epetition.org allows me to sign a epetition. nataliegs777's davespress.com is a site which allows me to sign epetitions. Openforum.com.au 2009, http://www.openforum.com.au/taxonomy/term/38>
https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/view/EPetitions_QLD/Confirmation.aspx? tells me when my local member last spoke in paliament
http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/09/the-mustread-book-for-obamas-war-team.html>
http://twitter.com/> tells me whoat obama is up to today.
http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/view/legislativeAssembly/documents/memberBio/InauguralSpeech/Attwood.PDF
is sa site which allows me to find out what my local members of parliament are up to today. and to let tehm know what i think of their recent speech.
the governments plans to censor the internet with their so called clean feed is a very complex issue. they wil need to be mindful of freedom of speech which is of course a right and and an integral part of constutional law in this country and many other democracies of course.

todays lecture centred upon democracy and the internet, notably cyberpolitics and edemocracy. we looked at how the internet and politics combine so as to operate together. the rapid growth of new communication technologies has impacted geatly upon most if not all areas in our world not least politics. it has connected our large world and made it smaller and has given more people a political voice and made it easier and faster to communicate with people in general and therefore with political institutions and politicain. it has recently influenced elections. most notably last years presdential electon. obama and his followers used the internet very afectivly. obama girl was a persfect eg of theis reaching the mass audience of youtube. kevin rudd and his supporters utilised the internet to keep upto date with new communication technologies. the recent ETS has been influence by the internet. politican have actually changed their stance on theis policy due to thousands of emails from people in there electorates and this has even signalled a leadership debate within the liberal party.
todays lecture also discussed the nesecity for people to be computer literate for the above reason so as to be better able to be polically active.

1. an article by danah boyd and nicole ellison (2007) social network sites: definition history and scholarship from the journal of computer mediated communication defines and explains the history and innovation of social networking. it briefly discusses teh different types of social network sites and their basic roles or functions. it is relevant to my essay as it directly relates to facebook the biggest of all the social network sites.

2. an article by ellison steinfield and lampe "the benefits of facebook friends" looks at the benefits and disadvantages of facebook. this is clearly relevant to my essay as the various positives and negatives indicate the overall impact facebook may be having on our lives.it discusses teh bonding and bridging benefits of facbook as well as maintained social capital ( the ability of a person to stay connected to a previously inhabited community eg an old school job etc. the journal also discusses benefits such as improving self esteem and overall psychological well being.

3. an article by stuat boon and christine sinclair " a world i dont inhabit: disquiet and identity in second life and facebook" examins some of the disadvantages of facebook in education eg schools universities in particular the affect that teh "disquiet" of these sites have as well as the existence of users commonly having virtual personalities.

4. an article by harvey jones and jose hiram soltren (2005) "threats to privacy" examins the security aspects of facebook to its users. the reality of marketing by large firms and the use of perosnnal information for marketing purposes by firms. it discusses teh difffernt measures that facebook takes to allow its endusers to make their perosnnal information only availble to teh peole they wish it to be made available to although information is stil used by firms for marketing purposes.

5. an article by sarah birnie and peter horvath (2002) " psychological predictors of internet social communication examins the psychological aspects of online communication and social networks in particular the role it plays upon a users tendency toward sociability and shyness but more importantly it supported the theory that internet communication and social networks were merely an extension of traditonal social forms and didnt necessarily replace them.

6. an article by jonathon kandell (2009) " internet addiction on campus: the vulnerability of college students" outlines the exisence and the nature of addictive internet usage among many college students and the possible reasons for this addictive behaviour.

7. alessandro acquisti and ralph gross (2006) :imagined communities: awareness, information sharing and privacy on facebook. discuss the various implications both positive and negative with facebook in particular negative aspects such as the availablitity of personnal information that many endusers provide publicly on facebook.

todays lecture centred upon video games and their role and importance in todays society. video games were first used as far back as 1954 although as primitive and as simple as they were they were also hidden and not widely known or spoken of with one of the earliest being a game called "spacewar". a video we watched aired by bbc4 proposed teh idea that video games would eventually overtake other larger media forms such as telvision and cinema as the leading forms of entertainment. the history of video games was discussed with reference to other possibly more serious applications such as military purposes particularly with reference to simulation (notably war games) as well as simulation for medical purposes eg distance operations.
different schools have differing ideas or philosophies on teh nature of video games. one school (the narratology school) propose that video games must tell a story. the ludology school propose that they must be graphical whilst an alternative another school propose that they are infact a combination of and that they must involve simulation and an adherence to a set of rules.

In todays lecture we looked at virtual philosophy. The question as to wheether the virtual world is infact a real world in the sense that it is part of of our everyday life. In the movie the matrix which was made back i the mid nineties, this questions was brought to the large or wider audience. It seemed to suggst the way in which technology was heading and therfore the direrction in which all our lives were heading. the french philosophers , Dleeuze and Guatttanis ideas were discussed and it was proposed that if there ideas were supported then virtual reality is infact or at least is probably best considered a real and genuine part of our lives. Finally the video on "Second life" also prooposed that all of us would have a "second life or a virtual life. further supporting the concept that the virtual is infact real.

computer rage

this video was part of a turorial exercise to make out own video. ive only ever doen music ones where i record live so this was fun just for the exercise. its just a compilation of pictures with a voice-over telling a silly little story about a cat trouble shooting my computer after i develop bad computer rage. hope u enjoy!

In todays lecture we loooked at 1. the community 2. collaboration and 3. choice . with respect to software. we discussed rcreative commons first of all . creative commons (or CC) was creatied by lawrence lessig in december 2002 with the purpose of enabling some rights to intellectual property and software property rather than having all rights reserved.within this community anyone may copy and distribute so long as the licensee credits the creator and licensor but must 1. be totally non commercial 2. make or produce no derivatives and 3. share and share alikejthe intellectual content.
Software is separated into first of all proprietary software and free software. A free software community called GNU ( which stands for GNUs Not Unix) was created by Richard Stallman in the 1981 so as to make freely available software to the world. This is comparable to proprietary software eg Microsoft. The open source community was thus established and it was named so as to avoid the use of the word "free".

1.he wore a gas mask whilst riding his bike. (caslon analytics biographies)
2.the 1st email was sent in 1971 by ray tomlinson between 1 computer at UCLA and another at stanford research center. (inventors.about.com)
3. bill gates was born on the 25th october 1955. he sold his first soft ware at age 13. (inventors.about.com)
4. the www was invented in CERN Geneva switzerland. (w3.org)
5.the computers used 30 years ago were obviously a great deal less powerful and slower the memory was only about 120 gb and the speed was dramatically slower..(articlesbase).
6.18lb 6 oz (vintageassessments.com)
7.159. the tweed R is in nsw because in 1859 on the 6th june letters patented on this date show that teh border was to lie between the point danger and the rivers to the line of parrallel 29 degrees south.(ga.gov.au)
9.lord byron is still remembered in venice because he lived there. (englishhistory.net).
10.stephen stockwell the black assassins.

In todays lecture we discussed new media first of all. we discusssed themes from internet studies. first of all we discussed the virtual community and the individual identity. this is examined in depth in Howard Rheinholds book the Virtual Reality (1993). The individuals identity is also examined in Sherry Turkles book "Life on the Screen" (1995). It was put forward that the internets social media sites have developed from being specialised sites from the early days in the 90s where people would chat online mainly if they were infact using the internet at all to huge sites that we have today that millions of people use eg facebook etc. it was also noted that people obviously upload pictures and create profiles to portray differnt alternative profiles to other than who they really are.
the year 2000 saw the advent of web 2.0 due to the dot com crash. this event saw the innovation of various including tagging, user generated content and open API.
Social media essentially includes 1. weblogs/blogs eg microblogs and twitter. 2.social network services eg facebook, and 3. content sharing communities eg youtube. social media has taken a leap in the last five years or so from "geeky" to "normal" as a person almost feeling out of place in todays society if they are not savy to sites such as facebook etc.

Like millions of people around the world i use facebook, myspace and also msn for socialisng purposes. I have been using them really only for a couple of years before that i really only emailed. As a busy person i discovered that chatting online was not only good to stay up to date with new communicaton technologies but also as a time saving tecnique in which i could chat whilst doing work for uni etc. i found out thru word of mouth as well thru mainstream media. Privacy was as still is a huge issue for me. i am vry careful what information i post on my facebook page. facebook asd the like make their profits from advertisng as well as selling peoples details for marketing purposes. these companies should be more open about what they do with our information and make sure it is kept as securely as is possible. i have some friends that i only chat with online. i personally find it far more boring than knowing them in real life. online these people sem to only be a picture and lines of text rather than an actual person in some ways.

This used to be new technology for my grandparents its seems communication technology has improved at an expenential rate. I chose this video because its fascinating how things have changed in telecommunications.

In todays lecture it was noted that theres is a marked difference between the internet and the web, the web being merely a part and a function of the internet. The terms "cyber" and "cyberspace" were discussed and we considered the "reality" or indeed "non-reality" of the internet and how it can create illusions within peoples lives in terms of there social lives particularly. In 1972 Karl Hopper believed that there were three "worlds" that we lived in 1. the physical/material world. 2) the subjective consciencious eg feelings. and 3. The public structures that allow people to communicate with each other eg. the internet.

In our lecture today we began with the history of computers. It is widely believed that the very first computers were investned in primitive form as early as the 1700s to perform mathematical functions and thus were simple calculators. In the 19th century Charles Babbage and his partner Aida Byron (daughter of Lord Byron), were believed to be the parents of what we commonly know as the computer although it wasnt until World War 2 that these machines were utilized in a more practical way with Alan turings cracking of the Germans enigma code.
In the 1940s IBM were the first company to produce computers. Although it is not officially recognied until the 1950s.
At Zerox PARC in the early 1970s the invention of the mouse, drop down lists and graphical interface began i new age in information technology although in the 1970s Bill Gates claims to be the real inventor although many believe he was only the first to patent theses innovations rather than actually invent them. Gates BASIC computer language was the first of its type in world and this invention co insided with his starting of the giant conglomerate Microsoft.It was at this stage that computers took a giant leap in their development with other pioneers such as Apple co founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak aslo producing what we commonly refer to as the personal computer or the "PC".
The internet was invented in a very simple form forty years ago in 1969 (yes it would have been very slow then!) It was initially called the Arpanet and it was soon after this in 1971 that Ray Tomlinson invented and sent the very first email (and in 1979 the usernet was invented and 1979 saw the advent of the first emoticon (the smilie).

If any of you are interested please go to www.youtube/stopkillingwhales to see my music videos (for free!). These were just recorded for a bit of fun in my loungeroom. There are covers as well as originals please enjoy. I will endeavour to record some more music and upload some mp3s in the near future. I did have some on jjj unearthed last year and will hopefully enter some more in the competition there in their next competition next year (just for fun of course). Please stay posted on here for updates on this exciting news!

As a new blogger i am fascinated to learn of the many worlds this could open for me. Although i am of course familiar with facbook and other social networks blogging is in reality my own website in effect. this opens up a new world to me in that i can convey not only what i want to type in text for people to read but as a musician, this is another way i can allow people to listen and download my music and/or video clips (assuming they want desire to). Perhaps i could steer my family and friends toward my blog although it needs to be said that most people i know are more likely to search me on facebook or myspace to see my music or videos as most people i know are quite familiar with these sites and are of course more intersted in "surfing" on them they they are in surfing bloggs such as these! I hope that maybe one day people actually pay to download my mp3s as i also own the rights to these. Problem is, how badly do they actually want to own a copy of my music? Afterall my friends can already watch my videos on youtube for free anyway as indeed they can quite legally for just about any of their favourite artists nowadays.

opening blog

Today marked the first day of the summer semester course "New Information Technologies". It also marked the opening of my first blog account as i have never blogged before. Nevertheless, like everyone in this course (and the most of the wider public), I am relatively well-versed in major modern technologies (not an expert by any means) but I of course utilize the internet and its many dimensions particularly social networks eg facebook etc. on a daily basis.
In our initial lecture we briefly outlined the major forms of modern information technologies, eg mobile phones, emails, instant messaging etc. were discussed. Additionally, we discussed the history of communication itself and its primitive communication forms such as simple visual and phonetic communication progressing to more advanced language. We then examined technology and its movement from its older forms such as the written word to print, progressing to radio, film and television then finally into what we have today in the internet. The nature of the internet was also reviewed in Jonathan Zittrain's video "the kindness of strangers" which looked at the security of the internet and at how large sites such as youtube and wikipedia have been saved from hijacking by the "kindness of strangers" on at least one occasion. These people seemed to be doing this for merely altruistic purposes rather than for payment or recognition.