5:30am iPhone alarm goes off with Kings of Leon ring tone. There are no other alerts or messages on my phone

 5:45am turn on PC and check emails and my twitter timeline. Emails include a newsletter from one of my favourite online stores.  Spend a 5 minutes looking at their sales, while glancing at my twitter timeline. I @reply a couple of the people I follow. Open up browser and flick through a few sites catching up on the latest news.

 6:40am Head to work by car. Radio is on and listening to triple m’s breakfast show. There are a number of ads for new cars and insurance. There aren’t many billboards on my route however those that I notice are for mobile phones or mobile carriers. I notice a lot of store and business signs.

 7:10am Arrive at work. Turn on computer and read emails and check calendar for the day. Write and read emails for 30 mins before heading out to the Refinery.  The radio is on in the car and there are more ads for insurance.

 8:00am Spend the next 2 hours in a one-on-one training session based on corporate web applications with the entire time using the intranet.

 10:00am Return to office by car with the radio playing again. This time there is music playing for the 15 minute trip

 10:15am Arrive back at work and check and write emails. Check cricket scores online. Google search to find solution for a couple of co-workers with outlook and excel problems.

Check private emails and tweets on iphone at various times during day.

 2:45pm Head for home and put the cricket on the radio. Switch between that and commercial radio. Check stocks on iphone while at lights.

3:30pm Arrive home. Turn on PC. Check emails. One email tells me I have some Facebook notifications. Most of the others are newsletters. Open twitter to see timeline and Facebook to check my friend’s statuses. Write a few tweets and @reply to a few friends. Download latest episode of Bones and Grimm via Torrent.

6:00pm TweetDeck is on for the rest of the evening although I am only glancing at it most of the time. Watch an episode of Merlin on the PC that I downloaded about a month ago but haven’t watched yet.

8:00pm Transfer episode of Bones to digital media player and watch on TV

9:00pm play Skyrim on PC while glancing at Twitter timeline on Tweetdeck on the other monitor.

 11:30pm Read book on iPad for 30min before going to sleep.

Summary

About 90 minutes listening to the radio in the car and seeing various billboards and shop signs, around 1 hour reading and responding to email, about 4 hours glancing at Twitter via TweetDeck, about 30min on the iphone checking emails, messages and stocks, around 30min reading a book on the ipad, around 3hours on the internet/intranet, about 90 minutes watching downloaded TV shows and around 2 hours playing PC games. The total comes to 12 hours engaging with some kind of media with most of it digital (apart from the times spent in the car listening to an analogue radio show and seeing physical advertising media).

The first independent variable is attendance at a tertiary educational institution and the second is combined household income. The dependent variable is the types of radio stations listened to.

Question 2: Identify what could be regarded as ‘high-brow’ or ‘low-brow’ forms of consumption in tables B3 and B8. Are there any stations or programmes where it is unclear as to whether it is a ‘high-brow’ or ‘low-brow’ form of culture?

The ABC radio stations and the News could be considered ‘high-brow’, while Commercial AM radio, Blue Heelers Sale of the Century and Film/movies could be considered ‘low-brow’.  Commercial FM is almost evenly distributed between those that did and did not attend tertiary education and amongst all income levels, so it is difficult to suggest whether it is ‘high-brow’ or ‘low brow’ based on these independent variables. Home improvement is also split evenly amongst the two independent variables.

Question 3: In table B3 what seems to be the stronger determinant of a stated preference in particular for ‘high-brow’ radio stations – income or education? What about ‘low-brow’ preferences? Are there any other variables that you think could be influencing the percentages (eg living location, age)?  How would this effect interpretation of the data?

For ABC FM Classical and ABC AM Radio National the determinant seems to be education rather than income. With ‘low-brow’ radio stations such as Commercial AM, the determinant seems to be both education and income. Age would also be a factor in determining listening preferences, however it wouldn’t necessarily reveal whether something was ‘low-brow’ or high-brow’ as we may find that while older people have a preference for ABC radio, they might also have a preference for Commercial AM.

Question 4: On the basis of these tables and your knowledge of Australian culture do you think we have a clear demarcation between ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow- tastes in Australia? What might you use as evidence in mounting your case?

There is no clear demarcation between high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’ culture based on these tables, however, it would be more useful to measure this against more contemporary ‘low-brow’ culture such as reality tv to see whether education and income are determining factors on preferences towards watching these programmes.

Sheil describes Sociologists as people who are intrusive and waste time with meaningless studies. Berger describes the Sociologist in a similar way when he describes sociologists as being “intensively, endlessly, shamelessly interested in the doings of men” (Berger 1963). While Berger discusses the sociologist in a serious manner, Sheil lanpoons the sociologists and their studies, although they both descibe the process of the studies in similar terms. Sheil comments that in her new study, “the terms of reference will be clear and precise” (Sheil 2003). Berger insists that sociologists conduct their studies according to “strictly defined frame of reference” (Berger 1963).

The most interesting point about the lecture was the explanation of structure, culture and agency. While I remain unsure of what Mills () referes to as “the sociological imagination”, it is interesting to read how the author distinguishes between the individual experience of marriage, for example and marriage as a structure of society.

The idea that the more we can understand about why we act as we do, and about society as a whole, the more likely it is that we can have some control as individuals over our lives (Giddens), is interesting as it goes against the idea of structure and culture. The lecture describes this as agency.

How would you answer the question: ‘What is sociology?’ if a friend were to ask you?

If asked, I would say that sociology is the study of humans and their interactions with each other, as individuals, groups and societies (Giddens, 1986). Sociology seeks to explain the mundane in terms of why we do what we do and why are as we are.
What differentiates psychology from sociology?

While psychology is concerned with the  individual lives and how factors such as family relationships, for instance, impact on lived experience, sociology is concerned with the interaction of the biological, the psychological and the biographical. While similar, it the addition of social categories, such as gender, age, class, cultural background
What differentiates journalism from sociological research?

Journalism can often involve opinions, while sociological research should never do so.

What social norms, other than those mentioned in the lecture, can you think of?

Queuing – Queue jumping is frowned upon yet there are times when the actual queue is not clear.

Drinking Alcohol Socially – There is often an expectation that people should drink socially and there is peer pressure to drink heavilly even though a person may not be able to handle alcohol

Drinking Tea or Coffee – there is often an expectation that people should offer and accept tea or coffee and there is surprise when someone drinks neither

Creating comments in your code is easy. All you need to do is:

<!– Write your comments here. The browser will ignore, however anyone you looks at the source code will see this –>

How can you make your text appear on a Web browser exactly as you typed it in your HTML code?

<body>
<p>You will need to first place your text inside body tags anf if you plan on writing a few paragrpahs you should place them in <p></p> tags
</body>

How can you provide additional information in HTML in the form of a small pop up message that is otherwise not apparent if you don’t roll your mouse over it?

You can use the “title” attribute. Not to be confused the <title></title> tag.

<p>If you want this sentence to have a tooltip to appear you when you roll your mouse over an abbreviation, such as URL, you will need to use a tile attribute inside an <abbr title=”Laugh out Loud”>LOL</abbr>.

How can you create a hypertext link that will allow you to link to a specific part of the same page?

You will need to use a named anchor inide the document and create hyperlinks to that name. Click the hyperlink at the top and you will jump to the name. Great for longer html documents

<a href=”#here”>Your link to the name will be here</a>

<a name=”here”>This is where we want to go</a>

If you were to create an empty table of two rows by two columns, what do you need to do to it to show the borders around each empty cell?

<table border=”1″>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>

How do you turn an image into a hypertext link? How do you influence whether or not such an image has a border?

Place the image source inside an <a href> element. You can set the border attribute to zero.

So the code would look like this:

<a href=”seanpryor.wordpress.com”>
<img border=”0″ src=”image.jpg” title=”my image” alt=”my image” />
</a>

How do you change the colors of your hypertext links? How do you change the background color?

I would use a style in the <head> to create different colours. You can do the same for the background colour or use <body bgcolor=”xxxxx”>

<head>
<style type=”text/css”>
body {bgcolor = purple”}
a:link {color = green}
</style>

Using the HTML tags available from “A Beginner’s Guide to HTML” (above), practice your basic Web coding skills. Once you’re feeling confident, answer the following questions in your space on the Flecs-Blackboard discussion board:

What tags make up the basic structure of an HTML document?

<html>
<head>
<title>This is my title it appears in the title bar of the browser</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is my first paragraph</p>
<p>This my second paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>

What tags do you use to denote a paragraph?

<p></p>

What is the difference between a paragraph tag and a line break tag? Please illustrate.

<p>gives me a paragraph</p>

<p>Gives me a paragraph</br>
which continued on a new line</p>

How do you create a bulleted list?

<ul>
<li>Point one of my bullet</li>
<li>Point two</li>
<li>Point three</li>
</ul>

How do you create a numbered list?

<ol>
<li>Point one of my numbered list</li>
<li>Point two</li>
<li>Point three</li>
</ol>

There is title information that appears for Web pages in the title bar of a Web browser, in your bookmarks when you choose to bookmark a site, and as a listing in the search results when you do a search for information using a search engine like Google. How do provide this very important information in your HTML code? Please show an example.

<title>This is my page</title>

How do you add an image?

<img source=”image.jpg” />

How do you add a link?

<a href=”http://seanpryor.wordpress.com”>My Curtin Blog</a>

How do you make an image a link?

<a href=”http://seanpryor.wordpress.com”><img source=”image.jpg” /></a>

Provide the code for an empty table, 3 columns long and 4 rows high.

<table>
<tr>
<td></td><td></td><td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td></td><td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td></td><td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td><td></td><td></td>
</tr>
</table>

Read Tim Berners-Lee’s answers to Frequently Asked Questions by the Press: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html

After reading through Tim Berners-Lee’s answers to Frequently Asked Questions by the Press, answer the following questions:

1. What role did Tim Berners-Lee play in the development of the Internet?

His only role was in the development of the Web

2. In this unit, you will be working with the XHTML scripting language. What scripting languages did Tim Berners-Lee discuss (back in 2000)? Do you feel his comments are still relevant today? What evidence can you find to support your view?

He spoke about XML (eXtensible Markup Language), RDF (Resource Description Framework), SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), Voice and XML Signature.

Not sure if I understand the question, however as I can’t find many developments  on RDF and there are many pratical applications and varieties of xml. I would suggest that TBL’s dream of the semantic web may be a while yet.
3. Tim Berners-Lee discusses the world’s very first Web page. Visit the site and write your observations on the following: In what ways do you feel Web design has changed over the years, not just in the visual design, but in the hyperlinks? Why do you think his page is so simple? What scripting language did it use? View the source of this page and tell us how many different tags you can find in the code. (see http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html)

Very simple page without any graphics.

The Tags are

<HEADER>
<TITLE>
<NEXTID>
<BODY>
<H1>
<A>
<DL>
<DT>
<DD>

The language is HTML

4. What is the W3C? Why do they care about “standards?”

The W3C is the WWW Consortium. There mission is to realise the full potential of the web by creating a neutral forum. Common specs are essential
5. If Tim Berners-Lee could roll the clock back and re-design URLs, how would we type in the address for Curtin University ‘s Admissions Office (now at http://students.curtin.edu.au/administration/admissions/ )? Why would he do this?

http:curtin.edu.au/students/admissions/admissions

The syntax is too clumsy.

6. According to Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the first GUI (Graphical User Interface) browser? Name 5 different Web browsers. Which do you think are the most popular ones today?

TBL wrote the first GUI, which je called WorldWideWeb and then later named Nexus

Pei Wei wrote Viola

The 5 most common web browsers today in order of usage are:

According to http://gs.statcounter.com/

IE (54%)
Firefox (32%)
Chrome (7%)
Safari (4%)
Opera (2%)

According to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Firefox (46 %)
IE (36%)
Chrome (11 %)
Safari (4 %)
Opera (2 %)

7. Name the three first World Wide Web link colours, in order of appearance.

Blue

Red when active

Purple when visited

1.1.3. Reading & Exercise: Internet Timeline

5 milestones most relevant to the World Wide Web, screen design, and multimedia design issues

1982 DCA and ARPA establish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), as the protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP

1984 Domain Name System (DNS) introduced

1991 World-Wide Web (WWW) released by CERN Tim Berners-Lee developer

1995 RealAudio, an audio streaming technology, lets the Net hear in near real-time

Time, space was a head spinning look at time and space and how media transforms the human experience and perception. There are a number of expamples that Harris uses:

• Memorization of speeches as a form of artificial memory where orators used the architecture as a medium for delivering speeches
• Descartes, who posited that understanding came from the workings of the mind, where space is unlimited and the mind utilises time to understand duration
• Lessing a German writer stated that pictorial representations should be spatially perfect and poetry must represent time
• Einstein undermined the idea of space and time as absolutes with his theory of relativity where space and time are relative to the observer
• media is tranformed by this idea with abstract art forms attempting to depict changing spatial and temporal realities

Rather than absolutes of time and space, media has provided us with many different ways to experience time-space realtionships. Changes in communication media from the telegraph to email, travel and information dissemination via television and the internet are reducing the lived experience of time and space.

So what this means to me, is that our perception of time and space has been modified by technological advances in various media. Yet this also allows us to operate in many different levels of time-space experiences. (I thought Fiske was confusing).

The Web of Time is a little easier on the mind and looks at the way in which Time is affected by the Internet as 24hr operations are possible. Whereas this threatens local cultures it also gives them the means by which to protect and promote their identity.

The author discusses his theories by looking at different concepts of time”

• Mediaval Concept of Time: time is not an abstract, but part of life and reality. Time was measured by natural events rather than a mechanical means. Time was linked to human activities. There is a radical separation between Global time or the measurement of aeons and Local time or the measurement of days, months and years.
• Modern Conception of Time: mechanical clocks have separated us from the natural measurements that governed the lives of medieval times. Our lives are measured now by the beat of the clock.
• Time, the Internet, and the Dilemma of Globalization: raises the question of how we can reconcile the local times of cultures and communities with the time as a single global entity.
• Traditional time in Thailand: Encompasses the contunity of life and as such, time stands still as the past, present and future are one.
• Modern time in Thailand: relentless march of time through the past, present and towards the future. All are separated and people lose touch with the past as their days are measured by the need to earn a daily wage.
• Animistic concept of time: where the future is uncertain and out of the control of people and only the present is important

All three concepts are important to the Thai and can explain much of their behaviours.

To cut to the chase, the author looks at the concepts of time as a Circle (medieval time), and Arrow (modern time) and a Web (Internet time).

Activity 1: how has engagement with the Internet affected your experience of time and space

There are so many areas where my experience of time and space has been affected by the Internet. They are as follows:

Gaming. As a child if you wanted to play a game that involved more than one person, you had to be pysically in the same place as that person and also had to devote a signficant amount of time to setup and complete som of these games. For me the Internet has meant that you can play a game with someone no matter where they are and as long as you dont carewho you play with, at any time you like.

TV. As a child and teenage, my schedule was mapped around the TVs. If you missed a show it was devastating as you couldn’t talk about with kids at school the next day. Now I download shows as they are released, so both time and space are affected as geographically there is no need to be in a particular place to watch a show (in front of a TV) or at the time the show is scheduled.

Music. No need to go to the store and buy a CD and then come home to play it. I can listen to it live and download it and transfer it to an MP3 player.

Memory: no need to physically store information or try to memorise information. It is likely to be available when searched for. I rarely even store bookmarks as my internet history is stored for me.

Banking/Shopping/etc: No need to wait until 9am to buy something, transfer money or even go to a store.

Study: Can attend iLectures and access information without physically being at Curtin. Being a student in the Internet age is truly a pleasure as I hated going to tutorials at 6pm or 8am or spending time in the library. It used to take me 1h to get to Uni (longer if I also took the bus). Waiting between classes was a waste of time. That time can now be used to study or do other things. However the time you gain by having access to the Internet means that you need to be more mindful of the time you can waste.

The readings were involved as they usually are when the word “society” is used. William and Edge’s paper on SST (the social shaping of technology) looked at the way technology is shaped by society as opposed to the more traditional view of the technological impact on society. Nguyen looked at the the interaction between technologies and society through online news services. A very interesting article about how the fear of new technologies is often greater than their actual impact. It also highlights that the advent of Internet-mediated news is only one of a series of similar events. The third reading from White was about the commercial aspects of facebook and lack of control that non-users have over content that others put up. He talks about committing “facebook suicide” by removing yourself from facebook, a task that is quite difficult to do.

Activity 1:

with reference to Facebook, an online game, or any other Internet application or technology, look into how the developers and users negotiate its development:

I’m not a facebook user so, I’ll take a look at twitter.

a. Are there examples of the developers and the users disagreeing with some change or other? What was the outcome of these?

Probably the biggest complaint users had over minor change that Twitter made was with retweets. For those that don’t use Twitter a retweet is users way of citing an interesting made by someone they follow. There had never been a retweet feature in twitter, so users took it on themselves to use RT to signify a retweet.

Twitter liked the idea so much they built a retweet feature into the web app, however, they took away the inherent usefullness of the RT, which was that users could add their own comments to a retweet. Although Twitter hasn’t modified the retweet feature on the site, there are a number of twitter apps where the original RT is still incorporated or you have choice as to whether you want to add your oen comments before you retweet.

b. Have the people using the application found uses that the developers may not have anticipated?

It is safe to say that twitter had been defined by its users rather than the developers. the retweet is only one way that users added their won value to the service. The #hashtag is probably the biggest user-defined feature. By adding a # in front of a an abbreviated word, users can follow a conservation, news or political event, conference, or even just a joke. It is such an important part of Twitter that these #hashtags form trending topics that are often noted in mainstream media.

Activity 1 Individual: power operates in many ways on the Internet, let’s take one example, that of Internet access, to discuss power (no more than half a page):

a. Are there limits to when, what (sites), how much, and where you access the Internet?

There are few limits on my personal web access apart from my download allowance and the cost of usage. As long as I can continue to pay for my internet connection and my ISP or another ISP offers a connection to my house, there is nothing to restrict my access. If, however, I go over my download limit, which is unlikely, then my access will be slowed but not stopped. There are no limits to what sites I can visit at the moment, however there is a concern and the Rudd government will implement a clean feed which could restrict content on the Internet. Unfortunately, we will never know what is resrticted.

When I am working, I can access any sites that I want, however, I restrict myself to browsing during my lunch break and before I start work. As I am a trainer, it is difficult for me to access the internet while I am working.

b. How can you transgress those limits and what are the possible consequences?

I can only really transgress my download limits if I go crazy and download everything I can find on the Internet. The only consequence would be to have slower access until my quota resets.

c. Is it possible to lose your access and what are the ways this might happen?

It isn’t likely that I will lose my access. I was concerned about this with the AFACT v iiNet trial that concluded last week. I download my favorite TV shows from the net and I was concerned that if iiNet lost the case, then I wouldn’t be able to do so or at least that it would be more difficult to do so.

Avtivity 2: Individual: with reference to a friend or relative (you do not, by the way, have to identify this person by name), note (no more than half a page):

a. What impressions would you have of them from the information available online?

I have a friend that I have known for nearly 20 years. He is about 10 years older than me, but we both took to the internet about the same time. We fell out of contact for a few years and when we contacted each other again via facebook it was interesting to see his online persona.

b. Are there distinct differences between their face to face and online selves?

He is pretty much the same online and offline although I wasn’t suprised. I haven’t had a lot of experience with meeting people online and then offline or visa versa, however, I have found the people I already knew offline are pretty much the same online.

I’ll leave the last topics for blackboard.