Week 3

Firstly i have to mention how unsure i was about this entire module.
It seemed as though just to blog was quite unnecessary, but then the project that I and my group, 'Alter Egos' are doing is based on online identity.
So, it is clear that this quite evidently interlinks with us blogging.
We all have created a blog page which we update on a weekly basis, allowing other users to view and share their comments. We get to personalize it by adding pictures of ourselves, which i have not got round to uploading as yet, and also have an "About Me" section... now you can't say i am reading too into this. Is this not an online identity in itself?

Moving on, to what we as a group have decided to set up, a bogus "myspace" and "facebook" account, for a male known as Joe. We are going to experiment on how many people add him and what comments they leave? This will show us how extreme or not an online identity can be.
Although this will not play a major role in our project, it will give us a clearer insight into other people's identity too. How, u say? Well firstly, what type of people add "Joe", if certain groups add him etc... or, it could go totally opposite, either way it will definitely open up more questions and hopefully give us some answers.

The group and I will be looking into how the social network has evolved from many years ago. For example when the chat rooms existed the only information available to the other person was their screen name, which in many cases at that time were made up.
Now we have all sorts of social networks that in a sense make it mandatory to fill in such gaps, before you start making friends so that you can read a person's profile and if you like it then you add them, if not you move on to another profile.
Because social networks have been around for a long time now, people are feel more comfortable in uploading their pictures for people to view, having their real names on screen, where as mentioned above, when the chat rooms started off, it was all so new to people and they were more aware of possible consequences, i.e fraud.

This is one of many things that our group will be looking into. Once we have gathered more information and research we can then elaborate on different types of identity, the dangers, and the positives, and how it all came about.

Week 2

My first lesson was in week 2.
It was a surprise to learn that i would be keeping a blog which I would have to write in each week. So as most, i was happy in the sense that i could finally put my views across about anything freely.
But, the more i thought about having my views widely available for everyone to read and possibly argue with, the more daunting it became.
Deep down though everyone wants to be heard, right? So blogging is definitely the way.
Well here it goes anway.

On Monday 15th October '07, i was taught about HTML, how to use it and about the codes and tags it contains and its purpose. I learnt how HTML is a text work and how it is actually the browser that does the work.
I also learnt how the tags are always in pairs and what some of them stand for, and how to insert links and images too.
<> This symbol is to open and close a text etc.

The most interesting part was to see how a HTML code works from a minor programme such as Notepad. This surely taught me what i used to think of as another language, the simplicity of HTML.

It was also intriguing to find out about Marc Andreessen, a software engineer who was the first to create "Netscape", the first web browser to be widely available.
Although, there was much competition with "Microsoft", as "Netscape" was an open source software which meant it was freely available.
So, Bill Gates took advantage of this and created HTML codes/tags that could only be read by Internet Explorer.
Up until now, as most would agree, Internet Explorer proves to be most popular.

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