Module 3 Web 2.0

Today is Valentines Day, I was sitting quietly having breakfast reading the Saturday Age, as per my normal routine. Then an article in the Business section grabbed my attention. I searched the on line newspaper for a link, but unfortunately I could not find one. So I have duplicated it below.

I had previously written about Web 2.0 Back to the futurebut this article presented something I had not previously considered.

The title of the article is Why governments need to loosen up and get that Google is not a dirty word. The author is Nicholas Gruen, chief executive of Lateral Economics

The bushfires have shown us that we need to use the web together. Googling the fires. Its all shoulders to the wheel on the fires. Or is it? At the weekend, Google – teh largest internet company in the world and one of the most agile – offered Victoria a helping hand. It was turned away.
The Country Fire Authority (CFA) website wasn’t coping with demand for its online list of bushfire updates. According to the storey, Google’s engineering director,Alan Noble, told a Broadband and Beyond conference in Melbourne this week that Google proposed overlaying CFA data onto Google Maps to produce online,realtime mapping of the fires’ location and intensitie. Especially in an emergency, why did they need to ask?
Where the Government acted with great timeliness and success in migrating to the web as a platform for existing public communications – hoisting every government report you can name on the net – it’s having trouble adapting to the potential provided by the new use of the internet as an online collaborative platform.
That’s because collaborative web is also serendipitous web. You never know how useful some information might be until you let people get hold of, play around with, “repurpose” and republish it. And those kinds of of possibilities are cruelled each day, every day by intellectual property paradigms that haven’t received the comprehensive reworking collaborative web requires, and by organisations – usually large firms or government agencies – whose standard presumption involves containing the unpredictable and maximising their control.

Victorian Bush Fires 14/2/2009

So, four hours after asking the CFA, Google was permitted to take its data feed and become a firefighter. But the CFA feed only covered private lands. The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) provides similar information on public lands. According to Mr Nobel, DSE hadn’t established a data feed and explicitly refused Google permission to access DSE’s internal data.
I don;t know all the details – people have been understandably preoccupied with other thing at short notice – but what seems clear is that, in the age of serendipity, in the age of Web 2.0, governments shouldn’t assume that content they are funded to produce shouldn’t be their own monopoly, or even exclusive intellectual property, unliess there’s a strong case for it to be otherwise.
The converse assumption is more apt – that publicly funded and/or generated information/content is a community resource and should be made freely available unless and untill there are good reasons not to do so.
Such reasons include protection of privacy and confidentiality. Restricting access can make sense if it enables the sale of public data to (usually private) resellers because that can help defray the costs of collection. But in the serendipitous world of distributed internet collaboration, restrictions should be imposed with caution. There should be many exceptions: for experimentation, research, for non-commercial use, even for innovative commercial uses.
And ….ahem..for emergencies.

Linkhttp://tinyurl.com/b46wfg

In my working life, I have been a part of a project team, but we have not utilised the aspect of working on a single document collaboratively. That is one reason that Web 2.0 as a collaborative tool had not dawned on me. This article made me think about the amount of data that exists in private and government data banks. If we knew everything that existed , I am sure that we can think of myriads of ways to crunch various bits to come up with solutions to water storage, early flood warnings and the like. There are greater minds than mine that could look at two disparate pieces of data and use it to advantage.

There is much more to reflect about from from this perspective, and I am glad that this article surfaced in such a timely manner.

 

Module 3 Web 2.0 Software

Prior to the research for my previous post, I had never come across the expression Web 2.0. I had obviously lived a sheltered life as a mild mannered accountant, engrossed in spreadsheets and word documents.

I had not envisaged the wealth of software out there that could be so helpful. My first port of call was to read Dion Hinchcliffe’s “The best Web 2.0 software of 2005”

This is a great list to start with. It covers Social Bookmarking with del.ocio.us and blinklist. It goes on to cover Web 2.0 Start Pages, OnlineTo Do Lists and Peer Production News (digg) among many others

I had heard of one or two offerings, but the article actually gives a good explanation of his number one pick in each category.

I realise that his list is not definitive but it is a great starting point. As I get some time I will be looking at all the packages with a view to incorporating some into my daily life to make my days more productive.

So thanks to this module I have discovered a new world and new challenges.

 

Module 3 – Web 2.0 – Back to the Future?

The web was developed in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee. According to
an answer to a FAQ on the W3 website

“The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential…. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it become a realistic mirror of the ways in which we work and play and socialise.”

Soon fences were erected, first by Netscape (1994) and then by Microsoft in the so-called browser wars to become the dominant force in web browsers. The software produced was proprietary and thus locked users into using particular types of software. Netscape ,Lotus and Word Perfect eventually gave way to Internet Explorer, Excel and Word as Microsoft dominance grew. It was also around this time that saw a massive growth in internet companies. The mantra during that period seem to be grow market share and do not worry about profitability (see The Investors Journal.com (November 2007) .

The concept of Web 2.0 began with a conference brainstorming session between O’Reilly and MediaLive International in 2004(O’Reilly Network:What is Web 2.0). In essence they realised that the web was not dead and new applications were being developed with regularity. The web 2.0 conference was born.

But what was web 2.0.? In Paul Graham’s article , the 2004 conference notes read:

While the first wave of the web was closely tied to the browser, the second wave extends applications across the web and enables a new generation of services and business opportunities.”

There have been many attempts to arrive at a definitive definition. These range from “The Web as a platform” (Richard MacManus in February 2005 to Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Compact Definition

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an “architecture of participation,” and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.

So where does this leave us? Have a look at Tim Berners-Lee’s Dream back in 1990 and then compare it to O’Reilly’s definition in 2005. Do you see the similarities? Both espouse the idea of universal usage, both talk about social networking, and both refer indirectly to harnessing the collective intelligence.
Paul Graham sums it up best when he suggests that Web 2.0 mean using the web the way its meant to be used.

Like the title of this blog Back to the Future

 

Module 3 Web 2.0

Log Entry:

What is the difference between Internet Communication Blinklist and the HTML list ? What are the benefits? Which format do you think you would like better and why?

Blinklist

The screenshot of the Blinklist on the left is a selection of items that have been listed under web 2.0 .  The Blinklist has a very neat and tidy format. that  actually invites you to explore it by using the “index” on the right hand part of the screen.

The index is formed by using the keywords that each item has been tagged with by the person saving the items. Any one item can have multiple keywords to assist in its classification.  Thus the first item can be found by searching on web2.0, web 2.o, social networking and networking.  There could also have been a reference to Dion Hinchcliffe, the author.   This type of indexing is different to the traditional library indexing by author and book title.

Selection from HTML List

Contrast this layout with the HTML list that appears above. I have cut a section from the total list that only refers to Web 2.0.
I find this list totally uninviting to explore. The first point of difference is the lack of an index. To search the list you need to use the windows Control-F search key. If you do not type in exactly one of the words , a nil result may be returned.
In order to make the list more friendly , the author of the list would be required to manually group like items . This is the second point of difference.

Both lists give the user the same information. The Blinklist is a lot easier to use. It is indexed using logical keywords and thus makes it easy to locate the required reference.

 

Module 3 Blogs

Log Entry
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 have been away cycling for the last ten days or so and have deliberately stayed away from the laptop as much as possible. My sport of long distance cycling can be pretty anti-social. Combine this with hours spent on the internet and my significant other can feel very isolated.To say nothing of our social life.  On a more positive note , it actually gave me time to think a little more about the course and the various tasks accomplished and yet to complete.
I did not think that I would miss writing a regular blog. I did not think I would miss the interaction with my fellow students by readings and commenting where appropriate. I surprised myself.
When I commenced this class and saw that I was expected to contribute a web log, I thought “what the……!”  I always felt that having a blog and/or a personal website  was more about showing off or self aggrandisement than serving any worthwhile purpose.This course soon put paid to those thoughts. I began to look at blogs in a different light. These things could actually serve some purpose. I was aware of a friend of mine you had commenced his own blog. He is in the same cycling club as me , so I began to read his occasional ranting musings  at Blogscrement.

The above blog led me into a virtual cycling community, there are people whom I have ridden with or communicated with as well many others offering varied opinions and constructive advice about cycling and cycling lobbying. This reminded me of Stephanie Nilsson’s essay The Function of Language to Facilitate and Maintain Social Networks in Research Weblogs. In part III of her essay she asks whether blogs make up a defined community, or are they merely detached mumblings from veteran websurfers? It makes for interesting reading and goes through various ways to analyse the answer.

My view is that blogging is a sharing of information and a sharing of thoughts. Groups of bloggers form together into communities that share common experiences and give advice to newer members of the community. A blog may be read by many readers or none, it does not matter. What is important is that the writer has set out his/her thoughts for all to read and react to. A blog can offer a source of two way conversation. For every comment there can be a counter comment. In this way a conversation ensues. The various parties need never meet. The important part is that there is an exchange of views.

From this humble beginning , I now follow a whole community of cyclists (some I know personally, and others I know by reputation) that enjoy the same hobby as myself. I also follow the blogs of my fellow NET11 students as we feel our way along our own learning journeys. I find as well that I am getting the urge to contribute to the blogosphere in ways other than as a student blogger. This may take little time as study and cycling currently are all consuming.

Apart from my hobby, as part of research during this course I have discovered blogs that impart information about using Twitter for business(refer Chris Brogan) among many others. So blogging is more than personal ideas, it is also being using in the main stream of business .

Peter alerted us to a blog by a friend of his. This is a Travel Blog,or rather it is a diary reflecting on travel experiences and the experience of living in a different country. It is a simple way for all of her friends to follow the various adventures vicariously. (Mind you jealously could also set in.)

Can blogs be used in business? I would now suggest that blogs would be a perfect way for companies to spread information internally . Human Resource divisions spend a lot of time ensuring that there is a staff newsletter. Blogs would make a perfect replacement. We can do the same with email, I hear you say. Yes you can but Blogs lend themselves more to sharing pictures and chatty items than does an email. Emails tend to be more a formal communication tool.

Just one final point. It is rather ironic, that some of us do courses like this to keep up with our children. The opposite has happened to me. My daughterhas recently started her own blog to keep up with her old man. Go Figure

 

Module 3 – WWW Standards 3

Legal Issues

The abuse of copyright has been one of the biggest issues facing in the Internet over the last few years. Well probably longer, but it has been newsworthy in the recent past. The major issue has been in relation to the Music Industry and the illegal downloading and sharing of music . The big cases involve the shutting down of sites such as Napster and the issue is still ongoing. In NME First for Music News of 16th January the industry claims that 40 Billion files were illegally shared in 2008.
On the Student discussion Board I posed the following:

With a glass of wine in hand and listening to blip.fm, I started to ask myself the question. Why do we as normally law abiding people think nothing of downloading music or listening to music on peer to peer networks?
If we own a CD we can play it for our own pleasure, but we are prevented from playing it in public without paying a royalty to the artist. We are allowed to make a copy for out own use (to save the original). Blank tapes and CDs have a royalty system built in. (I do not know how it works but I believe that there is a pool of sorts).
I suspect that most music on the web (not including Itunes stores and the like) is owned privately, but we share it in “public”.
Is this not illegal use?
I know that likes of Napster and others have been closed down, but it seems to me that new networks are popping up seemingly immune.

Two questions:
1. am I barking up the wrong tree?
2. Why do we feel that it is ok?

Sorry if I seem to be generalising and casting aspersions in the wrong direction.

Cynthia provided the following link to the SBS Insight program regarding the illegal downloading of music.

Mindjack provides a reminder that music is not the only item being illegally downloaded , films and television shows are also in the same boat.

Music and film are not the only things that are sublect to copyright. In Australia the law recognises that individuals have the right to protect teh moral and economic interests arising from their creative works. It is not ideas but their expression taht is protected by copyright law (Copyright Agency Limited). In a nutshell all material found on the internet is generally protected by copyright. Even my humble blog.
The copyright owner may give explicit permission for works to be copied or further transmitted. From a student perspective the Copyright Act 1968 section 40 has specific provisions regarding the use of copyright material. Essentially it allows “fair dealing” of the work. My interpretation is that a student can take a copy of section of a work and utilise this his/ her study, citing sections of that work with appropriate acknowledgment of the source. The act provides a guideline as to how much may be copied.

Use of the Curtin Logo
Curtin University has a Logo Use procedure that basically say the logo may be used after receiving appropriate permission. The logo is a trademark and my feeling is that even as a student I would be prevented from using it on my website or on an assignment if I am attempting to pass the work off as being produced or authorised by Curtin University.
On the other hand I believe that I could use it to provide an example of a trademark in the body of my work under the fair dealing provisions of the copyright legislation.
My preference would be not use any trademarks unless explicit permission was received.

 

Module 3 – WWW Standards 2

W3C Standards

The World Wide Web consists of hundreds of millions of documents, which reside somewhere on the internet are are written in some form of HTML (HyperText Markup Language).

Tim Berners-Lee designed the web to be universally available to everybody with a computer, however back in 1994 Netscape  started the so-called browser wars. In order to attract users, they created a set of extensions to HTML that only Netscape could handle. For example, Netscape surfers could view pages with coloured text, photos and other improvements. Surfers with other browsers would get errors, or nothing at all (Elizabeth Castro, 2007, HTML, XHTML & CSS, Peach Press).  By 1996 Netscape had become the most poplar browser, then Microsoft entered the fray and designed their own extensions that only Internet Explorer could recognise.

According to the The Web Standards Project

If Netscape and Microsoft persisted in building ever–more incompatible browsers, the cost of development would continue to skyrocket, tens of millions would find themselves locked out, and the Web would fragment into a tower of digital Babel. In fact, we said, it had already begun to do so.

The webs United Nations is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) set up by Tim Bermers-Lee. The membership of the W3C comprises all of the major players such as Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Google and Mozilla. The membership comprises in excess of 400 organisations.
The mission of W3C is :

To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.

In pursuit of this mission amongst other thing the W3C has been encouraging browser manufacturers to support official HTML ans CSS standards. Unfortunately there is no compulsion on the manufacturer to follow these standards. If you have a read of articles and comments in A List Apart and Sitepoint you will soon see that web pages will not display in exactly the same way in every web browser. In fact even in my own home page I had to make allowances for Internet Explorer, because it did not support pseudo classes.

There are some other issues whenit comes to deciding which “brand” of HTML you should declare in your DOCTYPE. The W3C has deprecated certain tags in the move towards XHTML. It is possible to choose from theee flavours, transitional, strict and frame set. You can read all about these at the W3C website.  In summary transitional supports deprecated tags and frameset supports deprecated tags and frames. Strict obviously does not allow either.   My personal view is that the sooner developers all use the strict standard, the sooner the browser manufacturers will all fall into line. It may be a pipe dream but it will mean that developers will not need t  spend time in developing work arounds for the various browsers.

My own web page in the student presentation area was coded in XHTML strict. I ran the page through the validator several times before it was fully validated. My major issue was failure to close tags and a small issue with the sub menu list. The problems were quickly sorted.

I believe that it is necessary to have standards to fulfill the WWW dream as stated in the W3C mission. Can you imagine a traffic system without rules? A tennis match without an Umpire? The WWW is the same a web without standard can have the potential to be a digital tower of Babel.

 

Module 3 – WWW Standards

Great Ocean Road - Port Campbell (October 2008)

After the buzz of getting my web page the I wanted it, it has been a tough week trying to get back into the swing of research, reflection and writing a blog that makes sense and will cover off the balance of module 3. To paraphrase Matthew 26:41, ” the body is willing, but the mind is cycling along the Great Ocean Road.

Writing for the Web

Last study period , along with several others doing this unit, I completed NED11 Internet Design- Introduction. During the first assignment process ( Analysis and Design document) there was discussion on the discussion board, attempting to define what a web site design was. A fellow student Trent Jackson came up with the following definition:

Professional web design looks like a complex compilation of graphic arts, psychology and computer programming. I see a lot of Photoshop /Illustrator expertise required for the graphics, some psychology in areas like typography and visual hierarchy, and I also see high-level programming for XHTML / CSS and JavaScript.

In summary the following would be key ingredients of a successful website:
-One sentence writer “A website for teabag collectors” is all that is required. But most people launch right into “Tannin is very popular with children …” with no context or reference to teabag collecting.
– Copywriter
– Graphic arts
– Psychology …
– Computer programming

Jakob Nielsen is a highly respected web design usability guru. As you read his various articles, his commentary comes over a bit strong even bombastic , but there is always a lot of research and analysis behind it. My first introduction to Nielsen was Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design. These were first listed in 1996 and have been regularly updated , this from 2007.

• Bad Search
• PDF files for Online Reading
• Not Changing the Color of Visited links
• Non Scannable Text
• Fixed Font Size
• Page Title with Low Search Engine Visibility
• Anything that Looks Like an Advertisement
• Violating Design Conventions
• Opening New Browser Windows
• Not Answering User’s Questions

Three points relate to the actual content of the page, the rest are to do with navigation and search engine optimisation. The first battle is to get people to your page, once there if the color or typography is garish then no matter how good the writing the user will not stay. It is then that the content comes to the fore.In another article Nielsen explains how users read on the web. We scan the page and pick out words. I think that this is a function of the amount of data that is available on the web when performing a search as well as the speed with which we now seem to require data. As a result web designers need to ensure that they employ “tricks of the trade” to ensure that users read what they want them to.

As a result of my reading I have come up with my top 5 suggestions for writing for the Web.

• Use meaningful sub heading
• Highlight keywords
• Use bulleted lists to keep everything concise
• Put the main point first in the paragraph
• Stay away from excessive linking

 

Module 3 – HTML tags

Today I finally uploaded the index.html file for what will be my personal part of the World Wide Web. In the last study period, I completed unit NED11- Internet Design-Introduction. This unit ,in the course of thirteen weeks, took me from not knowing anything about HTML and CSS to designing a simple but working web site for a business of my own choosing. Being a humble sort of person, it was a great success. The tutors were happy (as reflected in the grade) and my son-in-law has a web site (soon to be uploaded) for his business (HiSpec Automotive).

I actually approached this task by first reading through the tutorial. I am smart enough to know that it always pays off to go back to basics. We always find something new. In my case it was a good refresher on tags. I chose not to do the practical examples of the tutorial, instead I decided to explore vertical drop down menus. This is something that had me stumped last study period. No matter what I tried it just would not work for me. Instead for the NED11 assignment I created a navigation work round. The other thing that I could not get working properly was a three column heading section.
Not being under time pressure, I was able to get both things working to my satisfaction as well as actually using Photoshop to “design” my own logo. I still need to find a decent tutorial for Photoshop or a CAE or TAFE course to learn the ins and outs of this software.

Dusinkaustralia Homepage

You can find the homepage in the student presentation pages of WebCt at Curtin.

On the home page, two navigation tabs have sub menus under them. Thus under Cycling there is a sub menu containing three items, similarly there are two items under Travel. These pages are not complete, but you can see where I am going with it.

I found great satisfaction in getting these things to work in the manner that I had expected them to. But since embarking on this journey into, for me, an unknown frontier I have known the feeling of satisfaction and frustration all in the same moment. I am enjoying the challenges and the research to make the computer do the things that I want it to instead of a standard reaction to an accounting problem.
HTML is structured, but at the same time there is an element of unstructure (not a word, but its what I mean). In strict HTML you are required to close all tags, but the web page will still display if you do not. The code validation process will soon let you know if there is a problem.

What is the main difference between html and blogging? HTML is the coding behind Web pages and Blogs. Blogs generall have templates that beginners like me can utilise and have a web presence in around 5 minutes or less. You do not need to have any knowledge of the code behind the blog template. You can just get in and type similar to creating an email or any other word document. When you create a web page you usually create this from scratch to suit the business or organisation concerned. I suggest it would be rare that you can utilise a standard template to fulfill all an organisations requirements. HTML tags and the words and pictures between opening and closing tags provide the structure of a web page. CSS provides the style of the web page. With CSS you can manage the fonts, colours and position of elements within the web page. IMHO a very powerful partnership.

In summary, I am thoroughly enjoying this learning experience. In some respects the internet has no restrictions , whereas in accounting I am very restricted in what can and cannot be done. Creativity is not really an acceptable (legal) thing for a Senior Financial Manager.

 

More on False Identities /Alternative Identities

As a follow up on a my post of 4th January regarding reports in the Melbourne Age. Check out this story from Jim’s Marketing Blog. Not everything is as it seems
You also need to be aware of changes to photographs using programs such as Photoshop and the like. Now I am not anti making a few changes to hide the odd blemish , but this guy seems to have gone over the top .

Question: How does it make you feel if this happens to you? Do you still do business with the person concerned or has all trust gone out the window?

PS: I am not skilled enough with Photoshop, so unfortunately the photo in the previous post is me warts and all.