Nick's Blog

Week 5, Module 2.1: 'Blogging?' Introduction Week 5 talked about the first key element in the web 2.0 revolution: blogging. Blogging is shown in O'Reilly's web 2.0 website as a move from having a personal website (O'Reilly, 2005). So what is a blog? the following list shows all the words associated with blogging: * Blog (noun): Shortened form of weblog. * Blog (verb): The act of authoring a blog. * Blogger (noun): One who blogs. (blogging, n.d.) Activity One - Discussion Via blackboard we are encouraged to discuss the following points: 1. The early days of blogging were extremely optimistic about the potential of blogs to give everyone who wanted one a voice and a venue to publish. Now that blogging is over a decade old, to what extent have these early predictions come true? 2. Rettberg talks about blogs facilitating ‘distributed conversations’ and even ‘distributed communities’; what do you understand these terms to mean? If anyone has any comment on th

Week 4, Module 2.0: 'What is Web 2.0?' Introduction This week's topic is Web 2.0, which is the key transformation from static, maybe boring but definitely not dynamic websites to dynamic, user driven websites which can revolve around 'the conversation'. Activity 1 : RSS Feeds This week's activity was to compare an RSS feed for news.com.au to the websites head line articles, which interestingly enough was the same. It basically shows you, from my understanding, that the content of the website and the graphical side of the website is separate. Activity 2 : Delicious The next activity is to create a delicious account and find some interesting websites to tag. So I decided to chose nickstery as my username. To be honest though, I'm kind of new to delicious but due to its easy interface and browser app, it was easy to see why it can definely be handy. References

Module 1.2: ...and what is the World Wide Web? Introduction This week we took a look at the World Wide Web which refers to the information or documents that are sent or retrieved over the internet normally through a web browser. I learnt there are 3 key elements to the World Wide Web: The HTTP (Hypertext transfer protocol), the website URL (Uniform Resource Locator) address and the HTML (Hypertext markup language) markup language. With the term World Wide Web being coined by its maker Tim Berners-Lee. Activity One - Show me the HTML! Simple HTML exercise: making text bold!!! In this exercise we use the follow tag your text goes here to make something bold!!. We will use this text: it should finally look like this: the web is amazing Activity Part Two - Hypertext (Why the Fuss?) Every webpage or search engine has it but where did it come from and why is it significant? let's explore the history of the hyperlink. Hyperlink is an old concept with sources as old as 1960 #citation

Topic 1.1: What is the Internet? Introduction This week we took a look at the internet and what it really is. Sometimes it's easy to confuse the internet with the World Wide Web, Cyberspace or what we see through a web browser. The internet is actually a vast network of connected computers, talking to each other through servers and using telephone lines, fibre optics, satilites or radio waves to connect everything. The key parts to the internet are as follows: Physical medium Protocols Web server References

Week 1, Module 1: 'What's in a Name?' Introduction What's in a name, from my understanding, deals with the issue of online identities - how you like people to see you through the internet medium. We are to take a look at the following website: www.namechk.com On this website it lists all the social websites (I think) and you can search for usernames which best describes you. Activity 1: namechk.com I looked under my desired username (nickster - a mix of my name and also mystery which kind of describes me) and to my wonderful surprise it was mostly available. I subscibed acouple of them but decided it's kind of pointless to subscribe to services I don't use and probably wont use. Afterthoughts References

Introduction Welcome to my blog My name is Nick and I'm currently studying University online in Japan!!!. I was born in England but moved to Australia at the age of 18 and lived there ever since. I have a interest in mostly everything and especially love the chance to debate issues with my students in Japan. I am writing this blog for my Curtin University course on Internet Comm unications, so I hope you find my blog clear and concise as well as useful. To be honest though it'll probably be more of a memory aid for me so my expertise in the IT field can continue to grow. Over the course of this semester I will be writing about the following modules: Module 1 o Introduction to Module 1: 'What's in a Name?' o Topic 1.1: What is the Internet? o Topic 1.2: ...and what is the World Wide Web? Module 2 o Introduction to Module 2: What is Web 2.0? o Topic 2.1: Blogging o Topic 2.2: Wikis o Topic 2.3: Soc