Topic 5 - Online community building and social architects

The many faces of you

Educational

1. CSU ebox
2. CSU interact

Official

1. Company email
2. Company network and intranet
3. Leave and payroll system
4. Banking
5. Utility billing - Credit card, E-toll,Mobile phone

Personal

1. Email - hotmail & gmail
2. Social networking - Facebook, Secondlife

I think I have maintained a consistent online identity across different communities. Whenever I have the control in deciding and creating my identity I have followed a consistent profile. However based on the purpose of the particular community the topics discussed the nature of communication and the purpose for using and interacting with the online community would be different.

My persistent identity would always have my real name associated with the online identity and a picture of my self if allowed on the site. Personal related online identity would be friendly & easy going. Official identity would be clear & to the point (at least I try to be)

Topic 4 - Human centered computing: Human interfaces

Blog design

1) Design and manage
A blog with a clear heading provides at a quick glance what the blog is about and its purpose. The main content area that display the posts should be easy to read and should be created with easy to read sub headings and paragraphs. It is also better to keep the page scroll amount to a minimal. Archive feature provided by the blog software should be utilised as this would help readers find content organized by the date or month. Another feature of blogs is the labels or categories and each post created under the relevant label/category would help the readers locate your posts easily. Making use of the comments facility is another ideal way to keep the readers engaged with your blog and helps promote a two way interaction between your self and the readers. I would definitely be using the above features in my blog design.


2) Supportive tools provided by blogger that I have used
A blog title is provided which can be used to give a clear indication of the purpose of the blog.
Ability to engage the community by including a comments feature. I have added a list of blogs that I like to follow during the subject and the blogger software automatically notify me when the latest update has been done to each of those blogs.
Ability to set up a comprehensive profile of the author is provided. However due to concerns of privacy many may choose not to share the profile or define basic details only.
If you choose you can also set up a blog page which will give an introduction about your self.
Articles can be organized into categories or labels. This can be done as the work progress allowing for flexibility and growth.

Hosting good conversations: House Rules!

a) Three ways of providing more control to users
The software or technology should be easy to use and learn.
It should suit the purpose of the community for example if the community is about sharing pictures it should provide facilities that help to share pictures.
There should be ways to perform special functions such as moderation and leadership.

b) The art of hosting good conversations three rules or tips that I find interesting are,
Make newcomers feel welcomed, contributors valued, recreational hasslers ignored.

All hosts are members of a community of hosts. You can't host communities without communities of hosts.

A place where everybody builds social capital individually by improving each other's knowledge capital collaboratively

c) Why rules of engagement are required in collaborative social software systems
Collaborative social software is intended to provide interaction among different users.The users will be from different age groups,different back grounds & and mostly from very different parts of the world.

Due to the nature of software, it provides functionality that can be easily done which is not the same in the real world such as spamming or filling the screen with unwanted text, teleporting a person or their objects without their persmission as described in the ISPG policy. Therefore if rules of engagement is not defined the experience of using collaborative social software would not be pleasent for everyone.

Assignment 1

Internet has become an essential component of the daily life of many individuals and almost all of the businesses operating today. There have been many significant events that helped Internet become what it is today. Technology advances beginning from circuit switching, packet switching to data transfer mediums & speeds. In order to integrate different hardware and software applications protocols and standards such as TCP/IP, SMTP & HTTP were developed. Research institutes, Government and military agencies have assisted with the required funding and people to help with these demanding requirements.

Since the beginning of World Wide Web there is a steady evolution of technologies, organizations & standards that are facilitating people to work collaboratively.

Ward Cunnigham, Adam Curry, Jenny Preece and David Winer are few of the people who have made valuable contributions to the growth of the technology and the cause for development of online communities.

Wiki

Ward Cunningham has been a computer programmer, and a pioneer in wiki development, design patterns and extreme programming. He developed and installed the WikiWikiWeb software in 1994 in his c2.com web server (Wikipedia, 2009a).

While he was working on projects he realized the need for a method of updating project status and performing documentation by the entire team. In his interview with Venners (2003) he describes other important criteria of providing the facility to effectively capture the nature of communicating via talking and enable the reader to discover the structure of what the author had to say.

Reviewing the current notable list of wikis (Wikipedia, 2009b) available and the applications they are being used for it can be said the work done by Ward Cunningham and his ideas has been successfully applied for daily applications.

Really Simple Syndication

Dave Winer a software developer, entrepreneur and writer is the creator of RSS 2.0 implementation. He has successfully created and managed to establish RSS 2.0 implementation among other competitors such as Netscape’s RSS implementation. (Wikipedia, 2009c)

His involvement with software development, online publishing and XML syndication contributed significantly for news agencies to make the decision to use RSS 2.0 to syndicate their news articles. (Wikipedia, 2009c)
Nomination by InfoWorld as one of top ten technology innovators in 2002 recognizes his valuable and successful contributions to the community.

Podcasting

Adam Curry was a well known video jockey on the music TV channel MTV during 1987 to 1994. And he is noted as one of the first celebrities to have been known as a world wide web entrepreneur to create and administer a web site in the 1990s.(Wikipedia, 2009d)

In 2005 he founded PodShow Inc. a podcast promotions and advertising company. He is also the producer and presenter of a podcast named Daily Source Code. He has even promoted the podcast in Second Life.

Unlike Ward Cunnigham and Dave Winer contributing via inventing new technology Adam Curry has utilized emerging technology to successfully reach new audiences and also to generate publicity for emerging technologies.

Sustainable online communities

Jenny Preece has been involved with various studies and research about Human Computer Interaction for many years. She has also authored, co-authored or editor of seven books on the subject of Human Computer Interaction (University of Maryland Baltimore County, 2009). What makes online communities successful is her research focus and the studies have provided insights into how sociability and usability are connected.

Usability of many of the major social sites would definitely be a key factor for their popularity and hence the growth and sustainability.

Reference List

University of Maryland Baltimore County, 2009,

Jennifer J. Preece, Retrieved September 7,2009,

From http://www.ifsm.umbc.edu/~preece/

Venners B, 2003, Exploring with Wiki, A conversation

with Ward Cunningham, Retrieved September 7, 2009,

From http://www.artima.com/intv/wiki.html

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc., (2009a),

Ward Cunningham, Retrieved September 07, 2009,

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc., (2009b), List of wikis,

Retrieved September 09, 2009,

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wikis

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc., (2009c), Dave Winer,

Retrieved September 07, 2009,

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Winer

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc., (2009d), Adam Curry,

Retrieved September 07, 2009,

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_curry

Topic 3 - Augmented reality, gaming and mobile computing

Mobile computing research

Mobile gaming categories, examples and recent statistics

Action and adventure, Sports, Racing, Music, Strategy and Simulation, Brain training, Boards and cards, Arcade, Puzzle and Sexy are the list of categories provided on Gameloft website who is the winner of 2009 Global mobile awards 2009 in best mobile game category.

A highly commended game in the best game category is AvaPeeps and the game is categorised as social entertainment.

There is a wide range of game categories available in the market. As popularity grows these categories would even expand further.

A recent article on Businessweek lists there are more than 1500 games on Apples iTunes App Store compared to 300 titles for Sony PSP and about 600 titles for Nintendo DS.

In terms of sales units Nintendo has sold 42 million DS consoles from January 2007 to June 2008 and Apple is predicted to sell 40 million units easily according to the same article Apple: Soon to be a mobile gaming force

Interms of using mobile games and the benefit to education seems to be quite possitive. Particularly incorporating video, sound, sms & being able to access the content at students own time seems to be proving more apealing than the traditional education delivery modes and classroom environments. Being able to select a difficulty level of the game by the player/student also provides a challenge to the students and seems to have an encouraging effect for students to improve and pursue more difficult problems.

A report produced by Birmingham university Literature Review in Mobile Technologies and Learning describes the findings of many case studies done categorised into different activities involved with mobile technologies.

The report describes a mathematics video game called Skills Arena which is implemented using a Nintendo Gameboy Advance system which provides addition and subtraction problems as a game. The game also has a difficulty level which can be selected by the student and the study found an average 1,296 problems completed by each student during the test period which was three times higher than using the traditional work sheets.