Day 4: Lecture on media studies

We started of today’s lecture by watching a video “EPIC 2014”. The video talks about the origin of Google, Amazon.com, and Friendster. It deals with the advancements made by Google. Google forms a grid with all its applications. It is known as the Google grid. MSN launches the news botster. The video shows the merging of Google and Amazon.com to form Google Zone in 2008. Finally Google launches EPIC (Evolving personalised information construct) in 2014. It has contributions from everyone and some may even get paid for it.

Then the lecture dealt with new media, internet and cyber cultural studies. The popular media interest in early 90’s was the internet. By end of 90’s people started looking at the internet as a whole new area. They started studying about the social networking and economic interactions happening over the internet. The four types of investigations which were taking place online were contextualising interactions, discoursing cyber space, digital design, online access and barriers. There is a lot of research going on in the new media department. That sums up the lecture about the study on new media.

Day 3: Tutorial task on wikipedia guidelines

People use Wikipedia as a source to get information. It is a good site to get a feel for some ideas. Wikipedia depends on individuals who edit articles in it. It is not always accurate or comprehensive. Wikipedia follows a list of guidelines which are to be used by the editors to write articles. The seven points which are used in the guidelines are behavioural, content, deletion, editing, naming conventions, notability and style guidelines.

The first topic I have chosen is about an Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. This article is almost accurate. The only drawback that I have noticed is that more emphasis is not given on the early life and the struggle period of the cricketer. It covers the basic facts which are needed to be covered in this article. It follows all the steps which are needed to write an article. The article is fair and balanced. It shows the plus points and also the negative phases in the cricketer’s life.

wikipedia article source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachin_Tendulkar

The second topic I have chosen is on an Indian actor, Shahrukh Khan. The article emphasizes about all the phases in the actors life. The article does not show any details about his inclusion in any controversies. But in reality he is more often into some kind of a controversy. The article basically follows the guidelines which are used to write a wikipedia article. But the article does not give me sufficient information after going through it. The article is not properly balanced. It give importance only to his career highs but not his lows. That’s pretty much it for tutorial task 3.

Second article source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahrukh_Khan

Picture source:

http://www.tadkashadka.com/bollywood/bollywood-actors/shahrukh-khan/

Day 3: Lecture on history of Computers and Internet

Today’s lecture was about history of computers and the internet.
Computers:
The first ever computer model was found in the 19th century by Charles Babbage. It was a difference engine which was designed to calculate and print mathematical tables. Even though it had proper funding from the government, the engine could not be completed in his life time. Later he created an analytical engine which was a mechanical computer. He was helped by a woman named Ada Byron. She later created the first ever computer program.

Apple, IBM, Microsoft and Linux
Apple was started by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Together they both produced the Apple I which was a primitive machine with a single circuit with no case and keyboard. Computers were not so much in use at that time so they sold only 15 units. Each unit was sold at a price of 666.60 US$. After two years they launched Apple II which was more of a consumer product. The model was a big hit and they had made enough money. Later through addition of an application on the computer, the market ran after their product. At very less age both the founders had become very rich.

After looking at the success of Apple, IBM wanted to strike big. IBM was a company which sold huge mainframes for big companies. They were determined get into the personal computer market. They had the hardware to do it but lacked the software. They met Bill Gates who promised them an operating system. In four months IBM had its own PC out in the market place. Each PC was sold for a price of 50$. Bill Gates became a rich man. In association with software giant (Microsoft) under Bill Gates, IBM started to capture the market. Apple still held on to their strong position as their computers had their own graphical user interface (GUI). But IBM and Microsoft came up with their own GUI and launched Windows 3. Apple started to loose its strong market hold.

A Finnish programmer, Linus Torvalds decided to go for his own version of Unix in 1991. When he finished his first draft, lots of people were interested. He named it GNU/Linux. It was a free operating system compared to the other expensive systems like windows, mac and unix. Thus an operating system was born.

Internet, The Web and Cyberspace:
Internet is a network which includes servers, mainframes and personal computers. It is connected to a telephone line, broadband cable, or satellite service. It is used to link people from different parts of the world. It is used as a domain where information can be shared. The Web (also known as the World Wide Web) came out in 1990’s. This was how people started to communicate with each other via computers. It was very hard to use until the availability of browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape. Web pages are written in a language called hyper text mark up language (HTML). People mistake internet and the web to be the same thing, but its not. The web is only a part of the internet. Cyberspace is like a interconnection of imagination and reality.

Electronic mail, File transfer Protocol and Internet relay chat:
Email is a virtual mail system which is used to send information/files from one person to another. The types of files may include images, animations, videos, worksheets and programs.
File transfer protocol (FTP) allows you to download files from another computer onto your computer. It can also be used to upload files.
Internet relay chat (IRC) is one of the basic applications which allowed people to type in real time. It is used mainly for chatting. Even file transfers can be done on it. This application rose into popularity due to launch of instant messengers such as MSN messenger and Yahoo messenger.

Today’s lecture gives you information about origin of computers, internet and its related programs.

Picture sources: http://www.briansolis.com/2007/09/crisis-communications-20-apple-and.html, http://blog.protectwebform.com/p/category/ocr,

Day 2: Tutorial task

New communication technologies have become a necessity in one’s everyday life. The main technologies which stand out are the internet and mobile phones. Internet is being used everywhere (homes, offices, public places). Internet allows you to stay in contact with your family and friends from any part of the world. Mobile phone is like the best thing that ever happened. I can’t imagine a life without internet and mobile phone right now. That would be like stepping back into the stone age.
Internet allows you to meet new people online. You tend to become friends with individuals whom you haven’t even met. As per the question asked there is lot of difference in meeting someone in person when compared to chatting with them over the internet. You can’t get to see the true side of the opposite person. You get to see only what the person wants to show you. But you don’t get to meet them in reality so that wouldn’t cause problems to your personal life.
I have been using these technologies for a long time. Mobile phone probably from my school days and same goes with the internet as well. The main influence is the change in technology. You try to play catch up with the advancements in technology. In my school days I wasn’t much into social networking sites such as facebook and my space. But your friends play a major part in getting you involved into it.
Privacy over the internet has always been a major issue, but that has never stopped me from trying out new things. But nowadays we have privacy setting’s over what ever we use (mobile phones security codes, email passwords).
That ends the task given on day 2.

Picture source: http://www.wlo2004.com/_img/ad1.jpg

Day 2: Guest lecture by Paul Hodkinson

Today we had a guest lecture by Paul Hodkinson, department of sociology. He is from University of Surrey, U.K. He emphasized on social networking and identity. The lecture was about impact of social networking sites on youth. He said that previous researches in the topic dealt with male socialisation in public areas. But in 1976 McRobbie and Garber showed emphasis on girls and their ways of socialisation. The main topic in today lecture was how a bedroom acts as a virtual socialising network place. Your bedroom is like your own personalised place. You have private communications with individuals over the mobile phone or in person. You can also have virtual communication with friends over the internet.
In the same manner social networking sites such as facebook and my space help you in creating a private space where you can hang out or stay in contact with your friends. Social networking sites are places where people gather publically through mediating technology. These sites lead to everyday interactions with the outside world just from your bedroom.
Then we had questions answered by the lecturer. Later in the tutorial we had a discussion regarding the lecture. The main question was about the privacy factor in social networking sites. People don’t want to share their information with everyone in their friend’s list. So they setup security settings as to who can access their files (pictures and videos) and who can’t. It was a great lecture and i learnt a lot about social networking sites.

Picture source: http://flickr.com/photos/oliver_godby/514524785

Day 1 in summer course

Hey, this is my first day in the class "New Communication Tecnologies". The course deals with basic information regarding communication and technologies. The main explanation is about the web blogs. Blog is like a place on a webpage where you can place your personal comments. Today we have discussed about the course outline and main assessment items.The topics covered today are basic web pages used in daily life such as facebook, instant messaging, news sites, online game sites....Discussion on topics such as communication, technology, convergence was done today.In the tutorial class we were taught how to set up a web blog. Thats pretty much it for the first day....