Downloading Internet Tools

August 27th, 2008 by Mandy

Here’s where being a Linux user has some disadvantages: standard plugins and programs are little behind the main game. The Flash Player, which is essentially necessary for browsing the Web, is a bit buggy, or at least not as fully featured as the Windows version. This means I sometimes encounter problems, for instance in pausing YouTube videos or doing various other things. In fact, this is the only real problem I face as a result of choosing Linux over the commercial operating systems.

Many Linux users are supporters of Free Software (”free as in speech, not beer”: “because the user is free”) . Many advocate only using free software, which would preclude the use of the Flash plugin, Adobe Reader and other proprietary software, including Opera (my favourite browser). As such, you’ll find free (usually released under the GNU Public Licence) software as substitutes: eg Gnash for Flash Player and Evince for Adobe Reader. I actually think it’s practical to use the proprietary standard versions in many cases.

For this task, I downloaded and installed RealPlayer, which is based on the OpenSource Helix Player. Since then, I’ve enjoyed the relaxing sounds of ABC’s Dig Radio.

Web 2.0

August 26th, 2008 by Mandy

There  is a lot of noise these days about Web 2.0. Initially, it sounds a little scary, is this some kind of evolution? What’s happening to the current Web?

It is a kind of evolution, quite market-driven. Web 2.0 apps proliferate now, with companies falling over each other to provide users with better ways to collaborate and interact, but more than that, Web 2.0 apps give people more power to place their lives online.

Google is your quintessential Web 2.0 company: it’s all about using the power of Internet technologies to make the online experience more customised and tailored to the individual user. More relevant to their online self, their habits and their interests. Google has incredible banks of information with which to create these customising applications, and of course it is all a part of the business model: targeted advertising.

You’ll see this trend all over the place: Facebook, iGoogle, eBay. So that’s the first part: offering powerful customisations of experience in exchange for data about preferences (to be used in determining which ads are most likely to elicit a click from you and thus cash for them).

Another major step in the Web 2.0 evolution is the emergence of Rich Internet Applications. These are usually created using AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) or Flash/Flex and allow users to obtain a similar experience within their browser to  using a desktop application. My favourite examples are Google Docs and MindMeister, a mind mapping tool. A great advantage of these applications is that they allow collaboration and portability: one may invite people anywhere around the world to view or edit documents. These often operate on a subscription basis: providing a basic service for free, but charging fees in exchange for really useful features.

MindMeister screenshot

Thirdly, Web 2.0 applications are characterised by user control. Users are given unprecedented power to manage their own data and choose how applications work for them. So, Web 2.0 apps - I like IWantSandy.com - are responsive.

Fourthly, Web 2.0 is about interactivity. Largely due to the popularity of social networking, Web 2.0 apps work with each other to deliver content and experiences that are appealing to users. For example, Google has built OpenSocial, an Application Programmer’s Interface (API) for social networking sites. OpenSocial allows developers to write applications or widgets that work across all social networking sites that implement the API. This opens up wonderful possibilities for applications to operate across these normally-closed social networking platforms. A similar idea (although with different implementation - long story) is Widgetbox, which allows you to create a widget(s) that operate almost anywhere on the Net. See the CybaSumo Shop Widget (old version) below.

<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ codebase=”http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”400px” height=”370px” id=”InsertWidget_4a491246-ed46-40cb-ba25-83348290281c” align=”middle”><param name=”movie” value=”http://widgetserver.com/syndication/flash/wrapper/InsertWidget.swf”/><param name=”quality” value=”high” /><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” /><param name=”menu” value=”false” /><param name=”flashvars” value=”r=2&appId=4a491246-ed46-40cb-ba25-83348290281c” /><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”sameDomain” /> <embed src=”http://widgetserver.com/syndication/flash/wrapper/InsertWidget.swf” name=”InsertWidget_4a491246-ed46-40cb-ba25-83348290281c” width=”400px” height=”370px” quality=”high” menu=”false” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” align=”middle” allowScriptAccess=”sameDomain” flashvars=”r=2&appId=4a491246-ed46-40cb-ba25-83348290281c” /></object>

Not that Web 2.0 is a utopia: read this blog post about what occurs when there is trouble in interactivity-paradise.

So, Web 2.0 is characterised by:

  • customised online experiences;
  • rich internet applications;
  • unprecedented user control; and
  • application interactivity.

Other Resources:

Web 2.0 Apps…

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Don’t Fight The Internet

Web 2.0 Domain Name Generator

FTP Revisited for Module 3

August 26th, 2008 by Mandy

As mentioned, I created my web page for module 3 by editing a file directly on the server via SSH. To complete this task, I uploaded my Concepts Project Coversheet to my server instead.

You can find the file here.

Nice and easy.

Blogs

August 26th, 2008 by Mandy

It’s an interesting fact, but it took me a very long time to even look at blogs because I dislike the word “blog”. There’s something about it that repulses me, I think because I am reminded of bogs, yuck. Nevertheless, I feel that I am over my prejudice against the name, which I now largely ignore.

I remember first hearing about blogs during the Iraq war. The ABC’s AM program ran a story about a blogger in Iraq who developed a large following by reporting on developments as he saw them. Clearly, this blogging thing has the potential to be powerful, thought I.

I didn’t have direct experience with blogs until much later when I started my freelance business. Having just had a baby, and knowing little about the Internet, I started my freelance career at the bottom, writing articles and doing bits and pieces development work through GetAFreelancer.com. Here, I encountered blogging as a means for making pennies through Google Adsense. While some of the blogs I saw were legitimate businesses, providing decent content to an audience (see Consejos de Salud for an example), I also encountered some very seedy practices (Blue Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO (”let your greed meet your imagination”) that scared me considerably until I realised that the Internet is just a microcosm of society. No one forces me to go to Kings Cross, and the same principle applies here: just stay away from bad neighbourhoods.

So, onto more savoury uses of blogs. In my travels, I see them used mainly for business: as means of building a brand, keeping search engines interested, attracting links from other websites and for providing information to customers. None of that is particularly exciting, unless you actually run a business.

I personally enjoy blogs that are written by people who know what they are talking about and who enjoy it themselves. Food blogs are usually good for this reason, I like Have Cake Will Travel and Anthony Bourdain’s Blog.

Last year, when the Haneef business was playing out in the media, I discovered that blogs can give you a voice. I had some things I wanted to say, and found that plenty of other people did, too. By reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, I was able to develop my perspective on the matter and make more informed commentary myself. And checking my logs, it appears the government was keeping an eye on the blogosphere. Andrew Bartlett, who actually has a real blog and not just a Facebook profile, had very many interesting things to say on the Haneef matter.

This poses an interesting question about “democratization” of Web content and the influence that the blogosphere can exert on public events. According to Andrew Bartlett, Australia lags behind the US in accepting citizen journalism through blogs, and frankly, I think there is some basis to this slowness. As Andrew mentions, the crux of the matter is the quality of content: Australians tend towards apathy (at least, we don’t get quite as excited as our U.S. counterparts) when it comes to politics, and perhaps we don’t have a sufficient number of quality political commentators in the blogosphere. It is likely, however, that journalists do consume political blogs to some extent.

For an interesting analysis of how the blogospere exerts influence on the political domain, I recommend reading The Power and Politics of Blogs, by Drezner and Farrell (2004).

Overall, I’ve enjoyed writing my blog for this subject, although I’ve found it very time consuming and I’ve not participated in other students’ blogs as much as I would have liked. It’s been a great learning tool, to be frank, and I’ve spent many hours consuming material to help me develop and present my ideas. As such, I’ve found the blog format for the learning journal actually far more rewarding that simply writing in a book.

Concepts Project

August 9th, 2008 by Mandy

Below is my NET11 Concepts and Reflections Project.

Coversheet

Concept 1: Asynchronicity

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

Concept 27: The persistence of history

Concept 28: The paradox of the World Wide Web

Concept 1: Asynchronicity

1. Asynchronicity

Asynchronous communication means that the sender and receiver deal with the communication between them at different times. We are familiar with asynchronous communication, for we use it regularly with letters, faxes and similar media. However, email often appears to be more similar to the conventions of real-time (or synchronous) communication and thus the particular nature of asynchronicity is different. People often expect a response to email in faster time than a letter (perhaps because they themselves respond rapidly to email). People expect to be able, through email, to conduct a conversation, with much back and forth, similar to an oral conversation.

In other words, asynchronous communication does not render time and schedules unimportant (as is sometimes claimed). Rather it requires us to think up new rules to assist us in managing communications that, from one perspective are ‘instant’ and, from another, are ‘lagged’ and that, standing back, are about the differences in temporal location of the people communicating.

Asynchronous electronic communication is not the opposite of real-time, synchronous communication: rather it describes forms of communication that appear differently ‘located in time’ depending on the perspective of the sender and receiver.

This concept applies equally, of course, to the other forms of asynchronous communication that are very similar to email, or use email (newsgroups and lists). What is perhaps less obvious is that FTP and the World Wide Web can also enable asynchronicity: indeed they depend on it, by allowing individuals to access material in many different personal ‘time zones’. For example, teaching online is predominantly effective where students cannot gather together in class to hear lectures but need to access them individually, at their own time. (Allen, n.d.)

The Internet fundamentally assumes asynchronous communication. This means, firstly, that the computers transferring data don’t need to be synchronised with clock signals; it also means that the communicating humans don’t need to be synchronised; communication does not need to be continuous.

If “asynchronous communication” is taken to mean communication able to occur across different time periods, whatever those time periods may be, we have a starting point for this discussion. We are able to see that Internet communications have varying degrees of asynchronicity, and although communication is not technically time-bound, social sensibility often provides a framework for what is considered an acceptable communication delay.

A good example of this social sensibility in action is with email in various contexts. Although answering an email is not like answering a telephone call, there are instances when the sender of an email might expect a very rapid response. It’s a general rule with online businesses that email correspondence by answered within 12 hours: any longer and people tend to think you aren’t serious. Other contexts for email correspondence have similar unwritten rules: consider that you’ve sent an email to a real estate agent, enquiring about a property in their portfolio. You’d generally expect to receive a reply within 1 - 2 business days, after all, you are approaching their business. There are plenty of other examples, too. So, while email correspondence is not technically time-bound, it is certainly socially time-bound.

A popular form of online communication that approaches synchronicity is instant messaging. In a similar way to sending SMS messages, instant messaging can be almost synchronous or quite asynchronous, and this is one of the more appealing elements of this communication method. Research has found that this duality offers individuals greater control over an interaction: time can be taken to formulate a response (if one even chooses to respond), or the quick, conversational style can be maintained.

Interestingly, IM offers another feature of synchronous conversation: the ability to see whether or not it is likely you’ll receive a response if you were to attempt communication. IM clients offer status notifications, displaying whether a user is available for messaging, whether they are busy, or away from their desk. Many offer users the ability to customise the way the status is displayed, for example, with something like “I’m at lunch, back at 1430″. This allows buddies to determine whether now is a good time to send a message, or whether to choose a more opportune moment, which is actually a good deal more information than one would receive in making a phone call.

Websites, particularly blogs, fairly regularly incorporate communication tools for visitors. Formerly considered to be means for broadcasting information, the advent of Web 2.0 has seen more and more websites become platforms for dialogue and collaboration. If, for instance, you are commenting on a blog article, you would reasonably expect to a) receive a response to your comment, and b) receive that comment in a timely fashion, especially when the article you are commenting on is fresh.

The Internet provides numerous communication channels, and although they are technically asynchronous, near synchonicity can be achieved. The choice of response timing is up to individuals, although social conventions certainly still apply to online communications.

Resources:

  1. EmailReplies.com, (2006), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.emailreplies.com.

    This site provides an assortment of email etiquette advice. The authors advocate replying to emails swiftly, at least within 24 hours, and they make the additional suggestion that if the email query is complicated, a brief “I’ll get back to you in full ASAP” email will put the enquirer’s mind at ease.

    EmailReplies.com addresses several more issues relating to the asynchronicity of email communication, including delivery and read receipts, the use of email priority options and message recall requests.

  2. Patil, S & Kobsa, A, (n.d) Instant Messaging and Privacy accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/papers/2004-HCI-kobsa.pdf.

    The researchers of this paper found that IM users have concerns over privacy regarding their availability. Participants in the study behaved differently when working as opposed to when they were not working. For instance, some set custom “away” status messages, even when leaving their desk briefly, and one respondent disabled the auto-idle feature in order to remain responsive. Various other behaviours were noted that displayed a willingness to manipulate the asynchronous-yet-approaching synchronicity nature of IM communications.

Bibliography:

  1. Allen, M (n.d.) Concepts Document accessed online on 23/06/08 at http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_b/scripts/student/button_bar/305033_b/concepts.html.
  2. EmailReplies.com, (2006), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.emailreplies.com.
  3. Patil, S & Kobsa, A, Instant Messaging and Privacy accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/papers/2004-HCI-kobsa.pdf.
  4. Internet and Web Essentials Glossary, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.webliminal.com/essentials/glossary.htm.
  5. Envato, Freelance Advice and Freelance Jobs - Freelance Switch (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://freelanceswitch.com.
  6. Kallos, J, Business Email Etiquette Discussions, Tips and Proper Practices (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.businessemailetiquette.com/.
  7. Dominic E. Madell, Steven J. Muncer. CyberPsychology & Behavior. February 1, 2007, 10(1): 137-140. doi:10.1089/cpb.2006.9980. Accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2006.9980

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

You might think that, with the widespread availability of telephones, an internet-based system of real-time communication involving the typing of text messages would be hardly used, or at least, of little relevance. You would be wrong. Real-time internet-based text chat is a significant part of contemporary internet use. The question then to be asked is: what is the difference here that makes this mode of communication popular; and then what impact does it have of the kinds of communication and social interaction that take place?
Setting aside cost the main differences are
1.that you can imagine yourself with others in a public space
2.that your use of text provides a different form of communication, more ‘fictive’, more controlled, and still very expressive, but also one that enables you to monitor and reflect on the forms and meanings of communication, including your own
3.you can have multiple conversations without apparently being rude (including both public and private ones)
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 amenable to 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.
Whether this effect of real-time communication will survive the rush towards AV conferencing is a moot point. However, a skilled Internet user will appreciate that text is, in some circumstances, a highly effective mechanism for communication. In particular, because text can be captured so much more easily than speech, it provides a mechanism for preserving and reflecting on conversations. (Allen, M, n.d.)

Text-based, real-time chat, or instant messaging (IM), is a flourishing phenomenon of current-day Internet usage. The technology is relevant to very many different user groups, from teenagers, to business users, to friends in far-off places. For its use to be so widespread, it must possess elements that make fundamental sense to human communication sensibilities.

Assumptions are generally made that instant messaging is primarily good for quick discussions or for making arrangements to meet elsewhere. In fact, research has shown that, particularly in the work context, people use instant messaging for complex and prolonged discussions. My own experience confirms this: I’ve regularly held long IM and group chat discussions to discuss project requirements and to solve work-related problems, and I’ve also participated in extended personal conversations.

The Concept above states that whether IM will survive the rush towards AV conferencing or not is a moot point. I disagree with this: instant messaging *has* survived the advent of free and easy VoIP and AV conferencing - see the integration of IM and chat into Skype’s client as evidence – and there must be a reason why this is the case. Certainly, many of my own discussions mentioned above could have taken place using the free VoIP client Skype, but didn’t. This hints that IM has a value for human communications in its own right.

I propose the following reasons for the success of IM:

  1. The computing context: users are accustomed to using computers for a variety of purposes in the same time period. It’s not unusual for people to have upwards of ten applications open at once. At the moment, for instance, I am running seven different programs, and within each, I have a number of different things I am looking at. Instant messaging fits very comfortably into the multi-tasking atmosphere of the current day computer user, allowing them to hold conversations while doing other things without seeming rude. Importantly, these “other things” may actually pertain to the conversation: looking up reference documents, conducting Google searches, linking to pertinent Web resources or checking emails.
  2. Provision for adaptive communication: humans naturally adapt their communication style to the context they find themselves in.

    Instant messaging supports such adaptations of style: informal shorthand and emoticon-enriched messages proliferate among friends, particularly teenagers, and this has been commented on extensively, but this form is by no means forced upon all conversations. Formal style can be quite appropriate when meeting a business colleague or client online, and conventions are fairly quickly established for communication between individuals, even when the relationship exists purely in the online space.

    Research has shown that the use of instant messaging is an effective method of building relationships and a sense of community. Of course, it has been noted that online personas are more easily contrived, and there is a certain lack of verification that comes from visual communication cues in other contexts, but generally speaking, the communication style that has evolved, including the use of emoticons as parallels to nonverbal cues, can provide a sufficiently rich communication mechanism.

  3. Perceived synchronicity and communication context: the provision for almost synchronous communication satisfies an intrinsic desire for feedback in the communication context. Additionally, many IM clients provide additional context by way of user-defined buddy grouping, user status updates and display, and offline messaging.

The success of IM points to the fact that this method of communication is a practical and effective tool for human interaction.

Resources:

  1. Wikipedia: Instant messaging and messengers (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging.

    This resource describes instant messaging and features of various instant messaging protocols and clients. The article provides a good description of the communication-facilitating features of instant messaging, a history, a discussion of proprietary protocols and an introduction to the language used by instant messaging users, along with other instant messaging usage information. Read this article for a comprehensive look at instant messaging.

  2. EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (2005),
    7 Things You Should Know About Instant Messaging | EDUCAUSE CONNECT, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/39385.

    Although focussed on the learning context, this resource provides an excellent background to instant messaging, covering what it is; who’s doing it; how does it work?; why is it significant?; what are the downsides?; and where is it going?. Of particular interest is the note about the technology facilitating the creation of “communication back-channels”: secondary conversations operating around a more formal context, like note-passing in class. This is a very good introduction to instant messaging, providing practical examples to illustrate points. Although it is written for the education context, many general principles are elucidated and the document actually has a wide application.




Bibliography

  1. Allen, M (n.d.) Concepts Document accessed online on 23/06/08 at http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_b/scripts/student/button_bar/305033_b/concepts.html.
  2. Wikipedia: Instant messaging and messengers (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging.
  3. Isaacs, E, Walandowski, A, Whitaker, S, Schiano, D, Kamm, C (2002),
    The character, functions, and styles of instant messaging in the workplace, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/587078.587081.
  4. EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (2005),
    7 Things You Should Know About Instant Messaging | EDUCAUSE CONNECT, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/39385.
  5. Nicholson, S (2002),
    Socialization in the “virtual hallway” Instant messaging in the asynchronous Web-based distance education classroom, accesssed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4X-46V4TGM-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=2282e4dd07dae05912e708b84b41cf6d
  6. Krohn, F (2004), A GENERATIONAL APPROACH TO USING EMOTICONS AS NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://baywood.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&eissn=1541-3780&volume=34&issue=4&spage=321
  7. Schirber, M (2005) Study: Instant Messaging is Surprisingly Formal, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.livescience.com/technology/050301_internet_language.html

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Concept 27: The persistence of history

27. The persistence of history

When we consider certain applications, such as telnet, ftp and some of the more arcane ‘management’ tools such as the ability to finger, lookup and so on (so-called net tools), it may appear that, in the age of the World Wide Web, internet telephony, AV conferencing online and so on, these are old-fashioned irrelevancies. However, they are not. These early applications continue to have value, directly, and moreover, advanced Internet users understand them because they provide a sense of history and context which can assist in developing new capabilities for Internet use. Furthermore, the ideas that underlie these technologies are critical and continue to govern the fundamentals of Internet use.
Advanced Internet users inquire into and analyse the kinds of applications available over the Internet, even if they do not regularly use them, so as to learn lessons about past developments and to anticipate potential new developments, based on the meaning of those applications.

Moreover, while new systems ‘appear’ different, they often use or include much older, traditional applications. For example, various identifier commands (ping, traceroute etc) can be used within IRC; telnet and ftp are tightly interlinked with http for web browsing. (Allen, M, n.d.)

The study of history is an important cultural activity in any context. Humans have consistently shown a desire to review and understand past events, not only to learn from mistakes, but to gain an understanding of who we are.

By understanding a little of the course of history, we are given a perspective on our place and purpose, along with hints at the direction of the future. This is true of all human endeavours, and is certainly true of our creation and use of the Internet. Where history is ignored, a vast body of culturally significant knowledge, value and impetus is lost.

Although the Internet is not yet 50 years old, there has been a fantastic growth in the number of uses and the purposes for which the Internet is used. In this brief space, I want to look at a simple concept, present at the Internet’s conception; clothed, but still present today; and bound to be a driver for the iterative developments we will see with the Internet and the World Wide Web in coming days. I want to look at the concept of information sharing between people.

The Internet was not developed for the sake of machines or simply as a technological achievement. The Internet developed for the visionary purpose of facilitating the sharing of information amongst scientific and military researchers. ARPANET was devised to create open channels of communication between people with similar goals and purposes.

The World Wide Web was similarly conceived. Tim Berners-Lee formulated a system to run on the Internet, based on hyperlinks, to aid high-energy physicists worldwide to share data, news and documentation. He created the first Web browser/WYSIWYG editor, Web server and Web pages.

In April of 1993, CERN decided that Internet code and protocols could be accessed, royalty free. This contrasted with the University of Minnesota’s decision to charge for implementations of it’s Gopher protocol, and paved the way for widespread use and growth of the World Wide Web. Thus, the World Wide Web continued the Internet’s existence as a free and open information-sharing platform.

As the Web became commercialised, more and more people had reasons to use it. Applications were created that improved not only information sharing, but general interactions, and specifically commercial interactions. The Internet became more and more a microcosm of human activity. New applications developed - especially after Google made advertising, and thus online business, viable - to promote sharing of media online. People increasingly took advantage of Internet infrastructure to develop communication and media-sharing tools and even protocols for specific purposes.

Peer-to-peer file sharing flourished with Napster and Bittorrent - harking back to the early days of peer-to-peer Internet interactions, but with a twist provided by the rather larger pool of participants and increased bandwidth. Likewise, communication protocols such as IRC, ICQ and other chat applications blossomed. Further reductions in hardware prices and growing understandings of how to do business online made it possible for companies to provide World Wide Web users with facilities to create their own content with blogs, relatively cheap hosting, and social spaces.

It can be seen, then, that the history of the Internet is driven by the development of technologies to serve particular, rather than general, information sharing and communication needs and markets. It is true that technologies are often found to have a wider application than what was originally conceived, and this is paralleled by a similar phenomenon with inventions in the “real world”.

Many tout the Semantic Web as the next iteration of the World Wide Web. It is Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of a new form of web content, meaningful to computers, and enabling vast possibilities. Such a Semantic Web would see people sharing information on a boundless scale.

Resources

  1. Berners-Lee, T, Hendler, J, Lassila, (2001),
    The Semantic Web, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web.

    “The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users.”

    This resource describes Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for the future of the World Wide Web: a very specific development of technology to facilitate the boundless sharing of information. This is indeed an evolution of process as well, permitted in the context of the Internet because of our growing understanding of current use and the potential for future use.

    This is a fascinating document from the creator of the World Wide Web. It identifies technical issues and provides a context for understanding the difficulties of reconciling human and computer communications.

  2. Crabtree, D (1993) The Importance of History, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at http://www.mckenziestudycenter.org/society/articles/history.html.

    While this is not an Internet-related resource, I’ve chosen to include it as it formed the basis of my conceptions about Internet history as a specific case. The author, David Crabtree, states that history is important because it gives form to the way we view the present and to our formulation of solutions to current problems. This prompted me to think of the essence of the Internet as a tool for sharing and dispersing information right from its inception. The current buzz about the Web “democritizing” news, content and knowledge seems to me simply an extension of this process, rather than something surprising.

Bibliography

  1. Allen, M (n.d.) Concepts Document accessed online on 23/06/08 at http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_b/scripts/student/button_bar/305033_b/concepts.html.
  2. Berners-Lee, T, Hendler, J, Lassila, (2001),
    The Semantic Web, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web
  3. Crabtree, D (1993) The Importance of History, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at http://www.mckenziestudycenter.org/society/articles/history.html.
  4. Aaron, L (2005) The Internet, A Microcosm of Society?, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at /http://lesaaron.blogspot.com/2005/11/internet-microcosm-of-society.html
  5. CERN (2008)Welcome to info.cern.ch, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at http://info.cern.ch
  6. World Wide Web, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web
  7. History of the Internet, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet.
  8. Hinchcliffe, D (2006) Democratization of Content with Web 2.0: The Emergent vs. Deliberate Debate, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://web2.wsj2.com/democratization_of_content_with_web_20_the_emergent_vs_delib.htm.

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Concept 28: The paradox of the World Wide Web

28. The paradox of the World Wide Web

“The Web embodies a fundamental paradox:

it is designed to be user-friendly information environment, fun to use and unthreatening;

BUT

it is the exemplification of a community/industry/technology which by its very nature is innovative, constantly changing and growing in complexity.

It therefore tends to be easy to use on the surface but is, at a deeper level, difficult to understand and use” (M.Exon, 1998).

Moreover, simply understanding and coming to terms with this complexity is not sufficient. We must see through it to the conceptual basis of the web: a system that encourages decentralised participation, exploratory and entrepreneurial behaviour in a manner that bypasses traditional government and corporate systems. What makes the Internet ‘work’ is this level of decentralisation, which drives innovation and empowers the individual; what makes the Internet ‘fail to work’ is the extraordinary demands it places on users to cope with many complex facets and more decisions than normal. Furthermore, complexity can disempower those who lack the skills, time and opportunity to learn.
Advanced Internet users recognise the character of the Web, seek to utilise its advantages, ameliorate its deficiencies and understand that not all users have the same abilities as themselves in reconciling the paradox of the WWW.

The World Wide Web is also beginning to encompass more and more of what we do on the Internet, at some cost. People tend to assume that the Internet is the WWW: it’s not; on the other hand, we can see the cultural forces at work to make the WWW do all the things we want to on the Internet – it’s more effective for large companies to profit from, and creates a sense that using the Internet is ‘easy’ (useful to convince reluctant customers). (Allen, M, n.d.)

The point is made with this concept that the World Wide Web has two faces: a fun and easy presentation interface, and a complex and evolving technical underpinning. While this may be a paradox, it isn’t surprising.

In his book In the Beginning was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson [http://www.nealstephenson.com/] proposes that contempory culture is a two-tiered system, similar to that found in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine. He creates a parallel between Wells’s Eloi and Morlocks and the two elements of our society thus:

“In The Time Machine the Eloi were an effete upper class, supported by lots of subterranean Morlocks who kept the technological wheels turning. But in our world it’s the other way round. The Morlocks are in the minority, and they are running the show, because they understand how everything works. The much more numerous Eloi learn everything they know from being steeped from birth in electronic media directed and controlled by book-reading Morlocks.” [ITBWTCL, The Interface Culture].

In Stephenson’s thesis, society hankers for mediated experiences across the spectrum of existence: from reproduced - and sanitary - cultural artifacts, to Facebook politics, to Disney recreations of classic tales, to graphical computer interfaces. Stephenson describes the creators of all these “interfaces” as energetic, intelligent and industrious Morlocks: the Eloi are happy to pay for these interfaces because they “like to be dazzled”.

This may seem a harsh assessment of reality, but I think there is some general truth to the conception. Constituents of modern society are swamped with information and things to do: we must rely on others to make much of the current technologically-accelerated life digestible, while we work away at our own area of expertise.

In fact, this is true of all human knowledge: it is very rare that a human actually deduces facts entirely by himself, he must rely on the researches of many other humans when coming to knowledge. As such, epistemologists have generally defined knowledge not as “true belief” but as “justified, true belief” (although - and exceedingly interestingly - the Gettier cases prove that justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge because the existence of interfaces intermingled with real objects may mean that a justified true belief is in some instances actually pure luck: see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/#JTB for a good explanation). But I digress.

Stephenson makes the distinction between the Eloi and Morlocks of this world to understand the popularity of the computer Graphical User Interface (GUI) in general, and our fascination with Microsoft products in particular. GUIs are not as powerful as the commandline, but they offer convenient “metaphors”, an easy environment to help the user make choices. Now, it is apparent that the World Wide Web is becoming more and more like a desktop – with layers of abstraction built over the underlying technologies to make life easy and fun for users. Some strong examples are:

  • Cpanel and other web hosting control panels: these allow web hosts to operate their server from a convenient web-based interface, without ever needing to touch the commandline. This is telling development, because it allows the “Eloi” to propagate the Web;
  • Webmail and intra-web portal messaging, ala Facebook[http://facebook.com]: these technologies blur over email protocols and smudge the distinction between real email (using SMTP and the access protocols of IMAP and POP3) and HTTP (Web) based messaging;
  • Rich Internet Applications: these use technologies such as AJAX to create a desktop “look and feel” on a web page, particularly through asynchronous communication with the server, meaning the page doesn’t need to be reloaded to achieve a displayed response to user actions. The user is generally none the wiser as to how this occurs.

The evolution of the Web into a richer and more responsive environment for users does gloss over all manner of technical implementation details, and it certainly blurs the distinction between the Internet and the WWW for most users, who increasingly inhabit the Interweb. But we should be generous, we sometimes like to live there, too!

Resources

  1. Allen, M (n.d.) Concepts Document accessed online on 23/06/08 at http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_b/scripts/student/button_bar/305033_b/concepts.html.
  2. Stephenson, N (1999) In the Beginning was the Command Line, accessed online on 03/07/2008 at http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.shtml.

    This is an essay investigating the rise and rise of the Graphical User Interface (GUI), and in particular, the Windows variants of the GUI. Stephenson’s thesis is that society’s fascination with Microsoft products cannot be explained in purely economic terms (since there are better operating system products available – for free – and this information is widely available). Instead, he looks to a cultural explanation, and I have drawn on this in my discussion of the paradox of the World Wide Web.

  3. Wikipedia: The Interweb (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interweb.

    This resource explains the ironic term “Interweb” as a joke about inexperienced users of the Internet and the World Wide Web. The term mingles the names in imitation of the way these inexperienced users access content from both without understanding the distinction between them.

Bibliography

  1. Stephenson, N (1999) In the Beginning was the Command Line, accessed online on 03/07/2008 at http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.shtml
  2. Wikipedia: The Interweb (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interweb
  3. Steup, M (2005)Epistemology: Knowledge As Justified True Belief, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/#JTB.

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Copyright

August 4th, 2008 by Mandy

A client of mine was asking me only last week to advise him on how copyright law affects his new website. I pointed him to IP Australia’s web page on copyright as a starting point. Copyright is free. It protects the original expression of ideas: it does not protect the ideas themselves. Copyright operates automatically from the time it is created and protects works from unauthorised reproduction, publication and communication. The Copyright Council of Australia (CCA) has published a handy information sheet on creating and publishing on the Internet. The key point is that websites in their entirety are not covered by copyright, but constituent works - graphics, text, and so on - may be. Interestingly, the copyright in these component parts may be owned by different people, and not necessarily by the website owner. Both the  CCA and IP Australia recommend using a copyright notice to indicate the owner of copyrights within Web content. Within my own websites, I use public domain or attribution (such as GPL or Creative Commons Attribution) licenced images and content.

Using a logo from the Curtin website would constitute a breach of copyright unless permission was expressly granted and attribution was made. Some question surrounds the following statement in Curtin’s Copyright Statement:

Under the “fair dealing” provisions of the Commonwealth of Australia Copyright Act 1968 an individual may make a single copy of a “reasonable portion” of the material on this site without prior permission or payment, provided it is for the purposes of research or study, criticism or review.

The question is whether or not using a logo on an assignment webpage constitutes use for the purpose of research or study, criticism or review. For this assignment, it is unlikely, so using the logo would be ill-advised.

Is that valid?

August 1st, 2008 by Mandy

Do you feel that HTML standards are a bit of a pain? A bit like the NSW Foundation Cursive Handwriting style we were forced to emulate in primary school? Perhaps it is an inconvenience, but it can be good for you, too.

Firstly, valid HTML helps to make sure you are understood. Yes, it means that your page is more likely to display properly across a variety of browsers, so your visitors see things the way you wish them to. This is clearly important for conveying your message.

Secondly,  search engine robots (Google, Yahoo and so on) prefer clean code. To be quite frank, it’s best just to give these guys what they want. They’re like the mafia: do things their way and all is well, they’ll look after you. Ignore them, they’ll ignore you (this is actually not so good if you have any desire that people find you). Do you really want to know what happens if you double cross them?

Let’s go a little deeper, though, shall we? The  World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed these standards for certain reasons. The most fundamental of these is “interoperability”, which is the ideal that Web technologies be compatible and that any hardware/software combination will be able to access the Web to work together.

That all sounds quite lovely, but what does it mean? The  W3C is endeavouring to keep the Web safe from being dominated by “proprietary” communication protocols and languages. By publishing “open” standards as it does, the W3C is providing everyone the opportunity to develop or use tools they choose to use on the Web.

It’s my opinion that this is a good thing. The alternative is fragmentation, similar to what is experienced in the software market across the various operating systems. No one wants Microsoft to become the defacto standard on the Web as they have become in the productivity software domain with Office.

So, if you agree that keeping the Web free and open is a good thing, do your bit and keep your code valid.

Below is a screenshot of my first attempt to validate my page.

My Initial Validation Errors

The missing “alt” tag is a usability problem: the alt tag is meant to provide a description for when the image cannot be loaded by a user’s browser (you see this attribute displayed while an image is loading, too).

The other mistake was that I’d forgotten to close the html tag at the end of the document. Most browsers would just handle this error, but there may be accessibility issues.

I’ve now corrected these errors.

5 Tips for effective Web writing

July 25th, 2008 by Mandy

1. Write for a reason

Be clear about your reason for writing before you start. This will help you to actually convey your points to the reader.

Jonathan Cohen, freelance writer, says that  writing must fulfill its purpose, whether that is to inform, entertain or sell.

2. Be concise

Jakob Nielsen is still correct: Web readers DO scan pages rather than read them. Omit unnecessary words and structure your article or post to make it easy for readers to find what they are after.

“Readers expect relevant content online. If they don’t find it quickly, they’ll leave.”  - Kathy Henning

3. Consider your audience

Talk to you readers, not at them. Jakob Neilsen’s maxim that readers hate marketese is certainly still relevant today, yet marketese is rife.

In any article or web page, you are selling something: it may be an idea, a product or a service. You need to pitch whatever it is in words that are meaningful to your audience. Think clearly about the key selling points and present them simply. It’s always important to assume the visitor doesn’t have any prior knowledge, but don’t ever talk down to your readers. Be truthful.

I know how hard this is. We had some issues with our copywriting for CybaSumo.com, and I ended up having to revise the main bullet points in preparation for the alpha launch. I had limited space as a result of the design: each bullet point needed to be a maximum of 35 - 41 characters (depending on the characters used). I can’t tell you how many hours I spent trying to summarise our offering in a meaningful and convincing way. To be frank, it’s very important to know all about your business or ideas before you start (that’s a bit of a business tip first - build your website around your unique selling proposition, it makes your copywriting a lot easier, hahaha).

In my experience it is definitely true that readers do not tolerate unclear text.

My friend Jonathan Cohen, was telling me this week about the importance of “knifing the baby” (ouch, and he did warn me I wouldn’t enjoy the phrase!) when it comes to your online writing. Be your own worst critic.

4. Stay alive - write often.

These days, the Web is alive with sites that are regularly updated. A List Apart’s Mark Bernstein quotes Dan Chan as calling this the Living Web. To be part of it, you should write often. Remember that a living site is only as good as today’s update.

Your writing does not need to be long - write little, but write often. And consistency is the key: once you have a pattern, your readers will appreciate you sticking to it.

5. Be accurate

Before finalising your work, check its accuracy. Readers are looking for credible information, so feed them that and you will find you become authoritative in your field.

References
The Seven Qualities of Highly Successful Web Writing

10 Tips on Writing the Living Web

Five Keys to good web writing

Basic HTML

July 21st, 2008 by Mandy

I’ve known how to use the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) for some years now. I don’t mind it, it’s quite fun to see your thoughts materialise into a graphical representation through the keyboard. I wouldn’t say writing web pages is one of my favourite activities, though, and this is because I care rather more for function than I do for form. This needs a little explaining…

Monitor in blackness
photo © Lukasz Jernas for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike

The purpose of HTML is to describe the structure of a document, and it has some capabilities for controlling the form or presentation of that structure. In this way, HTML shares it’s pedigree with other markup languages such PDF, XML implementations, TeX in the marking up of manuscripts with printers’ instructions.

The formal standard for HTML is now based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which is the more rigorous document form. This standard, XHTML, requires that documents be well-formed, with tags correctly nested and closed. This means that XHTML documents can be processed using XML tools rather than a custom HTML parser.

As I mentioned above, HTML has the functionality to influence both document structure and presentation. This can get pretty messy and hard to maintain. Programmers generally like modularity - the separation of concerns - to improve maintainability and reduce duplication of effort. In the case of web applications, it is considered good design practice to separate the data and business rules from the presentation of the data and from the handling of user input (see Model-View-Controller from Wikipedia).

For simple (static) web pages, using Cascading Style Sheets is the best way to separate presentation code from business code, and this is quite sufficient. For more complicated applications using scripting languages such as PHP, template systems (engines) and development frameworks provide a means to separate application code from presentation code. Some examples are Smarty and Zend.

During the last week, I updated my business website, web-ready.com.au. Because I’m not such a fan of design, I found a free CSS based HTML template from Free-CSS.com and ported it to WordPress so I could use it as a WordPress theme.

For the first task for module 3, I took the basic design of my new website and extracted the HTML code from the top part of the page. I then added my business logo into a new div and surrounded it with a link back to my website. The page still uses the style sheet I created for my main site. I used the Linux nano editor on my Debian server to create and edit the HTML file.

I did go through Joe’s tutorial, but thought I might look for some other resources that use the more recent HTML standards and provide a good introduction to CSS as well. I like W3Schools, and tend to use it as my main resource, but I found Dave Raggett’s Guide to be a great introduction to HTML, and it provides links to an advanced tutorial and a CSS tutorial as well.

Generally, I would say that I prefer blogging to writing a page in HTML simply because it is more efficient. The WordPress platform has a decent WYSIWYG editor which saves a good deal of time, although I do regularly use the HTML editor as well. I actually prefer programming websites using PHP and MySQL over both blogging and using HTML: I love the sense of achievement when programming logic proves correct: that’s a buzz for me and will probably always be so.

Usenet

July 6th, 2008 by Mandy

Usenet is absolutely new to me. I had to do a bit of reading before I found out how to even well, use Usenet Newsgroups. My ISP has a handy page on Usenet. I’m reproducing the helpful Newsgroup Terminology section below:

Newsgroup Terminology
Article A message posted to a newsgroup.
Binaries Files containing something other than text, primarily pictures and sounds, posted to a newsgroup.
Flame Derogatory comments communicated in a posting to a newsgroup.
Flame War When a discussion degenerates into nothing but a series of personal attacks, or flames (see above).
Lurk To read a newsgroup without ever making yourself known by posting.
Message An individual posting to a newsgroup (also called an “article”).
Moderated Group A newsgroup where submissions first go to an individual called a moderator, who must approve an item before it is posted to the group.
Usenet Service

I found a news group on my favourite author, C.S. Lewis. To be frank, it doesn’t seem overly interesting, but I’m lurking there for a bit anyway.

The more I delve into the history of the Internet, the more I understand that “social networking” is hardly new: it’s simply recently that it has been “monetized”. It’s quite a shame in some ways, but such is tha nature of the world’s current materialism: it spills over into every nook of our culture. The most terrible symptom of our age is forgetfulness: the rampant disregard for how we got to where we are in the incessant rush for greater riches - sensory or material. It’s quite refreshing to be part of something a little simpler by way of a humble little newsgroup, although these are by no means immune to spam!

My newsgroup post:
My NewsGroup Post