Why do all good things come to an end? :'(

This whole week was really maddd hectic trying to put the final touches to our group website!!! At some stages I felt my arms would get arthritis and I saw those green dots flying about in the air from computer radiation, think it was damaging my braincells!!! Well Nigel didn't make it in on Monday, thanks to some trees being blown from the storm in all of the train tracks (and why is it everytime we have a slight drizzle of rain, the whole country panics and goes into major chaos??? lol) He managed to leave us a message on the wikipage though, so glad the gushing winds didn't break through windows and attack computers as well!!!

This course I have learnt so much about about myself and has made me want to think twice before I post stuff on the net, our group project is finally finished!!! We all texted eachother and facebooked eachother to get the work completed!!! See Facebook is useful!!! :P So a massive thank you to Karina who encouraged me to keep going at it and helpign whenever I was lost, Raquel who read through books and worked out what was rubbish and what made sense, Urvi who saved her work on my computer and it was missions trying to retrieve it back and Jess who was actually ill for while but still contributed good information. All our effort has now come to an end and many joyful moments of banging heads on keyboards but guess thats part of the learning process!!! lol

I think I've changed how I now see the internet as a whole, before I'd judge it through what I'd watch on telly, what I'd see in newspapers or what other people on the net would describe the intenet, but now I'm more varied and look at more websites and understand online communities much better. I don't think i would ever join something as extreme as Second Life well but I will always have a facebook and myspace for communicating better with everyone and always staying in touch with those friends I care about. I don't judge anyone who's formed online realtionships, hey, if it works, it works, that stereotype of them being geeks or social retards is completely unfair and it depends on circumstances. For now, all I know is the internet will continue o play a big part in our daily lives and it will eventually take over all forms of media possibly...or maybe i'm skipping ahead to a 100 years here.

I see Nigel's left us a personal video message which is sooooo cool, I think I'm gona make ne and freak out my friends too, I'm sad yet glad this course is over, its been a good journey full of hard work. Now I'm off to complete the rest of my uni course! Many thanks to Nigel the teacher who motivated us all!!!

See ya!!! Paps :)

Avatar idea scrapped!!!

Just a bit of random research for our groupwork: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_identity This issue of gender and sexual resignification raises the notion of disembodiment and its associated implications. "Disembodiment" is the idea that once the user is online, the need for the body is no longer required, and the user can participate separately from it. This ultimately alludes to a sense of detachment from the identity defined by the physical body. In cyberspace, many aspects of sexual identity become blurred and are only defined by the user. Herein again questions of truth are raised, particularly in reference to online dating and virtual sex. As McRae (1997, p. 75)

We wanted to create an avatar to prove this theory from first hand experience and we were gonna add the features so that people online are attracted to the avatar, we could technically be speaking to anyone on there. I just added a fake passport, number on the account and it said that it was checked against the government records within about 2 seconds, which I don’t believe and even if its true, its obviously not correct. We believed this even though our account was free, we actually fell for the words just because it was on the screen. Unfortunately there has been many technical errors afte the application and the uni firewall is blocking us from downloading the software to create an avatar so we scrapped that idea and have instead decided to look at online communication, how and why it happens with specific reference to Second Life.

I was thinking its wierd how people get a bad impression of chatrooms and forums and social networks yet we all use it, I mean some countries go as far as restricting and monitering access, horror stories of internet dating and friendships always appear in The Sun newspaper and I was thinking ahy is the negative emphasised so much? Well Nigel said print news is becoming out of fashion and news is more sought after online, so newspapers give a biased opinion to influence us to buy their newpapers. So half of what they say is always exxagerated.

Who am i online?!?!? :oO

So today Nigel asked us to search our names on the Google search engine and talk about what discovered, well when I typed in my name, despite it being a rare name, it said Results 328 for "papiya ray". (0.11 seconds). So anyone can do that but it worries me slightly to know some organisations recruit after searching potential employees names online, hopefuly what I find will be positive. The first link is a website about my religion which I made about 4 years ago and forgot about, can't believe its still on there, but its ok, though I wouldn't class myself as religious. Next link is some next person in India, lol, next one is me again on a modelling website except the photo I used isn't me, the girl is much prettier!!! I only made it to test it to see if they would send me work. Then the last link which makes me proud is this http://www.studyzones.com/profile/questions.cfm?username=pray a government run website which I used to get coursework graded during my A level finals, that in particular is a question I put forward to te other A level students on there at the time, again the picture isn't me as I didn't feel comfortable putting my photo up on the net back in the days. So it seems I have an online footprint, people could misunderstand my work to be someone elses as they probably wouldn't guess it was actually me because my photos arent up. I am relieved that I'm not a burgular or fraudster or something like other people in my class have found lol.

My name is listed on
192.com too and thats no surprise seeing as I vote and my name is on the national censor survey, but I didn't want it to say the road name or who lives with me, a secluded name is ok, but other details can make me paranoid. Nigel has told us that there are always records of our work online, even when we delete it, I tested this on my youtube video, but I still think its only if someone manages to copy it and reproduce your material otherwise if you delete it, then there surely can't be any record of it??? My youtube video is gone and despite thoroughly searching for it after deleting it, I still couldn't find it, so that means it gone PHEWWW!!! i did get slightly agitated when he said that!!! :-S

Btw if the dates or times are wrong on my blog posts, its because I saved some as drafts and have expanded on them and can't remember the exact order in which our class tasks were assigned to us but hopefully its in chronological order!!!

Team PurkJ, Jelly Beans and Peanut Butter :)

Well group work is going rather well and we've all come back with solid ideas and have already begun working on it all, so far, its looking good, we were told that we should base our webpage on personal identity and the characteristics of a online community. Stil have to research on content and design of webpage but we'll see what happens when we meet on wednesday to sort our ideas. Woo I feel we can achieve this and make it be like the most awesomest experience in uni ever!!!

Also I just wanted to mention that I don't agree with whats being said in this article that Nigel pointed out to us http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/sep/10/socialnetwork but also that I don't agree with this one either http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/building-relationships-10-ways-to-get-the-most-out-of-social-networking-sites.html I guess I'm in between, I like the face to afec and feel thats important but in order to d that nowadays, its good to keep contact online too and its helped me and my friends grow closer to eachother for sure!!! I found these few websites Watch Dog Report on Facebook BBC1 and Facebook is not as PRIVATE as it says it is !!
"The use of material taken from personal profiles on social networks by newspapers is to be the subject of a major consultation undertaken by industry watchdog the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). "
BBC News story about social networking and the
Mike Wesch Analysis
This is a video by Mike Wesch and his students at Kansas State University Is this a viable way of disseminating ideas? Might this type of media form part of how we form or change opinions? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o&eurl=http://lccspring.pbwiki.com/Week%208 quite good to understand that websites like Flickr and Twittervision can change a person's perspective of any location in the world and negative perspectives aren't always welcome as Amnesty International's site says about web censorship.

Are online identities trustworthy and whats the whole point of online profiles?

Those 2 pics above are my two fave movies Hard Candy and Closer and they both are films based around online deception in chatrooms though chatrooms are a thing of the past on the web, they seem to be quite popular on mobile GPRS. I'm thinking about security of online identity now....I am aware around the issues of our identity being accessible to just about anyone especially with the new rise of technology, we now have id cards for luterally everything and even things that don’t seem like id cards can often be used to keep records of us, such as conversations recorded on home and mobile phone lines, Tesco club card and Oyster which is used to track our shopping habits and where we travel to. This info is accessible to anyone working for these companies and marketing research company or crime investigation unit who requests such info. The British nation is obsessed with new technology so I wonder how many other ways our life is being tracked and watched involunteerily. So imagining the web (a large sea of information) where we choose to disclose personal info about ourselves including credit card details and phone numbers and addresses, when matched with names, a person's info can be found with a click. Our whole lives are surveillanced like Big Brother but we are editing it instead of the shows producers...I found the snooping law quite interesting but would it protect our privacy? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1761974.stm or what would it take to actively run something like this RIP act?http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/oct/24/qanda I don't know to be honest, but I know I don't feel safe with my address and eveything being on the net for just about anyone to access in particular my photographs, photos can be used for anything and I really don't feel comfortable leavin my photos online unlocked, so any photos I have on myspace or facebook is locked and inaccessible to random strangers. I read through all these sites and it made me extra cautious, I especially am careful with bank details, I always make sure there is a secure lock on the site before doing online shopping, Identity Theft: http://www.cariboo.bc.ca/cpj/identitytheft.html
Online Privacy: http://www.cdt.org/privacy/guide/basic/topten.html
Identity deception: http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html
Online deception http://www.nps.navy.mil/Content/CS/ncrowe/virtcomm160.htm



Funnily I have come across many songs to do with online deception: The first song I ever heard was a song about Myspace Friends by Gym Class Heroes, about how we accept random friend reuests on myspace depending on how they look, not caring whether they are real or not, funnily everyone always wonders whether Tom (the Myspace creator) would be left as their only friend sometimes, Theres a song by Brad Paisley called Online and Reggie and D-fam have also made songs about myspace profiles too, one song out right now is Mariah Carey - Touch My Body http://youtube.com/watch?v=CswQOP9RnJ8 which discusses how anything anywhere can be filmed and posted on youtube and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FahBBnfHAQ is a FUNNNYY parody of Enrique's Hero song, its called Facebook Skit and is about how people can stalk eachother on facebook especially someone like a crazy ex partner, funny thing is, celebrities have always been private and only in the last couple of years, there has been a craze over celebrities having myspace and facebook profiles for fans and media to access their personal lives, the photos part in particular, well actually no wonder they're making songs about it!!! Though I doubt people like Micheal Jackson have time to check their myspace if thats theirs of course, its probably run by their PA people pretending to be them half the time lol and just because it says its official, doesn't mean its true, anyone can say that, I usually rely on photographs to see if its a real profile, real profiles have lots of everyday photographs and sometimes celebs take a photo or do a vid of themselves holding a paper saying its their site.

About 80% of the young population in Britain have some sort of online profile, majority are on facebook or myspace though there are many other social network sites, we all most definately have MSN, the instant messenger which replaced emailing for most of us. I remember back in the days it was Hi5 and then I made a myspace only to keep up with music and then the next 7 months down the line I know, I'm enjoying getting in touch with old school freinds on facebook! I also like how I can talk to anyone on there and not have to actually have met them to talk, it can lead to being friends as you can share same interests, but the thing is you choose to share your info with someone you haven't met, it can be a bit dangerous but usually its fine, if you stay safe. I think the main reason why I enjoy facebook so much is I have actual friends on there rather the random strangers who added me, on myspace I have like 1178 friends, and only 2% regularly message me, on facebook I have like 218 friends at mo and I'm guaranteed to get lots of messages every hour of the day (which I reply to when I feel like), I'm going to delete the pointless myspace friends who added me because I look good soon because I watched this and it scared me
http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and_radio/watchdog/reports/internet/internet_20071024.shtml lol I also have found that my lifes more organised, I love creating events and inviting all my friends without having use up my credit to phone or text them, its worked wonders!!! and if I want to know what they are upto now, their everchanging statuses, wall posts and photos give the game away. My life online is an organised representation of my real life an my real life is organised (if Lilly Allen can create a whole TV show trough myspace friends she's never met then anythinsg possible really!) a little bit more through online messaging, the online world isn't tangible but I tend to trust those I believe to be my friends though it could be a hacker, axe murderer or stalker , I believe online profiles more when photos are there with their info, but I wouldn't talk to someone who I didn't feel comfortable with or someone who I felt was lying about who they are. I do know facebook also tracks my writing and it isn't private, its says so in their terms and conditions policy, I don't midn though because they are only using it to advertise specific brands to my interests which I find appealing. Professor Martin Weller talks about disaggregated communication but I really don't mind people reading myindo all over the world in fact I love how I can reach out to so many people so far away!!! :)

Team PURKJ!!!

I think I expressed my 'skittles lets taste the rainbow' mood and overdone the colour in the previous blog posts so I'm toning it down a bit with the white, not to say the colour won't come back!!! lol :D

Today we assigned ourselves into random groups within the class, we are going create a website about the internet, so its Me, Urvi, Raquel, Karina (who I just met and she seems lovely!) and Jess (who joined later, but because I'm able to edit this post, I can mention her to avoid any confusion) in this group and we're calling ourselves PURKJ (don't ask me how to pronounce that!!! lol) and that pic above is what I will use to get our work done together on time hopefully!!! I feel driven, ambitious and have a goal for our groupwork, we must all have roles, though it isn't set in concrete, I think I'll definately be up for being a computer whizz and geting technical stuff sorted, I'll also pitch in with some of the material and research too, we will divide our work up into sections according to our topic and work on which part of the internet we want to study and blend it into one piece of work in the end. Raquel mentioned a BBC programme about Second Life that she'll watch this week, I'll watch it online probably and we'll all get inspiration from that to do internet studies groupwork, it sounds good though and I'm looking forward to closely working with people on a fun project instead of another mindnumbing presentation :)

Confused about HTML coding! & Good, Bad and Ugly Websites

Well this youtube video of Bad Days @ the office, pretty much covers the ambience of the whole class today! http://youtube.com/watch?v=D4a1z7NLnNk I seriously felt for these people who have to work with computers 24/7 and yet 45 mins into todays class about how decode HTML and I already feel their excruciating frustration....(or maybe thats something to do with the throbbing pain of banging my head ten times on the dam keyboard) lol

Though eventually I did get past being intially baffled (bonkers) in building my own webpage. All the technical gobbledegook aka Hyper Text Markup Language transformed into bright colours and the fonts and lines came together to look nice, I felt better and at ease, not to mention very hungry and wanting a massive cheese sandwich to re-energise me. So far I am enjoying the class I have to say, its very interactive and unlike normal boring lectures, I never feel left out and wish all my uni lessons were like this one. Funny that, cause you would imagine a bunch of students sitting in front of computers would be occupied by whats in front of their computers screens but theres actually more communication going on here than any of the other classes and I don't mean instant messaging or emailing, I mean actually talking face to face (with computers conviniently getting in the way)

So far I've grasped how to create frames, tables, colours and links. I've always copied and pasted HTML codes and webcodes for spicing up my bland myspace profile but i'd never actually appreciated the complex attributes involved. Even for this blog, I used HTML coding for the background and images, but I now have an insight into how it works though the knowledge can make me fall asleep, I hope I can use it to build our potential group website soon and hopefully the HTML editors installed in there will help too :)

I'm now looking into how and why various web designs or content determine whether a website is deemed good or bad....or possibly even ugly lol. I have a few example websites to demonstrate some good and bad qualities in design and structure of content.

I found the NHS Direct website a good one, good job too, as its an important website http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/ Firstly the website has a snappy domain name and the homepage downloaded the instant I clicked it, so its accessible to anyone who needs the info in like 1 second, it clearly communicates the purpose of the site on the homepage straight away. Its design is visually interesting yet the colours or images are not overdone, just subtle and consistent throughout the site. There is a clear menu on the right hand side to navigate easily through organised pages. So its user friendly. The info they give is reliable and written by medical experts so for us health conscious or ill people, we know we are reading what the our GP would tell us and theres further contacts to get in touch with the NHS service via email or telephone. I especially like the Body Key Index in the Self Help Guide page, if your ill, you simply self diagnose yourself by clicking on the part of the body that hurts and then finding a reasonable solution to it, its playful and fun and sometimes even when I am not ill, I will click random parts of the body just to learn what to do in an emergency or for first aid, ITS COMPLETE GENIUS!!! :) Overall this website is simple, browser friendly and easy on the eyes.

I also came across this child friendly site for young girls http://www.princesspoppy.com/ and found it was really visually stimulating and fun to use as it was colourful and has lots of animated cartoons and music without being cluttered or full of too much info, it even tells you where to click with a magic wand! It looks sophisticated and makes me feel like a cheerful lil kid! :) lol Another site which I’m sure the whole British nation uses very often for TV programme guides and news is the BBC site http://www.bbc.co.uk/ its another popular website which I actually use it to read through the religions and recipes pages, but that’s just me being random lol but I find this website trustworthy and easy to use which I why I come back every time. As for an ok website, ASOS which an online fashion store http://www.asos.com/pgeHolding.html and I love how the clothes that are there put together with a catwalk video so people are more likely to buy it, the videos load up pretty quickly and are about 10 seconds long but it always convinces me to buy it, a good sales technique! The only reason why I say its ok is because there are too many focal points on each page especially the homepage and I never know where to click first as everything seems appealing! Sometimes I'll get unnecessary pop up adverts come up too which distracts me from the site. The info they give is clear though once you get past all that.

Well now I am clear on what makes a good website, I think I'll be ok just showing a couple of examples of some bad websites and clarifying my points, now this site I came across when a friend of mine decided to play a practical joke on me http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=worlds+most+annoying+website&spell=1 You can click any of those links on that Google search engine and find out for yourself exactly why I didn't laugh at that joke (well actually I did) but just the fact I couldn't even switch off the site without going through a series of humilating boxes was ANNOYING as hell (until I figured out that I could just keep a press on the return button to exit the site) it flashes too which hurt my eyes! And at some points I think it even froze or crashed my computer! Nightmare! It has too much advertisement pop ups thats probably why. It seems pointless to me to have websites like these, but then again it was produced to entertain us, not sure if some people with shor attention spans would find it entertaining though lol The internet can be used for free movies and music downloads too, along with which viruses can hack into computers, these websites I believe should be made illegal, one such is www.peekvids.com/ Theres no government laws or legislations to shut them down, but free msuic and movie downlaods also cost the inddustries who work hard to make them lose money as well as users of such sites getting often poor quality material. Plus it makes my computer slow down! GRRR!!!