Creativity and New Media

For this assignment, I chose to go on SlideRocket. This website is an online presentation app that strives to make presentations less boring and more engaging with interactive features, a powerful dashboard, and a fresh new look and feel.
I find it a plausible alternative to desktop-based presentation apps. 

The Pros
Fast, elegant and flashy transitions; Sharing capabilities; Access to slides from anywhere; easy to add YouTube and Flickr videos to slides; Good basic free version.

I love that SlideRocket allows me to be more creative while building a presentation. In my career, I will need to deliver a lot of presentations so having an online software that will help me make my presentations creative, interesting and engaging is awesome. Also, SlideRocket’s sharing capabilities alone can make easy for me to work with remote colleagues. 

Using SlideRocket is easy for anybody used to PowerPoint. It's really straightforward. It is the available features that are inspiring and entice you to build the best presentation ever!

I build a little presentation to give you a feel of SlideRocket. I wanted to add audio but the basic version doesn't allow me (to get the best out of this amazing site, be ready to invest! :)

My presentation is about my dear home country: HAITI <3 Hope you enjoy it! 
Click on the following link to get to it please

http://portal.sliderocket.com/CMJTE/52D23BD7-047A-45DD-876E-7AEBD1BE64A3

Creativity

To have a great experience with new media, the key to success is to think outside the box. Indeed, to be creative is what New Media asks of us. There are a lot of great things to explore on the Internet. We discover things and we tell ourselves: "Oh how original!" And our natural competitive side pushes us to think hard, think outside the box and bring to life another original thing. Thankfully, new media gives us tools to put all our ideas together and build the final product. I had a MySpace page, this site fostered a lot of creativity. Layouts, graphics and other tools were available to me to have the page I was sure all of my friends would envy. YouTube can be another example, my cousin put together a breathtaking video of all his wedding pictures. The theme, sound and arrangement were original.

  

I think creativity also lies in the use we make of new media. Crafting a beautiful video is one thing but what original use can you make of it? What comes to my mind is the role of social media in the revolution that overthrew Mubarak. A group of 14 tech-savvy Egyptians selected to represent thousands of young protesters in Tahrir Square in an article I read shed some light on the ways that social media, secrecy and strategic maneuvering were deployed to counter Egypt’s vast security apparatus and eventually topple one of the most entrenched autocracies in the Middle East. 

 The article I'm referring to is Behind Egypt's revolution: youth and the internet

In the article "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But why?" by Brooks Barnes, we read that although the title says Disney tolerates mash ups, in reality, they do not. They believe any unauthorized use of Disney property is stealing. However, they're discreet about their strategy to stop this. It is Nickelodeon that sees the humorous videos as fair use of its copyrighted content. “Our audiences can creatively mash video from our content as much and as often as they like,” said Dan Martinsen, a Nickelodeon spokesman. “By the way,” he added, “that was a very nice edit job by whoever did the SpongeBob mash.”

Being Creative is Essential for Online Success. Always make sure you have a strategy that ensure your business stands out from the crowd!

THANK YOU FOR READING!

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

A virtual world is an interactive simulated environment accessed by multiple users through an online interface. (www.virtualworldsreview.com) 

Virtual worlds can be used for several purposes. I will cite the most relevant to me:

• commercial gaming (most common use): it tends to focus on a singular fictional theme and consistently follow formal conventions such as character-focused avatars, progression through an interactive narrative story line  and a series of competitive events. It is strongly influenced by fantasy, science fiction, and anime genres of literature and film. Webosaurs is a good example. 
• online socializing: forums, blogs, wikis, chat-rooms, instant messaging, and video-conferences. These commercial community-focused virtual worlds emphasize socializing rather than gaming and have their own rules, topics, jokes, and even language. clubcooee is a perfect example of a commercial community-focused virtual world. 
• education: some virtual worlds have been created for educational purposes. They come in a wide variety of forms, including 3D recreations of museum and gallery spaces, computer programming tutorials, virtual libraries, and meeting spaces for online university courses. Blackboard is a perfect example. 
• business: virtual worlds can be used for conferences and workshops. 
• tourism: virtual worlds can help in sketching hotels, landscapes and such. 
• medical: virtual worlds can also be used to help hospitalized children to create a comfortable and safe environment which can expand their situation, experience interactions they may not have been able to experience without a virtual world, healthy or sick. Starlight Children's Foundation is one good example. 

Other interesting uses are eCommerce, political expression and military training. 

In the article "In Room 100, It’s Sid and Nancy All Over Again" by Saki Knafo , we read that Hotel Chelsea was remade by a former customer, Mr. Brown, on Second Life (a computer program that lets online users construct settings and hang out in them). It shows that people are creatively creating a whole new world to live in on a virtual platform

Another example is in the article "I’ve Been in That Club, Just Not in Real Life" by Dave Itzkoff. In this article, we read that a virtual website was built of the lower east side in Manhattan portraying stores, streets, trains, etc... and looking exactly like the real thing. It is known as VLES which stands for virtual lower east side. Almost like a game, people are allowed to go into these virtual stores, hangout with users, dance, etc. It creates almost another life of just fun and fantasy. 

The pros that are listed below explain some of the reasons why people enjoy virtual worlds so much.

Virtual worlds, like almost everything, have pros and cons. 

Pros:

• people who share similar interests find a common ground across differences in age, location, culture and language.
• people can escape real life when needed
• virtual worlds supplement traditional teaching
• virtual worlds supplement traditional military training 
• virtual meetings help save money (since travel, meals and accommodations are eliminated), reduce disruptions and such
• and more... 

Cons:

• virtual worlds can turn people into techno-addicts and sociopaths
• the best interaction remains the real face to face interaction which is one impossible in virtual worlds
• virtual worlds do not allow to identify users. They can be unsafe for kids as child molesters can use them to commit crimes. 
• and more...

Virtual worlds foster creativity: “If You Can Imagine It, You Can Build It!”, “Your World. Your Imagination.” As we have seen virtual worlds expand, there have already been some incredible creative expressions emerging. People use their imagination to create unique avatars, houses, landscapes, etc...  Take my example, I used to play The Sims (life-simulation video game). It offered me endless creative possibilities and believe me I used them to have the cutest family and nicest house! 

For the future, I believe virtual worlds will be used much more in tourism, education, business, military training, etc... I wouldn't mind attending a virtual business meeting! 

THANKS FOR READING! 

Social Networking Sites

After visiting and experiencing Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn, these are my comparisons/observations: 

Facebook is primarily for personal use as it creates a great environment for people to reconnect, stay in touch, or meet new people. Unique features I like are Facebook groups, "Poke" button, Fan pages and a few apps. 

MySpace has the same primary role as Facebook but it has more creativity. Unique features I like are moods depiction and built in photo editor.

Twitter is social blogging. It is used for info sharing. Users can "tweet" real-time information about what is happening and what's important to them. I like that I can discover deeper sides of people as they tend to express themselves freely on Twitter. I'm amazed!

LinkedIn is primarily for business use. Businesses and professionals can network on it. I like that you can display your twitter feed on your LinkedIn profile and have recommendations/references posted for you.

THANKS FOR READING! 

Social Networking

Let's start by defining the term "social networking". A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on facilitating the building of social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. (From Wikipedia)

Examples of social networking sites are Facebook, Twitter, Google+,  LinkedIn and Pinterest. There are a bunch of other sites all over the world as social networking is at its peak.

What social networking does is that it groups users together and allow them to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.

There are numerous ways that these technologies can be used. I've read that, overall, adults tend to use social networks for personal reasons more than professional ones. Indeed, people (teenagers and adults) can mostly use online social networks primarily to connect and stay in touch with friends, make plans with friends, make new friends, organize for an event, issue or cause close to their heart, flirt and such. Sites that are convenient to such motives are Facebook and Twitter.

After the personal reasons come the professional reasons that send people to network online. People but mostly organizations love to promote their personal brand. The online stage is a great tool for this marketing effort. It can be used to invite audiences to get to know a brand in a way that traditional forms of marketing or advertising can't. Digital marketing allows a company or just oneself to market a new line of products, connect to more people in the industry focus and such. Sites that are convenient to such motives are Facebook, and LinkedIn.
The article entitled "Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting" proves to us that as companies go hunting for job candidates using social networking technology, it is almost mandatory that we market ourselves online. Alfred LaSpina's story makes a perfect testimonial of this new movement.

Thus, social networking really benefit society. One can reduce loneliness and stay in touch with friends and one can successfully market itself online, you choose! (I suggest you choose both :)

However there is a dark side to it. It seems that social networking invades PRIVACY. You might already know that before hiring someone, a lot of companies look up their name on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Also, Facebook has been served several lawsuits concerning their privacy policies; in their efforts to accelerate advertising revenue, Facebook exploited their users so that when they clicked to like a product on Facebook, their names and photos were used to plug the product and further advertise on their site. Malicious activity such as fake accounts, photo tagging and fake apps are other frequent problems. In example, online bullying has sadly increased.
The article entitled "Who Cares About Facebook Privacy? Students Do" tells us how people especially students are sensitive to their privacy. It's understandable since they will be applying for internships and career jobs.

For the future, I see social networking totally taking over. There's no going back.
Businesses might want to have a fully networked environment so they better access customer profiles and preferences and grow a strong ability to deliver individualised products.
I see businesses becoming social and generating innovation, growth and jobs on an unprecedented scale.