Tutorial task 5 – The Internet Field Trip

The task 5 ask us take an ‘Internet field trip’ to 3D chat room. Rather than a regular IM chat room such as MSN, we were encouraged to take part in a 3D chatroom such as ActiveLife or Habbo.

Personally,I prefer MSN more than chatroom. Why? Because MSN is very secure – meaning you can only talk to people if you add and approve them and ofcourse you can remove and block them if you change your mind.

I decided to give this “Active Worlds” chatroom a try.The main difference I noted between regular MSN and this 3D environment was having to personalise yourself. For example, in comparison to MSN where your name and display picture is displayed… In these 3D chatrooms, you have a characterised person who represents yourself in these chatrooms.

I guess one okay point about 3D environments is that if your really really bored and lonely and socially deprived, you could enter these 3D chatrooms and become someone else and do wierd things… and no one will know who you are – which clearly explains the mass of strange and very, very wierd people already present in those chatrooms.

I do feel that the 3D aspect makes a huge difference to the chatrooms, as it adds more “life” to the strange environments and characters present. There is something highly amazing about seeing the avatars who look very wierd walk up to you and begin a wierd conversation.

Lecture 5 - Virtual Philosophy

In todays lecture we looked at virtual philosophy. Virtual Reality is a system that enables one or more users to move and react in a computer-simulated environment.There are some types of VR: 3D simulation on computer screen, control generally by mouse or joystick, utilizes VRML or similar program to give the sensation of moving through an environment.

I believe that the virtual world has been part of of our everyday life. Everyday we use computers, mobilephones. televisions...The games in Facebook seem to be quite popular among younge people, I believe that is precisely because the virtual world is more lifelike. People even can do what they can't do in the solid world. Now, it comes up with the 3d games there more people will be struck on the virtual world.

Lecture 4 - Free Culture, Free Society

This lecture was on Free Culture and Free Society. Basically it was about Creative Commons. Creative Commons are the internet equilivant of copyright laws. It was founded in December 2002 and is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting reasonable copyright. Creative Commons enable ’some rights reserved’ rather than ‘all rights reserved’.

The lecture also covered topics like how software on the computer works. There are two types of software, Free and Proprietary. Free software works on four principles: Freedom O which is the freedom to run the program, for any purpose. Freedom 1, the freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs. Freedom 2, the freedomt o re-distribute copies so you can help your neighbour and Freedom 3, the freedom to improve the program and release your improvements to the public so that thw whole community benefits.

Proprietary software is where a source code remains confidential. Software development mainly in-house are made by paid teams and the development goals are set by software companies. The business then sell the finished software packages.

There are 3 key words in Free Culture and Free Society:
Community – Poeple who want to share and do something good so the whole community benefits. Helping your neighbour is not a crime.
Collaboration – Instead of going against copyright and breaking the law, people can work together to create good things.
Choice – You paid for your computer with your hard-earned money, its a tool for communicating and creating. Don’t let companies like Microsoft and Apple tell you how to use your computer.

Tutorial task 3

Part 1 - Scavenger Hunt questions

1. What did Alan Turing wear while riding his bicycle around Bletchley Park?

The search engine I used was AltaVista. I plugged in “Alan Turing and riding his bicycle around Bletchley Park”. The first result on the first page of results was a link to a short biography for Alan Turing on a Generic Universal RolePlaying System Game software for WWII website.

Answer: Alan Turing use to wear a gas mask while riding his bicycle around Bletchley Park to prevent hay-fever symptoms.

http://www.nels.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/GURPS/WWII/Turing.htm

2. On what date did two computers first communicate with each other? Where were they?
Using AltaVista again, plugged in “computers AND communicate AND 1969″. According to Communication and Computer Network, the Department of Defence in the USofA started a network called Advanced Research Projects Administration Network, or ARPANET.

Answer:The first computers talked to each other in 1969 through a network called ARPANET. The computers were located in California and Utah.

http://www.nos.org/htm/funda4.htm

3. What is Bill Gates’ birthday and what age was he when he sold his first software?
To search for this,I plugged in “what age was Bill Gates when he sold his first software” and the fourth result down was for his biography on Answers.com. This told me that Bill Gates had sold his first commercially developed software for $3,000 in 1975. With a little bit of math, I was able to determine what age Bill Gates was when this happened.

Answer: Bill Gates was born on the 28th of October, 1955. So if Bill Gates first sold his software in 1975, that would make him 20 years old.

http://www.answers.com/topic/bill-gates

4. Where was the World Wide Web invented?
I plugged the question into AltaVista and the first link is what I want.

Answer:The World Wide Web was invented at CERN.

http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/history/inventedwebwhere.html

5. How does the power of the computer you are working on now compare with the power of a personal computer from 30 years ago?
I first find out the power of a computer made 30 years ago by using the AltaVista, come up with a link called "a timeline for the history of computers". This told me that in 1979, Intel released the 8088 8-bit processor to the public in June. Then, I went to the Lenovo website ,and fins my laptop, which told me that an Inspiring computer had a up to Intel® Core™2 Duo T9300 processor (2.50GHz, 6MB L2, 800MHz FSB)

Answer: A computer in 1979 had a 8088 8-bit processor.

http://www.web-friend.com/help/general/pc_history.html
A computer in 2009 has a 2.60GHz, 800FSB, 6MB processor
http://shopap.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/auweb/LenovoPortal/en_AU/catalog.workflow:expandcategory?current-catalog-id=3634951826AE4D3881BFFF1AC5FCD957&current-category-id=5F3D323E86B74590ADD714AAD4CB5F99&tab=2#tab-container-5

6. What is the weight of the largest parsnip ever grown?
Using AltaVista I found the Guinness world records website. No answer there so I searched for “giant parsnip” on AltaVista. The second result was for the Port Lincoln Times. This told me that a man by the name of Ken Holden picked a giant parsnip from his garden in July of this year.

Answer: Ken Holden grew a parsnip that weighed 2.3 kilograms. Mr Holden has also previously grown a cauliflower weighing 3.2 kilograms and carrots weighing 2.7 kilograms.

http://www.portlincolntimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/holden-growing-more-giant-vegetables/1570577.aspx

7. When did Queensland become a state and why is the Tweed River in New South Wales?
I searched for the history of Queensland in AltaVista and the second result was for the "Queensland Government’s website of Queensland history". It says “Queen Victoria gave her approval and signed Letters Patent on June 6 1859 to establish the new colony of Queensland.” For the second part of the question, I did a search in AltaVista for the “history of the border between QLD and NSW”. It did not come with an actually answer.

Answer:Queensland separated from New South Wales and thus became a state in 1859.

http://www.qld.gov.au/about-queensland/history/

8. What was the weather like in south-east Queensland on 17 November 1954?
can't find the answer even I tried several words in the searching engine.

9. Why is is Lord Byron still remembered in Venice?
I did the search in AltaVista for this one. I plugged in “Lord Byron AND Venice history” and came up with a "BBC History website"as the forth result.

Answer: Lord Byron is remembered in Venice because he wrote some of his most famous works including ‘Don Juan’ in Venice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/byron_lord.shtml

10. What band did Sirhan Chapman play in and what is his real name?

For this question, I plugged in “Sirhan Chapman” into AltaVista and the third result was for the "The Black Assassins". This told me the bands name, The Black Assassins, but not Sirhan Chapman’s real name.

I can't find Sirhan Chapman's real name.

Answer: Sirhan Chapman plays in The Black Assassins.

http://www.blackassassins.net/CDlaunch.html

Part 2

(1) How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?

Answer:Based on information gathered off www.searchengine-guy.com.au, I have determined that search engines base their rankings primarily on content. For instance, a link is more likely to have a high ranking if the keyword search is in:

+The title tag

+Regular text

+Links

+image file names

+meta tags

+alt tags

+comments

So basically, the links wherein the keyword appears most often are more highly ranked.

(2.) Who, or what, makes one page (that you might get in your search results) more useful than another one, so that it is put at the top of your search results?
Answer: This is answered within question one. The page appears at the top if it contains the keyword in a number of places. In some cases though, a link may appear at the top because it is a "Sponsered ad", and therefore has paid to be at the top.

(3.) What are some of your favourite search engines? why do you like one more than others?

Answer:My most favourite one is Google, and I also use Baidu (Chinese), Altavista.

Why? Simply because it is easy to.

Lecture 3 - Media, New Media, Social Media

This lecture firstly talked about the new media which includes the virtual community and the individual identity.When we talk about what is commonly called “Social Media” we are talking about different ways in which we use technology to communicate with other people in a social setting. In nowdays, when peopel using internet, they no longer to work individually, but also can communicate with others. People can also makefriend on line by searching their hobbies.

WEB 2.0 is referred to web development and web design that helps the interactive information sharing, it is a kind of marketing strategy and creates the community. Where Web 1.0 was all about marketing to the consumer, Web 2.0 is just about the consumer. It was said in the lecture that Web 2.0 is the domain of networking on Social Network Services like Facebook and MySpace, of blogging and all it’s forms like micro blogging on Twitter and content sharing on sites such as Photobucket and YouTube.

Social Media relates to Web 2.0 because social media is all about the different mediums in which people can connect over the internet.

Tutorial Task 4

This is the first time I used the Windows Movie Maker to create a video. The theme is about my travel to the Fraser Island. I hope u enjoy it:)

Tutorial Task 2 - My own experiences with communication technologies

The first time I used the computer was at home when I was 9 years old. My father bought the computer from the Shenzhen city and then mailed it home. It was a desktop computer. In my memory, I felt scared about the computer that moment because I did not know how to use it while I clearly knew that that was an expensive thing.

I started learning about the computer from 11 years old, when my father returned home from the Shenzhen Province. He taught me the basic knowledge of the computer, such as the monitor, mouse, how to start...Which impressed me was that my father pushing me to practice typing all the time. Our school opened the computing class when I was in Grade 4, I even participated in the design competition:) The teachers taught us to use Internet to send email and how to search information on the web, which seemed to be amazing for me at that time and of course that is definitely useful.

I did not using Internet for the entertainment purpose until I graduated from the senior high school due to the busy study, but I knew that most of my Friends enjoyed themselves quite a lot. When I started using Internet for different kind of purposes, I felt worried about my privacy as someone may steal my account and my chatting history can be seen by someone without promise. Not bad, the companies such as QQ, face book always try to solve such problems by using different kinds of new technologies, so actually I trust the Internet a lot. I never play Internet games because I think it is just a kind of business way of the companies which not only waste time but also waste money.

To sum up, new technologies changed my life a lot, I love it!

There is a vedio which is related to new communication technology, which introduce the history of the Internet:

Lecture 2 - The history of computer and internet

The second lecture we learnt about the selective history of the computer and Internet. This should be really hard for me as I do not know any thing about it.

First, the lecturer talked about the history of computer. The computer has its origins in various adding machines, most notably Charles Babbage's 19th century Difference Engine which was designed to calculate and print mathematical tables.

Alan Turing is the people who contributed quite a lot to build the computer during the Second World War. After the War, Alan set up the foundations of modern computing, by publishing a paper on the computability of numbers and the possibility of a machine to compute them. A few other interesting fact were the development of the operating systems.by publishing a paper on the computability of numbers and the possibility of a machine to compute them.

Computers were first commercially produced by IBM in the 1950s.The first generation of computers were large, unwieldy and expensive machines for military, government and corporate work but it quickly became apparent that computers would get smaller, quicker and less expensive at an exponential rate. It wasn't until 1975, however, that the first PC (personal computer) was released by the Xerox PARC.

Then, we learnt about the history of Internet. The Internet has an age about 40 years old. People started thinking about the communication between each computers in the 1960's and then they got a way to communicate with each other, which should be quite different to the Internet in recent year. We saw a video about how the Internet connect eachPC and How the PC gets required information from the Internet.

I believe in few years later, there should have new kind of computer and the Internet should be more completed.

Lecture 1 - New Communication Technology

As the survey we have done in the lecture, messenger, the Facebook, mobile phone, email, YouTube, online shopping are such good examples of new communication technology in recent world. At this moment, from my view, this course is about the relation between communication and new technology.

Communication means sources transfer from the sender to the receiver. Without technology, people can just communicate with others in limited distance. As the speedy development of the technology, there have been amazing changes to human beings' life. Information spreads really fast, for example, when the federal release a new law, the people around the world can get noticed in only one minute due to the super Internet. There are still some other media mediums, such as television, newspaper, mobile phone...

To sum up, new communication technology is the way of transmitting information quickly, which will lead to reduce the distance between the whole world.

Welcome

Hi everyone, I am a 21 year-old Chinese girl, my name is Li Zhu. I am happy that I can enroll in this course and hope that we will enjoy these two weeks.

I am interested in reading novels on the web and I spend most of my leisure time at home just doing something with my laptop. That's the very reason why I choose this course.

I will use this blog to record all the stuffs in the next two weeks, include the summaries of the lectures, videos and tutorial tasks.