Online Gaming

     The social media tool this week is Dungeon Blitz. This online game allows players to create characters, embark on quests, play with their friends, and complete quests with friends. Online gaming is helping users communicate more frequently while allowing users to engage in the game. Dungeon Blitz is a fantasy style game. This means that users will see dragons, spells, and other magical characteristics.
     Dungeon Blitz is a typical fantasy game. There are many characters on the game. The game allows the characters to interact with each other to complete quests. It is integrated with Facebook so adding your current friends is easy. The game also helps characters think when they should use certain spells and how often.
     After playing Dungeon Blitz, the thing I found most interesting was its ability to make me wanting to keep playing. It is an extremely simple concept, point and click to kill enemies. Even though it was easy, I was seeing myself wanting to keep playing to level up and progress my character. This is very common with fantasy games.
     I did not find anything too difficult with Dungeon Blitz. It does take a couple of minutes to get used to the controls and know character's abilities. There are different classes, and these classes allow a user to use certain skills better. On the first level of the boat, I got real frustrated because of the flying bat like creatures. It took me a good couple of minutes to figure out what to do.
     I feel this game helps improve communication. As stated before, it is integrated with Facebook so one can play with the friends that they have on Facebook. This adds an added level of communication with people. It helps connect friends by allowing them to do something besides creeping on other people's pages.
     My overall experience with this game is very positive. The only thing I wish was that it had a chat log to chat with other users who were not my friend on Facebook. This could be a security reason, however, since it is a Facebook game and Facebook allows 13 year olds on their site. It could be there since a lot of online gamers are inappropriate.

Second LIfe

1. This week's topic is cyber-culture. The activity for this week was Second Life. Second Life allows a user to create their character and essentially have a second life separate from their actual life. Second Life is set in a cyber-culture since it uses its own diction, currency, and just overall experience. Users can communicate and interact with each other.

2. Second Life, as stated before, allows users to interact with each other. Users are all over the world. During my experience, I communicated from someone in the United Kingdom. This can be good for shier people to interact with people, or just for people to meet new people in the world.

3. What I found real interesting is how open people are to communicating and having actual conversations. The most experience I have with interacting with complete strangers online is over Xbox Live, and if one knows, those conversations are not too intellectual.

4. The most challenging thing for me was to find an actual goal of this tool. I did not quite understand the point of just walking around and chatting with people. It got old quick for me. This is probably how the company gets users to pay for the premium memberships. This allows them to buy land and build buildings on their land.

5.. I think this tool helps improve communication. It helps people be more open with others in the world. Like any communication tool online though, one has to be careful who they talk to online, and what they say online since there are some not-so-good people out there.

6. Overall I was kind of disappointed in Second Life. I did not find a point of it. I liked that there were open people wanting to communicate on it, but that was not always a good thing. Some people would be extremely creepy on it. 

Interpersonal

    For this week's topic, Interpersonal, Meetup.com was the tool related to the topic. MeetUp is a website that lets people in an area to schedule events and do what the website is called: meet up. This is related due to the fact that the website allows people to communicate to others.
    Meetup.com serves the purpose of connecting people together. There are tons of interests on the website. There is anything like technology, sports, hobbies; all of these topics are used to search for different gatherings in the person's area. For example, if one were to look up the topic of technology for the Davenport area, there are gatherings of others with the same interest in Iowa City.
    The most interesting thing I found about MeetUp is its ability to bring people together. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, this social media tool actually encourages people to step out behind the computer and get out in the real world.
    I believe this tool improves communication since, as stated before, it gets people out in the real world. It utilizes the internet in a good way and allows someone to go meet actual people and get active.
    I enjoyed meetup.com for what it was. It seemed a lot like Facebook's group tab a lot though. I like that it makes it easy for someone to become social, or just allows them to meet others with similar interests.

First Post

    Blogging is the topic of the week. Blogger is a website that makes it easy for anyone to create, manage, and run their own blog. The best part about blogger is how easy it is. It is ran by Google, and like a lot of Google's products, it is clearly laid out. One can create any format they wish. Any picture can be the background. One real cool feature about this tool is that gadgets are able to be added on the blogs. Gadgets, or widgets, help enhance the reader's experience on one's blog. The most interesting part is actually the part I found the most challenging: adding third party widgets. I really enjoy how there are TONS of different widgets to add to my blog. However, at first, it was just a tad challenging adding widgets that were not prepared by Google or Google developers. After doing a quick Google search, all that is needed is to use the HTML/JAVA tool. These widgets, as stated before, help enhance one's blog, and in this way, help improve communication to others. The entire blog helps improve communication with readers. Blogs are a way to share basically anything with anyone. Some use blogs to update others on their daily lives, others use it to inform, and then some people use it to voice their opinion. Overall, I have enjoyed my experience so far. I am just in the beginning phases of blogging, and never have blogged or one to really get too deep in sharing via social media, I am sure it will be quite an experience.