Week 12 Social Media and Computing

In our final week of Social Media and Computing the main focus was the future of Social Media. Will it expand decrease? Everyone in class thought that it would expand and become more integrated in our daily lives. Apps would become more lifelike and easier to use. Whatsapp was the main app discussed by my group and that phone calls through it would become easier and more audible. 
I read the article "The future of social media according to vice" and found it interesting. Most the people interviewed in the article agreed that social media will only grow and when you look at how much it has grown over the last decade it is hard to imagine how much more advanced it will get by 2025. Like everything though it will grow significantly and will be fascinating to see its development. Jen Goldberg, a digital strategist for ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, feels that "We'll continue to see a trend towards micro-communities and one-to-one or one-to-a select few sharing over the one-to-an-anonymous many," she said. "We've cycled away from blogging and broadcasting, towards anonymous sharing and small group messaging." It is hard to disagree with her assumption. 
I 'd like to thank Vera, Aideen and Marcus in my project group. I feel we worked very well as a group for 4 people who had never met. Also like to thank Shane for his help throughout the year. 

Week 11 Social Media and Computing

The main focus of Week 11 was Google Trends. Google Trends is sort of like Twitter for top searches. When you click Google Trends on Google if will tell you the main things that have been searched that day. eg on the 13th of July 2014 the main thing searched on Google Trends was Germany vs Argentina the Football World Cup Final.
You can also check the trends anywhere in the world really. You can search worldwide or for Dublin, London, New York etc.
Google Trends will also show you graphs of everything that you have searched on the Trend. I found it extremely interesting and strange that I had never really heard of it.

We had our online quiz that Friday at 9am. I completely it and was extremely happy with my result.

The main trends of 2014

Week 10 Social Media and Computing

In week 10 we had a guess speaker in called Lucie Bohmova in to discuss Social Media for Business. She discussed the 4 c's of Creation, Creativity, Community and Connection. I learnt about what social media will be like by 2020. Well what people in the class feel it will be like then. It mainly just included enhances in all of technology.
 In week 10 I also completely my project work which was to make persona types for our target audience and also to create two animated videos that showcased these personas.
Here is a screenshot of my animated videos

Week 6 Social Media and Computing

In week 6 we were given two Ted talks about copyrighting and the 2nd about crowdsourcing. In class the first topic that was discussed was Synchronous Communication (SC) and Asynchronous Communication.(AS). SC is about how communication is direct, parties communication are simultaneously present, eg telephone and VOIP.

I watched the Ted talk video by Paul Lewis about crowdsourcing the news. Out of every article/video that I read and watched this year in Social Media and Computing this was my favorite. I found it extremely interesting and found it hard to believe in some parts. The way they basically solved two murders through social media was fascinating and shows what can be achieved when Social Media is used correctly 

The group meeting was clear and precise. We discussed what our roles were and why we were each undertaking these roles. It helped make our project more efficient and easier to complete. Our e-lab in week 6 was to create a Screencast-o-matic and upload it to youtube. I wasn't the biggest fan of this site as I found it a bit confusing and didn't think it would help me online as I don't upload anything onto youtube. If you were a teacher or a singer I can see how Screencast-o-Matic could be useful though. Here is the link for my Screencast-o-Matic.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INaIprmFB1w&feature=youtu.be&hd=1
Here is a screenshot of it as well.

Week 5 Social Media and Computing

In week 5 we learnt about the displaying of information on social media mainly though Prezi. We were also told about Tag Galaxy, easel.ly and Presentime. We were told that in our lab on Friday we would learn how to create Prezi which was interesting as I had heard about it before but never actually set it up. 

We had an e-lab to do this week and that was to create a Prezi account and make "my first Prezi". I found it difficult at first but got to grips with it eventually. After finding out that I will be using Prezi for my end of year group project I tried to become more familiar with using Prezi. Here is a URL link to my Prezi account. http://prezi.com/d6fb3lvk8xxc/?utm_campaign=share&utm_

medium=copy&rc=ex0share
Here is a screenshot of my prezi as well

Week 8 Social Media and Computing

Week 8 focused on visual social media. I learnt the different types and uses of images on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Youtube. I learnt why there are so many different services, the reason being that it is because each large media player has something different to offer. It is also due to the significant amount of different target audiences whether that be social media, original artwork hosting or professional photographers. We also went through different websites that focus mainly on visual imagery such as Instagram, Pinterest and Flickr. I also learnt about the copyright issues with Social Media. 

I watched the ted talk by Alessandro Acquisti about what will a future without secrets look like. I found this interesting as it is something likely to happen in the future due to the lack of privacy in everyday life due to social media. Social media will only evolve and grow bigger from year to year which means that privacy could almost become obsolete. It also scared me a bit as sites like Facebook are tracking your everyday activities on it and developing your news feed to make you more perceptive to buy/use their products.

This week we have no face to face lab, instead we have to complete an e-lab. The e-lab that we did was to create a Flickr account. Flickr is an online photo and video sharing website that has become very popular over the last few years. It's main function is to share videos and photos and allow people to watch and view these videos and photos. 
Here is the link to my Flickr account and the photos in the account.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/132204976@N07/sets/72157651235193557/

Here is a screenshot of my flickr account

Week 7 Social Media and Computing

Mashups was the main item discussed in Week 7. Mashups are web developments that contain more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface. I learnt that mashups more often than not contain Google Maps and another source of information such as the screenshot below which was completely in week 7's face to face lab


In week 7 we had our last face to face lab where we discussed Mashups. We were given two places in Ireland to research on Goggle Maps and Mash them together to create a map which shows the various different locations as follows:

Week 4 Social Media and Computing

 In week 4 the lecture was primarily focused on the Wisdom of Crowd and Social Bookmarking. Social Bookmarking enables us to add, manage and share bookmarks of different documents. The primary goal is to share content with others. Examples of social bookmarking are Delicious and Diigolet I had heard of these sites before but never really knew what they were about so it was interesting to finally understand what they were about. In that lecture it was clear that a lot of groups seemed to have chosen a diet app which was illustrated clearly when all the answers were put up on the screen. 

In week 4 I watched videos about social bookmarking in preparation for class.I learnt that through social bookmarking you can improve your web page ranking significantly. I also learnt that for this to be successful you must update it very regularly.

We had an eLab in Week 4 which concentrated on Diigo and Pinterest. My first post on Pinterest was about Ireland's Six Nations campaign and the return of Outhalf Johnny Sexton after a spout of concussion. Here is a screenshot of my first Pinterest. I found Pinterest interesting as it was different to twitter and facebook which i both enjoy but if I wast o spend as much time on Pinterest as I do on those two social media sites I feel that I might develop a strong interest in Pinterest.

 

 The second part of the eLab was Diigo. Diigo is a social bookmarking site to make it easier to take notes and provides a network to share and discover information. All this information is then saved online as you bookmark it. I wasn't overly enthused by Diigo and much preferred Pinterest to it as I found it more useful and interesting.

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Week 3:Social Media and Computing

In week 3 I learnt about how many people write reviews online for products that they are happy/unhappy about. I had never written a review even when I wasn't happy with the product that I had bought. This may affect my decision in the future if I am unsatisfied with a product. The following questions and answers were given in the lecture that week

Question 1:  He sold an iphone on adverts.ie. He met up with the buyer and the transaction went smoothly. 

He went back on the webbsite and posted that the buyer paid the price agreed.

Question 2: He said that he had to review it as it was part of the websites policy and that if he didn't he may have lost potential future income from selling more products on this website.

Question 3: He said that a book he got as a Christmas present had an error in it and he was going to post a review indicating the error but decided not to as there was already several other reviews of the book and thought that there was no point adding to them. 

In week 3 I also read about the pros and cons of Internet User Generated Content. I saw that the pros involved in this were that Content is written by people who are creating the product, which should lead to more technical accuracy. Content is also updated very quickly.
The Cons involved that It is difficult to maintain the same voice and tone from writer to writer and also that the content can end up being very disorganized and hard to follow.

On Friday 6th of February we had our second face to face tutorial in Newstead which was again focused on creating an app. I found this tutorial easier than the first tutorial due to developing a good knowledge with creating apps because of the first face to face tutorial. The instructions given were also quite simple to follow. This app was called the "Magic8Ball". It involved similar instructions to the "HelloPurr" app. The toughest part was linking all the "Blocks" sounds together to create the sound for the app. Here is a link to my Magic8Ball app  http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/   
Here is also a screenshot of the Magic8Ball app that I made

Week 2 Social Media and Computing

Week 2's lecture focused on communication- traditional, semi-traditional and social media communication.Traditional communication is considered as telephone communication, semi-traditional focuses on e-mail and mobile phone communication and social media communication is regarded as newer sources of communication such as web conferencing. In preparation of week 2's class I read the article "Truth in the Age of Social Media: A Social Computing and Big Data Challenge". I found this article interesting as it had brought up things that I had never known about social media. This week helped me learn about the different types of communication that currently exist in Social Media.

We had our first face2face lad that week as well where we created the HelloPurr App. Finding Newstead was a bit of a challenge but I got there eventually. It was a bit tricky at first to create the app as it was my first time doing something like this and as the class carried on I got more used to it and http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/#4749539715055616 found it easier. There is a link to of my HelloPurr App, Here is also a screenshot of it.

Week 1 Social Media and Computing

This week was our first lecture where we met our lecturer Shane McLoughlin. At the beginning of the class Shane told us about our group project. We were told we had our first eLab that week also. In this eLab I completely the two tools of the trade assessments that were given:How to Collaborate Effectively and How to Create a Wiki on Blackboard. These two tools of the trade helped me understand how to interact with team members and the do's and don'ts when working on a team. How to Create a Wiki on BB helped me understand the types of things that were expected in the module and was a good way to start the Social Media and Computing module. I also watched videos which were linked in the preparation of the first week of lectures. They helped distinguish between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. They also discussed what and how Web 3.0 will evolve in the future.