Next New

Health consciousness has become a prime focus point within this generation. Now a day, there's a multiple amount of resources that individuals can take advantage of to assist with being "health conscious". While technology is helping change the live & raw data to assist these individuals, we've come to conclude that simplifying the multitude of data, into a "one-stop shop" to help individuals, could be even more resourceful. Ironically, the fuel that makes this whole thing function, is the fuel that makes our body's function. FOOD. But, how do we know exactly what kinds of foods, are the right foods? How can we use the multiple technologies currently in place to make the correct food recommendations? How can we know what nutrients our body needs and at what proportion?

Although there are already numerous Health and Fitness apps like Fitbit and loseit, most of them require manual inputs. Users need to either type in their nutrient proportions or they have to upload a picture of their food or scan a barcode after which the app processes it and finds out what nutrients you have taken in. In our busy lives, we often forget to upload our dietary nutrients on the app, and thus the app itself fails to know what nutrients our body lacks.

However, what if there is an app that does not require this manual input? What if the app already knows what your body lacks based on your biometric data? What if the app not only gives you personalized recommendations for food that satisfies your body needs but also tells you where you can get it from?

This is where the idea of an app that collects health biometrics and recommends the food that your body specifically needs comes from. Since live biometric data will be collected in this app, the app is more accurate than the fitness apps that are already out there. There's no guessing game for nutrients you lack and a more personalized food menu will be provided for each user. Last semester, my team and I had worked on a prototype for this app and named it 'ReccoBite'.
If technology can help us reach for the stars, then how can it not help us reach for the 'right' food?

Here is the promotional video of our app: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2G1lTad1d0

And here is the prototype itself: https://xd.adobe.com/view/1fda9441-9167-45af-4198-0ccaee0f4c55-69eb/screen/2bd084d6-821d-4a67-b868-474eff51f09e/Screen-5?fullscreen

Wiki So Far

My pieces in the wiki so far have been quite random. I've mostly skimmed through a lot of pages and added my paragraphs where I felt some topics were missing and added relevant references for my works. For example, firstly, on the page New Media in Web Design under website builders, I swapped a paragraph for 'GoDaddy' because the earlier version seemed a bit vague. Secondly, I added a 'Shein' paragraph as one of the e-commerce sites on page Fashion. Along with the paragraph, I added a picture of its logo. Thirdly, on Social Media Acronym's page, I added a paragraph called 'Internet slangs and formal writing'. Fourthly, under Graphics I added a paragraph on 'After Effects' and like the previous one, I added a logo of After Effects. Lastly, on the Banking page, I added a picture and paragraph on 'TD Bank online banking.' Apart from these major additions, I did minor edits on the from the first paragraph till the end of 'video downloading on the end' wherever I found grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, hyphenation, etc. With the above mentioned Wiki work, I think I've had the chance to take the role and understand the tasks of a contributor, page editor, graphics editor, and a content auditor.

P2P

File sharing is the process of distributing or sharing media (audio, video, text files) from one computer to another. Few ways files can be shared are: through the use of removable devices like USB, through centralized servers like Google Drive or Dropbox, through hyperlinks and downloads from the world wide web and lastly through the most commonly used peer-to-peer networking (P2P). In peer-to-peer sharing, instead of sharing media files through a server, people share files through a network. Computers connected to a single network can share each other's files with a simple file search. One of the most popular examples of P2P sharing is BitTorrent. In the article The BitTorrent Effect, the author says that "It takes hours to download a ripped episode of Alias or Monk off Kazaa (another file-sharing application), but BitTorrent can do it in minutes." Creator Bram Cohen is so proud of his creation (aka BitTorrent) that he gets up every morning and sees his Paypal account "fill up with donations from grateful BitTorrent users - enough to support his family" (Thompson, 2005). Although these file sharing applications help millions of users to get their desired file easily and free, some data sharing can cause the violation of copyright laws and the rise of internet piracy. If and only if these applications are used properly without violating internet ethics, the full utilization of technology can be achieved.

Sources:
https://www.wired.com/2005/01/bittorrent-2/

Privacy

Glenn Greenwald, a Ted Talk speaker has said even though we are ‘not doing anything we need to hide’ ourselves in social media (Sommer, 2014). Privacy issues and online security has been one of the crucial topics in today’s age of technology. In simple terms, internet privacy is a level of security provided in different social media platforms for its users’ personal information. The whole process of online privacy starts from the moment we start accessing the internet. Exactly when we sign up with our specific internet service provider, we start to share our IP address with others. Although this little breach of privacy does not harm us personally, it is our personal information that is being shared.

Today, we millennials choose convenience over privacy. Daily tasks, as simple as giving a Facebook like or using our credit card at a grocery store requires giving up our personal data. Yet we do it. Why? because it's easier. A similar data is shared in the article Survey reveals generation gap in attitudes about security and privacy where it clearly shows that almost half of Gen-Xers fail to protect their smartphone with a pin but about 63% of millennials password protect their phones simply because phones are their world. From pictures to credit card information, millennials keep everything on their phones. Why? Again, because it's easier. 

Moreover, The article The Wild West of Privacy says big companies like Facebook and Google "have developed sophisticated tools that allow them to know almost as much about us as we know about ourselves; they then sell that data to all kinds of companies that want to learn everything from our habits to our health, from our sexual orientation to our finances." These media platforms, mainly Facebook help advertisers to target customers accurately by gathering personal information like Facebook likes and shares which may cause privacy violations. Throughout this process of collecting data and sending it to advertisers, both media companies and advertisers often forget the difference between privacy invasion and effective marketing.

Sources: 

http://www.javaworld.com/article/2101287/java-security/survey-reveals-generation-gap-in-attitudes-about-security-and-privacy.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/25/opinion/nocera-the-wild-west-of-privacy.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=1

https://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters/transcript?language=en

Advice

Baruch College has been already using new media to improve itself. Baruch has its accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to share news and update any information for students to know. Also, each class has a group on Facebook where classmates help each other regarding homework or registration. Baruch's Advisement office also uses an electronic system for appointments. Not to mention, several clubs have their own pages on social media sites where events and opportunities are shared.

However, despite being so much digital Baruch struggles in several ways. For example, even though Baruch shares events and news on their pages, but it fails to spread to the whole student body. To avoid this, Baruch can host giveaways where the person with the most number of shares would receive a gift. Similarly, although clubs are using social media sites, they still print out fliers to post it on the bulletin boards. To me, this is simply a waste of paper. Since clubs are already using media pages, they should try to utilize it to the very best and cut the wastage of paper. They should be introduced to a new rule such as: A club would only get a limited amount of paper to use. Hence, all communication regarding events and meetings should be online. Additionally, the advisement office uses online appointments but it is always full before registration opens each semester. To avoid this traffic, advisement should use video conferencing to provide their service to students. This way, students will get their necessary advice remotely and the traffic of students waiting on the line would decrease drastically.

Creativity and New Media

Since I'm a graphic design minor, I was required to take an animation course this semester and only because of this requirement I got the chance to explore the world of animation. From my childhood days, I've been a cartoon-addict and being able to create one is something really interesting to me. For my first ever self-portrait animation (embedded above), I used adobe after effects which is available in all mac and windows devices. In earlier days, artists had to hand-draw 24 frames of drawings in order to make 1 second of an animated film. This was, of course, quite time consuming and was only limited to those people who could draw well. However, with the advancement in technology, anyone can now make an animation with or without knowing to draw well. For instance, I'm not good at drawing but yet I was able to create this simple, clear animation by using adobe after effects cc and various vector graphics from online resources.

Also, technology has gone so far that animation is not only being used in cartoons and comic books but also in the medical field. With the ability to make 3D digital designs, doctors and nurses rely fully on medical animations to see the unseen anatomy in our bodies. Imagine if these 3D drawings were done by hand, would it be accurate? would it be visually clear? would it be reliable for our future doctors and nurses? I doubt it. Thanks to digitization for not only bringing out our creativeness but also creating a big impact in the field of biology. 

HW Creativity

The history of mashups started from the mid-1990s where songs had to be sampled, turned into hybrids with the extensive use of open source programs. Artists used to gather mashup programs from various programmers just to make one mashup. Then came, the process of publishing and distributing it (which used to be a whole lot of work). Basically, creating mashups was not only time consuming for mashup artists but also a lot harder compared to now.  In the article, The New Math of Mashups by Sasha Frere-jones, Mark Vidler, professionally affiliated with the Go Home Productions, shared his thoughts on recent digitization as ““You don’t need a distributor, because your distribution is the Internet. You don’t need a record label, because it’s your bedroom, and you don’t need a recording studio, because that’s your computer. You do it all yourself.” Today, behind-the-scenes work of a mashup has become so less that with the right software and enough time, one can not only listen to mashups but can also create it by himself. This proves, digitization enhances creativity and boosts intelligence.

Sources:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/01/10/1-1-1-1