New Media and the Job Market

For my last blog post I want to talk about how we can take all the concepts we have been discussing thus far in class and how we can use them to set us apart from other media studies majors as we enter the job market. I myself, as a media studies major, am very interested in a job field which requires work in the area of new media. I think gaining perspective from taking both new media classes at Catholic University will aid myself as well as others in entering this field of work. In class on Thursday we threw out some ideas of how we can market ourselves to the career market and set us apart from other candidates. For anyone in the process of applying for jobs or internships, I'd like to point out some ideas for aspects to add to your cover letter or points to talk about in interviews. When employers ask the infamous questions: "What makes you right for this job?" or "What sets you apart from other candidates applying for this position?", I hope my ideas can help you gain an advantage and land the job you are hoping to get. First off, this may seem obvious, but we all have exceptional knowledge and insight on social networking sites. You may think that anyone can say that they are experts on sites such as Facebook and Myspace, but to employers we have actually taken an academic course on the topic, which makes it much more official. I'm not such how to convey this idea without confusing anyone, but basically, we have a fundamental understanding of how these sites work, how they market users, and can fluently speak about the issues and concerns of them; which is much more important than merely knowing how to use all the features and know the road maps of such sites. Next, we have gained a lot of knowledge on the core issues of the internet, which a lot of people have awareness of, but we have deep insight and a lot of perspective on each side of the arguments. As well, we also have an understanding for the future of the internet, the dangers as well as hopes, for the direction we are going in the age of increasing technological advances. Everyone this day in age uses the internet, and gaining an employee who is well rounded in the nuts and bolts of the online world would be a beneficial gain to any company. While all media studies majors in the job market can say that they have a deep understanding of internet, we have this notion in writing, we have taken a specific course in this field and have the evidence to prove such. Remember, these are just a few ideas that I have highlighted for you to use, there are many other factors you can talk about. In closing, when you sit down to write your next cover letter, think about this course and all the insight we have gain and USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE! The economy may be tough, and the opportunity for landing a successful job may look slim at this point in time, but the internet isn't going anywhere, which means people who specialize in this field field are valuable to companies and businesses. We can take pleasure in knowing that we can put ourselves on a platform above others when in comes to conveying to employers that we have the skills and knowledge that set us apart from others in the topic of new media.

Cyber Bully Strikes Again....

After our class discussion about cyber bullying I took some time to reflect on some of my own cyber bullying experiences. As a teen I do not recall ever being a participant of these acts and I also do not recall having them done to me. Yet, in more recent years, I can recall several times where I fell victim to the bullying of others through the internet. I never thought of this as cyber bullying before, but after spending time thinking about it, I definitely think that it can be considered cyber bullying. I can count the number of times that I have been on facebook and simply closed the screen and forgot to log out, I'm sure you know where this is going...and your right. If my roommate ever sees my facebook open on my computer screen she immediately thinks that I am giving her an invitation to do as she pleases with my account. A few weeks ago as she was in the act of cyberbullying, she decided to send a relationship request to some random person who goes to Catholic who I am not even very close friends with. Once I discovered this I wasn't that upset, I actually found it kind of funny, but I hoped that I would never have to cross paths with that person ever again. Well all of my hopes went right down the drain when I found myself in Leahy trying to work on a paper. Leahy was packed as it usually is towards the end of the semester, and the only empty computer I could find was next to the guy that had received a facebook relationship request from me a few days prior. I sat down and avoided all eye contact whatsoever, the guy never said anything to me, but I can't even begin to describe how awkward I felt the whole time I was sitting there. The point of me telling you this story is that I know as we sat in class and watching the PSA about the young boy who was being attacked with cyber bullying, it was hard for some of us to relate to that kind of stuff. But, putting it into prospective into my life right now I can think of many cases where I have fell victim to cyber bullying as well as acting as a cyber bully myself (I obviously have to take revenge when my roommate alters my information on facebook). Not only did my roommates actions effect me, but imagine how that guy must of felt who received that relationship request from me, I'm sure he felt the same way I did when he had to sit next to me in Leahy when we have never actually had a conversation together. We all need to pay careful attention to what we do and say online, I know we've all heard this before, but it remains ever so true. If you learned any lessons from this post, its to ALWAYS log off of any social networking sites when you are finished using them, you never know who will be around. Although no serious damage was done in this case, there was a lot of potential at stake when I forgot to log off.

The Microsoft Hohm

After our class discussion last week about the iPad I thought it would be appropriate to share something that I read about in the news. In recent news Microsoft announced that it has teamed up with Ford to create a completely electronic car they plan on calling "Microsoft Hohm". After reading the article I got to thinking about what a great idea this was, I mean if there is one company out there that knows how to avoid crashes, its Microsoft...(not). What makes this car so different then other hybrid cars is that it is completely electronic and they have found a way to make charging the car more manageable by taking less time to charge them. Ford also says that they "might even develop a iPhone app that would allow owners to manage recharging remotely". I know I was sarcastic about the Microsoft Hohm in the beginning of this post, but in comparison to the electronic advances made through apple with the iPad, I think this product makes a lot more sense. The new iPad seems to be a good idea coming from a business perspective, but for people like me it just doesn't seem practical. Being a college student I obviously use my computer to do a lot of writing, if I was to get an iPad I would also have to have another computer to do all my school work on because it is obviously not practical for writing papers due to the touch screen keypad. If I want to listen to music I can listen to my iPod, or I can also listen to music on my iPhone. The iPad just doesn't seem like an expense worth justified to me right now. Until it actually does something that will completely change the way I live my life (like it promises to) you can find me using my PC to write my paper with my earphones in listening to my iPod. I think the iPad is more of a toy or gadget than anything else. While claims to embody the fantasies of the internet, most of them seem to be a stretch of the imagination.

...get a life.

After talking in class this week about MUD's (multi-user dungeons) I started to think about how I could talk about them in my blog. I sat here for about thirty minutes thinking about what my avatar would be like and what I would do with it. After all this time I realized that there is no aspect of MUD's that amuse me, the only fun I would get out of it is acting like a "Mr. Bungle". I mean I wouldn't go as far as making someone eat pubic hairs or violate themselves with a steak knife (from class reading, not my own thoughts) but the only fun I would find would be to go around causing chaos. The users who get so involved in these games that they don't know the difference between real life and virtual reality need a good ass beating. Life is not about sitting on a computer pretending to be someone your not and pretending to do things that you aren't really doing, they have a place in the real world for people who act like that and its called an insane asylum. These people need to get addicted to something more productive, like planting trees or something. The reality is that you can't live your life in html codes, users who "can't get enough" virtual reality need to wake up and smell the coffee because the real world isn't going anywhere.

My apologies if this blog post is just a list of my complaints towards those who display obsessive behavior over MUD's but I just can't seem to wrap my head around this. The only positive thing, and I stress only thing, I can come up with to say about MUD's is that I guess if your having a bad day in the real world you can take a small escape for a little while. That being said, you actually have to have a life in the real world for me to give you any approval for spending large amounts of time in virtual reality.

Unexpected Encounters...

After reading the story in the Clay Shirky reading I recalled a similar event in my life in which a group was formed unintentionally. A few weeks ago my roommate borrowed one of my purses to take to the bar that night, she returned the bag the next day and I nothing ever became of it. About two weeks after I had let her borrow the bag, I decided to use it to bring out with me. As I was putting my wallet and cell phone into the bag I noticed that there was a green TD Bank ATM card in the side pocket of the purse. Neither me nor my roommate belong to this bank, so I read the name on the card, for privacy reasons lets say the name read Johnny Appleseed. neither me nor my roommate had ever heard of this person before and none of the friends we were with knew who he was either. So how did someone's ATM card (a pretty valuable item to find) end up in my purse? I decided to log on to Facebook and look this person up, luckily there was only one Johnny Appleseed who belonged to the Catholic University Network and to my advantage, no aspects of his profile were set to private. This Johnny Appleseed must loose his belongings a lot because he had his cell phone number posted on his Facebook page, which is really not safe in my opinion. Surprisingly, I had nothing better to do with my afternoon so instead of sending him a message or email, I picked up my phone and gave Johnny boy a call. A groggy voice answered the phone and I asked to speak to Mr. Appleseed. The voice informed me that it was him speaking and I proceeded to tell him the story of how I found his ATM card in a bag that i had let my friend borrow. Johnny told me that when he closed his tab out at the bar that the bartender accidentally gave his card back to the wrong person and that he had already cancelled the card and told me I could keep it as a souvenir if I wanted? On a side note, My roommate came home with her own ATM card, so it remains a mystery as to why she thought is was okay to bring two ATM cards home from the bar. I thought that my conversation with Johnny Appleseed was over at that point, but he ended up having a conversation with me about what I was doing with my day and what my year and major was in school. Although odd, i answered the questions and eventually the conversation came to an end, A few hours later my roommate and I both received a Facebook friend request from Johnny followed by text messages sent to my phone asking if he could meet us for drinks to thank us for being to gracious to call him about his ATM card. We met up with him because we really didn't have any other plans, and since then we have remained friends and occasional have conversations with him when we see him out. We formed a rather unusual friendship or group from a rather unusual event. This life experience really goes to show how social networking sites, like Facebook, can create groups among people who would never have had an opportunity to interact with each other.

Downloading free music without committing any crimes...

The digital landscape is changing. It appears evident that the web is and will continue to shape business forever, music is no different. The notion of creating a multimedia piece online seems pretty quick and convenient with the uprise of websites like Youtube, which makes publishing any multimedia content that you create as easy as sending an email to a friend. One of the major problems that the world of digital creativity faces is the issue of music licensing. If you want to use/share someone else's music, you have to take extreme precautions in order to perform this legally. On Thursday someone in class asked about the issue of downloading free music in relation to our discussion about free open source software, and after surfing the web looking for information on downloading music I came across a website called Opsound. Opsound is "a gift economy in action, an experiment in applying the model of free software to music". Musicians and sound artists are invited to add their work to the Opsound pool using a copyleft liscence developed by Creative Commons. The listeners are invited to download, share, remix, and reimagine. After browsing this website I started thinking about how successful this website could be if more people knew about the opportunities it has to offer. Say more and more artist in the music industry decided to release certain songs from there albums and download them to websites like Opsound, this would prevent people from downloading songs illegally from the web. The incentive for artists to download music to sites that use the free open source software model is that maybe they can agree to put a few songs of their choice on the website, and then place a link to a website where listeners can go if they would like to purchase more music from that particular artist. This method allows for the creators and/or producers of the product (in this case music) as well as the general public benefiting from new product put out on the web. I think this website can really tie into our discussion of the economic and emotional arguments on the topic of free open source software.

I have IAD, and you might too...

After watching the documentary in class about the internet rehab center in china, I decided to look into rehab centers in the U.S. and how they plan to put an end to internet addiction. I found a program called reSTART, which is a 45 day program designed to "take serious suffers of IAD (Internet Addiction Disorder) and bring balance to their lives", joining this program will cost you $14,500 (at first this shocked me, but then I looked into how much other rehab centers cost and this price does seem reasonable). Internet Addiction Disorder refers to the obvious new phenomenon of people who can't resist using the internet or feel that their excessive use of the internet interferes with their daily lives. It is not currently included in the Disgnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), but many argue that addictions to the web and to internet based video games do indeed exist. To qualify for admittance to reSTART you are required to display 5 of it's 12 symptoms for IAD, which are as follows:

• Increasing amounts of time spent on computer and internet activities

• Failed attempts to control behavior

• Heightened sense of euphoria while involved in computer and internet activities

• Craving more time on the computer and internet

• Neglecting friends and family

• Feeling restless when not engaged in the activity

• Being dishonest with others

• Computer use interfering with job/school performance

• Feeling guilty, ashamed, anxious, or depressed as a result of behavior

• Changes in sleep patterns

• Physical changes such as weight gain or loss, backaches, headaches, carpal tunnel syndrome

• Withdrawing from other pleasurable activities

I won't tell you which symptoms I display, but according to this, I can self diagnose myself with IAD, and if you answered yes to 5 or more symptoms, you have it to! Now, aside from airing my dirty laundry about my medical conditions, I'd like to discuss the rehab program itself. Say you pay the $14,500, fly to seattle, and come back "healed", you now have another problem on your hands! In this day in age pretty much everything is going to be done online, we've all heard those threats before, and there is probably some truth to them. So, in a world where everyone is turning to the internet what are these newly "healed" people supposed to do, pretend like the internet doesn't exist?? How will they manage going online JUST to check there e-mail, or JUST to pay a bill? The reality right now is that the interet is pretty much unavoidable, at some point or later you will essentially have to go online to connect yourself with the rest of the world. What do you think, is internet rehab a waste of money in a world that exists half on the internet?