media. Expounding on these problems in hopes of creating a greater awareness is the goal of this project.