'Shared information unites people' - Richard Frickman

The practice of giving in online communities is not uncommon and is the fundamental basis upon which some communities have been established.
An individuals standing in a community is ultimately determined by what they bring to it.
The circulation and exchange of gifts within the community ultimately leads to the strengthening of relationships and an increase in the connections formed.
This is what is commonly referred to as the gift economy.

There are many online communities in which a modern notion of the gift economy is practised.

Gumtree is one of my faves. It's free to post ads on the site.There are gumtrees in major cities worldwide, so you can find goods and services in your area. It features ads from property for sale to people offering carpools. I managed to find a brand new shelf from Ikea on the freebie part of the site. All I had to do was pick it up from the advertiser's home address.

Many webpages now feature a link that enables the reader to add it to a selection of social bookmarking websites. You can find what's new and interesting on the net and it's an ideal place to get another perspective on a research topic without trawling the internet for ages.

Reddit, del.icio.us, and digg it are sites that hosts your internet favourites and those belonging to others, and lets you access them from a computer with internet anywhere. One of the benefits is that you don't have to be tied to your home network in order to view your bookmarks.
You can then store and share your favourites with people you know or members of the community. It is easy to find what you're looking for or categorise your bookmarks as you can make tags, one word descriptors or keywords.

The creative commons is a unique non profit organisation founded in 2001 that offers free copyright licenses. They are designed for musicians, film makers, photographers even blog writers and other creative disciplines that don't want to get their work ripped off. The artist retains copyright but licenses their work as free for certain uses. This means their work can be seen or heard and shared by people online. For example a song could be copied, distributed or sampled as the long as the artist received credit.

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved." http://creativecommons.org/

After perusing the online broadsheets as I do on a daily basis I found two articles which explored themes relevant to new media technologies.

The first is from the Guardian's technology section and provides an insight into how media law is in direct conflict with the ideals of the freedoms, particularly freedom of speech, that can be exercised in cyberspace. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/oct/22/news.blogging

Fans of football club Sheffield Wednesday expressed their dissatisfaction about the clubs boardroom members in what they thought were anonymous internet postings on owlstalk.co.uk The owner of the website was served with a court order that forced him to reveal the identity of fans who had made serious allegations about the club owners.

Libel cases are no longer unique to traditional media forms such as print but are finding their way into new media platforms. This case highlights the fact that there is no anonymity in cyberspace. Yes, we can create new identities for ourselves online however we are consistently monitored and no-one is autonomous or safe from the legal might of corporations seeking to silence or suppress the individual.

The second article is from the Times business section and explores the benefits of social networking sites, wikis and blogs maintained by employees and discusses why employers should realise the opportunities that can come from encouraging rather than discouraging their use. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/corporate_law/article2616593.ece

For some employers communication via these forums is seen as a means of strengthening ties with clients and colleagues. For others and understandably so it is potentially hazardous for the reputation of the organisation. Insider secrets being exposed to an otherwise unaware public could lead to legal repercussions

A few months ago my employer sent out an area e-mail warning us that posting information about the company on social networking sites however innocent it could be deemed, was in fact a breach of contract and anyone found doing so would face a disciplinary and possible dismissal. This is from a company who was fined £250,000 by the FSA for mis-selling insurance products to customers through its telesales department and was most recently the subject of a Watchdog report, again coming under fire for misinforming customers about an insurance product for the IPhone. You can see why they're anxious.

We discussed and viewed the phenomenon that is Second Life. This provoked heated discussion concerning the debates around online deception and who should be afforded access to these services.It was said by someone in the class that people who are mentally unstable or vulnerable could potentially misuse the site. Don't people on IM, Facebook or MySpace create alternate identities for themselves or lie about their attributes and achievements? I think Second Life is still serves a relatively niche community and does not promote itself in the same manner as the aforementioned online communities do, therefore it is understandable to see why comments like this were made.

The groups presented their ideas to Nigel. We went last just to be on the safe side.

Neng enlightened us about a site called Queeruption.org, a virtual community used for global activism. There is no central governing body or leadership. Communication is conducted solely online to organise annual worldwide campaigns and rallies.

We will use examples of global and local communities in cyberspace and make a comparison between the perceived aims of each and the character of members of the community.

His reaction certainly provided us with a degree of reassurance that we didn't receive last week. I certainly feel more confident about going forward with the project now.

Today I became reacquainted with html. I've been here before. I used Dreamweaver and Flash to create my own webspace in college and used html to add text to it. However it didn't seem so complicated back then.

First task of the day.

A brief tutorial on the basic html commands and how to insert an image into a body of text.

We have a projector in our teaching room now. So no more squinting for me, thank goodness.
Nigel said people are impressed when they see how easy it is to create text for a webpage using html. Hmm...I'm not so sure about that.

Last week my comments on blogging were probably not justified and I soon realised that there are plenty of blogs out there that I enjoy myself.

My favourites are www.gofugyourself.typepad.com, which I didn't even realise was a blog, and www.lunchinabox.net

Gofugyourself takes an irreverent look at the fashion faux pas of celebrities. With the tagline 'Fugly is the new pretty', it is unforgiving and hilarious. No celebrity escapes the wrath of the fugly girls, every inch of their look is dissected. Fugly stands for fantastically ugly. It features a section titled 'Frequent offenders' where celebs renowned for their style misdemeanours have their catalogue of errors analysed. The site was created by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan in 2004 who have now quit their jobs in the TV industry because of the overwhelming success of the site and the ad revenue it generates.

Lunchinabox is a blog written by Biggie a work at home mum and former expat, fluent in Japanese who lives in San Francisco.

The title of her blog refers to the Japanese cuisine of home packed meals called bento boxes which consist of rice. meat or fish and vegetables, presented in not so ordinary tupperware.

She is 'obsessed with cooking and building a faster, better packed lunch' and on her blog shares with readers the colourful and elaborate lunches she creates for her 3 year old.

The pictures look so delectable and good enough to eat, probably not the best thing to look at when you're hungry or if you're a foodie like me.

As a group we had a brief meeting last week Thursday to agree on a topic for our web resource. We have chosen to focus on virtual communities.

We are considering creating and maintaining an experimental or 'fake' MySpace page.

We are in agreement that is essential to define what is meant by the term 'community' before we proceed. Below are the definitions of community and virtual community. I will explore these in detail at a later stage.

A community is a social group of organisms sharing an environment, normally with shared interests. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community#Location

A virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as letters, telephone, email or Usenet rather than face to face. If the mechanism is a computer network, it is called an online community. Virtual and online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life. Many means are used in social software separately or in combination, including text-based chatrooms and forums that use voice, video text or avatars.

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

At the end of the lesson we came together as a group to discuss any ideas we had ruminated on during the past week.

Questions that emerged where how do artists create a fanbase or a buzz on MySpace?
Why are some artists more successful than others? How much of it is exploited by PR's and record companies?

We also seek to discover why individuals join other online communities, in particular Facebook, is it for narcissistic reasons or confirmation?

One thing I've observed is that we're thinking too much like cultural studies students which isn't necessarily a bad thing, however I think it may hinder our progress.

We are continuously trying to draw links between the topic of our project and new media theory, rather than concentrating on whether it will appeal to our peers for whom it is meant to inform.

We consulted Nigel, just to confirm we are on the right track. The response we received didn't exactly assuage any reservations we had about the idea for our project.

Nevertheless we are going to revise our idea and come up with some sort of structure for the content on our wiki by next week.

This is my inaugural blog.

I'm rather sceptical about the idea of blogging. I don't understand why people keep traditional diaries let alone blogs. Maintaining this page for the next nine weeks is a task I approach with trepidation...

Notably there are blogs out there that have developed a following for different reasons. I.e. The person has an intriguing, eventful life, hobby or profession, however the majority of them are pretty inane. No offence is intended to all those who are active and willing participants in the blogosphere.

My intention is to use this blog strictly for academic purposes although I will be recording my reflections in this space too.

Self evaluation requires introspection which in itself is a challenge, and is something I've had to undertake on numerous occasions during my time at various educational establishments, but to then have to post your findings on an open forum such as this is pretty daunting.

I have the status of a social pariah because I refuse to communicate via Facebook or MySpace. I have rejected numerous requests to be added as a 'friend' on the Facebook pages of my nearest and dearest. I pretend I have no knowledge of ever receiving such requests! I consider e-mail and IM to be invaluable tools in my day to day life, I wouldn't be lost without them though.

However the aforementioned networking sites just don't figure in my scheme of things. Many of my peers find it difficult to maintain meaningful and essentially 'physical' relationships outside of their online identity.

Myspace for example was, in its heyday, a place for up and coming artists, or those with a product, event or service to promote to get noticed, network with others in their field and create a buzz.

Myspace users soon upgraded to the phenomenon that is Facebook, a site originally designed for university students to communicate. It is still predominantly utilised by students but it is clear that many people use it is as a tool for self gratification

The distinction between the public and the private has become increasingly distorted and I'm shocked by some of the content on the sites, the things people are willing to share and the lengths people will go to to get noticed.
I'm not a cynic, I appreciate the value of these communities and I think at some point I'll get sucked in and may just open a Facebook account

For the group project I'm working with Karl, Neng and Daniella...I knew Neng prior to forming the group, but for the others it was our first meeting.

There were nervous handshakes as we made our initial introductions. They are all amiable individuals. I think we'll work well together. No-one has tried to impose their will on others or dominate, which is a positive thing.

The issue of group dynamics and interactions was raised in the session.
Transactional analysis is a theory of psychology developed by Dr Eric Berne. It is a social psychology and method used to improve communication.

'Driver behaviour or working styles' concerns how we relate and communicate with others

Berne identified five working styles

• be perfect



• be strong



• try hard



• please others



• hurry up

http://www.businessballs.com/transactionalanalysis.htm

His findings are revealing but not definitive. It is possible an individual could possess traits from one or more beahviour.The above link provides a description of the characteristics of each behaviour. It will be interesting to discover which category myself and group members belong to.

We agreed to meet later in the week to discuss what we want the focus of our group wiki to be.

But what exactly is a wiki? At the end of the lesson I was still unsure.




I'm familiar with wikipedia. We, that is degree students, are constantly patronized by our lecturers about the efficacy of content on the site. And due to its questionable and unauthenticated nature warned that it should not be employed as a reference for academic work.

Well I found a reliable definition of a what a wiki is, on Wikipedia.

A wiki is a type of computer software that allows users to easily create, edit and link web pages. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, power community websites, and are increasingly being installed by businesses to provide affordable and effective Intranets or for use in Knowledge Management. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

'The simplest online database that could possibly work.' Ward Cunningham

The first wiki, the WikiWikiWeb, created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham was set up as a site that featured topics and hosted discussions on software engineering.

I would describe myself as techno savvy, but at the end of week one I can say that this stuff is just not igniting a fire in me. I'm finding it very tedious, not boring just rather tedious.
I work for a well known mobile phone retailer and am well versed in the language and products of new technology and I keep up to date with developments in new media. However I'm just not techno, techno...(I coined a new phrase!) and I don't think this class will sustain my interest in the long run.

Thought for the day: Computers make my eyes hurt. Seriously.