Good examples of reflection assignment

I thought I'd post some links back to reflection assignments from last year for those of you who haven't searched them out yet (August 2007 is where they all happen, BTW).

For each of the top assignments, I've included a link, along with the comments given as feedback.

1. Being Lazy and Social at the Same time
Haha great read! Fantastic to see some support from established research to back up your statements! Would've been good to move beyond the sign-up experience (or did you not get beyond those) to reflect on the convenience of using the actual application once all that overhead was done with.And what is privacy these days? It begs the question - if you want privacy; why would you offer personal info to a very public forum? These applications are hardly asking for and broadcasting your medical history or credit card statement.

2. Reflection on Social and Mobile Computing Tools
Well written; although perhaps a little too formal for the medium (its great; however). Some images and layout adjustments may have helped in guiding the reader (images especially as layout is difficult on blogger). Great utilization of sources; really well done. Overall a good article; however more personal reflection; rather than a very systematic approach to analysing the tools may have helped in really connecting with the reader.

3. Social Awareness
Good reflection; with relation back to course and design issues. Would've been good to see some more discussion around what constitutes awareness and how it is supported in these applications (from a research perspective - pulling out what Dourish and Bly talk about) - rather than telling us what each application is as we do already know :) Looking at the differences between awareness in a physical setting (peripheral; audio cues etc) and how these may/may not have been adopted/supported online.

4. Skeletons in the Closet
Excellent incorporation of sources; succinct description of background - but could pull out key findings rather than generalise articles. Lacking in reflection of own experiences - more an overall discussion of privacy.

5. Collaboration Using Social Networking Tools
Nice layout fairly good overall. Good introduction - lays out the article well. Interesting way to tackle the structure; overall a good read. Some really nice resources cited; some interesting statistics. Some images to specific parts of the collaboration features may have helped; and shown more detail on each system. A section at the end which compared all of the tools briefly (as well as reflecting on them seperately would help). Also potentially talking about how they can be used together for collaboration might have helped.

Reflection Assignment 1 post by s40989802

In modern society, internet has become one of our regular activities like watching Television. Many people are exploring friendships online. To attract those who love to share and connect with others online, there are many applications that have been created to stimulate the interest of people in all kinds of aspects. The social and mobile computing applications that I have been exploring includes; blogger, facebook, and flicker. These applications have been popular amongst many members that have interest in different field of sources. These applications have reached a new identity in us to connect with others on the internet. Throughout the following discussion I will reflect upon these applications to focus on the aspect of “online identities”.


Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is an useful application to bookmark your favorites. It does not show an obvious element for identity in this site. When I first used this application, I was inspired by the function that I was able to “tag” my favorites to share with others. I began from the main page to explore the application. In the main page you can see the “hotlist” on del.icio.us. These links are followed with a snap shot of the site and shows the tags they have been given. Furthermore, the most noticeable part was how many people had added this to their favorites. Del.icio.us had created the simplest application with no extra loadings; they were not many images or flashes. Moreover, there is a search bar at the top of the site. For this search bar, the key word is skimpily keyed in and it would bring up a page of links that can saved and see who had post this initial tag.

By using this application I was able to find the most popular site that has been tagged and often leading to find the most useful links in my interest. There is also a helpful tool in this application; you can download a browser button. This button allows you to post your current page to del.icio.us. Furthermore, you could view your favorites by clicking it. I found it useful with this tool button; when I found a good site I could easily tag it with the button. It’s vital to make the most convince for the user to handle with the application. Delicious is an application mainly to share links of own interest or make note of great sites to be viewed. The users do not need to provide any personal information to interest others. Others would be interested with this identity, because by presuming the user has knowledge with the range of the targets and is able to find a various of good links to be shared with others.


Flicker,

My initial experience with this application reflects back to my first class for this course. When I first entered the site, I have been enthused with the clear web design. It recalled my memory of seeing some of my friends using flicker before. This application is mainly sharing photos online with people all over the world. Flicker also use the tag system to custom the photos. It brought back my excitement of using an album. I believe the flicker team has made the most out of it; the users are able to drag an outline to frame anything in the photo. This could be an object or a view, others could add comment with it and it would show up while the viewers move their mouse over to the pictures. This is not the only amazing function, the user can also open a map and tag the photo inside the map and tell others where they have shoot this photo. It can show details of street names, just like a Google map. Most people that use this application shows a high level of interest to connect with most people on the internet. Flicker has developed many innovative tools to achieve such outstanding result of connecting users.

The uploading systems in flicker are simple to use and has various way of doing it. It can be easily accessible via different platform or in alternatives can be used on mobile phone to upload photos through e-mail. Flicker allows the user to organize their photos with two different grouping styles; one is sets, and another is collections. Sets are to organize around a certain theme. Collections are sets in grander themes. This allows others to view the photos more exactness. An online identity in Flicker might be more direct on what your appearances are, and your communities become visible. Most users post photos that reflect to their life. It is most likely to judge users that users the maximum of the application can be seen most clearly about the user’s life style and people that evolve around through them. Some people might only use part of the application and still create a dissemble identity by using fake photos or images of their hobbies. This is also why the flickers had generated a community of million themes.


Blogger

Blogger is the biggest blog website host in the world; millions of users have blog on blogger. The blogger creates a virtual for its users that they are a host of the site themselves. In blogger, you are able to post your diary, thoughts, ideas, or anything you would like to keep in track with. It can take years to design your own blogger, by adding features from other applications and the improvement of blogger itself or even a continual of writing. The blogger mainly categorize by entries, months or you can create a category of your own. Blogger allows visitors to search users’ blogs online and are able to input comments to users’ blogs.

The blogger have the functions of editing user’s own profile, attachment of photos. As a result, the viewers would be able to know the owner by reading their profile. The way that user may create their online identity with Blogger are likely to be depth. Viewers can read through the blogs to get to know the writer as well as commenting the blog to get responses. Comments are the most popular method of knowing the owner from their blog. However, there are moments the owner of the blog ignores the comments. In the society today, blogs could also be used as trade amateur or professional writers would post articles for trading purposes. This would also become a fatuous identity of the users. Common users’ uses blogger to record their life experiences and talk about their hobbies, or make documentation of their professions. Blogger is an application that has included one of the most detailed information about a person’s representations.


These three applications are selected with purposes. They focus on difference aspects to the social mobile computing system. They are all application that has already developed sophisticate functions. To define online identity with these three applications there are three aspects that need to be considered. For Delicious the identity was not the focus of this application. It was to share information amongst the viewers or/and users. There it is not necessary to sign up for this site to locate find the sources that you are looking for. On other hand Flicker and Blogger are more focused on the original posting. Flicker is mainly paying attention on the sharing photos or images that were either about their personal life or professions. However, Blogger has taken the writing from the users. The user of blogger could post articles either they had interest in or original created, everyone can be a writer or journalist. Therefore, the viewers were able to foreseen deeper information over than merely viewing photos. These three applications included the ranges of personal representations, interest and communications between users in this world.


s40989802 Jo Huang

Assigment 1: William Ho 4027586

Introduction
Communication technology has evolved from using telegraph, mail and telephone to the wide variety of social/communication tools that are available on the Internet today (Bargh & McKenna, 2004). The Internet allow users to perform tasks more than any previous communication tool can offer, including the ability to collaborate on tasks, social networking, sharing opinions to a public audience et cetera. For the purpose of supporting this reflective post, I will reflect mainly upon my usage on Facebook, with references to other websites such as Google, Friendster, Wikipedia and Xanga.

Background
Since Web 2.0 started to become popular, more users contributed content to the Internet, with content hosting services such as Flickr, Youtube, Picasa and .Mac allowing users to appropriate the Internet to a much higher level (March, Jacobs & Salvador, 2005). A newly emerging service, Facebook, is challenging a well-established player in the social-networking web industry, Friendster, offering an interactive experience to users with more games and features available than its competitor.

The following paragraph will provide a brief introduction to Facebook’s history. Facebook is a social-networking website founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. It originated as being an intra-university student social networking website at the Harvard Univeristy and quickly expanded to cover most universities in the US and UK by 2005. Facebook further expanded to accept any users of the Internet by September 2006, which was criticised by some of the existing users in the academic community.

Unique features that brought Facebook to fame includes The Wall, Groups, Gifts, Marketplace, Pokes, Status, and the ability for external entities to create Applications using its API named “Facebook Platform”, these will be further reflected upon later in the report.

Focus
The focus of this article will be to reflect on the composition of social websites and issues surrounding the privacy of virtual spaces. A brief reflection will look at the future direction of these user-centric website merging with mobile computing, allowing the virtual portal to merge with social networks in the real world.



Reflection
In this section, I will first reflect on my perceived architecture of the current social web. This architecture applies to social spaces such as Facebook, MSN Spaces, MySpace or Friendster alike. Secondly, I will reflect on the privacy issues of virtual spaces, as current means of measuring publicity of these spaces are not adequate in knowing how public a space is and users’ awareness in the privacy concerns over their postings. Lastly, I will reflect on some interesting experiences in using mobile computing with these web applications.

Topic 1: Composition of the Social Web
To my experiences in using social spaces such as Facebook and Friendster, there seems to exist a generic structure which forms the ‘socialness’ of the website. This structure is modelled around a real world social environment and includes having entities, relationships, spaces, social tools, social channels, social actions and time.

Entities: Within Facebook, each virtual identity, group or organisation is an entity having its own demographic and status information. This can be seen where each user having their own customisable user homepage, with their own profile page listing their demographic information, a “Groups” and “Status” function to allow grouping of users and displaying their current status to other users.

Relationships: Virtual identities can relate with other identities by creating virtual relationships. Facebook allows the relationship to be further detailed into categories, such as siblings, intimate relationships, attending similar educational institutions, working at the same organisations. This level of detail is not present in MSN Space or Friendster.

Spaces: Virtual Spaces are any webpages that a user visit or interact with other users within a social website. Examples from Facebook include: The Wall, User Profiles, Photo Gallery and Marketplace. These spaces can be set as private, thus allowing only invited guests to visit. However, the awareness of privacy for virtual spaces is not always made evident to users, as more will be reflected below.

Social Tools: These tools allow users to communicate in a more entertaining manner, allowing for more interactions by providing multiplayer games (eg. Texas Hold’em Poker), information sharing platforms (eg. Cities I’ve Visited) and the ability to send gifts to other users (eg. Gifts). The Facebook API allows the development of these social tools by external developers and listing them as “Applications” for uses to add, which increases the amount of these interactive tools significantly.

Social Channels: These channels perform as active information feeds to notify other users of the activities and status of a user. Facebook provides Mini Feeds, which reports on the actions that a user has performed, and Status, which displays other users’ self-reported status.

Social Actions: Facebook offers functions such as Poke and Hug to users, which essentially is just a standard text message transmitted to the targeted user. It aims to simulate such social actions that are performed in a real-world social setting between people, and provide a sense of physical proximity and casualness to the virtual space.

Social Timeline: By having a time element in tracking relationships between people and demographic information, it allows a categorisation and timeline plotting of events that happens between people and within a social network. As users provide more information and be more active in a social space, rich information can be collected and plotted against a timeline to provide insightful information as to relationship formation and strength, interests, participation in different groups and organisation et cetera.



As with all web applications, this generic structure brings the rules that govern how interactions should happen. However, the purpose of the web application is provided by the ability for users to appropriate them for their own use. It is the intention rather than structure that gives an application the meaning, and the structure would change according to the intention of a user, allowing the required task to be performed.

Topic 2: Privacy Awareness in Virtual Spaces
As content-hosting communities are becoming more common, the issues surrounding copyright and information privacy becomes vital. Current content hosting communities such as Flickr and Blogger offer users the ability to elect certain spaces as private. On the other hand, social networking sites such as Friendster and Facebook can allow up to a certain degree of their social network to view their profiles. However, as Facebook opens up for third party development, there are certain spaces that do not preserve the privacy of its users. Below are two examples of Facebook’s own applications that may not preserve privacy up to the level that users want.

News Feed
News Feed can be classified as a form of ambient intelligence, as it allow ‘interesting’ information to be actively distributed to all interested parties (Raisinghani et al., 2004). All actions of adding applications, performing certain actions within applications or change in profile will result in an automated post in the news feed section to inform other users of your status. This is no doubt a user awareness application, but would everybody want other people to know every single thing that they are doing?



Wall-to-Wall
By contributing information to this space, users not only want to communicate with the wall owner, but at the same time, opposing their message to the general public to view. When posting from wall-to-wall does users actually get a sense that they are exposing their message to the general public?



With the two examples above considered, I personally think there should be guidelines developed to let users know of the publicity that their content will be exposed to. Also, users currently do not know the popularity level of their content (i.e. Amount of independent visits) and what kinds of users are viewing them (eg. Close friends, Acquaintances or Strangers). These privacy and security issues should be considered thoroughly by Facebook and other community sites, allowing these virtual community to be a ‘safe’ place for users to interact and socialise.

Topic 3: Mobile Accessibility of Virtual Social Networks
Current mobile phones are becoming more Internet-enabled, allowing many web applications to be used on the go (Lewis, 2006). After using the initial set of web application listed in course, I tried to utilise these tools on my Nokia mobile phone and found interesting uses as listed in the following paragraphs.

Google Calendar
Bringing Google calendar with you on your mobile is a rather handy experience. It allows you to view the tasks and events that are on your schedule, as well as allowing you to put your friends’ schedule in your phone so you can find them when they are free or not disturb them when they are busy.

This can be done via two methods:
1. Google calendar has a SMS reminder function that sends you a SMS whenever an event is scheduled.
2. A service called GooSync allows a series of Nokia devices to be synchronised with Google calendar using SyncML via Nokia’s own synchronisation utility.

Flickr
By having Flickr on a mobile devices opens up a whole new dimension of usage. This is particularly evident when you gather with friends to share photos with them, or want to know more information about places surrounding you. With some newer phones such as the Nokia N95, direct upload and sharing of photos are enabled on the handset. While other phones can access Flickr mobile via Yahoo Go! 2.0.

Gmail
The online interface of Gmail allows a conversation style of email, providing an interactive interface for users to hold conversations or simply refer to an issue that they were talking about. Having Gmail on mobile has substituted SMS as a way of text-based communication, as it offers a turn taking conversation style messaging rather than the often cluttered SMS inbox that does not group messages together. The Gmail mobile application can be accessed at http://gmail.com/app and requires JVM to run.





YouTube
YouTube provides a platform for video hosting, which has enabled users of all kinds to express their opinion on issues, it also allow users to post a reply on a video clip using their own recorded video. By having YouTube on mobile allow users to use it as a video player for entertainment, catalysing topics for discussion, as well as directly record footages of their surrounding event or environment and upload these video clips online to communicate to the public.



eBay
The online auction site, eBay, inhabits a community of buyers and sellers. Through the use of feedback scores, it allows users to know how reliable an entity is. Mobile eBay allow users to use eBay as a benchmark on pricing and product variety, such that when you are shopping in retail stores, you will know if a product is comparatively more expensive than the market price or if there are also similar products that are not available in the retail stores. It is also useful as a tool for virtual ‘window-shopping’ when going on a road trip or at remote locations.



CityWare for Facebook
Lastly, the application that I came across is a plug-in for Facebook named CityWare, developed as a project at the University of Bath. It enhances the power of Facebook to interconnect people via collecting data in the real world. This application uses Bluetooth on your mobile phone to explore how your real and virtual social networks intertwine, especially with those ‘familiar’ strangers that we see everyday but not know. It then logs these records in Facebook, thus allowing individual users to explore these real world encounters within the virtual community, merging the digital and physical divide.

Conclusion
To sum up, I have reflected on my use of these social computing tools in regards to its structure and composition, as well as its intention of uses. I have also discussed the security and privacy concerns as being a vital safety issue in the future development of virtual communities. Lastly, I reflected on my use of these social web applications on mobile computing and listed some insights into uses that are not intended by the design but very useful and interesting when used on the go. Similarly with any development of technology, online social applications require multiple iterations of design, appropriation and redesign to enable the capturing of user requirements, which includes adapting to cultural and ethical changes.

References

Bargh, J. A. & McKenna, K. Y. A. 2004, 'The Internet and Social LIfe', Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 573-590.

Lewis, R. 2006, 'The meaning of 'life': capturing intent from web authors', Proceedings of the 2006 international cross-disciplinary workshop on Web accessibility (W4A): Building the mobile web: rediscovering accessibility?, ACM Press, Edinburgh, U.K.

March, W., Jacobs, M. & Salvador, T. 2005, 'Designing Technology for Community Appropriation', CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems ACM Press, Portland, OR, USA.

Raisinghani, M. S., Benoit, A., Ding, J., Gomez, M., Gupta, K., Gusila, V., Power, D. & Schmedding, O. 2004, 'Ambient Intelligence: Changing Forms of Human-Computer Interaction and their Social Implications', Journal of Digital Information, vol. 5, no. 4,

Technorati Tags: Assignment 1

Last.FM's place in the mix - Tom Ireland s4100358

Last.FM is an expansive online social network centered around its users main goal; to listen to good music. It accomplishes this goal in a number of ways, both automatic and user input based. One unique thing about the Last.FM website, is that it includes features found in other social networking tools such as FaceBook, Delicious and Google Calendar. Its ability to utilise various features found exclusively in these external tools allows it to take one extra step forward from being a specialised networking tool to being a social networking hub. This reflection piece will discuss how Last.FM integrates various aspects of other social networking sites, as well as how effective it is at managing a persons music tastes.

Last.FM is an online networking tool unlike most, in that it combines many different aspects of social networking into one application, allowing friends to share music tastes among other things. However, consideration must be given as to how well it achieves its goals, as well as how it copes with the legal restrictions currently in place when dealing with online music distribution.

The downloaded sister application for the website allows the user to start 'scrobbling'. Scrobbling is a non-sensical word given to the task users undertake of selecting different songs and then sending that play data back to the Last.FM servers, which in turn both add your recently played tracks into your history, giving you a more personalised radio and music experience the next time you visit the site, and also allows the site to 'organise and recommend music to people; we use it to create personalised radio stations, and a lot more besides.' [1]

Comparisons:

Last.FM is similar to Google Calendar in that both feature a basic calendar with events listed, both can show and list events in specific months, and both can share these events with friends online. Google Calendar, being a specialised calendar application, has the ability to record new events, store much more information on the events, and has many other specialised tools available to a calendar application. Last.FM, however has pre-loaded music festival information uploaded to the server, allowing you to find quickly what popular events are taking place globally, or what local events are happening that coincide with your music taste. Last.FM automatically generates recommended events based on your past selection of music.

The Delicious book marking system that is becoming more and more popular uses a similar system of tagging that is found in the Last.FM recommended music selection. However, the tagging system used by Last.FM is completely ubiquitous, meaning that the service automatically determines what kind of music the user likes to listen to, and then plays one of these songs (or a song by an artist with a similar type of music) via the Last.FM radio, without the user ever being aware that their music usage statistics were being accessed. Delicious, however, relies on users manually inputting bookmarks and tagging websites for others to hear about.

Now, Facebook is a social networking tool that focuses around finding friends online and interacting with them online. Facebook features numerous tools and plug-in applications that allow users to interact in different and interesting ways. Last.FM features a tool whereby you can import contacts from Hotmail, AOL mail, Yahoo or Gmail as friends, and then interact with them in a variety of ways.

Last.FM has a wide array of networking tools that can compete with many other networking tools found externally. For example, the site allows for a friends list with pictures and chat, 'Latest recommendations', a place for friends to recommend songs, 'Event updates' which sample real live local concerts in your area and gives you dates, locations, even approximate people attending (from the site). All of these features, however, have to be set up online to be properly utilised. The following features, however, I found to just start working from the moment you start listening to songs. 'Recommended Artists' lists a selection of artists based on artists that you had previously sought after and listened to. 'Recommended events' presents the user with a sample of real live local concerts in your area and gives you dates, locations, even approximate people attending (from the site). It also allows you to track which events your friends are going to, and allows you to send friend invites.

The site features tools for downloading music files, but is not considered to be a file sharing network. While you can download free .mp3 files through the network, most of the time any band page you visit will only contain 30 second samples for download. Proliferating free music is not this websites main goal. It's goal is to connect music lovers with other music lovers that have similar tastes (also called Neighbours in the application), or with artists that are similar to the music they're listening to. It is a network best used in conjunction with a user who already has plenty of music cd's, but is looking to find artists with similar sounds to what he or she is currently listening to.

An example of the legal bindings some social networking music sites face is the site called Pandora. It was an online radio site that tailors each users radio to the peculiar music tastes of each user. However, due to 'recent Copyright Royalty Board rulings that increase fees and ask for licensing guarantees' [2], it has closed its doors to international operations. Whether this will be the fate of other online radio stations such as Last.FM will be dependant on user statistics and increasing royalties fees.

Reflections:

Two of the main benefits of using a social networking system that includes all of these features is interoperability, guaranteeing that all features work with each other, and contact sharing, not having to import multiple contacts across multiple web sites. Two of the main disadvantages of using just one program to handle social online interaction is the (generally) smaller user base, which limits how many people you can interact with, and the lack of specialised tools found only on focused social networking tools.

Neighbours is a new concept found in Last.FM, referring to people who you do not know or have any connection with, other than your music tastes. It is a great tool that can be used to find people who are in your area who have similar tastes to you. Very few social networking tools allows for complete strangers to interact and share common interests. This is a great example of how Last.FM is both generalising networking tools while also specialising in some fields. I personally used neighbours to find a couple of people interested in bands that i like, such as Prodigy and Massive Attack, and through them found bands that i had never heard of before, like Unkle.

After using the Last.FM application for a couple of days, i found that its ability to find music that is similar is limited only in the music that is accessible through the application. After starting the radio looking for the band Prodigy, it played five bands after Prodigy – Firestarter that were very similar in style (and that I had bought cds of). Scrobbling tracks is how Last.FM makes this automatic music selection possible, so in a way it is very much like Delicious in that without a solid user base, much of the music would not be associated.

Conclusion:

The website Last.FM, in conjunction with the application of the same name, uses a variety of networking tools found in more specialised social networking sites, which in turn reduces the number of users who choose to use other social networking sites. This has both negative and positive effects, reducing the need for users to set up multiple accounts and go through repetitive processes, but also limiting the user base of people that users can interact with.

References:

[1] Scrobbling FAQ

http://www.last.fm/help/faq/?id=321

[2] Copyright Royalty changes in the United states 2007, Wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_radio#2007_copyright_royalty_changes_in_the_United_States

'The social and mobile revolution awaits!' - Catchline Last.FM application

Author: Tom Ireland s4100358

Reflection on social and mobile computing tools

Aaron Wakem
s40768632

Social networks are becoming more and more popular everyday. Many are confused about these websites rapid grow and many are scared of them. This report looks at the use of the seven main websites; Facebook, Blogger, Google calendar, Last.FM, Twitter, Flickr, and Delicious. These all have many similarities with others, as well as many differences, but the major aspect of all is the social networking and communicating. The focus of this report is on the experiences of new users, with emphasis on starting up; aliases; locating people; and connecting. With this focus in mind, there are two major questions that need to be considered; firstly, which sites assisted new users, and secondly, which sites proved to be problematic.

The first thing that can easily be noted when it comes to the creation of accounts on these social networks is how far you involve yourself. Do you put your real name, or create an alias that represents you that you and hopefully your friends will remember and can refer to you as. The issue then arises as to what is your usual name available for use or what will you try next in the case of it not working. Almost all the seven sites required a user name and Last.FM and Delicious even recommended an installation of some software to improve your experience with their websites. Both of these installations were straight forward and easy, and only with use did I create an informed decision that whilst Last.FMs in-the-background running meant that I could interact with it if I wanted, but that on the most part it did its job unnoticed. The delicious add-on, on the other hand, became a large annoyance, due to the size and rare use of the buttons.

In regards to names, the nature of Facebook, being meant to locate university and high school friends that you have lost contact with, gives users more inclination to use their correct name, where as Last.FM where the focus is on music and what style your into, gives to more of nickname social networking, as people wish to represent themselves in the genre they love the most. The other five, from my limited experience, have a combination of both those who look to redefine themselves and also those who have no wish to hide themselves. There has always been concerns that people can change their identity and stalk others or worse. This makes aliases problematic and whilst Facebook has primarily peoples’ real names, it could be easy to use an alias.

Finding people was the hardest part of the whole learners experience. Because without physically asking friends if they connected to a site and what their username is, then the user is completely reliant on the sites search engine. Which, due to aliases, makes it hard to find people if they are not using their real names. Another interesting thing I discovered was that due to the shear amount of users on some of these sites, there can sometimes be multiple people with the same name if it’s a common name, e.g. “John Smith”.

Out of all the sites, Blogger by far had the most annoying navigation, and to make matters worse I could not find a searcher for people or blogs, but only by clicking my profiles interests would it do a search. Google calendars has a potentially useful and also annoying way to find people as have to know the persons email address, and as people nowadays have multiple email accounts for standard emails, work emails, and with different webpages requiring gmail, hotmail or yahoo accounts then it becomes hard to keep track of what people would be using for what purposes. In Delicious you must know username, or search for a webpage and add them via a bookmark of theirs, there is no people search. Twitter searches for people using their emails and if they don’t have an account it will send them an email inviting them to join.

Unlike the above examples of finding people, Flickr had both a person and interest scan that worked well. The only issue with the results was aliases, and the issue of multiple people with the same name. Both Facebook and Last.FM had a unique and interesting method that worked exceptionally well on Facebook and just didn’t work at all on Last.FM, it was using an existing email accounts address book to search for people you know on their site. Last.FMs version of this just returned me with errors, compared to their useful group search, which is primarily used for band groups to communicate on all things about the band. I found this one of the most useful tools out of all the sites as bands put their tour dates, album release dates etc. and I can get this information now directly from the bands.

After using all the search facilities on all the sites, I ended up with a grand total of several bands in Last.FM, the comp3505 groups and related people, and one other person; a friend who I met in my first year at uni and had lost contact with. Using Facebook I had found that he had an account and so I added to my friends list. And so after almost 2 years, we caught up again. Both of us still use msn messenger but never at the same time it would seem and we both have been to busy with everything else to keep in contact, so now we communicate via Facebook.

Multiple accounts: some Google, some Yahoo, some usernames, some emails. With so many accounts and passwords it gets to a point where without aid, it still can take a few times to get the right combination to get into a site. Although most internet explorers can record some usernames and passwords, when users login from multiple locations the problem still arises.

For users it is important for the experience to go smoothly for them to continue using the social network. Whilst most users find these sites easy to use, the new users without a support network of friends who already use these sites, need easy ways of starting up, remembering all of the numerous usernames and passwords, and finding friends. While many of these sites offer some of these areas, none prove all areas which are vital to ensuring the retention of new users.

Why am I here? - A reflection on social software

Introduction

This article will reflect on some software tools, namely Facebook and LastFM, that have been designed to aid human social interaction. I have been away from this field of inquiry for close to four years. In this time I have developed my own routines for keeping in contact with family and friends, thus making using these tools a forced and in some cases uncomfortable exercise. In light of this, much of this reflection will be based on material from Alan Cooper’s book “The Inmates Are Running The Asylum”[1] focusing on the question 1) How was this done in the past? and 2) Do these tools make an improvement? Although published in the late 1990’s this work asks relevant questions of software and hardware designers concerning the nature and quality of human interaction their product offers.

Background

Alan Cooper sites a few examples of what happens when an analog or mechanical device is merged with a computer and the resulting human frustration. These range from an in flight computer to an alarm clock, the first unfortunately ending in death for over 100 people[1- page3]. Cooper also reasons that these interaction breakdowns occur, not primarily because of human error on which they are initially blamed, but increasingly due to a product design for humans, by humans but without actually knowing anything about how humans work.

Facebook appears to have been designed to help university students and graduates keep in contact after gradation and across campuses while studying. The site requires the user to log on and complete a profile. This also includes somewhat personal information such as martial status and the type of companionship being sought after. Although these are optional to include, most people fill them out without realising they have a choice. Every time another user inputs on their own profile or on another’s the activity is reported on that profile as well as on the profiles of those who are listed as friends. Along with this, as soon as a member joins a network or group it is made public to others. Facebook also allows members to upload, share and comment on photos, post comments on a members profile, sell items and inform others what music they enjoy by linking with LastFM.

LastFM also required the creating of a profile and adding of personal information, as well as installing software on the user’s home machine. This software monitors the music a person listens to, logs it and lists it on the site. The installed software also reads the tags on the music tracks and shows information about the artist with a link to read more and often has a link to the album the track came from. However if the tag is not present or is incomplete the program shows nothing. The software also shows biographies of the artists and provides links to the LastFm site for more information. Following these links you can find out event schedules, reviews, user’s with the same and/or similar tastes in music. LastFM has a radio feature were the user type in an artist and listen to a selection of their songs or perhaps similar artists.

Focus

How would this interaction have happened in the past? And is Facebook /LastFM improving on that?

Facebook was designed for a specific audience, those who wish to stay in contact with classmates from their university. Before its existence people used a number of different means to keep in contact including email, instant messaging, chat programs(eg. MIRC), MUD's(Multi-User-Domain), phone and even paper and ink. Sometimes a classmate could be contacted by many of these or other means, while others only one. Facebook provides one central space for interaction, a single process to remember in order to start communicating. In this way the user mat be freed of having to remember which communication process goes with which classmate and thus Facebook has, I think, made it easier to get in contact and in some cases stay in contact with former or current classmates.

But what about the long term? What about finding classmates who are nearby to you geographically for example? They may live very close, work close to your work, catch the same train…etc. After discovering this, using only Facebook to communicate may seem rude. Perhaps one of your classmates only checks Facebook once a week and from another country so the time zones mean your asleep. However they check their emails twice a day, so the longest you have to wait for them to see you email is a few hours. Facebook from this perspective, might be seen more as a directory then a social software tool.

Where does LastFM fit in? LastFM provides an environment where people of different backgrounds, locations and ages can interact and share their music tastes. Previously, this information may have been shared on a profile in a social software application. It may have had to be manually updated and events and reviews would have to be searched for separately. Hearing a sample of the artists work would require going to the artist’s official website or one where the album was for sale and offered samples. LastFM offers a one-stop-shop for information, as a result people don’t have to bookmark all their favorite band’s sites nor do they have to remember which entertainment provider’s website to go to for event information(depending on country). What you are listening to can also be updated on your Facebook profile so that others can follow the links to LastFM information and join that community. In this way LastFM is making use of people’s social nature to direct them to music information in one central location. Of course there will still be some information that LastFM can not provide but it’s a good place to start.

Reflection

Someone once said to me if “you’re not on MSN I just won’t talk to you”. They weren’t being rude but just telling me that MSN was the only way they communicated with people. Since humans vary so much it seems so restrictive to tie yourself down to one sort of communication, perhaps even lazy.

When I used Facebook I did find two or three people I had attended university with previously. One of them I had been in contact with before using Facebook but the others I had lost contact with. However I did not need Facebook to get back in contact with them. I had other contact details for them already and could have easily caught up with them via those means. I also found my cousin, someone else I was already in contact with, even live near too. Again I didn’t need Facebook to catch up. Facebook was great for a first step in getting in touch with lost classmates, but I wouldn’t use it solely to keep up to date. Regarding the usability of Facebook I found that the interface was very busy and required a solid amount of time and effort to check all the information, some of which I found unnecessary. After which I searched through my profile option to try and cull the number of different items shown on my homepage

I found that I didn’t use the social aspect of LastFM. I used the information about bands I like but didn’t send anyone a message asking a question or update a review or profile of and artist. I selfishly just got what I wanted and that was that. As with Facebook, LastFM for me was more of a directory or even an encyclopedia.

Conclusion

In conclusion, although Facebook does combine a lot of information in one spot, for me it becomes just another login I have to remember, another process to go though to contact some people I know. This may have been precisely what the creators of Facebook were hoping to avoid, however since humans are so varied it was doomed from the start to being just that. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. The most valuable thing I have to offer the ones I care about is time.
Time to look up their email address,
Time to look at the most recent photos of child, pet, spouse, holiday and comment on them,
Time to look up the mobile and send them a text message or call,
And yes even time to sit down and actually write them a letter or card.

LastFM is a fine repository and great place to start if I needed to find people who liked the same kinds of music as I did. But by no means holds out a long term social advantage over methods that I currently use.

References

[1]Cooper, Alan, “The inmates are running the asylum” Publisher Indianapolis, IN : Sams, 1999.

Reflection on
Social and Mobile Computing
COMP3505 || SOCIAL & MOBILE COMPUTING
By: 40818229 || David Andrew Whipps

The World Wide Web has been a continuously growing medium of data sharing since its public formation in 1991. It’s power as a source of mass-information over extended geographical circumstances has been long foreseen. Even artists like Nam Jun Paik coined the term ‘Information Superhighway’ back in the early 1970’s as he foresaw a future ability in the world of electronic collaboration. Now in the wake of the 21st Century the true use of the Internet as a dynamic, public shaped medium of information and data is truly taking form. Some refer to it as the second Internet Bubble; others are coining the style of social websites as the Web 2.0 revolution, either way the Internet is growing into a true social medium. As this mould however, is only just starting to take its shape, the websites and online applications that are being developed and hyped about by common users of the internet – are yet to be seen as flawless tools of the Internet’s future.

The sites that will be discussed in this reflection all share a commonality in that they are all recently successful social networking sites. Each differentiates from each other in that they each specialise in different aspects of user functionality. Some sites serve to share and organise information or data with friends, others act on a more stricter social function that purely serve to represent a person on the internet as an ‘online identity’. Either way the use of the Internet is evolving into a more user-driven experience, a big step since the days of it being a mere collection of online documents. And as new technological gadgets like Mobile Phones, PDA’s and ubiquitous developments take form; the Internet is better integrating itself into our everyday life. However, how successful certain social projects can be in becoming a user’s everyday routine and thus a successful social and/or mobile adaptation – involves a lot more than the programming of the application.

My experiences with the social and mobile computing projects involved for this course I deemed as an overall successful one, especially considering I was using most of them prior to the course. However the biggest challenge I faced in using them all were not technical usability issues but social. No matter how technically advanced the site/program was, it didn’t count for anything when it wasn’t designed to be seamlessly adopted by the user. Usability was what I found to be one of the most important factors contributing to a successful tool of social/mobile interaction. If users, in general, did not adapt their lifestyle (even ever so slightly) to the tool, then it would not become a truly effective/data-accurate application.

An example of this theory of ineffectiveness I found was the social and mobile tool, Twitter. Twitter is an attempt to be a truly effective asynchronous distributed interaction between users. It is a simplified version of blogging in that it is more a short phrase of reflection on your current status of activity in the real world, or the virtual. The biggest twist with Twitter is that you are able to update your status anywhere geographically, by texting an entry with your mobile phone. Whilst you also are posting your own status on the site, your friends can also be given live updates of your new entries by phone, wherever they are (in an area with network coverage). The problem I found with its use since I signed up 4 weeks ago is that no one seemed to effectively use it. Though I can’t really prove why it wasn’t a real success with most of my peers, I stand by the theory that blogging everything that you are doing just seamed too much of a task for most. The friends who, including myself, seemed to use it to an almost full extent were ones with laptops and had the Twitter dashboard widget. The thought of texting my updates all day was something I knew I just wouldn’t adapt too, not to mention not knowing the cost involved in the process. However with the widget on my laptop I was able to at least keep a rather constant diary of my actions, and with another peer doing the same I learnt quite a bit from reading into his life.

For a deeper representation of a user as a real person however, I found Facebook to be the most successful. As their website states so clearly.

“Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.” – Facebook website

Facebook is quickly become the world’s leading social networking site, with its members list almost doubling by the month. Its success is merited towards its ability to reflect the true identity of the user from the real world. Facebook serves to fulfil the networking of known people from the real world, and thus a more grounded experience is fulfilled.

“That’s why I think the website has been such a success. We don’t view the site as an online community—we bill it as a directory that is reinforcing a physical community. What exists on the site is a mirror image of what exists in real life.”
- Mark Zuckerberg

As stated by the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s success lies in its integration with the real world, with the user’s real social lifestyle. The ethical design of the system has thus been its unique edge over other social networking sites like MySpace and Hi5. My personal experience with Facebook was though it was a bit more restricting than other social sites; the strict functionality has kept it as the clean, professional social networking tool that it prides itself on. Also with the new ability to add third-party applications, the users are given greater choices in what they can do with their profile. A favourite of mine is one that actually promotes the aspect of social computing in that it visualises your friends network by creating a social wheel graph, that links everyone that knows each other on your list. This is just one example of the possibilities of the Facebook platform.

Another good example of a well built tool is last.fm, an online hub for musical enthusiasts, that, as the websites states:

“Last.fm taps the wisdom of the crowds, leveraging each user's musical profile to make personalised recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams, and much more.” – last.fm website

To achieve this, the users’ music that they play must be ‘scrobbled’, this simply means recorded by last.fm onto the user’s account on their database. What makes last.fm so effective and usable is that you build up your data of musical taste with the ability to forget about it! The system uses a hybrid architecture that requires you to download a small program that runs in the background of your computer to record whatever music you play. Thus the tool becomes something that seamlessly integrates into your own lifestyle with next to no hassle of maintaining anything. Personally this has become my favourite tool for this very reason, it’s great to forget about it for a good week and then check the website to see who my favourite artists of the week were.

For a piece of technology to truly integrate itself into your social lifestyle it must answer to a lot of ethical and practical problems as well as the technical. One of my most favoured suggestions would be better integration between all these tools. Though Twitter could be a very useful feature, it by itself is a very acute tool in terms of so much sufficient time and thought into it. If the same features and functionality could be incorporated to Facebook’s status feature then you would see a lot more use of it. Thankfully now with Facebook’s third party applications system there are add-ons for Facebook to integrate both twitter and last.fm, but there’s definitely room for improvement yet.

Understandably the world of social and mobile computing has a long way to go, and these tools are mere pioneers of more advanced, ubiquitous and integrated tools that will shape the way we live life in the future. As good as programming and technology is developing, we must also consider the human aspect of tools like these, to which require so much more psychological depth than we first perceived. We have a long way in studying ourselves alone, before we can flawless utilise the power of technology we have birthed into our world.

References:
Facebook: www.facebook.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com
Last.fm: www.last.fm
Exclusive Interview with Mark Zuckerberg (MSNBC)- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6596533/site/newsweek
SAAM Interact – Nam Jun Paik’s Information Superhighway - http://americanart.si.edu/collections/interact/zoom/paik.cfm

John L'Estrange 40973883

Reflection on Social and Mobile

Computing Tools

Introduction:

As human society grows along with the vast structure and availability of the internet, certain websites have spawned a range of user friendly sites which help people in their everyday lives if required. The choices become apparent as people are more exposed to the web. These sites allow user to support them with either visual or text based information structured in a way which can form potential groups for similar online social tasks. Some of these tasks can contain information about the users’ daily activities to simply displaying a collection of the users’ photo/ image collection.

This article will be looking in detail at 4 of these programs located on sites all of which contain a catchy name. These sites listed are Flickr, Facebook, del.icio.us and Twitter. These have been chosen because of the seemingly high participation of people around the globe and the different uses to why people may use such sites.

They will also be studied through means of their purpose of use, how well the site works to succeed to fulfil a social aspect online and determine positive or negative outcomes that may be resolved.

Background:

The following list studies the mentioned sites in how they were intended for use and how well they complete this intended task.

Flickr (http://www.flickr.com):

This program represents similarities towards the widely famous site Deviantart.com but with slight social and cultural differences. Flickr allows a registered user to actively create an online photo album available for use in a global scale. The user is able to upload images and save them on the assigned page, this can potentially become a large list of images and therefore forming an online picture gallery type of page. Each of these images are available for any other registered Flickr user to view and add comments to the specified picture. The reason Flickr was created was to generally give the user an opportunity to display pictures focused more around the person. These usually include family pictures, personal pictures, holiday pictures and so on. This is the concept that separates Flickr from Deviantart.com. Deviantart was created as another social/ personal image site but with restrictions that these images were generally along the lines of manipulated images either by computer instead of posting simple photographs of the user or anything that depicts an online social aspect. There are a few problems that Flcikr illustrate in respect to social context and human behaviour. One of these problems in personal opinion is that Flcikr is a good site for compiling images online available for other users to view but the question of “Will people want to view other users’ personal photos?” ie family, personal, friends etc. there are obvious issues that arise after noting this. Flickr can be taken advantage of in this case, areas of online stalking are apparent. People may not use the site as intended and basically look up pictures which take fancy and spy on online users. This may be the worst case of use for Flickr however there are issues to overcome such fears for the user as they are able to specify wether a picture is considered private to the community or not. This can also be relevant to other group member/ online friends the user may be in contact with. By acting in this method the user is able to avoid such scary scenarios. The other problem is that the amount of public viewing may be too low for a user to be happy with their profile and pictures. It would be apparent that users may register for Flickr as a result in a need to be commented on via the public to share opinions about their personal life etc. these issues can only be assumed that Flickr is used at a regular basis as it was intended. Flickr overall becomes useful usually when a user becomes a part of a group and is more actively participating among their peers. This allows a majority of people have a certain degree of privacy and visible reflection on their photos which in the end should give an amount of positive feedback upon the users’ behalf.

Figure A (Screen shot of Flickr):

del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us):

Delicious is based of the idea of an online bookmark which allows the registered user to post url sites to themselves and write down small notes about them for future reference. These sites become available to the public for viewing and commenting.

The user able to create a list of cited sites, maximum limit still undetermined but still gives the user a sense of flexibility through its use. Delicious as a site is very easy to use as there are no real complicated options any user should really need. In respect to the social context of the site, it is lacking in personal interaction between other users. The only way people communicate are via comments on a posted url or url’s that others post themselves. Such methods could also be noted as ineffective attempts of communicating apart from communicating the bookmark at hand. Like social programs, the user is able to receive url’s specifically from another user only if the registered user name in known by the sender. This allows for simple friendship qualities to arise by very simple communication via interests and genres of the shared url’s. When a url is saved, the user is able to check which other users have the same site in their collection as well. This can lead to ideas of people with similar interests of web page thus iterating the idea behind social computing but also to determine based on Delicious’s registered users, how popular a site may be in the overall community. Delicious overall can be a useful site in the eyes of the user. It allows for simple communication via interests in web sites and knowledge on popularities of sites other people have bookmarked.

Figure B (Screen shot of Delicious):

Facebook (http://facebook.com):

Facebook is a site that allows the user to create a personal online profile which is available for display to any amount of peers within your network. The site relies on the user having some frequent participation throughout their accessing their personal profile and with other friends located on the network. Facebook can resemble strong social and mobile computing aspects as it depicts an archive full of the users personal material. These methods are enhanced by the addition of simple features like an avatar picture which is used to display on the users main page, DOB, area of location, etc. The user has a fine amount of options when it comes to customising visual and textual content. These are made apparent by the great design scheme Facebook follows including small text boxes indicating a minor topic in which the user has chosen to put up for public viewing. These text boxes are one of the main ways other people/ friends interact with the user. Boxes such as “The wall” allow friends to write a comment and post it which in the end becomes a new part of the profile. This conveys strong social aspects as people tent to like small cohesive messages from their friends and will in turn be implied to send a message back. This method of communication keeps both users active in supporting their Facebook profile and eventually can find or add new friends therefore add to the amount of social belonging to the site. The method behind finding friends becomes very clear as when the user views another persons profile, they are able to view each friend that person has but only to an extent of the picture (no viewable profile). The friends box is the base starting point for anyone to make new friends. It is basically a chain process that friends the user knows, knows somebody else within a certain range from them determined by either area of living, family, school friends and so on. Follwing this chain, the user is able to keep up with their friends and their friends-friends and so on. The fact that people cannot view other profiles except by adding them as a friend stops any threat of stalking inferences people may be afraid of whilst using Facebook. Overall Facebook can be seen as a highly structured and down to earth site for simple but effective use in personal profiling. The site is capable of keeping people in touch on a daily basis with new and unpredictable features yet to be uncovered which also add to small excitements of being a Facebook user.

Figure C (Screen shot of Facebook):

Twitter (http://twitter.com):

Twitter is a simple conceptual program based on a user’s real time status. Although the site design may seem of a poor quality, the use can be quite effective depending on what kind of person the user is or whether they are busy during the day. Twitter allows the registered user to define at a point in time “what they are doing”. Certainly this question highlighted on screen at first was quite confusing and confronting until the real purpose was revealed. The user can type in the activities they are currently progressing in or can set up a daily plan etc. basically the user can outline to other Twitter users and friends what they will be doing for a certain amount of time similar to a real time journal but more focused towards the users friends or work people. The other people are able to determine the exact notion of that users actions and can act accordingly or can be simply notified. Instances in which Twitter may be useful is if a user is expected online at a certain time but have been cut short and is required to go shopping. That user is able to leave a small message on Twitter notifying anyone in relation that they will not be back until a while later. There is but an obvious issue of stalking inferences as that people are able to view and know specifically what the other user is doing. A scary thought but is always a potential threat while using Twitter. On the other side is the idea of a user telling a simple lie. Users are not mistaken by telling small lies on Twitter as it is their right to say what they like but not so much as the users viewing the false message. Twitter can in the end save peoples time and will not need to worry about the where abouts or actions of their fellow peers.

Figure D (Screen shot of Twitter):

Focus:

A focus point to be clearly addressed throughout discussing these social computer sites is the idea behind Conversation. Each of the chosen sites mentioned have different methods of conveying a message but some not so greatly as the next.

As above the Delicious site was made for personal Url bookmarking specifically. Delicious cannot create a sense of conversing between peers but merely an assumption of what the user requires in the form of a hyperlink to a web site.

Twitter in respect to conversing has limits to whether or not the messages posted on screen can be classified as conversation. Users who use Twitter as how it is intended cannot give a strong conversation to another. Twitter is practically a global message board only readable by the people the user has added thus not a global conversation board. Users however may take advantage of Twitter in a way to produce a notion of conversing through twitter as long as they refer to one person only but this would only then become a more complicated and confusing version of instant messaging programs. Twitter overall has the potential to become a tool used for social conversation but only to a point in which it would become confusing and inefficient. Flickr forms areas for conversation while basically posting personal photos and actively viewing other users’ photos. The comment function is the central method of conversing with another person in Flickr. It allows each user to freely type constructive or simple comments surrounding the certain images posted. A simple picture is worth one thousand words they say but also produces a starting point for user to user conversations and may potentially gain a new insight from one another. Although this method may seem satisfactory to present a conversive mode, it still lacks real time functions and is usually restricted towards the photo itself.

Facebook provides acceptable functions for conversing but is still not at a high enough point to be considered a great conversive tool. The social communication about the users identity is the main priority of Facebook and not necessarily conversation. Again Facebook allows users to communicate via textbox like windows and make simple comments or questions about the person or photos they have of themselves. These comments however still fall in the similar category of email like messages as they will not be detected until the user checks their profile the next time they log in. Even though Facebook is not the strongest tool for conversing but the idea is still firmly present at least.

Reflection:

Through this article one question arises based on all of the discussed sites:

“What degree of awareness must the user provide to support these social mobile programs?”

A user who uses Facebook will vary in respect to time and consistency. Facebook tends to be a low maintenance journal with plenty of options. This does not interfere with the users daily life as even though they may have messages, they may not be inclined to check up on their status on Facebook to see whether someone has posted a new message or picture etc. this will most likely apply to the users on the other side. Facebook can almost feel like an email system at times but not as serious as emails usually are therefore a daily check on Facebook would be fine in most users book. There is more of a luxury sense to using Facebook than needing to be aware of individual status.

Twitter is a site that would have to keep running for the user to track the actions of their peers. Users don’t always have to check on what others are doing all the time but may be persuaded in possible cases of sudden change. Users can only assume that a user on the other end is currently doing what they say they are doing thus can carry on with their own business. The only time where awareness must take place is when a message changes within a certain timeframe therefore indicating new change to a user’s action.

A user provides limited awareness towards using Delicious. Users are not interested in what other people usually have to offer in Url form but only for what they need. Users can use Delicious as a search tool based around the degree of high rated sites and allows the user to search accordingly. The most awareness a user will usually need while using Delicious is to keep a track of which sites are important to them most and if a person has sent them another Url link.

Flickr stimulates users creatively while being able to post comments towards other users. A user should have a casual amount of awareness towards Flickr as some comments may be constructive feedback towards their images or even destructive in another case. Most users would be inclined to verify the status of their photos and comments and on the other hand are able to comment and view other user photos. a user can provide any amount of awareness towards Flickr if they use it for general purposes but if any greater ie. Groups or work, greater awareness must be apparent.

Conclusion:

In conclusion the four sites discussed in this article had been general social and mobile computing technologies, many of which are used by people world wide. The way people communicate, act and portray themselves in accordance to time and space can all be noted down by simply using such web sites. Any person can become a user and participate in these broad networks without having to sacrifice a majority of their day to verify their status for each site. Most sites are user friendly and influence a formal amount of social context throughout the network. These sites however do not offer full social dynamics of the real world, this includes formal face-to-face contact, emotional contact or other elements of communication which users loose while conversing synchronously.

Bibliography:

1. Twitter. (2007). Retrieved 17/8, 2007, from http://twitter.com/home

2. Facebook. (2007). Retrieved 17/8, 2007, from http://uqedu.facebook.com/profile.php?id=715841185

3. Delicious. (2007). Retrieved 17/8, 2007, from http://del.icio.us/A.Einstein

4. Flickr. (2007). Retrieved 17/8, 2007, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/53151484@N00/1142484496/

Assignment 1 - Tim Cooper (40986856)

Introduction

I have been using different social applications for a good year and the only ones to survive have been the ones that exist as a natural extension of my day to day activities - applications that don't, or inhibit my work flow get binned and usually never again see the light of day. This article explores three social applications abilities to become an extension of my natural day to day activities and the social awareness generated from that.

Focus

The focus of this reflective report will be on one aspect of the social awareness augmentation of software, that being that the application in question becomes an extension of how you would usually use your everyday applications and the social awareness generated from that. The applications that will be examined within the report are Last.fm, Facebook and Twitter - I choose these three from the list of seven that we signed up for at the start of semester because they are the ones that I was using before class and still get the most enjoyment from.

Facebook Background

Facebook is for me, MySpace generation 1000 - it achieves the same goals but with much less time and stress. Facebook is "a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet" (About Facebook). I originally started using Facebook as a MySpace (ugh!) alternative because I was sick of error messages, bloated code and crappy design - turns out we have to use it for assessment as well, double bonus.

Last.fm Background

Last.fm describes itself as "the social music revolution" (Last.fm) - it is a music 'taste' sharing application that sits in the background (of your desktop) and listens to you listening to music. It then relays that information to your last.fm profile page for others to view. I have been a registered member since the 31st of May, 2007 and have been using it almost on a daily basis.

Twitter Background

I find the concept of Twitter rather odd but unresistable - it's a place where you are able to tell everyone (who is 'following you') what you are up to at that moment. In the beginning I couldn't believe that people would actually care so much about what other people were doing during the day / night. But after using it for awhile it started to grow on me - while at the same time it still doesn't sit right knowing what people are up to every minute of the day.

Reflecting on Facebook

I made the switch from MySpace to Facebook earlier this year and the only reason I still log in to my MySpace is because someone wants to be my friend (and I don't even know them!) - oh well, one is better than none right...? (hehehe). Keeping in touch with my friends is something that I strive to do on a daily basis, therefore I consider keeping in touch with people as a day to day activity - and for myself Facebook has been the most effective at extending that experience and making it enjoyable.

In Facebook I am able to go online and search for friends / groups / networks and keep up-to-date on what is happening with each of them. There is a huge level of social awareness on Facebook as you are able to see, interact and influence any of your friends and they have that same power over you - and you don't feel as if you are fighting the system just to stay in touch with everyone. For example if I were to upload photos to my account, automatically everyone of my friends would be sent the link and they are able to view them. No longer do I have to post a 'bulletin' or email my friends to let them know that I have made some changes. I feel that Facebook is the greatest natural extension in terms of communicating volumes of different information to a whole bunch of friends and family.

Reflecting on Last.fm

I wish I had been using last.fm since it started. It is my one social application that gets used on a day to day basis (My Last.fm Home) - and I absolutely love it. Last.fm (for me) is what I look for in an application when I'm wanting to extend myself into the online social world. I am a big music fan and iTunes is constantly open playing songs - and this is where Last.fm extends my listening experience - it sits on your desktop in the background scrobbling whatever I listen to and updates my profile page without me having to press anything. Because Last.fm integrates so well with my usual day to day activities, I feel that Last.fm encourages me to visit my profile site to see what else is going on. Once online you are able to see what your friends and neighbours are listening to, you are able to leave comments and join groups. I feel that all this awareness of what's going on around you - your friends music profiles, recommended songs / artists etc - steams heavily from the fact that it is so easily integrated with your natural day to day activities.

Reflecting on Twitter

I have had a Twitter account (My Twitter Home) for about 3 months now (I signed up just before classes started) and have been using it on and off and I feel that this is because Twitter really isn't an extension of my daily activities. I have always used Twitter is an application that I have to fire up (either using my dashboard widget or desktop application) to edit my status, so although it could be considered in my daily routine, it's often something that I forget to do. I am aware that you are able send sms messages to a Twitter number and that will update your status for you, but I have never really looked into it (to see if it costs money - and I'm not a scrooge either haha) because I spend far more time on my computer than I do with my mobile phone. That being said Brendan (Lidster) informed me tonight that you are able to update your status through your IM account, simply by adding the Twitter address to your contact list and then every time you write to that contact it will update your status. So for me that could possibly change the way that I interact with Twitter completely - I'm constantly on msn, so interacting with Twitter through my client would suit my day to day activities. But this reflection is on how I have been using it and my experience so far... With that in mind Twitter is an application that currently isn't an extension of my day to day activities and as such I don't gain much social awareness from it - by no means does that mean that it doesn't exist (it's undistributable that Twitter is based solely on social interaction), I'm just commenting that from my interactions with it (because it's not an extension of my activities and therefore it's basically unused) I don't go and check what other people are up to at different parts of the day so I don't gain that level of social awareness that Twitter strives for.

Conclusion

In conclusion I found that both Facebook and Last.fm were just a natural extension of my daily activities and also generated an awareness of society around me, but Twitter (as I currently use it) actually hinders my work flow and therefore I don't get to enjoy the awareness that is generated from it. I feel that I will continue to use Facbook and Last.fm in the same way as I have over the last couple of months and I will continue to feel that awareness that is generated by others also using them. As for Twitter, I intended to change how I interact with it in the hope that it can become more of a natural extension and hopefully I will reap the benefits of the others using it also.