Topic 8

Q1.
You know what? It's hot. It's f@$&ing hot. It's 8:30pm and it's still 36C outside. It's also overcast and dusty. So as I wander around submersed in the heat I can taste a fine layer of dirt forming in my mouth as I draw breath. The light from the streetlamps washes through the air with a certain haze only a Broken Hill dust storm can bring. The prickles crunch underfoot as I pass through the entrance to the terminally ill football field across from my home. I grimace at the thought of pulling them from the soles of my shoes later, or worse, finding them in my feet after one or two are smuggled into the house. I can smell rain in the air, albeit faint. The notion of rain mingled with all the dust in the air leads me to suspect the local car washes are going to have a few more lucrative days ahead of them. The hot wind blows in my face, my eyes narrow as flecks of dust obscure my gaze. It's almost like wandering around a fan forced oven. Now the rain starts. Big, hot, dirty rain drops intermingled with dust muddy up the world around me as I retreat back home. Back home to a balmy 27C. Feeling a little guilty that I'm privy to such a luxury.

Q2.
Do we need this many web 2.0 tools? I feel like I'm playing jeopardy having to come up with the question to an answer that I simply wish to give as a statement. I have begun to wonder where the line between want and need has been drawn. I can't help but suspect, through what I've learned about marketing and consumerism, is that many of the Web 2.0 apps have been developed before identifying a clear need. Sort of "It seems like a good idea, we'll figure out how to use it when we're done". Take twitter for instance. Do you honestly think someone was sitting on their computer one day and thought to themselves "You know what? There really needs to be a quicker way to tell people how much I like toast." And while twitter has seen widespread use, even to practical ends, it still feels like another contributor to a world saturated in methods of distr.... oooh shiny.

How much social interaction do we really need? So many apps are palmed off as methods of maintaining social interaction. But how many people mixed up in your networks are you really friends with? I begin to wonder if these facilities contribute to the erosion of socialization as a whole. Without sounding too much like a Luddite though I acknowledge that I do use several social networks and without web 2.0 applications I wouldn't be able to maintain my relationship with my fiance at the distance we are currently living apart. I guess my underlying concern is to do with excess. People are overdosing on social networks. Now a quick break to check facebook, brb.

What hazards are there in being saturated with web 2.0 applications? First point that my fiance raised while discussing this is how many children are using age restricted social networks? We are awash with so many options that it is impossible to police them all. It's unrealistic to want to police them all but it is still a concern.

Q3.
The difference between FOAF and semantic web confused me a little but the relationship between the two as I understand it is that FOAF allows us to roam with the same set of data across multiple services. Like we learn from normalising databases, reducing redundant information leads to greater efficiency, so this is the goal of FOAF and the semantic web.
FOAF in particular in this context runs along the social networking sites in such a way that members of different social networks have a means of connecting on a meta level via their FOAF information.

Q4.
a)
RSS or Really Simple Syndication is a a way of providing summarised news to subscribers. It is a form of syndication in that it automatically sends out information to interested parties as soon as there the information is published. An aggregator is a drunk alligator, but not really, it's not actually a word but I liked the joke. A site that provides aggregation services means that it collects headlines from many different locations and displays them, usually chronologically. DIG is a good example of this.
Swarm refers to the users subscribed to the RSS feed and stack refers to the news being provided.

b)
Delicious. It's an online record of your bookmarks. But it's SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT! It is also an online record of what everyone is bookmarking and keeps lists of what's the most popular. The tags for each bookmark refer to a word you assign to a bookmark. The tags allow the bookmark to be filed under that category. So if you have a video tagged as funny and video it will show up when your search criteria include funny or video.

c)
Web 2.0 repository's, now that I know they exist, will certainly feature in my future when looking for a tool for a particular project. I'm a little overwhelmed by the number listed but I honestly got a little excited when I saw how many there were and how diverse they were. I was a little disappointed to see so many twitter apps though. I am not a fan of twitter.

d)
Elgg.
When I read 'social engine' my immediate reaction was that it probably wouldn't be suitable for use in a workplace but after perusing the features offered I've come 180 and have to say this is almost the ideal application for the workplace. One could configure it around different departments in an office, share project files and perform interoffice collaboration and it's all easily moderated.