Anthony’s Net11 Learning Log

I choose to search for the term Leo Laporte and as I use google for 95% of my searches it was the engine of choice. The result was as follows:

Leo Laporte returned 1,120,000 results and the first result was http://leoville.com/

Google

After I finished with google I used Copernic Web Search with the same phrase. The first thing I noticed was the amount of results returned and how low it was at 54. Interestingly it returned the same first search result and it did not mention google as one of the search engine it used to find the listing. I found the results for google were better for what I was searching for, why? No results from the same site in the top 5 and the results were more up to date.

Cop

1. Adobe's pdf reader

I have used Adobe reader for many years, but last year I changed to foxit reader. Foxit does the same job but doesn't take up as much space and is less buggy. PDF has really become a format of choice for the web and a good reader is a must.

2. Flash/Shockwave Players

I have just upgraded to flash 9 and I had really forgotten how much I use them. The make the web a much richer place, but it comes at a price as it can bring your system to a halt. The reason I just went through the upgrade was to fix a problem flash had caused with firefox. Flash has even moved on to mobile phones with my nokia n95 running a version of flash, this to me shows how important flash has become to the internet.

3. Media Players

Windows media player 10 came pre-installed in my version of windows vista and I had used many different versions over the years. I also have Quicktime installed on my pc and is the player I use the most as it's intergratered into itunes. Both work really well and I could not work without them. Realplayer is not something I have on my pc for many years as the .rm format is not very well used on the web in recent years. Saying that it is the media player on my phone.

4. Search Manager/Combiners

I have not used a program like this before so I downloaded Copernic Meta. When I tried to search the internet it took me to a webpage with my search results, while they were from a number of search engines used, the results were know better than google.

5. Bookmark Manager

I use a plugin within my internet browser that integrates really well in firefox for the social bookmarking site del.icio.us. This is a tool I use all the time, both for work and fun. This is the way I see the internet going where browsers are going with projects like flock.

6. Offline Browser/Copier

I did not download any piece of software or plugin for this part of the task. Simply I think there is no longer a need to do this with the amount of broadband in Australia both hard wired(adsl, cable) and wireless(3g, hsdpa)

Blogs are something I am very comfortable with and I have setup a number in the past. I have installed software on my own servers and I have also used hosted services like the service I'm typing this entry own VOX. Both have there advantages and disadvantages. Hosted services are more easy to setup and once they are setup they will run for as long as the company is in business. While a self hosted solution is a little hard to setup you can create a blog that has it's own look, as well as customizing it with widgets.

A blog is a term that is short for weblog and has gained great popularity in recent years. So a blog is just a log of thing you do on the internet and it can take a number of different forms html pages, special blog software, tumble logs and micro blogs. In this task we were asked to setup a blog and the easiest way to do this was with blog software. Since I'm using a blog for the learning log I'll show you a screen shot of it.

Writing an entry

Blogr

The blog

Blog

The main difference between blog software and a normal html is the updatability of a blog. You can add new content to a blob with out changing the structure of the site. You can also update via email, a desktop tool or even sms. Another great feature of blogs is rss feeds, you can use these in app's like google reader so you can get the information published on the site without having to visit it.

In this module we reservist the concept of ftp and this time we have to use an ftp program to upload a file. This is something I do on a daily basis for my websites. As I had my ftp program setup for my websites I decided that I would host the page on one of my websites. This took me two minutes to do using filezilla, this is done by clicking and dragging the file into the correct directory.

Ftpup

We were asked to design a webpage using the tutoral set out for this part of the module. This was simple and straight froward and it layout everything that was need to create a page. This is not something I had done from scratch before, but I had dabbled in templates for wordpress and to be honest I didn't really know what I was doing. But after undertaking this exercise I feel I have a much better grasp on what I should be doing.

Html code

Please note this page was made in early June, but I have been slow updating the blog. My skills have advanced much more as I'm studying ned11, everything that is written above was written at the time I wrote the code for the page. It was a nice introduction and as this is the foundation that the WWW is built on, it's important to understand what html is and how it works.

Html finished

More coming soon

For this part of module 2 I had to post on a newsgroup. Newsgroups are not something I have really used in the past. There are a number of ways to access newsgroups which sounds great, but for a newbie like me is confusing. I end up using google groups and using there web interface. I ended up posting on an afl newsgroup and the process to do that was easy.

Newsg1

I got a response very quickly which I was surprised by as I didn't think there would be that many people using the newsgroups. I don't think this is a technology that I would use ahead of forums or other modern technology's like social networks, but all the same it was pleasant experience. The questions that I asked were answered by a number of people and it was very easy to follow.

News reply

What are the pros and cons of email lists versus discussion boards?

Pro's

• Most responses are moderated before an answer is published, a discussion board is moderated after the the response has been posted
  
• People tend to treat email with more respect and there is less likely to be flame wars
• More likely to stay on topic
• No need to go to the website, the responses go straight to your inbox
• It is private to a certain extent
  

• A chance to get more spam
• Clog up your email and get emails that you are not interested in
  
• No where near as interactive as a discussion board
• You only get emails from when you subscribe, discussion boards often have there entire archive viewable
• Not as easy to follow as a treaded discussion board

Are there certain kinds of communication or purposes more suited to one than the other?

It really depends on the user, but general more private subjects are suited to email lists. Also email lists are more suited to very niche topic, where the volume of responses and topics are more suited to email. I really feel that email lists are a thing of the past, with the volume of other email most peoples inboxes are already swamped.

1. What information about a user's email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message?

• who sent the email
  
• who the email is too
  
• the subject, which often includes how urgent it is
• who else received it
  

2. In what cases would you find it useful to use the 'cc', 'bcc' and 'reply all functions of email?

• 'cc' or carbon copy is used to send someone a copy of an email or to send the same email to multiple people
• 'bcc' if you want to hide the recipients email addresses
• 'Reply All' will reply to all recipients of an email, in gmail there is a conversion view when you use reply and reply all and is helpful to stay organised

3. In what ways can you ensure that an attachment you send will be easily opened by the receiver?

• Default attachment should be MIME
• Make sure the recipient can open the attachment
• if you send them a excel spreadsheet, make sure they have excel
• the size of attachment must not exceed the allowable limit
  
• Make sure the recipient can receive attachments
• A number of isp/email providers are blocking attachments, which has lead to a number companies like you send it

Attachment I believe have reach there limit as far as useful goes. With the number of viruses/security problems and the limit in size compared to other files that are transfered via the internet, I have seen a real down turn in the number I receive. Instead people are send a far greater amount of links, I can't remember the last time I was sent a video, but today I got sent 3 links to youtube.

4. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose?

• I forward all my mail into one account, there is a rule applied to emails come from the forwarded address
• they don't show up in my main account
• but they have a label apply(it's like a folder)

5. How have you organised the folder structure of your email and why?

I don't use folders as I use gmail. I do use label and as stated in the last answer I have a label setup for each of my forwarded email addresses. Labels are better than folders in my view because many labels can be used on one email without having to be reproduced.

This bring me to a broader question of what are the advantages/disadvantages of web based mail? Web based mail has the same look no matter what computer you are viewing it on. It's also true that web based email can be accessed by almost computer that is connected to the internet. The one major drawback I have with web based email is you have to be connected to the net to view it and nothing is stored locally.

Traceroute

The final part of module one was to use a number of internet tools to complete the final task. The first tool that I used was from network-tools.com which I used to run a trace route to curtin.edu.au. It took 18 hops, at a speed of 244ms and the final ip was 134.7.134.47. A Trace Route is something I have used in the past, mainly to try and identify ip's that are causing trouble with my website, it is a very useful tool. It is also a reminder of how the internet was built and still works to this very day, with increased speed it is easy to forget.

Ping

The last task undertaken for this module was to ping 134.7.134.47 otherwise know as http://curtin.edu.au use two different tool. One an internet based tool again at network-tools.com which gave a ping time of 245ms. We were then asked to download a tool bar so we could ping from my machine to the curtin address, I didn't do this. I opened up my command line in windows vista and then pinged the address with the ping time being 70ms. This is exactly what a expected for two reasons. Network-tools is based out side Australia so there was more physical distance to travel, so my ping should be faster. The last reason for the slower ping from the Network-tools website is because of the very fact it is a website and it's trying to route more traffic.