Topic 2 parts 1, 2, 3 & 4

Part 1 - Facebook -

Upon searching for groups in Facebook there are around 401 CSU members on one particular site. I'm the 401st. The ethics involved in Facebook are questionable i feel. I will bullet-point the reasons...

*People are unaware of security and privacy issues. They are unaware their identities could be stolen, and most use passwords that are easy to guess.
*Young people are unaware that what they are putting up in the public arena could stay around to haunt them for years - ie missing out on a job because of drunken photos.
*People post private details of their life in the public arena.
*People accept friend invites from users they do not actually know. These individuals then have free access to your page just so you can look popular and gain 1 friend.
*Facebook recently made the accounts so that you could see a picture and see the friends of someone who has not yet accepted your friend request.

I think users, mainly young people, do not know how to use facebook properly. They over-use it in a sense, as they are not old enough, or experienced enough to make judgement on what parts of their lives should or should not be thrust into public face. Their lack of judgement carries over to private, often intimate relationship details, or vicious and nasty arguments being in the public eye. It is important people are advised and warned of this before signing upto sites. Pictures should also be kept private - Many young people do not understand the seriousness of pictures of themselves being used from facebook.

Part 2 - Second Life

I joined second life, as did my friend (whose name i shall leave blank). We searched together and found each other online. Now, i know my friend well, and they know me...but our avatars looked completely different. I think that second life is a way of making people feel better about their lives as life is not controllable but second life is. You can be who you want to be, or what you want to be without judgement of others:- Hence, My friend's avatar (and my own) did not look like us - it looked how we wanted to be perceived, which is often better looking than what you would see in real life.

The next thing i noticed was a few people trying to talk to me, and when it took to long to reply (as i was figuring out the buttons) - they called me a n00b. Noob. Great. Yes, i am new to this, but once upon a time you were too you *******. (Use your imagination for that one....it can be whatever you want it to be!). There seems to be a general feel that there is a lack of tolerance for "noobs." Then when these n00bs grow up - they are likely to call other newcomers n00bs to make them feel better about the time where they were embarrassingly enough - called a n00b by some random individual on second life, that probably is sitting at home in a chair that is almost melded to their bum from usage, typing away with cheezle-crumb fingers, and burping carbonated gas from some coke 'zero' product they think will help them shed a few pounds the easy way.

As you can probably tell i do not like second life. That and the fact it is a giant money generator from people that cannot stand the sight of some '3D animated' image of themselves being uncool, or not having friends, or new animated clothes, and the list goes on. Second Life has crossed the border and delved into the land of the ridiculous. Avatars are seen as people's 'babies' that they have to nurture and develop and grow until it's something they can be proud of - but how the heck can you be proud of that?!

Part 3 -

My face book persona is basically me. Ofcourse i have left off details of my life that i do not want the general public to know, but what i'm doing at uni and where i work is on there. Facebook is the only online persona i actually care about - therefore i will make it like me. I would not put anywhere near as much detail on any other social networking site or tool. I have not included religious beliefs or political beliefs as i think it causes problems. I don't want someone to read this and pass judgement on me before i meet them, so for that i have made my avatar as neutral as possible.

They CAN however make judgement on my likes and dislikes. I do not mind sharing that information as it is objectionable in that everyone has different taste. I also do not mind sharing photos with my friends - as long as facebook never gets me fired, or miss out on a new job because someone found out something they shouldn't have - then everything is ok!

Part 4 - Explaining Dick

Dick's presentation brought up 4 points about online fraud and online security issues. These are Phishing, Farming, Identity Theft, and Privacy Invasion.

Phishing is used by bots to scan the web for email addresses so that they can send hoax emails, either to obtain credit card information, or to send out viruses to users. Example - a phishing system could obtain a bunch of email addresses for commonwealth back customers, create a fake email, and send to all. This could be enquiring about their credit card information, and some un-thoughtful users would unknowingly give their details and their credit card could be used.

Pharming - Is when scammers farm the internet in search of harmless users and scam them. Pharming is a more involved and developed form of Phishing where coders try to duplicate real world as best they can. If someone thought they were logging into their online bank and it was a Pharming scam - the hackers could take control of their account until the bank is notified.

Identity Theft - Is when someone creates an account pretending to be someone they are not. For example, Australian Comedian and Musician Tim Minchin has a facebook site. There are 4 other "Tim Minchin's" claiming to be THE Tim Minchin... This can lead to all sorts of privacy drama.

Privacy invasion - An in vasion of one's own privacy. The unwanted, unauthorized view of seeking out a person's information and using it in a way the user has not agreed to. This could include Facebook photos. You can view a person's photos in an album (of whom you are not friends with) provided one of your friends is tagged in the album. This allows for access to photos they should not have access to. Some persons go further in using this information by distributing the photos or putting them in a place on the web that the owner has not warranted.

Topic 2 ist kaputt!

Seeya Later!

Heuristic Experience Topic 1 part 3

Heuristic Evaluation:- Evaluation of a User Interface Design. The goal is to find the usability problems in the design, so they can be worked out and fixed during the iterative design process. It involves having evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles.

http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/

The Heuristic Evaluation I used was from http://oldwww.acm.org/perlman/question.cgi

I would love to have done an eval on the CSU system, but i know all the ins and outs already. I think this should be done on a relatively new system, you aren’t too familiar with.

Therefore, i have chosen a bank that i do not bank with – ANZ.

Q1 - 6 - It was very categorized.

Q2 - 6

Q3 - 6

Q4 - 5 - There is too much information for a new user. You have to read everything to find what you want.

Q5 - 5

Q6 - 6

Q7 - 3 - It was simple to learn once you get over the initial *whack* of information.

Q8 - 5

Q9 - 4 - The error messages were clear, but hard to find! They were not large, or bold.

Q10 - 4

Q11 - 5

Q12 - 6

Q13 - 5 - Information is easy to understand but there is so much of it!

Q14 - 5

Q15 - 2 - All the pages are too cluttered. There are way too many boxes and links and tabs.

Q16 - 2 - As above.

Q17 - 1 - I do not like the look of the interface.

Q18 - 5 -

Q19 - 5

Positives :-

*There is lots of info - you can research and banking topic.

*The bright colours enable good visability.

* -

Negatives :-

*Lingo and terminology is used that people would not immediately recognise. (ie - "SmartyBank")

*Web site is too busy and cluttered. There are too many links and tabs. Too much info to sort through.

*Limited use of online forms. For almost everything you need to call the bank or visit the nearest branch.

Overall the website had good information - it was just poorly set out. After a few times accessing this website i think i would have it downpat.

Au Revoir

Topic 1 part 2

Topic 1 part 2

Folksonomy aka collaborative tagging, is a collection of people who participate together in organizing information into categories. It is a word that has been formed from the words folk – (people) and taxonomy – (or taxis – to arrange/organise). Folksonomy is used by participants to organise content such as web pages and photographs by using labels called tags. Tags are used to ease users in their search for information.

Two widely used websites for folksonomy are Flickr (for photos) and del.icio.us.

The website Del.icio.us stores the most popular tags on the homepage for users going to the site. Folksonomy is a flat namespace, in that there is no hierarchy. There are related tags however for similar search functions.

http://www.enterprisesocialsoftware.info/glossary

http://www.adammathes.com/academic/computer-mediated-communication/folksonomies.html

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is about creating a Web work of machine-readable homepages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do. Tags are also used for FOAF, highlighting users interests and their relationship to other people. It is a project designed to compliment the web as for connecting social networking sites, in that it bridges the gap between facebook users and users that chose a different social networking tool.

http://www.foaf-project.org/

Topic 1 part 1

(Bah! Here be the start of the uni stuff...)

Social Networking

The article implies that social networking is for groups of people with common interests that can use Information technologies as a means of communication to discuss these interests. One of the more common mediums is websites. The websites are sites you can be granted access to, and once access is granted you can read other peoples pages, and info, and discuss and share your own experiences.

Social networking is bridging the gap between time zones, and geographic regions to bring people 'togther' but online, extending the amount of people a communication can reach, and opening the discussion to (usually) a world-wide forum of users, information, opinions, and alike.

http://www.whatissocialnetworking.com/

Online Collaboration

Online Collaboration is the use of Information Technology to facilitate a group of users to work together on a particular task or topic. It is a facilitator of effective learning, and like Social networking, bridges the gaps between people in different time zones and geographic locations. Collaboration is necessary to create an efective learning environment, providing the necessary discussions, arguments, agreements, that people need to reflect on before learning becomes knowledge.

Online collaboration brings about convenience for collaborative work groups, and with the numerous tools now available, it will only get easier, and more in use.

http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/proceedings/agostinho/paper.html

Auf Weidersehen!

*yawwwwwn*

Been a bit ill over the past few days, but thought i'd post once more before getting into the uni stuff (YUCK!). I'll only make it a short one, but i got pondering today whether or not people think about what they say before they say it. For example, where i work, we have alot of students. (I'm being sneaky here again....can't reveal my *awesome* identity). One student brought their laptop that needed fixing - as i said, i'm a spunky can-do career girl in IT - and making idle chit-chat he says, "It's been so cold here, when is it summer in *particular town*?"

*stares blankly* - "Uhh, usually in the summer months....you know, like, December to February..."

*student screws up face* - "What?!? I'm not even going to BE here then...is it going to be winter until then?"

*looks down at computer to avoid eye contact* - "No usually we have a bit of an in-betweener called Spring."

*student smiles* - "Oh yeah! ....Spring!"

I quickly finished up and sent him on his merry way. Won't tell you what he was studying, but you *do* need a UAI of 90 + hmmm...

That's about it for now. I think i'll do some actuall uni work (hehe)...

Sayonara!

Greetings and Salutations...

Greetings and Salutations,

This is my first blog, shy about it being in the public eye, but i think i have enough of a thick skin, and a heavy internet disguise (haha, a monkey >.> ) to get over that pretty quickly. I'll start this off by pondering for a moment (gee, i'm deep), the fact that i hate Mondays, and I hate rainy days...so if a rainy day falls on a monday, do they cancel each other out?

My first post and i've lied to you already...i *love* rainy days ><

Im a spunky can-do career woman, who works in IT, (not management or anything), and also unlike Jen Barber, i actually *do* know a thing or two about comp-uters. I was born and bred in the Central West of NSW, moved around alot while young, then after finishing school, packed up my bags and headed to CSU in Wagga to study IT. Now in my third year, i've left internal study to pursue a career in answering phones, leaving me with DE study.

My likes include laughing and smiling..(It's infectious, and easy to do), painting, making jokes out of practically everything i do, and long car trips with someone who doesn't mind the sound of me belting out the words to Don't stop me now by Queen.

My dislikes include pension day (for the down town traffic), bad drivers, queue cutters, show-boats, and teenagers....(i can only say that last one as of 5 months ago! Ha!)

I have one dog named Rufi who is black and white, only because I couldn't afford the coloured giga-pet.

Im thinking this is enough for my first ever posting, so thanks for reading!

Ciao!