Module 3

COPYRIGHT:

Copyright protects “artistic works”, provided they are:
• not copied from something else; and
• recorded in “material form” (that is, in a form from which they could be reproduced: for example, by making a craft item, painting a picture, taking a photograph or making an artwork in digital form).

A wide range of things are included in the category of “artistic works”, including:
• drawings
• paintings
• sculptures
• photographs and
• craftworks (such as mosaics, tapestries, jewellery and woven art).

There is no registration procedure for copyright protection in Australia but the Copyright Act 1968 applies. Registration of original work is not required. An original artistic work is automatically protected as soon as it is created.

Permission:
If I want to reproduce, communicate or publish an artwork and I am not the copyright owner, I need permission UNLESS:
• copyright has expired and the item has entered the Public Domain
• one of the special exceptions to infringement applies.

Items have entered the “Public Domain” if:
• Works published prior to 1978 did not contain a valid copyright notice.
• Non-renewed copyright on work prior to 1968.
• Federal documents.

Exceptions: - Fair use:
It could be argued that reproduction of images on my Blog would be allowed by the Copyright Act under the Fair Use provision. There are three factors that are taken into account to determine fair use:
• Commercial nature or non-profit educational purposes.
• Preamble purposes
o Critism
o Coment
o News reports
o Teaching
o Scholarship
o Research
• Degree of Transformation:

Images on my Blog:
It could be argued that downloading of images are for non-profit and educational purposes and may also fall into one of the Preamble purposes (e.g. Research). However, the provisions only allow for one copy to be downloaded and posting to a Blog may be seen as making multiple copies therefore requires permission from the owner before posting.

In looking at the images I have reproduced on my Blog, some were obtained exclusively via the WebCT site and it may be presumed that copyright permission has been obtained via the University as it was implied that these images should be posted to our Blog, although this should be checked.

If I have reproduced any original images that are not in the public domain and published them on a Blog or Website then it would be prudent to ascertain whether they are protected by Copyright and seek permission to publish them. The permission may attract a fee or an acknowledgement of the image’s origin.

Curtin University Logo:
A logo is usually held to fall under Copyright protection if the artwork is consistently associated with, and regarded as being identified with a particular product or organization. Any “close” imitations with some changes may be a breach of the original artwork copyright if there is substantial association with the original.

Ownership of the Curtin University Logo Copyright License would be held by the creator unless the License was assigned as part of the commissioning agreement, to the University.

The University has the right to:
• Copy or reproduce the logo (including digital copies)
• Publish the work
• Communicate the work to the public (electronically, broadcast, email or fax, posting to its website).

The exceptions that may apply to reproducing artwork would not apply to the Curtin University Logo unless it was directed by the University as research or study in which case the appropriate permission would have been granted.

Passing Off:
If the Curtin University Logo is reproduced on my Blog, I may be regarded as benefiting from the established reputation of the University and using the logo to elevate the value of the material in the Blog or implying that the University endorses the content of the Blog. This is said to be “passing off” and is a breach of the Trade Practices Act 1974 or Sections of the fair trading laws.

Trademark:
The logo may also be a registered trade mark in which case an infringement will breach Copyright and Trade Mark rights Trade Marks Act 1995). It would be reasonable to assume that the logo could be a registered trademark as it is “inherently capable of distinguishing the traders’ goods or services”.

The Curtin University Logo would be protected by Copyright and it would be an infringement to reproduce the logo without the University’s permission.

Module 5

Ecology of Information:

Ecology, or ecological science, is the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of living organisms and how the distribution and abundance are affected by interactions between the organisms and their environment. The environment of an organism includes both physical properties, which can be described as the sum of local abiotic factors such as solar insolation, climate and geology, as well as the other organisms that share its habitat
The two elements that seem to be important in describing an ecology are the behavior of a body within its environment and the influence or interaction it has on its external environment.

Behavior: The internet has evolved from a technological tool to communicate between academics into a huge interrelated network of computers that create the framework or environment in which other components i.e. software can be developed and distributed anywhere within the internet. The internal environment it has created has led to the development of the World Wide Web and other applications for any purpose or utility that we can think of (e.g. education, commercial profit, scientific research, leisure, astronomy etc.).

The other additional component that the internet incorporates is the user who, when “connected” to the functions of the internet, becomes part of its operation and influence. The user of the internet is not an identity in him/ herself but any individual, who at any time, interacts with the internet and flow of information within it.

Interaction: The second element of an ecology is its effect on the external environment in which it exists (its habitat). The internet exists in a society that thrives on accumulating and controlling information. There is almost a symbiotic relationship between the internet and society; the internet relies on the flow of information to sustain its existence and enable it to grow and we use the internet to maintain our society and make it grow.

In this broader definition of hardware and software and people then the internet has some of the characteristics of an organism that acts and reacts to the flow of information and communication between its different parts. The influence of the internet on the social and ethical behavior on its external environment is the issue debated by (Capurro, R.) who views information technology as an opportunity to change the inadequacies of society pre-information technology. The suggestion that society should reassess its motives for controlling the access of information to promote a greater balance of information flow, cultural diversity, moral values and share of wealth is a strong indication that the internet has a major influence on its external environment.

Reflection: When I connect to the internet, am I part of the internet’s external or internal environment? I used to think that the distance between the keyboard and me was the separation line. However, when my wife used “Facebook” recently I noticed that at the bottom of the screen that the counter said that over 10 million people were using that program at the same time she was. The participation and influence of that user community on the internet would not be regarded as part of the external environment but part of the internet.

This has changed my awareness of the society that exists at any given time within the internet environment and appreciate the potential influence it has on its external world.

How are the concepts ‘information’ and ‘communication’ understood within the framework of an ‘information ecology’?


The ecosystem concept:
A central principle of ecology is that each living organism has an ongoing and continual relationship with every other element that makes up its environment. The sum total of interacting living organisms (the biocoenosis) and their non-living environment (the biotope) in an area is termed an ecosystem. Studies of ecosystems usually focus on the movement of energy and matter through the system.

From the free encyclopedia Retrieved from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology, August 26th, 2008.

If we consider the aspect of relationships between elements within an ecology and note that the interaction between the elements focus on the “movement of energy and matter through the system” (Wikipedia) then we can associate the central elements in the information ecology of information and communication creating a synergy that is greater than there individual value. (Stadler) states that the elements of communication and information are interdependent: communication is the process which connects the pathways to carry the data. The interaction of this data with different bits of data and as it travels through the internet it is enriched through its combining with otherwise meaningless bits of data. The result of the combination between communication and information is the information ecology.

Why don’t we talk of a ‘communication ecology’?

The concept of a ‘communication ecology’ isn’t refuted as a concept but it would be superfluous to try and describe communication to the exclusion of knowledge when the two elements are combined to create information.

Aren’t we talking about the characteristics and dynamics of information? Using the internet as an example, communication technology exists to transmit data and the product, which is information, exists because of its ability to be channeled through communication technology. The particular outcome of this process requires the input of communication and data combining to produce information. This is the sum total of the interacting organisms within their ecosystem.

Stadler, Felix “information Technology” A position paper (version 1.0) McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, FIS, UofT, 1997.

Module 4 - Annotation

Summary:

The Web has made huge amounts of information available to society and has been a technological leap in communication and data storage, retrieval and display. Even so, storage and retrieval of data has depended on the ability of search software to find data stored in structured formats (schema) that allow it to be recognized as legitimate data and contain a complete set of attributes before it can be retrieved.

Creating suitable applications to perform these “relational” tasks means the development of software features that are not constrained to select data that has been stored using a predetermined schema. This software needs to be “agile” enough to collect data, store and retrieve it in a format that responds to its quality and quantity and can evolve as more data is changed or added.

The relational data base relies on the primary key to link related data from different tables and it will not retrieve and display that data if the primary key is missing or different. The Semantic Web, however, has the potential to retrieve data from unrelated databases which therefore requires a more flexible alternative to the traditional notion of the primary key.

SPARQL is a Web 2 software which is an extension of the Web search software that can operate with the existing Web data storage structure whilst accessing the Semantic Web data. In the example of a database, the Semantic Web has access to information which reaches across the data defined in a table.

The ability of this type of software to form relationships with data outside of one database table with data in another database will create “one huge database” and make the next evolutionary leap in data storage and retrieval.

Preference:

1. The information describing the article was an introduction to a number of articles on the same topic as the Semantic Web and not directly attributable to the content of the researched article. Therefore, although the summary was relevant to the Semantic Web, the article by Andrew Newman was specific to describing a type of software with the capability of searching and interacting in the Semantic Web environment. There is some technical information which, although very detailed, was not helpful to the conceptual discussion that I was looking for.

The annotation which I have written is a summary of this particular article and provides a description which would give me a more informed and preferable version of the article.

2. External users would prefer to use the information in the annotation that I have written. It would take longer to read than the “snapshot” on the original source but it would save time to read a description that provided the key elements of the article rather than a general summary of the articles located at this site.

1. 
   

Newman, Andrew, “A Relational View of the Semantic Web”. March 14^th, 2007. Retrieved from: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2007/03/14/a-relational-view-of-the-semantic-web.html

Module 4

Evaluating Web Sites:

Type of Content:

The website I have chosen is a site that contains an article located at O’ReillyXML.com. This is a media website that publishes articles and resource material. The information is more reliable than a site such as a blog but not as proven as a research paper. This site however, reproduces topical articles from many newspapers and magazines.

Search Engine: Yahoo “Semantic Web”

The description of this article, although brief, has more credence because of the website that it appears in i.e. “Semantic Web Resource Center”. This site is a collection of commercial and public resources for research groups and has a catalogue of articles on the Semantic Web.

The headline of this article is: “A Relational View of the Semantic Web”.

The “blurb” reads “Creating a Web of machine readable information, leading the Web to its fullest potential…” But this is an introduction for a list of articles about the Semantic Web and not directly attributable to this article.

URL: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2007/03/14/a-relational-view-of-the-semantic-web.html

Author: Andrew Newman 14^th March 2007

Institution: O’ReillyXML.com

Summary: “A Relational View of the Semantic Web:”

Abstract:

Software which falls into the category of “Web 2” have the ability to search and find information drawn from databases using applications that are designed to search all data, locate and identify combinations in which bits of data appear and interpret the relevance of the data for the user. This new software has a flexibility that does not need to conform to rigid database design features to conduct a search. The outcome is the integration of data in any database being available and accessible to the user. Therefore, creating the most suitable software to operate within the semantic web and produce these results is the goal of numerous software developers.

Relevance to Purpose:

I selected this article for its relevance to the concept of Meta Data being the data required to produce quality search results in research. The concept of the Semantic Web is an evolutionary step to using Meta Data and the title implies that the relational aspect between types of Meta Data is an important factor it the development of the Semantic Web.

Purpose of the Site:

This site would be described as commercial because it invites subscription to its service for a fee and has an abundance of advertising material on it. It sells books on line and reference material can be downloaded for a fee. However, the article is valid and the information can be tracked to a reliable source.

O’RiellyXML.com is a resource and publishing center. To post to the site membership is required but articles are free to read. It would be a useful search tool for future reference.

Author:

The Journalists who wrote this article are recorded in the search results. The facts noted in their article are suitably referenced in the Bibliography for authenticity. The credentials of the author are available on a separate reference page:

Andrew Newman

“Andrew Newman is currently working for the University of Queensland's eResearch centre and part time on his Honours. His has previously worked on Kowari and continues to actively support the RDF API for Java, JRDF. His current interests include SPARQL, defeasible logic, agile databases using RDF, ontology development, and software development methodologies. and as the source is a newspaper, it should be seen as an opinion on a topical issue and not a research document.”

Publisher:

The article is published by “© 2008, O'Reilly Media, Inc.”. The Website produces a directory of articles about the topic but states at the foot of the page that copyright is owned by the individual authors. There is an invitation on the site to submit articles on topics that are new and “it helps if you know that we tend to publish "high end" books rather than books for dummies, and generally don't want yet another book on a topic that's already well covered.”

Content Bias/Balance:

The content of articles is talking about a new area of Web use in the Semantic Web. The article doesn’t lend itself to being bias unless support for the Semantic Web concept is bias. There is a substantial amount of information and speculation that is supported by explanatory data and a bibliography.

Coverage:

Other articles about the topic are published on the same site and are listed in the directory. Also using Google I found 27 related sites:

Currency:

The date of the article was recorded on the search results. The development of this concept will make each article time sensitive because of the changing technology. However, this site seems to be a popular resource for publications and attracts current information on the topic. A search of this site on the Semantic Web produced 9,842 references to similar articles. The range of posting dates appears to be from 2000 to 2008 but they are not listed in date order and required a manual search for the information.

Signs of Recognition:

Links to http://www.xml.com/semweb/ (above) – 6 (3 are blogs, 2 are linked to the publisher’s Webpage and 1 is an educational reference.

Tags for this Site:

Tags for www.xml.com (above) – 13 bookmarked items from this site used by 5,585 people. Is this a significant number of tags for this type of site? A search in del.icio.us for “Semantic Web” resulted in 23,915 bookmarked items by thousands of people. This doesn’t place www.xml.com as a popular website for this information.

Blog reaction to website www.xml.com 1,432 The “authority rating” is respectable for the blogs on a specialized topic. A search for blogs with references to the “semantic web” was 8,281. Not all references from xml.com are about the semantic web so more comparison would have to be made to determine whether bloggers thought this site is popular.

Blog reaction to website www.xml.com 1,432 The “authority rating” is similar for these blogs as the previous but would need some more comparison with other sites to get the relative popularity.

Citations of Articles by other Researchers: This is a search using the title of the article to see whether it has been cited in any research articles. The search found that the article had been cited in one published paper.

Module 4

Boolean searching task:

The biggest number of hits relating to these key words:

Using OR:

Semantic OR Web: would initiate a search for the individual words or both words combined.

Semantic

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&as_qdr=all&q=semantic&btnG=Search&meta

Web

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&as_qdr=all&q=web&btnG=Search&meta

Semantic OR Web

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=semantic+web&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images

Search Items	Results
Semantic	23,600,000
Web	4,210,000,000
Semantic OR Web	4,230,000,000

Information most relevant to what I actually wanted to look for:

Using Semantic AND Web AND Concepts: would initiate a search of sites that only contained these words and as I was searching for information on the concept of the Semantic Web, I could exclude reference to “applications”by using NOT and ().

(Semantic AND Web AND Concepts) NOT applications: http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=Semantic+Web+concepts&as_oq=&as_eq=applications&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=title&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images

Using Google, the number of results using a Boolean search with these parameters, came to 49.

Google doesn’t seem to recognize the Boolean Operators and substitutes its own “Implied Boolean Logic” instead with the use of + & - symbols. The following site address provides a list of corresponding Boolean Operators used by Google: http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html

Information coming only from Universities:

1. http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&as_q=Semantic+Web+concepts+universities&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images – This search included the AND Universities – Results 849,000. The term “Universities” doesn’t limit the results to University sites.

2. Specialised search engines or nominated types of sites such as *.edu will focus on data from unique areas: http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=Semantic+Web&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=.edu&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=title&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images This site is powered by Google but only brought up results from educational institutions. Results 15,400

Searches using different search engines would reveal different search results and each search would require several modifications to narrow down the search to get the best quality information.

Module 4

Log Entry of Three Search Results:

URL: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2007/03/14/a-relational-view-of-the-semantic-web.html

Author: Andrew Newman 14^th March 2007

Institution: O’ReillyXML.com

Summary: “A Relational View of the Semantic Web:”

Software which falls into the category of “Web 2” have the ability to search and find information drawn from databases using applications that are designed to search all data, locate and identify combinations in which bits of data appear and interpret the relevance of the data for the user. This new software has a flexibility that does not need to conform to rigid database design features to conduct a search. The outcome is the integration of data in any database being available and accessible to the user. Therefore, creating the most suitable software to operate within the semantic web and produce these results is the goal of numerous software developers.

Search Engine: Yahoo

URL: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web

Author: Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila

Institution: Scientific American magazine May, 2001

Summary: “The Semantic Web:”

(An extract from the article)

“The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. The first steps in weaving the Semantic Web into the structure of the existing Web are already under way. In the near future, these developments will usher in significant new functionality as machines become much better able to process and "understand" the data that they merely display at present.”

Search Engine: Copernic Agent

URL: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-9891949-80.html

Author: Posted by Dan Farber 11/3/2008

Institution: cnetnews.com

Summary: “Tim Berners-Lee: Google could be superseded by the semantic Web:”

The evolution of the web is moving towards complete integration of data which will be a tool that will infiltrate every part of society. The automatic search and use of information by a new wave of software applications has already started. These applications exceed the current ability of limited search engines like Google and create a connection between all sources of information. The speed with which this new technology is adopted will depend on drivers such as commerce, usability and cooperation between providers to set standards of data recording. All factors need to be developed and reach a stage where they produce a cheap, user friendly and integrated search system.

Module 4

Searching the Web:

Log Entry 1: - Standard Google Search for “Semantic Web”.

(above) :This is the top 7 results of a Google search for “Semantic Web”. This is a Web index search which has picked out matches of the two words either in the title or the content of the web page. These results put the two words in order but as searches progress down the page, the words may be found in different areas of the web page. That is why there are 7,980,000 results in this search.

To make the search more relevant it would be helpful to conduct a further search within the first set of results to focus on a topic such as “applications” or “issues”.

Log Entry 2a: - Modified Yahoo Search, using modified search features: “Semantic Web” in the Title Page only.

(above): results 912,000 sites: This is a search of the same topic using Yahoo and making the search more specific. I have asked the search to look for the words “Semantic Web” in order and only in the title of the page. This should help ensure that the document I am seeking is primarily on the topic of the Semantic Web and not a passing comment in the text. Even with this one modification , the search results have been narrowed to 1/10th of the Google search results. There are three resources appearing in both searches but the modified search introduces an article but the main differences will be further down the search list as results that refer to the Semantic Web in the content only have been excluded.

These results, while still numerous ensure that the initial search for this topic results in sources that are only discussing this topic.

Log Entry 2b: - Deep Web search engine (Complete Planet) “Semantic Web”.

(above): results 1 site: This is a search using CompletePlanet “Deep Web Directory” with the same query. The result is a website for a directory type search engine that uses Semantic Web applications. CompletePlanet conducts a database search and the concept of the Semantic Web is not a reference term to be found in a database.

Log Entry 2c: - Copernic Search Manager using 6 Search Engines “Semantic Web”.

(above): results 22 sites (less 4 sponsored sites): This is Copernic search agent which combines the results of multiple search engines. This search used 6 search engines and the Yahoo engine was modified using the same filters as the example in log entry 2a to give the results of a “Deep Web Search” (i.e. only search for the words Semantic Web, in the titles). Copernic has combined duplicate sites and labeled which engines found them.

There are 3 sites in this search that appear in the broader Google search.

Summary: The results from the Google search are of a general nature but the first 5 displayed give a broad range of topics and reference material to start a research project. There is less information about the sites in the Copernic search manager so it is difficult to determine the relevance of the site from the summary of the source. On this website there is a “relevancy indicator” that is used to order the search results but I would hesitate to rely on this indicator alone and would check the data personally to determine the site’s relevancy to my research.

The Copernic search manager has performed satisfactorily (overlooking the first 4 sponsored sites which may not appear in a paid for version), as it has reduced the duplication of search results. If there was a specific research project or issue to narrow the topic down further and ample opportunity to practice using the application to be satisfied with its operation then this type of search manager should produce a narrow range of good quality results.

The Google and Yahoo results provide more details about the source than the other two search engines. The quality of the results is affected by the topic being researched but in this case the results in Google, Yahoo and Copernic are on a par with each other.