Hello everyone and welcome to my latest posting. Well here we are in week four already (how did that happen?) and probably like many of you, or perhaps not, I am beginning to enter a mild state of panic whenever I think about the amount of work that I have to catch up on for uni. So I have written off my entire saturday and half of my sunday to get up to speed. Alas, its a glorious day outside and I can only have eyes for my computer screen and text books... not to worry.
I'd like to hear everyone elses thoughts about this weeks lecture with the two guest lectures from Square 1 PR. I thought it was interesting and a good little insight into the world of running a pr company and as someone who is reasonably business and entrepreneurially minded myself, I found the girls very inspiring in that they have gone out there and built their company from scratch and are making a success of it.
I'm just not sure how relevant it was to NCT??? I guess the connection is that both PR and NCT are closely linked with Journalism and communication but I think they are completely different spheres. Of course, many communications technologies are employed by PR companies but no more than any other compan I would think...
And what is a blackberry anyway?
So, in regards to this questionably productive exercise in internet usage, this scavenger hunt, I have posted my contribution below:
1. Weight of worlds largest pumpkin- 1502 pounds- www.pumpkinnook.com
2. Grant Hackett contact- Live journal- gh.bigpond.com
3. Length of Giraffe's tongue- 27inches- www.qeok.com
4. Ontology- The specification of a conceptualisation, the study or concern of what type of things exist- what entities exist in the universe- www.whatis.com
5. Davis Cronnenburg's first feature film- as far as I could find- 'Crines of th Future' (1970)- www.imdb.com
6. original 'Hacker's Manifesto- January 1986 by 'The Mentor'- www.mithral.com
7. Why 555 numbers?- The prefix was reserved for TV and movies use so the viewing public wouldn't harass real phone customers when they were looking to speak with their favorite stars.- ask.yahoo.com
8. Cheapest form of travel from Crete to Rhodes- by ferry but couldn't track down a price- www.ferries.gr/greek-islands-ferry/ferry_crete.htm
9. Top song of the Australian Pop Charts this week in 1965- 'I'll Never Find Another You' , The Seekers www.onmc.iinet.net.au/topspot/1965.htm
10. Steve Stockwell band- The Balck Assassins- www.brisbanewritersfestival.com.au
So on to more productive persuits...
What is a search engine?
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help search and find information on the world wide web.
A search engine includes: A. a spider (also called a "crawler" or a "bot") that goes to every page on every Web site that wants to be searchable and reads it, using hypertext links on each page to discover and read a site's other pages,
B. a program that creates a huge index from the pages that have been read and C. a program that receives your search request, compares it to the entries in the index, and returns results to you
How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?
Search engine basicaly rank the pages they find according to thier deemed relevancy by assessing the frequency and location of elevant keywords in the body of text on a webpage. Those with the highest frequncy of relevany key words or phrases as close as possible to the top of the text are placed at the top of the search results.
Who or what makes one page more useful than another one, so that it is put at the top of your search results?
A search engine takes all the webpages that it has found to have matching keywords to your search, and ranks them according which it deems to be most relevant by the location and frequency of the keywords and places the most relevant at the top. So, it is the search engine that decides what page are most relevant to your search. This is not a foolproof system, however, by the number of seemingly irrelevant page that often pop up in a search. This is because unfortunately, search engines don't have the ability to ask a few questions to focus your search. They can only go on the information they are given. They also can't rely on judgment and past experience to rank web pages, in the way humans could.
It is also up to the weppage designer to make sure that thier page contains the best and most logical keywords that will rank thier page in an appropriate search. This will stop it popping up in irrelevant places.
What are some of your favourite search engines and Why?
At the risk of being unoriginal, I use google almost exclusively for searches. I think it is the most user friendly and clearly laid out. I like simplicity in webpages without lots of distracting links and adds. I guess this is why google is the most popular.
Current news stories about Search Engines.
http://totalnews.com/
Wikipedia Becomes Intelligence Tool And Target For Jihadists-
www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=XTPWGMHVLW3IMQSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=198500163&subSection=
Yahoo Updates Widget Platform
www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=XTPWGMHVLW3IMQSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=198500207&subSection=
Coupa Brings Amazon.com Look To E-Procurement
www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=XTPWGMHVLW3IMQSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=198100609&subSection=
Federal judge dismisses suit attacking Google's search rankings
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/3/24/apworld/20070324082836&sec=apworld
As my primary interest in the course that I'm studying is journalism, I'm planning on examining in my essay How the development of communication technologies has changes and impacted on traditional journalism.
Journal Articles
The Impact of Technology on Journalism
John Pavlik
Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group
http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/content/1adt752j38ubpr6j/
This article, after a preliminary perusal, I've foun this article to be very usefull and relevant to my topic. It deals with four aspects of the journalism industry- journalistic method, news content, newsroom structure, and the relationship between media organisations, the journalists who write thier news and the public sphere who consumes it.
Moving Toward Participatory Journalism
Dan Gillmor
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/03-3NRfall/79-80V57N3.pdf
Also, looks to be very usefull, concerned with how the irise of interactive media such as the net is impacting on news practice and content.
What is multimedia journalism?
Mark Deuze
Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group
This article looks, again, at the impact of development in multimedia in journalistic practice and how this impact effects news professionals view and perception of themselves and thier profession.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Introduction
Hi, My name is Andrew.
So small talk out of the way first. I'm a part time student here at Griffith doing a Bachelor of arts with intentions of majoring in Journalism and Communications. I have long had an interest in writing and journalsim, english being the only subject at school that I was better than average at, and first studied for a Bachelor of Journalism at UQ after school (about seven or eight years ago). I never got very far with it however as I decided to go traveling for a few years, but always meant to come back to uni once I settled in one spot again. Well, this I have done and it is for this reason that I have decided to do this course.
I'am a passionate photographer and a keen, if somewhat intermittent, writer and I fit uni in around a fulltime job as a photographer with a multimedia production house called Photo & Film - www.photoandfilm.net. I'm also building my own photography business which at the moment revolves around photographing at equestrian events on the weekends and also producing several lines of postcards giftcards etc. Its just in the early stages and equates to a lot of work but is going well and there's lotsmore I plan on doing with the business. Check out my site- www.ajlphotopublish.com (ok, I know the home page blurb is a bit pretentious but you have to talk yourself up right?) In addition to this I do a bit of modest freelance photojournalism for various magazines and have had a few pieces published mainly in the spheres of equestrian sports and outdoors/climbing/adventure etc.
So that is my professional life in a nutshell.
This course so far seems like it will be an interesting journey. I am only a newcomer to the world of computers and communication technology, not having used them much before the last couple of years. So im looking forward to sinking my teeth into the topics and hopefully learning a bit more on the subject wich will be very valuable to my work aswell. Photoshop will be a peice of cake :)
So small talk out of the way first. I'm a part time student here at Griffith doing a Bachelor of arts with intentions of majoring in Journalism and Communications. I have long had an interest in writing and journalsim, english being the only subject at school that I was better than average at, and first studied for a Bachelor of Journalism at UQ after school (about seven or eight years ago). I never got very far with it however as I decided to go traveling for a few years, but always meant to come back to uni once I settled in one spot again. Well, this I have done and it is for this reason that I have decided to do this course.
I'am a passionate photographer and a keen, if somewhat intermittent, writer and I fit uni in around a fulltime job as a photographer with a multimedia production house called Photo & Film - www.photoandfilm.net. I'm also building my own photography business which at the moment revolves around photographing at equestrian events on the weekends and also producing several lines of postcards giftcards etc. Its just in the early stages and equates to a lot of work but is going well and there's lotsmore I plan on doing with the business. Check out my site- www.ajlphotopublish.com (ok, I know the home page blurb is a bit pretentious but you have to talk yourself up right?) In addition to this I do a bit of modest freelance photojournalism for various magazines and have had a few pieces published mainly in the spheres of equestrian sports and outdoors/climbing/adventure etc.
So that is my professional life in a nutshell.
This course so far seems like it will be an interesting journey. I am only a newcomer to the world of computers and communication technology, not having used them much before the last couple of years. So im looking forward to sinking my teeth into the topics and hopefully learning a bit more on the subject wich will be very valuable to my work aswell. Photoshop will be a peice of cake :)
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