Chat me up baby... Module2 Chat Task

I have been using chat for a long time but I have really found the benefits of it greatly expand for me over the past few years with it's work uses. Here is a summary of the chat tools I use often and the applications I employ with them:

• Skype is definitely the best thing since sliced bread for me. It makes my job a lot easier and certainly more flexible because I have the ability to work from home and communicate with my colleagues and boss cheaply and quickly. I do use it for personal chats with friends but not nearly as often now as I used to. The video and voice options I tend to reserve for use with family and friends because I really have no need to see my colleagues in the office and most of the time they don't have speakers, camera or microphone. I did a chat with a few folks from net11 on chat and found that we mainly had small talk. One thing I find annoying with all types of synchronous text chat is the long pauses caused by folks writing long chat messages with two finger typing.... ARRRRGH. (fortunately, this was not something I experienced with the chat I had with net11 folks)

• Facebook has a chat function which I use for catching up with friends and often e-learning colleagues as well. It is usually a ten minute quick chat. The functionality of the facebook chat is limited; I am yet to find a way to include multiple chat members; people who are offline often appear online and vice versa; messages often take a long time to come through. This article about other uses of facebook chat has given me some ideas and I guess I probably am not using it to it's full potential.

• Ning has the ability to put a chat function in it but to be honest, I think it is pretty rubbish. There doesn't seem to be any audible indication of an incoming message and chats seem to stay there for days... in hindsight I might take it away from the ning I have set up. This forum discussion on a ning website I am a part of reflects some of the problems I have experienced in the past with ning chat.

• Twitter, though not a synchronous communication chat method as such, has proved to be a very good way for me to have "chats". Though you often have to wait for a long time (maybe a whole day) the responses you get seem to be measured (usually) and thoughtful because they are public record (if you use the @reply as opposed to the DM direct message). For me the fantastic opportunity that you get with twitter which you don't with many other methods is the access to contemporaries all around the world who you otherwise would never have had access to. I have managed to have a few impromptu quick twitter chats with some of the net11 folks and these have added to the connections we have experienced in the forums.

I know these chat methods are probably not the most popular or even the most effective but they are the ones that I use and those are my reflections on them. Should I try something else? well I have used MSN, ICQ and others in the past but this is what I currently play with.I have found that the asynchronous discussions occurring in the webct forums, on blogs and other web2.0 tools to be more akin to my optimum communication style.... but I like to play with all sorts of stuff so I reckon I will be playing with another tool that is bigger and better at some stage down the track and I'll let you know how that goes too ;)

holy .....ummmm..... I mean merry ....

Here is the truth: I have been participating in this course at uni. Open University via Curtin to be precise. And. Well. I've also been travelling. Travelling in two senses of the word.

I have driven from Adelaide to Brisbane. I am writing this in Brisbane at my folks house where I grew up. So back to the uni part. I have been participating in online discussions, reading blogs and doing tasks. The same stuff as anyone reading this probably has. I have also been catching up with family, cycling around Western Plains Zoo, reading blogs, stressing about concepts (you who know what I mean, KNOW WHAT I MEAN) And that brings me to the other journey.

I have been travelling along on the blogadrine trail. Blogadrine is the hit you get from receiving comments. Participating in conversation and making choices. I don't think it's a word but I am coining it now if it is not. Blogadrine, it's addictive. You write a post, you wait for the comment, you comment back. The cycle can be unerring. I am certain I am not the first one to say that it is an ego kick. Having work published the minute you write it and read instantly and feedback received is awesome.

But here is the reality kick. I gotta write a heap of stuff about concepts. OK that aint so bad, What scares me is the academic stuff. I gotta write like stuff with quotes and stuff? And an anotiamated bibliomographamy. Crap. the onion is peeling away now. The skin is being shed and the core will soon be revealed. Please you experienced academia types, come with me and help me with my assignment!!!!

testing voice thread

Module 2 Lists Task

As a convenient coincidence for the Email Lists Task I was asked by my boss at work to design a Christmas card and a little video for emailing out to our students, clients and associates. The image I produced is there at the left and the video was a 10 second 400kb .mov file. So when I found out that they wanted to send the file to 350 recipients from the Office Manager outlook account I started to have some concerns. 350 X 500kb equals a whole host of problems.

As we are an educational institution we have access to the fantastic resources at Edna one of which is Edna Lists. I applied for and set up an email list some time ago and it had been lying dormant ever since. So I put two and two together and the result was a nice shiny email list with 350 emails addresses in it. I have to say I am indebted to the fabulous Kerry Johnson who I am lucky enough to have in my PLN as my Edna expert. I sent out a tweet for help and she responded with her phone number!! Now that's customer service eh.

The email list software interface (is that the right terminology?) that Edna uses for their lists is Lyris and so far it has been a snap to use. At this point in time the email list will only be used for sending information emails about BJ's Australia but there is the possibility we will use it more as a two way communication tool. I really liked the analysis email I received in my inbox a few hours after we sent out the email message. It provided me with excellent information about the delivery successes and failures.

Screenshot of Edna Lists in action.

So for this task I am going to answer the questions with my experiences of today and my work use of email lists firmly in the forefront of my thoughts.

What are the pros and cons of email lists versus discussion boards?
Are there certain kinds of communication or purposes more suited to one than the other?
For our needs there is no question, a discussion board simply would not have provided the services we needed. We needed a speedy way to get the Christmas Message out. We did not need to have a bunch of folks discussing the whys and wherefores of Christmas. This was a unidirectional connection with a single short term purpose and a secondary but no less important opportunity for us to create a legacy for easy communication with our network.

Of course there are pros (here is a link to the Lyris product tour) and cons for email lists. And of course you can all find good reasons not to use Discussion Boards like this and well our course discussion board is a prime example of an extremely useful discussion board.

For me this experience has also opened up a whole new can of worms and I'm sure there will be plenty of people dead against the way I have used email lists today. There is no question however that for the BJ's , this use of email lists is exactly what we needed.

Module 2 Email Tasks

I am using MS Outlook 2007 as my email beast.

I took a while to work out how I was going to do this task. But I worked out that if I right clicked on an email message in my outlook window, I could then choose “Message options” and this opened up a window with the header info in it. I then cut and paste the header info into notepad so I could get a better look at it. The following text is what I saw when I did this for an email message received from Curtin when I was making my first queries into this course.

In a feeble attempt to avoid spam bots I have changed the @ symbol here to (at) .

Return-Path: <internetstudies(at)exchange.curtin.edu.au>

Received: from nschwingx03p.mx.bigpond.com ([134.7.32.165])

by nschwmtas03p.mx.bigpond.com with ESMTP

id <20081007043933.WTSL1796.nschwmtas03p.mx.bigpond.com(at)nschwingx03p.mx.bigpond.com>

for <rhys.moult(at)bigpond.com>; Tue, 7 Oct 2008 04:39:33 +0000

Received: from email.curtin.edu.au ([134.7.32.165])

by nschwingx03p.mx.bigpond.com with ESMTP

id <20081007043932.RYKE16043.nschwingx03p.mx.bigpond.com(at)email.curtin.edu.au>

for <rhys.moult(at)bigpond.com>; Tue, 7 Oct 2008 04:39:32 +0000

Received: from exmsp2.perth.ad.curtin.edu.au ([134.7.178.11]) by email.curtin.edu.au with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);

Tue, 7 Oct 2008 12:39:31 +0800

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Subject: RE: Bachelor of Arts (internet studies)

Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 12:37:27 +0800

Message-ID: <092BF7A1BC389E489A69DC764F23CD870EB154E1(at)exmsp2.perth.ad.curtin.edu.au>

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Thread-Topic: Bachelor of Arts (internet studies)

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References: <002701c927a6$aeaabfd0$0c003f70$(at)moult(at)bigpond.com> <092BF7A1BC389E489A69DC764F23CD870EB154E0(at)exmsp2.perth.ad.curtin.edu.au> <004d01c92835$6b002880$41007980$(at)moult(at)bigpond.com>

From: "HUM-InternetStudies" <internetstudies(at)exchange.curtin.edu.au>

To: "Rhys Moult" <rhys.moult(at)bigpond.com>

Return-Path: internetstudies(at)exchange.curtin.edu.au

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I went to this site after a google search http://www.visualware.com/resources/tutorials/email.html and it helped me to begin to understand what I was seeing here.

And to answer the questions in the Module:

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?

The origin of the email is exmsp2.perth.ad.curtin.edu.au which I presume is the name of the computer the email was sent from.

The Path was pink to green to yellow.

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

· I use ‘cc’ quite a bit when I want to include my boss or project team in on a conversation or a topic. I believe this gets me off the hook a lot when someone says “why didn’t you tell me?”

· I use ‘bcc’ if I am doing a big mail out to lot’s of recipients or if I want someone to know something but I don’t want other recipients to know I am sharing ;P

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

I tend to use widely recognised formats like PDF or MS Word, though I did have a bit of a problem when I upgraded to office 2007. As is often the case with proprietary systems when a new product comes out it is not 100% compatible with the old versions. I was sending out attachments in word 2007 format at the start but now I usually send out a version saved in the old format. Grrr MS…..

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

To be honest I don’t really use the filters to their potential, in fact I hardly use them at all. Part of me doesn’t trust the filter (funny considering I would have to set up the parameters myself). I am worried that I will lose potentially important documents. So I manually filter the emails myself. I look at the subject line and the “from” field and assess if I need to open it from there. I guess I should really review this, but old habits die hard.

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

The image of my mail folders can be seen in this post. The why…… well it has just evolved this way over time the reasons too numerous to even start to contemplate. Though again, looking at this module has made me realise I need to review my use of folders and organise my email much better.

Further to this, since we are talking about email I decided to email this to my blogger account so here is me stretching my boundaries a bit.

(now editing in the WYSIWYG editor in blogger) Some things I noticed about emailing were:

• setting up to email here was very easy
  
• the formating of the post was mostly maintained
• the images dissapeared (I wonder where they went)
• I forgot to take out my email signature (now done)
• MICROSOFT OUTLOOK PUTS A HEAP OF CRAP HTML IN MY POSTS ARRRGGGH
• the above point has made me so very frustrated that I have abandoned trying to insert my image where I want it
  

Traceroute Task

I had been thinking about trying to do part of these posts using video so I produced this video today. The result is incredably boring but the process was useful and interesting for me.

I learned a couple of things:

1. I won't be vlogging much more in the future for this unit because it is incredably time consuming not to mention the boredom factor for my readers. (tell me if I'm wrong)
   
2. Talking through the procedures and the questions seemed to assist me to come up with answers to my own questions by thinking logically. Not entirely sure if they were the correct assumptions though.....
3. put 1 and 2 together and the result is, though I might not publish the videos, I still may produce them for the learning value.
   

After I completed that section, I went back in and decided to download Visual Route for the next Traceroute task.

I took some screenshots of the results of the Visual Route traceroute and they can be found here if you are interested.

To summize the photos:

• traceroute to curtin.edu.au from my computer as compared to from the web hosted tool; this comparison showed 19 hops versus 21 and 100ms versus 123 which I guess is no surprise because the webtool is hosted in the States.
• traceroute from my computer to webct.edu.au versus curtin.edu.au; to webct was almost twice as long at 193ms but the same number of hops. Grrrr webCT!

Time to go over to the forums I think and mine the knowledge there......

FTP

CAPITALIZATION MATTERS!

This task was easy for me with no hassles because I already had Filezilla and have used it quite a bit over the last few months.

I was interested to see Fetch as a recommended FTP client for Mac users. I used to use Fetch on my old Clamshell iBook back when I was building my first website. I still have that old Grey Clamshell and the kids use it for games! It still works a treat too : )

Telnet Task B

Let's face it, I am a geek at heart. The blinkenlights telnet site warms the cockles of that geeky heart.

Creativity is an amazing thing and innovation even more so. IMHO Innovation is the driving force behind the blinkenlights telnet as opposed to creativity. The guy "(a "whacked out geek called Sten)" according to the blinkenlights site /) obviously had plenty of innovation in his soul (not to mention a hell of a lot of patience) to be able to put telnet to this wonderful use.

Innovation drives technology to the brink and creativity takes technologists to their next new invention. Sten took a well known and well loved movie and used technology to show it in a new light. He used the technology to the brink.

When innovation is stifled by the limits of technology there is a need for someone who is creative to develop new technology. This cycle is never ending and sometimes quite rapid.

The explosion of WEB2.0 is evidence of this as is the current discussion of the semantic web (web3.0). The innovators have taken the technology and beat it to within an inch of its life and soon they will need to invent new tools to embrace this growing need.

Am I thinking this too deep?

Telnet Task A

My initial experience using telnet as an information searching tool is not a happy one. I used the Windows Vista help page as advised and followed the steps there with no problems. I found the connectivity to be sketchy. I wonder if this is a problem with my telnet browser choice and perhaps I should try some other browsers. I found this great list of telnet applications http://www.telnet.org/htm/applications.htm and should check some of these out.... I imagine a few folks will read this and say "ahh you're using Vista, there's your problem".

This screen capture from my vista telnet client says "what kind of terminal are you using?" and gives two options: V for VT1oo and W for NCSA VT100. I have no idea idea what these options are refering to and will try to resarch this more but would be happy if anyone wanted to add there ideas here in the form of a comment!

The email function of the Deakin Library telnet server was nice and is certainly useful but I hated not being able to cut and paste in the telnet client window! Drag and drop and cut and past are some of the features I would miss if I was using telnet often. Makes you wonder how we did it back then and how long it must have taken us.

I believe telnet, on first impressions to be a clunky and outdated tool/protocol and I will be interested to see the next site we are directed to for Task B. I can see that it must have had it's uses in it's days so I will research this a little before I discount it.

Top five tips for new bloggers.

1. KISS You know what that means right? Keep it simple _ _ _. You can fill in the gap but in this case the second s is for startup. If you keep it nice and simple at the start by choosing a generic format and not getting bogged down on gadgets, widgets and themes, you will get your blog up much quicker and can get started on the real guts which is the content you put in it.
2. Tag it. Use your tags on all your posts and photos too where you can. Do it right from the start and continue to do it for the life of your blog. You will get "google juice" for it, your readers will be able to search the blog much easier and if you want to use your blog as part of your portfolio in the future it will be much easier to link your posts to relevant areas in your portfolio.
3. Link it. Linking to other sites takes your readers on a journey and adds to the interactivity of your blog. It also helps search engines like Google to increase your page rank so that more traffic will be attracted to your blog.
   
4. Don't Cram it. Use of photos is good but too much becomes overload. Restrict your photos to one or two max per post. If you want to use more then link to a photo sharing site like flickr or better still chuck in a badge or a widget. Too much in the way of writing will probably be a bad thing too. Make a point, substantiate it with some links to other blogs or websites and then ask for some comments.
5. Comment back. Once you do get some readers, you'll want them to share their thoughts on your musings right? Otherwise what's the point of using a blog? If someone challenges your ideas on your blog, don't hide away from them, comment back and start a discussion. And go over to other peoples blogs and share your ideas on their sites. Chances are they will head to your site then to see what you have to say in your own domain.