Creativity

Creativity can come in different ways, this time in the article of The New Yorker "1 + 1 + 1 = 1 The new math of mashups" and in the article from The New York Times "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of its Critters" I find it really interesting how people just have the ability to create better things from thing that are already done. For me sometimes is difficult to create new things because I think for some things I have not developed that as well as I could of with all the new media and technologies. I think that for me is sometimes really unfortunate that having so many things to use I just stay with the basic stuff, maybe because I am not a frequent user of them but learning about them and trying to use them might give me a better perspective of things and it is never too late to learn new things.
The mashups from videos are really great sometimes and get to be viral on youtube and generally in the Internet. creating this kind of things has it magic, mostly with the videos because people have to have a really good imagination of what they want to do in order for them not to get sue for copyright or things like that, so the person doing that has to be very clever to use whatever they are going to use and do it in a way that the people can enjoy but that at the same time is not illegal to do.

Also the article from The New York Times "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers" is very interesting because they do take into consideration what the users want so they can actually please them (of course this is not only for something that is mentioned just a few times, it has to be something that is "trending", so it is logical to say that Twitter actually cares about their users wants.

Blog about Twitter

I believe that for this class is more efficient to have a Twitter discUssion than a blackboard discussion because when people comment on your ideas you will get a notification right away, while with the blackboard you will have to go and check constantly to see if something happened. And it might be better than a I'm class discussion because you won't get interrupted and you can express your idea without any trouble, and sometime you'll be sure that people will read your idea and maybe be interested in it.

Social networking sites

I have a myspace, facebook, Twitter and I used to have hi5. All the four sites are similar in the sense that they all help you find people and communicate with people that are far away or just to meet people. The are all different because they are also used I'm different ways than just the basic communication with people. Twitter for my point of view is a place to express ideas but you are limited due to the few characters that they give you. Facebook is a place where people express their ideas but have a bit more abilities to do so. Myspace I used it mostly to have like musicians and their music, which I don't use very much due to the fact that not all the amount of people who used to use it are doing it now, for me is a dead site, and the same goes to hi5.
Nowadays I try and stick to few social networks because once there's one that becomes way more popular than the others is basically as if it never existed.
They all have the basic features of connecting people and know even more.

Social Networking

What are some ways (corporate and otherwise) that these technologies can be used?

I believe that this technologies can be good to keep us informed, let say if people follow social networks about news and thing like that t is very useful to keep an eye on what's going on not only in your town or your country but also all around the world. It truly is a way to keep in touch with people you don't see that often anymore, to find childhood friends. For some other people this is a great way to meet people (I am not one of them because you are never sure if the person who is really after that picture or profile is really the person you think it is, for me it is way better to actually meet people in meeting, or just randomly which can be awkward but it is better to know for certain who is the person who you're talking to and not have the uncertainty of not being sure who is behind the screen). 

These technology is a much better way to find jobs, and put yourself out there to find a maybe better job than the actual. This i believe is a really good tool because people might bump into your profile they might like your characteristic and from there now there is an opportunity that you might have not thought of having by just sending out your resume at some potential places you would like to work at. This is stated in the reading Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting by Frank Langfitt, NPR, March 16, 2008.

What are the benefits of these technologies to society? Be specific. Is there a "dark side"? 

I believe that the good thing about social media is that you can keep in touch with people who live in some other part of the world or just friends who you don't see that often anymore, in my case social networking is a great tool to keep in touch with people from my country, also I follow some facebook pages that are related to news so when i open up my facebook I can see some of the stories they have publishes and so on. But I do believe this has a really big dark side, I know that we are in a technological era but this social networks keep us somewhat hypnotized, I read recently that there are people who are literally addicted to social networking and cannot live with out their phone, and the treatment that they are giving this people is the same as an alcoholic or even a drug addict. Social networking is good if it's used in a reasonable way or even just as an attraction but not for it to become your life. 

I find important nowadays the privacy you can have in your social network, because you will post something online because you want to share it with certain, but if you're not sure of how it works or if you're not sure of the configuration just don't post it, find a more private way of doing it, and so you'll avoid what happened to the Zuckerberg's, getting something that was supposed to be private to be public. (Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private,” The Atlantic Wire, Greenfield, R. December 26, 2012).

Blog vs. Wiki

Blogs are a space where people express their ideas and opinions while a wiki is a contribution of some information to an specific topic but people cannot really express their opinions on it.
Blogs can be a one to many source or a many to many source, wikis are a many to may source because it has many collaborations. 

The convergence of blogs and wikis lay in the fact that they both are collaborations in the sense that one of them can express an opinion on something and at the same time help people ("Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write a Blunt and Unfiltered Blog, NY Times, march 3, 2008") to know what to do, and wikis ("An Internal Wiki That’s Not Classified by Noam Cohen. The New York Times, August 4, 2008") since they are a contribution of "knowledge" it helps people in this case to know about the people who were going to be in a meeting, which was a really god thing because they got rid of so much paper wasting, but at the same time they had the uncertainty of who edited the information and if it was accurate or not. 

Blogs can be used as a collaboration when it comes to something that affects a community as we could read in the article "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid By MICHAEL WILSON The New York Times June 26, 2008", with the help of comments of the neighbors police uncovered a house with dug dealers, that put the neighborhood and the people in danger. 

Also it was a good collaboration for Wal-mart, to know what products the customers like and want and which one are not, and most important that the people who actually sell the products had an opinion on whether or not it was a good or bad thing.