Week 9 - response to content

Cyberpolitics and Hackers- are we all somehow one?

An interesting quote by Blankership (1986) from the article titled, 'Citizen-Hacker: Doing Global Democracy' from the weekly readings this week mentions "This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons? We explore... We seek after knowledge?."

This statement got me thinking about how true this statement was back in the late 80's and how relevant it is today.

A question that could be raised is are many of us today in fact, citizen hackers? Curious and simply wanting to explore and delve into the knowledge mind of a computer to gain 'digital inclusion and universal access'? (Lenczner, Townsend & Proulx et.al 2011).
I know myself, that I am forever curious as to how and why software is the way it is as I gain further knowledge, and therefore the more I want to find out about.

That's also why I believe open source software is so important and something that I have a strong ethos towards and the fact that there should be much more of it readily available for users to share with one another.

Another point that springs to mind is the fact that many years ago when they use to have meetings in the public sphere, and those who wanted to voice their opinions or share information were able to do so, I suppose it could be somewhat similar where today particular kinds of 'hackers' simply want to find out more information that they believe should be readily available for all to use and share, but cannot, therefore they hack into a system to somehow try to find it themselves.

So could it be possible that we really all are somehow a 'hack' at some point in that we wish to seek out knowledge and information that perhaps we so rightly deserve to know?

Reference:
1) Lenczner, M, Townsend, A, Proulx, F, Hall, J, Kaplan, A, 2011,
Citizen Hackers: Their Disappearing Role in the Community Wireless Movement, viewed 22 September 2011, http://www.cuwinpdf

Week 9 - Tutorial Task

Final essay topic and plan:

My chosen essay topic question is:

"What is communication? Do whales communicate? Do birds? Do atoms? Does DNA communicate? What would you suggest as the limits to communication? When does a failure of human communication occur?"

My plan of attack is outlined below:

I will first give a definition of communication and give a very broad mention and discussion on a few different forms of communication e.g, technological and non-technological communication, how particular animals communicate, perhaps types of physical and non-physical (speech) communication and perhaps touch on inter-cultural communication. I would also like to perhaps briefly discuss it's close relativity to psychology.

I will come to a conclusion after I have done more extensive research.

Some research I have found on the topic which I may use is below:

1) Communication Theory

    Volume 2, Issue 3, pages 251–259, August 1992

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2885.1992.tb00042.x/abstract

2) The “Concept” of Communication

    Frank E. X. Dance, Journal of Communication

   Volume 20, Issue 2, pages 201–210, June 1970

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1970.tb00877.x/abstract

3) Deviation, rejection, and communication.   

 Schachter, Stanley

   The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol 46(2), Apr 1951, 190-207. doi: 10.1037/h0062326

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/46/2/190/



My Political Participation on the internet:

1) Sign an e-petition.
2) Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site:
3) What is Barak Obama up to today? Can you send him a message about the importance of freedom   on the internet?
4) What are the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")?
5) When will the NBN get to your place? What are the benefits?
6) Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are. Send one a message.
7) Look up the Queensland or Australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament.

1)

E-PETITIONS CONFIRMATION Thank you Miss Morgan    Your name has been added to the Support for whaling ban E-Petition as specified below. Please print this page if you require confirmation. Click here to return to E-Petitions  TO: The Honourable the Speaker and Members of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland Queensland residents draws to the attention of the House that some reports indicate that approximately 1,400 whales are hunted and killed each year and at least 7 species of giant whales are endangered and the global whale population continues to decline. Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to join with the Federal Government in advocating for a total global ban on whaling and for strong international action to be taken against those countries who continue to support national whaling programs. 2) comment submission completeX Thank you for submitting your comment. http://health.ninemsn.com.au/blog.aspx?blogentryid=35690&showcomments=true It may take up to a day for your comment to be approved and published on the site. 3) President Obama's Schedule for Wednesday 21/09/11 is found here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2011-09-21 4) Australian Government's plans to censor the internet: "Exact plans and implementation dates for the government's so-called "clean feed" remain uncertain, but testing is due to take place with a number of ISPs. Chief amongst the arguments against the plan are the detrimental effect it will have on connection speeds (doubly ironic given the government's plans to fund a massive increase in broadband speed), and the lack of clear information on just what will be blocked." 5) There are no definite dates on when the NBN will come to the Gold Coast. The map that is on the NBN official websye (link below) only shows the first and second release sites - Brisbane city is one of the second sites.  http://nbn.gov.au/content/geographical-rollout And it states: 'There will be a rolling 12 month plan that updates every ¼ with specific details about the next locations for the next 12 months and a rolling 3 year plan. The first copy is due out 3 months after the Telstra shareholders deal.' 6) -Local for Burleigh/Miami area: Mrs Christine Ann Smith MP     -QLD list of members of parliament:  http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/documents/members/photosheet/MembersPhotoSheet.pdf      -Australian federal representitives: http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/memlist.pdf 7) MP Christine Ann Smith spoke in Parliament on 13th July 2011, this can be viewed at: http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/documents/Hansard/2011/2011_07_13_Estimates.pdf#xml=http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/internetsearch/isysquery/d5fffd9d-f714-45bd-8d5c-e6e2cab65eee/2/hilite/

Week 8 - Tutorial Task

Progress on video assignment

This week we created a facebook 'page' for our video titled "Information Fighters'. Our idea behind this page was to add some depth to our video concept by using an additional technology medium to portray our ideas and to even see how many people we can get to 'like' the page.

My job is to create this page, which only took about 45 minutes. After I got it up and running I asked my other group members to collate any pictures they had that we will possibly use in our video and upload them all to our facebook page/photo album, that way we will be able to see all the pictures as well as attract curiosity to our page.

In addition to this I have started to broaden my picture/image search to the following sites, which are both royalty free content sites:
1) Dreamstime.com
2) Shutterstock.com

I found these sites by searching in Google.
All I have done is sign up with a free membership and that enables me to browse and use thousands of royalty free images under the condition that I recognise the source of the image and the site it came from in correct format, and use them in the following ways, as stated on the FAQ page of their website:

Web sites

Multimedia presentations

Displays for trade shows

Billboards/banners

Packaging/labels

Broadcast video

On business letterhead

Brochures

Business cards

Office decoration

Decoration for restaurants

Public areas

Decoration in stores

And many other uses outlined in our Standard and Enhanced Licensing Terms

In our case, we can use them in our video.

We also met up this week to start putting our images/music and voice overs into Final Cut Pro to make our video.
We went to the Mac computer lab at uni with all our images and music ready to upload to the Final Cut Pro and realised it wasn't on those computers!

So we have had to use iMovie instead - a little scary being that none of our group members have used it before.
We have managed to teach ourselves how to upload all our images/music to it to start creating and editing the video.

We haven't ended up using all the images we collated on our facebook page for the video, because we've found while editing the video, that the short 1.5 - 3 minute time limit is rather quick!

Finally after inserting all our images and text into the video, (we decided against using voice recording too as it takes away from the legitimacy feel of the video) we have completed our video!

It has taken roughly 7.5 hours to get it the way we want it, well considering the short time frame of just 3 weeks that we have had to think of an idea, research images, music and copyrighting laws and put it all into video form, we have done well.

The last thing we have done, and after seeking advice from out tutor is credit every single one of the images and the song that we used in our video.

We have done this by attributing them all in the description part beneath where we uploaded our video to You Tube.

A great job and here it is for your viewing:

Reference:
Frequently Asked Questions, viewed 19 September,
http://www.shutterstock.com/faq.mhtml#FAQ_Q_HOW_DOES_SHUTTERSTOCK_WORK_.

Week 7 - Tutorial Task

Why I believe Facebook works:

I believe facebook is one of the most useful and participatory web applications I have ever seen for reasons such as:

1. Cures Boredom
2. Assists in finding lost friends/family members easily
3. Keeps you up to date with events
4. Allows you to upload, view and share photos with friends
5. Great marketing/networking/advertising tool
6. It's FREE to use

I know this due to the phenomenally high number of users who are registered on Facebook - over 8 million active users (Facebook 2011). In addition, more than 2 billion posts are liked and commented on, on a daily basis.

Reference:
Facebook: Statistics, viewed 17 September 2011,
https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics


Progress on video assignment to date:
This week we have all been researching sites with uncopyrighted content that we can possibly use in our video.
I started my search at http://creativecommons.org where I've been looking through various pictures that we could use to portray our main theme and ideas for the video.

I'll admit it's not the ideal site for a large range of pictures but they should be adequate.
I have found about 5 pictures that we can possibly use and import to Final Cut Pro (software program found on Mac computers).

In terms of ideas, we are thinking the video will have some voice overs, pictures and music. Finding the content shouldn't be too difficult, it's putting the video itself together that will prove a challenge!

I have never used Final Cut Pro, but one of our group members has as she owns a Mac computer and plans to show us how to use it in producing our video.

Week 8 - Lecture response

Free or open source software

After reading an article by Matt Lee (2011) titled  'What is free software and why is it so important for society?', it answered a lot of questions I had about what free/open software is.

As a brief definition it's basically the opposite to proprietory (commercial) software and allows software users to be able to share knowledge and content, study it or add/modify it.

I think this is a fantastic idea and have since then, been using different types of free software including GIMP a  similar type program to Photoshop but the difference being that it comes as a free download as opposed to Photoshop which is a very expensive commercialised software program.

I also found that Kingsley-Hughes (2007) has a list (below) of free alternative software programs which can be downloaded from the net.
I will endeveour to use some of these without a doubt over the last half of the semester.

References:
Kingsley-Hughes, A 2007, Free Alternatives to Commercial Software, viewed 17 September 2011, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/free-alternatives-to-commercial-software/968

Lee, M 2011, What is free software and why is it so important for society?, viewed 17 September 2011, <https://learning.secure.griffith.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_101249_1&frame=top>

Free	Commercial
7-Zip	WinZip
CDBurnerXP	Nero
OpenOffice.org	Microsoft Office
Thunderbird	Outlook
Paint.NET/GIMP	Photoshop
AVG Free	Symantec/McAfee etc
UBCD4Win	Norton SystemWorks
Any Linux distro…	Windows/Mac

Software	Description
FoxIt	PDF reader
Real Alternative	RealPlayer/Real One alternative
avast! 4 Home AV	Anti virus
ZipGenius	Compression tool
ImgBurn	ISO burning tool
Serif software	DTP software
Google Pack	Misc
CCleaner	System optimizer/privacy
Inkscape	Vector drawing tool
AdAware	Antispyware
Spybot S&D	Antispyware
Audacity	Sound editor
FreeMind	Mind mapping
Gantt Project	Project manager
Open Workbench	Project manager
Scribus	DTP
Blender	3D creation
SoftMaker Office	Office suite
Timidity++	MIDI sequencer
PDFCreator	PDF creator
Hugin	Panorama creator
OpenDisc	ISO crammed with high quality apps

Week 7 - Lecture Response

Producers and Produsage

Produsage - 'the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement' (Bruns 2005).

The more I read about this topic the more I liked the idea of user led content production, better known as produsage.

For example, and as mentioned by Bruns, Wikipedia is a perfect example of Produsage and is where 'the production of ideas takes place in a collaborative, participatory environment which breaks down the boundaries between producers and consumers and instead enables all participants to be users as well as producers of information and knowledge'.

I think this is a fantastic way of users getting the best opportunity to showcase their knowledge and allow participation in the sharing of knowledge on a interactive platform.

I believe if users have or think they may have the knowledge to contribute to a topic then they should be given the opportunity, and of course the correct procedures should be in place to ensure that what they have stated is correct.

On the other hand there is nothing wrong with the tradition of Producers, I just believe now that we have the technology and opportunity to contribute to worldwide knowledge we should use it.

References:

Bruns, A 2005, Towards Produsage Futures for User-Led Content Production, Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Retrieved 17 September 2011 via Learning at Griffith site, Griffith University.

Week 6 - Lecture response

Mischief Marketing

I have come to learn that mischief marketing is: 'unorthodox, bold and most importantly, successful' (Bahadur 2011).
Two examples of mischief marketing are:

1) When Netscape sued Microsoft due to the underlying fact that Microsoft was apparently violating monopoly rules with Internet Explorer. Such a daring move for Netscape, but the effectiveness of this campaign came out of the attention that they received in doing so.

2) The Blair Witch Project creators got people talking predominantly (through viral marketing) in online chat rooms about this mysterious documentary which was centred around the legend of the Blair Witch.
They purposely talked up the horror film to gain public attention and to spread word of mouth about the film. This turned out to be a very successful film grossing over 200 million dollars. Not bad for a film that cost around 22 thousand to make.

I believe viral marketing is, if used correctly a very effective method of marketing, though in saying that do not believe that there is much of a theory or technical explanation to it either.

It's success seems to be in it's spontaneity and unorthodox way.

References:
Bahadur, S 2011, Mischief Marketing : going UnOrThOdOx, viewed 1 September, 2011,  <http://marketingbrainstorm.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/mischief-marketing/>