Thanks everyone

Ive passed my first University subject. Web 101
Thanks to all that have helped me along the way and thanks to my tutors and lecturers

In conclusion WEB 101 Topic 3.3 Laura's notes

Web 101: Communication and Collaboration Online

Laura’s notes

Topic 3.3 – Future Trends

Introduction:

By now, you will have a good background on the evolution of communication and participation over the Internet. Yet, as you have seen, changes occur very quickly in this realm - the idea of Web 2.0 was only really articulated in 2004. This week, as you conclude your studies and finalise your web presence assignment, we will look at some possibilities for the future of the web and how they might impact (influence) the way we use, communicate through and perceive it. (Curtin, 2010)

Instructions:

Follow through the information on this page, stopping to view any videos and performing the activities and readings as you get to them.

Web 3.0 – The Semantic Web

Throughout this unit, you have seen how quickly the Web has grown and evolved, from a series of static linked pages to a platform for a variety of applications and services. Yet the Web has a very significant limitation - it needs people to make sense of it. For example, if I want to find out the best value for money refrigerator that I can have delivered to my home in the next seven days I will first need to do some independent research on the kind of refrigerator I want. Then I will need to perform a search of refrigerator shops in my area, browse through them, make notes (mental or otherwise) of their prices and estimated delivery times, and then make a decision based upon my research. All of this I can accomplish from the comfort of my desk at home, because all of this information is stored on the Web, mostly as text. As a person, I can read this text and make sense of it. But what if a computer could 'read' and understand all of this content? This is the idea behind the semantic web. (Curtin, Tama Lever, 2010)

Laura: I watched an interesting YouTube video titled “Intro to the Semantic Web”. An interesting vision of what the Semantic Web “could” become and an explanation that I thought quite interesting. YouTube embedded video Url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGg8A2zfWKg&feature=player_embedded

I also came across another video about Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and the progression to Web 3.0 on YouTube url: Evolution Web 1.0, Web 2.0 to Web 3.0  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsNcjya56v8&feature=related that I thought was also interesting an related to what we have been reviewing.

Reading - The Semantic Web

Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J. & Lassila, O. (2001), 'The Semantic Web' Scientific American Magazine, May 2001, Vol. 284 Issue 5, p34.

Extract from reading:

THE SEMANTIC WEB

A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new

Possibilities

The entertainment system was belting out the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" when the phone rang. When Pete answered, his phone turned the sound down by sending a message to all the other local devices that had a volume control. His sister, Lucy, was on the line from the doctor's office: "Mom needs to see a specialist and then has to have a series of physical therapy sessions. Biweekly or something. I'm going to have my agent set up the appointments." Pete immediately agreed to share the chauffeuring. At the doctor's office, Lucy instructed her Semantic Web agent through her handheld Web browser. The agent promptly retrieved information about Mom's prescribed treatment from the doctor's agent, looked up several lists of providers, and checked for the ones in-plan for Mom's insurance within a 20-mile radius of her home and with a rating of excellent or very good on trusted rating services. It then began trying to find a match between available appointment times (supplied by the agents of individual providers through their Web sites) and Pete's and Lucy's busy schedules. (The emphasized keywords indicate terms whose semantics, or meaning, were defined for the agent through the Semantic Web.) ...

The Mobile Web

Although web-enabled mobile devices and wireless connections have been commonplace for quite a while now, Apple's iPhone has thrust the idea of a truly mobile Internet into the public consciousness. Described as "the seventh mass media" (Ahonen, 2008), mobile devices have become ubiquitous in our society with some estimates putting the number of people who carry mobiles at 30% of the population. The combination of this mobility with 'smart phones' that can increasingly serve rich web content is bringing about a shift in our understandings of the degree to which the Internet can reach into our everyday lives.

The principal shift that mobile devices are bringing to the Web experience is that of localised content through location-aware GPS functions. With the added context of location, web-based applications are able to offer an augmentation of the real world by providing information that shifts as we do. More importantly perhaps, the collaborative culture of Web 2.0 and beyond can be further enhanced by this kind of location awareness. We have already seen the beginnings of this in geo-tagging, but the area is still relatively under-explored.
While the most obvious application of the mobile web is that embedded in devices that we carry with us, wireless technologies can theoretically be utilised to connect any electronic device to the Internet. The promise of smart appliances has been with us for quite a while (Who doesn't dream of owning an Internet-enabled Fridge?!), but with the growing availability of wireless access, we can expect to see growing inter-connectivity between (and access to) appliances. (Curtin, Tama Lever, 2010)

Laura: I thought this was an interesting angle and explanation concerning the mobility of the internet today. Although I cannot see carrying a fridge in my pocket as something of a revolutionary aspect, maybe a back breaking one...(joke) I find this future footstep interesting and I look forward to some sort of interactive bracelet that gives a holographic projection of the semantic web i.e. point and use!

In conclusion to this week AND the unit I watched all the videos:

Kevin Kelly, Web and Where: Web 3.0 (... the web that we have at the moment is less than 5000 days old ...T.V but better ...) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J132shgIiuY&feature=player_embedded

Google Wave Overview: While Google's Wave was hailed as the next great thing in late 2009, it has taken a considerable time to become popular. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6pgxLaDdQw&feature=player_embedded

Laura: I joined Googlewave, https://wave.google.com/wave/  it’s an interesting concept but you do need to have more than one person using it. I delegate this type of functionary tool as one that is best used as a communal one. For those that are using Internet Explorer it is necessary to download the Chrome Shell but be aware it might interfere with your web face and cause the browser to crash intermittently. It’s a tool best utilised with either Firefox or Safari (and yes, you do not have to be using an Apple/Mac computer to be able to use Safari as the browser integrates quite well across all platforms. I have found that both Fire fox and Safari are actually better and have greater stability than Internet Explorer. Keep in mind this is MY person view and opinion)

Activity:  Food for thought.....

This final week has given some ideas about future directions the web might take. Think about how your experience of life online might be different in five years time. What will Google (and its competitors) have to say about you at that time? WHAT DO YOU! THINK?

Web 101 Topic 3.2 Social Me(dia) Laura’s notes

Web 101
Topic 3.2 Social Me(dia)
Laura's notes
Intro:
While the web was famously described as Small Pieces Loosely Joined (a unified theory of the web, David Weinberger: "What is the Web for? And why do we care so much? Why has this simple technology sent a lightning bolt through our culture? It goes far beyond the Web's over-hyped economic impact: 500 million of us aren't there because we want a better "shopping experience." The Web, a world of pure connection, free of the arbitrary constraints of matter, distance and time, is showing us who we are - and is undoing some of our deepest misunderstandings about what it means to be human in the real world".) At the begging of the millennium, since 2006, the joins are often harder to see and the pieces are getting smaller and smaller. Our output of Facebook status updates, Twitter posts (called tweets), Last.FM playlist updates, and the different posts from a thousand other services all leave tiny fragments of information about ourselves, our like, our dislikes, our habits and so on. The topic we'll be considering how those fragments are used, what they say about people, and how combined in different ways.(Curtin, 2010)

David Weinberger: Flap Copy (april 2002)
The Web doesn't exist in space, yet we talk about going to sites, entering themand leaving. Diaries move on line and suddenly they're more about creating selves than writing about Tthem. Web sites don't have fences, yet a site for auction hunters was found to have trespassed on eBay, a metaphorical offense for which it paid a very real price. Companies invest heavily in professional, polished Web sites, but the Web rewards sites that revel in imperfection. Bits are the "atoms" of the Web, but they have no weight, no size and no real existence.
These anomalies are just a few that show how uncomfortable the fit between the Web and the real world is - and how deeply weird the ordinary life of the Web is. In this one-of-a-kind book of social commentary, David Weinberger takes us beyond the hype, revealing what is truly revolutionary about this new medium. Just as Marshall McLuhan forever altered our view of broadcast media, Weinberger shows that the Web is transforming not only transforming social institutions but also bedrock concepts of our world such as space, time, self, knowledge - even reality itself.
The Web would be important enough if it hooked up our species on a global scale. But, Weinberger argues, it is doing much more than that. Unlike previous technologies, such as the phone or fax, the Web is a permanent public space that gathers value every time someone posts a Web page, or responds on a discussion board, or replies to a mail list. The result is that the Web is a second world, layered on top of the real world, that's drawing into it more and more of our social life lives together.
Weinberger introduces us to the denizens of this second world, people like .Zannah, whose online diary turns self-revelation into play; Tim Bray, whose map of the Web reveals what's at the heart of the new Web space; and Danny Yee and Claudiu Popa, part of the new breed of Web experts we trust despite their lack of obvious qualifications. Through these stories of life on the Web, an insightful take on some familiar-and some unfamiliar-Web sites, and a pervasive sense of humor, Weinberger is the first to put the Web into the social and intellectual context we need to begin assessing its true impact on our lives.
The irony, according to Weinberger, is that this seemingly weird new technology is more in tune with our authentic selves than is the modern world. Because the Web foils our conventional assumptions about concepts like space and time and self, we are led back to a more authentic view of what it means to be a person sharing a world with others-whether it's the world of the Web or the real world of atoms. Our experience on the Web enables us to recapture the truth of our experience of the real world. Funny, provocative, and ultimately hopeful, Small Pieces Loosely Joined makes us look at the Web - and at life - in an all new light.
David Weinberger is the publisher of JOHO (Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization). He is a commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and a columnist for Darwin Magazine, KMWorld and Intranet Design Magazine. Co-author of the bestselling The Cluetrain Manifesto, he has written for a wide variety of publications, including Wired, The New York Times, and Smithsonian, and gives talks around the world on what the Web is doing to business.

Twitter as a river:
 Twitter is a micro blogging service.
The metaphor of the river works well when considering 'micro-blogging' services like Twitter; users of the service rarely look at all the tweets (the twitter posts) made by their friends but rather check in from time to time and look at the most recent tweets visible at that time. It's a bit like looking into a river full of interesting fish: every time you look there will be water and fish, and they're well worth looking at, but each time you glance it'll be different water and different fish you see. Just as no one would try and chase water which has swept past, so too do older Twitter posts tend to disappear unread. Unlike a blog, for example, the sheer number of tweets means that people's engagement with their 'friend's' tweets tends to be partial and fragmented. (Curtin, 2010)

 Twitter in Plain English (March 2008)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

Shows how Twitter works as a micro blogging site, 140 characters at a time.

 Activity:
 Go to the Twitter homepage and log in with the account you set up earlier in the unit. In the sidebar, you'll see a section called 'Trending Topics' which lists the most talked about topics on Twitter in the last hours. Click on those topics and figure out what they've about. How do those topics compare with the sort of uses and discussions mentioned in the video and readings above? If you're following a bunch of friends yourself, look at their recent posts and see what sort of things they're discussing, too. (Curtin, 2010)
Laura: logged onto my Twitter account to find out something interesting, well anything interesting that has happened in the last few hours. Trends:
Lauer is concerning the interview that American NBC Today Show TV journalist Matt Lauer conducted with ex President George Bush. The consensus is that George W Bush is a "terrible arrogant man", this is combined with semi retaliation concerning Matt Lauer's interview techniques.

thedailybeast The Daily Beast by thejimmix: "George W. Bush Defends His Legacy ... In interview with Matt Lauer. http://thebea.st/9PKUCg
#cheatsheet via @msnbc"
MattBinder Matt Binder by pat1944 "Matt Lauer's interview with former President George Bush made me stop & think about how thankful I am for President Barack"

 j_hodges Jeremy Hodges "No 'Chuck' tonight. Instead, a somewhat hostile interview of former President G.W. Bush by Matt Lauer."
 amanidakar Amani Dakar "Ouch! RT @washdcnews: RT @jeremyscahill: Matt Lauer did a harder hitting interview with Snooki than Bush"
 steveweinstein Steve Weinstein by awop @ .@jeremyscahill "The goat from My Pet Goat would have conducted a tougher interview with W than Matt Lauer."
Laura: My friends are out across the globe; my newer friends are more to do with Open University/Curtin University. In addition, the consensus is that all seem stressed about assignments due to be handed in over the next couple of weeks or sooner.
Q: How do those topics compare with the sort of uses and discussions mentioned in the video?
Laura: They don't compare really, as I have friends who share different interests. They are not all following the same conversation link as each other.

Friendfeeds: aggregating Me(dia)

 While most Web 2.0 services create tiny pieces of information about us, there is a new breed of service which allows us to grab all of these pieces and join them together (that is, aggregate them) into one single feed which contains all of the fragments we're creating across the web. The most well known of these services is Friendfeed; take a quick read of their About section  (Curtin, 2010)
"FriendFeed is a service that makes it easy to share with friends online. It offers a fun and interactive way to discover and discuss information among friends.
Sign up for FriendFeed, invite some friends, and get an instant, customized feed made up of the content that your friends shared — from photos to interesting links and videos to messages just for you. And your friends get their customized feeds, full of the cool stuff that you've shared. It's fast and easy to start a conversation around shared items, or to show that you like something a friend has shared. You can subscribe to updates from individuals and groups, such as your family or a team of people you work with. On FriendFeed, you and your friends contribute to a shared stream of information — information that you care about, because it's from the people that you care about.
You don't need to install anything to use FriendFeed. You can read and share your FriendFeed however, you want — from your email, your phone or even from Facebook. If you make your FriendFeed publicly visible, your friends can see what you're sharing without creating an account, and you can Friendfeed account and aggregate the RSS feeds from the Twitter and delicious accounts you've signed up for during the unit; also add in the RSS feeds from any other services you have accounts with.  Now that a look at the resulting 'feed' that results. embed your feed in your home page or blog. FriendFeed also lets you pull in updates from other sites around the web, and even publish your feed to services you already use, like Twitter.
So sign up and try it for yourself. Why FriendFeed? Because it's fun, fast and conversational. And because everyone has something to share." (http://friendfeed.com/about/ )

 Activity:

Sign up for a Friendfeed account and aggregate the RSS feeds from the Twitter and delicious accounts you’ve signed up for during the unit; also add in the RSS feeds from any other services you have accounts with.  Now that a look at the resulting ‘feed’ that results. 

How does that feed represent you or your interests?  (And how would that work if you have more posts using the individual services?) 

If you can, post your Friendfeed details on the discussion board and take a look at each others'. 

What sense of other people do you get from their feeds?

Laura: I've signed up for Friendfeed. Interesting that they utilised my Facebook account to initiate the signup (to "save time") and you can find me here -> http://friendfeed.com/loulouherbert
Laura: my post to Blackboard (BB)

Subject: RE: Official Thread: Friendfeed Activity	Reply Quote Set Flag
Author: Laura Herbert Posted date: Tuesday, November 9, 2010 2:50:14 PM WST Last modified date: Tuesday, November 9, 2010 2:50:14 PM WST Total views: 2  Your views: 2		‹ Previous Post
Hide Parent Post Author: David C Date: Monday, November 8, 2010 12:25:36 PM WST Subject: Official Thread: Friendfeed Activity To investigate one 'social media river' service, sign up for a Friendfeed account and aggregate the RSS feeds from the Twitter and delicious accounts you've signed up for during the unit; also add in the RSS feeds from any other services you have accounts with.  Now that a look at the resulting 'feed' that results. If you can, post your Friendfeed details on the discussion board and take a look at each others Do you prefer services aggregated into one like this? How does that feed represent you or your interests?  (And how would that work if you have more posts using the individual services?) What sense of other people do you get from their feeds? Hi David, as I have only just signed up to Friendfeed I'm yet to find many others there. I did find my younger brother (interesting) and a past student of Web 101. I actually prefer aggregated pages like this one, from consideration I now have the majority of my services linked to one another (including my blog page which I have linked to FF), it was not that hard to do but I had to decrease my security to my other sites for the links to be active, you can look at my blog to see how the FF is posted to the page http://loulounilly.blogspot.com/ Here is my link Friendfeed link http://friendfeed.com/loulouherbert

Readings:

Tama Leaver (2007) 'It's a Small World After All: From Wired's Minifesto to the Twitterati', Tama Leaver dot Net, March 11.
Available:http://www.tamaleaver.net/2007/03/11/its-a-small-world-after-all-from-wireds-minifesto-to-the-twitterati/

Look on my blogspot for the above full extraction. Or http://www.tamaleaver.net/2007/03/11/its-a-small-world-after-all-from-wireds-minifesto-to-the-twitterati/

Akshay Java et al (2007) 'Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities', Procedings of the Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop 2007, August 12.
Available: http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/get/a/publication/369.pdf  

Anne Helmond (2010) ' Identity 2.0: Constructing identity with cultural software.' Anne Helmond. New Media Research Blog. 

Available: http://www.annehelmond.nl/wordpress/wp-content/uploads//2010/01/helmond_identity20_dmiconference.pdf

 How does the idea of 'Continuous Partial Presence' work in terms of building a picture about someone from their microblogging (think about the Twitter in Plain English video in this context, too)?  How does Anne Helmond's concept of 'Identity 2.0' work with the concept of web presence? (For the longer paper from Akshay Java et al, feel free to ignore all the maths in the middle and just focus on the discussion and conclusion; pay particular attention to sort of activities people undertake with Twitter and similar services.)

It’s a Small World After All: From Wired’s Minifesto to the Twitterati

It’s a Small World After All: From Wired’s Minifesto to the Twitterati

Tama Leaver's dot Net

Tama's thought about digital culture, whatever that might mean:

It’s a Small World After All: From Wired’s Minifesto to the Twitterati

Posted by Tama on March 11, 2007Leave a comment (5)Go to comments

Apparently small is the new black. This month’s Wired Magazine contains a Minifesto, celebrating the coolness of all things mini, from meals to media:

Today, media snacking is a way of life. In the morning, we check news and tap out emails on our laptops. At work, we graze all day on videos and blogs. Back home, the giant HDTV is for 10-course feasting – say, an entire season of 24. In between are the morsels that fill those whenever minutes, as your mobile phone carrier calls them: a 30-second game on your Nintendo DS, a 60-second webisode on your cell, a three-minute podcast on your MP3 player.

From YouTube’s clip culture to Apple’s iTunes (not iAlbums), it seems for the time being smaller is, in fact, better! In the world of social software, the coolest and probably the smallest is Twitter, which allows users to post entries of no more than 140 characters, sent in from the web, IM or text message and being sent out via these same three platforms to your Twitter friends. Twitter has some impressive parents, includingEvan Williams (who started Blogger before is was sold to Google) and the other Obvious folk. I’ve experimented with Twitter for the past few days, and I can see the appeal of its immediacy, and the fact that you really can’t take up much time with so little space to type! From the larger blogosphere, Jill Walker has been thinking about her Twittering in terms of blogging, noting similarities and differences:

…there’s something very satisfying about logging your days like that and seeing what others are up to. It’s a blog at a different scale than this one, in a way, very short posts, but far more frequent…

The logging aspect is quite addictive, and despite the brevity of posts, reading just a few Twitters seems to build quite an intimate picture of someone. Ross Mayfield in his post ‘Twitter Tips the Tuna’ gives this succinct explanation of Twitter:

Twitter, in a nutshell, is mobile social software that lets you broadcast and receive short messages with your social network. You can use it with SMS (sending a message to 40404), on the web or IM. A darn easy API has enabled other clients such as Twitterific for the Mac. Twitter is Continuous Partial Presence, mostly made up of mundane messages in answer to the question, “what are you doing?” A never-ending steam of presence messages prompts you to update your own. Messages are more ephemeral than IM presence — and posting is of a lower threshold, both because of ease and accessibility, and the informality of the medium.

I think that notion of ‘Continuous Partial Presence’ may very well be the core of Twitter. Mayfield goes on to argue that Twitter is peaking, with the uptake rate getting higher and higher, with everyone from Joi Ito tothe BBC staking their claim as Twitterati. Indeed, as Steve Rubel notes, even John Edwards who is once again campaigning to be the Democrat candidate in the US presidential elections, is using Twitter to keep in touch with his supporters.

While there are probably a lot of people who’ll see Twitter as the icon of procrastination (and I can see their point!), Liz Lawley responds to criticisms of Twitter, pointing out that these ephemeral tidbits can actually be quite important:

The first criticizes the triviality of the content. But asking “who really cares about that kind of mindless trivia about your day” misses the whole point of presence. This isn’t about conveying complex theory–it’s about letting the people in your distributed network of family and friends have some sense of where you are and what you’re doing. And we crave this, I think. When I travel, the first thing I ask the kids on the phone when I call home is “what are you doing?” Not because I really care that much about the show on TV, or the homework they’re working on, but because I care about the rhythms and activities of their days. No, most people don’t care that I’m sitting in the airport at DCA, or watching a TV show with my husband. But the people who miss being able to share in day-to-day activity with me–family and close friends–do care.

The second type of criticism is that the last thing we need is more interruptions in our already discontinuous and partially attentive connected worlds. What’s interesting to me about Twitter, though, is that it actually reduces my craving to surf the web, ping people via IM, and cruise Facebook. I can keep a Twitter IM window open in the background, and check it occasionally just to see what people are up to. There’s no obligation to respond, which I typically feel when updates come from individuals via IM or email. Or I can just check my text messages or the web site when I feel like getting a big picture of what my friends are up to.

So, for Lawley, it would appear that everyone has their own Twitterati who are more likely to be family and friends than anyone else. Thanks once again to Steve Rubel, there’s now a basic Twitter Search, so if you’re not using it already, why not explore a little and decide who might be in your Twitterati? Professor Tama Leaver.

Disclaimer: this is not my article. I do not claim to have written. Laura 

Web 101 Topic 3.1 Your Digital Shadow – Laura’s notes

Web 101: Communication and Collaboration Online
Topic 3.1 – Your Digital Shadow
Laura's notes

Introduction:

Whilst the information you post to the web purposefully creates your Internet footprint, it is increasingly the case that other people contribute information about you to the web. Whether this is a comment on a blog that mentions you or an image uploaded to a social networking site and tagged with your name, we need to be aware that we are not always in control of how we are perceived.(Curtin, 2010)

Often confused with an Internet Footprint, your digital shadow is a reflection of how visible you (or your company) are to other users of the Internet. Increasingly, digital shadows are being used to evaluate potential employees and by law enforcement agencies. For the most part, this visibility is determined by search engines. At the time of writing, this largely means one thing: Google. (Curtin, 2010)

Instructions:

Follow through the information on this page, stopping to view any videos and performing the activities and readings as you get to them. (Curtin, 2010)

Your Digital Shadow:

Google has become the default search engine for the vast majority of web users. (Curtin, 2010)

Using an algorithm called 'PageRank', http://www.switchit.com/news/improve-pagerank.asp

"PageRank Explained

At the heart of Google, software is a system called PageRank, which gives every site on the Internet a rank from 0-10. So how is this calculated? Well, the page rank of your site is determined by the links to your web site. Each time somebody adds a link to your web site, Google interprets this as a vote for your site. The more links you have to your site, the more votes you get.

Nevertheless, Google also looks a little deeper than just sheer volume of links, and analyses the importance of the web site that has cast a vote for your site. Sites that Google determines are important are those with a higher PageRank. Therefore, a link to you from a site with a PageRank of 6 is better than a link from a site with a PageRank of 3. In fact, 1 link from a site with a PageRank of 6 is better than 10 links from PageRank 3 sites.

Still following? Almost there. When Google is determining how important the link to your site is, it also checks how many other links are on the web page. Take our PageRank 6 page for example. If it has 1000 links on a page, with your site being one of them, Google will determine that the site's 'vote' for your web site is only worth 1/1000 of the PageRank 6 value. If there were only 3 other links on that page their 'vote' for your site will be interpreted by Google as much more important." (Richardson, March 2005)

(and the assistance of Pigeons!)

The technology behind Google's great results
As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders. Larry Page (Google board of directors) and Sergey Brin (Google board of directors) at Stanford University.  Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, http://www.bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/Home.html ( Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.

Why Google's patented PigeonRank™ works so well

PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutes’ differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages.

By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.

When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When one of the pigeons in the cluster observes a relevant result, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user's results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.

Integrity

 Google searches place particular emphasis on the value of incoming links in ordering search results. For example, in the case of a blog, the more people that link to your blog, the higher it will rank in Google searches. Furthermore, Google ranks the importance of particular websites and assigns a value to them - the more important Google considers a site that links to yours, the higher your ranking in the search results. (Curtin, 2010)

 Activity: 'Ego Surfing'

So, let's see how visible you are...we'll go ego-surfing!

Type your name in to the Google search box below to see what (if anything) Google knows about you..
(Hint: Type your name within quotation marks for more specific results and make sure to view at least the first 3 pages)


Laura: Well is seems Google knows an interesting amount about me. At the top of the search page, there are a possible 9,090 results in less than 0.07 seconds. Five hits on the first page, five hits on the second page and a mention in someone else's Twitter list. Page three of the search list has three hits for me and some precarious mentions on other people's pages. Page 4 has another three hits. In the inevitable end, Google says that; 'In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 35 already displayed'. From my perspective this is extremely scary but not a particular revelation, simplified, a search such as the one just completed lays my Web presence wide open to anyone wanting to look at what I have been doing on the Internet. This factor may cause me to rethink what I actually do post to the Internet.
 

Laura: Next search engine: http://blindsearch.fejus.com/  that plays a little game with you concerning blind searching with three different engines. I ended up with bing, Google and YAHOO, hence giving me the same information that the original “Google” search had provided.

Laura: And finally; Spezify http://spezify.com/ which utilises MSN search engine. It's a very intense, in depth searches that view, and reviews your music choices, any particular preference for TV shows that you may have looked at including the types of movies that could possibly been downloaded and enjoyed. There are hits on photos that I have uploaded and mentions in other people MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn sites. I viewed a possible 48 out of 65 items arranged in picture form over the Web page, a nice display but an incredible intrusion into what I thought were my private likes and dislikes.


 "Spezify is indicative of the future direction of the web in that it doesn't restrict itself to text links, but creates a more eclectic series of results that incorporates images and blog posts. As the 'semantic web' draws closer (a shift we'll be looking at in the final week), your identity will only become more embedded (and more easily accessible) online. As data is increasingly tagged and annotated, you may find that you have a presence online that has nothing to do with content you have contributed. If someone uploads a photograph and tags you in the image, you have no control over this. Similarly, if your name is mentioned in someone else's blog, search engines will find it. (Curtin, 2010)

"As you will have seen from the earlier activity, an important issue in managing your web presence is visibility. For example, let's say your name is John Smith (a search that currently produces 4.6 Million Google results!). If you want to remain largely invisible on the web, it isn't going to be that difficult.
But what if you don't want to be invisible? On the other hand, let's say you have a distinctive name. Chances are that as soon as you become reasonably active on the web, information about you is going to appear in a search. By taking control of our participation on the web and by creating an informational 'hub' from, and into which these contributions flow, we can not only increase our visibility but also have a far greater degree of control over our web presence. Whether this be in the form of a static website or a blog, the more that our contributions point back to this centre, the more controllable our digital shadow will be... Assuming that we do not want search engines to arbitrarily decide how we are perceived online, and with the knowledge that anything we contribute to the web is searchable, we need to take control of our own web presence - We need to give Google something to find." (Curtin, 2010)

Readings:

danah boyd (2008) "http://www.danah.org/papers/HBRJune2007.html
Facebook's Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence.", 14 (1)

Abstract / Not all Facebook users appreciated the September 2006 launch of the 'News Feeds'
feature. Concerned about privacy implications, thousands of users vocalized their discontent
through the site itself, forcing the company to implement privacy tools. This essay examines the
privacy concerns voiced following these events. Because the data made easily visible were already
accessible with effort, what disturbed people was primarily the sense of exposure and invasion. In
essence, the 'privacy trainwreck' that people experienced was the cost of social convergence.
Key Words / convergence / exposure / Facebook / invasion / privacy / social network sites. (boyd,2008)

Solove, D., (2007). How the Free Flow of Information Liberates and Constrains Us, in The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet.
Available: http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/text/futureofreputation-ch2.pdf


"The Internet allows information to flow more freely than ever before. We can communicate and share ideas in unprecedented ways. These developments are revolutionizing our self-expression and enhancing our freedom. But there's a problem. We're heading toward a world where an extensive trail of information fragments about us will be forever preserved on the Internet, displayed instantly in a Google search. We will be forced to live with a detailed record beginning with childhood that will stay with us for life wherever we go, searchable and accessible from many where in the world. This data can often be of dubious reliability; it can be false and defamatory; or it can be true but deeply humiliating or discrediting. We may find it increasingly difficult to have a fresh start, a second chance, or a clean slate. We might find it harder to engage in self-exploration if every false step and foolish act is chronicled forever in a permanent record. This record will affect our ability to define our identities, to obtain jobs, to participate in public life, and more. Ironically, the unconstrained flow of information on the Internet might impede our freedom. How and why is this happening? How can the freeflow of information make us freer yet less free as well?" (Solove, 2007)


boyd, danah. 2007. "We Googled You: Should Fred hire Mimi despite her online history?" Case Commentary,Harvard Business Review, June. Available: 
Citation: boyd, danah. 2007. "We Googled You: Should Fred hire Mimi despite her online history?" Case Commentary, Harvard Business Review, June.
 This is my response to Diane Coutu's case student. To read the complete case study with other respondents' commentary, you will need to order the June 2007 issue from http://www.google.com.au/Harvard Business Review. Because this case is the firstInteractive Case Study, the case is now online without the responses.

Background: What follows is my response to Diane Coutu's "We Googled You" case study where Fred is trying to decide whether or not to hire Mimi after one of Fred's co-workers googles Mimi and finds newspaper clippings about Mimi protesting Chinese policies. Given the case study, we were then asked, "should Fred hire Mimi despite her online history?" To fully understand my response requires reading the original case (which I'd encourage) but I still felt that it was important to make my response available even if the complete context is missing.

I just celebrated my ten-year blogging anniversary. I started blogging when I was 19, and before that, I regularly posted to public mailing lists, message boards, and Usenet. I grew up with this technology, and I'm part of the generation that should be embarrassed by what we posted. But I'm not—those posts are part of my past, part of who I am. I look back at the 15-year-old me, and I think, "My, you were foolish." Many of today's teens will also look back at the immaturity of their teen years and giggle uncomfortably. Over time, foolish digital pasts will simply become part of the cultural
fabric. (boyd, 2007)

Reference:

Google Australia site http://www.google.com.au/
PageRank, How does Google work - explained. http://www.switchit.com/news/improve-pagerank.asp
Google Pigeon - http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html



How Are Companies Leveraging Social Media?

How Are Companies Leveraging Social Media?

The State of YouTube

The State of YouTube

How Important Have Apps Become?

How Important Have Apps Become?

The Evolution of the Geek

The Evolution of the Geek

The 2010 Social Networking Map

The 2010 Social Networking Map

Web 101 Topic 3: Your Internet Footprint

Web Communications 101: Web 101 – Communication and Collaboration Online.

Laura's notes

Module 3: Introduction – Your Internet Footprint.

iLecture: Internet footprints: Dr Tama Leaver

Topic:

Internet Footprints

Speaker:

Dr Tama Leaver

Outline:

1. Theories of 'Self'? 2. Technologised and Mediated Selves in Contemporary Popular Culture 3. Self and/as Social Media

Dr Leaver discusses individuals such as:

Erving Goffman: The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life (1959) self can be conveyed to others as a series of performances (with keep audience in mind). Goffman's ideas are influential in digital media studies as all self is presentation.

Donna Haraway, Everyone in contemporary society is already a cyborg. Cyborg: we are deeply entwined with technology and would be fundamentally different people without it. The traditional Liberal Humanist Model of the Subject (the Western subject: Humanity /cyborg/Technology/ - Humans and technology are entwining on both material and epistemological levels.

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990): performativity. All Self is a performance, which is a form of construction, but this is not distance from a "real" self. Part of postmodern and post structuralist movement: saw everything as discursive and thus constructed.

 17:39 minutes: Technologised and mediated selves in contemporary popular culture. (Popular culture is a very vast field. How do we think about digital media?

18:12 minutes:  Alter ego by Robbie Cooper (l) Jason Rowe has major disabilities but plays a computer character on line called Rurouni Kenshin. Jason's explanation "the computer screen is my window to the world. Online it doesn't matter what you look like." The digital experience for him is a very liberating experience. The first impression that you get from his online avatar (representation of self) is a different sort of visual representation, pseudonymity in a strong character representation comparatively very different to his real world self.

Choi Seang Rak, an economics and public policy professor at Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea has an online avatar through the game Lineage II that is female. Uroo Ahs. By the looks of him in comparison to Uroo he is a middle class professor with conservative appearance and the avatar is blonde ponytailed semi gothic armoured quite sexual in appearance. How does the representation map back on to physical identity?

Films:
Surrogates (2009) - about displaced identity into technology.
Gamer (2009) – technology implanted in prisoner's brains allowing others take control.

These films do ask a person to think deeply about the relationship we have with technology today.

http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html


Laura: I had a small travel section followed by an even smaller fame and management section. After that particular section of the bar, I have a huge fashion then even bigger family section of the bar. Education was as small as travel, fame then management (slight disappointment). Movies were quiet impressive in size (no really!) followed by mediocre news. However, wait! My intelligence, sorry make that illegal portion was something I should worry about proportionate to the politics size. Legal matters was a nice size (cough) and the social section isn't worth even mentioning followed up by a likeable chunk of art!

Introduction Topic 3

The Internet is a medium. Consequently, any communication that utilises the Internet is mediated.
The broad and complex topic of computer-mediated communication (CMC) has long drawn the interest of academics from a variety of fields. However, in this module we are going to look specifically at how this mediation affects your communication and how to think more carefully about the way you communicate and present yourself through the Net. Beginning with some simple tips about using email, we will consider how effective communication and publication in different forms through and on the Internet needs to be embedded in a firm understanding of the medium that supports it. (Curtin, 2010)

Instructions:
Follow through the information on the page, stopping to view any videos and performing the activities and readings.

Your Internet Footprint.
The impact that you make on the Internet is commonly referred to as your 'Internet Footprint'. It is the accumulated result of all your contributions to the Internet and is found in (but not limited to):

Laura:  "... Critics complain that personal home pages are often trivial or even tasteless, amateurish and superfluous products of narcissism and exhibitionism" (Döring and Rothstein, 1996)

• Blogs : mine: http://loulounilly.blogspot.com/
• Forum Posts: Blackboard for Curtin University of Technology
• Website Contributions: Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, Wikipedia and so on.
• Social Networking profiles: Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn and so on.
• Email: loulouherbert@hotmail.com
  laura.herbert@student.curtin.edu.au

In order to fully experience the shifts and changes we have seen emerging through the course of this unit you will have to contribute to and participate in the growth of the Internet. To establish an Internet presence for yourself (or, for the more business-minded, your company) you will need to consciously think about the ways in which you present yourself to the other users of the Internet. (Curtin, 2010)

Internet Communications Basics – Netiquette.
Netiquette refers to the basic social conventions that are applicable to any use of the Internet. Originally used before the introduction of the World Wide Web to refer to the appropriate use of email and usenet groups, the term has grown to encompass the 'unspoken rules' that informally govern the wide variety of expressive form that the Internet has given rise to. The most important point to remember (and one we shall return to a little further down the page) is that you cannot assume that anything you 'send via' or 'post to' the Internet will remain private. (Curtin, 2010)

Laura: all communication as far as I am concerned is public, it is important to remember that anything that is posted on the Internet is potentially public and will and can be used in any which way or form another user will see fit.

Email:

The Limitations of Text:

Although this might seem like common sense, it is surprising how many people feel the need to adorn the text of their emails in some way. The use of HTML to display email is not generally appropriate. Make sure the default setting in your email program is to create plain text emails.

Think Before Replying
The limitations of text can often lead us to misinterpret the intention of emails. Coupled with the instantaneous nature of email communication, this can often lead to un-necessary miscommunication. If you ever feel the need to type an emotive or reactive response to an email, allow yourself time to cool off.

Think Again Before Replying!
The 'reply all' button on your email client should be used with care and consideration. If you receive an email that is addressed to a large number of people, is your reply intended for all of them of just for the original sender? Make sure to familiarise yourself with the function of the CC and BCC fields in your email client. If you don't, strange things can occur! (Curtin, 2010)

All email programs allow you to quote the original email in your reply. Sometimes this is a useful way to maintain the 'flow' of a lengthy conversation by reminding the recipient of the points you are discussing. In this case, it is often a good idea to insert your own comments at the relevant point in the quoted text. However, email quoting can be abused. Think about whether you need to include the original text in your email, particularly if it already contains the quoted text from many previous emails!

As mentioned above, it is important at all times to remember that information posted to group discussions is generally not only available to members of the group, but to the entire Internet. Many web discussion groups 'feel' like a private and localised conversation but, almost invariably, they are not.
When you participate in an online discussion of any kind, you need to be aware that most will have been around before your participation. Thus, individual groups tend, over time, to develop norms and rules. On both websites and other forms of discussion group, you should avail yourself of any rules and guidelines that govern participation.(Curtin 2010)

(Curtin Blackboard and Curtin Skype have netiquette in place to deter inappropriate behaviour)

Social Networking - Presentation of the Self.

Sociologist Erving Goffman, (Laura: Erving Goffman was an American Sociologist 1922-1983, whose classic book"The presentation of self in everyday life (1959) saw social interaction as performances by individuals, which vary according to context, usually intended to please the current audience. Not merely micro level social psychology, this book suggest how identities and ideologies are reproduced on a grand scale) in his book, The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, discussed the idea of Interaction Order to describe the way in which we selectively and deliberately reveal certain information to others in our everyday communications. It is through these interactions and the control we have over them that we establish a social status. This idea can be applied to our presentation of our online selves.

Thus, the second issue with privacy in social networks concerns the degree to which we make our information public and what that the presentation of that information conveys to others. While social networking platforms offer a convenient way to keep in touch with friends, they also constrain the user to a specific style of communication in terms of the way the site presents information to others.
 The information on a Facebook page is presented in a standardised way, with few opportunities to change the look and feel of the page. Whilst the interface takes full advantage of Web 2.0 technologies in terms of how the information is arranged on the page, the graphical style is determined by the platform. For some users, this is fine, as the work of constructing a web presence is reduced to inputting data. It is important to remember that presentation of self on the Web plays an important role in defining the nature of your Web presence. (Curtin 2010)

 Information – How much is too much?
When posting information to the WWW about you it is important to thing about who is going to read it. Who will be able to access and what amount of the information is available to the discerning public. Bearing in mind the content of what is being uploaded it is important to ask yourself some relevant questions

Make the Subject Informative:
Stick with Text:
Netiquette in Group DiscussionsQuoting The 'subject' field is the first indication of the topic of your email that the recipient will see. Make sure it tells them succinctly what the body of the email contains. Whilst 'Hey' might be an appropriate subject for personal emails, in a professional context it tells the reader nothing about the content and makes it difficult for the recipient to manage their in-box.


Some times as we type emails it is easy to forget that the thoughts and emotion that lie behind the message are not necessarily transferred to the text of the email. While the use of emoticons (or 'smiley's') can help, consider the context in which your email can be read and whether the content could be misinterpreted.



Even for those of us who are regular email users, the very ubiquity and increasing volume of email (both wanted and unwanted) may have led to a certain lack of attention to some of the basic ways we can best communicate with and manage our email. It is vital that email messages be read and clearly understood, especially if they're-addressed to people dealing with large numbers of email messages regularly. To achieve this result, you need to attend carefully to the way that email messages are laid out and organised.

• What judgements and conclusions might others form with my information? (what I find funny and interesting now will reflect on my public image in future years)
• Are there some details about my life I would like to keep personal? (of course there are, no one wants to know that you have your period or your left testicle hasn't descended, or where you have a new piercing, not really necessary to post on line)
• Who might view or purchase this information about me? (Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch et al, advertising agencies, product endorsement agencies, marketing companies et al)
• Will this information reflect well on me a year from now? Five years, ten years? (yes yes yes)
• Would I want my best friend to know this? (no no no)
• Would I want my boss (or future boss) to know this about me? (Defiantly NOT!)
• Would I want my mother (family) to know this about me? (NO, NO NO...she would never let me live it down.) 

Remember that the retention of data by specific websites is not the only issue here.
Remember the wayback machine on the Internet Archive site from earlier in the course? Any data that you post or upload to the Web might be retained - and widely viewable - long after you have forgotten about it.You might also want to consider whether you really want your home address, email or telephone number available to others through this type of service.

Typically, most social networking sites enable you to control who has access to what information. It is good practice to make yourself aware of these tools and to tailor the access to your profile accordingly. (Curtin. 2010)

Activity - Readings

The following readings are concerned with the ways in which people present themselves online and their motivations for doing so. Depending upon your interest, pick one of these:

DiMicco, J.M. and Millen, D.R., Identity Management: Multiple Presentations of Self in Facebook. In Proc ACM Group Conference (2007).
Available: http://www.joandimicco.com/pubs/dimicco-millen-group07.pdf

ABSTRACT"As the use of social networking websites becomes increasingly common, the types of social relationships managed on these sites are becoming more numerous and diverse. This research seeks to gain an understanding of the issues related to managing different social networks through one system, in particular looking at how users of these systems present themselves when they are using one site to keep in contact with both their past social groups from school and their current social connections in the workplace. To do this, we examined online profile pages and interviewed employees at a large software development company who frequently use the website Facebook, a site primarily used by college students and young graduates transitioning into the workforce. The outcome of this initial case study is a framework for understanding how users manage self-presentation while maintaining social relationships in heterogeneous networks." (DiMicco and Millen, 2007)


Qian, H., & Scott, C. R. (2007). Anonymity and self-disclosure on weblogs. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), article 14.
Available: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/qian.html

ABSTRACT"Bloggers are typically cautious about engaging in self-disclosure because of concerns that what they post may have negative consequences. This article examines the relationship between anonymity (both visual and discursive) and self-disclosure on weblogs through an online survey. The results suggest that increased visual anonymity is not associated with greater self-disclosure, and the findings about the role of discursive anonymity are mixed. Bloggers whose target audience does not include people they know offline report a higher degree of anonymity than those whose audience does. Future studies need to explore the reasons why bloggers visually and discursively identify themselves in particular ways." (Qian and Scott, 2007)


Döring, N. (2002). Personal home pages on the Web: A review of research. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 7.
Available: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol7/issue3/doering.html

ABSTRACT
"Personal or private home pages are Web sites published and maintained by individuals or informal, small groups. The paper presents the personal home page as a new object of sociological, psychological, linguistic, and communication studies research. It shows how theories of identity, self-presentation and computer-mediated communication are being applied to personal home pages. The paper is the first systematic review of about thirty personal home page studies. In order to integrate the diverse empirical findings a communication studies framework is used: Personal home pages are regarded as media products with specific production processes, product characteristics, and reception processes. The paper ends by suggesting some possible directions for future research."(Döring, 2002)

Discussion board:

Once you’ve read one (or more) of these articles, post your reactions to the discussion boards. As part of that discussion, consider how much time you put into thinking about your own identity online – is this something you’ve considered before? In what settings have you considered your identity online (for example, have you considered what happens if a link to your Facebook profile turns up in Google or Bing)?

 

Laura:  Before I commenced this course, I had not put a great deal of thought or consideration into what my identity on line was really all about."... Personal home page construction promotes the systematic answering of the identity-critical "Who am I?..."(Döring, 2010)

I have not actually put anything of great detrimental significance on the internet as I have a large number of family members connected to my Facebook account which means they have access to nearly everything that is on there. I probably subconsciously considered their reactions before putting anything reactionary on the Internet.

 “... have you considered what happens if a link to your Facebook profile turns up in Google or Bing ? ...” (Curtin, 2010) I have just done a Google search for myself and found my MySpace page  (I have not used that site for well over a year, along with my old Plaxo site). The bing search was even more worrisome as not only were my MySpace and Plaxo sites listed but also my LinkedIn, Facebook and found myself on a suspect site called 123 people.com   that not only listed phone numbers but also residential addresses. Identity on the internet means that nowadays there is hardly such thing as anonymity unless you take yourself right off the grid (so to speak).