Completion!!!

Well, my journey of learning about internet communications has come to an end. I am now ready to face the big WWW and feel that I am much better prepared for making use of the huge range of tools, programs, and information that is available.

Even though, at times, I felt like I was getting no where and that I was falling behind, I now feel proud that I have completed this unit, and have put as much as I could into it. I am excited that I have learnt so much through studying this unit, and its actually stuff I will use almost every day of my life.

I look forward to starting the next unit Net12, as I feel more prepared and organised compared to how I felt when starting Net11. I now have gained many skills in being able to search the web, and locate appropriate information that Im certain will help me in my future studies.

Thank you to everyone who has made this journey an enjoyable, exciting experience! I wish everyone all the best with their future studies!

So long :)

Information Ecologies

From my understanding an ecology is the relationship between organisms and there environment. And information is knowledge, thoughts, ideas, facts which are derieved from study, experience and can be communicated.

Now to me, when we combined the above it pretty much explains what the internet is. The internet is an information ecology. The internet allows people (organisms) to gain information through sharing of studies, ideas, facts and so on. 

However one major issue is, that when using the internet (Information Ecology) we need to take into account at all times just how accurate the source of the information being shared is. As everyone who has access to the internet, has freedom of speech, so often the information can be false or misleading as it wasn't supplied by a valid source. 

Once internet users become to understand how the information ecology can work, and how sharing of information and contributing, we will not be able to fully utilise and make full use of the internets capabilities. But once it becomes more understood, if used correctly, it will benefit our society.

Evaluating the Web

I'm going to evaluate site "Which came first: the bunny or the egg?" using the guidelings set ou in the following tutorial by Ohio SU net.Tutor.

Site: "Which came first: the bunny of the egg?." Seatter, L., (2009) SuperLiving.com.au, (Online), Retrieved 30th May 2009 from
http://www.superliving.com.au/storyview.asp?storyid=1025737&sectionsource=Planning%20-%20Getting%20Ahead
Lorna Seatter writes a entertaining article about how the Easter Bunny and Easter Eggs came about being the symbol of easter. She discusses the views from different countries and religions using appropriate facts that she has researched. This article to inform the reader and Lorna does this using light humour, facts, other peoples points of view and historical events.
Also Lorna talks about how the egg was developed and how different courtries had their own style however eventually the egg became more standardised "The popular crocodile finish that we see on chocolate eggs today came from Germany, with the design originally used to disguise a chocolate egg's imperfections by breaking up the smooth surface." Lorna Seatter (2009). A very enjoyable article, with interesting facts, and easy to read.


Reflection:
If I was to come back to this article in the future, I feel that the original blurb would be more useful to myself. Its short and explains the article enough to remind me what it was about.
However if someone else was to come accross the article they would probably find my annotation more useful, as it states everything you need to know, and give you the details of the article, the author, the URL and a better overview for someone who hasn't read the article yet.

Web 2.0 vs FURL

What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is like the 2nd generation of the web. It allows us to build on the information that is available with Web 1.0. Basically Web 2.0 is a platform.  

What is FURL?

FURL (File Uniform Resource Locators) is a bookmaking website tool which allows users to store copies of webpages. It allows us to rate the information we find, to comment, to share with others and it forms an asynchronous form of communication with others that are interested in the same information or topics. 

What do I like best? 

I think that FURL is extremely clever and is a very very handy website. I love the fact that we can save copies of websites and be able to still view them if the original website is removed. Its like having your own filing system of all the useful websites and articles you come across when searching the web. I think FURL is a fantastic idea, and will save alot of time having sites so easily book marked especially for assignments.  

At the moment, Im still not too sure about Web 2.0, and what extra benefits it will offer. Im still a little confused with the whole idea. To me its like expanding the web and offering more and more uses and options. 

I definitly feel that the Internet Communications furl list is far more appealing thatn the HTML version. The HTML doesn't look exciting, things don't stand out as easy and there isn't much you can do in the ways of give the information some sort of order or telling what is the best link etc. 

For U R Luxurious!!  

Blogs and me! One BIG thumbs up!!

Until I started this unit I honestly didn't know about blogs! I hadn't heard of them, never made one, and for all I knew never read or followed any. So the first task of this unit was to start my own blog, and boy did that seem a bit daunting.

Now that was a good 12 weeks ago... These days I hear about blogs everywhere! Blogs have SO many fantastic uses so I can't believe it toom me this long to hear about them. People use blogs to as review sites, personal journals, news sites, for assignments/projects just to name a few. 

I have found blogging to be quite an enjoyable straight forward task. With posting my drafts into a design template then when Im happy with what I have said I can publish it for the world to see. Many celebrities have blogs, this helps their fans keep track of what the celebrity is up to and see what the celebrity is thinking about etc. 

There are many formats for blogging, and even more tools/features that your can use in your blog to keep things interesting. Whether it be a poll, or a game, or a chat group, a calander etc you name it, its most likely in available. You can even access and update your blog on your mobile phone!

I have been having a bit of fun searching for all sorts of blogs. And my god, there are blogs about anything and everything!!!!! 

I think blogs are great because they have no rules, there is the freedom to say what you like, and express yourself in so many ways. Pictures, screen prints, writing, diagrams and so on, and the best thing is, anyone who has the internet can view your blog.

Anyways, time to blog on! 

FTP Upload...

Well this task was a bit disappointing, I read, I tried, I re-read the instructions, I tried again but no go... I simply couldn't work out how to get the Webpage transfered onto my Oasis account. 

So I took the easy way out and went from this:

To this: 

So here is the results when uploading it into a browser. Not quite the same as FTPing, however this is the best I could do.

Organising Search Information Task

My best 3 sites are:

Site 1: "History of the chocolate Easter egg"
Author: Michael Lund (2008) Atricle from The Courier Mail
URL: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23389261-5013511,00.html





Site 2: "Which came first: the bunny or the egg?"
Author: Lorna Seatter (2009)
URL: http://www.superliving.com.au/storyview.asp?storyid=1025737&sectionsource=Planning%20-%20Getting%20Ahead
Blurb: "HAVE you ever wondered why the Easter bunny carries a basket of eggs? It seems like a haywire crossing of the species. Super Living investigates the origins of the Easter bunny and the Easter egg and how the unusual combo arose." Lorna Seatter (2009)


Site 3: "Shock news for chocolate lovers!"
Author: Jill Dupleix (2009) Sydney Morning Herald, Table Talk, Entertainment Section.
URL: http://blogs.smh.com.au/entertainment/tabletalk/jilldupleix/2009/04/14/shocknewsforchocolatelover.html
Summary: Jill Dupleix (2009) discusses in her article how "Joanne Harris the author of the very popular novel 'Chocolat' actually doesn't like chocolate. Jill then goes on to discuss how Australian like chocolate and how your tastes change as you get older and your choice of chocolate then tends to change."


The Software that I used when gathering and saving this information were:
1) Google
2) Print Screen
3) Paint
4) Copy and Paste

During these exercises I didn't really find anything that I felt would help me with the saving and coping of this information. I unfortunately didn't get to play around with the tools as much as I would have liked having been short for time. I felt that my usual way of copying, saving, and locating information was the best for me.
However I have found that the WWW offfers so many options that it is so hard to find the most appropriate for each task. And that if you downloaded all the great tools out there, you wouldn't have any room left on your hard drive for anything else. When searching the web and sorting through all the inappropriate sites to find what I was after I realised that this exercise is infact quite time consuming. Where as when I first read through the task I thought it would be quite simple and quick.

I still feel that Google is my search engine of choice as it is easy to use, has the most appropiate sites and offers many different formats of information.

Searching the Net Boolean Style!

When I first looked at this, I was like what the heck is Boolean searching! I mentioned to a few of my friends and family, no one had heard of it. So I was quite looking forward to reading about it further.

However once I started reading through the lessons on Boolean searching I realised I actually already searched this way when I hadn't been successful with just the standard search. 

My first attempt I tried was "cadbury chocolate eggs" in google which gave me 1520 hits. None of these seemed to be the sort of information I was looking for.

 

Second time I tried cadbury chocolate AND eggs in google which gave me 73,100 hits. Although there were heaps more hits than the first attempt, the first few sites it found were the most relevant so far.

Third time I tried cadbury chocolate OR eggs in google which gave me 455,000 hits. The first sites once again were similar to when I used AND for searching, however using OR produced a Heap more results. But this was still more successful than using the "".

So my findings conclude that using AND or OR in the search helps give more results and with this particular search, these results seem to be the better ones. Boolean is a useful way for searching especially when you are searching very broad topics. 

Putting the Search Machines to the test!!

I love chocolate eggs, so I decided what better to search then Cadbury Chocolate Eggs!!!
Using google I first searched cadbury chocolate eggs. My results were:

- 73,900 hits
- First site was Cadbury Chocolate Hershey www.hersheys.com/products/details/cadbury

I then used copernic to search and the results were: 

- 68 Hits (heaps less hits)

- First Site was Cadbury Chocolate Gifts www.cadburygiftsdirect.co.uk

I honestly didn't think copernic was as good as I expected. I feel that google provided more acurate results. Looking through the sites that copernic found, they seemed to be a bit off the topic where as good had a MUCH more extensive lits of sites, however the first two pages were what I was after.

 

Some New Stuff!!!

Looking through the list of tools that I can download from the internet, I found that I didn't really know many of them. I have Adobe Reader, Apple Quicktime Player and Windows Media Player all of which I find handy and useful in their own special way. I don't tend to use windows media player much because I have itunes and it tends to run most things through quicktime if needed. As for Adobe, I'm honestly not sure how anyone would get by without it. The amount of documents I open daily using adobe makes me appreciate this little program immensely. Its fast, straight forward, and allows you to do pretty much exactly what it was made to do 99% of the time. Occasionally I have small issues but usually thats because of another program interfering with Adobe Reader.

As my computer is a little slow with downloads I decided only to try 2 of the tools that I thought sounded the best.

Firstly, I downloaded Copernic. The reason I download this tool was because it was free, looked fancy, sounded as though it would be really handy, and covered nearly all aspects of the computer. I was a little nervous about downloading this tool as I didn't know too much about it. However, I decided that I would give it a go as if there were major issues with it I'm sure I would have heard by now. (And yes im a bit of a black sheep at times too).
Copernic seemed to work relatively well, was a little confusing at first but as I got past the first few teething problems I found that this tool was infact much more useful then first thought. I am a little sceptic about buying a version of this as programs are forever changing and every day there seems to be something that out does the product you bought yesterday...

Second program I decided to download was Pagesucker, I chose this tool because of the entertaining name. Im sure that many others also found that they had the same reasoning. Once downloaded I couldn't get it to work because I had some issue with the Java programs. So I quickly uninstalled it.

So finally I downloaded Bookmark buddy. I thought this would be extremely helpful as I am forever having issues with book marks disappearing, now adding them to my list correctly and so on. Once downloaded I realised this didn't exactly work the way I expected it to. But not to say the least, the tool was actually worked better than imagined.

Copyright - Have you been caught?

When someone creates something and it is original there is a certain period of time in which no one can use that idea, image or name etc. This is know as Copyright as long as they register for copyright no one can copy your work without your permission.

It took me a while to confirm my first thought about copying the Curtin logo. From my findings it would be a breach of copyright to add the Curtin Universities logo to my website. This is because the logo is a symbol for Curtin University and if I had that logo on my website it would be saying that I am a part of Curtin University and that the University has given me permission to use it.

I think that copy right is a good way of making sure the people who put the effort in are acknowledged.

Features of Email Lists and Discussion Boards

Email Lists:
- Regularly updates you with the information
- Allows you to received information from people who are interested in the same thing
- The email is automatically distributed to the group
- The information is sent directly to you
- It is like a community on the internet
- They can either grow or die very quickly
- They are public conversations
- Lists are asynchronous
- You need to contribute as much as you need to get out of it
- List have rules
- Read the entire conversation before contributing otherwise you might say something someone else has already said.



Discussion Boards:
- Kept on a single server which is maintained by the owner/originator
- No need for immediate response
- Its a community that discusses the same topic
- It can provide extensive information about a particular topic
- Requires you to visit the website to be able to view the discussion


I feel that email lists would be easier to follow as you wouldn't have the chance of missing post. This is because the discussion is sent to you. Where as in a discussion board when people post the information is sorted from newest to oldest and you have to look back over ALL the posts to see where you last finished reading at. However a discussion board it is easier to write what you think and post it straight away for viewing, where as the email lists must first be approved by the moderator.

Validation of My Webpage!

I decided to give this task a go as I thought to myself how can there be issues with a webpage that I have created on my own without coping or add images etc. But according to the W3C standards I have 6 errors and 4 warnings!

The 4 warnings from the "World Wide Web Consortium" include:

No Character Encoding Found! Falling back to UTF-8.

Unable to Determine Parse Mode!

No DOCTYPE found! Checking with default HTML 4.01 Transitional Document Type.

No Character encoding declared at document level

The 6 Errors from the " World Wide Web Consortium" include:

Line 1, Column 1: no document type declaration; implying ""

Line 3, Column 4: document type does not allow element "BR" here

Line 7, Column 21: document type does not allow element "P" here; missing one of "APPLET", "OBJECT", "MAP", "IFRAME", "BUTTON" start-tag

Line 18, Column 41: end tag for element "B" which is not open

Line 19, Column 7: end tag for "FONT" omitted, but its declaration does not permit this

Line 5: start tag was here

Line 20, Column 7: end tag for element "HEAD" which is not open

So unfortunately even though my page was created from scratch it still was not valid.

My 5 Important Rules for Writing Online

Here are 5 ways that I find important when writing online:

1. Keep the information clear and to the point, make sure it is exciting to read
   
2. Make sure ALL your links work
3. Make the site look exciting as to catch the readers attention straight away
4. Test the site on another computer
   
5. Write using scanable text

Cenceptual Research & Reflections Project

Concept Number 17: The impact of text-based real-time chat

“Communicating in real-time with text enables a form of ‘authoring of the self’ that is similar to the processes of face-to-face speech but which is much more amendable of authorial control, experimentation and reflection. Further, text-based communication carries with it the possibility for multiple, differing conversations occurring simultaneously, relying on the ability of the human brain to deal with text much better than speech.” (Allen, n.d)

From my experience and research I have found that communication over the Internet is far different to other forms of communication. There are many positive and negative aspects with communicating in various ways over then Internet.
Many businesses these days tend to use real-time text based communication as one of their main communication options. As Morrisett (1996) discusses in his article "Habits of mind and a new technology of freedom" the advantages of using computer-mediated communication are its reliability, speed, low cost and freedom. Due to these advantages, people are relying more and more on the Internet for communication.

Face-to-face or over the phone communication is no longer the only synchronous communication. Online chat programs such as ICQ, MSN, and IRC are all real-time communication programs. You are able to use them for business, recreational, social or for instructional purposes. The pros and cons of Real-time chat for instructional purposes is discussed further in the article "Communication Conventions in Instructional Electronic Chats" by Collins and Murphy, (1997).

The issue with chat programs is that you can get behind in the conversation. If you are chatting online with someone who is slow at typing they will take longer to send their message and it may have been much faster calling them over the phone. Where as is you are chatting with someone who is fast at typing you may find that you get left behind in the conversation and have trouble keep up. However I feel it would be more common to get left behind in an online discussion if you were chatting with a group rather than one person. This was experienced in the ICQ chat task for module 2. Also people who aren’t as familiar with how the program works will tend to fall behind with the conversation as well.

Keeping in mind that it is easy to get left behind in a conversation or have time to write up your ideas, real-time text based communication is beneficial as you have a hard copy of what you have discussed with said person or group. Whereas when we communicate over the phone you don’t have any copy of what was said. This will then make it difficult to remind you of what has been discussed or later use it as proof of what was said. When you communicate through online chat you have the option of choosing whether you want the conversations to be saved as a document on your computer or not. This would be very beneficial for future referencing especially in business situation or when studying and completing group assignments.

Finally the use of online chat is beneficial for people who are isolated in remote areas; joining online support groups or if you have personal difficulties meeting people in person. Online communication allows individuals to meet others who have similar interests, and hold discussions with them online rather then posting letters back and forth which can take days/weeks longer. The only problem with discussion with strangers online is that you never actually know their true identity. The Internet allows people to be someone that they aren’t and unless you meet the person face-to-face you have no real way of telling if this stranger is being honest with whom they say they are, mention by Morrisett (1996).

In my opinion, the convenience of online chat still outweighs the stress of making appointments to meet people in person, having telephone conferences, and in some cases travelling long distances to hold meetings. It is much faster, cheaper and less time-consuming being able to use text-based real time chat.


Annotation 1: “Habits of mind and a new technology of freedom”
Morrisett, L. (1996). “Habits of mind and a new technology of freedom.” First Monday, [Online], Volume 1 Number 3 Retrieved 20th May 2009 from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/483/404

Morrisett discusses the growth of internet communication and the benefits this has had. The section “New Technology, New Freedom” was particularly interesting and helped with my understanding of the different forms of communication available over the internet. This article was to the point and easy to follow especially because there was not a lot of jargon. Morrisett backs his discussion up by including facts that he has come across from other people’s research and surveys etc, which adds to the strength of his arguments.



Annotation 2: “Communication Conventions in Instructional Electronic Chats”
Collins, M. P., and Murphy, K. L., (1997) “Communication Conventions in Instructional Electronic Chats.” First Monday [Online], Volume 2 Number 11 Retrieved 20th May 2009 from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/558/479

Collins and Murphy discuss in depth the pros and cons of computer conferencing for instructional purposes and compare this to the traditional style of classroom teaching. They discuss the many types of internet communication now available and the impacts of each of these in today’s society. This article includes easy reading graphs which help display their results and findings. They have also included comments that were made by others when researching. It is interesting to see the views of others on the types of communication now available.


References:
Allen, M. (n.d). Internet Communications Concepts Document in Net11,
The Internet – Communications Curtin University of Technology.
http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/




Concept Number 26: Privacy and Security

“The Internet is a profoundly ‘open’ system and advanced Internet users are cautious about either accepting or sending material from and to unknown sources and are careful in releasing information about themselves in any form. Conceptually, the Internet challenges us to take greater responsibility for the protection of privacy and security than perhaps we are used to when dealing with the media.” (Allen, n.d)


The Internet has become one of the most common sources for communication and research in the world. As so many people have access to the Internet and it is used for such varied tasks, it is not uncommon for people to worry about the security and privacy of the Internet.

One of the major issues is the amount of spam that is sent through e-mails to people’s e-mail accounts. Often the SPAM contains inappropriate information or images that can offend others. I have found that rarely do these e-mails contain viruses or other harmful programs, they are more so just a nuisance. However, one helpful thing with e-mail accounts is that you can set your account to block certain degrees of junk/spam. This then acts a security measure and filters the mail into separate folders so you are able to see the e-mails that are actually meant for you and the majority of SPAM ends up in the junk folder.

Over the years the Internet has expanded to such an extent that everyday activities such as banking, paying bills, home work, online business conference etc can be done at the touch of a key. The issue with this however is that all the information you put on the Internet can be viewed or disclosed by the wrong people. As Classens, Preneel, and Vandewalle (2002) discuss in their article, “An attacker could try to impersonate entities in order to get information which is normally not disclosed without authorisation; for example, an attacker could spoof a Web banking application, hereby gathering users' PIN codes. A substantial amount of confidential information is made available via the WWW; unauthorised access to this information should be prevented.”

Since security and privacy is such a problem over the Internet, sites such as online banking are developing several different security measures. These range from passwords, access codes, secret questions and answers, to sending a text message to your mobile with a pin before allowing you to process any transactions on the online bank. This then makes it difficult for unauthorised people to get access to other people’s personal information. With my experiences with online banking, I find that the SMS with a pin is very useful, as I will know if anyone is trying to transfer money from my account and without the pin they cannot proceed with that transaction.

Another activity that is carried out over the Internet is online shopping. These days you can purchase almost anything as long as you have a credit card or deposit the money into the sellers account before they send out the item you have purchased. Most Internet shopping sites have certain accreditation so you know they are a genuine seller, however there are many fraudulent people out there and will take you for what you have. “One important aspect of trust online is the nature of risk in terms of actual damage, spam e-mail, financial or time cost, and perceived loss of privacy” discussed by Nikander and Karvonen, cited by Brown and Sellen (2001). However many people are whiling to take the risk of shopping online because they feel that the positives (discounted prices, or the purchase of hard to come by items) definitely outweigh the negatives.



Annotation 1: “A Tangled World Wide Web of Security Issues”
Claessens, J,. Preneel, B,. And Vandewalle, J. (2002) “A Tangled World Wide Web of Security Issues" First Monday [Online], Volume 7 Number 3. Retrieved 21st May 2009 from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/935/857

The authors of “A Tangled World Wide Web of Security Issues”, have written a comprehensive overview of the issues of security and privacy that we are faced with when using the WWW. They have given background of the WWW and discussed ways in which this current issues are being fixed. A number of other useful links are also included throughout the paper. This article covered many issues that are still current in today’s society.



Annotation 2: “Exploring users' experiences of the Web”
Brown, B., and Sellen, A., (2001). "Exploring users' experiences of the Web" First Monday [Online], Volume 6 Number 9 Retrieved 21st May 2009 from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/882/791

Brown and Sellen have done a wonderful job researching and discussing in depth the experiences of other users when using the web. They have included in this article the results of their findings; some of the individual comments made by users and included images to help explain what they are discussing. I found the section “Problems with Internet shopping: trust and risk” to be very interesting and enjoyed reading the added comments that they included from other users.


References:

Allen, M,. (n.d). Internet Communications Concepts Document in Net11,
The Internet – Communications Curtin University of Technology.
http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/






Concept 32: Virtually a Library?

“A Library is, fundamentally, a system organized according to shared, accepted sets of classifications and organizations, and on the basis that it is impossible to access the information except through categories (either in a catalogue or by browsing collocated books on a shelf). The World Wide Web has no such shared system, and is technologically capable of a large degree of searching for information directly – ‘full text searching’. What advanced users seek to do is to exploit the advantages of the idea of a library in a way that suits their person needs, effectively creating personal virtual libraries.”(Allen, n.d)

The World Wide Web is generally one big pool of information. A library is also a place that holds all sorts of information. Many people feel that the World Wide Web can be labeled as an element of a virtual library. I feel it really depends on your own meaning of a library, and what your meaning of the World Wide Web is and their uses. Noted by Koehler (1999) “The Digital Library Federation offers one definition of digital libraries: Digital libraries are organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities.”

In the article "Digital Libraries and World Wide Web sites and page of persistence" Koehler (1999) discusses similarities between Libraries and the World Wide Web. He states “Digital libraries, including Web-based collections, are redefining both the role of electronic information storage and retrieval as well as the role of traditional libraries. As Chen (1998) has argued, no cohesive or comprehensive theory of digital libraries has yet to be fully developed. Digital libraries include collections of books, journal articles, graphics, newspapers, and other material in digital format; in sum, collections of digitized content. To be a library, that collection should be organized according to some standard Chen (1998).” The World Wide Web offers information in different ways to which the usual library would, however virtual libraries are now more easily accessed. From my findings, the main difference between the traditional library and virtual/digital libraries is that virtual libraries aren’t categorized.

One major problem I find with the internet acting as a digital library, is that you can’t 100% trust what you read on the World Wide Web. This is because so many people have access to the WWW and are free to upload anything they like. The information may be correct, but how can you tell? There is no real way in valuing all the information that is available on the web. Whereas with a traditional library, the information and resources are all categorized so you know what are facts and what is fiction.

Missingham (2003) discusses the value of information available over the World Wide Web, and ways in which we can measure the quality. Also in her article "What Makes Libraries Relevant in the 21st Century? Measuring digital collections from three perspectives" she covers several ways in which we determine the value of the information available. She mentions in her conclusion “Juggling our resources to ensure that readers, or users, are best served through a mix of print and electronic resources provides a significant challenge for libraries. By using the concept of the hybrid library and combining an analysis of value based upon the matching of digital footprints, as they exist to users, libraries and information producers, new insights can be gained into collection development and delivery.”

Annotation 1: "Digital libraries and World Wide Web sites and page persistence."
Koehler, W,. (1999) "Digital libraries and World Wide Web sites and page persistence." Information Research, 4(4) Retrieved 22nd May 2009 from: http://informationr.net/ir/4-4/paper60.html

In the article “Digital libraries and World Wide Web sites and page persistence” Koehler argues the World Wide Web can be labeled a digital library because he feels that the information available online can be categorized and organized. He also discuss many others points of view and the options on what makes virtual libraries. This article covers all angles of what makes a library. He includes many other useful links to back his argument.
Koehler has done a wonderful job in covering what he set out to do.


Annotation 2: "What Makes Libraries Relevant in the 21st Century? Measuring digital collection from perspectives"
Missingham, R,. (2003) "What Makes Libraries Relevant in the 21st Century? Measuring digital collections from three perspectives" National Library of Australia at the Information Online 2003 Conference. Retrieved 22nd May 2009 from: http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/2003/missingham2.html

Missingham discusses in depth the value of information available today in the 21st century in digital libraries. Seeing as the world has had such rapid growth in using the internet she feels that the even without a correct definition of what “virtual” and “digital” libraries are that the move to digital collection is here to stay. The article includes results from studies and different points of view. The article focuses on the question “What digital collections should be provided by a library?” and Missingham covers this question extensively.

References:
Allen, M,. (n.d). Internet Communications Concepts Document in Net11,
The Internet – Communications Curtin University of Technology.
http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/

Digital Library Information and Resources (1999)
http://www.webcitation.org/5RYmStGXJ






Concept Number 18: Non-speech communication through text: audience and authors’ responsibilities

“The Internet imposes responsibility on all its users to be both effective ‘speakers’ and ‘listeners’, who are each aware of the differences between Internet chat and face-to-face communication and who compensate for the learnt preference of humans for a communication style that involves gestures, intonations etc that cannot be directly transmitted over the net.” (Allen, n.d)

Since the rapid development of the internet and the extensive ways in which one can communicate over the World Wide Web, users of this communication style are having trouble coping with this new found phenomenon. The younger generations who have grown up with non-speech communication have coped well learn as they go. However it is the older generations that are having difficulties accepting and understanding the new online communities and e-mail. When communicating over the internet it is important that you keep in mind who will be receiving your communicated material. Important factors that need to be considered to make sure that the communication is successful and understood are: Age, experience using online communication, their ethnic background, gender, Netiquette etc. If you are not careful when communicating online the message you are conveying may be misread.

As cited by Williams (1998) in his publication "Predicting E-mail Effects in Organisations" “Another recent development to increase the effectiveness of electronically mediated communication is sensory predicate matching (Crook & Booth, 1997). Sensory predicates are word choices that enhance rapport between an author and reader of a message and refer to the three primary senses; visual, auditory and kinesthetic that individuals use, and prefer, in written communication (Bandler & Grinder, 1975). However, the concept was adopted from speech accommodation theory, which states that oral communicators adjust their speech styles to meet that of the person with whom they are communicating (Street & Giles, 1982).”

With face-to-face communication, you are able to read the body language of the person you are talking to. Facial expressions, body movements, gesture like motions etc are simple things that help to maintain an understanding of the context the message is being conveyed and how it is being received. However, through online communication this is not able to be read. Williams (1998)
For online communities, group based chat, e-mail and so on people can sometime come across differently from who they actually are. This is because of there textual choices. Giese (1998) states “The textual choices people make in their interactions in the group are complex and multi-faceted. They are deliberate and conscious choices made in an attempt to present themselves in a particular way and be perceived in a particular way.”

As discussed by Giese (1998) some computer mediated material is now considered a synchronous mode of communication. Thus making written communication “feel” like face-to-face communication. However, electronic communication is more commonly known as asynchronous communication as there is still a small delay in responses, but this is far less than the previous communication modes. Giese includes in his article “Self Without Body: Textual Self-Representation in an Electronic Community” “Because the response delay has been so drastically reduced it is much easier to think of communicative acts in terms of a less formal "conversational" mode rather than "writing" which has traditionally been a more formal and structured mode.”

I believe that as the internet expands, as will people’s abilities to communicate effectively and efficiently using online communication. It is likely that in generations to come, they will sit there thinking how the hectic did people get by with out the internet. Just like we do now, with telephones and televisions!


Annotation 1: "Self Without Body: Textual Self-Representation in an Electronic Community"
Giese, M,. (1998) “Self Without Body: Textual Self-Representation in an Electronic Community” First Monday [Online], Volume 3 Number 4 Retrieved 22nd May 2009 from: http://131.193.153.231/www/issues/issue3_4/giese/

Giese has divide into the discussion of computer generated communication with expertise and great understanding. He shows sound knowledge and examines the opportunities for social interaction and presentation of ones self over the internet. He concludes that “real-time textual interaction engenders a novel new social environment”.
“Self Without Body: Textual Self-Representation in an Electronic Community” is a well written and engaging article. He discusses the social issues with computer generated communication soundly.

Annotation 2: "Predicting E-mail Effects in Organisations"
Williams, E,. (1998) "Predicting E-mail Effects in Organisations" First Monday [Online], Volume 3 Number 9. Retrieved on 22nd May 2009 from: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/617/538

This article discusses the ever growing changes that computer generated communication has on organisations and individuals. Williams discusses the changes and the way it has effected organizations. He includes ways in which we can make better choices to make sure our communication is correctly received.
Williams prediction “By the 21st century e-mail will be a pervasive communication medium in organisations one that will complement a number of communication channels including the telephone, with expanded functionality, paper based communication tools and the familiar face to face exchange to name three existing channels.” I feel that the prediction was right on track.


References:

Allen, M,. (n.d). Internet Communications Concepts Document in Net11,
The Internet – Communications Curtin University of Technology.
http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/portal/

HTML Tags

That was great fun, tricky but good fun!! I started out doing all the exercises but accidentally deleted the saved document before I got to take the screed shot. However, I was pleased I did that because I then worked through it all again but having a better idea of what I was doing and was able to experiment further.
I think HTML is very good because you can create everything exactly how you want it to be, much more freedom compared to blogging. The only issue is that you have to understand all the coding, and its very easy to make mistakes. And for one small mistake , such as forgetting to close off one of the formats the whole page may not work properly. And trying to sort through to find the one small mistake can be very time consuming.
Both have good and bad things about it, however I think I like html better as it has more freedom and is a bit more challenging!!

MSN Rules... I think

Having had much more experience with MSN than icq or skype etc I feel much more at home using msn. I know how all the settings work and think that it is great that MSN is linked to your hotmail account and can check emails so easily.
The only problem is that is you create a group in your contacts, you can't delete the group unless you find someone to take over it. This is pretty annoying as I didn't actually mean to create the group.
Chat is useful for communicating with people who are online at the same time as you and you require an answer straight away. It is handy because you can write in short point form and receive questions or comments back about what you are saying straight away. Chat is only useful though if the person is online at the same time. However you can chat with people all over the world, and its cheap and you can keep copies of the conversation, where as a telephone call you can't keep copies unless you have a phone that can record the conversation. So therefore chat is handy as you can reference the conversation at a later stage.

The Ins and Outs of ICQ

On Monday 6th April, I prepared for the chat task which was arranged for a few us to meet online on Tuesday.

Firstly I downloaded the program, which was quite straight forward, I then created an account filling in as little information about myself as possible. I accepted all the terms and conditions (which I actually didn't read...) and then I was ready to go.

I had a bit of a play around with the settings and my profile etc, added a few people who's ICQ numbers had been posted on the Blackboard.

I found the ICQ program to be quite straight forward and, easy to setup, easy to locate friends if you had their ID number or nickname. When you are "chatting" you can see when other people are typing a message.

I was involved in a 3 way chat, at times I did find it confusing keeping up with the conversation. I think for someone who was experiencing chat programs for the first time it would be very difficult keeping up. I have had extensive practice at the MSN chat, a little bit from ICQ many years ago.
Rachel who was in our chat group was quite worried about the security of chat programs and about all the terms and conditions that most people read through when joining. I was not so concerned as I have had the previous experience with chat programs. It would be quite interesting to know how many people actually read the terms and conditions before accepting these programs.

Also if you are a slow typer you would struggle keeping up with the conversation and having your say. Unless you are with a group who have a similar typing speed. Having people in a group who type at the same speed would help the conversation flow at a suitable speed and would allow everyone to be involved equally.

I thoroughly enjoyed using ICQ again and felt that this task was a huge success. The people who were more advanced users of ICQ helped the less experienced through the task. I don't think security would be a huge issue unless you are adding a heap of people that you don't actually know. The use of emoticons is a very useful way of expressing your mood or feelings when in the chat program. If we didn't have this option many people may find it very difficult understanding sarcasm, jokes, or if someone is angry etc...

ICQ is good fun and very handy communicative tool!! :)

Module 2 - Tasks

Q1. What information about a user's email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message?

A1. At first glance of an email you can easily observe the following 'surface' metadata:

• The Sender
• Who the email is addressed to (Receiver)
• The Subject of the email
• The date and time the email was sent
• Who is copied in the email (unless they were BCC)
• The urgency in which the sender has assigned to the email
• We can determine if the sender requires an immediate response
• Some email addresses you are able to determine which country the email originated from ie .au is for Australia
• You may be able to tell which institution or company they are with (for example .gov you would know straight away that they can be associated as part of the government).

Therefore there is quite a lot of information that is available in the email message. This then makes it easier to determine whether the email is correctly sent to us or if it was in fact ment to be sent to another person. Also the email message gives us a overview of what is to come in the body of the email ('implied" metadata) before we set out to read the whole thing.

Q2. In what cases would you find it useful to use the 'cc', 'bcc' and 'reply all' functions of email?

A2. With the email becoming one of the biggest forms of communication for both personal and business the use of 'cc', 'bcc' & 'reply all' is a very handy option.

To 'cc' (carbon copy) is to send a copy of an email to secondary recipients as well as the person it is directed to. This is a useful way of sharing important information and keeping people in the loop. I find this very handy at work when a customer emails me with a compliant, I then try to answer their email but 'cc' other people at my work so they know what has happened and what current situation is. Other times I would use it when making a compliant myself, I would 'cc' my manager so that the person who the email is directed to knows that the manager is following what is happening also.

To 'bcc' (blind carbon copy) is where you 'cc' someone however they aren't able to view the complete list of recipients. Nor can other recipients see that they received it. This would be useful as you can keep other people in the loop without the person the email is directed to knowing that person knowing other people are copied in the email. Thinking of an example for when I would use 'bcc' at work would be when I am sending the same quotation request to several different suppliers but don't want for each of the suppliers to know who else is receiving the request.

The 'reply all' function is useful when replying to an email where several other people have been copied. This allows everyone to know what my response is and each person involved to act accordingly.

Q3. In what ways can you ensure that an attachment you send will be easily opened by the receiver?

A3. The following 2 ways that can help ensure that the attachment you send can be opened by the receiver:

1. Before sending an attachment contact the desired recipient and find out what software and computer system they are using. As if you are sending a file from a PC to mac computer the software is often quite different. If you first discuss what systems you have you can format your files appropriately thus allowing the recipient to open the documents first go. If you aren't sure what software and systems the receiver is using always use file format .rtf (rich text) format or plain text (ASCII) these can be read across most of the programs and platforms. Sometimes the format may change slightly however they will atleast receive the information.
   
2. When emailing an attachment you can copy and paste the important parts of the attachment and paste it in the body of the email. This way if the attachment is not able to be opened the receiver is still able to view the important information.

Q4. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose?

A4. At work we have a filter set up that keeps any email from an address that is not in our contact list in the online server inbox, when we connect to the online inbox we can check the surface metadata and decide if this email is spam or not. If it is not spam we then we 'receive' the email and it is then placed in our inbox. This prevents alot of viruses getting into our system.

When 'filing' the email the system is set to keep a copy in the email center which is where our inbox and outbox etc is. These are all store in date order, however we can sort each month by sender, date, subject etc. Also the email is linked to our data base if already added. This way we can see all communication with this client from anyone in our company. I find this very handy as you can quickly check what previous discussions has gone on with this customer before contacting them yourself. And you are able to review any of the emails they mention as they are all filed together in the same place in date order.

Q5. How have you organised the folder structure of your email and why?

A5. I have set up my person email account to have several folders where I file my emails. These folders having headings such as Important, Uni Related, Photos, Work Related etc, Bills etc

Alot of the emails that I receive in my person email account are mostly junk emails or emails from groups I have joined. Majority of the time I do a quick check of the surface metadata then delete the ones that I am not interested in. Then I will sort to show emails from the same sender together.

Once emails have been checked and I have decided whether I need to keep them for reference in the future I file them in the appropriate folders. This keeps my inbox virtually empty unless they are unread emails. And makes checking emails a quick and easy process.

At work we have little say in how the emails are filed and stored however I am very satisfied as to the way the system is set up and have had little trouble when needing to find an email which was sent to me or anyone else at the company months, or even years earlier.

Internet Tools - Traceroute

A new Experience is always welcomed!

Traceroute basically allows us to trace a route between one computers router (Ip address) to another. I performed the trace from centralops.net to curtin.edu.au using the following website: http://centralops.net/co/

The list below is the results of my trace.

I found that there are 19 hops between centralops.net (70.84.211.98) to curtin.edu.au (134.7.179.56). The average ping is 235ms, the lower the ping the faster the route.

I had trouble working out what the averare ping was, because the site I was using didn't make it clear what the pings were and when doing this task for the first time just got totally confused. After checking the blackboard and seeing what others had done I managed to work out the average (I hope).

FTP or in full File Transfer Protocol

This server runs on a unix platform, so CAPITALIZATION MATTERS!
A file named "file.txt" IS NOT THE SAME as "FILE.TXT"

I hadn't done anything using FTP before, this was a new learning curve for me. I downloaded FileZilla and FTP'd to recall.curtin.edu.au and from there I got a little confused!

I was looking through the local network to begin with which I didn't realise I was doing, then I went over the side for the Remote site, finally I found the readme.txt file and downloaded it. So yeah I found the answer that I was looking for CAPITALIZATION MATTERS...

I think that the method of receiving file is good, however a little confusing to begin with and it could end up being quite slow if you have a rather big file to download. It seems pretty safe seeing as you have to have passwords to access certain areas, however hackers are capable of almost anything!!

Star Wars.... GREAT!!!

Just to clear things up Star Wars and I just DON'T mix! Now with that behind us, lets get on with the show...

For task B we had to telnet over to blinkenlights which if you had not put two and two together is a Star Wars story. This apart from being Star Wars was pretty cool, these guys who made this up must have had a hell of a lot of time on their hands! I mean to take the time of putting such a flashy show together.

The way the guys developed the pictures using letters and numbers etc to make the story more interesting. Whereas now days you can transfer a video from one computer to another in a few clicks of a mouse. However these guys probably had the same idea as we now have, they just didn't have the technology and knowledge to be able to make it happen to the extent we can now.

Its pretty amazing to be able to see that this is where the internet used to be, and to think about just how far it has come in really, a pretty short time. Today you can log onto someone else's computer and see there screen and access all the programs that they would be able to access if they were sitting there infront of it.


Great little task, really was an eye opener as I thought telnet wouldn't work with stuff like this, it kinda reminds me of some old dos looking games I used to play...

Those were the good old days... haha

Do you trust everyone in this World??

I hadn't heard much of Telnet before this unit, nor had I used it before. I followed the instructions in the study area, and read up a bit more on what Telnet is. Now understanding that it is a Telecommunication Network or more easily understood as a service providing us access to another computer using the command-line interface. So off I headed to try my luck with task A.

Getting onto telnet was quite straight forward, following the steps in the study area I ended up at Deakin library searching for books written by Bennahum. These results were then quickly displayed on my screen and I was easily able to email this to my Curtin email address.
A very short time later the email arrived in my inbox.




The Boo boo's of Telnet!
Telnet was developed back in 1969 when very few people had access to the internet, those that were lucky enough to have it were part of the computer departments in LARGE organisations or worked for research based organisations. So the security issues that we face today with the internet weren't even thought of back then however unfortunately overtime telnet has become less popular since the internet became the 'in thing' in the 90's. As Telnet is unable to encrypt the information sent between the client and the receiver it allows hackers to easily gain access to private information being sent between the two computers.

I found this service to be a quick and straight forward process and so far based on my experiences would not hesitate in using Telnet again if it wasn't for its lack in security in todays world!!

I love Technology!!!

On Saturday I worked through all the readings for module 1.
I started finding myself getting rather excited and just wanted to keep reading and learning more! This module is so interesting, it has made me think about so much that has never crossed my mind. WOW it has given me such a big insite to just how everything works with the net. I have had an understanding of the basic process but this has just made me so impressed with the whole thing!
The animated router really helps to show just how much we value routers and what a significant role they play in getting us the correct IP (Domain name) that we request.
My dad is a computer programer so usually I just asked him when something goes wrong or had his help when I have gotten stuck, I had never actually understood the jargon he was using. But now... look out haha
I really love the website howstuffworks!!!! With several different diagrams and demonstations to help explain what was being discussed. This just made it much easier to understand and visualise.
I am really enjoying this unit so far and learning so much I didn't know before starting!

Top 5 Tips for NEW Bloggers!!!

1. Take some time to look at other peoples blogs before creating your own.
2. View blogs in different blogging systems to see what you like best.
3. See what suggestions, friends or peers may have as to what blogging system you should use.
4. Make your blog different and stand out from the rest as to attrack peoples attention.
5. Add polls, or quizes so you can get some feed back on your blog or about the things you discuss in your blog.