Module 2 Tasks - Newsgroups

The following is a screenshot of my post to an Arsenal newsgroup. Arsenal are a Premier League Football (soccer) team in England. I have supported them for as long as I can remember. In a trip to Europe in 1996 I went to their ground "Highbury" and managed to sneak on to the ground with the workers. Last year Arsenal built an new stadium called "Emirates" and have now moved there. My post is just a question regarding what will happen to Highbury.

Module 2 Tasks - Lists

What are the pros and cons of email lists versus discussion boards?
Email List pros

• You don't need an immediate answer
• You know who you wish to communicate with.
• You can attach files
• You get specific information that you subscribe to.

Email List cons

• You can recieve large amounts of SPAM (unsolicited email).
• Impersonal
• Mail box can become clogged with too many messages or take up mail box storage space.

Discussion Board pros

• Threading of the discussion makes it easy to pick up and see through to its conclusion.
• A more personal environment.
• Easy to find and participate in.

Discussion Board cons

• Threads can sometimes get too long making it difficult to find what you are after.
• Threads can mutate into an entirely different subject.

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

Email lists seem to be better suited to the spreading of information that doesn't necessarily need discussion. Discussion boards are most suited to this. Email lists spread the information as effectively as discussion boards but replies tend to be personal as most recipients are bcc. Businesses try mass email lists in marketing campaigns but the effectiveness of getting sales from this is minimal with response rates of 0.25 to 0.50 percent or less (Source: Email Marketing Services Buyers Guide, accessed 25/3/07, address http://www.buyerzone.com/marketing/email-marketing/buyers_guide2.html)

Discussion boards make ideal platforms for like minded people to have an open discussion on a common interest. The discussion can be followed and is open to all members to join. Email is much more closed than this.

Email lists work well when you have a group of users interested in the same subject matter. This group of users is able to read the information at their leisure, or respond to the group if appropriate.
Discussion boards work well in creating an online community which is great when you have a group of people who are unable to participate in face to face discussions.

Module 2 Tasks - Email Tasks

Friday night and I'm doing uni work.....

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?

An email tells you who it comes from via the email account (the first part of an email address) and the origin of the email via the domain. I use Outlook and further information can be gathered from View, Options - Internet headers. Below is an example from an email I recieved tonight. I have put x's in the names to protect the innocent:

Return-Path: <XXXX@internode.on.net>Received: from
ipmail02.adl2.internode.on.net
([203.16.214.141]) by
imta01ps.mx.bigpond.com with
ESMTP id <20070323095203.YELW27201.imta01ps.mx.bigpond.com@ipmail02.adl2.internode.on.net>
for <shoey72@bigpond.net.au>;
Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:52:03 +0000Received: from
ppp242-44.lns3.syd6.internode.on.net (HELO [192.168.1.2])
([121.44.242.44]) by ipmail02.adl2.internode.on.net with ESMTP; 23 Mar
2007 20:22:01 +1030X-IronPort-AV: i="4.14,318,1170595800"; d="scan'208,217,147";
a="101241567:sNHT91265349"Message-ID: <4603A33F.90303@internode.on.net>Date:
Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:51:59 +1100From: Chris K User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (Windows/20070221)MIME-Version: 1.0To: ">xxxx@internode.on.net>User-Agent:
Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (Windows/20070221)MIME-Version: 1.0To: Subject: Today
is a special dayContent-Type:
multipart/related; boundary="------------000709040801060300040707"

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

The "cc" (carbon copy) function is good when including someone on an email that is not addressed to them but the information still should be shared with them.

The "bcc" (blind carbon copy) function is useful for emailing to a number of recipients without them knowing the other recipients.

"Reply all" will share your response with the original recievers of the email. It should be carefully use and not used when the response is personal.

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

There are several steps you can take to ensure that an attachment will be easily opened by the receiver. These include:

• Communicate about your computer systems and share information on how to open the attachment.


• Convert to ASCII text. This is easily read but takes away many formatting options that give a document it's feel.


• Convert to RTF (Rich Text Format). RTF is readable across programs and platforms and as such should always be used when in doubt.

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

I always look both ways before crossing the road. But with my email I havent really done much with rules. The only rules I have set include playing a tune when email is recieved from certain people and always empty the deleted items bin on closing of Outlook.

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

I have numerous folders to store emails in. These originated just through what I believe I frequently recieve and the possibility that I may wish to retrieve them later on. Below is a screen shot of my folders:

Module 1 Tasks - Internet Tools

Traceroute
By coincidence I was only recently shown traceroute and ping by a colleague. On that occassion we used MS DOS prompt (called tracert), which seemed fairly simple once you knew the little tricks. This time I used Network-Tools and achieved the following results:

As you can see below, it took 17 hops from network-tools to curtin.edu.au

The average time in milliseconds (ms) was 248ms.

Interestingly the curtin.edu.au IP address was 134.7.179.10 which is different from the answer in the 'self test'. Many other students also got this result so either we are all wrong or curtin has changed the address, server or something similar.

Ping

As suggested in the text, I downloaded A-Tool bar last night and had a bit of a play with it. It has heaps of functions, many I probably will never use, but it seemed fairly user friendly.

For this task I had to ping the webct site from my pc and from net tools site. Like others I had trouble with the webct site so I just did a ping to curtin.edu.au

I have posted both results below:

network-tools Ping time Results

Ping 134.7.179.10
[curtin.edu.au]
Round trip time to 134.7.179.10: 249 ms

Round trip time to 134.7.179.10: 249 ms

Round trip time to 134.7.179.10: 249 ms

Round trip time to 134.7.179.10: 249 ms

Round trip time to 134.7.179.10: 249 ms

Round trip time to 134.7.179.10: 248 ms

Round trip time to 134.7.179.10: 249 ms

Round trip time to 134.7.179.10: 248 ms

Round trip time to 134.7.179.10: 249 ms

Round trip time to 134.7.179.10: 248 ms

Average time over 10 pings: 248.7 ms

PC Ping time Results

Average time over 10 pings: 69ms

The ping from my computer was much quicker than the ping from the net site. This is probably more due to geographical reasons more than anything. Network-tools is located outside of Australia, so it has much further to travel. I expected the time to be shorter and this proved to be the case. While the Internet makes the world a smaller place, distance can still be a factor, even if it is only at a micro-second level.

Traceroute Comparison

I thought that running the traceroute from my pc would take less hops than the Network-tools website.

Below are the results.

A quick comparison shows that

Local

20 hops and 70ms average

Network-tools

17 hops and 248ms

This was a suprising result for me. I'm not entirely sure its correct but I did test both ways several times. One possible reason for more local hops could be that it takes my ISP more hops to get onto the backbone. The longer time from Network-tools could be due to its location outside of Australia.
Overall these were interesting task that challenged me learn and try to explain some unexpected results.

Module 1 Tasks - File Transfer Protocol FTP

This is one of those internet things that I've seen but never took the time to understand. I downloaded WS-FTP and found it to be a really easy and powerful tool. I began by doing the tutorial that showed the features of WS-FTP and how to use it. It was then really easy to connect to the Curtin FTP and find the README txt file and then the missing word - CAPITALIZATION.
See screen shot below for view of WS-FTP in action.

Module 1 Tasks - Telnet

Now I'm getting into the fun stuff.

First task is using telnet. I've never heard of this before let alone used it. Fortunately one of my fellow students has provided some easy instructions on how to use it in MS DOS. There is a real sense of community in this subject and everyone is keen to help those (like me) who are not at their level. Luckily I got the result below which seems to be close to the mark.

I even got the right answer in the 'self test' (see below). I loved the Star Wars 'movie' at blinkenlights (4 stars from me!) but I still prefer a more conventional web based search.

In the Beginning.....

After going away for the weekend I was most shocked when I logged in on Monday night to find literally dozens of Blogs already started. Righto, Rob. Stop mucking around and get onto it. So firstly I must thank my fellow students for getting me into gear and going. This my first blog so its going to be an interesting learning experience. But I am nervous about my ability to do this. I'm not an internet expert. I mean, I can surf and google and stuff but getting into making sites and blogs, up to now, has not really been my thing.
Well, here we go.....