P2P File Sharing

     Peer-to-peer technology is a new network technology. It based on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network, rather than to rely on gathering on a few physical servers. P2P networks are typically connect through Ad Hoc connection. Such networks can be used for a variety of purposes. Variety of file sharing softwares have been widely used. P2P technology is also being used in data communication like VoIP and other real-time media business. File sharing is the practice of providing access to transfer information and documents like pictures, sounds, videos, data, etc. Peer-to-peer file sharing is that users upload files that are parted into small datas and stored on thousands of servers, and others users can download the whole file by collecting all the datas from the servers through the peer-to-peer technology. One of the biggest and well know peer-to-peer file sharing is Napster, BearShare, BitComet and eDonkey.
     In the article "Should Online Scofflaw be denied Web Access" published by New York Time in 2009 by Eric Pfanner, states the question "Is Internet access a fundamental human right? Or is it a privilege, carrying with it a responsibility for good behavior?" The big problem of using P2P file sharing is infringement. In fact, most of the files shared on P2P networks is copyrighted popular music and movies. In most of the judicial scope, sharing these copies is illegal. Many observers, including the majority of media companies and some P2P advocates criticized this network has caused a huge threat to the existing issuance of medias. It is necessary to make laws to protect the copyrights and limit the use of P2P file sharing softwares.

Creativity

I think new medias offer opportunity to people to show and share their ideas about every areas of life each other. Creativity means to creat some thing new with existed resources. That can be real things or ideas. One of the big platforms that new media fosters creativity is Youtube. People like to share their new ideas about things in life through making videos, after more and more people watch it, it would become a new kind of pop culture if people love to join and act it. The song "Gangnam Style" from Korea is a good example. The dynamic rhythm of the music and the new style of pop dance named Horse Riding Dance attract so many people in the world. Since the video was posted on Youtube, there has already 750 million views. People from Asia, Americas even Europe now love to sing and dance with the song. It has become a kind of pop culture in the world. Because of Youtube, more and more people have opportunity to know the new things from everywhere of the world. New medias offer chances to creators about showing their talents and abilities, then it encourage people to creat more good things.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

     The virtual world is an online community based on computer simulated environment. The virtual character incarnations are the carrier who live in the online world. The users of the virtual world can choose a virtual 3D model as the incarnation to walk, fly, ride transport and so on. Also they communicate through text, images, sound, videos and other media. Although this world is "virtual" because it comes from the creativity and imagination of the computer, this world is an objective reality. The real human exist as unreal characters with real time and space blend, which is the most important feature of the virtual world.
     The virtual world is divided into virtual fantasy world and the virtual reality world. Virtual fantasy world is similar to MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) game. It's just a fantasy world with a theme. The structure of the virtual world in the games are the network interactive versions of the myth and fantasy. Game provides players with a pre-built scenes and tools that allow player to play a role into the fantasy world. In essence,  it is not associated with the real world. The virtual reality world provides users the most original virtual elements. The users can build anything they want with the elements on the land of nothing. The creators have the ownership of their virtual property. They can decided if their property can be copied, modified, or resale. The virtual reality world let people create and extend reality in virtual world. At the same time, the life of the virtual world and the life of the real world have certain relevance in politics, economy, culture, education of the society.

Social Networking Sites

      Social network has became a part of people's life. The four major social networking sites in the U.S. are Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn. Their users' age distribution quite different and have their own characteristics. Compared with MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter users balanced age distribution. Between MySpace, Facebook and Linkedln, Facebook and LinkedIn users' age distributions are similar which more than 75% of users are between 23-65 years old. There is 70% users of Myspace concentrated between 18-35 years old. The SNS user age distribution are decided by main services provided by the website and the demand of the users.
     MySpace provides users a stage to show the personality. The users are more interested in entertainment, humor, comedies, and video games. Variety of popular fashion elements abounded. It is favored by many musicians and actors. They can communicate with their fans so that it attracts a large number of young people to use it. Facebook and LinkedIn as the largest social network have most similar at the authenticity of the user information. They put the virtual social network back to reality. The difference is that Facebook provides more entertainment purposes to users with their real friends, and LinkedIn provide efficient, safety and business valuable social services. It is more favored by business people. Therefore, although the users' age distribution of Facebook and LinkedIn is similar, LinkedIn users are more mature. Twitter is the originator of the microblogging community, which provides users with short, frequent, fast service, the nature of its services has not much difference in the needs of users in different ages. Twitter users are particularly interested in news, food, sports, politics, personal finance, as well as religious. They also like pop culture, music, movies, TV, and reading. Their buying habits reflect their interest. Twitter users prefer to buy books, movies, shoes, and cosmetics.

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Social networking

     Social networking is the network of relationships between individuals. Website that based on the thinking of the social relationships is social networking site. Now, many Web2.0 websites belong to social networking sites, such as online chat, video sharing, blog, wiki, podcast, music sharing and so on. Most of the social networks allow users to interact in many ways, including chat, sending a mail, audio and video, sharing files, writing blogs, participating in discussion groups. Social networks provide a new method for exchanging and sharing information. General social networking site has several millions of users, and the service has become a part of life for the users. Facebook and Myspace are the well-known social networking websites in the world.

     The starting point of social networking is the e-mail. Early, e-mail resolve the remote mail transmission problem, and it is still the most popular application on Internet. Later when BBS comes out, social networking goes further. The normalization of "group sending" and "retransmission" theoretically set up the funtions of online publication and discussion. BBS makes the advance in cost reduction from simple point-to-point to point-to-side communication. Instant messaging (IM) and blog (Blog) are more like upgraded version of the previous two social tool.
     Making friends is beginning of social network. Social network has undergone such a process of development: Make friends with strangers stage-Friendster helps you build weak social relationship; the entertainment stage-MySpace creates rich multimedia personalized space to attract the attention; the social graph stage-Facebook copy real interpersonal network to online with low-cost management.
     Social networking plays an important role in people's lives. It has underestimated effect in people's thinking,life and information catching. However, there are some drawbacks in social networking, including the disclosure of personal information. Especially for young people, they are in the front-end of the social network, but also affected the most.

Blogs vs. Wikis

     The themes on wikis are generally clear and firm. The site's content requirements a high degree of correlation. Writers and participants should comply with seriously. Wiki collaboration takes denotative and connotative extension for a theme, and solve a problem very fully and deeply. Compare with these, blog has non-variations on themes, and it is generally spread by concern of few people. Blog site will have a theme, but it is often loose, and generally will not deliberately control the content.
     Wikis are used most in co-writing of the document or writing books. Especially for the FAQ of technical program development. It is more suitable to show that on wikis with collaboration. Blog also has the meaning of collaboration, but it generally refers to users focus on completely different content. This collaboration in terms of content is relatively loose. You can show any person, any sites to blogs.
      Blogs help to share your ideas to other people. Blogs do collaboration when you show out a theme or an idea, then you communicate with your audience and having their respond. People can learn what you think from that and may apply your learnings to their own. Many organizations prefer to use blogs as collaboration tools to share data, information, and knowledge among employees and consumers. For example, consumers can post some messages or feedback about the products and services on blogs. The companies are interested in how the consumers feel their products, and what suggestions theny give to improve the products. In Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write a Blunt and Unfiltered Blog, NY Times, march 3, 2008, p. C1, it states "Their decisions about what makes it onto Wal-Mart’s shelves have enormous impact, earning (or costing) vendors millions of dollars. A blogger who first disclosed last month that Wal-Mart would stock only high-definition DVDs and players using the Blu-ray format, rather than the rival HD DVD system. The decision was considered the death knell for HD DVD."  Also, the feedback from old consumers helps new buyers get information about the products. "Wal-Mart says the Web site helps buyers solicit quick feedback from consumers on the merchandise."

Project Description

Topic: What are the advantages and disadvantages of shopping online?

Description:
In my research project, first I will introduce what is online shopping and how it relate to new media. For example, I will talk about how online shopping create, what old media does it depend on, and what technology does it use. Then I will discuss the advantage and disadvantage of online shopping base on the impact of  people's daily life and work, and how it effect the social communication and the social stability.