My Rugby Presentation

Above is my presentation on Rugby. Unfortunately it may not make much sense when looked at on its own as I have no script to accompany it.

Overall I was very pleased with how my speech went. I think I spoke without too much hesitation or repetition. I think my timing with the slides was quite good, however I think had I practised a bit more it could have been better. I think I should have put more pictures in the presentation as it was mainly text, although I thought I did quite well in not putting too much text on the board and not reading from the board or burying my head in a script. After listening to everyone else's talks I feel I could have maybe used slightly more imaginative language and maybe gone into a bit more detail about the actual rules of rugby and given my opinion on certain aspects of the game, e.g. the best players. I really enjoyed making the Pecha Kucha presentation and look forward to using the skills I learned in making the presentation in other subjects.

Pecha Kucha - The art of a good presentation

If you are able to make a good presentation and are able to deliver it in a confident manner, you will go far in the world. The worlds most confident speaker can ruin a nervous speaker in a matter of minutes even if the nervous speaker's point is clearly good. Below is a video by Don McMillan which points out all the bad things that you can do when making a speech. From experience, reading several articles and watching some very well known public speakers, such as Al Gore and Bill Gates I think I can summarise how to make a good speech:

• Speak with Confidence, let the talk flow
• Do not speak for hours while not actually giving any facts, i.e. do not waffle
• MINIMALISM, simplicity is the key
• Know your topic
• Have prompters in front of you, but DO NOT have your head in a sheet of paper reading your speech

In my opinion when writing a speech follow Pecha Kucha. This is a method of speech writing where you have 20 slides, and each slide only lasts 20 seconds. Of course this can not work for all speeches as some are much longer than 6 minutes 40 and others a lot shorter, however it is a good concept to try and follow.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. In its eight year life it has turned into a goldmine of information. Wikipedia is the ultimate wiki, it works as such. Anyone can join for free. Once joined up anyone can write an article on just about anything they choose. Once written that article can then be accessed by anyone on the internet regardless of whether they are a member or not. Once the article is published then any other member of wikipedia can edit that article if they see a mistake or a fact which needs updating. This system has resulted in the biggest most reliable encyclopaedia ever. Today Wikipedia has over 12 million articles in many different languages; 2 million of these articles are written in English. Wikipedia is so huge that nowadays if you type a random object, person or event into Google then a wikipedia page is usually in the top 5 results. So why is it so reliable? Wikipedia could never work if half the facts on their pages were incorrect. So whenever someone writes a page they also have to write a bibliography explaining where they got all their facts from. This bibliography can be looked at by anyone. Another way to check if a page is reliable is to look at the amount of edits a page has had. Again anyone can access this information, the edits page lists all the people who have edited the page and puts their edits in chronological order. Naturally a page with lots of edits is more likely to be correct than one with very few edits. Some pages have been edited hundreds of times. Of course a massive website like wikipedia is prone to vandalism as anyone can edit its pages. Wikipedia are extremely good at fighting vandalism. They have huge security teams who scan wikipedia constantly, meaning that incorrect facts and fantasy articles are only ever on wikipedia for a matter of hours. As wikipedia has millions of users it is also becoming a great source of news. The best example of this is the July bombings. Someone heard the explosions went home and minutes after the event had created a wikipedia page asking people to update with all the news they could get. Within hours the page had been edited hundreds of times and the result was wikipedia had a in depth account of the incident hours before news teams across the world. The interesting thing about wikipedia is that about 90% of its edits are done by just under 2% of its users. This means if the top 10% of wikipedia editors and writer’s packs up and stop editing, wikipedia would cease to exist within a day or two, as the mobs of vandals would take control. For a more detailed history of wikipedia just follow this hyperlink. Wikipedia is a great website as it provides the world with countless facts. It is Vanevar Bush's dream come true and also would sit comfortably with the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. Berners-Lee wanted the World Wide Web to be used for science and education and for it to be free; Wikipedia fits both of these credentials. Below is a video which shows the Wikipedia article of the July bombings while it is being edited.

Tagging and the many ways it appears on the web

Tagging is a way of organising things you need to find on the internet. Today I will look at three different websites and how they all use tagging in different ways.

The first website is facebook. On facebook tags are put on pictures and videos. If a friend uploads a picture of your rugby team he could then tag all the people who have facebook on the rugby team in the photo. That photo would then be sent to the members of the rugby team's collective photo album. This is an album which every facebook member has. The album contains all the photos that that person has been tagged in. Underneath the super album are links to albums that that person has uploaded which may not have pictures of them in necessarily but might have pictures of their friends in them which they have tagged them in. So what are the advantages of this, well firstly it is an easy way of sharing photos with your friends who live on the other side of the world and who would not be able to see the photos in hard copy in your living room. It is also becoming a new way to find old friends. People are uploading their school pictures from years ago then tag a couple of people who they have kept in touch with in the photo, then some of those people will tag a few more people that they have kept in touch with but the original up loader may have lost contact with. Eventually you may find that half the people in the photo are on facebook and that they are now back in contact with each other as after seeing old friends tagged in the photo they have added them as a friend. Of course there are some disadvantages to tagging on facebook, you may be tagged at a party doing something that you would not like other people see, but because of the tag all your friends can see you in this photo, this can lead to trouble with employers, school, and your family, however the way around this is to untag yourself from the photo or to just be careful what you are photographed doing.

The second website that uses tags to a great extent is Flickr. Flickr as I have described in previous posts is a social networking site which specialises in sharing photos, so how does it use tags. Well you can upload photos like with facebook and then arrange them into albums for example, "Holiday to America". You can then tag different things in each photo for example in a photo of the Grand Canyon with your uncle in it; you could tag Grand Canyon and Uncle. Then depending on the privacy settings of the photo you have uploaded, these tags will be placed in a sort of super album where if anyone searched grand canyon then your photo would come up along with anyone else's photos which had Grand Canyon tagged in one of their pictures, that is if you had your privacy settings like that. Why is this useful? Well again like facebook it helps you show family and friends on the other side of the world what you have been up to and also helps you find friends you have lost, for example like with facebook the snowball effect could occur if you add a school picture and then everyone tags different people. However Flickr takes tagging a step further than facebook. Flickr is now being used like a Google images search tool bar, when students are doing projects for example on the rainforest and need pictures, not only will they search on Google images but also on Flickr now as there are bound to some good rainforest pictures in the 3 billion photos that Flickr has.

The final website that uses tags is one called Delicious. This is an extremely useful website that allows you to save tags on the internet. How it works is you sign up for an account then in the option that says save url you copy and paste your favourite websites url then you leave a description to remind what the website does then you tag it for example if you were to add facebook you could tag the site social networking, friends and favourite website. Then when you come back in a year’s time and you have 100 different tags it is easy to find your different websites and remember what each website does and why you needed it. You can also share your delicious bookmarks with your friends which can become useful in business. Below is a very good video describing delicious and its advantages. The other video describes tagging on a more general scale and compares it to the old way of book marking websites with folders.
If you want to find out more about the history of any of these sites then simply follow the hyperlinks in the blog.

Flickr

Flickr is a social network which specialises in photos. Developed by Ludicorp in February 2004 Flickr in its short five year life has already collected over 3 billion photos. So lets back track a bit, how does Flickr work? I will give a brief description here; there is also a useful video below and for more information follow this link Flickr. Flickr is a free site which you can sign up too, although there is a version where you pay and you are allowed to upload an infinite amount of photos, where as with the free version you have a limit. So once you upload your photos what can you do. Well you can then arrange them into albums for example, "Holiday to America". You can then tag different things in each photo for example in a photo of the Grand Canyon with your uncle in it; you could tag Grand Canyon and Uncle. Then depending on the privacy these tags will be placed in a sort of super album where if anyone searched grand canyon then your photo would come up along with anyone else's photos which had Grand Canyon tagged in one of their pictures, that is if you had your privacy settings like that. This is the other thing about Twitter the privacy settings. Once you have uploaded a photo you can choose who sees it, and comments on it, the scale ranges from just your friends to the whole world. If you limited it to just your friends then only your friends who had Flickr and who you were friends with would be able to see the photos. So what are some of the advantages of Flickr, well it means if you have family on the other side of the world they can see how you are doing and what you are up to, and also it means you always have a saved copy of your beloved photos

Facebook Privacy

I touched very briefly on privacy in facebook in my last blog post. Since then I have had talks with my ICT teacher about privacy on facebook. From these talks and several other sources, I am able to draw up one very simple easy rule of how to use facebook. This rule is only post a picture, or a video, or write a comment on someone else's page if you are 100% sure that you do not mind who discovers this information. Here I am talking about issues that go beyond your friends finding out that you have been slagging them off behind their back. I am talking about your safety for the future. I am almost 100% sure that our school knows ways of tracking our facebook's, I am sure they have fake accounts which makes it even easier to track our facebook's. This means that not only do you have to be careful about not slagging your friends off, but also not slagging your teachers off. To keep this idea more simple never insult someone over facebook. Be careful what you get photographed doing as with facebook it can be all over the web within hours, the same applies for videos. Photos and videos are more dangerous for when you are applying for a job. If an employer sees a photo of you throwing up at a party, or a video of you singing a drunken song they may think twice before they employ you. The final thing you should do with your facebook is go over your privacy settings and limit what information you show people. When I talk about information you reveal about yourself I mean do not put your number or email address up on your facebook page, and definitely not your home address, I also question whether you should put your religious and political views up or your relationship status on your facebook page. Your privacy settings are probably the most important things to your facebook page, if you do not spend time reviewing them then you should not have a facebook page. You should review your privacy settings thoroughly. In my opinion you should make yourself hidden to searches on facebook and google, make you profile and all of your pictures visible to only your friends, I also think you should only be friends with people you know well. In conclusion it is easy to be safe on facebook all it takes is common sense. What goes on facebook stays on facebook.

Facebook

I spend more time on facebook than any other website in the world. Is this a bad thing? Does it make me more vulnerable? Could it possibly cause me problems in the future?
First of all I will tell you a bit about the history of facebook. (A more in depth history of facebook can be found here, The History of Facebook). Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg while he was a student at Harvard. Originally the site was only available to Harvard students, this was then expanded to colleges in the Boston, Then to colleges in the Ivy League, then to Stanford University. It then became available to High school students, and is now available to everyone older than thirteen. Since starting three years ago Facebook has gained over 175 million users and made Mark Zuckerberg the youngest billionaire in the world. Yet there are many controversies surrounding facebook, and there have been many problems with people's security. Originally facebook was not that private, this time last year anyone in the same network as you could see your page, meaning if you were in the London network millions of people could see your page. Students who have had facebook throughout University are being turned down by employers. In the past they have posted pictures, videos or written comments which do not put them in a good light with employers. If an employer saw a picture of the person when they were at a party drunk and they were doing something like jumping off a table they would probably trust them less and would be less inclined to hire them. People also can get bullied over facebook, internet bullying is a as bad as bullying in the real world. People can be discriminated over facebook, say if someone wrote on someone else’s wall, "oh so and so is being really annoying at the moment" if so and so saw this he would be upset, so friendships are easily ruined over facebook.However it is very easy to use facebook and get around all these problems. Security has been tightened on facebook; it is possible to have a limited profile so some people can only see certain things on your page. If you go through your settings carefully it is possible to choose who sees your page whether it is just your friends, people in your network, or anyone in facebook. If you are careful with what is put on facebook you can avoid the problem with employers, or you make you page private enough so they can not get onto your page. The same applies with what your friends see, you should never insult someone over the internet behind their back, as the odds are they will see what you have written.
In conclusion I think facebook is brilliant, it connects people all around the world and makes it easier to talk to your friends who you do not see everyday. If you are careful with you privacy settings and with what you written there is no reason to be scared of facebook, although you should respects its power.
Below is a very good video which explains social networks on a more general way.

Our Digital Identity

England is the most watched country in the world, more so than China and America. On average we are caught on camera around three hundred times a day. Everything we do is monitored, it is now impossible to make your way through life without leaving a single digital footprint. Your digital life starts before you are even born, when your mother has a sonogram, that sonogram is saved onto the hospital's database, thus your digital identity is born before you are born. From then on everything you do is monitored, your school records, your passport, with the invention of the oyster card you can not even take a trip on the tube without people knowing about it. Every time you buy something with your credit card a record is made of it, every time you drive in a car past a speed camera and you are speeding your photo is taken and it is saved onto a database, CCTV cameras plague our streets, and this is not to mention all the info that the government have on us.
So that is all the information that people have on us without our consent, to be honest we can not do anything about it, no matter how scary we find it, to be honest Orwell's prediction of "Big Brother is watching you" has come true. But what do let ourselves into? What digital information do we give about ourselves to the world and how much can someone tell from that information? I myself have a Facebook, a blog, a Google mail account, and an MSN account. Although all of these are private it is still possible for others to hack onto these accounts. If they did get onto these pages what would they find out about me? Well to be honest nothing that I would not mind them knowing, I have been very careful about what I put on these accounts, at the most they would find out my name, my friends and they would see a few photos of me. When you Google my name you get 45,900,000 results, clearly this gives me extra protection as they would have to trawl through pages and pages to find anything about me, and at the most they would probably find something that I wrote on someone's facebook years ago, even that would not bother me as I have been very careful as to keep what I say on other people's pages not to personal, in case someone like a future employer found it. Having a facebook account makes me a little more exposed, but you still get thousands of results when you search my name.
In conclusion I think the fact that records of what we do are splattered across the internet is nothing to be scared of, so long as we are sensible with how we behave on the internet. As for the government having so much info on us, there is nothing we can do but hope it does not fall into the wrong hands.

Microblogging

Microblogging as suggested by the name is a form of blogging done in less detail. Microblogging is basically a way of keeping people posted on what you are doing right now. There are no rules about what you tell people and who you tell, you can choose to tell everyone, or just a select group of friends. You can tell them anything you want, from I am mowing the lawn, to I am about to take the biggest career step in my life. You can also post pictures and videos on microblogs, this is a useful feature as it means you can not only tell people what you have been doing, but you can also show them. Microblogs are starting to be used as advertising tools and business features. The tourist industry has latched on to this idea, the following monuments and famous landmarks have their own microblogs which keep people updated in what is going on, these include Tower Bridge, The River Thames and an orchid in Greenwich London. Barack Obama has a microblog which gives brief descriptions of what he is doing and thinking. The two main examples of Microblogs are Twitter and Jaiku, (the videos below describe Twitter and Jaiku in a little more detail and if you follow these links, Twitter and Jaiku, you will get a Wikipedia article on them). Twitter and Jaiku are almost identical, they are everything I described above, the only slight differences between them is Twitter is slightly more popular and more widely used than Jaiku, and also to be a "follower" of someone on Jaiku you have to be invited by the person, however you can follow anyone's microblog on Twitter. This means business' will generally use twitter more as it means people can go to them instead of them having to chase after people. I am sure many facebook users who are reading this will be thinking a microblog is just a much simpler version of facebook with people just showing status updates and posting pictures and videos, this is true, but unlike facebook, it is a much more personal appliance where you really are just speaking to your close friends, which depending on the person makes microblogs a good thing or a bad thing.
A video about Twitter

A video about Jaiku

How are Wikis being used by the public?

Today I'm going to show you four different Wikis. The first two are about completely random subjects, the third is a homepage to a Wiki created by design students and the fourth is an article written by the students themselves about Wikis. Their Wiki is a little bit like a mini Wikipedia, as it not only has information about design and architecture but also about other things, however unlike Wikipedia you need an account to write and edit articles, but anyone on the internet can see the actual articles. Have a look at the four websites here, The Science Musesum, Lenovo Thinkpads, School of Architecture and Wiki Good Style. I think everyone will agree that the first one made by the Science Museum is a brilliant idea for a Wiki for many reasons. Firstly it gets children and adults involved in Wikis in the first place, as many people are still unaware as to what they are. Secondly it brings people who are passionate about certain subjects together and allows them to discuss their thoughts to whatever ability and matureness they can. This wiki also brings education into the 21st century and brings it learning to life for children. Most children are very internet capable, in some cases more so than adults, this means they find they the idea of learning and discussing things through books and writing very dull and old fashioned. However bring learning to their level, on the internet, and they are suddenly interested. Finally it is very good advertising for the Science museum as it means people will be persuaded to go and see certain exhibitions by people's posts. The second Wiki I think is also brilliant. again it brings people together through a subject they love, but it also teaches people and gives them advice about Lenovo Thinkpads and other things. This is good as people often pay much more attention and learn more from speaking one on one to a real person rather than reading things out of a manual. The third link brings you to the homepage of a Wiki called Wiki fish, set up by some design students, so they can collaborate their information and ideas together. A good idea in principal, however I do not like how they have interpreted the meaning of the Wiki. Firstly they urge you to change their own rules so they suit you. I do not agree with this because the internet should not differ from the real world so much, to point where there should not be rules, if we can change the rules at any time then basically we do not have rules, rules are there to protect us whether we agree with them or not. The second thing I do not like about the Wiki is how aggressive it is in its opinion that if you do not change what's written then you do not really deserve to have an opinion. I do not agree with this as you should not just go around changing things so they agree with your opinions, you should respect people's views, especially if they are written and presented in a clever way. Finally I definitely do not agree with the last Wiki page. It is obnoxious and shows little faith in humans. It suggests that people do not stick to Wikis and simply get bored of other people's opinions and move on to other people's Wikis. It is almost telling you yourself to do this. It does say a very small piece at the bottom about trying to have good faith with others ideas, but it is not enough to compensate for what was said earlier. Even if it was a joke, it may put people off using Wikis if it is their first time. I believe the purpose of most Wikis is a bit like facebook, combined with a debate, combined with teaching. People say their opinions and argue about them, people teach people about different subjects, and they also make friends.

Wikis

Wiki’s are a growing feature on the internet and in my opinion very soon every public website i.e. those that don’t require a password to enter them or a username or membership, will be wiki’s. However I do not think that it will work in the way that anyone can write on any website, I think they will still need permision from the originalcreator, but they will still be able to edit it without being the original creator, this is the case on websites like the BBC. But what actually is a wiki? The best and most famous example of a wiki is surprisingly “Wikipedia”. There are many sites like Wikipedia on the internet, sites that are also online encyclopaedias, but what makes Wikipedia unique? What makes Wikipedia successful? It is that fact that it is a wiki. You may have guessed now what a wiki is, but to put it in simpler terms, pretend a wiki is like an empty bottle, anyone on the web can reach this bottle and anyone can contribute to the bottle to make it fuller and fuller, so in essence a wiki is a webpage which anyone can comment on, or add information to. This means Wikipedia can be more up to date than any other website and can also have more accurate detailed information than any other website as experts can focus on their particular subject. Of course on huge sites like Wikipedia this is not strictly true, as you can not just say anything about anything, if something is obviously not true and is not sensible and it is posted on Wikipedia it is taken down within minutes. A brief history of wikis; they were created by Ward Cunningham who started to develop the first wiki site in 1994, “wikiwikiweb”. The name wiki came from when Cunningham was told on arrival in Honolulu airport to take the “wiki wiki” shuttle bus, the word “wiki-wiki” means quick, which is why he chose it instead of the name “quick-web”. Cunningham released his website onto the web on March 25, 1995, since then the idea to have a “wiki-website” has taken off. They are predominately used for websites that need constant quick updating, and on websites which serve a lot of people who need to get information across to people easily, e.g. company intranets.
Bibliography, ironically most of information came for Wikipedia.
Below is an excellant video showing how useful Wikis are

Google Earth

Google Earth, as suggested by the title, is an application created by Google that lets you observe the Earth. The program is downloadable in two forms; one is for free and allows you to use the basic settings of Google earth. The other is called Google earth pro and costs $400, of course being at the age where I can't earn money I have no idea what this version allows you to do, even if I did have the spare $400 it would not be worth much to me, as it is intended for commercial use.
Google Earth in its newest version, Google Earth 4.3, has several very useful functions. The first most obvious ones, is it allows you to observe anywhere on the Earth on any scale of size. This has been possible by Satellites and other aerial devices taking photos of everywhere on Earth, then after superimposition the photos were pieced together to make a map of the world.
Another function which Google earth has added since its update is the ability to see certain famous buildings in 3D. This is not Google’s own idea, as Microsoft has had the function ever since they released their own version of Google earth, virtual earth. However Google have taken the application a little further, if you click on these famous buildings, a bubble appears beside them and gives you some information about the building. Another extremely fun application on Google earth is the Easter egg that allows you to choose a plane which you can then fly all around the world, with the Google earth scenery below you. Google earth and Google maps have been linked through some very clever applications. If you click on a building e.g. your house, you are give the option to either get directions from your house to another place, or directions from another place to your house, the directions are of course those used on Google maps. This helps as if you need to get to a place, but do not know the address which is key for Google maps, but you know roughly where it is, you are able to still get instructions on how to get there. It is also possible to bookmark anyplace on Google earth which means a little yellow pin is left over the place you have bookmarked and makes it easier to get to that place.
Below is a video which shows you some of the new functions on Google Earth 4.3

This video shows you how to use Google Earth on your I-pod touch or I-phone

This video below shows you how to find and use the flight simulator on Google Earth 4.2