Week One - The Matrixs and beyond. An Introduction to web 2.0, wikis, blogs and Youtube.

I thought it would be a good idea for me to actually discover and understand what these technological words of blogs, wikis, human computerisation and web 2.0 actually were so I could futher my understanding of the virtual in which i will be operating in, in the following weeks to come.

"Wikis"

Could be known as "open editing".

Wikis is a piece of serve software that enables users to freely creste and edit web page content usinga web browser. They support hyperlinks and often form to create collaborative websites. A prime example of this is wikipedia which is an online encyclopedia.

"Blogs"

this video from Youtube called Blog in Plain English - tells its audience to the point in a simple manner what the function of a blog is;

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI

I thought it would be a good idea to actually find out about blogs if i'm going to record my work on one of them. A blog is short for weblog, which is basically a noncommerical website that uses a dated log formate, containing links to other web sites.

Weblogging started initally in 1997, however they didnt become the phenomenon they are today until 1999.

The blogger programme I am now using to store my Virtuality and Performance class notes was released in August 1999. By the year 2000 blogger users were creating 300 new blogs a day.

Why I ask? they reason bloggers are doing this are for many reason but the main purposes is to create discussion and use it as a way of marketiting.

Other reasons people use blogs include;

1. 
   
   
   To express yourself in a uniques way.



2. 
   
   
   To communicate a life with friends and family.



3. 
   
   
   To futher an obession with online life.



4. 
   
   
   To gather attention for local business.



5. 
   
   
   To promote thing like music bands.



6. 
   
   
   To spread the word on topic like regions and philosopies.



7. 
   
   
   To contribute to the online community of information and knowledge.

What I gather from this as refection is that people use blogs as a way of havinga voice to vocalise subjects, to be heard and then share with other to create means of communiction via online discussion.

It is a place where people can interact virtuality and build a virtual communityby posting topics, tips or random thoughts.

The one thing i think its key to remember is that blogs are personal in the way they format a kind of online journal diary, individuals are logging their experiences and life not the world of the web.

http://tech.uk.msn.com/features/article.aspx?cp-documentid=7217170#toolbar

I found a web article on msn that states;

Ask any two people for a definition of a blog and you are likely to get a different answer – from an online diary to a well-structured insider’s view, from a valuable news source to a frivolous time-filler.
But one thing is for certain, blogging is a huge and growing hobby for millions of people – some with an audience of one and others with hundreds of thousands of avid fans.
With more and more people looking to find their way into this world, Tech & gadgets caught up with two of the UK’s most familiar bloggers, Graham Holliday and Johnnie Moore for tips and advice on how best to blog. These tips are as follows;

• Dont be afraid to blog about something niche
• Use pictures - it makes blog more interesting and can be intergal to its success
• Expect criticsm and use it in your debate
• Encourage debate from your readers by responding to them.
• Comment on other blogs.
• Read other relevant blogs.
• Blog often, blog well.
• Link out to other blogs
• Dont lie
• Dont preach
• Dont ignore your readers
• Dont expect instant success
• Set your own limits, and dont be afraid to break them
• Design is not key to success
• Blog when you wnat
• Write to please yourself
• Try to be timely
• Dont be afraid of putting up rough ideas.
• Dont be afraid on new technolgies.
  
  

"Web 2.0" - A summary

( a photo of my mind map made up of what Web 2.0 actually is)

• Web 2.0 stands for web-technology,
  a generation of web based communities including social network sites, blogs and WIKIS
  
  
• a NEW vision of the world wide web
  


• WEB 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry cased by the move to the Internet as platform and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.

• Essentially a Network Platform.
  


• WEB 2.0 includes social elements where users generate and distribute content,
  often with freedom to share and re-use. USERS ARE ABLE TO PHYSICALLY DO MORE ONLINE.
  
  
• WEB 2.0 technologies tend to foster innovations in the assembly of systems and sites
  composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent development.
  



• WEB 2.0 technology - oriented only exists on the net, deriving their effectiveness from the inter-human connection and from the network effects that Web 2.0 makes possible.
  
  
  
• People who make use of them - ebay, Wikipedia, Skype, del.icious.

"Human Computation"

The class and I watched a video of Luis Von Ahn who has used a popular free video sharing website "youtube" which lets users upload, view, and share video clips - to reaching a wider mass audience. In his lecture Luis talks about CAPTCHA's which are disorted words or charcters which are used on registration forms such as hotmail, google or yahoo.
The reason we use these captcha's is for the safety of free email sites, data collection and the preventation of dictonary attacks.
Attacks of spammers may occur on any of these application based sites, without captchas as programmes are made and designed to access these sites to gain thousands of email accounts.
It is known that a programme was made to votes hundreds of times, on a online poll for their favourite option- therefore the vote was be inaccuarte, this is why the disorted word is used on many registration forms and polling sites as programes can not identify the word or characters like humans therefore stopping spammers in their tracks.