Well, I’m back in the land of the living again after an amazing couple of weeks! I’ve been doing some things in the background but I haven’t had a chance to update my blog, so here goes…
Email Lists
As directed in the course notes I went to yahoo and searched for some groups to get involved with. I wasn’t sure what I would like to join for a while, but I found a group related to travel which I thought suited me as I travel a lot, and I also organise a lot of travel as part of my job. I chose the ‘Travelzine’, although it seemed to have a lot of security and multiple checks on legitimacy before being accepted. I never expected to be rejected on my first application though – it made me feel a bit dirty! My intentions were so honest and innocent!
The instructions for joining were to
1) update my yahoo profile (which is quite empty as I’m unlikely to ever use it again – possibly my first mistake),
2) click join this group;
3) wait for a message to arrive in my yahoo mailbox (which is diverted to my hotmail account – possibly making me look less upfront and
4) respond back to the mail within 24 hours.
So I received the email asking me to provide a response to the questions:
Name?
Location? (city, state or province and country)
How you found TheTravelzine?
Please explain your interest in joining TheTravelzine
Your web site or blog address?
Experience in the travel industry?
To which I provided brief one line responses stating my interest in travel and my study requirements. My responses were obviously far too brief as I received the response:
Our group is comprised of an international membership who trade travel stories and tips. All members are expected to participate in this way. We don't want our group to be studied by "outsiders". We do have a concern about approving your request to join. So you must assure us that you will follow our guidelines. All messages are moderated prior to posting and any attempt to 'mine' the membership list will result in an immediate ban. Please respond directly to me, within 24 hours.
Oops! So it was a good lesson for me in internet/groups security. I had naively expected to be allowed to participate without seriously proving my genuine intentions in the group. I sent back a very lengthy explanatory email in which I listed every country I have travelled through, the countries that I organise travel for at work, and I copied in the requirements for Net11. I finished with a comprehensive summary, expressed my understanding for security, and left it in their hands. Fortunately I seemed to hit the mark this time, was accepted as a member of the group, and started to receive a daily digest of the group communications. And it was at this point that I realised my greatest error – I hadn’t done anywhere near enough research before joining.
When I had initially looked at the yahoo groups site searching for a group to join, I had very briefly flicked through the previous posts, only randomly scanning over them – they were related to travel so it seemed fine with me. But on receiving the daily digests I realised that this group do not cover information relevant to me at all.
Although there is clearly a diverse membership, most of the people posting appear to be retired, affluent Americans seeking the best cruise liner holidays. The majority of the posts are US centric, and although I have been to the US I really can’t contribute to discussions relating to festivals in Boston or the best time to visit the Grand Canyon (surely the answer is any time, with a hat and sunscreen!!). They are also very interested in group travel, something that makes my skin crawl as a seasoned backpacker. I like to make my own way when I travel, the stories of my misdemeanours make for great discussions when I get home!
The questions that I can provide information about eg journey times between terminals in Charles de Gaulle airport, have without fail, already been answered by the time I have read them, most probably because of the time difference between here (UK) and the US. I have been religiously reading my daily digest to find a query to reply to, but as yet haven’t been able to contribute without already repeating someone else’s advice. I’ll continue on and report back on my first contribution in my blog soon!
Pro’s for email lists compared to discussion boards include the ability to receive information in digest form or by individual emails. I like this as all the information comes to me, I don’t have to search around a discussion board where sometimes the title of the thread has little relevance for the direction of the conversation. It is easy to check one email per day (if receiving the digest) than searching through various threads for information.
Con’s could be that the original query isn’t repeated, and can be a bit difficult to track down. The answers are very clearly seen in order of response, but the finding the original question can mean backtracking through a number of emails or on the list site. I think the responses can get off track as people respond to issues listed in the answers provided, as opposed to the original query.
Are certain types of communication or purposes more suited to one than the other? I think this comes down to personal preference. Some people may only want to read specific information, so a discussion board may be more attractive to them as they can choose which thread to read through and ignore those that don’t interest them. This kind of person may not enjoy an email list as they need to trawl through all the information presented to the group.
On the other hand, I enjoyed the email list as I could see all the conversations going on, getting a good idea of the demographic and interests of the group in one simple email, without spending time looking through threads. I think it comes down to personal preference.
So to summarise my learning from this task:
1) Read previous postings in the group before joining an email list. Check that it is relevant to your interest and experience
2) Provide information to the group moderator to support your legitimate interest in the group – otherwise risk being offended when labelled an “outsider”
3) Get in first with answers to queries/observations – or someone else will!
Newsgroups
My first attempt at joining a newsgroup was by following the first link suggested in the curriculum – www.usenet.org. I think there was something strange going because it pointed to a page called alcoholism.com, selling various products and religious icon thingys to help people overcome alcholism. I went on to the next suggested link: dmoz.org/computers/usenet, and followed the link through to the google newsgroups. But how to decide?
I had a look at a global warming group first (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.global-warming/topics?lnk), a big interest of mine, to find the group had 287 postings this month from the email address execute_the_traitor_in_the_white_ho...@hotmail.com, and while I love a bit of anarchy it just seemed a bit over the top to me. I kept looking, and found a strange sounding group called recovery.clutter (http://groups.google.bs/group/alt.recovery.clutter/topics), where women talked about their laundry, the smell of mice and other such things. To quote Molly:
Today was ironing day... since thunderstorms were going to rake IOWA ONE MORE TIME... decided to stay in the basement till they were done. arghhhhhhhhh 4 of my shirts, and 10 of hubby's. Two business trips back to back and throw in some procrastination.. and walaaaaaaaaa.... a ton of shirts. Oh.. also two pair of dress slacks that were in the dryer when the electricity went out and as a result they needed a touch up. My daughter suggested washing them again. Figured for the time it would take, it would just be easier to steam them a bit. :) Then shame of it all, I ran out of spray sizing... toooooooooo bad..... LOL two shirts left, that don't need to go to work anyway. In fact one might just disappear as it is so raggedy
And I just wondered if I could be so eloquent and detailed about laundry as these ladies… so on I kept looking and found more like this:
I was starting to become concerned about the state of the world… I ended up joining UK Bus Photo – because I’m new to the world of public transport having lived in a country town with woeful transport options most of my life. I had seen a bus accident the week before, so I posted this:
Hi group
I'm newish to the UK, Australian, I have lived in Edinburgh for 3.5 years. I've always loved the buses around Edinburgh, they seem great compared to what was offered in my country town in Aus.
I saw an accident last week on the guided busway near heading to the Gyle from Edinburgh city centre. I've been curious about the guided busway as it seems to make the ride a bit rougher and slower, although the driver must appreciate having a break from steering for while. I'm interested to learn more about the advantages/disadvantages of it. Here's a link to the story and some pictures of the accident.
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/topstories/Six-injured-after-triple-bus.4238633.jp
Cherna
I’ve posted this because I can not figure out any advantage of the guided busways, it seems like an absolute waste of money, slows the bus down and makes for an uncomfortable ride. I have no idea if what I have written is controversial, but as this site appears to be full of bus drivers I’m sure it will provoke a reaction of some sort. I’m yet to receive any responses, but I’ll let you know how it goes!
I quite enjoyed looking around the newsgroups. I like that underneath all the responses there is a link to the original post, the google pages are very easy to navigate through, and they are lots of opportunities for a giggle. I think these newsgroups are something I could continue to be a member of.
Chat
Unfortunately I have found this part of the module a bit more difficult. A number of chat sessions seem to have been arranged at times that are great for students in Australia, but for me they land at around 12 noon during work time, and unfortunately the internet security settings on our pc’s won’t allow to us to view any social networking sites, hotmail, etc.
I have been involved in a number of chats on skype with the class, and enjoy the sway from serious school stuff to other topics. It's really nice to know what everyone else is doing and thinking and feeling.
I have had MSN on my computer for about as long as I can remember, but I rarely use it, as mentioned in one of my posts to the discussion board a few weeks ago, which prompted some responses, particularly regarding my reference to chat being a generational thing:
I'm one of the people who can't (or hasn't yet) adapted to chat. I spend all day at work in front of the computer, and although I regularly spend a few minutes checking my personal emails etc when I get home, I hate getting stuck sitting in front of the computer growing a hunch in my back for any longer than I absolutely have to.
I 'accidentally' logged on to msn a few weeks ago and a friend appeared immediately, I stayed on and talked with her, but it drove me nuts! I was trying to cook dinner and attempting to do 13 other things at the same time, but she was getting offended if I didn't respond back straight away. We hadn't spoken for a while and I had a lot to say but I felt a bit trapped. I would much rather have called her the next day when I was able to sit and truly concentrate on the conversation. I was just wondering if I would have felt any different if she had picked up the phone that night instead... a thought to ponder.
Is chat good or bad? Maybe it's a generation thing? Maybe environment? A lot of the younger people I know are entirely ok with spending the evening in front of the computer chatting, whereas I was brought up in the country by hippies with a very limited tv viewing, outdoor lifestyle - concepts that have stayed with me to this day. Ahh... time to straighten up and go for a walk
My reflections of MSN as a tool are mixed. When someone would like to add me as a contact I am asked if I would like to accept them, but I can’t really tell how to be sure who they are. I just fired up MSN and I got three perfect examples, three people have asked me to accept them into my contacts, I think they are possibly people from this course, but I’m really not sure. Am I going to be inundated with spam now? Should I just instinctively block everyone? I’m very lucky that I receive next to nothing in the way of spam in my hotmail account, and I’d like it to stay that way. By allowing random people access am I opening my hotmail address to the world? I’m not sure that I like the idea. On the upside, MSN is very clear as to who is online and who isn’t, and the functions are quite easy to use and quite intuitive. I’m very interested in the concept of intuitive software as there are quite often software packages introduced to us at work with no training – they are supposedly intuitive. There are so many that just aren’t, but I’m going to cover that more later on.
Luckily, unlike others in this course, I found Skype very easy to use. I had no trouble joining the chat room and no issues using the software at all. I quite enjoyed this as I leave it running during the day, and when I come home in the evening there is a nice window sitting there with all the comments from the class chats that have taken place a few hours earlier. Sure I can’t contribute to it very much, but it’s great to see what has been going on.
After reading some notes about IRC on the discussion board, I decided to download it and see how it compares. I found the software at www.download.com. After downloading it I became entirely lost, pressed a whole pile of buttons I probably shouldn’t have, and came to a complete halt. I googled for the austnet user guide, and the first match was a girl who completed Net11 a while ago! She had downloaded mIRC, decided it was too difficult and said she would come back to it later – don’t think she did though. I finally found some instructions on www.thepcguide.com, which pointed directed me to follow the instructions that came with the mIRC download. So after searching through piles of difficult to read text I found a link to the help page http://www.quakenet.org/faq/. Unfortunately I couldn’t even understand the questions in the faq to page:
I used to use ICQ years ago, and found it finefor chatting, it was as easy to use as MSN or Skype. It looks a bit busier on the screen compared to the other two, and is quite easy to personalise with the skins etc. I’ve decided not to download it again just now – I think my pc is starting to burst at the seams with software that I’ll never use again!
I’ll finish this entry for now, but I will report back with a final summary on chat after I have organised one with my expat classmates, and figured out IRC.
Ciao!
