Topic 3.1 – Your Digital Shadow

This was quite a small and quick topic, covering the digital shadow. From what I have derived, the digital shadow is basically how easy your footsteps are to find on the internet. The example from the study guide uses a blog, if alot of people are linked to this blog, then it will be ranked higher in Google and thus easy to find, whether it be bad or good.

Activity – ‘Ego Surfing’

This quick activity requires us to punch in our name in to Google to see what results may show up. My results showed up nothing directly linked to me fortunately, so hopefully I cover up my shadow well….maybe. Although the 3rd result in Google was for a page titled Gay Military Signal 070116English. I am not too sure I want to click on that (not that anything is wrong with that).

I then used the blind search, this is the search URL http://blindsearch.fejus.com/?q=Patrick+English&type=web. Once again I came up with nothing on me, although I did see the same Google results up so I knew the Google was one of the hidden search engines.

The next search engine was Spezify. What this search engine does is search for not only text, but links in blogs, images etc so it traces more than just the text relating to you on the webpage. There was still no results for me, even the Facebook pages that it put up wasn’t mine so I guess I am not too popular online or I am somehow covering my shadow well enough.

It is quite concerning how available all your information is on the internet, there is nothing too sacred anymore if you are a common user, even if you are not a user there can still be information about you on there. It pays to keep your nose clean and dont put up any information that may one day bite you in the bum. With this in mind if someone else talks about you alot, it can still be found on the internet. Big Brother is watching…..

Question – As an employer, what would be your feelings about employing Clair Werbeloff?

To be honest it would be quite hard, it also depends on the type of work I am hiring her for. I definately would NOT hire her for any position requiring a high level of honesty and importance such as someone who deals with large sums of money or has direct interaction with clients involving very important business. I would hire her if the position was for a low end check-out worker, or a video store clerk then maybe I would, but she clearly is very cunning and quick to lie to the world, she has tainted her image. I am sure radio stations and tv shows etc would hire her, but only for a comic relief, she has tarnished her repupation and is known worldwide as the “Chk Chk Boom” bogan.

Topic 3.0 – Your Internet Footprint

Awaiting update

Activity

Identity Management

http://www.joandimicco.com/pubs/dimicco-millen-group07.pdf

This article appealed to me instantly.

I have used the Facebook network for a number of years now, and I have slightly been able to determine what peoples intentions are with Facebook. It was amusing to see the 3 categories of users, Reliving College Days, Dressed to Impress, and Living in the Business World. These categories names could not be more suiting to the types of users on facebook and tends to cover a bulk of the Facebook demographic.

On my Facebook I was able to go through a large portion of my friends and list them under each category, unfortunately I am unable to list those here. It is hard for me to determine what category I fall under, it would be easier from someone elses perspective but I believe I call under Reliving College Days.

My interpretation of Reliving College Days is that these users do not take Facebook to seriously and like to have fun with it, as I do. I generally join most groups and add anyone who wants to chat, I am cautious enough to have to personal information on there, although some people are clever enough to work out your personal life from your Facebook updates.

‘Anonymity and self-disclosure on weblogs’

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/qian.html

It is a growing concern about bloggers and their lack of self-disclosure and anonymity. There is arguements for both sides, the idea of blogging is to show ideas and the authors
feelings and thought process, but on the other hand this can lead to trouble in the real world and a red mark next to your name, people need to handle what they say and it is only
themselves who can do it

It is crucial to self-censor your own blogs, because we all have unsavoury thoughts that must be kept to yourself, and these are the comments people should not let out. Some
bloggers believe because they have visual anonymity they can say whatever they wish, but in todays world, it is a very small place, and the smallest details they let out can be
traced back to them.

Anonymity is disappearing by the day, I personally witness people putting out more and more personal information on the internet daily, perhaps its to get attention, or maybe to get
at someone in a sneaky way, either way it is concerning how open the world of blogging is becoming

Topic 2.4 – Content Sharing

This topic we discussed the practise and theory of sharing internet content. Today it is very easy to share alot of data due to the speed of current internet connections allowing us to send larger amounts of data.  Content sharing today is quite common within the Web 2.0 platform, utilising websites such as Flickr and Photobuckup, these site have alot of web traffic.

The aspect of content sharing that drew my interest was copyright of the content sharing. With the ability today of sending this mass amount of data around the internet, it makes it more accessible to send movies, music, software etc.  I am sure at some stage most of us have breached some sort of copyright law, its interesting to find out that something as simple as a picture online is copyrighted and may only be used by the one person even though they upload it to their site, Flickr etc. 

I also found Mashups quite interesting due to the bending of the legislation involved. Mashups are videos people make around the world using footage from copyrighted material, but change in slightly by adding their own sound or crossing it with another movie, and then releasing it on Youtube or another video site as a new movie. The law is quite fuzzy on this, but after watching the mashups in the study guide I was amused enough to not let it bother me today.

Activity – Playing Around

This activity involved me signing up to www.bighugelab.com and checking out what the site was about. We were then instructed to make a picture using one of the various online tools, I chose to make a movie poster. The picture used in the artwork had to come from Flickr and have no copyright attached to it, allowing us to make it legally (even though I believe you may be able to use other artwork for educational purposes, dont quite me though…). I made a movie poster quickly to show how it works, i called it Exploding Zombies, I am not artistic enough to put too much brain power in to a movie title.

Topic 2.3 – Social Networking

Social networking is something alot of people are very familiar with these days. My first experience was with Myspace about 4 – 5 years ago now. I wasn’t in to it heaps at the start, I didnt feel comfortable being exposed to the Internet world. I soon got the hang on it and was using it nearly daily to see what people were doing and catching up with old friends, it is a fantastic social networking site. The Facebook phenomenon started shortly after I was comfortable in the Myspace world and I had to take a peek to see what was happening. I found myself drawn to Facebook more than Myspace so I jumped ship and now use Facebook almost daily.

In this topic we spoke about privacy on these social networks, and I have noticed alot these days that people will put up very personal stuff on Facebook. There is private and personal information updated every day by some people, exposing their lives to everyone. I think alot of people are very unaware of how much some people out there can gather on them, stealing ideas, spying, stalking and even ID theft. It would be a shame to filter these social networking sites but in some cases it would benefit people.

Activity – Introducing Twitter

This week we were required to sign up to Twitter and find some people we wanted to ‘follow’. The idea behind Twitter is to update your current status and what you are doing, to sort of let the world know what is happening in your life. It is fantastic to see what celebrities are doing, some people even get to meet them if they are close to them.

I had signed up about a year ago but never used it, I only signed up for a competition, but now I have gone back in to my old account and found some celebrities to follow. Below is a screen shot of who I am following.

Topic 2.2 – Wikipedia

This weeks topic covered the basics of Wikipedia. It was fantastic to read all about its inner-workings and how it works. I enjoyed it so much that I read this at the same time I was doing my second assignment in which I choose Wikipedia.

It was interesting to find out how the Wikipedia project started, as a side project for Nupedia, which was an online encyclopedia. Wikipedia soon took off quicker than ever due to giving the users the ability to add, update and change the web content, paving the way for Web 2.0 advancements.

There has been debates about the authenticity of the Wikipedia content and has caused great friction (which I go in to more detail in my assignment, if anyone cares to read more, just email me after the assignments have all been marked and returned). But Wikipedia appears to be rather strong today and will only get stronger if censorship doesnt take away the foundation that Wikipedia was built in, which is Web 2.0 .

Activity 1 – Mucking about the Wikitext

This activity shows us how to update text on a Wikipedia page. We are required to play around with an online ‘sandbox’ on this site  do link a Wikipedia page to it. Below is a screenshot of what I have done.



I found the sandbox full of a language foreign to me, but i added some links to basketball Wiki pages using the online tutorial, its quite easy to pick up and learn how to Wiki 🙂

This is what the outcome looked like

(  CLICK PICTURES TO ZOOM IN ON THEM )

Activity 2 – Knowledge Sharing

This activity requires us to update a Wiki page with some relevant changes or info and see how the public reacts to it. I am currently fixing up a motorbike and so I have a little knowledge on the Yamaha FZR250. I updated the below information to the Wiki page.

==Note on Power in Australia== All Japanese exports to Australia in the 250 range have 40ps power capping, so all the 250 imports from Japan are just as powerful as the next.

Below is the screenshot of what it looks like (REMEMBER TO CLICK ON PICTURE TO ZOOM).

So far there has been no feedback, it appears as though it is not often viewed. It is hard to change a page with lots of traffic because there has been alot of people fine tuning the information for a while.

Topic 2.1 – Blogging

Waiting to update….

Topic 2.0 – What is Web 2.0

Activity One – Newsflash

The Aim of this activity is to just check the RSS feed from the website www.news.com.au . In the study guide (online) there is a link to the RSS from this site, showing the latest updates. Below is a quick snap shot from the website showing the items.

 

Below is a snapshot of the RSS feed from the online study guide (it reads Rise in New Building Approvals)

Picture isnt the greatest of quality unfortunately. Need to edit in the fullness of time if I can get higher quality out of it.

Activity Two – Creating a Delicious Account

Firstly we are instructed to start a delicious account. In short terms, Delicious is an online booking marking system, so a user is able to bookmark their favourite sites and access those bookmarks from any computer in the world which is better than having your bookmarks restricted to the one computer. It is really quite an obvious idea, and I sort of wish I came up with it a few years ago.  One problem with signing up was that you have to have a Yahoo email account (which I dont), so I had to sign up for Yahoo first, then Delicious.

My Account is www.delicious.com/pattyefresh (which is my commonly used login)

I worked my way around the site and it was very quick to get a grip on. I found my five sites and before I even checked the net11_test tag, I found that alot of people had already bookmarked the same sites as me.

Below are the sites I found and how many other people had tagged it.

Web 2.0 – Wikipedi, the free encyclopedia – 2453 people

The Death of “Web 2.0” – 252 people

What is Web 2.0 – O’Reilly Media – 662 people

Social Networking Sites & Copright Violations – 5 people

Introducing Web 2.0 Concepts – 169 people

Upon trawling around the site, I found that when you search for the Net11_test tag, you can actually type in www.delicious.com/tag/net11_test

Delays & Catch-up

Hey people, sorry for the delays and messyness of the blog at the moment. I am doing my best to catch up after missing a few weeks.

Topic 1.2 – And the World Wide Web?

Part One – History

This week began with a quick introduction to the World Wide Web and allowed me to discover the difference between the Internet and World Wide Web and how easily and often people get these two terms confused.  I also learnt a bit about the history of the Web, beginning with the original ideas of Vannevar Bush who came up with the idea of an easible accessible repository of information. I learnt what a URL actually was and what it meant,  and how to determine the difference between URL, FTP, SMTP and Usenet. Alot of this stuff  we all sort of knew a little about, and used it day to day but I for one never knew what alot of those terms are in full detail.

Hypertext was my focus for this week. Hypertext is a way of referring to the linking system that enables us to jump from one page to another by intuitively ‘clicking’ our mouse on a highlighted word (Copied from the study guide). In Simple terms, a web browser is required to access these hypertext links, allowing us to browse the internet.

Activity One – Show Me The HTML

The first task asked me to follow some instructions, to get an idea of what html looks like. This is the results.

<strong>Hello World</strong>

This is what Hello World in bold looks like in HTML

<em>Hello World</em>

This is Hello World in Italics in HTML

<p><a href=”http://www.google.com”>www.google.com</a></p><p /> 

This is what a hyperlink looks like in HTML

My thoughts are that it wouldnt not be TOO hard to get a grip on HTML, its just a case of expanding your knowledge base a little.

Part Two – HyperText (will elaborate further when im awake)

Activity 2 – Going Way Back

I got to access a webpage called the Way back Machine. This webpage is a massive archive of webpages throughout the last few years, even some as far back as when the page started. Some of the examples are as follows;

Apple.com (October 1996)

Apple at the time where not as large as they appear now. The website only has information on their computer range, and is quite simple. The Banners are not working when I access the archived site so I am unable to compare it to today, but its a sure thing that Apple have come a long way.

Google.com (November 1998, back when it was a prototype)

This is the original Google banner when the site first opened, quite similar to today but has advanced so much further

Wikipedia.org (July 2001, back when they had over 6,000 articles!)

From the archive, it appears as though Wikipedia has no images on the site, its only text. It stayed like this for a while, with only 1 or two images, the first proper title logo that we recognise today came in August 2003.

 

dominos.com (February 1997 – To find out where their 1000th store was…)

Upon viewing the site, it appears as though the 1000th store was in Perth, Australia.

Delays from Xmas and travelling

Sorry for the delays people. I nearly got caught in the blizzards in Europe, and internet was being quite a pain while on holiday. I am home now and ready to catch up on these studies. Thankyou all for being patient