This is the first of my Modules for BA of Internet of Communication. As you read this I hope you enjoy that journey as much as I have.
Week 12 The Future of (Internet Communication- 15 Feb 10
Response to The future of Technology
Hi Susan
Really great thoughts and to much for me to really focus on (still working on the two submissions this week)
Just a thought though. This study period we have focused on the mechnical – web – internet. What about the greatest computer of them all – the human brain. I wonder what connectivity we may have in the future because of this – how will it change everything? (sorry about answering a question with a question)
Pete
Response to Activity Discussion
Hi Erin and all.
The Semantic Web is an interesting article. For me, it’s a real “Open the Door Hal” type of question that has aspects of the second point. In five years, and this is with a trusty broken crystal ball – nuro implants will have been tried in third world countries. Although a 15% mortality rate they are becoming commonplace. The ability to not even phrase a full thought and have the detail appear in the right eye HUD is appealing to all users.
The ground swell has been surprising to Google and News Corp and they are making the best of the opportunities with the backing from the Peoples Republic of China (kissed and made up apparently)
OK, not real or is it– can any of us who watched Startreck or 2001 not believe that anything is possible? As I started with “open the door HAL”
Pete
Response to the Future of Internet Communication
Hi Susan
Really great thoughts and to much for me to really focus on (still working on the two submissions this week)
Just a thought though. This study period we have focused on the mechnical – web – internet. What about the greatest computer of them all – the human brain. I wonder what connectivity we may have in the future because of this – how will it change everything? (sorry about answering a question with a question)
Pete
Refelctive Comment
Glad that this is the end – hmmmm 🙂 Good peace to end with – looking forward to seeing some of the responses as it’s a bit of a crystal ball affair.
Week 11 Social Me(dia) Rivers – 8 Feb 10
Response to FriendFeed question
Hi Jos and all the above guys. Just to continue this thread and specifically the thoughts, yes same. I was an existing Facebook user, however have only joined Twitter and Delicious as part of this study. Honestly, I don’t feel the need to be on twitter and will reconsider this once this unit is finished (I like to converse with more than 140 characters). Delicious I’m becoming a bit of a convert to I must admit. To answer the specific questions:
How does that feed represent you or your interests? (And how would that work if you have more posts using the individual services?). An interesting question, only as much as I wanted it to. There has been a specific need for this, and that’s the focus that I’ve presented – is it me, don’t think so in context?
What sense of other people do you get from their feeds? Unless it’s something that jumps out and slaps me, I don’t normally think to much about this. I prefer to get a sense of people as people – over a period of time, not an electronic image that they have projected.
Response to the Social Rivers Introduction question
How can you usefully collate and update information from others in your online community/communities? Via any number of feeds/RSS etc. Personally, I do this manually, it allows me to get a better feel as I can see posts or responses either side, very simular to this discussion board.
Building on previous weeks’ discussions, what do your ‘social media rivers’ tell others about you? Who might be paying attention to your social media river? Only as much as I’m willing to share. Some minor detail only. They would get an understanding of me – over 50, grandparent, loves color and humor – the question is do they get a sense of me – no don’t think so and that’s OK by me. If I’m using twitter, with its small amount of information – that’s dependant on mood, need or time. Facebook, different circumstance for a same result.
How does the idea of ‘Continuous Partial Presence’ work in terms of building a picture about someone from their microblogging (think about the Twitter in Plain English video in this context, too)? Who really has the time? By this I mean yes a CPP can be built based on mocroblogging, however it would take a lot to arrive at something meaningful. Not sure the relevance of something like this – the world would need to a different place for this to be a critical aspect of building a picture of someone.
Is the information that we make available through microblogging through Twitter, Facebook status updates and other such sites different from the information we make available through blogs? How, and why? Different and the same, depends again on what our needs etc are. Although we mae direct comments about status vi microblogging, don’t we do the same with our blogs – what our interest are, how we present via a written medium etc. Blogging allows us to have a more narrowed focus about the information and to present more of it – the information is still presented though.
One of the key characteristics of Web 2.0 is the ability of content to be pulled from its original context and viewed in new contexts, for example through RSS feeds. How well suited are these small packages of information to this? What might some of the implications of viewing this information outside its original context be? We don’t normally write anything with a view to it being presented on other sires (my understanding anyway). This can cause issues as any information taken out of context is exposed to misunderstanding or misinterpretation.
Reflective Comment
More about the understanding and use, some of the questions and readings were challanging. I liked the leaver reading, brought a new perspective to my understanding.
Week 10 – Digital Shadows – 01 Feb 10
Response to Reading: Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck
Inadvertent exposure: boyd addresses how personal relationships are transformed into quantifiable data online. How do you feel when your daily interactions, likes and dislikes are presented back to you as a public ‘news feed’ or list of actions? Is this no different than I I make comments other ways – the issue may be more around the instant accessibility. If I’ve made an informed choice to share detail online, then as a adult, I need to have the ownership of that. In this day and age it would be a rare person who is not fully cognizant of that fact. I only share what is OK for my values and beliefs to share online, so yes I’m OK for that to come back.
For those of you who use facebook, have you felt exposed as a result of the changes in format? Do you think twice, knowing that performing an action will produce data that is visible to all of your ‘Friends’? As a Facebook user, I rarely notice what my friends are up to unless they specifically point it out. It does appeal to the voyeur in us as we all are aware that this happens. I was a bit bemused as it took until the middle of the article for boyd to address voyeurism. This for mine is the biggest reason that we follow some of our friends on Facebook .
Information invasion: boyd comments that “the stream of social information gives people a fake sense of intimacy with others that they do not really know that well. If this is true, it could be emotionally devastating” (p17). Does the constant updating of your facebook Friends make you feel closer to them? Is this an asymmetrical relationship? Is it so different from ‘following’ a celebrity on Twitter? No, we follow simply to see the ‘forbidden’ in most cases. Who has never stopped/slowed down looking at a crash schene – we ‘need to know’, again for mine the voyeuristic aspect. Is it a asymmerticial relationship if we define this relationship as someone who knows you well, but you don’t know them well (Answers.com 2010) then it can be, or perhaps not. Although this type of relationship is circular in construct, a lot of times it’s not an equal construct. I share little, however I get more from some of my Facebook friends that I wished for.
boyd argues that “infinite social information” can be ultimately destructive. Do you agree? In the short term, until us as a society become more adept at handling this as a new medium, then yes it will cause concerns and issues. It’s one of those cases I feel where we don’t know enough to know. boyd is coming from her perceived position of ‘correctness’, will this be the case in the future? The big result is that boyd and others can have this discourse and challenge us to help set what comes next.
Response to thread on We Googled you”: Should Fred hire Mimi?
Sky, to answer your last question first, it would be great to open a window and look into the future. I wonder what this type of discussion will look like in 10 to 15 years. I wonder what dana’s generation is, looking at her site, http://www.danah.org/ she describes herself as “At my core, I’m an activist and a scholar”, I have to wonder if they are mutably compatible terms. Her comments are very Gen X, presuming that her generation can be the world fixers – I kind of think that is something that each generation can lay claim to. The tool used may be different depending on the generation, consider the suffragette movement, mass demonstrations on the Vietnam police action or apartied, however the result can be the same. I personally found her comments about generation’s other than hers to be a tad pretentious and narrow focused. In her article, ‘We googled you:….” she talks about “young people” without defining that – most of this group would fall into that category for me (I’m 53).
The major point here I feel is our accountability to what we have ownership with – if I author something, I own it from an individual perspective. If I share a personnel view, irrespective of the media (people still write into newspapers – the internet is not the only means of discourse), then that is my private thoughts that I shared. If, however, I author something for a business or organisation, then that is owned and shared by both. My private communication intercourse should have no part to play with my employability. Who really cares if I, as a personal belief, protest about some of the social issues in today’s world, responsible and open employers won’t hire because of that – they will hire me because I’m the best person for the position or role. Anything different, and would you wish to be employed by them anyway? If a make a comment now, will that same thought hold true in 6 months or 10 years, who knows, other than I be allowed to discuss it at the time.
Response to ‘Ego Surfing’ – How deep is your digital shadow?
Long answer short – wow man. I had done some ego surfing previously, however never with focus such as this. 5,400,000 entries on Yahoo with that combination of names- rather awe inspiring.
How did you go? Were you comfortable with the results, did you find information or images that surprised you? No, not really comfortable due to the sheer volume. Aware that it’s a search based on a lot of factors, however still a lot of detail. I can see how easy it may be to form opinions based on incorrect data.
How were the search engines different? How might the presentation of information alter its impact or meaning? Depends on the user – I thought spezify was rather cool. This will depend on what results are anted or expected.
Would you be comfortable with an employer or employee searching for you? What about your family members? If they were searching as a friend and not in a negative way- it would be OK. If someone is looking for something bad or negative – they will find it.
If you did not find much information on yourself, are you happy about this? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having little or no digital shadow? Depends on what we expect from our digital shadow. It does come back to expectations. I expect that whatever I add as material can/is viewed by a much larger audience, so I add detail with that in mind.
Week 9 – Internet Footprints – 25 Jan 10
Finally got around to having a module that covers netiquette – very basic detail picked just right. A good list of do’s and don’t. I found the readings good and I’ve expanded in the official thread below. Very, very good discussion on how much do we project of ourselves – either deliberately or inadvertently…
Response to Official ‘Introduction – Your Internet Footprint’ Thread
How important is ‘netiquette’ in our presentation of self online? Why do you think this? Depends on the individual. Some are OK for short, sharp and snappy, loose all the vowels etc and what is punctuation etc. Then there are others who do the opposite of that. Some it’s OK to swear and some not. An interesting observation – I can remember very well having my rear end tanned with an egg flip cause I dropped the ‘f’ word in front of mum as a kid. My kids got time out, however that specific word is close to becoming acceptable in normal conversation for Gen Y. Hmmm,
What does your own Internet footprint look like at the moment? Chalk and cheese if mapped against 12 months ago. I had a very small footprint then, now however it’s much larger, in part because of this unit.
Did you try out the MIT personas installation? Were you surprised by the results? What does this tell you about the efficacy of data-mining? OK, I was dead, no I was an outspoken individual through to parking cars. Not any that was actually me though. This confirmend what we have been doing with a communication module, the internet allows direct access as a communication medium – it’s the filtering that we apply that is important. Data mining- I’m a bit of fan, so long as the detail has been posted/collected with the informed consent of the individual.
Do you think carefully about what identity you want to present online? Ohh yes. I don’t have many names other than pseudonyms. I am very protective of me and mine online. Yes, my most used identifier does giver an insight into me, however there is not an easy link to me.
Do you use an avatar online? If you do, why did you pick that avatar? I’m going to be rude and answer with a couple of questions. Is there a difference between an avatar and a pseudonym? From some of the response, some I think, are calling there username/handle/pseudonym a avatar. Are avatars simple screen shots with no motion? To answer the actual question, no I don’t normally employ an avatar. If I did it would be a bouncing smiley face type.
Do you agree that the presentation of identity has become technologised? What effects do you think this is having on us as individuals and as a society (or societies)? Only online, and not for the full population. There is still a large percentage of the population that don’t have any web presence. The impacts are not a lot of difference as the technologies allow us to be more creative. Pre internet/web, if I wanted to change my presentation of self (identity), flares, high shoes, a hair cut etc would do that. The tool has changed; the result is still the same.
Are there cues or keys that you consistently look for in dealing with people online. What are they? Why are they important? Why are they important online? How well do they communicate – one of my filters is that I prefer structure and form with communication. I look for spelling, punctuation etc- if that is missing it implies a lazy mind (OK settle) – I know it’s not right or correct however I’m a product of my times. I have no time for bigotry, racial or religious intolerance – I’m not respond, delete material if able etc. Our clues and cues are more important online, as I don’t have the opportunity to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ how the communication is delivered.
Do you agree that social media is a fundamental shift in how we communicate? Hasn’t it always been? I only have to see the ‘new’ words being added and the greater preponderance of social media to see the change.
How actively do you ‘read’ others’ profiles online? Do you look for clues as to who other Internet users are in their online content?” No, unless there online presence allows me to judge them as ‘internet trash’. I mean those who hold others in contempt based on race etc. I try and keep an open mind until someone shows/proves otherwise. If someone wishes to share the who/what they are 9and are comfortable to do so) that’s great. If they don’t, hey that’s great to. As a line from a song that escapes me (the song) ‘Live like you wanna live”
Response to Official Reading Thread: DiMicco and Millen, ‘Identity Management’
What did you think of the three clusters identified: “Reliving the College Days,” “Dressed to Impress,” and “Living in the Business World” (p.2)? Do you think this is applicable to most users you see on Facebook? Does it fit your own experience? As tags to help define this specific study group, they are OK, specifically as they would apply to business organisations like IBM. Would they be applicable to other organisational structures with slightly different demographics – no don’t think so. At the time of the study, this small sampling may have been seen to be a sufficient sampling, however my view of face book is not one that is easy to fit. I’m not the age demographic, and although I have a number of work colleagues as friends on Facebook – they are from several different organisations.
Do you think SNSs like FB can be effectively incorporated into working life? I do feel that SSN’s can benefit some organisations. They can be a tool to help with diverse work forces and remote teams. A caveat with this is that some business structures would not allow this type of interactivity, such as a highly structured call centre or even some Governmental structures such as Defence or Police forces. To answer the specific question, yes they can so long as they are separate and don’t occur during work engagement. Most organisational development in intranet sites allows for similar functionality as SNS’s.
Do you agree with the authors’ recommendations for how to handle the challenges of managing the use of a single site for both professional and non-professional identities? The specific comment about ‘people sensing’ (P4) is, for mine, the most relevant here. SNS can help users with intraorganisational quests and queries. The authors talk about SNS’s becoming integral part of the workplace, I honestly don’t feel that this will occur in a bigger picture view. Most intranet sites are heavily shielded from external exposure, allowing SNS exposure would not be a clever business decision.
As well as issues raised by this reading specifically, there are some issues that you may want to reflect on in relation to all of the readings. These include:
1. Research methodology: was the study concerned conducted in such a way that you have faith in its results? Can you see any ways in which the results might have been biased? Was the research carried out in an ethical way? Always a difficult question to answer – what was the original stated outcome, brief and aim? With two of the three studies – Identity Management and Anonymity and self-disclosure on weblogs – being very narrow focused with the target audience (less than 400) and not being culturally or demographically open, their responses are to weak and non representative. Both are dated in the context of the environment being dynamic and have a to small sampling. The weblog one is also very specific with tabulated data without providing any relevant datum points. Were they carried out ethically – I would suppose so, if the limited respondents are taken into account.
2. Did you agree with the interpretation of the study’s results? Based on the limited focus with two, it is difficult to not agree. This question is to narrow in focus and context based on the limited study focus for two of the questions. The data is presented in ways that lead to conclusions – it’s the actual data that should be questioned. Yes, broadly I do agree, however question the narrow focus for two, the third is a much better (Personal Pages on the Web) as there is much better research behind the comments.
3. Is the study still relevant today? Are there aspects of it that need to be updated? No, to dated, however it would be a full time job to keep on top off and abreast of these issues.
Week 8 – Content Sharing – 18 Jan 10
An interesting week. Full on with catchup and readings. I really enjoyed this module. Some greta discussions on the Discussion board. Memes and Mashups – what a combination and through Folk and Taxonomies into the mix- hmmmm
Response to Official Thread: Copyright, Mashups and Meme
Copyright and creative works, always an issue and one that has grown and evolved over a long period of time. It’s relevance today is a lot ‘murkier’ than say 30 or 40 years ago. Although issues occurred, the ability of anyone to take some form of intellectual property and create whatever is much greater today. Is it OK to take something and make it slightly different without acknowledgment or potential payment of royalties. Would that ‘new’ item have been created without the old to build on? Who does copyright actually protect – the actual creator and his/her original thought that lead to something – or the individual that copies it from legal action. Lots of unanswered questions, I’m still thinking through the issues. Perhaps the best resolution is left in the hands of the creator – if they want full copyright then OK, or limited free use with a CC. Mashups are no different, in my opinion, than the original creation being modified to a slightly different creation, not a completely new work. They should be subject to whatever law (and not lore) that applies. What do you guys think?Pete
Response to Official Thread: Readings, Tagging and Folksonomies
Characteristics of folksonomy – group speak, ease of use, growing usage.
Tags. Can be best summed up by Homer (Simpson, not the other fella) with Woo Hoo. So much easier to do so much more. I can’t see much of a down side at the moment.
Biase free. No, in my opinion, there is not a lot of difference between a folksonomy and a taxonomy as both are subject to individual bias etc. All a folksonomy is a large collection of individual thoughts and ideals.
Mathes argument. I disagree with the quoted comment. I feel that the most important strength of a folksonomy si that it allows the individual to have a voice or vocabulary.
Week 7 – Social Networks – Module 2.3 – 11 Jan 10
Lots of learning with this module. It discusses the basic outline of Social networks via the learning collateral and readings. It challenges us to start thinking about on and off line communities and privacy. Although I sue SNS sites, I did not have a clear understanding of the what and impact of them, and how pervasive they had become.
Activities
Join Twitter. Interesting exercise, as I had thought Twitter was more IM than necessary –hmmm Will get some more value from this site when I start having some interaction – I’ll need to review what/how to make that happen.
The following is a response to Shane D’s comment on Twitter usage. Hi Shane, agree with your comments. I’ve just set up my first twitter account, and my first thoughts were that it may be a global IM type of service yep now know that is not the case). Although I’ve had no response, and same as you – how does one make that happen, I’m kind of looking forward to it. Sky made an interesting observation with her comment that research appears to indicate (I’ve not looked myself) that online appears to strength offline communities. Not sure about that one – I will need to follow up. One thing that does concern me is the easy trap that can be fallen into – if we follow specific people on twitter – such as Rudd – do we loose a balanced perspective?
Reflective Comments
A fair bit to get my head around. Still taking it all in. The reading was excellent, I feel that I learnt more from that than the Curtin material. What has been interesting has been the various discussions on privacy and usage – lots of divergent points. I’ve shown a couple of my responses to the discussion board with this.
I agree with your comments. It’s difficult to know when to stop. Most organisations require 3 different bits of information about us for ID – how easy are they to get. We have just started to lock our letter box after a spate of letters going missing from our local area, plus a couple of youth spotted (and chased) over xmas removing letters and opening for cash or gift vouchers.. Hmmm, where do we draw the line, who has the right of access to my details. For mine, any legally (under strict guidelines) empowered organisation or where its a life or death situation. Who makes those decisions though.
We hand over our rights to our own information and detail whenever we answer yes to questions from organisations about sending us marketing material from themselves and any associated third party company. “Telemarketers” will only call if individuals appear on a list, I fairly certain it’s illegal for them to cold call. If in doubt, contact the https://www.donotcall.gov.au/ and have your details placed onto the don’t call register. It takes several weeks to do though. Any international company that offers services inside AU is required to abide by this Federal Govt requirement. On selling of our details (also data mining) has occurred for several years and is not a recent advent, and applies to govt agencies.
Great points, and I agree with them all. In particular your closing comment about “baggage that separates people in real life is carried onto the network with them and exists still“. There has been a bit of discussion on people being able to be their true selves on SNS, however at the end of the day we are all subject to our own bias, beliefs and upbringing that shape who we are. People normally have 10 seconds to make a first impression, and for mine that applies to both off and on line communities. What shapes us in off line has to shape our online views. My two bobs worth…
Week 6 – Wiki’s Module 2.2 – 04 Jan 10
The world of Wiki’s and what a world they are. My initial understanding was that any Wiki was associated with Wikipedia – how wrong have I been. My understanding now is that Wiki’s allow anyone to access with admin rights sites that they can add/delete etc material on, with Wikipedia being the more notable one of these.
Activities
One – Mucking about with Wikipedia. Easy to use and great site when learning in the sandbox.
Two – Add some minor detail to Wikipedia. I added the aboriginal meaning to a small town in central Victoria. Will need to revisit as I didn’t attribute the meaning to anyone – doh.
Reflective Comments
I really enjoyed doing this – new learning’s and the potential to add knowledge in a meaningful way.
Week 5 – Blogging Module 2.1 28 Dec 09
This week’s topic introduced us to the world according to Blog. It was an interesting made on the learning collateral that “Irrelevant as Seth Godin claims the word is, who hasn’t heard of blogging?” Well, me for one – I should qualify that I had heard it, this is more understand. This has been a brand new experience for me, not only increasing technical understanding of blogging, but some of the emotiative issues surrounding this as well.
My response to a Discussion Board question on Rebecca Blood, Blogs and Journalism
My thoughts on difference is that ideally a journalist will base their comments on fact that has been verified and reviewed, is readily available and normally allows differences of opinion to be presented. A blogger normally does not have these constraints – they can present whatever they desire, whenever they desire it, with scant regard to fact or truth. They appear at times to be more in thrall of their version of the story. Having said that, some powerful images have and stories have come about because of bloggers – more the difference than the norm.
If news is being presented concurrently and factually by an individual, does this make them a Journalist?
In 2000 Rebecca Blood predicted ‘the power of weblogs to transform both writers and readers from “audience” to “public” and from “consumer” to “creator.”‘ How do these ideas stand up in 2009? – In the sense that the comments where first written, yes I feel that they still stand true. Although there has been several years between comment and now, in the infancy of this all not a lot has changed.
What do you think about the relationship between blogs and journalism? Depends on what definitation of blogging we are using.
What are the effects of blogging upon the mainstream press? Has there been an effect? I normally watch Sky news as its more balanced – even though its easy to see personal bias in some stories. With the proliferation of ability for news to be spread, have bloggers become jour’s
What do you see as the role of the ‘citizen journalist’?” To enhance the spread of factual news, as opposed to some ones private agenda.
Activities
One
- 1. Rettberg talks about blogs facilitating ‘distributed conversations’ and even ‘distributed communities’; what do you understand these terms to mean? Distributed conversations relate to the ability to have conversations that span extended timeframes. They are not like an form of IM, in that I may ask (post) a comment/question/thought that may not receive a response for several hours/days weeks. The distributed communities relates to these conversations, or blogs, occurring in a global context with a large range of different social or graphical localities.
- Have you ever been caught between ‘colliding networks’? No luckily. I can see how this could come about, having spent most of my work in life in large business / government environments. Lots of conflicting points about the rights of the individual and business, as well as any social impacts. I shudder to think of the implications of any disgruntled partner/spouse/friend/work colleague/child
- What do you think about ‘publicly articulated relationships’ online? How do they challenge/influence our ways of interacting ‘offline’. Without being flippant – whatever rocks your boat baby, this is definitely each to their own style. In a perfect world there should be no difference as the face that we present to one should be the same for elsewhere. Having said that, I’m enough of a realist to know that this is not the case. The question should be perhaps – should they challenge/influence our ways….
Two. I used Google Reader for this, (yes something else that needs to signed into and password/login detail kept/remembered) to set up my RSS feeds. It is based on my hobby of genealogical Study, specifically for Northern Ireland and Victoria AU.
Reflective Comment
I have learnt, and changed my opinion on blogs after completing this module. I had always thought that they were a vehicle for personal comment etc. I now see that they are much greater than that, and now look forward to creating a my web presence blog for this.
Week 4 – What is Web 2? 21 Dec 09
Introduction.
This week’s work involved looking at what Web 2 (W2) is when compared to Web 1 (W1). The learning material was structured to increasing our understanding of what W2 allows us to do and compares this against what various authorities are now calling Web 1. This has been an interesting journey for me as I had not given much thought to the improvements that have been occurring. Web 2 allows a much greater interaction between individual and the web. Some of the major activities that can be actioned are the use of RSS, greater user creation and interactivity. Wed 2 is a very mobile platform, allowing for users to be restricted by their own understanding and imagination.
One area that was not discussed within the learning collateral was where W2 might go on its journey. The apparent difference between the notional Web 1 and 2 is a sign of growth and the potential ongoing maturity of this medium. Although W2 runs on our traditional understanding of what W1 is, it’s name and use is built around form and function. Social usage sites have now become the norm, with Face book and Delicious to name two.
The ability for a user to build and create new pages, without having a specific understanding of coding is the biggest innovation between W1 and W2. A user can now now create pages that have various sight and sound requirements that are specific to the user and allows easy sharing using simple sites to do so.
A ahh moment for me was during the lecture when the comment was made that W1 was created as an idea and W2 allows creation of own content and is not restricted to using others platforms.
Reflective Comments
Thus far this has been the most enjoyable unit to work through. I have a greater appreciation of what, and how flexible and usable, Wed 2 is. I have been following several posts where different sites have been discussed this has started myself on the journey of – “Ohh that’s new let me have a look”. Sites such as Delicious, Flickr etc I have not had any exposure to, mainly because of a lack of understanding – that has now changed.
Activities
One. RSS View. Actioned. This was a good activity for myself as I had not a big understanding of RSS as a potential tool.
Two. Create a Delicious account and start to use. Well, this was a Woo Hoo moment. I was a Internet Bookmark user, having them divided into various categories, however this is a much more versatile tool, allowing more specific and responsive searches – WOO HOO.
Week 3 – What is the WWW 14 Dec 2009
Overview. Another new concept – the WWW as nothing more than a huge book with an ever growing number of pages and the ability to link and search them all. Hey my heads OK I think. As this simple book has grown, under several authors starting with Vannevar Bush through to Doug Engelbart and Tim Berners-Lee. These, and others in their field, have had a vision of information and data that can be stored and retrieved easily. The two main tools that have allowed this vision to become an ongoing reality is HTML and URL’s. In today’s world anyone with the wherewithal can create their own page to add to the ‘book’ – a simplistic view yes, works for me though.
Readings – Nil
Activities –
- 1. Show me the HTML. I stumbled across how to view this in the blog edit page – I’ll have some fun there so stayed tuned – have to teach myself some HTML first…….
- Going way back. OK, this is scary, isn’t anything inaccessible. The Curtin site certainly had a huge explosion of pages in 04/05. How big has Google become, and Wikipedia….
Reflectation – Another unit where I thought that I had a fair understanding of what was what – my knowledge has been really expanded by what the WWW actually is and how big it has become – the question is where will the ongoing growth take it?
Week 2 – What is the Internet. 07 dec 2009
OK, the real stuff starts. We started to look at our basic understanding of the Internet and where it has come from – its birth if you like. Starting more than 50 years ago with a simplistic (a today’s view) start to something that the early pioneers would not have envisaged. A definite case of not knowing what they didn’t know. Some of this I was OK with as I have seen and used the couple ofA presentations. A major point that I took away from this was that the ‘internet’ and the WWW are different. The internet is the underpinning carrier and the WWW is the application…. Anouther activity that helped put some conext around up/down was how bandwidth effects the speed of individual users. Using the link in the learning collaterial, mine was (not sure if this was a OK response for cable internet?) :
Download Speed: 1027 kbps
Upload Speed: 1694 kbps
Readings – Nil
Activities –
1. Routing in action.
I had a lot of fun with the proxy trace – did not know that this type of activity could eb undertaken. Some examples of my activities are – Google, 24 server links or hops and 21,625 klm. Yahoo – 23 hops or 21,612 klm, and creativesolutionsandtraining – 25 hops or 23,334 klm.
- Wikipedia.org – St Petersburg, FL, USA
- Amazon.org – Scottsdale, AZ, USA
- Flickr.com – Sunnyvale, CA, USA
A domain that is not hosted in the US is Qantas.com. This appears to be hosted at their corporate headquarters in Mascot Au.
2. Who owns what?
- flickr.com – Yahoo
- youtube.com – Google
- mickey.com – Bueana Vista
The following domain names are owned by Yahoo and Google as they will link with any misspelling and stop competitors, or cyber squatters, from misuse.
- gooogle.com – Google
- yaho.com – Yahoo
Reflectation – A little bit more than I thought with this unit. Don’t know if I was a bit cocky, however I learnt more than I was expecting, and really enjoyed this. I posted my first comments to a IRC as well as creating this Blog as part of my learning portfolio….
Online Discussion –
Week 1. Introduction: Study the Internet
This ended up being a great introduction to this module. Do a vanity check using a new or existing username on the ‘net’. I used one, or variations of, that I’ve had for a while and the challenge was on to find sites that I would be able to use it – hmmm – lots of other users like to use something that is not based on their own name. Additionally was the intro to each other and getting my head around what is required….
Peters Internet Communications - OLA 
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