Tuesday, April 29, 2008
IM vs. Active Worlds
Im not much of a gamer and i personally found active worlds a bit dull. Active Worlds is largely a game, and a world where if youve got nothing better to do you could probably whittle the hours seemingly away. On the other hand I love to use instant msg, as its a quick way of having a conversation with my friends without the expense of a lengthy phone call. And for me i guess that is where the major difference lies between these two applications. With instant msg it is connected to your email account and the people I talk to on it are known to me and have been added by me. I am not pretending to be a character like I am on Active Worlds, i am representative of my true identity on msn. Active Worlds allows you to create an imaginary identity, where you can meet new, unknown people in their fantasy 3d world. It is this 3d world that adds the game/fantasy level to it. I dont have to be represetative of myself within it nor do other people. I make my username/character up and so do the other people. Active Worlds, i realise is an older game, and it is not a true or modern virtual world, it does not fake reality, yet the fact that some people can loose themselves for hours within these types of games is to me a worrying future trend. With the creation of better virtual worlds, we become a step closer to a virtual world in which people may begin to use to hide from their real lives. The more time they spend within these virtual worlds the less they spend within their real lives and tend to their relationships with real people. The creation of virtual worlds could eventually isolate us by technology and meddle with our sense of emotion. The movie eXistenZ was a good representation of these dangers and asked its audience where the line will lie between the worlds, where the difference will be between reality and virtual and how will we know it?
Using Microsoft Excel
This program is one that ive had little to do with and i struggled more with this exercise. Whilst I knew how to enter the basic data, i was confused by the formula questions and it took me a few tries to get it to turn out properly. I had used graphs in excel before though and was happy to breeze through that question but then i got stuck on the macro advanced question which I still haven't managed to work out.
Using Microsoft Word
Most of us have been using microsoft word since we've been using a computer- a.ka. most of our lives yet whilst i found the first basic excerises an easy bore, i have to admit i had never even heard of the tools in the advanced exercises, so learning how to track changes and mail merge was actually useful, not riveting, but useful. Microsoft Word has a good setup, in that it is easy and efficient to use, you can find most of what your looking for with just a few clicks of the tool bar but youve just got to know what your looking for in the case of the advanced features, to make them work for you.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Wikipedia
I find wikipedia to be great for gaining a general overview of a topic. It is however a rather unrealiable source and therefore I cross-check everything I read in it to verify the accuracy of the information.
Our task today was to find two wikipedia articles that we knew something about and to check their accuracy on the topic. The first article I found was on the town of Coffs Harbour. This was a suprisingly detailed article for what I consider to be my small hometown. Having lived there most my life, I feel I know the place pretty well and therefore believe, having read this article it is an accurate source of information on Coffs Harbour. It covers a broad range of topics, from its location to its general popularity as a tourist spot. As such it also includes information on attractions, transport services and annual events, all of which I have experienced first hand. If I were to make any changes to this article, the first thing I would do would be to create a link to my high school's webpage, so that (Jetty high) it is fairly represented against the other schools listed in the area (that have links displayed in the article). I would also include more information as to the history of Coffs as a town. Another tourist attraction that has recently been renovated and re-opened is the Historical Museum, which has not been included in this article as an attraction, so I might include something on that. Having completed a history of coffs at school, I know that it does have an interesting history-including involvement in the second world war. Which leads me to think of another attraction which isn't listed in wikipedia's article, the bunker cartoon gallery (an interesting old bunker they converted into gallery, that regulary displays local artists work.) Basically, my point is that they could have been more detailed in the attractions section, as during the winter months there are other things to do apart from lie around on one of coffs many beaches. I also noted that it stated that coffs has a strong surfing culture which is true, but it also has a strong arts culture, which could have been included. Maybe also would have included info on night life and good restaurants in the area? But all in all, this article was an accurate and fairly detailed overview of Coffs Harbour. It was dealing with objective fact so therefore was a generally balanced article, and from the looks of it it followed the wikipedia guidelines for useful articles. The second article that I looked up was on the retail company Big W, for whom I used to work for, and completed a school based traineeship with based on in and outs of the company. And having read this article I believe it to also be an accurate and non-biased portrayal. It describes aspects such as their services and their foothold as a large australia wide company. From my general knowledge the history of the store is accurate as well. In conclusion both of the articles I researched were, to my own knowledge accurate and non-biased and generally a good overview and source of information on both topics.
Our task today was to find two wikipedia articles that we knew something about and to check their accuracy on the topic. The first article I found was on the town of Coffs Harbour. This was a suprisingly detailed article for what I consider to be my small hometown. Having lived there most my life, I feel I know the place pretty well and therefore believe, having read this article it is an accurate source of information on Coffs Harbour. It covers a broad range of topics, from its location to its general popularity as a tourist spot. As such it also includes information on attractions, transport services and annual events, all of which I have experienced first hand. If I were to make any changes to this article, the first thing I would do would be to create a link to my high school's webpage, so that (Jetty high) it is fairly represented against the other schools listed in the area (that have links displayed in the article). I would also include more information as to the history of Coffs as a town. Another tourist attraction that has recently been renovated and re-opened is the Historical Museum, which has not been included in this article as an attraction, so I might include something on that. Having completed a history of coffs at school, I know that it does have an interesting history-including involvement in the second world war. Which leads me to think of another attraction which isn't listed in wikipedia's article, the bunker cartoon gallery (an interesting old bunker they converted into gallery, that regulary displays local artists work.) Basically, my point is that they could have been more detailed in the attractions section, as during the winter months there are other things to do apart from lie around on one of coffs many beaches. I also noted that it stated that coffs has a strong surfing culture which is true, but it also has a strong arts culture, which could have been included. Maybe also would have included info on night life and good restaurants in the area? But all in all, this article was an accurate and fairly detailed overview of Coffs Harbour. It was dealing with objective fact so therefore was a generally balanced article, and from the looks of it it followed the wikipedia guidelines for useful articles. The second article that I looked up was on the retail company Big W, for whom I used to work for, and completed a school based traineeship with based on in and outs of the company. And having read this article I believe it to also be an accurate and non-biased portrayal. It describes aspects such as their services and their foothold as a large australia wide company. From my general knowledge the history of the store is accurate as well. In conclusion both of the articles I researched were, to my own knowledge accurate and non-biased and generally a good overview and source of information on both topics.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Walter Benjamin
This was a complicated reading, that did make me think. It raised a few interesting points concerning the reproduction and replication of art, and the ulimate impact this has had upon society and the way in which it has changed the purpose of art itself.
Walter Benjamin introduces the idea that the growing standard of reproduction has ulimately led to a change, from art as an individual and select medium, that was only available to the wealthy upper class who could afford to own and experience it, to a trend towards mass communication and a closing of class divisions, as art slowly become more widely available to the general public. -Art's purpose has changed with the times.
Therefore it raises the question of whether or not, in today's digital society has the original importance, individuality and authenticity of art remained within our culture? Or has it lost that 'aura'(as refered to by Walter benjamin) of the original art works importance with every reproduction of it. Does it sort of sell-out on its original purpose? has it changed its original purpose? Can our modern day reproductions claim to still have the 'aura's' of their original pieces? Benjamin argues that they do not, he claims that with repliaction an art work is removed from its shell and detached from what it was when it was first created. Does the ultimate meaning of the artwork change throughout this process?
The idea of manipulation is ever present in our digital society. With just the click of a button an original artwork can be changed/ manipulated. This may or may not have an impact upon the original message and perception of the artwork, therefore its original 'aura' has been compromised. The way in which a person may recieve the artwork, the message intended to be conveyed has been changed from the original. The reliabilty of a photograph, in todays digital world is an example of this. Digital image manipulation programs such photoshop allow a person to easily and readily change aspects of the photograph and thus misrepresent the original information that was captured. The authenticity of the image is no longer reliable. Such things have caused our society to readily question the reliance of our sources. Have reproduction technologies caused us to become sceptics? We definately tend to question all the information that we recieve.
In today's society anyone can produce art. It is a form of mass communication that has allowed us to exchange information to a wide audience. The fact that our technology is having a growing impact upon the creation and manipulation of art and its 'aura' or 'meaning', was a concept realised by benjamin even back in 1936. It is still a relevant concept today, which seems to grow even more important with each advance in modern technology and the further impact it will have on the changing face of 'art'. They say a picture tells a thousand words, then in todays society do we need to question what is actually being said, and allow for the impact that replication may have had upon its original and intended message?
Walter Benjamin introduces the idea that the growing standard of reproduction has ulimately led to a change, from art as an individual and select medium, that was only available to the wealthy upper class who could afford to own and experience it, to a trend towards mass communication and a closing of class divisions, as art slowly become more widely available to the general public. -Art's purpose has changed with the times.
Therefore it raises the question of whether or not, in today's digital society has the original importance, individuality and authenticity of art remained within our culture? Or has it lost that 'aura'(as refered to by Walter benjamin) of the original art works importance with every reproduction of it. Does it sort of sell-out on its original purpose? has it changed its original purpose? Can our modern day reproductions claim to still have the 'aura's' of their original pieces? Benjamin argues that they do not, he claims that with repliaction an art work is removed from its shell and detached from what it was when it was first created. Does the ultimate meaning of the artwork change throughout this process?
The idea of manipulation is ever present in our digital society. With just the click of a button an original artwork can be changed/ manipulated. This may or may not have an impact upon the original message and perception of the artwork, therefore its original 'aura' has been compromised. The way in which a person may recieve the artwork, the message intended to be conveyed has been changed from the original. The reliabilty of a photograph, in todays digital world is an example of this. Digital image manipulation programs such photoshop allow a person to easily and readily change aspects of the photograph and thus misrepresent the original information that was captured. The authenticity of the image is no longer reliable. Such things have caused our society to readily question the reliance of our sources. Have reproduction technologies caused us to become sceptics? We definately tend to question all the information that we recieve.
In today's society anyone can produce art. It is a form of mass communication that has allowed us to exchange information to a wide audience. The fact that our technology is having a growing impact upon the creation and manipulation of art and its 'aura' or 'meaning', was a concept realised by benjamin even back in 1936. It is still a relevant concept today, which seems to grow even more important with each advance in modern technology and the further impact it will have on the changing face of 'art'. They say a picture tells a thousand words, then in todays society do we need to question what is actually being said, and allow for the impact that replication may have had upon its original and intended message?
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Week 4 Tute Blog 2
How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?
- Its relevance to the words and concepts in the query
- Its overall link popularity
- Advertisers/sponsors given higher priority/rank
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?
- "Because of the potentially large number of pages that can be retrieved by a search, good relevancy ranking is important. Most search engines use various criteria to construct a relevancy rating of each hit and will present your search results in this order. First generation search engines primarily use term relevancy ranking. This type of ranking judges relevancy based on the presence of your search terms in Web documents. For example, ranking will be based on: the presence of search terms in the title, URL, first heading; the number of times search terms appear in the document; search terms appearing early in the document; search terms appearing close together; etc. This is known as "on the page" ranking, since the engine looks at content on the page to determine its relevancy. " ( http://www.internettutorials.net/eng.html)
What are some of your favourite search engines? why do you like one more than others?
- Meta search engines eg. Dogpile save time combining individual engines and bringing up a wider variety of results in the one place, with the one search. It also has yellow and white pages search options, allowing a wider, easier and more efficient search.
- I also like the layout and simplicity of Google- it is efficient returning search results and I like the option to search Australian pages only as this often has a higher relevance to what I am searching for.
Scavenger Hunt
Before I start allow me to explain what I thought of this week's task: I found this week's task rather boring and must say that Iam still a fan of Google or Dogpile ( which I believe would have found me the answers to these questions a lot faster). Either way I do this, I still needed to double check the answers by cross-referencing different sources, so as to come up with an accurate and reliable answer(so why not use a fast and known to me, search engine to begin with). I tried out all of the search engines included on the resources list but I stand firmly with good old google.....because its not as frustrating, as some of these other search engines often didn't bring up anything even remotely resembling what i was searching for. Google or Dogpile are definately top search engines for a reason....the millions of people who use them each day are proof of their advantages over other smaller and obscure search engines like the ones we were using for this scavenger hunt. I did eventually find the answers through them, though I believe it took a lot longer than it would have if id been using a meta search engine like dogpile. My resulting answers are: (Their reliability was ensured by cross-checking answers from a range of different sources and by evaluating the reliability of the sources themselves. eg. an .edu site is more reliable than a .com site)
1. Who was the creator of the infamous "lovebug" computer virus?
Onel de Guzman, a 24yr old computer student ( http://www.a9.com/)
2. Who invented the paper clip?
This had a bit of a complicated answer. Johan Vaaler was the inventor of the first simple paper clip -a piece of wire bent into a "rectangular, triangular, or otherwise shaped hoop". Around the same time, Cornelius J. Brosnan from Springfield, Massachusetts, was issued a U.S. patent for a similar device called the Konaclip. It wasn't until 1901 that William Middlebrook patented a paper-clip making machine for the Gem Manufacturing company in England. The design of the clip( which most resembles our modern version) wasn't actually patented, the patent only covered the machine. ( ask.yahoo.com/20031120.html) (yahoo search engine)
3. How did the Ebola virus get its name?
It is named after the Ebola River in Zaire, Africa, nearwhere the first outbreak was noted by Dr. Ngoy Mushola in 1976 after a significant outbreak of the disease. (http://www.crystalinks.com/ebola.html) (hot bot search engine)
4. What country had the largest recorded earthquake?
The largest recorded earthquake was in Chile in 1960. There may have been larger unrecorded earthquakes but the 1960 Chile earthquake earned the title because scientisits were able to measure, record and verify its ground motion strength. It meausured 9.5 on the richter scale.( http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question63269.html) (ask.com)
5. In computer memory/storage terms, how many kilobytes in a terabyte?
1 terabyte = 1 073 741 824 kilobytes. (http://www.ask.com/web?qsrc=2417&o=0&l=dir&q=how+many+kilobytes+in+a+terabyte) (ask.com)
6. Who is the creator of email?
Ray Tomlinson. (http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/1408411)
7. What is the storm worm, and how many computers are infected by it?
It is a virus that installs a Trojan horse onto the message recipients computer. Anywhere between 250,000 and 10 million computers may have been infected by it, exact statistics are not known. (http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/storm.asp )
8. If you wanted to contact the prime minister of australia directly, what is the most efficient way? Post a letter. This is the prefered method as email is not a secure way of transfering information. (pm.gov.au)
9. Which Brisbane-based punk band is Stephen Stockwell (Head of the School of Arts) a member of? Black assains (I couldn't find this answer online, source: classmates general knowledge)
10. What does the term "Web 2.0" mean in your own words?
Web 2.0 is a marketing term to describe all the elements of the internet where the main purpose is sharing, connectivity, and interaction between users. eg. Wikipedia. The main difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, is that Web 2.0 has made using the net simpler and therefore more accessable to a wider range of people, allowing users to come together and net communities to be created. It has increased the prominence of the internet within our everyday lives, as html skills are no longer a necessity when posting information onto the internet.
1. Who was the creator of the infamous "lovebug" computer virus?
Onel de Guzman, a 24yr old computer student ( http://www.a9.com/)
2. Who invented the paper clip?
This had a bit of a complicated answer. Johan Vaaler was the inventor of the first simple paper clip -a piece of wire bent into a "rectangular, triangular, or otherwise shaped hoop". Around the same time, Cornelius J. Brosnan from Springfield, Massachusetts, was issued a U.S. patent for a similar device called the Konaclip. It wasn't until 1901 that William Middlebrook patented a paper-clip making machine for the Gem Manufacturing company in England. The design of the clip( which most resembles our modern version) wasn't actually patented, the patent only covered the machine. ( ask.yahoo.com/20031120.html) (yahoo search engine)
3. How did the Ebola virus get its name?
It is named after the Ebola River in Zaire, Africa, nearwhere the first outbreak was noted by Dr. Ngoy Mushola in 1976 after a significant outbreak of the disease. (http://www.crystalinks.com/ebola.html) (hot bot search engine)
4. What country had the largest recorded earthquake?
The largest recorded earthquake was in Chile in 1960. There may have been larger unrecorded earthquakes but the 1960 Chile earthquake earned the title because scientisits were able to measure, record and verify its ground motion strength. It meausured 9.5 on the richter scale.( http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question63269.html) (ask.com)
5. In computer memory/storage terms, how many kilobytes in a terabyte?
1 terabyte = 1 073 741 824 kilobytes. (http://www.ask.com/web?qsrc=2417&o=0&l=dir&q=how+many+kilobytes+in+a+terabyte) (ask.com)
6. Who is the creator of email?
Ray Tomlinson. (http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/1408411)
7. What is the storm worm, and how many computers are infected by it?
It is a virus that installs a Trojan horse onto the message recipients computer. Anywhere between 250,000 and 10 million computers may have been infected by it, exact statistics are not known. (http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/storm.asp )
8. If you wanted to contact the prime minister of australia directly, what is the most efficient way? Post a letter. This is the prefered method as email is not a secure way of transfering information. (pm.gov.au)
9. Which Brisbane-based punk band is Stephen Stockwell (Head of the School of Arts) a member of? Black assains (I couldn't find this answer online, source: classmates general knowledge)
10. What does the term "Web 2.0" mean in your own words?
Web 2.0 is a marketing term to describe all the elements of the internet where the main purpose is sharing, connectivity, and interaction between users. eg. Wikipedia. The main difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, is that Web 2.0 has made using the net simpler and therefore more accessable to a wider range of people, allowing users to come together and net communities to be created. It has increased the prominence of the internet within our everyday lives, as html skills are no longer a necessity when posting information onto the internet.
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