Week Seven - Using the WWW 20/04/07

Lecture
The web is like an imaginary space which contains an infinite amount of information, it exists because it allows computers to communicate with one another on the internet, without the web there could be no internet and the web made the internet useful to everyone. The web and internet was created by Tim Berners-Lee who was a researcher at CERN in 1989. He developed it to make sharing research information less difficult. The World Wide Web protocols are TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), DNS (Domain Name System) and URL (Uniform/Universal Resource Locator). DNS are www. (is in front of the URL), .com, .org, .net (are international domains), .au, .uk and .nz (are country codes). Com stands for commercial, org stands for organisation, net stands for network, gov stands for government and edu stands for education. To access the internet one needs a computer, a modem, a telephone line and an internet connection. Programs called web browsers allow users to explore the World Wide Web. The web browsers are Internet Explorer, MyIE2, Neoplanet, Netscape and Firefox. Web browser interfaces are very similar to one another like tools for searching and navigation tools. Shortcuts are used in web browsers to let users work faster without clicking on files to open or save something.

Workshop
The website http://www.haggishunt.scotsman.com/ is a broken link and can not be accessed. The website http://www.molossia.org/ appears to be authentic but it is not. The first page of the site has a phrase for the country but the phrase is a verse of a song someone has made and they just copied it. It gives an exact address of the place but it is a country so the whereabouts of this place is wrong. It gives fake information out which seems authentic but is not because they said ‘the Government of the Republic of Molossia takes no responsibility for the content of external links.’ And the beginning and ending of this country seems off because what kind of country only lives for thirty years. I expect the website www.martinlutherking.org to be about Martin Luther King and his history. The website is a non-profit organisation because org is at the end of the URL. It seems to be about the Martin Luther King but there are comments that say things that he did not do. The website Martin Luther King Organisation website is a biased site accusing Martin Luther King of horrible things that are untrue.

Readings
The website History of the Internet, Internet for Historians by Richard T. Griffiths is about the development of computers until the 1960’s, the history of ARPANET, the history of electronic mailing, search engines and basic net data.
The website a Little History of the World Wide Web by Dan Connolly is about fifty years of the World Wide Web from 1945 to 1995.
The website Search Engine Tutorial by Danny Sullivan is about how to use search engines and it provides a guide on how to search resources on the web better.

Summary
With a partner we looked at the http://www.molossia.org/ and http://www.martinlutherking.org/. We listed four clues that gave the Molossia site away as a fake site. Before we entered the website of Martin Luther King we guessed what the website was about. Then we read the Martin Luther King site and found out the site is a biased site created by racist people. And did three readings for this week about the World Wide Web.