Web serfers to become Mars explorers !

May be this will be the newest use of social networking.

NASA and Microsoft jointly set up the web site for people to help explore, view & classify the vast amount of information that are being collected from Mars.

I haven’t had a chance to look at this in detail myself, but thought this might be of interest.

Web site beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov

News article http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,26367252-1702,00.html?from=public_rss

Assignment 2

CIO Recommendations

Project

Social Networks in Providing Professional Development Experiences for Staff

Client

Multinational Company

Stakeholders

CIO - Project sponsor

IT manager - Implement project

Staff - Participants

Margaret, Jennifer & Sanjeewa - Research

Social Networks

SecondLife, Skype, Facebook, Twitter

See the complete list of CIO recommendations by Indigo group

Table 1 - Issues involved using social networks

Second life

Strengths 3D environment Separate space as meeting rooms People can be reflected as animated and customizable avatars Behavior can be reflected Real time interaction Groups can be set up

Weaknesses Require more technical understanding to use Specific requirement of client software and preferable to have newer hardware to achieve maximum user experience Security Privacy Separating private and official content is difficult

Face book

Strengths Very easy to use Groups can be set up

Weaknesses Separating private and official content is difficult Security Privacy

Twitter

Strengths Text based user interface Interaction with mobile phone Easy to use RSS updates provided

Weaknesses User interaction can be seen only via exchanged messages Third party applications or software required to exchange files Security Privacy Separating private and official content is difficult

See the social network issues group discussion

Table 2 – Web 2.0 tools complementing the networks

Second Life

Strengths Stream video Podcasts Chat Interaction with other social networks

Face book

Strengths Blogs Wikis Chat Video Interaction with other social networks

Weaknesses System response may affect as number of users increases

Twitter

Strengths Post from mobile phone or other web tools provided

Weaknesses Multimedia content use is not directly available Chat facility unavailable

See the web 2.0 tools group discussion

Table 3 – Develop and sustain work related social network

Plan

Define clear purpose for the site Identify different user experience levels to determine if training required

Cost

Above social networks are free to use

Implement

Company policy should include what is expected from staff in terms of using social networks

Sustain

Provide opportunities to staff to use social networking Define clear goals to achieve Organize corporate events for staff to meet in person

See the sustaining a social network group discussion

Topic 8 - Applications, tools & services

30 minutes walk ..?

After a very late breakfast on Sunday I started to work on the subject exercise tasks for topics 7 and 8. I had almost completed topic 7 when my wife sat down to have her lunch switching on a movie called “Outsourced”.

An American company outsources their call centre to India and sends the call centre manager, Todd to India to train the new call centre manager, Puro. The cross cultural differences Todd experiences and the Indian staff at the office experiences are shown really well. Despite the cultural differences, Asha, a strong opinionated Indian girl and Todd find them selves’ getting closer, into a relationship. I think it presented topics such as globalization, cultural aspects, human factors within each of us regardless of culture in easy, light and funny way.

I know this task meant to give much needed physical exercise as well as relaxation to the mind by taking a 30 minute walk. However after moving the lawn the day before, I think I have a good reason to sitback and watch a movie without feeling guilty.

The avalanche of applications self interview

Q1. Is there a value in using blogs, wikis and social networks in online education?

I think this provides a very good experience in distance or online education environments. It creates a sense of students belonging to a classroom. We can get to know about other students by reading their profile, see them if there is a picture on their blog or social network site. This provide an opportunity to see each others work. Creates an opportunity to share and learn from each other. At the same time because there is a wide range of different applications available we can choose a tool which we are familiar with or easy to learn.

Q2. Does social networks really help boost business?

A quick browse on the web of many major businesses's web sites shows majority of them if not all has a link to at least one of these networks facebook, twitter, secondlife, linked-in or del.icio.us. Coca cola is currently auditioning in facebook for their next TV commercial. And very hot out of the press is about a movie called "paranormal activity" that was produced with a budget as low as $16,000.00 which has gained more than 1 million hits and positive reviews after advertising on the Internet. This has definitely generated the box office reputation

Data portability, FOAF and the Semantic

1. Watched the video, directly from YouTube as I could not get the sound working from the link.
   
2. Data portability is promising new possibilities. A new way of organizing, facilitating search of data on the web. On the FOAF web site it describes few example usages such as, being able to search for “web page recommendations made by people who work for medical organizations”,
   or search for “recent publications by people I’ve co-authored documents with”.
   
   The concept is to make it possible for machines to identify the content of the documents.
   
   On the other side I think this will make it more difficult to maintain official online presence and personal online presence. Further if I do not want my information to be published in a way that can be searched do I have this control?
   Edd Dumbill’s writing XML Watch: Finding friends with XML & RDF is really good in describing few of the issues this kind of sharing will cause.
   One of the other concerns is regardless of the technology accuracy of the content will rest much on the practices of people. For example people using search engine optimization techniques to get high ranking for their pages, though the content is not that quality.
   
3. FOAF has two main features, the ability to be linked together to form a web of data with well defined semantics and being a RDF application it facilitates easily harvesting and aggregation.
   
   FOAF vocabulary defines it’s schema and specification.
   
   An example from http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/
   a very basic document describing a person:
   <foaf:Person rdf:about="#me" xmlns:foaf=http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
   <foaf:name>Dan Brickley</foaf:name>
   <foaf:mbox_sha1sum>241021fb0e6289f92815fc210f9e9137262c252e</foaf:mbox_sha1sum> <foaf:homepage rdf:resource="http://danbri.org/" />
   <foaf:img rdf:resource="/images/me.jpg" />
   </foaf:Person>
   
   
   This enables the writing or creation of FOAF tags.
   
   These tags should be placed in a RDF document. Using Resource Description Framework (RDF) FOAF gains extensibility that allows mixing of specific description vocabularies such as geographical or mapping data.
   
   Once the RDF file is created it can be published on the web.
   
   There are 3 methods listed in An introduction to FOAF for publishing FOAF data.
   
   • Through foaf:knows tag
   • Through foaf bulletin board
   • Through auto-discovery
   
   The most efficient way would be to use the auto-discovery method.
   It allows the FOAF document to be linked to a html page using a link tag.
   
   <link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="FOAF" href="foaf.rdf" />
   
   This is similar to RSS readers automatically locating the RSS file when pointed to a page with RSS feed.
   

Aggregation, syndication and the social engine

What is RSS

Really Simple Syndication is a web content syndication format and all RSS files must conform to XML 1.0 specification. This makes RSS a XML based specification. The root element of the document should be <RSS> and there should be <channel> element. There are two required elements in the channel element as <title> and <link> RSS 2.0 specification at W3C

Aggregation

RSS aggregation refers to using a program to gather and sort RSS feeds. This method provides users quick way of finding out site update rather than manually checking for site updates.

Syndication

Web syndication refers to the content being made available to multiple other sites. This is typically done in the form of summary of updates to the site.

How to subscribe to a RSS feed

A feed reader program is required to be installed in your computer. W3schools lists the below feed readers,

• RssReader
• FeedDemon
• Blogbot

Once you have the feed reader, click on the rss button displayed on the feed reader or click on the rss button displayed on the web site which you want to subscribe.

Digg

Is the term assigned to people voting for a submitted story. The more digs a story attracts it is shown on the main page of digg.com.

Swam

This is a graphical representation of user activity as stories are dugg in real time. The more people are digging a story it is shown in a brightly coloured circle.

Stack

This is a graphical representation of user activity in real time, up to a 100 stories at once are shown. Brightly coloured stories have more digs.

Social bookmarking

A system that allows users to share web content, resources by creating a link to that particular content or resource and then sharing the link. These links can be created with additional metadata that would describe what the link is about, rank or vote about the quality of the content. Anytime anywhere sharing is made possible. At the same time an update made by one person can be seen by the whole group easily.

Tag

In web publishing tag refers to marking up the web page using html tags. These tags describe what the document structure is. There could be a header tag <h>, a paragraph element <p> and so on. In social bookmarking context tag refers to associating a category to the particular bookmark or link. If the resource is about cars, some of the possible tags that may be used are, cars, drive, automotive & or the particular brand names.

Elgg

It is a open source, social networking engine. You can use elgg to run, intranets, educational or your own social networking site. System requirements to run elgg are Apache web server, MYSQL database, PHP scripting language. It provides an array of functionality and scalability to increase from the default functionality. User, object, file and site management Social graph to show relationships between users, objects and other sites Access control RSS, FOAF, XFN for content syndication Blogs, File repository, Message board, Private messaging, Pages and activity See the list of features at Elgg.

Topic 7 - Devices for display and interaction

Touch screen mobile devices

Origin of touch screens

One of the early touch screens which was used as part of an educational project was in 1972 for a project called PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations). Worlds earliest commercial touch screen was HP-150 which was used in 1983.

What is a touch screen?

Touch screen is a display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. Although touch screens generally refer to touch by hand or finger, there are other types which detect the presence of a stylus.

Primary purpose

They enable the user to interact with what’s displayed on the screen directly and mostly without the use of any additional equipment such as a mouse.

Technologies used

Resistive touch screen technology recognizes the touch by a change in electrical current caused by the pressure applied to the screen. Capacitive touch screen technology responds to finger touch only and they use a charge storing material surface and circuits located at the corners of the screen measures the capacitance of a person touching the overlay. SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave) technology uses acoustic waves and sends them across a clear glass panel with a series of transducers and reflectors. When a finger touches the screen the waves are absorbed causing a touch event to be registered from that point. Infrared technology uses a controller to pulse a grid of infrared light beams over the screen and a touch obstructs the beams which help to identify the X and Y coordinates.

Advances on this technology

Apple iPod touch has taken the technology further by an enhanced user interface that not only detects the location of one point it detects the presence of more than one finger and the direction you move them. The software used to classify your touch is called as gesture software.

Popular examples of touch screen mobile devices

Mobile phones, game consoles, automotive GPS use the advantage of touch screen to enhance the usability and practicality of such devices.

Situations where the device improves the display or interaction over any alternative device

I think GPS is an ideal example where the device improves the interaction over any alternative.

Aged care & technology innovation

mHealth is beginning to extend eHealth and has the potential to be practical and bring technology and people(patients and carers) closer together. Mobile phone will be a prominent device with mHealth solutions.

Safe2Walk was launched in September 27 by Alzheimer’s Australia. The solution combines GPS and mobile phone technology. Patients can wear the device and it updates the location every 60 seconds to a web site. Carers can log into a secure web site to find out the patients location. In emergency situations the wearer can press a button which can store up to 3 pre programmed emergency phone numbers. The system will automatically divert the call to 2nd and 3rd numbers if the primary number is busy.
Popular science 2009 describes below solutions which utilise mobile phones.
Nokia N79 phone which interacts via Bluetooth with a heart monitor and records heart rate along with other information such as route, altitude, speed and distance. The software can chart the user’s progress and allow the user to compare it with another chart on the Nokia’s sports tracker web site.
Soon there will be mobile devices on the market that connect with blood-pressure cuffs and diabetics’ glucose meters. They will be able to send statistics directly to your doctor and alerts will remind you to check your statistics and what your target numbers are.
Mobile devices for 2012 and beyond will check vital statistics automatically which will receive signals from implantable sensors. This information will be relayed to the doctor who can send back instructions for the implants. The phone could then signal the sensor to take extra measurements or eventually to release a dose of insulin or painkiller.
GlowCaps is a smart-lid that fits the standard pill containers. It uses wireless technology to monitor when the pill box is opened and when it isn’t. If at the prescribed times the pill box isn’t opened it will alert via few different methods. First it will set on an alert light indicator fixed in the house, if the container is still not opened it will send a message to the service provider by connecting via wireless signals and the service provider can then place an automated call or SMS back to the user.
Scan avert is another new wireless health application that will help users avoid eating something that they are allergic to or that might interfere with a medicine they are prescribed. Users need to register with the scan avert service first and identify allergies, dietary preferences, illnesses and conditions, prescriptions and other criteria. Once registered they can use their mobile phone camera to scan a product before they purchase at the grocery and scan avert will compare nutritional information and alert the user if it might cause problems to the user.

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.

Topic 2 - Virtual environments & cognition

Exercise 2.1 Virtual environments and your cognition

Ethics on Facebook

Examining the privacy policy of the site gives clear information how they would use our personal information and how to utilise the privacy settings provided by the site to secure our information. The age of a member is used to filter content appropriate for a member and also the site provides clear notice it does not knowingly allow anyone under the age of 13 years to register. This has been implemented by prompting the user to enter the date of birth at registration time, though the site cannot actually verify users input.

Further it acknowledges tracking site users by IP address and also how certain data mining practices are used. Providing content that may be most suitable for the member is stated in favour of this practice. The site assures they do not identify any individual in providing these services. However there will always be instances where individuals would feel their privacy being lost, compromised or invaded due to the modern technology and ethics being questioned.
Read the latest case to appear against facebook.

I think it is difficult to say you are happy with the ethics of any technology, because technology evolves and new possibilities emerge and information you provide today can be and will be used and shared in new ways tomorrow. Take a look at current face book
privacy policy for complete information.

Social cognition & visual cognition

Cognition is the scientific term for the process of thought. Social congnition is an approach to understand social phsycology. This approach tries to analyse the underlying cognitive processes to understand social phsycology. Main process areas of analysis are perception, judgement and memory of social stimuli, information processing and behavioral and interpsonal consequences of cognitive processes. See definition of
social cognition at International Social Cognition Network.Visual cognition is the process of interpreting and understanding visual information.

Exercise 2.2 Virtual worlds and "citizenship"

What is Virtual

Three definitions are proposed by H. Tavani in his book, Ethics and technology as
a) As opposed to or contrasted with "real" - virtual object
b) As opposed to or contrasted with "actual" - virtually finished the task
b) Express as a feeling - When conversing electronically or on a telephone with someone who's physically many miles away but feeling virtually there.

Join second life

Download of the client was quite quick, created a profile and chose a community called Bigpond to arrive at Second life. The look and feel, graphics, controls provided and the simultaneous tasks happening were quite good. There were times when you press the arrow keys to move the avatar and there is a few second lapse but compared to some of the web sites with much less interaction than second life I think response was really good.

I spent nearly about two hours exploring the environment of Bigpond.

Point mouse on the avatar and right mouse click to access avatar properties, you can change hair color, body shape, height, eyes and even add tatoos!

Online help guide was quite good - I received an invitation to join a group and accepted it, but then didn't know how to "get out of the group". Consulted the help and there is a function called "leave."

Next I tried the Serach for places function, use the pull down box to see available categories. You can selecte a place from the list, click on teleport to arrive at the selected place.

Apart from the attractive nature of the characters and the surroundings I had a sense of “cannot trust any character” throughout the time I spent there. Who is really behind the character or avatar appearing there? I entered a real estate agency which I cannot remember the name. I was greeted by possibly the receptionist there. She showed me properties available for rent for 8000 L(Linden dollars) with two weeks upfront payment required. During this encounter I learnt something new. She said I see you arrived here yesterday? I figured out that we can right click on the other character, and see their profile data or may be the shared content at least. I left the real estate office, but wonder who would have been really behind the character? But then again the whole experience of a virtual environment is whether to be your real self or to explore your imagination and new possibilities?

Interface and bandwith

Interface is quite easy to follow, cannot complain about the bandwith requirements. Help provided was easy to read and find the information. Functions are provided in a variety of formats such as menu, short cut & context sensitive.

Exercise 2.3 Create and record your online persona

Avatars on the virtual world can be represented by a picture, graphic or a 3D character. Second life offers variety of customization as hair color, body shape, height and even eyes and tatoos.
I would definitely use a persistent avatar across all sites.

Exercise 2.4 Online Identity and your state of presence

With every web site requiring a user id and password to register with them users are faced with a burden of keeping track of their user id/password information. Some websites have adopted the email id as a means of creating user ids.

With the current situation the idea of a one id across the online environment seems to be a required solution to the problem. However in the real world the person and id is both present when required for verification, but in the online world this would
not be able to be achieved.

Phishing

Use email, web sites, games or instant messaging to trick people into disclosing sensitive information by pretending the communication was from a legitimate user or organization.

Pharming

Hijacking a web site URL and redirecting the user to a non legitimate web site trying to collect unauthorized information

Privacy invasion

Access or collecting information about someone without their consent

Identity theft

Pretending to be someone else by using the user id and password or name and address or other verification related information about a person without their knowledge and to gain access or execute an unauthorized task

Topic 1 - Social networking, workgroups and workflow

Exercise 1 - Social networks

Since the introduction of computers many things humans did in the “real world” have been introduced into the computer processing form as "online world". For example people used to go to the bank to do banking but now they conduct banking online
– by logging in into the bank website. Similarly interaction among people in the real world has been transformed in to computer use in the form of social network sites or social networking sites.

The main characteristics identified are the ability to maintain a profile about who you are, include a picture, set up the people whom you want to be connected with , allow others to post comments on your site enabling an interactive experience & categorise information that you post in your site.

New emerging technologies such as ability to interact with mobile devices, posting information in a variety of formats, chat functionality to communicate with your network of contacts are also being introduced in to new sites.

A social network has been defined as a web based service that allows individuals to create a profile, maintain a list of users with whom they share a connection, view and traverse the list of connections and those made by others according to article
social network sites: definition, history and scholarship by Boyd M. and Ellison B. Further according to this article the unique feature of a social network isn’t to allow individuals to meet strangers, but to enable users to articulate and make their social network visible.

Online communities

Online communities are about a group of people who share a common interest and want to exchange information & resources on their desired topic.

In his book Viirtual Community Howard Rhiengold mentions while he wanders through information space if he finds information that does not interest him but he knows of a friend from the world wide affinity group of online friends that will find the information useful, he would send them a pointer or simply forward the entire text. And others have been doing the same help for him. This would be an important aspect for online communities to exist and sustain and Rhiengold identifies this as an informal unwritten social contract.

Exercise 2 - Would you change your profession

I think a study into social networks and online communities would not change my professional practice. But definitely this study already has influenced a better perception about social networks and ways these could be used to achieve positive results.

Reference URL
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html

http://rheingold.com/vc/book/2.html

What is a folksonomy?

Due to the increase in social network sites and their applications a new form of categorising or bookmaking and annotation of photographs became popular. This facility is also known as social classification, social indexing and social tagging.
This was required because the site users were the content creators as well as opposed to earlier systems where site creators were the creators of content.

The result of this new tagging process is Folksonomy.
according to an article on internal corporate blogs

Another interesting thought on Folksonomy is found at Folksonomy as Symbol which shows how embracing Folksonomy changes the way essentialism, Western tradition began with. As an example using a hammer as a doorstop is an oddball use of a hammer according to essentialism. However this inhibits thought, reflects cultural hegemony, it is unenforcable and alienates meaning. Folksonomy returns meaning to us.

Refernce URL
http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/_file_directory_/papers/341.pdf
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/3281javascript:void(0)

Exercise 3 - Heuristic evaluation results

Subject: Commonwealth bank: Nielsen's Heuristic Evaluation
Sender: sanjeewa_f@hotmail.com
From: sanjeewa_f@hotmail.com (NHE)

system=Commonwealth bank
date=2009-08-11 07:47:47
comment=
q1=7
q2=7
q3=7
q4=7
c4=Very consistent look and feel
q5=7
q6=7
q7=5
q8=7
c8=Identifies requied fields, error messages clearly indicate
the field they refer to
q9=7
c9=Provide available or applicable values for most selection
q10=5
c10=Good detail of help documentation available. But this is
displayed in a different browser window and can be obstructed
by the current browser giving user the impression nothing
happened.

This test was done using
Nielsen's Heuristic evaluation form

OLR - Online learning record

This blog is my Online Learning Record for subject ITC213 - Computer Supported Collaborative Work.

I plan to organize the blog into below structure initially.

• Introduction
• OLR Exercises
• POD work
• Evaluation Report
• Commentary
• Scrapbook
• Practice Exam

As the subject progress adoptions will be made as required.

Introduction

I am studying online systems major for my BinfoTech course. Looking forward to completing all my core subjects this year and for the course completion next year. It's been a hard working few years, but time spent wisely, I think.

I work as an Analyst Programmer for an automotive company in Sydney. My work involves development & user support for the company business applications running on AS/400 computer systems.

Spending time with my 10 year old daughter and my wife is the escape plan to work and study. Although occasionally it works in the opposite direction too.