Reflection on Social & Mobile Computing Tools Across the Web

Name: Jarrad Hobby
Student Number: 40973155

My own reflective article will be critiquing the various web tools associated with many forms of Social & Mobile Computing that were suggested to myself and peers in our course, and comparing some to similar tools or websites across the internet. These tools, while they all have their uses, are not necessarily the best available, although some exceed where others do not.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking tool, similar to making 'favourites' (IE) or 'bookmarks' (Firefox), except that it is shared to other users of this particular web tool. Using this means that you can share your favoured websites and apply a certain description or even 'tags' (a term quite commonly used within many internet communities which pretty much means that you are applying the item to a particular category, such as when I used this program I attached the tag 'Art' to DeviantArt, as it is an artist's community). The more popular a particular website, the more likely it will appear at the top of the list when searching for websites (in the same way you would any other search engine) that share the same tag (or tags) with it. However, this means that only the most popular websites will be immediately viewable, but they might not necessarily have what you want. Another similar approach to this (that I personally have encountered) is the Mozilla Firefox plug-in, StumpleUpon, but del.icio.us is a lot more helpful for finding what you want because StumpleUpon will randomly pick popular websites from a specific topic of your choosing. There is a voting system however, that makes sure only helpful websites appear at first, and basically useless websites are taken off of the database. As well as this, users can add more websites to the first through recommendations, similar to adding new bookmarks to del.icio.us, but this still means it isn't quite as helpful as del.icio.us is.

FLICKR is a photography community, where users may upload photos they have personally taken with all manner of cameras, where other users can view them and then leave feedback or comments. The main thing that threw me off of this tool was that it required also creating a Yahoo account if you didn't already have one, and for someone like myself who is a long-time Hotmail user that also has both a UQ e-mail account and gMail account, this begins to require a lot of time and effort, and even memory in some cases (for passwords), to keep changing between the different e-mail accounts to check for new mail (and I personally forget I have the gMail account most of the time). Instead of FLICKR, I would personally choose my usual art and photography community, DeviantArt, because it doesn't require opening a new e-mail account, and while it may predominantly be assumed that it is only for paintings, CG work, hand-drawn images and certain types of photography, it is a lot more open than you'd think. It even has an entire category for Photography and Photo-manipulation, with many sub-categories within one another, meaning that if you're there only for photography, you can filter out everything else. You can receive feedback for your work (there's even an option for encouraging advanced critiquing), and even watch other users so that when they post a new journal or piece of art, you will be sent the link within a list of any other recently submitted work by those you're watching.

last.FM is a tool designed to upload a list of music you personally listen to quite often on your own computer, and then allows you to listen to music recommended by other users with similar tastes in music. Although it's almost useless for actually communicating to people (seeing as it is almost completely resolved around the music), it can introduce you to new bands that you have never heard of (or heard the music of) but might have liked had you discovered it earlier. The only problem is that while I was using it, I found that out of the 10 or so songs I was recommended based on my own interests, I only liked 1 of those songs, and it was by a band I had already listened to in the past. In addition, I couldn't find a list of recommended music, instead forced to listen to songs one-by-one because I couldn't quite figure out how to use the program.

Google Calendar is an online calendar that works just like any other calendar (be it physical or digital) in that you can add entries (such as birthdays, appointments, holidays) to and then share it with your friends. This could be quite useful for group collaboration, as you can enter what days you may be at uni, work or be available for group meetings, and when you and your group have chosen the best time to meet or work on projects, you can add it to the calendar.

Blogger is a free blogging website, where the user can write blogs about just about anything they want, place it within categories and edit the overall appearance of the blog. In addition, users may create group blogs, in which multiple contributors can add entries at any time they want (like the group blog set up for this course). This makes group collaboration outside of actually meeting face-to-face easier, because you can see/read what other members of the group are working on, or what their ideas are. It also provides a back-up copy of any written material you might have for projects, and then these back-ups can be accessed by any member of the group if they lose their original copy. By far the best of the web tools I've tried so far, especially when considering its application within a group.

Facebook is an online community to meet new people, and can act as a sort of dating community for some people as well. It is similar to Myspace, which is much more popular, but has a few extra features such as seeing what your Facebook friends have signed up to (in the way of groups) and the ability to play games with your online friends using the website, among others. However, its interface doesn't seem quite as easy to navigate as Myspace, and the search functions when I was using them didn't find what I wanted (as far as the search function was concerned when I was using it, the comp3505 group didn't exist!). I also couldn't figure out how to join the comp3505 page, as I couldn't see a 'join group' option on the group page, and because I couldn't find it in the search engine I still remain, to this day, not a member of the comp3505 group on Facebook. Otherwise, it seems quite a useful program for communicating to others, but not quite as easy to use as Myspace.

Lastly, TWITTER is a tool where you can enter your mobile phone number and then send a single SMS to a number provided by the website saying whatever you want. Anyone on the website can then access your profile and see what you've sent, so that others can see what you're doing. However, I personally see several problems with this. The main problem is limit of characters. You could easilly type a much larger, informative message on something like Myspace, Facebook or any blogging website, as well as others, and you can limit it to make sure only people you allow can read it (instead of just any random who comes across your profile). The second is that SMS messages don't come free, whereas a blog website or Myspace/Facebook are. Also, some people get into a habit of typing SMS messages with shortened words or abbreviations, which not everyone will be able to completely understand. Finally, although I don't know much about it, but if it isn't all that secure, anyone could access your phone number with enough effort, which could lead to all sorts of problems. Overall, not something I would use.

In conclusion, some of these web tools are actually useful, but most, in my own personal opinions and experiences with them, aren't all that great, and there are other, sometimes much better alternatives (such as DeviantArt instead of FLICKR in my opinion). In addition, some don't have enough options to enable easier communication with friends, colleagues or co-workers to make them all that useful (such as last.FM and TWITTER), but it comes down to personal preference in the end, and my preferences were pretty much set in stone before using these programs, and I probably won't be using them very often beyond this course, if at all.