TU100, My digital Life, Block 4, Part 4, Session 3.3, The TU100 load on Second Life, Activity 17.

 Block 4, My Friends., Open University., Part 4: Virtual Worlds., TU100: My Digital Life.  No Responses »
Mar 042012
 

Although it is extremely unlikely that everyone studying TU100 would be willing and able to give Second Life a go, I have to work to the maximum numbers as a possibility. Allowing for 3000 students over seven days, an average of 429 students per day would have to enter Second Life.

Second Life has a load capacity of 100 people concurrently on a standard island, and 25 on an Open Space island. With three standard islands and one Open Space available, the OU can therefore host a maximum of 325 people in Second Life at once. So in theory, the capacity is available. But what other factors do you think I have had to consider?

The capability of the students computers would have to be taken into account as well as compatibility of SL with their operating system. Other things to take into account is the capacity of the SL servers, and the relation to its ability to support the traffic generated by all the users interacting with each other and the environment (lag!).

The time that students are available is also a factor to consider, as well as the availability of the tutor(s), so it would probably be necessary to instigate shifts both for students and tutors to make sure maximum coverage to help as many students as possible.

TU100, My Digital Life, Block 3, Part 4, Session 3.3, Remote backups, Activity 10 and 11.

 Block 3, My Place., Open University., Part 4: Glue, TU100: My Digital Life.  No Responses »
Jan 192012
 

Activity 10

JournalSpace, which you met earlier, used the RAID system to store its customers’ data. However, RAID could not protect against the deliberate overwriting of that data. How could JournalSpace have better protected its customers’ data?

JournalSpace could have made use of an off-site backup site, so that the data erased at one site would still be available at the remote servers.

Activity 11

Based on the information in Box 2, why did many companies fail to back up Usenet messages?

Box 2: Backups saved the internet’s history ( Taken from the TU100 course material )

It seems that most companies did not back-up their USENET data as it was not considered important information. The arbitrary nature of the USENET technology as a news-sharing and almost IRC like qualities made the nature of the wealth of information on usenet seem unimportant.

TU100, My digital Life, Block 3, Part 3, Session 3.3, Health and wellbeing, Activity 18 and 19.

 Block 3, My Place., Open University., Part 3: Location, location, location., TU100: My Digital Life.  No Responses »
Jan 152012
 

Activity 18

Select a type of outdoor activity – perhaps one you do yourself, or one you have read about or have heard about from friends or family members – and think about the kind of information that would be needed by someone engaging in that activity. For instance, information such as the route, parking places at start and end, and rates of ascent and descent would be very important for someone who was hiking or cycling.

a.  How could you use location-aware technologies to help gather some of this information?

b.  What other sensors could you use to enhance the information you gather?

I enjoy astronomy and stargazing. Information which would be beneficial to know includes:

  • The cloud cover.
  • Outdoor temperatures.
  • Weather forecast.
  • Visible constellations and planets.
  • Local light pollution levels.
  • Local dark-sky sites.

a.    Locative technologies could be used to correlate information such as the local forecasts, and other meteorological information, as well as nearby dark-sky sites, and possible the local light pollution level, if this data ahs been geocoded.

b.    Other sensors that could be used include a “personal” weather station, to a) help the app correlate more data about the local weather, and b) send the data to the apps “cloud” component, giving it local, up to date information.

Activity 19

Search online for a description of the Japanese proposal for using location-aware mobile phones to track the spread of pandemic illnesses. The search terms ‘Japan phone pandemic tracking’ should give you a good selection of articles on this topic.

Choose one article and scan through it. Based on what you read, what are the potential problems with the proposed system if it were to be implemented?

I chose the following article:

From what I have read, it is a retro-active service, as the phone does not know when the user is infected, the locative information that is being analysed is only of any ose after-the-fact. The phone would constantly have to gather information, not only is this wasteful, as locative devices use a lot of power, but there is also the invasion of privacy to think about. The accuracy of the tracking information could be a factor, with inaccurate readings causing false alarms in the transmission /infection vector analysis.

TU100, My digital Life, Block 3, Part 2, Session 3.3, Using analogies, Activity 15.

 Block 3, My Place., Open University., Part 2: Cloud computing., TU100: My Digital Life.  No Responses »
Jan 082012
 

Imagine you are trying to describe the types of repetitive IT activities that Wardley is discussing. Find a suitable analogy for them if you are talking to:

  1. a keen gardener
  2. a cook
  3. a new parent.

So some analogies for “yak shaving” for these professions:

  1. Weeding, or pruning back a bush.
  2. Peeling potatoes.
  3. Changing a nappy.

TU100, My digital Life, Block 3, Part 2, Session 3.3, An interview with Simon Wardley (1), Activity 10, and 11.

 Block 3, My Place., Open University., Part 2: Cloud computing., TU100: My Digital Life.  No Responses »
Jan 082012
 

Activity 10

You have already started exploring what cloud computing is. Now, without looking back over the preceding material, write down your own definition of cloud computing below.

Cloud computing is where the user makes use of computing facilities remote from their own computer for the manipulation and storage of documents and other data.

First listening (audio 1a)

Audio 1a Beginning of the Simon Wardley interview ( click to play in your media player ).

Transcript of Audio 1a: Beginning of the Simon Wardley interview

Cloud computing – that is a particularly tough subject and the problem is you’ve got to start with a definition of ‘what is cloud computing?’. And the problem with that is that cloud computing is not a thing. Cloud computing is a consequence of a change in the computing stack from a product- to a service-based economy, which is being driven by a number of factors including technology, the commoditization of IT, and a change in business attitude towards IT. That’s quite a lot, so I’m going to try and break that down into understandable chunks.

So when we talk about the computing stack, the simplest way of looking at the computing stack is to use the ideas of componentisation and break it down into a number of discrete layers. And the common way of doing that today is to talk about applications, platforms and infrastructure. Now when we talk about the movement from a product- to a service-based economy, this is the provision of those elements of the computing stack through volume operators such as Amazon, with their Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud service, or through the provision say of a platform through somebody like Microsoft Azure or Google App Engine. People call this the ‘as a service’ industry, so you have a platform as a service and infrastructure as a service. So the computer stack is shifting from a product- to a service-based world. But it’s not all IT activities that are shifting – it’s only those activities which are ubiquitous and well-defined enough to be suitable for volume operations.

So if you look at applications, things like CRM – anybody in business has a CRM application – you’re starting to see things like Sales Force, who are providing application as a service or CRM as a service. The Amazon EC2 is obviously provision of infrastructure as a service, again a commonly repeated activity fairly ubiquitous within the industry – or the use of infrastructure is ubiquitous within the industry. We actually had an old term which we used to call ‘yak shaving’, and yak shaving described the process of doing commonly repeated tasks over and over again. It was considered to be something you didn’t really want to do. And so the idea of these service providers, you can almost consider as pre-shaved yaks. You don’t have to go and do all that work; it’s already been done by somebody else for you. So that really is what cloud computing is going on about, describing that shift from a product to a service world.

Listen to Audio 1a and write down how Simon Wardley defines cloud computing, either by identifying and quoting a key phrase from the interview or by putting into your own words what he argues the phenomenon to be. ( audio available on course material site for students ).
Simon says that it is the change from a product to a service based business model, where instead of paying for the product outright we are renting the privilege of using it.

Activity 11

Listen again to Audio 1a. This time you are going to try to find more detailed information:
  1. Fill in as much of the box below as you can. A computer stack consists of:
LAYERS             PROVIDERS INCLUDE
Applications      Microsoft, Google, Salesforce ( CRM )
Platforms           Microsoft Azure, google Platform
Infrastructure   amazon EC2
         2.  What types of IT activities are changing from products to services? Which example does Wardley use to illustrate this shift.
The example given in the interview, of the Salesforce cloud service being used to manage consumer to company interactions.

TU100, My Digital Life, Part 2, Block 5, Session 3.3, Crude Comparisons, Activity 27 and 28.

 Block 2, My Stuff, Open University., Part 5, With the Tears wiped Off., TU100: My Digital Life.  No Responses »
Jan 022012
 

Activity 27

Think of ways in which happiness, or satisfaction with life, could be measured. How would it be possible to put a number on it? How would this compare with putting a number on BMI, say, or temperature?

things such as happiness or satisfaction are not empirical items, they are abstract concepts to which different people attach various meanings and characteristics. So happiness, or satisfaction varies from person to person, whilst the same can be said about BMI or temperature, properties are empirical, they can be measured and compared reliably on anyone.

 

Activity 28

What problems do you think might arise from using subjective, single indicator measures of happiness? What about objective, composite indicator measures?

Responses on happiness in relation toa  single objective parameter would still be biased by the subjectivity of the people being asked. Using multiple parameters would probably complicate the matter, making those being asked over-think their answers.

TU100, My Digital Life, Part 2, Block 5, Session 3.3, Crude Comparisons, Activity 26.

 Block 2, My Stuff, Open University., Part 5, With the Tears wiped Off., TU100: My Digital Life.  No Responses »
Jan 012012
 

Do you think this graphic ( figure 23 ) is more or less informative than the previous version, Figure14?

Figure 23 3D representation of Figure 14
Figure 23 3D representation of Figure 14.
Figure 14 Column chart showing relationship between overweight/obesity and level of physical exercise
Figure 14 Column chart showing relationship between overweight/obesity and level of physical exercise.

I think that either chart is fine, the important thing is that it is clear in both cases that each column represents a genders rate of obesity given a level of physical activity, in figure 23 this is done by adding depth to the graph, whilst figure 14 achieves this by pairing the bars together in groups related to the level of physical activity.