Topic 2 - Email / Blogging

Lecture – Email is dead?
Email is definitely not dead, it maybe a little sick at times but its life is not in danger of ending any time soon. In its current iteration, email is a critical component in both the private and corporate worlds. When you consider a medium sized company like PRD Reality with 250 staff in their Brisbane offices consumes on average 150-200gig worth of email per month, it gives a clear indication of its importance in the corporate environment. The private sector isn’t much different, the amount of email maybe much less but its importance as a communication alternative is definitely just as great.

However, email is not without its issues. Email’s biggest advantages are also its disadvantages; free and easy. As a result the barriers to entry are very low which allows people to send great amounts of unsolicited email otherwise known as spam to millions of accounts every day. Statistics now show that over 80% of all email in the United States is unsolicited SPAM email. Advances in spam filtering have only curbed the rate of SPAM by negligible amounts as spammers find ways to circumvent the systems as fast as they are put in place.

The simplest solution would be for internet service providers to charge its customers for email. This is by no stretch of the imagination is a perfect solution but spammers who send millions of emails a day would find their profit margins becoming thinner.

Readings – The Handbook Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents
In the Simpsons episode titled “The Fraudcast News”, Mr. Burns purchases all of Springfeild’s media outlets in an attempt to control the news. However, Lisa’s newly released newspaper is not for sale and becomes the last media outlet not in Burns control. The episode is a satire on the ownership of multiple media outlets by large corporations such as Fox.

If that episode has been made in the last 12 months, Lisa would be blogging. Blogging has become the prefered communications medium for voices around the world where unbiased news is a high commodity. A critical point in the reading was the fact that many countries such as China and Bahrain have their media controlled by the government. Blogging enables individuals to workout side these restrictions and allows them to stay somewhat protected in the blogosphere. Being easily accessible with many free blogging services, blogs have become today’s equivalent of printing your own newspaper.

Tutorial – Blogging @ Blogger.com
Not being an avid writer, I have never had or considered authoring a blog, as a result Blogger is the first blogging website I’ve utilised. Being newly acquired by Google I was able to use my existing Google account and information to log in. This simplified the registration process and allowed me start configuring my blog. An issue which did cross my mind was the number of Google services I utilise and the push by blogger.com to entice you to use more of the services offered by Google.

Not having used other blogging sites I can’t draw any direct comparisons, however I can analyse the more basic site functions. The main problems I encountered revolved around the menu system which for me didn’t allow quick alterations. The settings menu system needs to be more streamlined opposed to the double layered tabs. A layout similar to hotmail/Gmail would be much more user friendly. A function which is completely missing is the ability to browse for blogs on Blogger. Other less critical functions which are also missing include word count and spell-check.