I don’t want to be boring and start every post saying its been busy, busy, busy, but it has been. It sure is the silly season, to use another cliché, but the Christmas shopping has now been done, Christmas cards have been mailed and the only Christmas party I have to go to (my son’s day care party) is on this afternoon.
But the festivities don’t stop there. Next week we are celebrating Ned’s birthday so there’ll be cakes to be made and two more parties to organise (one with his little friends and one with the family in the evening).
I have cut back my uni workload from two subjects to just doing WEB101 and I’m much relieved. Now I can concentrate on doing this subject really well rather than rushing maniacally through two subjects pretty badly.
For one of our assessments we need to keep a ‘learning portfolio’. I have been keeping my discussion points and activities that I add to Blackboard (Curtin’s online study area) in a Word document but I thought it would also be useful to include it here in this blog.
I am a bit behind but better late than never. Here are my entries so far:
Week 1
1 December 2010
Introduction
My name is Vanessa and I am enrolled in WEB101 and NET102. I have just spent the last year doing units for both a cert IV and diploma in web design and development at TAFE. I loved studying the internet, but was not so crash hot on coding – especially JavaScript, which is why I am now so pleased to have found this course.
I love everything to do with the internet and spend an enormous part of everyday online facebooking, tweeting, blogging, etc. My most important job though is looking after my gorgeous almost 2 year old son Ned. I am a single mum, in my mid 30s and we live in right in the city of Sydney.
I gave up my career as an executive assistant when I took a redundancy during the peak of the GFC and I’m now hoping to move into a role within the online space.
5 December 2010
1. How many of you have used email this week?
I use email every single day.
2. How many have used a social networking site in the last week? (Facebook, MySpace, CyWorld)
I am constantly on Facebook and Twitter, either from my laptop at home or via my iPhone.
3. How many of you have watched video content online in the last week? (YouTube, Facebook Video, etc.)
I watched video showing a sneak preview of next week’s Dexter episode on YouTube.
4. How many of you have created media in the past week? (Shared a photo you took, video, posted to a blog, or Twitter, etc?)
I have a blog that I update at least 3 times per week. I also comment on loads of other blogs that I follow. This week I have also uploaded a video on to Facebook via my iPhone and added a new photo album, I’ve updated my status on Facebook several times, and tweeted heaps. I also usually use Foursquare and GetGlue to show my location or what I am watching on TV.
Week 2
10 December 2010
Topic 1.1: What is the Internet?
Thinking back…
What was your first experience of the Internet? Has it changed over time?
I remember the first time I had heard about the internet was on the show ‘Beyond 2000’. I vaguely remember the presenter talking about internet cafes sweeping the UK and the US and I was absolutely enthralled. I’m not sure when that episode would have aired but it wasn’t until the end of 1997 that I actually got to use the internet for the first time and I loved it. That connection with the outside world really excited me. That was the year I finally worked for a company that had email that wasn’t just internal. I remember looking at a lot joke sites but not having a lot of friends on email to send jokes to!
The next company I worked for only had the internet on one computer which was in the library. In 1998 we had email on each PC. We could send emails internally instantly but the modem was only switched on every twenty minutes to push new emails in or out of the office so there was nothing instantaneous about it. Back then I was working for retail economists and I remember the guy I worked for wrote a report (which I had to type) on online shopping and what he predicted the uptake would be in Australia. I remember thinking there was no way I’d buy something without seeing and touching it first.
It was also that year I bought a computer for home with a 56k modem which was excruciatingly slow. A friend had told me about ICQ and I tried chat on there but wasn’t really taken to it. The first random stranger I chatted to was from Norway and I remember thinking that was just amazing. His name was Henning. I only chatted to him the once, but for some reason I remember it. Probably because at the time it seemed so momentous. I was talking to a stranger on the other side of the world in real time. After ICQ another friend introduced me to Yahoo Chat and I was on there all the time! Then came Napster and waiting for one individual track to take about 15-20 minutes to download.
The internet certainly has changed over time. It is faster, better, stronger and nowadays I use it every day. The credit union I have banked with for over ten years doesn’t even have a branch in Sydney – everything is done online. How perfect is that? No queuing at the bank!
I have used many dating websites (both here and in the UK – with no success I might add, but I have some funny stories!), I have bought and sold on eBay, I buy my groceries online, CDs, clothes, TVs, cosmetics, shoes, furniture, baby equipment, holidays – even my laptop. I have bet and won on the Melbourne Cup online while living in London. I download music and movies and audio books. I use Skype to chat with friends in London or just to Skype my parents who are 2 hours drive away so they can talk to their grandson over the weekend. I write a blog about my life on Blogger (and another one on WordPress) and I share photos and videos of my life on Facebook. And I now study online.
I also have an iPhone so I can check emails, tweets and Facebook updates whenever I am away from my laptop.
I love being connected!
The routing trail
Where did your routing trail take you? Were there any surprises?
Activity 1 – Routing in action
Using the Proxy Trace website (http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/visual-tracert/) I found the geographical location of the headquarters of:
Wikipedia.org wikimedia.org, Saint Petersburg, FL, United State
Amazon.com comcast.net, Pompano Beach, FL, United States
I noticed the result I got for Amazon.com was different from most other students’ so I did the trace several times. Each time the tool returned this same result. Does anyone know why?
Flickr.com yahoo.com, Sunnyvale, CA, United States
The website I found that was not hosted in Australia or the US was louvre.fr. It is hosted at telia.net in Europe (exact address came up as ‘unknown’). I was very surprised by the route it took through Australia, Honk Kong and the US before finally settling in Europe. I was actually surprised by all the routes taken, that each one was bounced all over the place before finally getting to the appropriate location.
Activity 2 – Who owns what?
Using the autowhois website (http://hexillion.com/asp/samples/AutoWhois.vbs.asp) I found the following information:
Site Owned by
Flickr.com Yahoo! Inc
Youtube.com Google Inc
Mickey.com Melbourne IT, Ltd. D/B/A Internet Names Worldwide
Gooogle.com Google Inc
Yaho.com Yahoo! Inc
The last two domain names would be owned by Google and Yahoo! respectively so that if a user accidentally does a typo they are redirected to the correct address. It also stops anyone from taking those site names to try to leverage off either Google or Yahoo! Inc’s reputation to get people to go to their own site. I recently learnt about this in my Copyright & Ethics class I completed this semester at TAFE. The term is ‘typo squatting’.
Let’s talk broadband
The final discussion point for Week 2 was regarding the National Broadband Network. I am opposed to the current proposal by the Government. This is because of the enormous cost that they are proposing and quite frankly I don’t trust this government to be able to manage such a huge and expensive project given their recent record of rorting and waste on the school halls scheme and with the home insulation debacle. I’d like to look further into this issue and will endeavour to follow it throughout this study.
An {Online} Education... 