Week 7- Tutespark

Try some free software - good examples which are free and easy to download are: Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Gimp, Audacity, amsn, pidgin, etc. Try to use it exclusively for a few days - then decide whether you like it or not! Say why/why not.

Mozilla Firefox

Pros-

I used Mozilla Firefox for five days and found it's download speed to be very fast. It seemed to be secure and safe to use and always blocked annoying pop-ups and I liked that fact that I was able to download it on my Mac and PC and also that you can choose from different themes.

Cons-

I found with Mozilla Firefox that not every website would open and said that it was not compatible and although I could have lots of tabs open in the same browser, it would often begin to freeze and I would lose all the sites I was on. I have also read that it is a memory hog and chews up all your memory which wouldn't be a good thing if i were to use it constantly.

Week 7- Response to Lecture

This week we spoke about...

Creative Commons

Creative Commons, also known as CC, began in 2003 as non-profit organisation which provided copyright, allowing creators to make their work available on more freely. Creative Common licences allow everyone and anyone to copy a piece of work as long as they give credit to the creator. However, the creator can apply conditions to their works such as non-commercial, no derivatives or shareAlike. This notion that we can rest our copyrighted content in the "interests of sharing" comes from the Free Software Foundation.

Free/Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS)

Created in 1981 by Richard M. Stallman, the Free Software Foundation created a free operating system fully made from free software known as GNU. The was before propriety software came about including windows, Microsoft office, internet explorer, etc.

Source Code- a source code is instructions written in programming format that tell a computer to do specific things and this is how computer software works. There are Four Freedoms for Free Software which is a legal document controlling what you can and can't do with Free Software:

Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.

Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.

Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.

Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

Open Source is an attempt to push Free Software into the business world. The Open Source source code is openly available and anyone is able to view it or use it. Propriety software, as mentioned before, requires the source code to remain confidential with development goals set by the software company

Week 6- Tutespark

Who owns the content you put on the internet on various sites? Who owns the right to your creations?

Facebook's terms and conditions states:

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings.

Although we may own the content that we submit on the internet, by confirming to submit content we are allowing the internet site to stream it however it is our own duty to make sure we choose who can see our content through the privacy settings.

Week 6- Response to Lecture

In this week's lecture we had a guest lecturer called Adam speaking to us about Media, New Media and Social Media.

New Media

New media is a broad term covering a wide range of "new media content". We spoke about Virtual Community which is "a way to explain a group of people who communicate via the internet", for example, chat rooms, facebook, myspace, msn messenger. Individual Identity also comes under New Media which explains how people express themselves on the internet whether it's through their chat name, customised myspace/facebook page or even the images they display. However, this notion is dangerous as people may pretend to be someone else either to impress someone, make fun of someone or even to scam people.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 emerged after the .com crash in 2000 as Tim O'Reilly and friends came up with the notion that there was a new era in web's history. It came with the idea of user-generated content which is that people create photos, videos, texts and put them on the internet, i.e. facebook, youtube. This also included sharing data openly between services on the internet and organising knowledge, which can be known as "folksonomy".

Social Media

Social media also evolved in this time including weblogs/blogs, social networking services such as facebook, myspace and twitter, chat rooms and content sharing communities. Social media is one of the most common uses for the internet and has sadly become apart of majority of people's every day lives. Although it is a great way to stay in touch with friends or meet new ones, it can also be used dangerously for things such as stalking and abuse.

Week 5- Tutorial Task

Parents of Griffith University are going on strike as they are outraged that their children are taking advantage of their parents hard earned money. Students are wasting their parents on food and alcohol at the Uni Bar, whilst their parents are also paying their tuition fees and petrol. Vivien, Alex and I interviewed a few students at Griffith University to see what their main source of income was.