Blog v Wiki

Blogs and wikis have become so popular that these words feel very familiar to us now. So familiar that sometimes we even forget the actual meaning or in fact what these two words represent. Blogs and Wikis serve to gather information from multiple people into one web page. The main difference is that blogs are all about the authors opinions and the development of these ideas (with some criticism and collaboration from other bloggers). As we see in the article "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid" by Michael Wilson; a bunch of people from the area of Brooklyn came together in a blog, providing information hat came from each blogger's perspective. This different information added up in one blog to become so detailed and accurate that eventually it was for use of the police to perform an effective drug raid in a house.

Wikis, on the other hand, serve as a collective effort to provide information. As opposed to blogs, the main article or piece of information can be altered in order to expand on the subject or to enrich the range of information that is provided. The most known wiki, is Wikipedia, which everyone has had used at some point. Sometimes Wikipedia seems so common that we forget the actual nature of the website and that pretty much anyone can add whatever they want to it (for a little time before getting edited by some other user who doesn't want people to fail their research paper). The purpose of a wiki page is very well described in the article "An Internal Wiki That's not Classified" by Noam Cohen, we get a picture of how a wiki page is used as an every day tool in the State Department. A wiki page is used for executives to come up with information about an important foreign politician that they have a meeting with. Now, instead of each executive coming in with their own piece of information about the politician; they all add that information in a wiki page in order for everyone to have the most accurate data for that meeting.

 I can not think of a way that wiki pages are not being used right now. With all the free flow of information sometimes we feel as everything that is to be invented, its already invented. I am sure that somewhere there is some blog and/or wiki page discussing on the multiple ways a wiki can be used that has been overlooked by most people.

Gaming and New media

In my opinion there are two sides of gaming. First, there is the side that the costumers see and enjoy, which is the game platform and all the features it offers for entertainment. Second, there is the developer's side. This is much more complicated and it is a process that a lot of people do not look into it. New media has affected both sides of the gaming industry by creating online communities where players communicate with one another. Adding to this some developers have turned their game process updates into something like a blog or a wiki page, where the players can give direct feedback and recommendations. I will look in more detail all the ways that new media has affected the gaming industry and how the industry is adapting to the merge of new media platforms.