Tuesday, 25 November 2014

Affordances and Limitations of twitter.

Twitter is a social media site that allows people to comment on peoples profiles about what they are feeling.With over 232 million users being on twitter why are people allowing strangers to comment on your life? People and celebrities receive up to 140 characters long of hateful opinions.
The social networking site has many users which can compliment people or write hateful comments about anyone they wish. When people comment on your life and make assumptions of you
Who knows who they are speaking to? The internet craze that is twitter is famous all over the world, people from different continents all able to jouge one another while hiding behind their computer screens. Yes, there's a photo and everyone has a different profile and you can set the settings to private friends only - but haven't you ever heard of re-tweeting? Encouraged trolling is one of Twitters limitations; with strangers commenting on your own life who needs a mind of their own?

Friday, 21 November 2014

Technology Research: Who invented the email?

Shiva Ayyadurai (born 2 December 1963) is an American scientist of Indian origin, inventor and entrepreneur.
In 1979, as a 14-year-old high school student at Livingston High School in New Jersey, Ayyadurai began his work on an email system for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.His task was to emulate the paper-based interoffice mail system then in use at the medical school. In 1982, he copyrighted his software, called "EMAIL", as well as the program's user documentation. Two years later, he copyrighted "EMS", which included EMAIL and other programs.
A November 2011 Time Techland interview by Doug Aamoth entitled "The Man Who Invented Email" argued that Ayyadurai's program represented the birth of email "as we currently know it". In that interview, Ayyadurai recalled that Les Michelson, the former particle scientist at Brookhaven National Labs who assigned Ayyadurai the project, had the idea of creating an electronic mail system that uses the header conventions of a hardcopy memorandum. Ayyadurai recalled Michelson as saying: "Your job is to convert that into an electronic format. Nobody’s done that before." 
Ayyadurai described his program EMAIL as "the first of its kind -- a fully integrated, database-driven, electronic translation of the interoffice paper mail system derived from the ordinary office situation. It provided the electronic equivalents and features of mail receipt and transmission including: the inbox, outbox, drafts, address book, carbon copies, registered mail, ability to forward, broadcast along with a host of other features that users take for granted in Web-based email programs such as Gmail and Hotmail. 
As a high school student in 1979, he developed an electronic version of an interoffice mail system, which he called "EMAIL" and copyrighted in 1982. That name's resemblance to the generic term "email" and the claims he later made for the program have led to controversy over Ayyadurai's place in the history of computer technology.
However, there are many people that disagree that Ayyadurai actually 'invented' EMAIL, including: Sam Biddle argued that email was developed a decade before EMAIL, beginning with Ray Tomlinson's sending the first text letter between two computers in 1971. Biddle quoted Tomlinson: "We had most of the headers needed to deliver the message as well as identifying the sender and when the message was sent (date:) and what the message was about." Biddle allowed for the possibility that Ayyadurai may have coined the term "EMAIL" and used the header terms without being aware of earlier work, but maintained that the historical record isn't definitive on either point.

Monday, 3 November 2014

Communication

Introduction to transcript and communication text
In this transcript there are two characters named Steph an Natalya, Natalya is instructing Steph to draw the same image on her piece of paper that she drew herself on her own paper. The conversation lasted 3 minutes and took place in a class room. The image contained pictures of 3 shapes with faces each in different corners of the page. 
Transcript
Natalya: So in the middle section, of like (.) the right hand side-
Steph: Okay..?
Natalya: draw a smiley face (brief laugh) closer to the top
(Pause.)
like-a..lika biggish, sort of, smiley face
(Both laugh)
Steph: Okaaay....
Natalya: Draw a circle around it. Wait - I'm not suppose to see this am i ?!
Steph: Okay.. art is not my.. uhh... strong point..
Natalya: (Laugh) And now you got to do loads of little, litt'l leggies underneath the .. (muffled laughter) smiley face
Steph: Little legs?
Natalya: Little leggies, lika (.) perpendicular sort of lines .. under smiley -
(Steph laughs)
Natalya: 'nd then you gotta do li'le arms coming off the smiley face
(Both laugh)
Steph: i bet mine looks nothing like yours.
Natalya: Okaaay now in the left top hand corner, that's more slightly in the middle (.) like the same size as the smiley face-
Step: Okay
Natalya: You've gotta draw a triangle (long pause)
and now now in the middle of the triangle, but like closer to the top, draw two little dots for eyes (brief laugh)
Steph: it's got one eye bigger than the other
(both Natalya and steph laugh)
Natalya: Aaand now .... do like a little, little leggies but like right angle leggies beneath the triangle (Long pause)
And now between the triangle and the smiley face-
(Both laugh)
But more like closer to the bottom half (.) of the page
Steph: Right...
Natalya: You got to do a square
Steph: More rectangular than a square but (.) you know
Natalya: You gotta do the same li'le leggies
(Both laugh)
Then you gotta do the same little arms coming off the middle coming off the middle, but they go at 45 degrees
Steph: Okay..
Natalya: Then you gotta do the exact same dots in the middle for eyes (3)
Yeah that's it↓ 
Steph: Yeah that looks goood..?
(Both Natalya and Steph laugh)
Analysis of transcript
Firstly we notice the colloquial language spoken by Natalya, she uses the conjunction 'so' as a starter, this shows that she is trying to get to the point of giving instructions to Steph. Moreover, Natalya uses many non-standard pronunciations: for the words little she says 'li'le' and for the word legs she says 'leggies'. By using the typical convention of fillers this extenuates her bristolian accent and the developed laziness in her speech.

Secondly,  Steph and Natalya both use frequent interruptions in the form of laughter or questions. One example is 'between the triangle and the smiley face- (Steph laughs)', in this quote it is clear by the use of the dash that Natalya has been interrupted by Steph's involuntary laughter. 

One of the basic conventions of a transcript are the uses of stage directions; they contain the interruptions of Natalya and Steph laughing and the pauses. An example f this is '(3)', here the use of the brackets show that the current speaker paused for three seconds, this then shows that they are thinking about what to say. They are presented in the transcript in parenthesis to show that they are stage directions and have not been spoken. 

Throughout the transcript, many fillers are being repeated, such as: like, lika, uh and okay; The fillers in the text show the casual language being spoken and that Natalya and Steph unsure of what to draw. By using the fillers, the audience can see that they are finding this difficult and are struggling about what to say.

Lastly, another one of the conventions used is utterances, which have mainly been used in the small phrases which Steph repeats, for example 'okaaay... ↓', I added this in here so it didn't seem so final and so it doesn't sound like a queiry, more of a statement. Furthermore, in the transcript I repeated these phrases as I wanted the transcript to sound continuous and more like a conversation.