WEEK SIX - 'YOU' ON T'INTERNET

The lecture this week was about Social Networking and how it works, given by Margaret McCann. Rather like Margaret as a lecturer she is very organised, timely, regimented and a little bit scary! Perhaps not words to put together with social or networking.....

Social Networking was defined academically by Boyd and Ellison (2007) as:

Web based services that allow individuals to:

1. construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system,
2. articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and
3. view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

OK to me and you that's, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace etc. Ah the penny drops!! These sites attract millions of users and many will have integrated them into their daily lives (especially now with the increased usage of SMART phone). These sites offer a varied difference in technologies and the usage. I understand it as a way of sharing information  - putting yourself on the internet!

Further research into Social Networking Sites (SNSs) has actually made me question some issues with perhaps over-sharing information. An example of this on facebook is when people 'check in' at different places, highlighting the fact that they are not at home. A website Please Rob Me actually showed hundreds of people who were away from home! Don't get me wrong I've succumbed to the pressure and have a Facebook account but think I'm pretty sensible about how I use it; I'm selective with the friends I add (described in the lab as strong and weak contacts), selective with the photos I upload and generally only post the high-points or low-points in my life. Things I actually want people to know! Not helped by the recent programme on Channel 4 - My Social Network Stalker which saw a girls life pretty much ruined by emotional and mental abuse through Social Network Sites. Now that scares me slighly more that Margaret! So then went on to research how to protect yourself from stalkers and found a useful video from a news channel:

So how does this affect businesses and can Social Networking develop Social Distribution? I'm partner in two small businesses which both have pages on facebook, A N Designs Handcrafted Gifts and Glitzy Gifts. This assists with advertising (especially our handmade selection as it shows the variation), marketing (as it shows promotions and fundraising events we participate in) etc although on a much smaller scale to other businesses. I haven't pushed this too much at the moment as our business orders are steady and to be honest with everything I have on my plate I don't want to attract too much business at the moment.  

So in the lab we were given our next e-activity which was to choose a company and follow a sample of their posts on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In. I think I drew the short straw with City of Glasgow College, I'm hoping it will be more interesting once I proceed with my research. Twitter was the only social networking site which I'm not currently a member but I am now! Now I have been looking at ways to improve myself academically and it seems I have found a solution. Who would have thought that my all singing, all dancing i-phone (that I wasn't actually that keen on having) would improve my time managment skills. My tiny hand held device provides APS for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and my most recent acquisition Blogger. My long bus journeys can now be spent researching City of Glasgow College and blogging. Who would have thought that the I'd be doing my next assessment by phone!

WEEK FIVE - FISHFINGERS, BEANS AND MASH

Only joking - RSS, FEEDS & MASHUPS!

Just having a strange day, struggled to find a computer today in the library to log on and print off the lecture slides. In my quest to find a computer I actually counted 17 computers over level 2 and 3 which were out of order. Turned up to lecture slightly frustrated and glanced at the presentation screen and thought I had misread the title of the lecture - genuinely thought I saw shorthand for fish fingers, beans and mash!!

For a number of years I have used google as a method of searching for information on-line and haven't really given a second thought to how that information was brought to me. In more recent years and the introduction of SMART phones information has become even more accessible with the download of APPs. The lecture provided today by Alexis gave me the insight into RSS, Feeds and Mashups which I hold my hands up to, was away over my head!

Further reading allowed me to discover that RSS (Rich Site Summary) is simply a format for delivering web content which is regularly changing. For publishers of bloggs, web related sites and other on-line publishers this makes life a little easier and allows feeds of this information to be sent to whoever wants it. The number of RSS sites is growing as it is providing a solution to a problem; it is allowing the user to stay up-to-date easily by receiving feeds to the latest content of sites they are actually interested in, thus saving time as the user does not have to go onto each site individually, and maintains privacy as you are not forced to join each site and perhaps receive e-mail updates or newsletters.

A further solution is to use a programme called a reader or aggregator which continuously checks and searches all of the sites you subscribe to for new content and streams all the information feeds to one place. RSS readers are available on different platforms and include FeedReader (through windows) and NewsGator (which integrates windows with outlook). There are also a number of web based feed readers such as: MyYahoo (which I used daily without realising) and also GoogleReader (which we were to go on and use in the Lab).

In the Lab we went on to look at how to use RSS, and it turned out to be slightly frustrating for me. I couldn't log on to my google account and although I answered all the questions in a n attempt to reset my password I received a generic message stating that google would get back to me within 3-5 days. AAArrrrggghhhh!!!! Panicked slightly as I was worried about my blogg and whether I had lost my link to it. Managed to sort it out in the end but just makes me realise how much I depend on technology without really thinking about it. When eventually logged onto Google I used the web-based Google Reader to subscribe to various feeds. It was simple enough to use, you entered the keyword for your search and browsed the selection until you found something that was of interest to you and clicked to subscribe. This could then be added to the Star Items (which is a little like your favourites). As usual I looked at keywords for Virginia Beach and discovered that it was the 2nd best state to raise a family - starting to feel a little less frustrated ;0). This is an excellent tool which will come in handy when typing up my Research Proposal as it will allow me to be up-to-date with my information. I would imagine that those staying on into the fourth year will find this invaluable. We were also able to share the items we found with friends and colleagues although I think my friends are fed up with the references I keep making to my Big Move!

All in all it was a valuable lesson which I think could become quite addictive and I'm sorely tempted to subscribe to feeds just for the sake of it, so don't think it'll save me time in the long run. Now where serves fish, beans and mash? Feeling a tad hungry!

WEEK FOUR - SHARING 'STUFF' ON LINE

This weeks lecture, delivered by Alexis was on Media Sharing, Social Bookmarking & Tagging. Thankfully the technology was working just fine this week!

It would appear that the use of media sharing is exciting and boundless, and is opening knowledge and resources to everyone. We share media on a daily basis with Face book, Flickr, Digg, Upcoming, Myspace, Twitter etc. So how can businesses use this technology to share media, bookmark certain pages of interest and tag the bookmark to remind yourself of the content of the bookmark?

Time Magazine has recognised the phenomenon of You Tube and the prospect of sharing media files which has grown massively since its launch in 2006. Although it may not have originally been designed for business or even education, there is an increase in people using the likes of You Tube to advertise videos which are either informational, educational or entertaining. Businesses are using You Tube to get feedback on video adverts prior to releasing them. By uploading a video to You Tube and embedding it into a blog or website you can increase the number of times the video is seen. The following advert from Virgin Atlantic is very entertaining however the feedback would suggest that it is to be banned!



Pod casting became the next step in blogging with individuals recording an audio blog and uploading to the Internet. Followers could then download the pod cast, onto a computer, i-pod/MP3 player. An example of Pod casting can be found on i-tunes which split their pod casts into categories ie, sport, music, radio etc. Starbust Magazine Pod cast offer hours of movie and TV news and reviews on a weekly basis. So how can this help businesses? Small Business Trends Radio have sourced 100 Best Small Business Pod casts from 2009 which vary from interviews with entrepreneurs to advice for rural small businesses in America!

Prior to this lecture I may have looked at a website and added it to my favourite list as it would be a site or pages within the site which I found of interest or would surf regularly. The lab this week looked at software which would not only mark a page of interest so that you could go back to it at a later stage but also so that you could share your saved pages and make them available to others - Social Bookmarking! Prior to the lab we were asked to join Delicious, Social Bookmarking Software so that we could search different categories and find topics of interest. A link to this topic was then saved and a number of these links created a stack. Each link was given a tag to remind the user what the link or topic was about. Once we were happy with the stack we had created then we published the stack ready to share with people within the Delicious Community!

I created a stack based on links and topics related to my move to Virginia. My stack included links to Realtors, schooling, job sites and car hire or car sales. This is a tool which will benefit me during this course and would be beneficial to any project! For example, the Proposal Document for Research & Consultancy Methods for Business - a stack could be created with links to various sites based on the topic and on-line referencing. Bupa was given in the lecture as an example of how a company could use bookmarks, which provided links from employees on bookmarks for staff and clients. A further example of a company who use bookmarks is Google, they face the problem of being able to merge Google Bookmarks with Chrome Bookmarks. Now I was understanding all this to this point, but when you start going into who uses folders or labels it starts to get a bit confusing!

WIKI

Our next lecture for Business Web Innovation was given by Alexis on Collaborative Writing. Had to refrain from giggling when the technology didn't work for the presentation, given that technology forms part of our course, but it all worked out in the end. What I learnt was that Collaborative Writing is software which allows you to work with others to view, edit and contribute towards documents. This was to be continued in the Lab. The tools range from a simple Wiki to advanced and I had basic knowledge of using a Wiki for a previous EDO module assessment. My experience from the previous Wiki produced was that it was easy to use, had similar functions to Microsoft Word and that it was easy to contribute to. On the downside our team faced issues with one individual who re-created the wiki the night before submission  - awkward! I'm hoping that I can use this experience on a positive note and ensure that the team I work with fully agree with it's content prior to submission.

Due to the technical issues in the lecture the presentation was rushed. I used this opportunity to go over my notes and realised that Alexis had planned to show us a You Tube video - Wikis in plain English. Having watched the video I learnt that Wikis were an effective way to co-ordinate and organise a groups input.

In the Lab we explored some of the best known Wikis such as Wikipedia, Wikibooks and Wikitravel. Admittedly I have gone back to Wikitravel on numerous occasions over the last few days and have broadened my knowledge of Virginia Beach, USA. Soon to be my new stomping ground - 143 sleeps!!

I was placed into a group with three other girls, none of which I have worked with or even spoken to before. Our task is to cover three e-activities; Background Research, Using the Tools and Writing the Results in a document which is no longer than 1200 words. As of yet I haven't had much contact with the girls however I've made a start on gathering information for the first task!

BLOGGING

The Business Web Innovation Lecture this week looked at blogging, and although it had been defined as a personal collaboration space for news, outlet, links and memos to the world wide web, I later discovered from Alexis that I couldn't really go with my earlier thoughts to blog about the whole course. That narrows it down - slightly!

What I learnt from the lecture was that Blogs were established some ten years ago and used as an interactive on line diary which has grown and can be used for public, personal, business or political messages. Being a new blogger I decided to investigate what other people had blogged. What I found was that you could find blogs on a range of topics which incorporate text and other media. From this you could also read the discussion based on the topic from the followers - genius! The Guardian offers a business blog. I'm slightly ignorant when it comes to what's happening in the business world as I sometimes find it difficult to understand, however starting this course has made me realise that I may need to change my ways. Such a blog will be a huge benefit to me as reading the blog and the views of its readers allows me to get a deeper interpretation of what it means from different perspectives. My favourite artist Adele even has a blog and over 17 million people follow her (with a little help from Facebook).

Having explored the 'Blogosphere' the tasks in the Lab were easy to navigate and I enjoyed exploring a variety of different blogs. I realised that although I wouldn't be blogging about the other modules on my course I could certainly use specific blogs to assist with research required in other modules. The only difficulty I may have is finding something interesting to blog about!

WEEK THREE - DECISION TIME!

So this week my head kind of feels like a wahing machine, got so many thoughts swirling around my head! Have made a decision to use this blog as a basis for not only my Business Web Innovation but to think about all the modules, Research & Consultancy Methods for Business in particular. The task this week being to make a decision on a topic for the Research proposal. Purchased a copy of 'The Week' magazine for some inspiration. Many ideas!!!!