Day 7 + Task 7

The lecture today was one of the best for me because its related to my field of study as an International Relation Student. It was given by Stephen Stockwell and it helped me a lot to understand new concepts such as CyberPolitics and eDemocracy which is very important to promote and political campaigning and raise awareness to the people on the internet.

The internet has opened new concept of debating and exchanging views without censorship to some extend which replace the old censored media such as Television and Newspapers. For example, in social media websites such as Facebook and twitter you will find a page or a group for all of the political Parties from all over the world to promote their views and activities to the users of the internet.

The internet fulfilled the concept of the participatory of Democracy as all people can participate freely and be a watchdog to monitor the political practices and criticized any activity that the citizen may think it's wrong.

Task 7

Sign an e-petition.

I have signed an e-petition to save Eumundi from proposed construction of high voltage overhead power lines by Powerlink from Ridgewood to Erwah Vale.

Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.

I have responded to Professional blogger Kare Galbraith of The New York Times. This blog was about Republican call for climategate inquiry regarding data manipulation on climate changes. I think there are companies that pays government to manipulate their report regarding their involvement in climate change. Even though they said that they are compliant with regulation and law on matter of environmental affect of their businesses. There is a lot of manipulation going on, which results in greater environmental damage.

http://jobview.careerone.com.au/GetJob.aspx?JobID=85002271

What is Barak Obama up to today?

Barack Obama is working increasing level of science education in US. In November he kicked off his “Educate to Innovate” campaign to boost US students from mediocrity in science and maths to high level in next decade. He has announced great deal of financial support to do so. Also, he is focussed on his healthcare reform in US, which appears to be very radical change. There is a general sense of revolt against his move because it is likely to take away the right of the people in democracy.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/11/obama_highlight_4.html

Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are.

Local representative for Brisbane is The Hon Arch Bevis MP

Party: Australian Labor Party Parliament House Contact PO Box 6022 House of Representatives Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600 http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/member.asp?id=ET4

The list of other federal and state representative can be found on following website

http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/mi-state.asp

Look up the Queensland or Australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament.

The Hon Arch Bevis MP spoke for the last time on 8/11/2009.

www.aph.gov.au/hansard/reps/dailys/dr031105.pdf

Day 6

The lecture today was about the academic study of the video games. It was very interesting to me because I love video games because its linked to my childhood since the age of Atari until PlaySation 3. There are many types of the video games such as Arcade Games (e.g entertainment section in shopping centre or Time Zone), Consoles games (e.g PlayStation 3) Mobile games (Games in the smartphone such as blackberry or Iphone) and many other games. The video games become a new form in cultural practices and should be studied like the old media such as newspapers and T.V.

There are two themes when studying the video games Narratology and Ludology. Firstly, Narratology is the study of narratives of video games and how it effect our perception. The second theme is Ludology which a general study of the video game that focused in the game, how we play it and why we are so attracted to the game.

Virtual philosophy was an important theme too, it differentiate the video games from the traditional games.

Day 5 + Task 5

Today, I learned a lot about the Virtual Reality (VR). The proper description of the VR is to allow users to move and react in computer-simulated in 3D environment. It make users feeling engaged as in the normal life. The Participants can do every thing such as eating, clubbing, doing business and making relationships. The element of VR can be visioned, heard and touched in 3D technologies but due to technical and hygiene problems, the taste and smell are not element of VR.

Day 4 + Task 4

In Day 4, the main themes of the lecture are the Creative Commons, Shared Culture and the Open Source Software.

Firstly, the Creative Commons and the notion of shared culture was found by Lawrence Lessig in 2002. His main argument is to redefine the concept of copyright and it restriction. He created the license of Creative Commons to give the creator space to be creative and with reasonable copyrights to share work with others and have a credit for it.

Secondly, the Open Source Software, is a new concept for me that I learned from the lecture today. I used to think that the free software don't have the same qualities as the closed or the commercial software which turnout to be wrong idea.

Finally, am very interested to instal the Open source software such as Linux to my laptop to experience the difference proprietary and the open source.

Today's task:-

this video shows the best of my photo collection that I captured in last few years in Australia, New Zealand and Egypt.

Day 3 + Task 3

Part 1

The lecture today was very interesting to me because it was talking about something that we use everyday such as Facebook, twitter and youtube. the lecture was about the New Media and the Internet studies. The new Media such as the virtual communities which is when people cary on public discussions to form webs of personal relationships. Another example of the new media is the individual identity which suggest that the internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize post-modem life in its virtual reality such as the users try to be older or younger.

The Web 2.0 is very important theme of social media. It was a notion found by Tim O'reilly and his friends to develop the web technology and make it more interactive and provide web services and for businesses. This services allowed people to participate such as read, write and create video and photo albums online. There are many examples of the web 2.0 such as blogs websites, youtube, twitter and Facebook. Most of these websites are free for public, however, they do businesses when they collect all the informations that they need to attract the user attention in advertisements and promotions. These websites use "Attention Economy" or "Economy of Accumulation" to make money from the subscribers.

Part 2

The Scavenger Hunt questions:-

1. What did Alan Turing wear while riding his bicycle around Bletchley Park?

- a gas mask simply to avoid hay fever (from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212910/How- Britain-drove-greatest-genius-Alan-Turing-suicide--just-gay.html#ixzz0YGW0r4s2) using altavista.com

2. On what date did two computers first communicate with each other? Where were they?

- On Sept. 2, 1969, two computers exchanged meaningless data in the first test of Arpanet in UCLA,an experimental military network (from http://scpr.org/news/2009/09/02/internets- history-tracked-codrescu) using altavisa.com

3. What is Bill Gates’ birthday and what age was he when he sold his first software?

- Born: 28 October 1955 (from http://www.answers.com/topic/bill-gates)

- By the age of 17, Gates had sold his first computer program, a time tabling system for his high school, for $4,200 (from http://www.tv.com/bill-gates/person/405954/trivia.html)

using yahoo.com

4. Where was the World Wide Web invented?

- The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau in 1990. While working at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) (From http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/history/inventedweb.html) using yahoo.com

5. How does the power of the computer you are working on now compare with the power of a personal computer from 30 years ago?

- In 1982, Intel released the 80286 processor . It was also a 16-bit CPU, but could handle up to 16 megabytes of RAM. The 286 is the processor that introduced the idea of "protected mode," meaning that a PC could run multiple programs at once without overloading. In the late 80s, Intel released the 80386, a 32-bit processor. (From http://www.ehow.com/about_5379425_history-processor-speeds.html) using altavista.com

- My 2008 MacBook has2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed ( From http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs.html)

6. What is the weight of the largest parsnip ever grown?

- the heaviest ever parsnip at 5.9kg. ( from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article- 1211262/Top-plots-The-super-sized-vegetables-trumped-string-world-records-Britains- prestigious-gardening-show.html?ITO=1490) using altavista.com

7. When did Queensland become a state and why is the Tweed River in New South Wales?

- Queen Victoria gave her approval and signed Letters Patent on June 6 1859 to establish the new colony of Queensland (from http://www.qld.gov.au/about-queensland/history/) using Ask.com

8. What was the weather like in south-east Queensland on 17 November 1954?

- State wide stream rises were reported in the third week of the month resulting from the heavy widespread rains during this period (from http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/fld_history/floodsum_1950.shtml) using yahoo.com

9. Why is is Lord Byron still remembered in Venice?
10. What band did Sirhan Chapman play in and what is his real name?

- The Black Assassins, using Ask.com

Task 2

1. How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?

- They use Page Rank systems. the system results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it. (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Page+Rank)

2-What are some of your favourite search engines? why do you like one more than others?

- My favorite search engines is google because the quality of the results, the accuracy and the simple homepage. In addition, google have specialized search for example google news, scholars, books, maps and blogs and others

Day 2 + Task 2

Part 1
In the Second lecture, We learned very interesting history of the computer and the internet. the lecture was consisted of 2 parts.
Firstly the origin of the computer can be traced to the 19th century. it was designed by Charles Babbage to calculate and print mathematical tables. Many developers invest more time in developing the computer such as Ada Byron and Alan Turing.
In 1950s, the computer were first produced for military and government by IBM. the first Personal computer released to public was in 1975 by Xerox PARC. In addition, Companies such as Apple and Microsoft developed new operating systems that help normal people to use the computers.
the Second part of the lecture covered the Internet and its history. The Internet is a network of networks that link people around the world into an information sharing system. It was found by group of U.S researches and was funded by U.S Dept of Defence. Moreover, we learned that the Internet is not the same thing as the web. the web is one type of internet. it became popular in the 1990s.

Part 2

This is one of the clips that I wanted to share it with you because I liked the Microsoft's vision of the coming future. The clip show us how the communication technologies will be everywhere even in the latitude of more than 45,000 feet above the sea. In addition, it shows how we can easily share files, photos and maps by multi-use devices. I'll let you experience the technologies of the coming future.

Enjoy :)

Introductory Lecture

In the first lecture in the new communication technologies the lecturer "Adam" introduced the course structure then he gave us a brief introduction about the concept communication and its origin since the ancient Greeks scholars such as aristotle. In addition,the lecturer talked about the media and its types such as the newspaper, radio, T.V and the internet. Moreover, he mentioned the differance between the the technology and the Media. At the end of the lecture, Adam showed us a video clip about thoughts of Internet and the new media.

Welcome.. :)

Hi all,

This is Mohamed Alsuwaidi. am an International Relations Student in Griffith University. I enrolled in new communications technologies course because I felt that I need to support my International Relations Studies with the up to date technologies which might help me with sharing my thoughts with my friends and others.
I hope to have a good time with the new technologies in this course

Kind Regards
Mohamed