For this task I am evaluating the tutorial from the University of California at Berkley.

URL: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html
Author: Joe Barker and John Kupersmith
Institution: University of California at Berkley

This site is very good to explain what the deep web is, and how you go about searching the deep web. As the site is prepared by a university, it is a site that would have been checked against academic principles. It is also used to help students at the university learn to search for appropriate material for their courses. The main points of this site are to teach students about the deep web, what it is, and why it is there, as well as why it should be a place to search for material in places such as databases. This is also constantly updated.


To compare this and the material I saved for the previous task, I feel that this annotation, whilst it may not have a screenshot, is more useful simply as it contains a description of what I can find on the site, what it is used for and how reliable it is. I feel also that this would be more useful to people if included as a resource on a website as they would not need to visit the site to determine its usefulness.

For this task, I needed to save the best 3 sources I found with my boolean task.

First up is the tutorial on the deep web from University of California Berkley.

URL: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/About.html
Author: Joe Barker and John Kupersmith
Institution: University of California Berkley



This is an introductory paragraph about the tutorial by Joe Barker and John Kupersmith.

Site number 2:

A collection of links to information on the deep web from Trinity College in Western Australia.

URL: http://www.trinity.wa.edu.au/plduffyrc/web/invis/default.htm
Author: PL Duffy Resource Centre
Institution: Trinity College Western Australia



Site number 3:

URL: http://library.rider.edu/scholarly/rlackie/Invisible/Inv_Web.html
Author: Robert J. Lackie
Institution: Rider University



These three sites appeared to me to be best, the second one is a collection of links to sources, and both of the other sites appear on this list.

I used Microsoft Word to organise this information, by calling the page an appropriate file name  for example "Deep Web Resource Bank". I added the screenshots in where appropriate in MS Word, and they served to jog my memory of each site. I used Microsoft Word as you can also click on the URL's saved in there to follow them to another site.

For this task, I needed to search using boolean operators. I chose to do a simple search for the "deep web".

Firstly, I tried deep web. This returned far more results in Google than Copernic, however I am sure that the majority of the 28.9 million results were not relevant. Copernic returned 42 results.

Secondly, deep OR web. This returned 4,300,000,000 results in Google, and 61 in Copernic. I think that still we are not getting relevant results.

Thirdly, "deep web". Google returns 290,000 results and Copernic 36. These results are a lot more relevant, however Google still provides me with far more than I can search easily.

Next, to search for information on the deep web coming from university sources, I used Google Scholar, which returned 3,010 hits, and in Copernic I typed "deep web"+.edu. This returned about 40 hits. The paid version of Copernic has a search facility called Education Resources, which I believe would return better results than I received using the free version and adding .edu at the end of the search string.

For this task, I chose to use Google as my most commonly used web search engine.

1. I chose to search for "deep web" on Google. The first hit was Wikipedia's entry on "Deep Web". There was a total of 28,900,000 hits.

2. After setting Copernic Agent to search 12 engines, including Copernicus for the deep web, I received 42 hits. Again, the first hit was Wikipedia.

After reviewing the results from both search engines, I think that either is the most promising, the 42 results from Copernic would be the most relevant, even though both Google and Copernic returned almost the same results on their first page. With Copernic, you don't have several million pages of dross that isn't relevant.

Below is a screenshot of Googles search results on the first page.



Below is a screenshot of Copernics results for the same search.

For this task I downloaded Copernic metasearch agent, and Pagesucker (mainly because Pagesucker sounds cool!).

First up was Copernic. I think that there are some really good facets with this program, not the least of which is that it seems to make searching a lot simpler. As a program rather than a website, there is a lot more that it can do, it is certainly a lot easier to make it user friendly. The ability to make it search country specific as well is a bonus. I think that this would be a good program for searching for journals etc for university essays.

Next I downloaded Pagesucker. Main reason was the name, however I can see how it can be useful. If you would like to read through the links on a site, then you could suck it straight off the Internet and read through it in your own time later. I feel that there might be problems sometimes if it doesn't take a page off correctly, and links may not work.

Well, I have now looked at the Internet Communications blinklist, and I can see that there are some advantages to setting this up this particular way.

There would be a way to use Web 2.0 services such as ASP.Net and AJAX to make this a little better looking, however it is definitely better than a HTML list. Even with anchor tags, written in HTML this would be a cumbersome list, not easily updated, and certainly without linked items such as the blink box, listing how many blinks each item has.

Something like this list that is fluid is far better than a static list, and this way its far easier to add and remove links that are no longer valid.

This blog has been a really interesting way to write an assignment. There are quite a variety of blogging sites out there, and there are good and bad ones.

With a variety of uses for blogs, they can be a good thing, or sometimes bad. Generally I think that they are a good thing, its a way to keep a publicly visible diary and a way to chronicle your own thoughts about things.

Generally I don't trawl the net looking for blogs, so unfortunately I don't really have any interesting ones to list here. However the few that I have seen have normally been someones ideas about the world.

If I thought that more people were interested in my thoughts, whether or not they comment on my blog, then maybe I would keep one as well, however I don't have anything interesting to say!

In this particular task, we needed to upload our page that we designed as part of this module to our student space on the Curtin servers.

http://student.curtin.edu.au/~14086845/index.html

That is where I managed to upload my page. I initially had some trouble due to the security settings needed in the FTP software. Once this was overcome, I then realised I needed to install a VPN client (helpfully provided by Curtin). After installing this and the profile needed to configure it, I was able to use the link above to connect to my site.

The reasoning behind a VPN (virtual private network) client is that due to security concerns, the student.curtin.edu.au domain is accessible only from within Curtin, whether that is a physical on-campus computer or through a VPN.

I have also uploaded my page to the student presentation area of webCT.

After reading through the sources provided, I feel I am able to answer the following questions.

1. Have I used any images or words on my website that contravene copyright laws?
       As all images and words on my website are either my own work or the creator has allowed free use of the image, I have not contravened any laws at all.

2. Would I be in breach of the laws if I used the Curtin logo at the top of my webpage for an assignment?

    According to the copyright section of Curtins website, any material in which Curtin owns copyright is, unless marked confidential, free to use. A notice to the originator would be a courtesy, and its use should also be restricted to Curtin students and staff.
   
    From this, I determine that it would be acceptable to use the Curtin logo for an assignment, as it would not be breaching Curtins own copyright policy.
      

This task is about validating my page. It is important that to satisfy the standards laid out by the W3C any webpage must meet certain criteria. There are numerous document types that you can include in the heading of your page. These will instruct browsers how to approach your page. For example, my page is written in XHTML 1.0 transitional. After validating it, it passed.

This is important, as it means that your page is written correctly.

I believe that the 5 most important rules for writing online are:
    1. Clarity: if it is just a solid bank of text, its very tiring on the eyes, and will drive people away.
    2. Follows eye movements: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html This shows how users' eye movements track down a page. By following this kind of layout, you can make a website appealing and informative, without cluttering up the viewed area with irrelevant information.
    3. Scannable text: users scan text on a web page rather than reading through it word for word. This means you need to employ tactics to grab their attention.
    4. Simple, straight language: no overblown exaggerations. Users on the web have so much information available that they want to get through a page as quickly as possible to see if it is relevant; if not they won't stick around.
    5. Informative: if a website has informative information available as soon as a user lands on the site, they can see straight away whether or not there is anything worth investigating further on the site.

Its important that you view webwriting in a different light to writing in a normal fashion. Based on my own experiences with websites, the ones that are written for the web properly are the ones that tend to have larger numbers of hits. These are usually the easiest on the eye, and also the most directly informative.

Jakob Neilsens writing is to a certain extent still valid today. The basic tenets of web writing still should be adhered to, as there is only so much you can do with the new technologies such as Flash and Silverlight. There is still information that can only be conveyed through text, and users patterns of reading on the web would not have changed much if at all. The only way they may have changed is that now we are busier with a far greater amount of information available, and we need to get through this as quickly as possible.

I taught myself HTML last year, when my mother was doing a Certificate III in Information Technology at TAFE. She showed me what she was doing for her web design component, which was just basic HTML. I thought, "Gee that looks like fun!". So I proceeded to teach myself HTML. I do feel a sense of achievement, as HTML, whilst not complicated, is definitely not easy. I have progressed into ASP.NET, which I code with Notepad. Again, I have taught myself the basics of this. I prefer HTML to blogging for the simple fact that in HTML it is easier to get the exact layout that you want, and I feel that you have a lot more control over the whole process. Also it is easier to back up as well. If you do not have a internet connection that is currently valid, you can still develop HTML, and then when your connection is valid for whatever reason, you can publish to the internet. However with a blog you need a valid connection all the time.

The tutorial, whilst being something I already knew, is very informative. Someone with reasonable computer literacy skills should be able to pick it up very easily, and begin to develop pages with very little trouble.

This was a task that I found was difficult to complete, for the simple fact that I am unable to be online at the same time as more than one other student normally, or if there is more than one other student online then I am unable to stay at my computer chatting for more than 5 minutes or so. However, even with these limitations, I did manage to use a different program to normal for my chat.

I downloaded a program called Trillian to my computer, this program allows you to connect to more than one chat network at once. Having done this, I then signed up for a Yahoo instant messaging username, and an ICQ username. I already had an MSN name, so it was then a simple matter of plugging all the information into Trillian and waiting to see who was online.

I found that using Trillian was in some respects restrictive, as things like emoticons or sound files are not able to be sent easily. Trillian does have some emoticons of its own, but these are only visible to Trillian users. MSN, being my primary chat client, has an addon script called Messenger Plus that allows custom emoticons, sounds etc and this is a far more interactive program. Synchronous communication is good, but the dry medium that is text needs some livening up to draw people in. Emotion is very important to humans, everything that we do has some form of emotion in it, however small it may seem. Using a chat program that does not allow for the use of emotion is restrictive, and potentially can turn people off.

Chat is not very suitable for really long indepth conversations either. It is mostly suitable for small talk. Typing is a long slow laborious process for a lot of people. These people would find talking to someone a more appropriate way of conversing. To this end however MSN (and potentially other chat clients) are making this more possible by allowing video communication. This means that you can see the person you are talking to, you can hear their voice, and it makes conversing with them seem like they are sitting right there with you, even if they are over the other side of the country or even the world.

I made a post to a newsgroup called rec.photo.digital. Photography is a hobby of mine, so I thought that this would be an interesting group to be involved in. Apart from a lot of spam, it is a reasonably interesting group.

I found a post on there about converting a film SLR camera to a digital SLR camera. When I read through the topic, I found that I had personal experience of this and could offer some advice.


Skratchy is my user name, I will now wait to see if there is a response to my post.

I found that this was a daunting task, simply because this is the first time I have ever posted to a newsgroup. However, apart from all the spam, there appears to be a lot of information out there, and you can learn a lot about a specific topic.

Having had a poke around the Internet, and a look at lists and discussion boards there are quite a few differences between them. There are pro's and con's of each as well.

With email lists, there is a far smaller chance of offtopic or inappropriate posts. These kinds of lists are normally a one way discussion sent out on a range of topics, such as an online technology review sending out a weekly newsletter. These have benefits in that you are provided with up to date information, that is relevant to the topic, and there is a low chance of the information being offensive to the recipient. The lists are provided in an easy to access format, with all new information clearly visible. The lists are sent your email address, which most people check on a regular, if not daily, basis. It is also not easy to respond to information provided in a list.

With discussion boards, such as WebCT or the Netstudies forum, posts can be spread throughout a large number of topics. These posts may have obscure subject titles, such as "Help!", giving no indication of the true content of the post. Posts can also be totally irrelevant, may be offensive to some and can be directly targetted at insulting someone. Discussion boards also require you to login to find the posts, and there may be a lot of trawling through dross to find something worthwhile. However, you can post easily to a discussion board.

So there are advantages and disadvantages to both methods. It really comes down to personal preference and the type of discussion you are having.

if you would like accurate up to date information on a regular basis without needing to respond or ask questions easily, then email lists may be the best way to go. If however you would like to be more involved in discussions, then a discussion board is better.

This particular task is about using email. What is it, what it does, how do we use it?

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 header of an email message contains metadata, information about the email. If you read the header you can see the email address or addresses to which the email was sent, what servers it has been through and which email address it has been sent from.

2. In what cases would you find it useful to use the 'cc', 'bcc' and 'reply all' functions of email?
   
    It would be useful to use the 'cc' (carbon copy) function to advise someone of a message that does not require them to perform any action. For example, if you are a supervisor, you may send an email to one of your team using the 'to' function that requires them to action it, but you would use the 'cc' function to advise your superior that you sent the email, but it does not require them to perform any action.
    It would be useful to use the 'bcc' (blind carbon copy) function if you do not want people knowing who has received a copy of an email . Using the example above, if you do not want your team to know that your superior has recieved the email, then you would use 'to' for your team member and 'bcc' for your superior.
    If you receive an email, that has been sent to several members of a team for example, you may use 'reply all' to send a reply to every member of the team who has received the first email.

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

    If you need to send an attachment such as a Powerpoint presentation, you would need to ask the recipient if they have a program that can open that particular attachment. It would be best to send documents in either RTF (rich text format) or plain text such as .doc.
Pictures would be best sent as JPG. If you are unable to send a file in one of the easily opened formats it would be necessary to ask the recipient if they have the program required, as mentioned above.

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

    I have no filters or rules set up in my own email program. However, filters or rules can be set for such purposes as moving emails from a specific contact to a folder designated for that contact, you can set it to move emails that you do not wish to receive to the deleted folder or even sort your emails into folders based on importance.

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

    I have retained the standard file structure from my email program Mozilla Thunderbird. I have found that this is the easiest way as its a personal email address. There are no more or less important emails being received to this email address. The folders are as follows:

Inbox
Outbox
Sent
Deleted
Junk

This is all the folders I need.

The final component of Module 1 was to download an internet tools tool bar for my computer, and use this to ping the curtin.edu.au site and traceroute to the site from my computer.

First up was the ping. This is used to determine that I can actually contact the curtin.edu.au site, and to tell me how long the signal takes to get there and back.

I used the centralops site for this task as well to compare the difference between the two. Centralops is the site I used to traceroute as well.

Surprisingly the ping from my computer took a whopping 1048596 milliseconds. From the centralops site took only 250milliseconds. I believe the difference is due to my personal computer not being a server, and not being hooked directly to the Internet, it has to run through to my ISP first.

Ping Screenshot



Next up was the traceroute tool. Now if you look for my previous post on this subject, you would find there was 20 hops from centralops to curtin.edu.au, and the average time in milliseconds was 250 ms.

However, from my own computer there was 1 hop, direct to curtin.edu.au, and this was also 1048596 milliseconds.

I believe that this could be due to the reasons mentioned above for the ping.

I feel that these are very useful tools, ping more so than traceroute. I think traceroute would be useful if you were trying to track back a hacker who had hit you, or something equally as nasty, but as a LAN (local area network) gamer I have used ping before to try and determine why connections arent working. It can be very frustrating, pinging another computer on the same network and having the ping work but not actually being able to connect to the other computer! Usually this is because of a firewall however.

So, yes traceroute is helpful, but ping much more so. It can tell you your lag as well, which is the time taken from your computer to the ping target and back.  I found this task was very easy, and the module overall was easy and also helpful. I learnt some new things, which is always good, and is also the reason for undertaking this unit.

This task involved tracing a route from one server to another. When you type an address in to your address bar, it doesnt go straight to that address. The path is rerouted through different servers. The path from the Central Ops server to curtin.edu.au is approximately 20 hops, and the time taken averages around 240 milliseconds. I have posted a screenshot below. Number 20 on the list is the destination. The IP address of curtin.edu.au is 134.7.179.53.

Tracerouting is to me a very versatile tool, one that lets you know exactly what path you take from one server to the next. I found it easy to use this particular site.

Well, this was another reasonably easy task for me, seeing as I have used FTP quite a lot for website managment.

Task was to log in using FTP to a set site, find and download a file, and answer the following question:

"According to the readme.txt file, '_________ MATTERS!' - what word goes in the blank?"

Answer: CAPITALIZATION


Screenshot above is of a program calle AceFTP3 Free. In the righthand column is the server I was logged in to. In the lefthand column is the directory on my computer that I downloaded the readme.txt file to.

FTP is an excellent way of managing files. It makes uploading website files to a server for testing very simple, for example. Or you can share files quickly and easily between computers.

File management has become more and more critical as society changes. As the world shrinks through the use of technology, and communications has become more and more developed to the point that it is possible to communicate in real time between any points on the globe no matter how far apart they are, so too file management becomes a critical issue. The reasoning behind this is that you may be working on a Word document with someone who is based in New York for example, whilst you are based in Sydney. If you can log in and download the file at any given time with no interaction from the other party, then it makes the flow of information a lot smoother. The difference that I see from telnet is that this is far more user friendly for files, not just data. It becomes simple to transfer movies, music, large documents, photographs and more from one computer to the next.

However, it can be open to abuse. If you know someones password for a particular FTP site, such as a web server, then you can remove all the files from that server, effectively removing the website from operation. You can also have people who will use FTP to log in to a major corporations server, and download critical company secrets. The military would be a prime target for this sort of abuse.

Well there was another link for a different telnet site provided, and this was a little out of the ordinary. A text based version of Star Wars.

Apart from the retina damaging task of trying to read the scrolling text, and the 1970's style flashbacks, it was interesting to see just what Telnet can accomplish. Admittedly there was no pretty pictures, but the idea of using telnet for something like a n ASCII text based movie is definitely off the wall!

The amount of work that must have gone into it was amazing. However I feel that using it for something such as that is mere novelty value, the real purpose and benefit of telnet is what I stated in previous blog entry Module 1 Task A: Telnet. That is, it is for data.

I have taken a quick screenshot of the telnet site as well.


I know it doesnt look like much, but thats what telnet is from my perspective. Its a text based data access medium.

Any tech that is invented/discovered, seems to have unintended applications. That is, the designers of the original tech have set out to make something to achieve a goal. Once the goal is achieved, there are always people who are going to look at that tech and say what else can I do with this?

This is evidenced by the use of telnet above. As far as my perspective extends, I can see that the original purpose would have been for data access. But an inquisitive mind would look at telnet and say, "Can I do something different?" The answer, obviously, is yes.

This happens with whatever invention you may care to name. No, not turning it into a text based Star Wars, but using it for unintended purposes. The nature of the human mind is to be inquisitive.

For everything to do with human daily life, there will always be needs. And as stated, those needs will eventually be addressed. It is interesting to observe the mutations of inventions, and to see how they are implemented in a thoroughly different fashion to that intended.