As an illustration of the information you give away when you are browsing online, go to one of the following websites:

• http://network-tools.com/analyze/
• http://centralops.net/asp/co/BrowserMirror.vbs.asp

This is just a sampling of the large amount of information that can be collected from you. This information can be used in many ways.

For marketing purposes, information such as: browser type; what sites you have visited and your favourites links (which can yield information on your browsing habits); what type of sites you visit (which can indicate what hobbies you have, and where you work – including what field); what type of computer you are using etcetera; can all then be used to target ads to you.

However, someone can use this information for a more malicious intent. If someone can get information on what browser you are using, and what operating system, they can see what security vulnerabilities you are susceptible to and can ‘attack’ your machine using this information – this is merely one example (and there are countless other ways) the information you give away can be maliciously used.

Perhaps it is a good thing that the next release of Firefox will have a porn mode. Check out the current security features if you’re bored. Oh, and by the way, if you are still using Internet Explorer, in all likeliness, you’ve been attacked and just don’t realise it. Take a read of the post by Brian Krebs from January 4, 2007 titled Internet Explorer Unsafe for 284 Days in 2006.

Firefox users who can’t wait for 3.1 (it’s available in Beta at this time), or you need another surf of those porn sites, then perhaps get some privacy and security add-ons in the meantime. They might slow down the onslaught of Viagra, penis enlargement and breast implants spam arriving in your inbox.

Since every man and his dog can publish anything on websites, we may question the accuracy of that content. Following the net.Tutor tutorial on Evaluating Web Sites, there are 6 points to consider in order to infer a reliable source.

1. Purpose

Is it an advocacy, commercial, or reference site?

2. Author

Check that both the author and publisher have credibility on the topic. See the net.TUTOR: Using Online Resources to Check Authority or perhaps try the following Firefox add-on.

Who Is This Person? by Ted Rheingold
Highlight any name on a web page and see matching information from Wink, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Facebook, Google News, Technorati, Yahoo Person Search, Spock, WikiYou, ZoomInfo, IMDB, MySpace and more…

3. Content Bias / Balance

In order to understand the need for this check, I’ll re-iterate the quote here.

Most of us have biases, and we can easily fool ourselves if we don’t make a conscious effort to keep our minds open to new information. Psychologists have shown over and over again that humans naturally tend to accept any information that supports what they already believe, even if the information isn’t very reliable. And humans also naturally tend to reject information that conflicts with those beliefs, even if the information is solid. These predilections are powerful. Unless we make an active effort to listen to all sides we can become trapped into believing something that isn’t so, and won’t even know it.
A Process for Avoiding Deception, FactCheckED.org

Good website sources on controversial topics should present a balance of both pro and con viewpoints, together with arguments supported and documented.

4. Coverage

To cross-check similar sites, try the Google related search, for example related:meyerweb.com

5. Timeliness

For researching time-sensitive topics, consider the age of, and how up-to-date any sources are.

6. Recognition

Just like the related search, Google provides a link search to find other sites linking to the source in question. For instance, link:meyerweb.com. Public bookmarking sites, such as del.icio.us, can indicate popularity with related tags. Technorati authority defines the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. For very new articles there may not yet be any citations, but try Google Scholar. These are just some measures of recognising that the source site provides useful information.

So now we know several ways to investigate and judge whether a website is an informative and worthwhile source. Let’s do it!

Evaluation of a source slightly relevant to the NET11 unit

• URL http://meyerweb.com/eric/articles/webrev/200001.html “Print Different”
• Author Eric A. Meyer
• This blog posting is a tutorial on implementing a CSS design for the print medium. The information presented is most helpful for web designers. The site is largely authored by an individual, an advocate for promoting the use of CSS standards. I doubt that an opposing viewpoint exists, but no alternatives to CSS are mentioned in this article.

  As the author of several books on the topic, naturally he does have a vested interest in selling them. However the article above was taken from his personal site, not the separate commercial one. He is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). … Eric coordinated the authoring and creation of the W3C’s CSS Test Suite and has recently been acting as List Chaperone of the highly active css-discuss mailing list. Certainly a reputable author and publisher on the subject.

  The article is somewhat biased and barely mentions the cons. The pro arguments are detailed, but as it is a tutorial rather than a controversial topic, it is supported by many examples. In terms of coverage, there are, according to the Google related:meyerweb.com search, less than 30 other websites similar to meyerweb.com, some of which Eric plays a role in!

  Back in January 2000, the material was originally written as a professional article on http://www.webreview.com. No information has been added recently, the content may be up-to-date but the external links no longer connect – probably due to the original site’s archiving scope. Hence, as stated, one of the reasons Eric has archived these articles himself. He does promise a return to the subject once browsers increase support for more media and specific styles.

  As for recognition, delicious reveals 18 public bookmarks of the site, Google found about 2,170 sites linking to meyerweb.com, and Technorati uncovered 3,225 blog reactions.

  As one might expect in a tutorial article, it was written with a biased viewpoint. Overall though, the distinguished author has produced an excellent tutorial, supported by examples and current best practices, with ample coverage of the topic for my needs.

Finally, for my own future use, the full evaluation is overkill. The quick skim of a basic annotation will suffice to jog my memory. For external users however, an analytical evaluation is superior as it includes thorough author and content cross-checking.

First, choose the best three sources found in the previous task.
Using whatever software or tool you think appropriate, record the following information about those sites:

• URL
• author
• institution
• blurb/ summary / screen shot (this can be a direct copy of an appropriate abstract or introductory paragraph on the site: but make sure you record and reference it as such)

Again, using any useful software you have downloaded, or utilising your existing software, record this information on your computer in the way that you think will be most useful to you in terms of preparing for your third assignment (that is, in terms of how easy you will find it to access, retrieve, understand, contextualise and recall why you saved it – and with what!).

* LOG ENTRY:
Record this information in your learning log, and also detail how you saved this information, what software you used and why. (Allen, n.d.)

The previous task was a search of our choosing. Mine was a query for “winter dreaming” film screening and the best 3 sources are as follows:

1. • http://www.eucalyptproductions.com/winterdreaming
   • Stephen Curtain
   • Eucalypt Productions
   • 
     Screenshot from
     http://eucalyptproductions.com/winterdreaming

     This page is self-promoting the debut of Winter Dreaming, a film by Stephen Curtain. It includes a preview, a film synopsis, cast and crew summary, and a list of screening dates and venues for 2008. Also listed are target audiences and several potential purposes for usage of the film as an educational resource. The author, cameraman, and producer has a swag of credentials including various photographic and editorial jobs for the BBC, ABC, Australian Geographic, The Age, Wild and Rock magazines. He has works in the fragile environs of Antarctica and around the world, and as an environmental – outdoor education teacher.
     http://www.connotea.org/article/e54e62c1196ecacfae6e518224af6d8a

2. • http://www.fallscreek.com.au/telemarkfestivalgreatsuccess
   • unidentified author
   • Falls Creek Resort Management
   • 
     Screenshot from
     fallscreek.com.au/telemarkfestivalgreatsuccess

     This commercial website caters to Australian snow enthusiasts. Telemark is the form of free-heel skiing promoted annually at the festival. This report from the latest news on the mountain, has no author listed, but photo credits go to festival organiser, Justin Hams. The article starts with a sales motive, then an overview of a successful festival, mentions the interest in the screening of Winter Dreaming (which was over 3 years in the making) before moving on to details of the racing results.
     http://www.connotea.org/article/0cf6e4e2bce4ea7478e9e821943ce3ed

3. • http://www.mountbawbaw.com.au/index.php?option=com_events&task=view_detail&agid=37&Itemid=19
   • unidentified author
   • Mt Baw Baw
   • 
     Screenshot from
     mountbawbaw.com.au

     This is a dedicated calendar event page for the Winter Dreaming screening. Full details of the event time, location and admission are specified, along with a contact email address for further information. Both this and the Falls Creek website are supporting the Keep Winter Cool initiative and both have an environment page. Although it is also a commercial snow resort, Mt Baw Baw’s website includes a Green Visitor page and more than a cursory splash on it’s environmental information. That being said, both the resort web pages fail to make the connection between the film screening advertisement and the initiative they are all supporting.
     http://www.connotea.org/article/0c7ab70ac4a9bf7c0003687beb1dc437

I like CiteULike but my search query isn’t exactly an academic paper. That’s why I used Connotea instead to store all these annotations. It can easily grab the HTML title based on the input URL. Connotea is simple and straightforward, even if the interface could be updated to web 2.0 standard.

• Engines
• Boolean searching
• Organising search information

Engines

Google, (in the western world at least), is such a common search engine, the very name has become an accepted slang verb! So let’s google with a query of my choosing:

[Image of] The top 5 results from googling winter dreaming screening

There were about 7,010,000 results. No surprise there as general web indexes are huge. Maintained by robot programs, web indexes amazingly contain all words from their indexed pages. (net.TUTOR, 2007) What is more, Google defaults to proximity searching by default, including results with near matches.

Jackpot! The first, http://eucalyptproductions.com/winterdreaming, was exactly the result I was looking for.

Using Copernic Agent Basic yielded only 51 results, that’s much better than millions.

[Image of] The top 5 results from a Copernic Agent Basic search for winter dreaming screening

All at once, Copernic searches employ several engines, such as Yahoo!, Lycos, AltaVista, Ask.com, and Netscape Netcenter. The relevance ranking includes criteria like identical results appearing from several engines. Our intended destination ranked 3rd along with a relevant related site coming in at first place.

There aren’t many differences in results for this particular search query. Both Google and Copernic will bold format the search term words within the results set. However, only Google also bold formatted related word forms. One of my search terms was dreaming and Google also displayed the word dream in bold format. This knowledge is useful in selecting your search tool, depending on whether you want related words included in your search.

Unfortunately the analyse feature is not available in the Basic version of the Copernic program. Some of the other Copernic features, summarising and grouping for example, look useful for serious searching.

GooglePreview is a wonderful insight, especially as a quick reminder when searching sites you’ve visited previously. GoogleEnhancer also assists with numbering and highlighting.

If you’re still stuck on how to choose the best search tool for any given search task, check out http://liblearn.osu.edu/tutor/les5/pg1.html which explains the 3 different types and cases for each. (The Ohio State University Libraries, 2007)

Boolean searching

Stupid people laboriously trawl through pages and pages of result sets looking for a gem website – sadly, yes, I’ve actually witnessed this. Lazy people give up if their desired search result isn’t listed in the top 10. Smart people refine their search terms. Taking the same key words from my last search query, winter dreaming screening, how would I best search for the following:

1. the biggest number of hits relating to these key words
2. information most relevant to what you ACTUALLY wanted to look for!
3. information coming only from university sources

To obtain the largest result set, a Boolean OR search would be the way to go! With Google one can enter winter OR dreaming OR screening to attain some 556,000,000 results. For broad topic search, this would be ideal.

For a narrow or specific search, a Boolean AND search query is required. We don’t usually need to insert AND between our search terms. Most search engines interpret a space between words in this way. Naturally our results may include other words between our search terms. For example, Winter 2004: California Dreaming… currently screening… appears at the highest rank. To improve on that, I want to search for a “winter dreaming” film screening. By using quotation marks I have enclosed the phrase, effectively searching for results with no other words between them. By adding a fourth term film to the query, the results are down to only 42 with our desired result appearing first. A fifth term freeheel is enough to narrow the results to just 4, all of them being about what I actually wanted to look for. (Marco Folio’s 10 tips for optimized Google search phrases is also full of good ideas for effective searching including wildcards, numeric ranges, and document filetypes)

For information from only university sources a good start would be to restrict your search to the .edu domain. To achieve this, add the site:.edu term to the end of your query. This won’t work for all countries however. Canadian universities often have just .ca, such as the University of British Columbia at www.ubc.ca. You could always try Google Scholar at http://scholar.google.com.au but if all else fails go to the advanced version. (Google, n.d.)

Summary of the key concepts: choose the right tool and search effectively

Organising search information

Attempt #1 at understanding this task

After completing my Conceptual Research and Reflection Project earlier, I shall, in hindsight, detail tools / methods I used for organising my information.

• Bookmarks are arranged in 4 subfolders of my NET11 folder, one for each concept.
• These are synchronised (via Foxmarks) and thus never lost. I can access them from any online Windows computer, with Portable Firefox if necessary, should this computer be unavailable.
• The bookmarks are all tagged (with help from HandyTag) to assist easy retrieval. The minimum tags used for each website were: NET11; and the concepts titles, namely Asynchronicity, Netiquette, Automation, and ‘Chat’ for The impact of text-based real-time chat.
• In a similar fashion, electronic resources were also filed into 4 sub-directories within my computer’s hard disk filing system. I’m relying on my brain to recall this redundancy arrangement.

The Firefox Library alone does a brilliant job of looking after bookmarks.

Attempt #2 at understanding this task

For citations, I’ve been using a few great tools. First, I rely on the wonderful and easy to use CiteMachine to generate standard bibliographic and in-text citations. Second, to automate the citation process as much as possible, I’ve recently been trying out Zotero which works alone on your computer.

In addition, for online reference management, I’m experimenting with CiteULike which is designed for scholarly papers, thanks Janette Treanor for pointing out this one; and thanks to Fiona Stace’s thread post, Connotea. Given the nature of the medium and the subject content, why anyone would record this information on their own computer beats me. Are we rocketeering towards cloud computing? (What is cloud computing? – on YouTube)

Finally, now it should be easy enough for me to access, retrieve, understand, contextualise and recall why I saved these resources any time in the foreseeable future. In my next post, annotations of the best 3 results sourced from my search query “winter dreaming” film screening. For evaluating sources of information, check out a later post.

References

The Ohio State University Libraries, (2007, September 19). Web Search Tools.

Retrieved August 22, 2008, from net.TUTOR website: http://liblearn.osu.edu/tutor/les5/

Cohen, L (2008, January). Boolean Searching on the Internet.

Retrieved August 22, 2008, from Internet Tutorials website: http://www.internettutorials.net/boolean.html

Google, (n.d.). Google Scholar Help.

Retrieved August 22, 2008, from Google Scholar website: http://scholar.google.com.au/intl/en/scholar/help.html

As we’ll be covering searching the web in the next post, this one will only provide detail on the choice search combiner tools, as well as five other handy non-search related tools for using the web. As you’re reading my blog, I’m certain that you are intelligent and already have your Swiss army knife, a.k.a. Firefox, but may be looking to throw in a few extra tools.

The most important things to look for in ‘additional tools’ are:

• cost – and, indeed, in most cases look for free products
• ease of use – can you use it easily (while recognising that you may need to learn to use programs)
• functionality – does it do what it needs to if it is to be effective (ie if a single vital element is missing, an other wise ‘good’ program is useless)
• utility – does the program increase your effectiveness (saving time, in particular, or allowing you to do something previously not done)
• commonality – is the program becoming ’standard’ or at least common.

(Allen, n.d.)

1. Adobe Reader
2. Flash/Shockwave Players
3. Media Players
4. Search Manager/Combiners
5. Bookmark Manager
6. Offline Browser/Copier

Adobe Reader

It’s difficult for me to imagine someone using the internet without needing a PDF reader. My father once accidently removed Adobe Reader from his computer before realising that it was the handler for all the PDF files he uses! Adobe’s is the most popular but not the only one. Although it’s free to download, the (Windows) 33.5MB installer for reading without the browser shell, is rather hefty. Modern browsers have the plug-in pre-installed. Ease of use, check. Functionality, check.

Flash/Shockwave Players

Sites such as YouTube and Vimeo are driven by Flash. So there’s a very high probability that you have a recent version of the Flash Player installed. Shockwave on the other hand, tends to be used for a few web-based games. Shockwave Player displays Web content that has been created by Adobe Director. Flash has become fairly standard, initially for vector based animation, but now includes high definition (HD) video and audio presentation. At zero cost, the interfaces are all fairly intuitive, and it exceeds it’s required functionality. A rather universal player.

Media Players

I’ve had both Apple Quicktime Player and Windows Media Player installed for ages. On rare occasions, I find video/audio resources only available in the streaming Windows format and am forced to use the player. I feel much the same about Apple’s QuickTime Player except the interface seems a little simpler and easier to use. The free Real Networks Real One includes advertisement sponsored viewing – great… not! – and DVD burning is not available without cost. The installation is sensationally annoying (default options to install games links, soft-porn film strip advertisement, browser restart required, compulsory product registration including email address! – not so compulsory… then annoying Message Center alerts – when will it end?) Despite this, the CNET editor’s review gave 4/5 stars, and you can download and record web videos. (CNET Editor, 2007) Call me old school, but when it comes to watching entertaining video, I’ve got a television, a DVD rental shop around the corner, and great cinemas in the neighbourhood. While I still have 20/20 vision, the quality of web video just doesn’t cut the mustard. Moral of the day: when you’ve found a tool that works well and does the job, stick with it.

Search Manager/Combiners

I’m checking out Copernic Agent 6.12. What is it with these compulsory registrations? I tried a search for yours truly. Aside from the auction sites, a familiar flickr web page came up 3rd on the list. In fact with combining the additional search engines under the hood, it seems to pull a more precise listing than Google alone. I like it. A clean but extensive interface, fairly easy to use, this tool could become quite useful for in-depth research.

Bookmark Manager

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer is what I’ve been swearing by for ages. It allows me to back-up my bookmarks and use the same bookmarks across different computers – rather handy when added onto Firefox Portable! However it doesn’t really make it easier to manage, sort and categorise bookmarks/favourites. With tagging, search, and all the other smart book-marking functions of Firefox 3, I’m starting to wonder at the need for more… I might come back to this at another time.

Offline Browser/Copier

If you want/need to create PDFs from web pages, Firefox users would be wise to try PDF Download 2.0.0.0 by Denis Remondini, Nitro PDF Software. This awesome utility produces such excellent quality PDFs, unless you check the surrounding program window icons, you may be fooled into thinking you’re looking at the web site through your online browser. And yes, the links will actually work when you are online next! Check out my example created via this great Firefox extension: vfowler.com blog 2008_08_15 Conceptual Research and Reflection Project (PDF 386kB)

References

Allen, M (2008). WebCT NET11 Module Four – Tasks.

Retrieved August 20, 2008, from Curtin University website: http://webct.curtin.edu.au/

CNET Editor, (2007, December). RealPlayer – Free software downloads and reviews.

Retrieved August 20, 2008, from CNET Download.com website: http://www.download.com/RealPlayer/3000-2646_4-10073040.html

What’s the difference? In bad old HTML, form and content were tied together. Web 1.0 resembles a fancy book with index links, whether you wanted them or not. Like a submarine, most users surfing the web were passive. Both 1.0 and 2.0 have hyperlinks. Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. – my emphasis. (Wikipedia, 2008)

When we separate data and format, users become capable of publishing their own content, be that text or any other digital media. What also arises is the possibility of mixing different content together, such as Flickr Maps. We collaboratively tag all this new data, as we see fit, in order to keep track of what we want and how. Web 2.0 is linking people… …people sharing, trading, and collaborating… (Wesch, 2007)

In alluding to the version-numbers that commonly designate software upgrades, the phrase “Web 2.0″ hints at an improved form of the World Wide Web. Technologies such as weblogs (blogs), wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds (and other forms of many-to-many publishing), social software, and web application programming interfaces (APIs) provide enhancements over read-only websites. (Wikipedia, 2008)

Some indicative examples of Web 2.0 applications or “services” are:

• eBay
• Wikipedia
• NetVibes
• Flickr
• Facebook and other social networking sites
• blogs, such as this one, and online content management systems

Comparing the blink book-marking application (mostly web 2.0) http://www.blinklist.com/InternetCommunications/ with the same bare-bones NET11 list of bookmarks rendered as an index, is rather black and white. The link list contains a fixed amount of minimal data, just a link title and text description, in a fixed (seemingly random) order. The blink list can be manipulated in several ways and each entry contains several meta-data: URL, tags, dates, votes, sometimes a thumbnail preview, and so on. So much more than just a list, and each entry can be private or public. Also the application provides a social networking service where one can collaborate on entries with others. Needless to say, the blink version is superior as not only does it have the additional meta-data, interactivity, social aspect, usability, it also has that visual reminder of the thumbnail making it quick to recall.

In summary, web 2.0 is a smarter, more usable resource for everyone.

References

Wesch, M (2007, March 08). The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version).

Retrieved August 19, 2008, from YouTube website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

Wikipedia, (2008, August 18). Web 2.0.

Retrieved August 19, 2008, from Wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Initial belles lettres

I’d been writing my own travel diaries and sending postcards to loved ones during my sojourns around the globe. Naturally I took up blogging, once I was aware of it. Way back in March 2005 I was about to start the next venture into a mysterious culture… Japanese! I started writing in the (Google hosted) blog o vfowler during preparations for my first work gig as an English language teacher. In 161 posts, such as Ending of Sleepless in Brunswick, and bike police, I began to indite some of my misunderstandings and musings for the next year and bit.

Fulfilling a personal multi-purpose

As a public travel diary, my first blog served several purposes brilliantly. First, it allowed me to communicate with family and friends back home. Second, it gave me a place to practise writing and publish some news style articles combined with my photos. I’d started my flickr account at the same time, so it was a great tie in. Third, my travel narratives sufficed as the base script upon which I proudly produced my DVD trilogy – something like a slide-show on steroids.

This blog that your reading right now, vfowler blog, didn’t have a lot of direction initially. Mostly it was my laboratory for experimentation in what was possible on a self hosted WordPress powered blog. With the bells and whistles of additional media formats (audio and video), mapping, tags, categories, search, monthly archives, RSS, podcasts and vodcasts, interactive polls, calendars, communications and so on… I guess this is a web 2.0 blog. Currently vfowler blog is doubling as my required course blog for NET11.

Blogs for others

I kicked off a blog for my English students to practice writing with a real audience. At http://hawthornenglishclass.wordpress.com is where most of my class first understand the term blog – I still find this amazing. Thanks largely to my best friend, I’ve come to learn the flexibility of WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) and have been punching out a couple of sites for friends using it.

Citizen Journalism – unlikely

http://www.nowpublic.com claims The News is NowPublic.com, albeit with a by-line of Crowd Powered Media. Generally I agree with James Farmer’s post Citizen journalism sucks, that there ought to be a level of professionalism associated with the term journalism. (Farmer, 2006) Sadly, I’d also concur that the average citizen is not very good at the skills involved. Only through teaching English as a second language have I come to realise how poor the average punter is with his/her first language. I studied photography at university and have some awareness of what makes a better photograph. Now the odds of the average camera wielding person producing an acceptable shot are improving. Still, my preference is to see the kind of photos that get into Lonely Planet publications rather than the rubbish that comes from my mobile phone camera. Needless to say, it frightens me when garbage is published.

Content is king

Whilst the average citizen isn’t skilled enough for publishing to a broad public audience, there are no fewer than millions of high calibre blogs out there appealing to our many niches and interests. Blogs are at home when new content is frequently published. Just like newspapers, one way to measure the quality of the content is by readership. The really great content is always forwarded on to others, similar to the way we discuss news articles that have impacted upon us. Although, how far reaching a blog post is, may be less important than reaching the right audience.

References

Farmer, J (2006 , October 5). Citizen journalism sucks. Retrieved August 18, 2008, from The Age Blogs website: http://blogs.theage.com.au/media/archives/2006/10/citizen_journal.html

Public domain (http://ww.wikieducator.org/Copyright_and_copyleft/public_domain) comprises all the works that are free to use without permission. There are a lot of works on the internet that are in the public domain and hence, not protected by copyright. Ideas, facts, titles, names, short phrases, and blank forms are not eligible for copyright protection. These surprised and shocked me, until I read that ideas are protected by patents, and names protected by trademarks.

This leaves creative expression under the protective realm of copyright.

The Copyright Act of 1976 states that the items of expression can include literary, dramatic, and musical works; pantomimes and choreography; pictorial, graphic and sculptural works; audio-visual works; sound recordings; and architectural works. An original expression is eligible for copyright protection as soon as it is fixed in a tangible form.

For more details on the specific forms of literary, musical, dramatic, visual art, and sound recording works that are covered by copyright, see the http://www.benedict.com/Info/Law/What.aspx web page. One would register their work of expression with the national copyright office to enable them to sue for plagiarism and statutory damages.

When “The Pacifier” was shown online by a Chinese website without permission, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA) complained to the National Copyright Administration of China last October.

The copyright agency then ordered www.116.com.cn to stop the piracy and fined it US$11,140.

On the international stage copyright law is successful in some cases. The above example from China Daily of China to improve copyright protection has a good outcome for the artists, but I’m not convinced there is complete understanding.

Wang Bin, with the Internet Society of China, yesterday said that to curb Internet users’ habitual downloads of pirated music, software and other products, it is important to technically enable copyright-holders to monitor use of the products and cut their sometimes unduly high price.

I’m afraid it’s more a catch 22 when it comes to the price of art and creative expression. Furthermore, in the proposed Free Trade Agreement between China and Australia (21 June 2005) there was some concern expressed by copyright owners on the protections of their rights.

18. This is even more so the case as a consequence of the move by the copyright industries to the digital delivery of copyright works and the adoption of this technology by educational institutions. The particular circumstances and particular nature of the use of copyright works in a digital environment, such as perfect reproduction and ease of copying and communication, make copyright owners even more concerned that their rights should be protected when trading in their copyright goods with China.

The WIPO disclaimer states that international copyright protection is automatic, it exists as soon as a work is created, and this principle applies in all the countries party to the Berne Convention. According to the list of contracting parties in the Berne Convention, Australia has been there since early 1928 and China since late 1992. Although the creations are copyright and need not be registered in any of the 164 contracting parties, with the ease of digital reproduction and the proliferation of markets for cheaper pirated copies, I can understand the concern of copyright holders.

Can we get around copyright? Well, provided you meet the Fair Use criteria, yes it is possible to use copyright material. There’s some fancy mathematical equation for working out the balance of four factors:

• purpose of use
• nature of work
• relative amount
• market effect

So what is unfair use? Plagiarism and piracy. People go for illegal choices because there is no legal way to download this stuff. This argument in the LiveWire section of yesterday’s The Age article ISPs join the copyright fight by Lia Timson, indicates we have become spoilt with ab/use of broadband connections. It appears our impatience results in rather direct theft from film-makers and the like.

Have I used images or words on my website that contravene copyright laws? Perhaps for interest and with ease, I have used copyright material on my website. Whilst it all complies with Fair Use, I’d like to start notifying the rights holders before using the material.

From my experience, this request-permission-granted system has worked well for me in further publication of several of my flickr hosted photos. Flickr does a good job of explaining the different licences of use under the Creative Commons area – http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ Also of interest to programmers would be The art of the open-source license by Dave McAllister.

Would you be in breach of copyright if you put the Curtin logo at the top of your web page for an assignment? No, provided the logo is copyright-owned by Curtin. Naturally, acknowledge the source, as always.

We all know data is the raw information itself. For example, the photograph or even this content you are reading this very instant, is data. So let’s talk about the content of this post. What kind of information is it? Can you tell me more about it before I read on?

Meta-data is information about the data. The type of content (text and often some images); categories and tags the author gives a post; name of the author; the date/time that it was published; are just a few of examples of meta-data. Another brilliant example is the meta-data associated with a photo on flickr.

A great failing of most web browser and management software is its inability to allow people to easily organize and reorganise information, to catalogue and sort it, thereby attaching their own metadata to it. (Allen, n.d.)

In terms of this blog, at present all the organisation and cataloguing is done by yours truly. I started with the Better Tags Manager plug-in but have since found Manageable to work more effectively and manages more meta-data fields.

Whilst you, my audience, can filter the posts on any of the categories/tags that I’ve nominated, there’s no facility for a reader to add his/her own tags yet. Meanwhile, a search for any other keywords is available via the search form.

The Commons on Flickr is an interesting project of photographic content with public users contributing to the tags describing that content. Quite a successful website strategy. Flickr members can open their own content to tagging by others also.

Firefox 3.0 makes it simpler than ever to bookmark and organise websites. I’ve been using Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer to ensure I don’t loose bookmarks and can maintain the same bookmarks across different computers. Brilliant!

At last, in Firefox 3.0 we have the ability to tag our bookmarks. (Maybe it was in earlier versions but only as keywords…) There’s also a neat library feature described there to save searches into automatically updated smart folders. Need tips on how to make it all happen? Those people at Mozilla have thought of everything. Tips for beginners, intermediate and advanced internet users.

So there you have it. Data and meta-data all taken care of. Go plug yourself in to The Matrix!

Our task was to build a web page utilising all the basic HTML constructs. I’ve been a Dreamweaver user since version 1.0 and I’m relatively familiar with HTML. I was excited to try hand-coding without the funky extras that Dreamweaver provides, knowing that better knowledge of HTML is always worthwhile.

What’s HTML? HyperText Mark-up Language, the fundamental language of web pages.

This source code I wrote for my HTML task 3 will be rendered in your browser something like… Well click it and take a look (http://vfowler.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/HTML_task3.html). There’ll be minor browser variations of course. Similarly, when you buy Arnott’s Tim Tams, they always taste different to other brands.

With solid HTML we can always code better and faster. Obviously the same goes for CSS, JavaScript or anything else you care to code. More sophisticated web pages are simply employing more CSS, graphics and other media. If you’re interested in clean HTML code (you should be, it’s too expensive in both time and money, to write dirty and non-standards compliant code) please remember that tables are for tabular data, never for layout. When you have tabular data, try Klaus Komenda’s best practice guide to the mark-up. I’m sure you’ll agree the resultant data table is well worth it.

What’s a blog? Perhaps you were born yesterday, or too many yesterdays ago. Try this great article from Dented Reality titled Blogs: What are they good for? including some great headings

1. What is a Blog?
2. Why Blog?
3. How do I blog?

The majority of blogging folk are creating content via the blog engine’s visual editor. Within the engine constraints, they don’t need to know any HTML to publish to their heart’s content.

When I blog, I always hand-code the new content, just the post itself. Naturally, the blog engine takes care of all the automated tasks associated with content management. I started out with a free hosted Blogger blog, but a year later moved to this self hosted WordPress blog. Blogging in this way gives me the control I want with the semi/fully automatic handling of mundane tasks. No regrets.

Will I go back to Dreamweaver? For blogging, heck no. It’s overkill. For creating other new code segments, maybe. However, I’m learning more and more about Notepad++ and enjoying it. Like any good program, when you personalise the workspace and learn the keyboard short-cuts, you’ll maximise your efficiency.