Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

               Virtual worlds such as Second Life allow people to overcome the limitation of physical and geographical boundaries to exchange their ideas and communicate about their feelings. Translating their thoughts into computer programs, virtual world allows people to discover more alternate solutions and use these creations to simulate a "real-life" day to day interaction.

For example, in "After second life: can virtual worlds get a reboot? ", the author used Minecraft as an example to illustrate what virtual world is and its capability. Although users are separated, all of them join an online group that encourages open communications and collaborations. By creating an avatar, which is a virtual representation of you in an online world, users can interact and communicate with other people. And virtual reality usage has been extending to many important fields such as medical and military training, such scenario based training and interactions are vital for professionals working in these field. 

Improvement to an existing result could be done by asking the right questions and conducting scenario testing, two key steps in finding viable solutions. However, that capability was bounded by the limits of physical world, as each scene can only host one event at a time, and lacking the power of analyzing results in real time. Virtual Reality solved this issue by allowing users to put multiple scenarios together, and therefore testers can examine their ideas from multiple viewpoints to look out for where improvements are needed, and how could this testing could be improved upon. In "Avatar 2: The hospital", conducting a crisis scenario rescue would be a managerial nightmare. Thanks to virtual reality, administrators can now forget about the logistic troubles that come with it. By clicking a few strokes onto the keyboard, they can carry out the scenario exactly the way they wanted, and as many times as they wish. 

However, I think that lack of person to person interactions presents a major drawback. Even though that virtual reality does foster users to enhance their thoughts and experiences, missing out a face to face communication means we will not get a sense of the other's facial expressions, and leaving out such details, which often are the keys for how to improve the existing challenges.

I think that augmented reality would be an interest area to watch. For example, development such as HoloLens from Microsoft is a great leap towards the next generation virtual reality technology. From a two - dimensional representation to a real, interactive systems that gives instantaneous feedback to users. The HoloLens is different from a Virtual Reality Headset as users can press onto the button and get first person view, instead of an different view.

Mehta, D. (2013, April 30). After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get A Reboot. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianemehta/2013/04/30/after-second-life-can-virtual-worlds-get-a-reboot/#1a949d4f735a

            Simon, S. (2010, April 13). Avatar II: The Hospital. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703909804575124470868041204

About Twitter

             Crowd sourcing is a force too powerful to ignore. With the accelerated changes in information processing capabilities, the time to disseminate the message across has drastically reduced over time. Using a simple hastag, trending topics could quickly escalated into a national headline. Moreover, it is shown that many big news such as corporate earnings or Federal Reserve's rate decision are first identified on Twitter, followed by printed medias. 

             Twitter main differentiation from blackboard discussion is that of user familiarity. Using Twitter is simple and intuitive, whereas using blackboard requires prior usage with the system. For a first time blackboard users, the panel for discussion requires some knowledge about the platform to find the right option. Furthremore, Twitter has a much larger user base comparing to blackboard's, and to avoid the chances of confirmation biases, it is important to hear from others for their opinion and ideas as well. 

            I think the main differences is that of feedback mechanism in between Twitter and Blackboard. In Twitter, a tweet marked with a hastag invites others to join in the conversation as well, an important feature which blackboard lacks of. With a timely update, users can reduce the waiting time for a solution to their problem, and improve efficiency. 

           However, the benefit of an in-class discussion should also be analyzed. Although you can get the lastest information on Twitter, a person to person discussion allows a more thoughtful process for students to exercise on the critical thinking skills and interpersonal skills, traits which are crucial even in today's data dominated world. 

Social networking sites

           Social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram have spent a huge sum of money into their product development to better service and understand their users. With a more personalized design and layout, and each platform came up with their unique ways in building its structure and gaining customers.

           Comparing with Twitter's word limit of 140 characters, Facebook's did not impose a strict number of characters you can post, and I feel that this can be both a good and bad rule. First, by restricting the number of characters you can post, writers need to write a concise message, and straight to the point. It is therefore important for writers to know what's the central theme of the post. Posting on Facebook is a lot more dynamic compared to Twitter's posting: you can write a more detailed message, without the characters limits.

          Twitter also shows you what are the current trending topics among your followers, and to join the discussion of a specific topics, you use the hastag # sign as a common identifier to find all of the people who are tweeting about the same subject. More importantly for users who like to gain the latest information on breaking news, Twitter has really became an indispensable tool to get the message way before the official channel reports.

          Instagram is another social media platform that are more visual-based comparing to Facebook and Twitter. In Instagram, you post pictures and videos about yourself, or even the products that you are selling. A common feature between Facebook and Instagram is that both have the "live" option that allows viewers to join in and engage in real time. Twitter lacks a bit behind in this but it is the crowd-sourcing power that differentiates Twitter from the rest.

         LinkedIn is professional-oriented social media company that allows people working within the same industry to connect and get to know each other. Besides establishing new connections, LinkedIn also allows job seeker to connect with recruiters, and apply jobs that they are interested in.

         As a software-as-a-service company( SaaS), LinkedIn also different from the other three companies as users can upgrade their profile by joining a different level of membership plans. Unlike profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, LinkedIn profile allows other to understand what skills and job experience you have. By listing down a set of skills you have honed, human resource management people can quickly identifying the good candidiate vesus the right candidates from the applicant pool.

Social networking

                   Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have changed the conventional ways of communication, and also opened up many previously undiscovered ways to explore more insights about both ourselves and within our network.

                   LinkedIn, for example, allows recruiters to see who's within the potential hiring candidate's network, and what are the primary interest/specialization for candidates. By going beyond the applicant's one-page summary, recruiters can better understand if they have found the suitable talent, so as to reduce the chances of getting a mismatch. Potential job seekers could also utilize the search function within the LinkedIn eco-system to find their previous contacts, and to re-connect and re-discovery within such already established network.

                   However, the real concern of identity theft also raised in the first article ' New Wave of Phishing Scams Uses Facebook Info for Personalized Spam'. By sharing more details about ourselves online, we are leaving behind more digital footprints for potential impersonators to learn the details of ourselves. Furthermore, our friends and connections will also let their guard down when they see the message is coming from someone their trust.

                  Privary settings about who have the privilege to view our updates and postings are also concerns about social media. In another article, private postings can be viewed even from the outside network, which brings us the question of how can that be? In this article ' Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private', Randi Zuckerberg, the siblings of Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the gaint social media Facebook, was suprized to found out that a photo which was set to private mode can be viewed by people outside her network. It was later find out the reason: people who are friends within your network can also view your posting.

                 The controversial side effect of social media are multifaceted, and social medias have also opened up another platform for people to open up about themselves, finding community that shares the similar values and goals. And as of the future, I believe that the pace of technology progress will increase exponentially into the future, and will not doubt significantly improve our productivity and efficiency. However, social media technology will still be secondary to going out and meeting new people, and to re-connect with your friends.

1. BBB: New Wave of Phishimg Scams Uses Facebook Info for Personalized Spam. January, 28, 2013 http://www.bbb.org/blog/2013/01/new-wave-of-phishing-scams-uses-facebook-info-for-personalized-spam/
2. Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private,” The Atlantic Wire, Greenfield, R. December 26, 2012 http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/12/facebook-privacy-so-confusing-even-zuckerberg-family-photo-isnt-private/60313/

Blog vs Wiki

                  Blogging has become one of the most simple ways of sharing our views and thoughts about topics that we are interested, while wiki allows many users to make meaningful contribution and exchange their ideas in various unique ways.  Jimmy Wales,Wikipedia's founder, stated that knowledege sharing is enhanced by open, flexible, and rapid collaboration, and I agree with him in the following ways.

                 Wiki's main difference with blogging is the management of its content. With a blog, writers as such could express freely their views and thoughts about the topics of their interest. However, things get complicated when irrelevant comments/ messages starts appearing, and effect of preventive measures is minimum at best. 

                  Wiki's exclusive content management system is ideal for a concise, easy to digest piece of summarized information. For example in the article " an internal wiki that's not classified ", Stacie, a special assistant at the United States Embassy in Rome, was delighted at how helpful an internally build interactive, collaborative wiki can be. Not only saving up alot of operating costs of printing papers, but also ensure that its content is well organized and up to date. 

                   Information Technology formed the backbone for many today's advanced gears. For example cloud computing and storage, a decentralized way of updating, retriving, and analyzing information in real-time to give its users the next best solution/ recommendation. Having such an intergrated technology is crucial for firms that seek to obtain a competitive advantage is this data-centric era.

                   I think wiki could be more interactive in the future, for example, users could use visualization and virtualization method to envision certain topic for discussion. For example if a particular wiki is about astrophysics, users could put on specialized glasses (such as Virtual Reality glasses) to allow them to experience at first hand. 

Project title: LinkedIn vs twitter – the battle for influence

Project proposal:

                         LinkedIn and twitter are two different social platforms that many of the millennials have used. I would like to examine which of those are more effective in reaching out to our target audience. (for example, a student who wants to connect with a company's recruiter). In addition to the resume, Linkedin can provide a more colorful presentation of the one page summary. However, often that is not enough for the HR department to get the whole profile of that individual. Here is where a twitter account would provide a better overview of the individual: is he/she actively following in the industry leaders? What are some of the tweets that he/she has retweeted? and how often does he/she appears online to engage with the communities? I chose this topic because I have used both linkedin and twitter to reach out to professionals working in finance industry, and it is very interesting to see what an informal platform such as twitter can do, comparing with subscription based service that linkedin has.