Week 9 - Communication

Lecture 2/5/08

There is a wide range of technology in the world today which help us communicate between friends, family, businesses, university student and tutors etc. Some of the most common technologies used to communicate today include:

• Mobiles
• Email
• MSN (Instant messaging)
• Public websites (Myspace and Facebook)
• Telephones and
• The Internet

These are used in a variety of contexts (informal and formal) which change from person to person, depending on their occupation and their relationship that you have with someone.

Tutorial

Task 1: Searching groups on Google

The group that I searched on Google was Scuba and groups that came up include:

• rec.scuba
• it.hobby.scuba
• rec.scuba.locations etc.

Task 2: Messages posted on the topic:

• All of the bulletin board messages for these topics do not relate to scuba diving what so ever. These messages appear to be complete nonsense and not even worth looking at, especially when you are trying to look for a professional group that provides data about scuba diving.

Task 3: Potential benefits of podcasts for university students.

Podcasts are very useful when it comes to something like a radio show that you have missed and really would like to listen to, you can just go to the website and download it. This sort of method can become very handy for university students because you manipulate this idea to be lectures instead of radio shows and make them available on the university website. This could be good for many university students because if you miss a lecture because you are sick you can go and download a copy of the lecture and not miss out on any information. It could also be very handy when there is only a small class, students that live far away or even students studying online, because instead of coming to lectures, they could also download a podcast of the lecture and therefore not miss anything important.

Reading Summary

The problem with spam

Email spam, known as Unsolicited Bulk Email (or UBE), is a unique form of advertising. It is when an advertiser sends adverts through email to as many people as they can find. This type of advertising has no cost to the sender and could have a great impact on the reader, which would then lead them to buy a product or service which is being advertised. This may be a good thing for the sender because it may potential bring customers, however this can also be a bad thing for the receiver. Many people that have email and receive spam by the bulk, can get quite annoyed. When they email users receive many spam emails a day, they start to get frustrated and try to block them out. But with the ever changing nature of the advertising stunts, it gets trickier to block them out and with every unit that is put into place to stop UBE, there is a way around it which means there is no way to stop it. The only way to stop this annoying spam from getting into out email boxes, is to try to ban the sale of tools, which are programed for spamming.