concepts assingment

concept 1: Asynchronicity

The definition of Asynchronous communication is a blurred one. It is not merely the opposite of Synchronous. Computer Mediated Communication actually exists on an axis of time and because the lag times can vary; some communication is more asynchronous than others. Instant messaging, considered synchronous is often conducted with long delays between responses making it asynchronous. Email, typically asynchronous can be conducted in a near synchronous manner. I actually like Shelton's (2009) attempt at conceptualizing asynchronous communication three dimensionally, not just in terms of time but also existing on axes of "scope" and "permanence." Scope refers to the sphere of involvement. Email is commonly one to one. Blogs are one to many; Wikis, and Discussion boards are many to many. By permanence, Shelton (2009) is referring to the quality of durability. Communication has a shelf life before it loses its relevance. Phone conversations are ephemeral. The content is usually forgotten as soon as the conversation is finished. Other forms, because they are predominantly text based tend to linger longer and therefore have some value. It is interesting to contemplate where something new like Twitter would fit into all of this. The communication exchange is kind of uni directional. You can follow certain people but they don't have to reciprocate by following you which is useful to celebrities such as Britney Spears who has nearly one and half million followers. The information would also seem to have a short life in terms of value before it becomes old news.

Just on a personal level, the advantages of asynchronous communication can be revealed by comparing it to some of the potential problems that people face when in real time situations, such as in face to face or on the phone. Sometimes, in these circumstances proper etiquette is easily forgotten with people talking over one another or just talking without thinking. Also, the attitudes they display through their body language, such as judging or moralizing can be barriers to good communication (Bolton 1987). This is where conversing asynchronously come into its own. An email isn't an ephemeral conversation; it persists. When you receive it, it sits there on you computer and you don't have to respond immediately. John Suler (2007) says that when he receives an emotional charged email, he waits for the emotion to settle down before he replies. Similarly, when i write an email, i can save it as a draft, reflect on it and edit it before i decide to send it. In other words, I can think before i write and avoid misunderstanding and regrets that i might have had if the conversation had been face to face.

The benefits extend beyond the personal. For example, I am only able to participate and further my education because of the benefits of asynchronous communication. The information and communications have permanence and i can access them at my convenience. I'm not constrained by time and place. I find relevant readings for my course work and participate with other students by means of the many to many nature of the discussion board. And then i communicate my learning through a blog, where others can view and comment. This is all possible because of asynchronous communication.

References:

Bolton, R. (1987). People skills How to assert yourself, listen to others, and resolve conflicts. Brookvale, NSW: Simon & Schuster.

Shelton, T. (2007, April 07). Grokking Twitter: Presence, Scope and Permanence. In Ted Shelton. Weblog post retrieved April 26, 2009, from http://tedshelton.blogspot.com/2007/04/grokking-twitter-presence-scope-and.html

Ted Shelton is the founder and CEO of the conversation group, set up to examine how new technologies are changing the way business is done. He has spent many years working as a software developer in high tech industries. In this article, he articulates his thoughts about asynchronous communication and attempts to develop a model through which to view these various communications. Of particular interest are his thoughts about Twitter and how to view it through his model. His slant is more business focused than general use. His conclusions are that Twitter is most useful for within a defined group and where information has short term benefit. This was very helpful to me as it encouraged me to view asynchronous communication in terms other than time.

Suler, J. (2007). The psychology of text relationships. In The Psychology of Cyberspace. Retrieved May 14, 2009, from http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psytextrel.html

Weiss, J. B., & Campion, T. R. (2007). Blogs, wikis, and discussion forums: Attributes and implications for clinical information systems. In Medinfo 2007: Proceedings of the 12th World Congress on Health (Medical) Informatics; Building Sustainable Health Systems. Retrieved May 01, 2009, from http://search.informit.com.au.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/documentSummary;dn=781745715885285;res=IELHSS

This article is aimed at health informaticians hoping to increase understanding of the possibilities given by blogs, wikis and discussion forums. It compares and contrasts each of these asynchronous communication forms in terms of seven attributes: display, display of knowledge, participation, visibility of author and tone of voice. For example, in terms of display of entries, Blogs are defined as reverse chronological, wikis are topical, and Discussion forums are chronological within topics.These comparisons really reinforced my understanding of these communication forms. The authors go on to describe two case studies using the attribute model including using blogs and wikis as part of project to provide social support for cancer patients.




Concept 17: The impact of text based real time chat

Synchronous or real time chat encompasses both instant messaging and conversations that occur in public chat rooms. Although it may be obvious, these technologies are text based and using them well depends on one's writing ability. This would preclude some people who find communicating by means of text difficult at the best of times. After all it is a very minimalist form of communication: just words typed on a screen without the usual overlay of auditory and visual extras that are present in a face to face conversation. Others, who love text might revel in this form of communication.

Conversations are also conducted at a much slower pace than in face to face.There is a lag time as participants send and receive messages over networked computers (Suler,1987). Really they are a form of asynchronous communication with a short delay between exchanges and really should really be classified as near synchronous. The slight delay allows time for reflective responses in a conversation to take place, a quality it shares with more asynchronous types of communication. So that even in a seemingly chaotic multi participant multi threaded chat room, users usually are able to make sense of what is going on by screening out a lot of the noise and focus on particular users or conversation threads (Suler,1987).

Online text based conversations are also characterized by invisibility; participants don't see each other. And in some cases, particularly in chat rooms they might not know each other. These factors contribute to a type of behavior in Cyberspace that is less restrained than would occur in face to face encounters. Suler (2004) calls it online disinhibition. Much of the media coverage of this has been negative in this regard, for example, stories about cyberbullying or flaming in chat rooms. However, the lack of inhibition exhibited online cuts both ways. It does manifest in pro social behavior. Research by Valkenburg and Peter (2009) on the use of instant messaging amongst teenagers found positive correlations between disinhibition and self disclosure which in turn actually enhanced their existing friendships. Their findings applied only to those who used messaging to maintain existing friendships; they didn't apply to conversing with strangers for example, in public chat rooms.

What i found fascinating about this study was that the participants were invisible but not anonymous; they knew each other in the first place, and yet still chose to disclose more than they might do in face to face encounters. This seems counterintuitive. However, sometimes the visual cues present in face to face conversation act as barriers to communication and they can diminish self disclosure and honesty. Lack of eye contact for example, communicates not listening and disrespect for the person speaking. Lots of people know the experience of someone not really listening to them. Communicating by text can avoid some to these disruptive aspects of face to face encounters.


References:

Suler, J. (1987, October). Psychological dynamics of online synchronous conversations in text-driven chat environments. In Psychology of Cyberspace. Retrieved May 03, 2009, from http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/texttalk.html

John Suler is a professor of Psychology at Rider University and has written extensively on the psychological aspects of computer mediated conversations. This article describes the nature of synchronous online chat that typifies public chat rooms.He describes the phenomenon of group "free association" that occurs when the owner and recipient of messages is not clear. This effect is compounded when messages don't appear exactly in sequence. He also describes the skill of disassociation that occurs when people have multiple conversations going at the same time without each other knowing, a highly developed skill without comparison in face to face encounters.

Suler, J. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 7(3), 321-326. Retrieved May 5, 2009, from EBSCOhost, from
http://web.ebscohost.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=103&sid=a8bfd36d-e373-442f-9ea4-9f5e1720db65%40sessionmgr107&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=buh&AN=13621589

Valkenburg, P. M., & Peter, J. (2009). Social Consequences of the Internet for Adolescents: A Decade of Research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(1), 1-5. Wiley InterScience. (2009, February 23). Retrieved April 30, 2009, from http://web.ebscohost.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=103&sid=a8bfd36d-e373-442f-9ea4-9f5e1720db65%40sessionmgr107&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=buh&AN=13621589

This paper is a review of the recent literature concerning the social consequences of Computer Mediated Communication. Patti M Valkenburg is professor and Jochen Peter is an associate professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research. This paper focuses on instant messaging more than public chat rooms.They debunk popular views that frequent use of online technologies such as IM has a detrimental social cost. Instead they reveal just the opposite: that enhanced self disclosure in online communications increases personal and social well being.

Concept 26: Privacy and Security


According to Jisuk Woo (2006), The threat to people's privacy today is not from governments and commercial organizations intruding on our space, but from the willingness of individuals to trade off their privacy by willingly giving out their personal information in exchange for benefits. Perhaps the Web 2.0 phenomenon has something to do with it where everything has been "Ajax'd" ( Harris, 2006). Web 2.0 services like Diigo, Delicious and Google Docs are very convenient and i have used them extensively in this course. But is my privacy at risk? I don't know and should i care? I think i take reasonable steps with privacy. For example i'm careful with passwords, the keys to my online life and i have set up my browser to intercept cookies for review before they reside on my computer. But I wonder if people get somewhat paranoid about what could happen. In any case, if their was some infringement of my privacy i don't think i would be too anxious because the information isn't that personal.

But what about something like Facebook, a social networking sites whose whole premise is to share personal information? Privacy issues here are real enough. In a recent article in the Age, the dangers of sharing personal information online were highlighted with the release, by the privacy commissioners of various countries, of an educational animated video called "Think before you upload"(Milovanovic, 2009).

In a study by Strater and Richter Lipford (2008) on the issue of privacy on Facebook, the authors found that users generally underestimated the risks inherent in sharing material on the net, for example, the potential for others to use the material in ways the originator might deem embarrassing. The authors also found that the perception that users had of their intended audience was sometimes wrong. More people had access to a users profile than the user thought because of poor privacy settings.

According to Woo (2006), the answer to protecting privacy on the net lies in deception. He argues that policies aiming to provide privacy are ineffective these days. Instead, users should be able to protect their privacy by disguising their true identity and concealing their personal information. In other words lying. I am not sure if i completely agree with him, but the idea of user responsibility is right on the mark. Users need to understand the risks and have to take responsibility for their own privacy.

In most cases though it's a trade off. You sacrifice one thing at the expense of the other. Sometimes i might be able to maintain complete anonymity or privacy and still reap some benefit. For example, i could use a pseudonym and a disposable email address when using Diigo, and then i could enjoy the benefits of collecting and annotating my sources whilst still enjoying a degree of anonymity .Other times i don't want to be anonymous. With Facebook, users willingly shed some of their privacy. They want to share themselves: their photos, interests, messages and contacts. Why? Because they aim to strengthen the social bonds between their friends, both real and virtual. Its called enhancing social capital and Facebook has been shown to do that (Ellison et al., 2007). Users just have to learn to mitigate the risks associated with doing it.

References:

Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of facebook "Friends:" Social capital and college students' Use of Online Social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4). Retrieved May 8, 2009, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/ellison.html

Harris, W. (2006, June 3). Why Web 2.0 will end your privacy. In Bit-tech.net. Weblog post retrieved May 6, 2009, from http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2006/06/03/web_2_privacy/

Milovanovic, S. (2009, May 6). Social site warning for Teenagers. The Age. Retrieved May 6, 2009, from http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/web/social-site-warning-for-teens/2009/05/05/1241289177088.html

Strater, K., & Richter Lipford, H. (2008, September). Strategies and struggles with privacy in an online social networking community. Retrieved May 7, 2009, from ACM digital library.http://portal.acm.org.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/citation.cfm?id=1531514.1531530&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=15605080&CFTOKEN=55032916

This a qualitative study into the ways users maintain their privacy on the social networking site, Facebook. The authors are academics from the University of North Carolina in the USA. Eighteen students from the Department of Psychology participated in the study. Uses logged into the Facebook profiles and their disclosures and privacy settings were noted. Interviews and questionnaires were subsequently undertaken. Results indicated that users rarely reflect on their privacy except when setting up their profile unless the suffer a privacy intrusion. Facebook itself also came under criticism for poor default and complicated privacy settings. Research is relevant to my concept because it underscores the notion of user responsibility.

Woo, J. (2006). The right not to be identified: privacy and anonymity in the interactive media environment. New Media & Society, 8(6), 949-967. Retrieved May 6, 2009, from Sage journals online. http://nms.sagepub.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/cgi/content/abstract/8/6/949

JIsuk Woo is an Associate Professor at Seoul National University's Graduate School of Public Administration.He discusses the concept of privacy, from how it developed as a response to the intrusions by governments and the media through to todays digital networked environment where he says the concept is flawed. He argues that current conceptions of privacy are passive and outdated in todays digital world, that users need to take responsibility for their own privacy, through deception. This work is relevant to my paper because it discusses how threats to individual privacy are often the result of users willingly divulging information about themselves in exchange for some benefit rather than an actual intrusion.


Concept 33: Information and Attention

I don't think there is any contention that information is increasing at a phenomenal rate on the internet. When i search for information on Google, i feel overwhelmed by the vastness of it all. The problem is that i simply don't have the capacity to attend to all of it. This is a theme highlighted by Goldhaber (1997). According to him, there exists a scarcity of attention relative to the plethora of information on the net screaming at us to be noticed. I agree with his proposition because experience has shown that i can only really pay attention properly to one thing at time. Sometimes i slice up my attention paying partial attention but its a diminished attention. So there exists this situation where people are writing blogs, websites and uploading photos and videos on the net, all clambering to get noticed in a world where the capacity to notice is limited.

This places the designers of web content in an unenviable position. How to possibly grab that attention and hold it ?

Nielson (1997) has a lot to say about designing web content with the aim of getting attention. He advocates designing with the behavior of consumers in mind who are lazy and inpatient. They browse and scan instead of read. They also read slower on the screen than they would on the printed page (Kurniawan et al., 2001). Nielson (1997) for example, advocates shorter pieces of content with plenty of links so users don't have to scroll down the page. He says users won't stick around long if they can't find what they are looking for. They don't need much of an excuse to move on to the next site.

I tend to agree with Nielson in some respects. Certainly scrolling down long pages of text on a computer screen is tedious and annoying, but so are lots of links. I find holding my attention on a computer screen difficult because i tire easily. Perhaps it is the resolution of the text or the size of the screen. But could it be hypertext? How ironic would it be that Web sites are designed with plenty of links intending to hold my attention, but that the act of reading them weakens my attention. Zimming (2005) has found hypertext to be a real culprit. His research shows that hypertext leads to non linear reading which leads to fragmented reading, and that this infact undermines attention.

One solution i think would be to ensure that the print view button is well placed so that people have the option to easily print out what they want to read. Even with the ability to annotate on Web 2.0 services like Diigo, it's not the same as annotating in the margins. There is something about paper that lends itself to holding one's attention. In Zimming's research ,80 percent of participants said that they frequently printed out documents to read. One reason is practical: paper is portable. Apart from the fact that i am not at my computer all the time, some of my best attention occurs not in front of a screen but when i am reading whilst relaxing in a cafe.

References:

Godlhaber, Michael H. "The Attention economy and the nett." First Monday 2 (1997). 1 May 2009 <http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/519/440>.

This article is a more formal treatment of a subject that he has written and spoken by the author many times. Here is appears in a peer reviewed journal. His premise is that the whole economy as we know it is undergoing significant change due to the internet and that attention is the new currency. The more you have, the more successful you will be. This article has been cited 167 time in Google Scholar. This article has helped me understand the limits of attention.

Kurniawan, Sri H., and Panayiotis Zaphiris. "Reading online or on Paper: which is faster?" 9 th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction. 2001. 03 May 2009 <http://agrino.org/pzaphiri/Papers/hcii2001_reading_posterr.pdf>.

Nielson, Jakob. "Why web users scan instead of read." Useit.com. Oct. 1997. 9 May 2009 <http://www.useit.com/>.

Zimming, Lui. "Reading behavior in the digital environment: Changes in reading behavior over the last ten years." Journal of Documentation 61 (2005): 700-12. 9 May 2009 <http://www.emeraldinsight.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/Insight/ViewContentServlet?contentType=Article&Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/2780610601.html>.

This qualitative study examines how reading habits have changed with introduction of digital media. Screen based reading behavior such as browsing, scanning and non linear reading facilitated by the use of hypertext is arising, but at the expense of sustained attention. A shallower rather than deep concentrated reading is also found. Majority of participants indicated that they always printed documents when required to read deeply. Study suggests paper will never be replaced entirely be digital media. supports my concept discussion in arguing that making it easy for web content to be printed is one way to hold peoples attention.

module 4: searching the web.

This is a timely task for me with the concepts assignment due date fast approaching. My skills in searching for quality information on the internet are very basic and i have tended to waste a lot of time so far without much thought before hand as to how i search . I just think Google. But doesn't everybody? Google is so popular that it has become a verb. when you need to do a search, you go and "Google it."

This task requires a meta search engine, the suggested ones being Copernic or Sherlock. Well i am a Linux user so both of these programs are useless to me. What to do? I did a Google search of course! I searched for meta search engines and came up with some good hits. Websearchguide and the Berkeley Library website i both found very useful.
This is what i did.I searched on Google for the term "instant messaging" and got 37,300,000 hits. The first hit being at Wikipedia on the subject of instant messaging.
Next, i searched using a meta-search engine called Allplus to compare results. Allplus works by delegating the search query to other search engines. In this case, Google, msn, Ask and Yahoo. Allplus also searches news sites,images, video and Twitter would you believe. Using the term "instant messaging", Allplus came up with a combined number of hits of 197,599,000 hits. Wow!
So how should i interpret this? Theres lots of overlap and duplication in the search results, but there would be lots of hits unique to a particular engine too.
I also tried using the meta-search engine, Surfwax. which the Berkeley library site recommends for serious deep web searching. I tried to register as a user so i could take advantage of setting up some custom searches, but the registration process was closed. From searching Surfwax. i did get lots of results but only from a 5 or 6 sources.
My experience of using both Google and using a meta search engine is that they just give too much information, much of it irrelevant and unhelpful. How are you supposed to process so much. Much better to get only a handful of hits that are useful.

Regards the issue of searching the "invisible web" or "deep web",it is not as straight forward as it appears. From my understanding, there is no one particular search engine that will perform this task adequately although Copernic comes close from some of the reviews i read. But the issue here is that a huge amount of the content on this part of the web is contained in databases, the content of which, may not be generally accessible to to the casual user of a search engine, even a meta-search engine. I found some of the articles at Websearchgguide on the topic of the invisible web or deep- web very helpful. They suggested i use the term, "database" together with the topic of interest in my search query. When i found a suitable database, i could drill down through that to find suitable information. I tried this just using Google. I used the terms: "Computer mediated communication" AND "text based chat"AND database"
and found some relevant databases to search.
They also suggested i try CompletePlanet, a site that allows you to access roughly 70000 searchable databases. If I could find a suitable database then i could search within that. I used the term "instant messaging" and came up with a list of 80 databases. I was then able to narrow my search to databases within the subject of social sciences which gave me five hits, one of which was titled "journal of computer mediated communication " and looked very promising. Of course i have now added CompletePlanet to my list of search engines for future use. Actually CompletePlanet is a very impressive website.

Boolean Searching on the internet.

To get the biggest number of hits relating for a search term, you need to use synonyms. This casts a wider net over the possibilities. You do this by using the Boolean operator: OR . For, example, for the term"invisible web" you could construct a search thus: "invisible web" OR "deep web" OR "hidden web".
When i did this using Google, i came up with a massive 42,200,000 hits, substantially more than just using one term. Thats just part of the story though. What do i do with so many hits? Its not quantity i want, its quality and to do this, i have to try another search strategy.

To get the most relevant information according to what you searched for, it is crucial that you use many keywords to qualify your search term. You do this by using the AND operator.This means that keywords on either side of AND must be in the document.This will narrow your search considerably to a manageable number of sites to investigate which hopefully are relevant. For example, i used the following search query in Google: "text based chat"AND databases AND"instant messaging" AND "social impact"AND "psychology".
This narrowed my search down to 11 hits and most of them looked pretty promising.
It is easy to limit your search results to those simply from university sources by narrowing your search results to the .edu domain. This is easily done through the Advanced search preferences. Also, when you use the term database in your search, you notice that a lot of the results are indeed from academic institutions.

Organising search information task

Choose the three best sources found (so far)

1. http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/texttalk.ht
2. http://www.livescience.com/technology/050301_internet_language.html
3. http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2007/04/11/text-chatting-versus-face-to-face-talking/

I have used Zotero , a Firefox browser extension to collect manage and cite my reference sources. Below is a screen shot displaying bibliographic information for the first of my sources. I think if you click on the image, you will get a better view.


Zotero opens in three panes. The left pane contains folders called collections. Each collection is connected to a topic. My sources so far are all gathered together in the middle pane and are contained in a collection (left pane) which i have called "text based chat".This helps keep all my sources relevant to my topic in one place. The pane on the right contains the bibliographic information related to a particular source. Most of it is captured automatically,but it can be edited. I have created an abstract made up of key words that help me remember what the article is about. it also contains the URL, author and a link to the original website. So for each source, i have created an abstract and stored the bibliographic information.
Zotero also creates a snapshot of the webpage which is stored locally. It then lets you annotate to your hearts content. In other words highlighting and adding comments much like i might do in the margins of a book or article. (see below).



Finally, this application lets me print out my accumulated bibliographic information in a number of formats including APA.

module4: Tools for using the web

Bookmark management programs have become popular due to the large number of bookmarks that most of us accumulate these days. Especially students such as us, doing most of our reading and research online. These  programs are a supposed solution to the problem of messy unorganized bookmarking: just storing with no thought of organization.
One of the tools suggested is Bookmark Buddy. I am not intending to download it but i have read some reviews of it, which have been good.I have pasted a screen shot of it here.

Seems straightforward enough. Be warned though, you will have to pay for it after 30 days.
My first thought about this is: what is wrong with the trusty old bookmark manager within one's web browser? I can't comment reliably about internet explorer, but Firefox's web browser allows you to organize bookmarks into folders and tags and it also has live bookmarks which allows saving of RSS feeds as a bookmark. Very handy when you have to keep up with a lot of blogs.

Because i use Ubuntu as my operating system, i am unable to download any of the programs mentioned, but this is hardly an obstacle to managing my bookmarks as there are plenty of online bookmarking sites available. They are so common these days the question immediately comes to mind as to why would anybody want to download one onto their desktop? Personally i use Delicious and Diigo to manage my bookmarks. These are social bookmarking sites that allow you to set up an account and then store your bookmarks online. you can organise your items with tags and lists. Diigo lets you add annotations in the form of sticky notes which is extremely helpful. The other program that i use to organise my information is Zotero which is a firefox add on. This site takes snapshots of web pages and then allows you to make notes on them. You can classify your information similar to Diigo and Delicious, but what really makes it stand out is the capturing of bibliographic information automatically. You are able to display it in many different formats. I discovered this site a few months ago as an alternative to Endnote and can't sing it's praises high enough.

Module 3: standards, legal issues

Module 3 standards

• log entry: have you used images or words on your web page or website that contravene copyright laws?
  

Regards the use of copyrighted material on my website, well i have an image that i sourced using Google image search. Ooops. So, am i in violation of copyright law? And if so, Australian law or US law - assuming the image was sitting on a server in the US? On the Google image site it did say that the logo i used "may be protected by copyright".It didn't say explicitly that it was. Some things to ponder.
I investigated further. The Australian Copyright Council was a good source of information here. They had good information sheets to download in pdf format, in particular : Websites: an introduction to copyright.( info sheet: G057v08). It explicitly states that individual components including photos, logos and other images are protected by copyright. Looks like I'm gone.
However, it goes on to say that there are certain circumstances where you can use material without permission. These exemptions are termed, "Fair dealing", for example, if you use material for the purposes of satire, jokes or parodies, then you can use the material without fear of copyright infringement. Also included in the definition of "fair dealing" is using materials for research and study.(see information sheets: Research and Study (G053v07) ) On reading these exemptions it seems clear that what these laws are trying to protect is people exploiting other peoples work for commercial gain. The fact that i am using a logo as an example of my technical ability to insert an image into an html document doesn't infringe copyright. I am sure of it now.

• Would you be in breach of copyright if you put the curtin logo at the top of your web page for an assignment? This information may be difficult to find so be prepared for a search and some independent thought.
  

There is a link to the copyright and disclaimer page at the bottom of the curtin university homepage. Within that page there is a link to copyright information for staff and students. On this page it contains information for students relating to what is copyrighted material and also information regards allowances of copying material without infringing copyright. Again the allowances come under the provisions of "fair dealings". Basically you can copy part of copyrighted material provided it is for research or study. As for the curtin logo, it definitely would be protected by copyright. So you would need to consider your intention in using it. If you thought that adding the logo to your work might infer to the reader some extra credibility on your part, then i think you are probably infringing copyright. But if your intention was just to demonstrate your mastery of inserting an image into a html document, then i wouldn't think you had anything to worry about. But i may be wrong here. It would be interesting to know what others thought.

html task:

Log entry: Once you have completed the lessons, you should have a page with all the basic elements needed in a web page - save it as 'index.html', open it in your browser and take a screenshot and post it in your blog.

Record any difficulties you encountered with these exercises. Record your thoughts about html - do you feel a sense of achievement? What are the differences between html and blogging? what do you like best?

What do i feel about html? Well i feel a great sense of achievement of course. Having created a web page with my own handy work, one can't help feel a bit chuffed. I did find the original tutorial a bit cumbersome and ended up using the W3Schools Online Web Tutorials which i found much more helpful. But it still took me quite a long time to get comfortable using a text editor to write my html. it got to the point where i felt i was spending too much time on this task and just had to stop. Hence my site is rather rudimentary. The W3 site is great and when i do have time i will go back and try and master it more fully.

The differences between html and blogging? Funny question that. The way i understand things, html is simply the language that underpins websites and blogs. Its just that blogs are created with WYSIWYG editors, so that writers don't have to worry about having to learn html themselves. This is no doubt part of the reason why blogs are so popular. But learning how to write html gives you and edge. It gives you control of how you want things to look, because you can edit and tweak the html to create a design that you want.

The url of my uploaded web page is http://users.ncable.net.au/~garryreid/

Blogs:

Blogs are one of the new tools with which to communicate on the internet. They are an asynchronous in form, where one person can communicate with potentially many others. And they are booming on the net.

The thing that i find most appealing about blogs is their capacity to facilitate discussion through comments. Often it's not a particular post that is the most interesting part , but the flurry of comments that sometimes follow, as readers choose to add their two cents worth. Comments can be silly and even outrageous, but they can also be amusing and informative and add to the topic being discussed to the point sometimes of being more interesting than the original post.

I follow a few blogs regularly. I guess Lifehacker.com would be one of my favorites. It's a technology blog that I've learn't heaps from, mainly about more productive ways of doing things with technology. I would say my internet literacy where it stands now has a lot to do with that site, not only due to the topics they post, but also the responses to the posts that follow.

When i think about personal blogging, i think about a blog's ability to communicate and therefore connect with potentially lots of others especially in situations where the participants may be isolated. I remember being struck by a news report I saw on the TV some weeks ago about a young man who had written a blog of his experiences undergoing treatment for this rare life threatening medical condition that he had somehow taken on. And then how supported he had felt by the responses he received especially by others who were suffering the same disease. It was an uplifting news story and showed the power of the internet through blogging to connect with others. The same story could be applied to those who feel alone and isolated through mental illness such as depression and schizophrenia.

And citizen journalism? it's a new concept for me, something i haven't thought much about before.

I think the basic idea is that ordinary citizens can participate in the reporting and publishing of news. Whereas previously, what was deemed newsworthy would be decided by editors and the proprietors of large media companies, the internet via blogs has now broken down the barriers to make it possible for potentially anybody to contribute news. The most succinct definition I got was from you tube: definition of citizen journalism. People are calling it the democratization of the media. Really? I just wonder if the reality is as good as the rhetoric. Just because you can write a informative and opinioned post and publish it on a blog, or upload a newsworthy video on you tube, is that journalism? Or is it just news reporting? Not sure about that.

I did a bit of searching on Google regarding this topic and it's obvious it is a subject of intense debate, something to write a thesis about rather than just contribute in a blog post here. Maybe for another time.

Web2.0 task

Web2.0 task
although both sites contain the same information, the differences in presentation and usability are striking. Furl is a social bookmarking site which embodies a lot of what Web 2.0 is about.
For starters, it allows searching of the site's content. I can search for the term Web 2.0 and then if I choose, i could filter my search by time, say, for articles that are as recent as the last 6 months. Very important for those who bookmark a lot.
Also notice that the titles of the sites listed are not the only way to describe what they are about. They also use tags, which allow users to reorganize the information in a way that they may interpret it. The site on opera web standards, for example has a number of tags associated with it: web design; web standards; opera; html; css. Tags allow users to reorganize their data in different ways, how they see it.
Another feature of Web 2.0 on this site is syndication or RSS, indicated by the little orange icon located in the address bar on the right. It means that i don't have to keep checking this site to see if it has been updated. I can choose to subscribe to it and then receive updated content automatically delivered to my feed reader. What a time saver! These three characteristics: searching, tagging and Rss are enabled on the furl list, but not on the static html version.
Furl has recently been taken over by Diigo which is a similar service and which i use extensively in this course because i can annotate while i read things on the web. With this increased level of usability available on web services like Diggo and others like meebo and google docs etc, what is becoming apparent to me is that one's desktop operating system is fading in importance. You don't really need a powerful desktop computer for the majority of stuff that one does. All you really need now is a web browser and a fast internet connection. That is what Web 2.0 is all about.