Jill's Learning Log - NET 11: March 2008

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Module Two - Newsgroups - 2

Let the fun being. Many years ago i was a member of a couple of newsgroups and found that
whereas they were informative quite often there was a core group of very active members who generally overwhelmed most of the conversation and that quite a lot of flaming was happening within the groups.

I decided to find a newsreader program. A Search of google produced the following site

http://news-file-grabber.ralph-brooks.alienpicks.com/

Which gave me the download for News File Grabber which is free newsgroup reader.

After downloading it I had to add which server I was going to use. I consulted with this with my father who is a big newsgroup user. His recommendation was Aioe.org

http://news.aioe.org/

Aioe.org hosts a public news server, an USENET (NNTP) site that is intentionally kept open for all IP addresses without requiring any kind of authentication. This site is especially designed for those who wish a simple and quick way to read the USENET news without needing to post an huge amount of articles

This worked fine and after exploring the program I went into the "manager" and downloaded some 53340 different newsgroups ! So now i need to decide which one interests me. The program has a very easy drop and drag function to pick out a group you are interested in and drop it into your own personal file

After choosing a group rec.food.cooking I found I couldn't post messages. I was getting the following error:

Server My Server responds with: 441 Banlist

I need to explore this further however it for the sake of this exercise I decided to log on through Google and post that way.

I posted the following:

1 message - Collapse all

jellysk...@yahoo.com

View profile

More options Mar 31, 10:43 am

Newsgroups: rec.food.cooking

From: jellysk...@yahoo.com

Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:43:54 -0700 (PDT)

Local: Mon, Mar 31 2008 10:43 am

Subject: Cold Weather

   Reply   |   Reply to author   |   Forward   | Print   | Individual message   | Show original   | Remove   | Report this message   | Find messages by this author   

Hi Everyone,

I am new to this group and would love to hear some of your ideas for
cooking for cold weather.

It would be great to expand my collection of ideas for casseroles etc
and things that you can pre cook and freeze for those busy days.

Thanks

Jill

Reply Reply to author Forward

End of messages

« Back to Discussions

Older topic »

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My conclusions about newsgroups are that they can be fantastic if you are looking for a particular topic. They are basically an open information network where you can pursue just about any topic you can think off.

The main downside of them is possible spamming and flaming. I guess in this information free age it is a bit like television however. You quite often here people complain about what is aired on t.v. The solution for adults is simple. If you don't like it don't watch, or join. The issue could be a lot more complex for children however the parental role of supervision then comes into play.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Monday, March 10, 2008

Module Two - Chat

With so many chat programs to choose from it was confusing trying to figure out
which one to use.

Deciding to try a few different ones I signed up with ICQ, Yahoo and MSN.

ICQ
Downloading the program and signing up seemed relatively easy and did not take long at all.

MSN
My children already use this program so it was just a matter of getting and I.D. which was no problems at all.

YAHOO
I already had Yahoo on my computer and had an i.d. so this was also not a problem.

ICQ
I managed to get in touch with a fellow student Peter on ICQ and we chatted for a while.
My main problem was trying to figure out how get in touch with people. The postings on our forum made the ICQ identity problem a lot easier and I now have a number of classmates signed up although I am yet to chat with any except for Peter.

Michelle, one of our class mates has created a group called NET11 which I managed to locate and join. I am yet to have a group discussion and hopefully have not left it too late.

MSN and Yahoo.

Both MSN and Yahoo seems fairly easy to navigate as well. The major difference between these and ICQ is that MSN and Yahoo interlink and you can talk to across the programs whereas ICQ appears to be stand alone. As a result of this MSN and Yahoo are a lot more interactive and accessible however ICQ seems somewhat simpler to use.

Being a regular user of email I can see the pros and cons of both methods of communication. Email seems more direct and easier to record and file. Chat is instantaneous and a group can follow the conversation together.

My overall feelings about chat is that where as it is a useful social tool, it is not suited to serious conversation. It seems to me to be too fragmented and harder to follow.

I am sure once more familiar with chat programs I would be a lot more comfortable using them.

Group Chat
I have had a couple of group conversations using msn and ICQ and we did talk about some of the pros and cons.

Some of the pros that came to light in groups discussions were being able to communicate instantly. Also using chat as a workplace tool to communicate with far flung locations. Another was IRC gave the ability to overcome accents when in normal one on one conversation so that people were on an even level of understanding, especially across different races in different counties.

The cons of IRC were mainly it made for an abbreviated conversation and could be disturbing if you are concentrating on somethings else. Also it came to light that many business have not embraced this or many forms of Internet use probably due to lack of resources and information. One of the cons pointed out was that for someone with slow typing this form of communication
is difficult as they can not keep up with the conversation.

MSN seemed to be the most popular form of chat amongst the class however on a personal note I found ICQ simpler to use, quicker and less intrusive.

Module Two - Email

Being very familiar with emails I undertook this task fairly confidently.

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?

The users email address tells you there user name i.e. fred then @ (at) then the domain that they are using

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

'cc' The cc function comes in useful when you are addresses the email to one person or a group however you wish to copy in other people. That way the email is directed to the person in the 'to" however alerts people in the 'cc' that the email is a matter of interest to them.

'bcc' The bcc function is useful when you are either emailing someone and wish to 'blind copy' in another person or people without the "to" address recipient knowing, or alternatively if you are posting an email to a larger group of people and do not wish for their email address's to be revealed to each other.

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

With there being many different types of attachments you can send via email the only way to ensure that the receiving party can open you attachment is to either know the person you are sending it to and exactly what software they have on their computer, or alternatively sending the file as a plain text file (ASCII) or in a format that can be read by most applications such as 'rtf' (rich text format).

The problem with the second option is so many attachments to emails are now photo's, excel files, video or pps etc. In these cases you need to confirm with the receiving party that they can open your attachments.

4. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose?

You can set up filters and or rules in most email programs to route mail to the appropriate folder that you wish it to go to. This gives you the ability to filter your message if you get a large amount so you can pick out the important ones and file the others for later browsing. This could apply in such cases as you were a member of a newsgroup, or if you wished to filter out "junk mail" from you in box.

5. How have you organised the folder structure of your email and why?

My folder structure in my email client (Outlook Express) is set up with everything going directly into my In Box as I get a lot of emails from people I don't know due to the nature of the web site I run. I then have various sub files such as Personal, Web Page, Correspondence, Computers, Humour etc where I file everything. Although at times my in box does get overcrowded it gives me the ability to find old emails easily by subject. Also nothing gets filed out of my in box until it has been dealt with. This ranges from passing on humourous emails from friends to answering queries etc to do with my web page and various work that I do.

Art & Design	Music	Software
Books, Movies & TV	News & Information	Sports & Recreation
Developers	Personal Finance	Travel & Leisure
Food & Drink	Personal Technology	Women & Family
Health & Fitness	Small Business	More...
Internet


List Name	Recommended Recipes (RecommendRecipes)
Purpose:	Don't get terrible recipes in your email, get Recommended Recipes! GREAT FUN!
Website URL:	http://www.freebiesunlimited.net
List Type:	Unmoderated discussion
Subscription:	Does not require owner approval
Archive:	Readable by anyone
Created:	Nov 09, 2001
Owner:	RecipeMan
To Join:	Subscribe here, or send an email to ihaverecipes-subscribe@topica.com
To Post:	Send mail to 'ihaverecipes@topica.com'
Stats:	263 subscribers / <>
Categories:	Entertainment \| Food & Drink

Jill's Learning Log - NET 11

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Module Two - Newsgroups - 2

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Monday, March 10, 2008

Module Two - Chat

Module Two - Email

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Module Two - Tasks - Email List

Labels

Blog Archive

Link Lists

My Classmates

The Web Page I Run

About Me