Chat

Given many options for chatting to fellow students online, I wanted to try the virtual world ones as I'd heard so much about them. Time to dress up and get a life!

Unfortunately I didn’t like SL (Second Life) because it gave me untold grief after set up. My PC was not powerful enough and everything was jerky and slow, I didn’t feel like I needed the hassle. Looking at the system requirements for Entropia I figured my experience would have been much the same. 

I got the impression SL and Entropia were huge portals and that kind of put me off as well. Don’t get me wrong, in Real Life I love big cities and I know that virtual worlds can give me the opportunity to live and breathe something else. Virtually, I’d like to try a more personal sized small hick town with a general store, petrol station and a bowling alley serving charcoal chicken. And then be a part of dragging the entire town into the 21st century, being a human catalyst of sorts. Anyway… Next!

IMVU

• This virtual environment made chat and exploration of the limited ‘default’ world interesting. Visually it was ok but not as good as video or webcam. Chatting here was not too different from non-virtual applications such as Skype. IMVU offers a mix between the virtual and non-virtual experience. It is better for those who prefer to see more than just text in the chat but without engaging in visual cues too much. I liked it because even though this is real-time text chat, it's easy to use and lets me think about what I want to say and read in a conversation. But I am a fast touch typist so maybe the next person I chat with won’t agree that text-chat gives them time to think!

ICQ

• I installed ICQ but haven’t had the chance to chat with fellow students yet. I did however read about a privacy and possible security issue in AJ‘s blog where she mentioned ICQ loading all sorts of junk during installation. I cannot believe that some large and well known organisations still do this! During my own installation of ICQ I noticed a couple of boxes were ticked by default at the time of installing and I unticked them. ICQ will load a toolbar and become your default search engine if you don’t look carefully (and who does that!!). Most people just want to run the program but will end up getting quietly taken over by software like ICQ overriding any current settings. This is invasive if it is not adware or spyware grrr.
  

Oh how I could easily launch into a multi-page mollyrant and get lippy about our privacy and security online, but I won't today. The tactics that ICQ uses to brand (or whatever reason they have) by automatically replacing our search engine and installing yet another toolbar, is similar if not worse than Spam. I don't understand why they would need to use unsolicited marketing.

And my problems with Second Life - where I could have totally enjoyed their world but couldn't - leads me to think of a double whammy:

1. I need to make myself aware of the technical requirements to play some games... 
2. ...before downloading a weeks quota of ISP bandwidth.
   

 ‹/RANT!›

Lists or Boards?

1. What are the pros and cons of email lists versus discussion boards?
   

Hmmm, where do I end. I looked mainly at Yahoo Groups, Topica, Google Groups and a great one I just found today was at www.meetup.com

Email Lists about various topics are covered quite well however it can be difficult and time consuming to find what you are looking for.

• Pros: Lists are focused and on topic, rarely would members be able to make small talk or 'go off topic', regular digests are sent containing the latest posts. Less immediate interaction is required from List owners, mods and members yet information can continue to flow back and forth.
• Cons: “List Directories” are not updated, contain spam and do not provide adequate search categories and methods. This makes it very hard for the average surfer to find an active List of interest.
  

My overall impression of Email Lists is that ‘they are too hard’ to find and therefore use. List categories were too broad in that a lot of junk appeared and I couldn’t filter it without resetting my current search - meaning I would start all over again. I got the sense List Directories were not used too much in this way, and that people joined Lists using other means. I could not find many quality lists to join, although I did pick one local Autism group for parents and joined that! Their digest was very good, listing recent (informative) post summaries.

Discussion Boards can be found using search engines and that alone means many topics are easier to find.

• Pros: Wide range of boards on just about every topic. You can see who is online in a board. Sometimes you can get a quick response to a question. Some boards use main categories and sub categories - good for digging deeper into a topic.
  
• Cons: Little or no immediate control over content- requires immediate or constant moderation. You’d need to trawl for relevant topics because thread subject lines are not always informative.
  

I use discussion boards quite a lot to ask questions or just ‘lurk’ and read without contributing. I prefer discussion boards or forums over using email lists because I can quickly check out sites for information or I leave a question and return later.

1. Are there certain kinds of communication or purposes more suited to one than the other?
   

As I had no luck finding a group of interest on the major providers of Group Lists, I sat back and thought… why?

If I was looking for singles in Thailand or ADHD support for single mums I could easily pick up a group. From what I saw, Lists contain mostly topics for sexual and health related purposes - not what I was looking for. 

Since my sister-in-law works with Autistic children, I ‘took an interest’ in Autism and in the end picked a local Adelaide Autism group for parents. I was accepted into that group the next day and the messages come to me in an email digest.  What a relief to get something, anything, after hours of fruitless searching for my own interest in ‘internet business women’.

So in stark contrast to my own interests, I’d have to say that Lists are catering ideally to particular topics like sex, companionship, health and family. And by default, Discussion Boards or forums also cover that and the rest.

Although communication methods such as forums, lists, email and chat dictate when information can be shared (now or later), it makes sense to first find your topic and then attempt to choose how you want to view and receive it.

Email Filters, Rules, Folders

1. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose? + How have you organised the folder structure of your email and why?
   

If you email a lot then expect it back in droves too. Filtering incoming email is a handy way of keeping a semblance of order in your Inbox. I rely on it because it automatically moves email from certain people into their own Folder and keeps it marked as unread so I can see it has arrived.

The rules are ‘usually’ easy enough to set up although it takes a bit of reading and testing to work out. It could take you longer to figure out depending on the email program you’ve got. 

My filters and rules consist of a mix of automatic and manual approaches. If emails come in from Clients, they automatically go into my Clients folder. Inside THAT folder, are more folders each named by Client. It looks like the screenshot on the left.

Sounds over the top you might think? Well I only started filtering like this a couple of years ago when my incoming email got busy and I needed to stay on top of my work. Having my important email automatically placed in the proper folder makes my life easier and I don’t have to think about it, it just arrives in the right spot. I also use a few more folders that I manually move messages into. Two folders I use the most are DO and READ which I hope are self explanatory. I’m thinking about adding another folder called ‘Bloody Good’ but I don’t get email that fits into the rule yet.

Before I started filtering this way, I had set up rules for each email to go into it’s own unique folder but not inside another categorised one like ‘Clients’. This was ok until I got too many folders listed, it was scroll city and felt like hard work just looking all the time, so I decided to categorise my email instead. I use Google Apps and Gmail as a backup and it’s easier for me to run a search filter inside my Gmail account.

Email Attachments

1. In what ways can you ensure that an attachment you send will be easily opened by the receiver?
   

It’s good to ask a couple of questions and consider some options before attaching anything to your email. The following list is pretty much what goes through my mind...

• What do I want to send?

Is it a Word doc, pdf, image, video etc?

• Would the recipient have the software or system to open the attachment?
  

Operating System – PC/Mac/Linux

Other software like MS Office, Adobe Reader etc?

• Who am I sending this to?
  

Are they familiar with different file types?

What Internet speed might they have?

Are they using a PC or Mac or Linux?

• How big is the file I want to attach?
  

Does it need to be ‘zipped’?

Should I ftp it to a website and insert a link instead of an attachment 

in my message?

After considering these questions, I might find that I can’t answer them so I would send a quick email and check first – I can ask what format to send a file in and whether it should be ‘as is’, zipped or a download link etc.

Another thing I would add in the email before sending it is to point out that the attachment is attached! It’s possible that people will overlook attachments they have received (generally this is only my brother-in-law).

   

Email CC, BCC, Reply2All

1. In what cases would you find it useful to use the 'cc', 'bcc' and 'reply all functions of email?
   

For people on slow internet connections or with minimal bandwidth quotas it’s a definite plus to be able to send one message to more than one person at the same time. 

• I use CC when I want to show the main recipient that my message has been copied/sent to other people they may or may not know. My friends for instance, won’t think they are the only elite members in my contact list and work associates might appreciate not having to forward the message themselves because I’ve already CC’d it.
  

• BCC is a bit like selecting stealth mode in RPG and sometimes I regard using BCC as underhand or deceptive even when it is not meant that way. I use BCC for work, when a colleague asks to be copied in on an email and it’s not necessary that he is identified or there is no need for him to receive correspondence from anyone else.
  

• I would use the Reply To All function when I am aware that it would be polite to do so or it’s obvious that I should reply to everyone. But what if we all decided to Reply To All? Using Reply To All has the potential to create a situation where recipients receive many emails back and forth from within the Reply To All group. This scenario is even more likely to occur if it’s a group containing newcomers to email who might still foster the ‘newbie’ illusion that they are replying one to one rather than one to many - Clicking once on Reply To All can be useful if used properly otherwise it’s unnecessary for a lot of recipients.
  

  

Email Metadata~ology

1. What information about a user's email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message?

Cartoons by Andertoons

Without looking at any expanded Header information I can see quite a lot of information about the users email.

• Name of the sender – this could be either the senders name or a business name. It could also be any text the sender chooses.

• Date and time the message was sent – this information converts to my date and time and not the senders. Useful if you have someone emailing you from another country or timezone. You can see when they hit the send button and whether the pressure’s on to reply back! i.e. 5mins ago, last night at 10pm...

• Subject: what the email is about – sometimes I rely on the Subject line to help me filter or manually scan my inbox which gets many messages. It’s not helpful to me if a subject line is empty or not meaningful, grrr.

• Level of priority – the sender can effectively ‘tag’ the message they are sending by importance such as High, Normal or Low. This tells me what the sender thinks about the message content; it implies how I should regard the message. Sometimes this is used by the sender in a different way I would not expect. They mark their email as Important when it contains a couple of pictures of their Waterworld holiday. THEY are important to me but the message content is not urgent or what I would call High priority.

• Senders email address – it’s often a good idea to quickly check if the email is really from the person you know. You can also see what organisation or ISP the sender is using in the domain after the @ symbol. This is not a fool-proof method of checking authenticity as spammers usually forge this information but it is a quick check which can be followed by an extended header analysis if necessary --> Get.a.Geek.to.Explain. or have a look at this explanation of basic and extended email headers.

• Carbon Copy recipients – If the sender has chosen to send the same email I received from them to other people, I can see their names or email addresses in the CC field. I am always unsettled by CC emails and I think it’s because my own email address/name could be displayed to people I don’t know. I feel like I’ve lost control of my privacy and security. Maybe I’m being paranoid...

• My email address – this is shown exactly the way in which the sender has chosen; it could be my full email address or a ‘label’ like ‘The Queer Queen’ or my name. If I am in the users Contact List, my name or label would display by default instead of my email address but I think that depends on the email software being used.
  

It's so important to learn the basics of how to send email and to be aware of how to reply to email messages in the right manner. I class myself as a seasoned email user in that I have seen and made some email bloopers in the past and I’ve felt the consequences of sending ‘the wrong/inappropriate reply’ without thinking. 

Ignoring the human side of email messaging by not considering, relating to or just plain being aware of the other persons context can be truly ignorant and in todays wired world, I think it’s quite a responsibility we have as communicators.

 

Traceroute (and Biff)

My attempt at using Traceroute from centralops.net to curtin.edu.au went well and after doing this task it gave me cause to ask a question but more on that (and Biff) in a minute...

The chart below shows the number of hops from centralops.net to curtin.edu.au was 19 and the average time for the packet journey was 235ms. The IP number for curtin.edu.au is 134.7.179.56

You know after all of this tracing and erm routing, I have one question. Why would anyone use traceroute? I mean, what use is it to anyone?

Well, it’s definitely a tool used for diagnosing network communication problems such as delays and even non-delivery of information. As a non-network-administrator I can’t imagine any reason why I’d want to do this, but traceroute turned out to be more interesting than I first thought.

It was interesting to note that each router doesn’t always pick the most direct route to take – it will send your packet to the fastest node or hop which might be further in human distance but actually quicker. Sounds obvious to me now, but initially the visual perspective like a map image of the path traceroute travels will have you screwed because we look at a map of the world and think wow, that’s a long way. Follow this link if you're keen to self hypnotise --> Routers use algorithms - Routers logically hop between each other, from one to the next, based on speed, not distance.

There’s more to Traceroute but I’m at risk of following my nose and ending up at YouTube or TechCrunch or Biffs place. I stopped after viewing this video about Home Network Routers (http://www.labrats.tv/episodes/ep65.html). The video gets interesting once Biff the cat arrives (after +/- 4mins), didn’t learn a thing from the video after he arrived, I'm easily entertained!