Keith's NET11 - Student Log

Internet Concepts

2009-02-03T08:34:00.063+11:00

Author: Keith Farrelly

Student Number: 245673

Affiliation: Curtin University, NET11 Internet Communications, SP4 2008.

Abstract

The articles below are my reflections about four concepts from the Curtin University module NET11 Internet Communications. The concepts are written in a style that I am comfortable with, it may not suit everybody. I tried to let the topics flow straight from my ideas, rather than quote a lot of other academic type papers I wanted to bring some new thoughts to the subjects, I hope I achieved that.

The Netiquette concept analyses a personal incident. In Information and Attention the concept of the human ego is discussed. The concept Human Computer Interfaces, discusses how good and bad design has a large part to play. Lastly in the Automation concept I talk about the good and bad parts of this very progressive technology.

Abstract

Contents

Concept 7: Netiquette

Site 1: emailreplies.com

Site 2: relevant forum discussion

Concept 10: Automation

Site 1: Rise of the machines, end of the humans?

Site 2: Singularity University

Concept 33: Information and Attention

Site 2: Eckhart Tolle Video

Concept 23: Human-Computer Interfaces

Designing Speech Interaction

Designing Internet Interaction

Addiction

Conclusion

Annotations

Site 1: Internet Addiction Test

Site 2: silicon.com

Bibliography

Concept 7: Netiquette

Quote

“An overwhelming and many-faceted aspect of using email and similar asynchronous communication systems over the Internet is 'Netiquette'. Netiquette describes 'good' and 'bad' conduct in online communication (amongst other forms of Internet use). But what is important about Netiquette is the concept that there are these 'agreed' rules of what is good and bad.”

Response

I had an incident today that I believe shows an important aspect of the Netiquette protocols, some background first.
When on vacation last year we met a great family who we spent a lot of time with, we went surfing (well I tried to anyway), drank lots of wine, and all got on famously. So about six months later we were still keeping in touch and arranging other meetings etc. Then today out of the blue, my wife was forwarded an email from one of the parents in this family. This email was quite disturbing and flew in the face of all our principles. So I took it in my stride to send an email directly back to this person to tell them about how disgusted I was with this email and how we simply could not be friends with them anymore. I won’t go into detail about the email content too much, suffice to say the subject was politics, race and religion, very tricky subjects.

Retrospect

In retrospect I think I could have handled this situation better. My emotions and ego took over and virtually responded to the email without me really knowing. I am sure we have all been there. About 10 minutes later you think “maybe I shouldn’t have said it quite like that”. I believe that by sending the email you release some tension, then the red mist lifts and then the ‘real’ you peers through the fog, to find the damage is done.

So what happens in these situations?
1. The email arrives, you read it, you don’t agree, this is your ego (see Lost In Ego).
2. Then you rant to somebody close to you and they bolster your views.
3. With bolstered ego you write a response.
4. You deliberate a little and have an inkling that you may want to think about this (this is the crucial moment where you need to take control), you have two choices here:
5a. You send it
5b. You don’t send it

Solution

So how can we stop this from happening over and over again?
Quite often the step 5a is executed instead of 5b, this is because the ego and your emotions are very strong, only when you learn to recognise your emotions getting out of control can you begin to halt them in their tracks and regain control of your actions. You can even feel your emotions as a physical response, heartbeat rises, sweat increases, stomach rumbles, etc. I thought I was getting good at recognising this, but obviously some things still push my buttons.
Often you hear the old saying “wait until the next day, sleep on it” before sending a response to an email that your upset about.

Conclusion

I think I can safely say that the way I behaved was bad Netiquette and I feel that I am discovering why these situations arise. Now the hard part, how to eliminate this kind of thing from your communication methods (putting this into practice in your every-day life).

Annotations

Site 1: emailreplies.com

This website gives some good advice on email etiquette; it gives a list of 32 tips and discusses why these are essential to follow. Number 28 on this list is especially relevant for the situation I got into. After thinking about this situation a bit more, I can conclude that I broke the rules, so did the person who sent the original email and so did my wife for forwarding the email onto me. It’s almost like a chain reaction that can only cease when the email isn’t sent to anybody else. Even then, the damage is already done.

Site 2: relevant forum discussion

This is a very interesting discussion that was initiated by somebody who sent an email with a comment of their own, but that email was then sent to other people who got very offended and threatened the person who forwarded on the email. One of the comments mentions that the person should have ‘slept on it’, similar to one of my points. I think that by sleeping on it, you allow your unconscious mind to at least have some bearing on the decision you make, your ego isn’t as strong when you are asleep, or early in the morning when you rise. This helps you to see through the red mist and come to a more rational decision.

Concept 10: Automation

Quote

“Effective email use depends on automation or, more precisely, on the ability of effective users to make decisions and then implement them as to how automation of information processing can assist users to make more efficient use of their valuable time. Automation is critical to processes such as filtering and requires that humans try to anticipate the future and then give precise instructions to their email programs to deal with those future contingencies. Searching for information can involve significant degrees of automation or, at least, surrendering control to seemingly ‘intelligent’ agents. The advantages are, of course, in time saved; and the obvious risk is that you will not get exactly what you want because the agent is less capable than it appears to be or cannot cope with the peculiarities of your specific request. A greater risk, however, is that, using various automated processes can make one question the reliability of the results you receive…by surrendering control over information finding to others we are either lulled into false security or constantly nagged by doubts that the process is time-efficient but quality-inefficient.”

Response

In traditional computer terms, the word automate means the replacement of manual operations by computerized methods. In the context of this concept, it means the automation of tasks that we do on the Internet. Of course some tasks can not be automated, like reading your emails, because that’s personal, but other tasks are ideal candidates for automation. Automation is not a new phenomenon, in fact it’s something that we humans seem to strive for in so many aspects of our life; driving, working, walking and even medical procedures are now being pushed towards more automation, but at what cost?

Reliant

So as we automate more and more aspects of our daily lives, we become less and less skilled at these tasks. As we rely on automation to do these tasks for us, we trust them to complete the tasks as good if not better than we can. Is automation of everything going to mean our brains have less to do and we get less good at remembering stuff and problem solving? This is a hard question to answer, there are people who say the human race genetic development has reached a plateau and we are not going to get any smarter. This may be true, but it underestimates the human race a bit and these statements don’t take into consideration the advancement of other parts of the human race, for instance spiritual advancement.

Controlled

Automation is technically progress, but it is also quite dangerous if not monitored and controlled. For instance there has been an influx of so called intelligent search programs/websites that are supposed to get you the cheapest fight/hotels, etc. based on your search criteria and their ability to search a multitude of similar sites for the best deal. The idea is novel and the implementation of the technology is varied. Some websites do a great job (for example getprice.com.au). In practice these types of websites can be the first site that appears on Google searches. This can be dangerous because these sites are not always going to give you what you want, and sometimes can lead to websites that aren’t in fact the cheapest out there and you eventually pay more because you haven’t manually looked.

Conclusion

Are we getting closer to a period where humans are no longer needed? Can we automate ourselves out of existence? Are the science fiction films that predict the world after it has been taken over by computers realistic of what the future may hold? I don’t know, my feeling is that computers will always remain our friends and not develop into our enemies. This is a hot topic with lots of futurists and technologists at the moment. As far as automation on the Internet, it is good for certain things and bad for others. As we develop the Internet more, this will add to the collective overall intelligence of the Internet, the Internet will be the closest thing to real artificial intelligence that we have, maybe by then automation won’t even come into it because everything will be automatically automated.

Annotations

Site 1: Rise of the machines, end of the humans?

This is a very interesting newspaper article from a highly respected newspaper in Ireland. The title is little alarmist, but the content is very well written. The article discusses the future from the perspective of some of the brightest talents in technology and futurism today. It also makes reference to Hal and some of the other fears that I have identified about computers and their potential to destroy the human race. But the flip-side to that may be that unlike us, they may have more control over their emotions (if they bother having any) and possibly won’t destroy the planet like we have.

Site 2: Singularity University

This link goes to an overview video from the Singularity University that has been recently created by NASA and Google. The main goal of this University is to help to guide and shape the rapid development of the latest computer technology. In aim to get to a position where in about 35 years computers will pass a singularity event and develop into something completely new and advanced, something that us simple humans can’t even begin to comprehend at the moment. I would love to be part of this movement and believe that computers are more than just a little blinking box in the corner, as we grow as humans and develop our spiritual side more. We will also learn to use computers in a whole new cooperative way. Real space travel and Nanomachines that keep our bodies alive for hundreds of years could all be part of this.

Concept 33: Information and Attention

Quote

“One of the newest and most significant ways of thinking about the Internet is termed the ‘attention economy’. In this kind of economy, the most valuable commodity is people’s attention (which can be, for example, bought and sold in the advertising industry): successful websites and other Internet publications / communications are those which capture and hold the increasingly distracted attention of Internet users amidst a swirling mass of informational options.”

Response

Distraction

As I started to read the first chapter that described this concept, a thought sprung into my mind and I opened up another browser tab and continued to go to Google, for some reason I decided it was time to look up reviews of a new football game that I bought over Christmas, but why? I must have had an urge to do this, where did this urge come from?
It seems that my unconscious mind decided that this reading lark was all too serious and probably thought something like: “hey lets get some entertainment here, that’s nice and easy”. Often, too often my attention goes this way, and without my control it seems.

Marketing Talk

I am sure that most marketing people may think that they understand how to make a website grab our attention, but I think that’s more to do with their job retention than our attention. The human mind relies heavily on control, control of the owner of the mind, that’s you and me. It likes to keep you locked into recurring thoughts that repeat on a daily basis. Hey maybe that’s what the marketing guys understand!

Lost in Ego

Our minds all function similarly, because we all have an 'ego' and this ego controls most of our waking thoughts. The word ‘ego’ in this context describes those recurring though patterns that occupy our daily lives, akin to self-obsession, self-preservation, and fear (of the unknown, failure, future and past).
This is why sensationalism, fear campaigns, violence, drugs and sex is a big attention grabber. These things appeal to the ego and pain-body. My favourite Author Eckhart Tolle describes these problems of the mind as 'The Human Condition: lost in thought'. These groundbreaking ideas come from two incredible books called The Power Of Now and A New Earth.
The ego likes to label people and places or situations, because it is able to create a separation or duality this way. It's hard to believe that you would want to do this, but the ego can be understood as something separate to you, almost a living entity in itself, the trick is to not associate the real you to the ego, not an easy task in every day life.

Conclusion

I think that marketing and design companies understand certain aspects of how to get our attention, but I don’t think that they understand what is really going on in a persons mind when their attention is grabbed. On the subject of being lost in your ego, I am hopeful that in the future the human race will take a leap in consciousness where we end up more in control of our mind and thoughts. I’m still learning to do this, sometimes these days when I catch myself obsessing, I actually laugh or smile at how silly the thought was and it's a really good feeling to disconnect yourself from these thoughts and smile at your own madness, I still have a long way to go though.

Annotations

Site 1: Diggy

Here is a perfect example of an Internet marketing and design company that claims to know how to get you on the Internet, quickly and effectively. I put this example here to show how these types of companies can influence the naïve company that want’s a Website but doesn’t understand much about the Internet or what they really want to do. These companies have their place of course, because they give certain companies the opportunity to have and Internet presence.

Site 2: Eckhart Tolle Video

Not sure if it is appropriate to post a video in this section, but I think it is relevant to post this video in this instance. While this video touches lots of other aspects of the human mind, the common theme is the ego, which is a subject covered in this concept. Eckhart talks about how people live with fears of various things, mainly created from our past or projected into our future. There are lots of videos and text on the Internet now about Eckhart, a quick Google search on “Eckhart Tolle” shows 1.6 million hits.

Concept 23: Human-Computer Interfaces

Quote

“The Internet was originally designed to enable humans to instruct computers to act at a distance. The Internet still has this capacity; thus, we begin to see the emergence of a cultural sensibility in which the hard and fast distinctions between humans and computers as different kinds of ‘communicating devices’ breaks down. Telnet and similar functions on the Internet are different to programming and interacting with a computer on your desktop because you can’t physically see the computer at the other end of the connection.”

Response

Hal 9000

While thinking about this subject, Hal from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey came to mind. This film (written by Arthur C Clark) was a representation of human’s fear of computers being able to control their destiny. While this film shows a human fear of communicating with computers using human speech methods, the Internet poses some new fears, but these fears all come down to one thing: trust.

Trust

We are becoming sceptical of communicating with corporate websites, especially customer support websites, with lots of automated agents. Modern Internet users are flocking to community/friend based websites like linkedin or facebook, partly because this is a guaranteed human that you’re interacting with.
From my experiences with designing some of the first telephone based Natural Language Speech Recognition services. I can compare the scepticism and trust issues I seen with this technology to current Internet issues, however good design can help to build the users trust.

Designing Speech Interaction

Let’s explore the impact of the quality of the design, below is a comparison of good and badly designed speech systems.

Well designed speech application		Badly designed speech application
	1. Wow (the user is impressed)		1. Wow (the user is impressed)
	2. Slow Steps (user speaks slowly and clearly)		2. Confusion (user speaks slowly, starts to get confused)
	3. Confidence Increases (builds trust in application)		3. Frustration (application is not responding or understanding user)
	4. Power User (user speaks quickly and confidently)		4. Anger (user gives up using the application)

Designing Internet Interaction

Following a similar method above translated to a website.

Well designed Website		Badly designed Website
	1. Wow! (site promises to help the user)		1. Wow! (site promises to help the user)
	2. Tentative Use (user explores features)		2. Reluctant Use (user could have already been lost at this early stage)
	3. Confident Use (user becomes familiar with features and trust builds)		3. Frustrating Use (may continue to use, but get frustrated)
	4. Trust Use (user trust the website)		4. Angry Use (if user is still using the site, then its necessity rather than choice)
	5. Possible 5th step here is: Addiction

Addiction

I mentioned above in step 5 of a well designed Website, a possible stage where the user gets addicted to the Website. I have seen this with people I know, especially with the new community based sites like Facebook. The person gets addicted to seeing, commenting-on and posting photos all day. I think that this appeals to the voyeuristic element of our minds.

Conclusion

For the older generation, it feels more natural to speak than use computers, and vice-versa for the younger generation. This is why most companies understand that they need to offer a speech and Internet service that overlaps functionality. That's not to say that the older generation are better at using speech recognition systems, just that they may prefer this to a website, but would probably rather human interaction if given the choice.

Annotations

Site 1: Internet Addiction Test

In line with my comments about people getting addicted to sites like Facebook, there is a general Internet addiction condition that lots of people suffer from. This Internet site allows you to test yourself to see if you’re addicted to the Internet, it’s a strange concept to use the Internet to test if you’re addicted to the Internet. While I think that these tests are a good way to point if you may have a problem or not, they are not really accurate, but worthwhile doing anyway, just in case you do have some problems with Internet over-use, this site can at least help you to realise this.

Site 2: silicon.com

This link contains a very interesting article about trusting the Internet for transactions and other things. It is fairly negative, but it backs up this negativity with a great story of the inventors of the Unix operating system. It talks about how easy it would have been for them to include a check in the Unix login system to make it so that they could login to every Unix computer in the world. They talk about how they could have done this, but infecting the C compilers that compiled the Unix operating system code.

Bibliography

Tolle, E. The Flowering of Human Consciousness. (2008, Aug 30^th). Retrieved 2008, Dec 23^rd. From http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2546949894540352546

Iskold, A. The Attention Economy Overview. (2007, March 1^st). Retrieved: 2008, Dec 28^th. From http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/attention_economy_overview.php

Koo, L. Community Newsletter: Q&A Share with us some of your e-mailing etiquette. Retrieved: 2008, Dec 21^st. From http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10149_102-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=269313&messageID=2615173 (2007, December 25^th)

Hawley, John K. Automation Doesn't Automatically Solve Problems. (Quality Progress May 1996)

Howker, E. Rise of the machines, end of the humans? (2009, February 4^th). Retrieved: 2009, February 4^th. From http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/rise-of-the-machines-end-of-the-humans-1626990.html

Moffet Field, CA. Singularity University Overview Video, Retrieved January 25^th. From http://singularityu.org/overview

Leo. Living With Tolle #10: When the Pain Body Awakens. (2009, January 8^th) Retrieved: 2009, January 15^th From http://livingwithtolle.com/2009/01/08/living-with-tolle-10-the-pain-body

Real, J. Tolle on ego. (2004, January 26^th). Retrieved: 2009, January 14^th. http://realjoe.com/post/1115

Tolle, E. The Power of Now. New World Library; 1 edition (1999, September 27^th).

Tolle ,E. A New Earth. New World Library; 1 edition. (2008, January 30^th) .

Moderator, C. Way to go Eckart. Retrieved January 12^th. holisticlocal.com http://www.holisticlocal.com/forums/topics/view/615

Matula, Val. Natural language speech recognition: Expanding the dimensions of IVR. (2008, August). Retrieved: 2008 December 20^th. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3973/is_200008/ai_n8906903

Module 4

2008-12-20T10:45:00.016+11:00

Content

Content 1

Downloading tools / plug-ins Task. 1

Search Engine Task. 2

Google Results. 2

Copernic Results. 3

Analysis. 3

Boolean Search Task. 3

The biggest number of hits relating to these key words. 3

Information most relevant to what you ACTUALLY wanted to look for! 4

Information coming only from university sources. 4

Organising Search Information Task. 5

My Zotero library exported to Citeline. 5

Evaluating the Web. 5

A New Earth on Time with Mayan Calendar Prophecy link. 5

Automatically Created Zotero Bibliography. 7

Downloading tools / plug-ins Task

I have decided to download the Copernic application because it sounded interesting, I have heard of this type of application before but never tried one. I also downloaded Apple Quicktime and installed it.

So based on the topics for reviewing these tools, here are my results:

Apple Quicktime

An application that plays Apple Quicktime format movies and other movies, very simple application in it’s free mode, but obviously has lots more features on the non-free version.

Cost - downloading the free version, is free of course, Apple is hoping that you can’t live without it and purchase the full version, I have not done this, nor do I intend to.

Ease of use - Apple’s interface for this tool is very basic and definitely needs a makeover

Functionality - It’s pretty good when it comes to the amount of media types it can play, with the exception of some of the *.wmf (Windows Media File) files, obviously Apple didn’t spend a lot of time getting their application to play a Windows centric format.

Utility - Not really that applicable in this case, but if I had to put something down here, then I would say it does not save me any time at all because the user interface is weak

Commonality - Yes Quicktime movies are a standard, however it is not as widespread as MP4 or AVI is, mainly because of the backing of these formats by Microsoft and other large companies

Copernic

Before I downloaded this tool I was under the impression it was an advanced Internet search tool that would do deep searches of the Internet, however. It seems that this tools main function is to index all the files on my computer and allow me to search these for content. This is not what I expected and a bit of a disappointment, especially since I already have this feature with Windows Vista, I think I will be deleting this application fairly soon, unless it begins to wow me.

Cost - bit disappointed that the installation program for this application asked me if I was using this for home, or corporate or educational. I chose educational but the installation program then asked me to pay a fee for download, so I reverted to the home version, which was free. I am surprised that the educational version was not free also.

Ease of use - Interface has a nice look and feel, but the layout of this is a little dated compared to more modern user interfaces.

Functionality - disappointing when it comes to searching the Internet, but seems ok at finding information on my computer.

Utility - could be pretty handy when you have to find an important email or presentation that contained a certain phrase or phrases.

Commonality - with the new search tools in Windows Vista then I don’t see a huge future for applications like this, I don’t get the impression that this application is setting any standards.

Search Engine Task

I have decided to use for this task and compare the results against a standard Google search.

Google Results

I searched for the words “eckhart tolle” (including the “”), since he is my favourite author and I know that he has a lot of hits on the web. Incidentally I was surprised to find that I now got nearly 2 million results compared to the same search that I did earlier on in this course and got 1.6 million results, he is becoming more popular every day! I did noticed that the search became a lot quicker each time I did it, it looks like a certain amount of caching tool place that made the search quicker each time I did it, the first search tool 0.19 seconds and the last search tool 0.07 seconds.

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,940,000 for "eckhart tolle". (0.19 seconds)

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,940,000 for "eckhart tolle". (0.20 seconds)

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,940,000 for "eckhart tolle". (0.17 seconds)

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,940,000 for "eckhart tolle". (0.08 seconds)

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,940,000 for "eckhart tolle". (0.07 seconds)

Copernic Results

I used the Copernic web search feature to do a search for the “eckhart tolle” phrase again and got a very disappointing, almost funny, result of 82 hits on average.

Results: 1 - 20 of 81

Results: 1 - 20 of 79

Results: 1 - 20 of 82

Results: 1 - 20 of 86

Results: 1 - 20 of 84

Analysis

I can’t understand why the Copernic search engine only got an average of 82 hits for the same search terms as Google. I was under the impression that Copernic would search multiple search engines for my phrase and end up giving me more results than Google. From what I can gather the Copernic search web feature is almost useless for finding information on the web.

Boolean Search Task

I am aware of Boolean logic and use it every day when I search the web. My initial searches for “eckhart tolle” utilise the “” around the words to tell the search engine that I want to search for this exact phrase and not a combination of both words. This is good for searching for peoples names, I could have put “eckhart tolle” OR “tolle eckhart” into the browser and this would have delivered me more hits, because some people may write the name with the surname first. For this task it seems that I have to try to get different results from this search, by trying the following.

The biggest number of hits relating to these key words

The biggest number of hits relating to these key-words are achieved by simply change the search to read eckhart OR tolle and yes I got the biggest amount of hits that I think are possible for this name.

Results 1 - 10 of about 28,300,000 for eckhart OR tolle. (0.21 seconds)

Information most relevant to what you ACTUALLY wanted to look for!

In this case, because this guys name is so unique, then by simply using the “eckhart tolle” (with “”) I am already getting what I am looking for. I could put “eckhart tolle” OR “tolle eckhart” into the browser and this would give me more hits, but that may not improve the chances of me finding what I am looking for, more hits may just decrease the chance of me finding what I am looking for. Of course I could take it to another lever and start using bolean like this +eckhart +tolle in this case it will give me all pages with those words in them and they don’t have to be beside each other. Let’s show some results here (all results were from Google).

Using “eckhart tolle” OR “tolle eckhart” I got the following results: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,880,000 for “eckhart tolle” OR “tolle eckhart”. (0.29 seconds)

Using +eckhart +tolle I got the following results: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,810,000 for +eckhart +tolle. (0.08 seconds)

It is not surprising that these both results give similar enough amount of hits, this is because people will normally only ever say this name with either the surname and the beginning or at the end of his name.

What is more surprising is that when I just use the simple “eckhart tolle” I actually get more hits than thw two entries above, see the results below.

Using “eckhart tolle” I got the following results: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,940,000 for “eckhart tolle”. (0.18 seconds)

I am not sure why this happens, it may be something to do with a database timeout, if the transaction starts taking nearly have a second, then the search engine may decide that’s enough data and return, so on the more complex searches this may happen. I am sure there is lots of other optimization logic going on inside Google that I couldn’t even speculate about.

Information coming only from university sources

Ok this is an interesting question, I guess if it was me just doing a casual search I would just include the word +university in the search criteria but this would just bring me up pages that have the word university and may miss other university related information that doesn’t include the word university.

Next thought that I had was: ‘maybe I could search the databases of Universities?’ So I had a look at this page at the Griffith University. It looks like I can search the database at this University, but not all universities, and I have to pay for the privilege with Griffith University.

So I am looking for a way to search all university databases, but I have a feeling that this may not be possible, may be to do with information privacy and security. I will update this Blog if I find a way.

Organising Search Information Task

I decided to use Zotero for this because it looked the most appropriate for using with academic type bookmarks. The way you can use it to add citations to your Word documents is looks good, although I haven’t ventured down that path yet. The interface is a little complicated at first, and it only works with Mozilla for the moment.

I have created a subcategory below my NET11 folder in Zotero to store three of the best sites that were found in the previous task. One of the great advantages I can see to using this tool is the automatic way it can create a bibliography, I have put this bibliography at the end of this section to show how nice this feature is, and I will not modify the bibliography after it is automatically generated.

My Zotero library exported to Citeline

I used Zotero to create a library of the three most useful search results, I then installed the addition to Zotero called Zotz and used this to publish the library to Citeline. The following screenshot shows this library exported to Citeline, but it doesn’t look like I can show the snapshot of each webpage in the Citeline list, this is a shame because it would help me to easily identify each webpage from the list.

Evaluating the Web

I shall evaluate the previous Zotero entries based on the tutorial provided here Ohio SU net.Tutor as part of this task.

A New Earth on Time with Mayan Calendar Prophecy link

Purpose

“Determine whether the main purpose of the site is to inform or to persuade (advocate for a cause. This might include any apparent external interest, intellectual motivation or contextual information”

The main reason is to inform, the writer claims that Eckhart’s two recent books are in line with the Mayan Calendar and the spiritual development of man. There is a little bit of persuasion involved, but not much,

Author

“The best sites are produced by those who have appropriate education, training, or experience to write with authority on the topic. Check site documents or external sources to find out more about the author“

The author Shellie Enteen is an established holistic health and astrology practitioner ,educator and writer, she writes in multiple places, including a monthly newsletter here.

Content

“Consider whether content seems biased. Does the author have a "vested interest" in the topic? Look for documentation of claims and a balanced point of view”

The content is a little biased towards the writer’s expertise. I don’t think there is any vested interest in the article and the books that it writes about.

Coverage

“Shop around for the best source. You can compare the page to others on the same topic to see which provides better coverage”

I have compared the article to similar articles on the Internet, for instance there is a very similar article here that explains it in a more simple way, but /I like the technical way Shellie has written her article.

Currency

“If you are looking for the most current information on a topic, be sure to determine when information was added”

This article was published on Feb 28, 2008 which is pretty recent, in this case, the date of the article isn’t that relevant because the ideas put forward are not going to change in a year.

Recognition

“Try to determine whether the site has been recognised as exemplary by others linking to it, tagging or citing it”

I am not sure if the writer’s theories could be considered exemplary, but this article has been inked to in lots of different paces, including here.

Reliability

“The reliability and authority of the site / source / article”

With the topic and information covered in this site, it is hard to say wether this article is reliable or not, because it’s a persons opinion. The internet site suite101.com is a quite well respected online magazine written by writers for writers, so I am happy that the overall reliability is good in this case.

Subjects & Ideas

“The main ideas or subjects discussed in the article“

The main subject is that the writer is comparing the new wave of consciousness that is being generated throughout the world with the ancient Mayan Calender that seems to match up with the timing for this wave of consciousness. The writer thinks that the big interest and popularity of the Eckhart Tolle books coincide with the calendar.

Automatically Created Zotero Bibliography

I must say I wish I had found this utility before now, because this feature is great. I will check out the different APA styles at a later date, this is using the default APA style.

Shelly Enteen, Eckhart Tolle and 2012: A New Earth on Time with Mayan Calendar Prophecy, Writer Network, suite101.com, February 29, 2008, http://philosophy.suite101.com/article.cfm/eckhart_tolle_and_2012
MKinley Jesse, Eckhart Tolle: America's guru of the moment - International Herald Tribune, International Online Newspaper, International Herald Tribune, March 25, 2008, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/24/arts/tolle.php.
Eckhart Tolle: This man could change your life - Profiles, People - The Independent,” Newspaper, England, independent.co.uk, June 21, 2008, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/eckhart-tolle-this-man-could-change-your-life-850872.html.

Module 3

2008-12-09T08:51:00.049+11:00

Optional Standards Task. 1

Online Writing Guidelines. 1

Observations from articles provided. 2

Legal Issues. 3

Blogs - Reflection. 3

Web 2.0. 4

HTML Task

“Thoughts about HTML, do you feel a sense of achievement? What are the differences between HTML and blogging? What do you like best?

The HTML task was easy for me, since I have been involved in HTML and other web development for quite a while. I decided to create a web page that was useful to me, and hopefully to other NET11 users. The web page contains the most frequent links that I use when working on NET11. It also contains a few of my favourite websites. I like HTML.

It is difficult to decide if I prefer HTML over blogging because blogs are HTML. I like the way that blogging opens up HTML functions to somebody who doesn't want to learn HTML. Similar to what Wikipedia does, Wikipedia takes blogging to a new level in my opinion. Since I am quite technical, I do like getting my hands dirty with HTML, but I also like the convenience of having the HTML code written in the background for me, which is what blogs and Wikipedia do.

Optional FTP Task

Please click the image below to go to the working HTML page that I wrote (index.html) for this assignment, I have uploaded this page to the Presentations space on WebCt.

I realise that the images/logos on this page may contravene copyright laws, but I am going to keep them here for the moment, mostly because I don’t have time to change it and partly because I like the look of the page with the graphics in there.

Optional Standards Task

Online Writing Guidelines

The 5 most important rules (rather than call them rules, I will call them 'current guidelines') for writing online are:

Be careful with flashy websites

Sometimes a website is created with the intention to blow the user away with so many flashy animations and interactive user interfaces that they end up doing the complete opposite and turning the user away. Apart from the obvious problems with too many graphics and too little content, there are issues with compatibility, formatting, browser support, security and download speed that make needlessly flashy websites something to avoid as much as possible.

Allow the user to create/add content

You should also encourage the users to write comments on your content, although it is advisable that these comments are passed through a vetting process that monitors them for abusive content. With a blog this is different of course because it's part of what blogging does, but with a custom built web site, then this is more applicable.

Make the content customisable

Allow the user to configure various aspects of the web page to suit their needs. This is dependent on the website being able to store cookies on the user’s browser. A good example of this is iGoogle and the BBC's new main page, both of these web pages allow very customisable content, with the BBC website getting it just right in my opinion.

Be constructive not destructive

Try to avoid berating people and places because they don't somehow fit with your views. Be careful before you write comments that could hurt a person or make them feel like they are somehow not 'good enough' to write on the Internet. A lot of people abuse their fellow Internet users and one or two mislaid comments could really have an impact on that person, so much so that it could put them off writing anything else on the Internet.

Don't lie

For example if you are deciding to give medical advice or other information about a product you see on the Internet, don't lie and if your not sure if your really correct then say that, or don't advise at all. The Internet has a bad name in the Medical profession for instance, quite rightly too. But the Internet is a great place to find information about health if you know where to look and don't get sucked in with people trying to tell you your very sick when your not. This is a fairly new phenomenon on the Internet, where people are self-diagnosing to the extreme and making themselves sick with worry needlessly.

Observations from articles provided

The advice in Nielsen's paper is a little less relevant today, since the Internet is now less corporate and more personal and social. With the invention of Wikipedia and blogging the rules go out the window.

As more and more people write on the web, the Internet becomes much less corporate and more public. The Internet now runs on people power.

I don't think you could get a typical Internet contributor to read rules on writing on the Internet because I don't think they would care, which is good and bad, since most everybody could do with some training on the subject before they get stuck into writing on the Internet.

Sarah Horton's guide is more relevant for today's writers, since she is more interested in how you present your information, chunking documents and providing ways to let the user read the documents like an encyclopaedia are good hints. She declares that writing for the web is different to writing traditional books and articles, she is totally correct, that's one of the disadvantages of the Internet.

To get traditional journalist/writers content onto the Internet a manual (or these days some companies automate it) process needs to take place to convert the traditional document into an Internet version. The automated option here is commonly used on newspaper websites, where the traditional print is converted into HTML automatically. Often it can be seen that some logic is put into the conversion that spots relevant words that are good candidates for turning into a hyperlink. An example is the Irish Independent newspaper website. The articles on this website have automatic links that allow the reader to click on a word to get more information on that subject or person. This has its advantages and disadvantages; if the article has mentioned a persons name and you didn't know who that was then its a handy reference point, but if its linking to something that your not interested in (which is more often than not) then your eyes get drawn to that link and you may miss the content. Sarah talks about the overuse of hyperlinks in your online writing; this is a good example of that. I am aware that I have also used a link in this blog to jump to a few websites; in this case I think it was a good use of hyperlinks to add to my blog.

Legal Issues

“Have you used images or words on your web page or website that contravene copyright laws?”

I don't believe I have, the images I have used are just the logos of the companies that I have linked to, I think it is common for the logo or image of the website that you are linking to be used as the actual URL to that site. The fact that the images and words I have used are being used in an educational context means that the copyright people would consider this fair use. If I was somehow using this material to make money or pretend that I am somehow representing that website/company then I would be in breach of the laws on copyright.

“Would you be in breach of copyright if you put the Curtin logo at the top of your web page for an assignment?”

No, because the course is part of the Curtin University and the web page is part of an educational assignment then there should be no copyright infringement. I think that the context of this blog allows me to use images from the University that I am attending. It depends on the image of course; I don't think the logos are a problem in this case because of the context of the web page.

Blogs - Reflection

“In your learning log, record your thoughts. Consider various uses for blogs such as citizen journalism and personal blogging. Have you seen in your net travels any interesting uses for blogs? This blog entry is an opportunity to tell us what you really think of blogging!”

I must say I was sceptical at first. I can't say that I was a huge fan of blogs until I started to actively use them for this assignment. I was a little bit judgemental, thinking that blogs were a sign that the blogger was a bit needy for attention. I still have a feeling that some people write blogs to try to belong or to get acceptance socially, where they are not able to in other ways, wether that is right or wrong is not for me to say.

There is a possibility that the blogger can get obsessed with comments and positive feedback, to the point where it becomes unhealthy to blog. I have seen that there are some great examples of blogs out there, some of these I have mentioned earlier, and on the flip-side there are some useless blogs that don't seem to provide anything to the user. It could be that these blogs also have their place in Interspace.

When I realised I had to write a blog for this course at first I was a little annoyed, I thought "why am I being asked to do something so visible to everybody on the Internet?" Then I realised that by doing this task you got an understanding of what it means to contribute to the Internet rather than use the Internet as a tool. I must admit that most of my experience on the Internet (except for Facebook) was in a business sense, where I have designed websites and tools, that was contributing, but not in a personal way. Now that I understand blogging more, I am happy that I have had to write this blog, and it has shown me that my preconceived ideas about blogging were wrong; this is normally the case though when you make up your mind about something before you actually try it.

Web 2.0

Everybody keeps asking what Web 2.0 is, which is a bit of a problem, if you have to keep asking; then it’s dubious if it even exists. Plenty of people profess that they know what it is; they write long articles on the Web to verify that they are experts in this field. I will not be foolish enough to say anything other than this: Web 2.0 is just the development of the www in motion; it doesn’t have to be labelled with a version number.

People like to give things names and version numbers, the Web is not like a movie, it doesn’t exist as a document that has many revisions, were not going to come to a point in time and say “ok now that’s Web 2.0 finished, lets start on Web 3.0”.

I suppose the latest giant leaps in social networking and media sites like Facebook, LinedIn and YouTube could be considered the catalyst for the Web 2.0 labelling frenzy, but there is so much more going on now that these sites are only part of the story. It’s handy to look at advancement as giant leaps, and that’s all very well if you’re bringing out a new version of a car or a games console, but version labelling doesn’t work with Web, maybe that’s why it’s causing such confusion?

Before we all get too excited about the way the Internet is developing, we need to take a look at our lives in general and how the Internet is really improving them on a daily basis. This is a hard thing to do, because I see certain aspects of the Internet as very addictive, social network sites especially and this can be a bad thing for people’s health, as speculated recently on the BBC Website. I am sure that in the future we as a human race will look back at these times of Internet advancement and think “what were we thinking”, akin to when we look back at the 60’s and 70’s now and think “what was I wearing and why was I dancing like that”. I believe that we are only just beginning to understand how the Internet can help us to communicate, but that’s only the very edge of what we eventually will get out of it. So labelling is fine for some people when it comes to the Internet, version 23674.0 won’t roll off the tongue as well as 2.0 does though.

Module 2

2008-12-04T12:13:00.010+11:00

“The tasks for this module consist of a series of explorations of various forms of online communication.”

Content

Email Tasks. 1

Deconstruct an Email 1

Cc, Bcc & Reply to All 2

Email Lists & Discussion Boards Comparisons. 5

Chat Task. 5

I did manage a small chat! 5

Group Task. 5

Extra Personal Experience. 5

Email Tasks

Deconstruct an Email

1. “What information about a user's Email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message?”

I took the information from an email my wife sent me from yahoo.co.uk to my work email address. From this I can see the following email metadata/headers.

Metadata	Description
Received: from *..com.au (10.122.40.76) by awesch02..**.au (10.12.32.229) with Microsoft SMTP Server id 8.1.291.1; Thu, 4 Dec 2008 11:46:49 +1100	This shows the Outlook Exchange server that received the mail on my behalf
Return-Path:	Shows how to respond to this email (senders address)
Received: from [116.50.58.190] by [10.122.40.76] with StormMail ESMTP id 56998.950239096; Thu, 4 Dec 2008 11:55:15 +1100 (EST) Received: from web27402.mail.ukl.yahoo.com (web27402.mail.ukl.yahoo.com [217.146.177.178]) by rly09m.srv.mailcontrol.com (MailControl) with SMTP id mB40kilv019118 for ; Thu, 4 Dec 2008 00:46:46 GMT Received: (qmail 24363 invoked by uid 60001); 4 Dec 2008 00:46:42 -0000	Shows the path the email took to get here
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.co.uk; h=X-YMail-OSG:Received:X-Mailer:References:Date:From:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Message-ID; b=IxRd1Zpu6Z1muoZOLJoQQsZz+qWjpcQc/7ah6xhL4kjrIo6Y7bWhNpLBmH 7finmw1PfnYjPohVQDC9WVlZO98lV7G3d55KYZfWnJb0Zw9z6dMa+r0OGlJK a7JOUUS1lsnDkBddTCMHErE2F1qCdRidZtIiUW42J+NhTjXVscm3k=;X-YMail-OSG: ZZqeQxYVM1nAmDkRT5X1Dq5IzmokHAnOqGfC8DdLl1ummn2hXyO9MLEK 1iipRA6sdqAtGlM41qaO6JIz9nygfbM5qwEv9x85mawxoKo8mMBTKw.Y2Xr_RB Jpo9mY4OWjdi2a6UAvE8HL7msBqUUF7unfTceXQmMXu.gFXeoSDmtkLc0-Received: from [121.217.143.212] by web27402.mail.ukl.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:46:42 GMT X-Mailer: YahooMailRC/1155.32 YahooMailWebService/0.7.260.1References: <08ff9f030b5ac3428e83ddeb24b45c3b35b9695a1f@awmail.**.com.au> <482415.35747.qm@web27405.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <08ff9f030b5ac3428e83ddeb24b45c3b35b9695a51@awmail.**.com.au> Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 00:46:42 +0000	The DomainKey is the sender authentication certificate information, in this case the following information was sent in this email, this email containts the following headers.
Header	Description
From: Non Blonde <****@yahoo.co.uk>	Senders Address
Subject: Re: Hotel	Subject of email
To: Keith ****	My address
MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0-1933541526-1228351602=:24192"	Content type and MIME version
Message-ID: <495014.24192.qm@web27402.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>	Yahoo's message ID so this email can be tracked
X-Mailcontrol-Inbound: DrF2jmRCQeA4fyE dFQMuw3PsnAW5+aCI5C4 VsUb3x5xAm!pCPuofWt7vmlLxU6jX X-Spam-Score: -6.1 X-Scanned-By: MailControl A_08_51_00 (www.mailcontrol.com) on 10.77.0.119 X-MS-Exchange-Organization-SCL: 0	Spam/Virus filter report

Cc, Bcc & Reply to All

2. “In what cases would you find it useful to use the 'cc', 'bcc' and 'reply all functions of email?”

Using Cc

I use 'cc' in an email when I want to include other people in an email but I don't necessarily want a reply from them. That’s the most basic way to use 'cc' and in my opinion the reason why it's there. People can use 'cc' for various other things, but it gets dangerous when you use 'cc' in various situations where it can cause problems with the interpretation of the use of 'cc'. For instance if you 'cc' a persons manager in an email thread that has already been active for a while, even though your intentions may not be that bad, the receiver of the email can get upset.

Using Bcc

I would use 'bcc' if I wanted to do a quick email to a bunch of people but I didn't want them to know who I sent the email to. I sometimes 'bcc' myself so that I can have a copy in my sent folder. It is also good to use 'bcc' if you want to include somebody in a business email, but you know that some people on the email may be sensitive to that person seeing the email, this has some dangers too though, especially if the person you bcc’d replies and then puts the other people in their 'to' or 'cc' fields.

Using Reply to All

I use the 'reply all' feature carefully, mainly when I am sure that the people on the email thread are ok about getting a response to the email. The 'reply all' button is probably the most dangerous button in the world, many people have been fired for saying something silly to the whole company without knowing it, this is so dangerous that some email systems don't allow you to reply all to certain lists of people.

In general I tend to scan the people in the 'To', 'Cc' and 'Bcc' fields in an email more than once, especially if I know it is a sensitive email. Sometimes simple typos or auto-spelling of names can leave you in a position where a sensitive email has gone to the wrong person. The Internet is full of horror stories where whole lives have been ruined in this way.

"Check and double check each person on your email distribution list before you hit the 'reply' or 'reply-all' buttons" - Me

Attachments

3. “In what ways can you ensure that an attachment you send will be easily opened by the receiver?”

I think about the person I am sending the attachment to, if I know that they are computer savvy and have all the required software to view this attachment then I am not so fussy about what I send as an attachment because I am confident that they will know what to do with it. If however I am not sure about the person’s ability to view what I send then I will think about what attachments I am sending. For instance if it's a zipped/archived file then I may decide to unzip it and send it separately, if it's an embedded link/URL, I will mention that they have to click or copy and paste it into a browser. I am also aware of what information I can send through spam and email filters, so I am careful not to send executables or other files that alert filters to these types of mailboxes.

Rules

4. “What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose?”

It depends on the email account your talking about, in my company I use a Microsoft Exchange system with Outlook. In this case I have filters and rules setup to push emails into various folders depending on the senders company/department/project and I rely on my email program to help me housekeep. I like to push the emails into 'personal' folders that are located on my local disk drive, and back this file up regularly to me network drive space. At home I am not so fussy, I use yahoo mail and I find it quite easy with the new yahoo user interface to maintain my inbox manually by moving emails into required folders for archiving.

Folders

5. “How have you organised the folder structure of your email and why?”

As per my last point I use folders to store emails that have a common theme. So I have various folders for family and friends, but I also have business folders that can be broken down to the project level, project level email folders are harder to maintain with automatic filtering of data into respective folders based on the sender or spotting words, because as projects close the filters need to be updated. I like using folders in conjunction with filtering email into the respective folders, I find this is the most useful way to use folders. It is also good to have folders so it makes it easier to archive bunches of related emails.

Email Lists

I can't say I have had a great experience with Email lists, I see them as a bit of a nuisance if managed or used wrong and in lots of cases they are used for the wrong purposes.

Pros and Cons

“What are the pros and cons of email lists versus discussion boards?”

Pros

I guess they could be good if you don't have access to the Internet but still wanted information or to take part in a group.
They are also quite useful in corporations when the company wants to send information to a large number of people.

Cons

The inflexibility to show creativity with the format of the information that is provided.
The reliance on an administrator to manage the content, whereas discussion boards can be self managed by the users.
The non-secure nature of Emails could also be a concern.

Discussion Boards

Pros and Cons

Pros

The flexibility of the administrator/owner to add graphics, spruce up the layout and make the content appealing is an advantage.
The ability to let the users maintain and add content is a big plus, that’s where the Internet shines.
The ability to search and find information quickly and easily also is a huge plus.
Can be used for a wide range of applications

Cons

The content is open to abuse unless actively monitored and vetted by an administrator.
There are a lot of them and its not always easy to find the right board for your topic
It often encourages people to rant long and hard about subjects that are not important

Email Lists & Discussion Boards Comparisons

“Are there certain kinds of communication or purposes more suited to one than the other?”

Yes there are, I see Email lists as an information supply and that’s what they are good at, especially for people who are not that Net savvy. This communication is often one-way and that’s good in this case, so it has limited use. Discussion boards are very useful for applications where customers are reviewing products, discussing issues, or even internally in a company to encourage information flow from one person or group to another.

Chat Task

This was by far the most difficult task for me to complete successfully. I have to admit, I don't like chat programs, I rarely ever use them, after originally being excited about the concept and one of the first users of chat programs I have grown weary.

I did manage a small chat!

I got together with Natalie Spa for a brief chat on YahooChat on the train into work. But it didn't get to be a long chat about the course. Natalie also introduced another NET11 student to me by sharing my chat id with him, but I haven't seen him on online since then. Further update is that we did get to chat a small amount after this, but it was more to do with trying to arrange more official chats rather than anything else, but it was an interesting experience all the same.

Group Task

I still intend to get involved in a group chat, I see that there is one on Mondays, and I will install the chat program this week and make sure I attend that group meeting...more to come here…I did manage to get onto a small chat group on Monday, but my wireless broadband connection kept dropping out on the train. From what I seen of the 10 minutes I participated I felt it was very useful, if a little hard to follow and contribute with a dodgy connection. A consistent connection to the Internet for the duration of a chat is something that you need, and in this case I didn’t have that luxury so I found it a little frustrating as I tried to chat my comments were sometimes appearing 5 minutes after they should have.

Extra Experience

I designed and developed a chat program about 14 years ago, as part of my job at a company called Cylon Controls in Ireland. I decided to add this feature to a program that I was working on as part of a Building Management System (or Process Control system). This chat program didn't use internet protocols. It used a native data transfer system on the control systems we used. The main interface was a Visual Basic program that I wrote, the user interface communicated with control systems on site, in real-time through a connection to the control system hardware. The communication between chat programs actually travelled across the custom made control systems and not the Internet. The lag in communication was less than a second and it had a small amount of use in the industry. I think the engineers were not ready for chat yet :-).

Module 1

2008-12-04T11:00:00.009+11:00

Content

Content 1

Task A - Telnet 1

Task B - Blinking Marvellous. 1

FTP Task. 1

Traceroute Task. 1

Reflection. 2

Now doing the same from my computer 2

Reflection. 2

Task A - Telnet

Telnet was successful to library server, choose the appropriate terminal and continued to search for author. Found author easily, not a bad little interface this. Selected a book, not clear from the instructions that you have to select a book before printing. Now, stuck a little no the email address, what is the full Curtin email address? Trying keith.farrelly@curtin.edu.au however this email address is not real as such, so not sure if it will work. Had a look at the WebCT website, its not obvious from there what your virtual email address is. Oh, worked it out, its keith.farrelly@student.curtin.edu.au.

Task B - Blinking Marvellous

Not a bad piece of ASCII character manipulation, somebody spend a long time writing a simple program that spins through lots of different slides/pages. Haven't seen anybody who spent this much time doing this sort of stuff in ages. It reminds me of some of the most basic games and funny comic strips that I used to write in basic on my old Mitsubishi MLF80 MSX computer when I was a young teenager. Of course this could be done now with a nice snazzy flash embedded animation, but hey it’s not quite as retro. Blast from the past!

Of course some of the problems with this type of demo are evident straight away, the terminal that displays it may corrupt the images, the timeout on the telnet session may kick in too early, and the graphics are...well not graphics really.

FTP Task

CAPITALIZATION is the answer. Very simple FTP task that would be a good exercise for somebody new to this technology.

Traceroute Task

Below is the output from the trace route command from the website:

Tracing route to curtin.edu.au [134.7.179.53]...

hop rtt rtt rtt ip address domain name

1 0 1 0 70.84.211.97 61.d3.5446.static.theplanet.com

2 0 0 0 70.87.254.5 5.fe.5746.static.theplanet.com

3 0 0 0 70.85.127.109 po52.dsr02.dllstx3.theplanet.com

4 0 3 0 70.87.253.21 et3-1.ibr03.dllstx3.theplanet.com

5 7 * * 157.238.225.5 xe-4-4.r03.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

6 0 0 0 129.250.2.173 ae-2.r21.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

7 44 44 60 129.250.4.25 as-3.r21.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

8 47 47 47 129.250.4.118 ae-0.r20.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

9 46 46 46 129.250.3.79 p16-0-0-0.r05.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

10 46 46 46 129.250.10.226 p4-0.aarnet.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net

11 196 196 196 202.158.194.173 so-3-3-1.bb1.a.syd.aarnet.net.au

12 197 198 197 202.158.194.198 ge-0-0-0.bb1.b.syd.aarnet.net.au

13 208 208 208 202.158.194.33 so-2-0-0.bb1.a.mel.aarnet.net.au

14 217 217 217 202.158.194.17 so-2-0-0.bb1.a.adl.aarnet.net.au

15 244 244 244 202.158.194.5 so-0-1-0.bb1.a.per.aarnet.net.au

16 244 245 245 202.158.198.178 gigabitethernet0.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au

17 249 245 245 202.158.198.186 gw1.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au

18 * * *

19 * * *

20 * * *

21 247 246 246 134.7.179.53

There were 21 Hops, 246ms to destination (the average from 3 attempts was 251ms).
Across 9 visible subnets.
This doesn't show the protected network after hop17 to hop 21
Then at hop 21 (134.7.179.53), this is the public IP for the destination server.

Reflection

This is not really anything new for me, but glad to do the exercise all the same.

Now doing the same from my computer

tracert curtin.edu.au

Tracing route to curtin.edu.au [134.7.179.53] over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 406 ms 381 ms 407 ms 172.22.106.66

2 379 ms 421 ms 397 ms 58.145.157.164

3 * * 366 ms mas11-vl880.gw.optusnet.com.au [58.145.157.130]

4 348 ms 379 ms 1372 ms mas1-ge1-0-2.gw.optusnet.com.au [58.145.152.13]

5 117 ms 119 ms 119 ms mas4-unk8-1.gw.optusnet.com.au [211.29.129.34]

6 136 ms 119 ms 119 ms 119.225.4.1

7 * * * Request timed out.

8 * * * Request timed out.

9 1403 ms 186 ms 182 ms 61.88.226.115

10 160 ms 159 ms 169 ms AARNET.o6ssc76fe.optus.net.au [61.88.166.134]

11 189 ms 179 ms 180 ms ge-1-0-3.bb1.b.per.aarnet.net.au [202.158.198.6]

12 168 ms 179 ms 170 ms gigabitethernet0.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au [202.158.198.178]

13 159 ms 179 ms 168 ms gw1.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au [202.158.198.186]

14 * * * Request timed out.

15 * * * Request timed out.

16 * * * Request timed out.

17 777 ms 479 ms 429 ms 134.7.179.53

Reflection

Less hops, doesn't have to travel from the US to Australia, the 406ms at the beginning is because I am on a train doing this with an Optus wireless broadband connection, so that explains the first long hop.

Top 5 tips for Bloggers

2008-12-03T08:15:00.005+11:00

These are my top 5 tips for new bloggers.

Make a Difference
There seems to be a lot of blogs that cover the same subjects but don't bring anything new to the subject. Checking if your blog falls into this catagory is not that easy because you can't easily tell if somebody has a similar blog with similar content. You can google the key words but be prepared to do a bit of reading. It is your responsibility to discover what other blogs there are out there when you decide to write your blog. Blogs can also be made worthwhile by creating blogs that help others, rather than be rants about something, look at craeting blogs that suggest solutions to problems.

You Can Make Mistakes
Don't worry about making mistakes in your blog, even if you hit the 'Post' button and then realise a few days later that there was a big typo error in the title or the formatting looked all wrong, you can correct it easily. Don't overuse the 'preview' features of blogs to make sure your blog is perfect before you post it, sometimes its just worth getting it out there and cleaning it up afterwards.

Update Regularly
Even if your blog is intended to be a fairly static affair (for instance it is a review of a book), go back and review it, see who has commented on the blog and look for any updates to the subject of the blog. In the case of a book review, you may want to add any new updates or versions of the book to the blog, here is an example of a well made book review blog site 26 books. If somebody has commented on your blog, try to get back to them where appropriate and add comments to your own blogs if you feel its needed.

Don't Abuse
Unless your blog is centered around the critique of people, events, places or situations then try not to get too negative in your blogs. Definately don't abuse or give out negative vibes, it just adds to the negativity on the Internet. I see negativity all the time, people making fun of the not so fortunate, or race of people. The following video shows this.

The comments left for this video are an example of people anonymously leaving negative and racist comments that are hurtful and of no real use to anybody other than to insult. The full video page can be found here.

Be Safe
Don't give out any personal information on a blog, it is afterall not private and some undesireables can use blogs to glean information about you to hack your accounts or inpersonate you. In my opinion its not a good idea to get too emotional or go into dept about your current hardships with relationships, job, life etc. This information could be reviewed by future employers or people who may have a grudge to bear and use this information as ammunition, even courts and lawyers could access this information in a way that could somehow not benefit your situation.