New media, social networking, and software development.

I would like to discuss the evolution, and merger of new media, social networking, and software development. During my presentation I would like to use 2 pieces of software as a demonstration of how developers of the entertainment software incorporate social networking, as well as new media ideas into their products. I will be discussing these issues on an example of "Steam", by VALVe, a digital content distribution system, as well as "Spore" a game developed by Maxis. I will discuss how the developers did intentionally incorporate the mentioned issues into their software, for the purpose of creating communities, creative growth, as well as for pure economic reasons. I will add aditional content to this post later on, in the mean time feel free to visit the main sites of interest: Spore Steam Here is also a video demonstration of Spore during the TED conference(Jul. 2007)

“The New Media technologies: Overview and research framework”

The review of “The New Media technologies: Overview and research framework” by Linda Weiser Friedman & Hershey H. Friedman. The paper is very informative, it presents to the reader a lot of information, all divided into separate sections, that deal with “new media”. It allows us to look at new media which is so common nowadays, from other perspective that sometimes we might be used to. The issues related to new media are defined into more specific groups, such as information relating to technology involved, the social influence of new media, the business applications and etcetera. The article gives a new comer to the “new media” topic an excellent overview, not only from the perspectives mentioned above, but also a “historical” perspective, which allows one to realize how “it” all begun, and evolved. Even though the idea of new media is an issue that is very temporally dependant, since the technology evolves so rapidly, I do believe that the paper does describe “new media” with the use of different definitions very well, since it is hard to pinpoint what is new media, without the use of time references. Since as described in the paper, there is a constant convergence of the new media with the old media, I enjoyed the comparison of this “evolution” to the “Darwinian’s” evolutional theory. New media is truly an evolving concept, and I also believe as it was stated that it is defined by: communication, collaboration, community, creativity, and convergence, but I also believe that it thrives upon it.

What is New Media?

A short video in which several leaders of the digital media community voice their opinions on "New Media".

Tech-talk comments

• Muhanad’s presentation on del.icio.us: It was very informative, I stumbled upon “delicious” in the past, but did not really pay much interest to it, but the presentation made me interested in it.

• Nichel’s presentation on flickr: The ability to share pictures with friends, and family, that flicker offers is very convenient.

• Amy’s presentation on ebay: I never knew about the additional resources that ebay offers, it allows for much greater collaboration/communication than I thought.

• Anthony’s presentation on youtube: I guess youtube is one of those sites everyone of us visited at least once before, but never really thought about how much of a marketing resource it is.

• Johnny’s presentation on V.O.I.P.: The presentation was very informative, since I never really used the voip services in the past.

• Melissa’s presentation on gnu.org: I have used a lot of open source software/OS in the past, and I enjoyed the presentation a lot, since I do believe that open source is the way to go when it comes to being creative, as well as being able to contribute to the “evolution” of technology.
• Sarah’s presentation on watching TV on the web: It was very informative; I always enjoy learning new bits of tech info, especially when it comes to entertainment.

• Tiesha’s presentation on Music Media: I enjoyed it a lot, since to be honest I really got out of the loop when it comes to any music related technology. The CD/vinyl product was really an interesting “mash up” of the old and new.

• Anastasia’s presentation on Second Life: Finally one presentation relating to the gaming media , I never really plaid this game, although I read a bit of info about it. I enjoyed the info on how the game is being used not only for leisure, but also for collaboration, and commerce.

• Sutharshan’s presentation on HowStuffWorks: I used to visit similar sites, but never visited this one, very interesting content can be found on that site. Great resource for research, or just on ….how stuff works ;).

• Damon’s presentation on bittorrent: Torrent technology is an interesting one, even more so the use of it in commerce. It is a topic of much controversy.

• Vincent’s presentation on Wikipedia: Very informative presentation, the coding section will definitively be helpful in creating our Wiki.

• Sergey’s presentation on MapQuest: Very informative. I did not know that MapQuest had such advanced features. Its one of those technologies that can really help people not only when it comes to navigation.

Photosynth

What is photosynth? Photosynth is a new technology developed by Microsoft Labs, initiated at the University of Washington as a photo-tourism application. It takes a large collection of photos of a place, or an object and analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3D form. Personally I believe that PhotoSynth will change teh way we percieve photography, as flicker, and photobucket were revolutionary in their times, PhotoSynth will be soon. The software is powered by SeaDragon, and it allows for seamless transitions between pictures, and zooming in and out, which allows the viewer to see where a picture was taken, in relation to other pictures. Each photo is processed by computer "vision algorithms" to extract hundreds of distinctive features, the photos that do share similar features are linked to one another, as a result the 3D position can be calculated, and the photo will be assigned a place in he 3D location. One of the major strengths of photosynth is its speed, it allows the viewer to brows collections of many thousands of high definition photos, as if it would be one image. The only restraint is the bandwidth, as well as the user screen size. During the presentation I would like to use power point slides, as well use a tech demo of photosynth provided by the Microsoft Live Labs, in order to provide a more enjoyable experience to the viewers. . The tech demo can be fuond here. A demonstration of SeaDragon, and PhotoSynth video:

Bendable displays

I think this might be one of the "ultimate" mergings of books, newspapers and electronic displays. below are some vidoes: - Sony's ultra thinflexible video screen. - Couple vidoes of the "Radious" Philips's prototype of a e-paper based document reader.

Electronic Scroll

I think this might interest some, it is an "electronic scroll" which utilizes the e-paper technology.

E-Book readers (the old and the new)

This is an interesting article(PC Magazeene, February 08) that deals with old media(books) converging in a way with new media(e-book readers) I decided to post this article, since I think it is interesting, also the way its prezented is quite interesting as well, since its a scan of the article, which has been digitalized and embedded into a "viewer".

Perils of social networking.

The New York Times article “How sticky is membership on Facebook? Just try breaking free.” Written by Maria Aspan is an interesting article that deals with the “risks” of social networking. It describes the perils of ex-Facebook members that wish to erase all their Facebook account information. The article discusses the hardships that the former members of this social network faced, in order to permanently expunge their presence from the Facebook records. Apparently it is not as trivial as it might initially seem. According to many “victims” the membership on Facebook does not get entirely deleted after a user terminates his or her account, nor does it cease to exist after requesting the deletion of the account from Facebook itselfe.

Video

I thought that this video might be of interest to some. It relates to new media, as well as to a bit exagerated "what if scenario".

In the beggining...there was a blog.

Hi, the purpose of this blog is to document data relating to New Media, such as different articles, new media related technology and alike. I hope those that shall visit this blog will find it to be informative.