Suze's NET11 Log

Summary thoughts

Suze — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:59:33 +0000

Upon reflection of this unit I have learnt a lot of different things both practical and conceptual. It took me a little while to immerse myself in the topic, especially during the first two modules where the focus was on the practical aspects. However, once into the later modules it became clear why this fundamental understanding needs to be obtained before one can progress to the conceptual material effectively

Practically, I have simply become a much more effective user. I thought I was advanced before the course, but it truly was a case of not realising how much I did not yet understand. Gaining an insight into how the internet works has influenced everything I do as a user in a fundamental way… seemingly minor things like formatting posts are now much less daunting due to these developing skills

I have learnt a lot about online applications and how the Internet works. This especially applies to the internet 2.0 (and beyond) and the many different ways in which the web is developing today as an open source environment.

Learning about the technical aspects of the internet, from it’s structure through to how HTML works has given me huge practical advantage in my everyday use and I feel that as a result I can see possibilities that I could not before. This widely varies from my own searching and browsing on the Internet to my interactions with people via email, chat etc

Conceptually this unit has really stimulated me and helped me see more of the big picture. I understand that the rapid and dynamic nature of the internet means that an advanced user never stops learning…

The Internet is a vast and complex, and at times, I have felt that the more I know, the more there is to know. Thinking of it as an ecosystem was a real revelation for me and I’ll continue to build that understanding through future studies (I am doing NED11 and NET12 next study period)

Module 5 Task: Info-Communication Concepts

Suze — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:20:31 +0000

How might the metaphor of an ‘ecology’ impact on the way you think about, understand or use the internet?

I think that using the metaphor of an ecology really sums up how I have come to view the internet, rather than just a tool for finding information and communication. I don’t mind admitting that prior to a few months ago (despite considering myself a reasonably skilled user) I had this sort of tacit assumption that the net was mostly technical in nature and therefore I had nothing to do with the past, present or future and that ’someone else’ was looking after creation, maintenance and future development from some central place somewhere. I now see things much more as they are – the net is a dynamic eco-system that depends on it’s users for growth and development just as it’s users depend on it as a tool and a technology. It is the users who generate growth and development.. Sure, at differing individual rates, but the ‘user’ I refer to here is the interconnected mass rather than the individual per se… nontheless, thinking of the net as an ecosystem brings to mind considerations that are pertinent in any other ecosystem i.e sustainablity, conservation, development, culture. Considering it that way, the responsibility (and reward) that comes with being an advanced user is much greater….

At the end of the day, this clip from M Wesch sums it up so wonderfully I had to include a link here… I just think this is brilliance!

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

In the context of an information ecology, communication and information are interdependant i.e each requires the other to be effective. The transmission of information via communication is what an information ecology is all about. Likewise, communication without information.. is virtually pointless. The Concept (#3) ‘Effective Internet communication combines technical and communicative competence’ demonstrates this idea. An information ecology flourishes when both elements work synergistically and likewise, is limited where one is employed too strongly in the absence of the other, and ceases to exist at all where only one or neither are present.

Why don’t we talk of a ‘communication ecology’?
As mentioned above information ecologies cannot be one dimensional and instead must have elements of both communication and information. Communication (alone) tends to have limitations around the attributes of diversity and evolution; which are essential for an ecology to develop, I beleive this is why we don’t think of communication as an ecology. An example is shown in Concept 15 ‘Metaphors of use and communication differentiation’. Advanced users, in using metaphors to describe online dynamics, must be careful to remember that the Internet is unique, and so metaphors really only help in suggesting how the development of the internet is similar, not actually how it is

PEER-TO-PEER

Case Study: Peer-to-peer

I am approaching this topic with a completely open mind (this is largely due to ignorance on my part I admit). and I do realise it is controversial and subject to misundersanding so armed myself with the following reading

How the old ‘napster’ worked, by How Stuff Works
An introduction to peer-to-peer computing, by David Barkai
An introduction to peer-to-peer networks, by Vinod Musuthamy
Wikipedia entry on file sharing

Information transfer

P2P networking: An information sharing alternative, by Parameswaran, Susarla and Whinston
Peer to peer goes corporate, by David Lipschultz (not available, alternate article sourced below)
Peer to peer for academia, by Andy Oram
Peer to peer goes corporate, snapshot by Peter O’Kelly from WSJ.com subscription-only article by Bobby White

Community

Playing our song?, by Henry Jenkins

Legal issues: Copyright

“Copying is Theft …” And other legal myths in the looming battle over peer-to-peer, by Mark Rasch
Rip, Mix, Burn: The Politics of Peer to Peer and Copyright Law, by Kathy Bowrey and Matthew Rimmer
Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Since Napster, by Magdalena Heim-Smith

Security and privacy

PCStats Beginners Guides: Spyware protection and removal
Is your computer talking to strangers, by Gene and Katie Hamilton
Spychecker.com

Socio-political considerations

p2pnet.net - p2p news
The Internet debacle – an alternate view, by Janis Ian

Wow… it is very complex issue and therefore difficult to make any sort of absolute statement as to whether P2P is a positive thing to be embraced. There are many facets to the argument and it’s a topic complicated by differing perspectives as to right & wrong, legality, profit and so on. I found myself agreeing and identifying with elements of both arguments for and against file sharing. It may be a slightly overstated anaology, but I think of it in a similar way to how I do Nuclear technology where there are so many positive applications and possibilities where used for the collective good, yet so many negative consequences are possible if misapplied for individual gain… because of this there will be fear and debate i.e the benefits of lower cost, efficient distribution are weighed against indexing problems, and fear of loss by corporations who claim to be protecting artists rights and are agressively pursuing Internet service providers and individuals; there is a reasonable case for the distribution of material in order to provide exposure for the artist and increasing sales of other formats i.e live appearances.

Module 4 Task – Evaluating the Web

Suze — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:04:29 +0000

Task Objective

Understand the process and criteria for evaluating information and resources found on the web, as well as the importance of evaluation information management overall.

Process

Annotation

Dr Brad Myers is a Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University He received his PHD in Computer Science from the university of Toronto and holds a Masters degree from MIT. He consults widely on the topic of user interface design and is widely published on the subject. Dr Myer’s paper – A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology summarises key developments in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) technology. He covers fundamental interactions and application types through to developing trends and technologies. The paper discussed the importance of university research in the future of development in this area concluding that the majority of key research in the field is generated by universities and educational institutions.

Myers, D. (1996). A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology. Retrieved April 29, 2008, from http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~amulet/papers/uihistory.tr.html.

in terms of your own future use, which ‘body ‘ of information (IE. the original ‘snapshot’ of the site, or your own, annotated, analytical version) would be most useful to refer back to?

Becuase it is trasnalted into my own words, I think the annotation will always be more useful providing that ‘use’ does not require a level of detail much greater than the annotation offers. I think in case where a close review of the information was required, my annotation would assist me in finding the source, and quickly summarizing it’s key message and outcomes, however the document itself provides a much deeper dive into the subject matter and this cannot be overlooked in importance.

In term of external users (i.e. if you included this site as a hyperlink or resource on a website) which body of information would best help them judge if the site was useful or of interest to them?

For external users the same as above would probably apply. They would look to the annotation to get an understanding on what the paper was about and its usefulness to them but the true information would need to come from the paper itself.

Module 4 Task: Organising Search Information

Suze — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:41:13 +0000

Task Objective

To become familiar with the process of saving and categorisng web information resources in a way that faciliates later access, retrieval, understanding and context.

Process

For this task I decided to put Pagesucker to work and saved the following source pages. Old habits die hard though and I bookmarked these pages in Safari using a subfolder ‘Europe Trip’ and also saved them to Delicious

Task Outcomes

1.
URL: http://www.mountainbikeeurope.com/index.php/cPath/3
Author: Various (forum)
Institution: None
Summary: Community site driven mainly by member contribution. Lists trails by country in Europe and includes member reviews, destination info, maps, video.

2.
URL: http://dirtmag.co.uk/news/category/press%20release/mountain-bike-europe/sp_1231846.html
Author: Unknown
Institution: Dirt Magazine
Summary: Points to the page on Europe MTB news on the Dirt Magazine website.

3.
URL: http://www.mtb-rides.com/about_mtb_rides.html
Author: Not Specified
Institution: MTB Ride
Summary: Online resource run by team of riders – provides info on routes, trails and maps. Uk focus with some Europe travel – good site with mtb specific detail on europe i.e travel tips, places to eat and stay etc

Module 4 Task: Boolean Search

Suze — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:59:19 +0000

Task Objective

To gain an understanding of the boolean logic on which most search rules are based.

Process

Using the keywords ‘Mountain, Biking, Europe’ again determine a search strategy for achieving:

The biggest number of hits relating to these key words
information most relevant to what you ACTUALLY wanted to look for!
information coming only from university sources

Task Outcomes

Biggest Hits: To get the biggest number of hits relating to the key words I thought that using full Boolean to search OR would be most successful i.e Mountain OR Biking OR Europe., and indeed this was true, but if you ever needed proof that quality is better than quantity this is it…

The results were very loose and generic i.e Wikipedia defs on Mountains and Europe as individual topics (but not on Biking…is there a heircachy I wonder?) essentially a huge number of returns (76,000,000) , but all of them were of little value in providing the information sought.

Best Hits: Here I combined searching for the keywords with AND, but combinined it with NOT as well as the most relevant return would involve excluding sites that would use similar language but be aimed at differing types of cycling. I also wanted to exclude racing sites, and commercial tour companies and just focus on getting information about good places to ride in europe i.e Mountain Biking Europe Trails-Cycling -Cycle -Race -Tours -Tour.

The results of this search strategy were really good, returning a more reasonable 13,200 with site content much closer to what I was looking for and really highlighted how increasing search skills can save time and enhance the quality of information that is found.

Educational Sources In this case I used the advanced search option in google and stipulated that the search should occur only within the domain .edu

The results of this were as expected, a low return and low relevancy. The sources found tended to have a brief mention of mountain biking in regards to extramural activities or trips for prospective students, however relevancy would have been much higher had the topic been different so I do think that the ablity to filter by domain is helpful.

Module 4 Tasks – Search Engines

Suze — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:54:37 +0000

Task Objective

To gain an understanding of the application of and differences between: search engines, web directories, databases and metasearchers…

Process

1. Use the most commonly used internet search engine and do a search with words of your choosing.

record the first hit and number of hits in your learning log

2. Using copernicus or similar, set it up to search at least three search engines (including one that will search the ‘deep web’) and repeat eactly the same search

record the number of hits in your learning log, and compare to your first search. What differences did you notice? Why? Which search, on first glance gave you the most promising results?

3. save at least the first 5 hits of both searches.

Task Outcomes

First Seach using Google

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,310,000 for Mountain Biking Europe. (0.23 seconds)

First five hits:

Mountain Biking Europe | Mountain Bike Europe - Spain

Search for a mountain bike tour or mountain bike trail in Europe. Discover downhillmountain biking, extreme mountain biking and mountain bike treks in …

www.mountainbikingholidays.net/europe/index.php – 45k - Cached - Similar pages
EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails | TRAILSOURCE™

EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails Source is an adventure travel guide to the best 2000mountain biking trails and singletracks in over 75 countries around the …

www.trailsource.com/scripts/ two.asp?TYPE=BIKE&CONTINENT=EUROPE - 21k -Cached - Similar pages
Mountain Biking in Europe

The Trento Bike Pages describe rides throughout Europe (mainly in Italy, … Reports onmountain biking in the Trentino region: from Thomas Driemeyer (in …

mtb.live555.com/mtb-europe.html – 14k - Cached - Similar pages
Amazon.co.uk: Mountain Biking Europe (Footprint Activity Guide …

Amazon.co.uk: Mountain Biking Europe (Footprint Activity Guide) (Footprint Activity Guide) (Footprint Mountain Biking Europe: Tread Your Own Path): Chris …

www.amazon.co.uk/ Mountain-Biking-Europe-Footprint-Activity/dp/190609831X – 153k -Cached - Similar pages
BIKE-ROX - Mountain Biking, Biking Holidays, Biking Europe …

Romania activity tours, cycle in Romania, Hiking Romania mountains, outdoor tours like Romania mountain bike tour, biking, trekking in Romania, …

www.bike-rox.ro/ – 36k - Cached - Similar pages

Next Search using Inquisitor (Meta Search tool)

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,300,000 for Mountain Biking Europe. (0.23 seconds))

First Five hits.

Mountain Biking Europe | Mountain Bike Europe - Spain

Search for a mountain bike tour or mountain bike trail in Europe. Discover downhillmountain biking, extreme mountain biking and mountain bike treks in …

www.mountainbikingholidays.net/europe/index.php – 45k - Cached - Similar pages
EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails | TRAILSOURCE™

EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails Source is an adventure travel guide to the best 2000mountain biking trails and singletracks in over 75 countries around the …

www.trailsource.com/scripts/ two.asp?TYPE=BIKE&CONTINENT=EUROPE - 21k -Cached - Similar pages
BIKE-ROX - Mountain Biking, Biking Holidays, Biking Europe …

Romania activity tours, cycle in Romania, Hiking Romania mountains, outdoor tours like Romania mountain bike tour, biking, trekking in Romania, …

www.bike-rox.ro/ – 36k - Cached - Similar pages
Mountain Biking in Europe

The Trento Bike Pages describe rides throughout Europe (mainly in Italy, … Reports onmountain biking in the Trentino region: from Thomas Driemeyer (in …

mtb.live555.com/mtb-europe.html – 14k - Cached - Similar pages
Mountain Bike Europe, Trails, Downhill, Cross Country, Touring …

Free for and By the Mountain Bike Community – Join Our Community and Share your Experience, Search our Information and Ask Your Questions, WebCam, GPS, …

www.mountainbikeeurope.com/ – 53k - Cached - Similar pages

To be honest I really couldn’t see much evedence of inquisitor in the second search result set – it seemed much that it returned a high volume of results, but of medium to low quality after the first 10 or so.

I also tried a couple of popular metasearch sites Dogpile and Clusty given I’d had no real success so far…

Dogpile searches the ‘top 4′ (Google, Ask, Yahoo and Windows Live) combining the results in an easy to use format

Clusty on the other hand searches a number of search engines and directories, but NOT Google or Yahoo. It’s other point of difference is that it displays results traditionally, but also sections them into sub categories like so….

Clusty gave the top 180 results of at least 349,000 retrieved for the query Mountain Biking Europe and I did observe a much higher quality of result compared to the previous 2 searches (which seemed to digress alot to things like singles cycling holidays in Hawaii after about the 10th search result)

Dogpile didn’t provide data on search result numbers, however it did give a very good selection of sites back, including many not previously returned. Like Google after a while relevance started to get pretty loose, but this was less of an issue given that the number of good returns seemed more than anyone could ever want (is that a dangerous statement when disucssing the web or what!!!?)

In conclusion, there dosn’t seem to be any one panacea for me – let alone the millions of other users out there. I think I will definately continue using Dogpile, although I wish that like Google, I could restrict my search to just pages from my local area… ever so handy when you’re just looking for a dentist…

I think I would use Clusty too, as I loved it’s ‘clustering’ feature for further defining all that noise. Although because it does not search the majors like Google and Yahoo, I’ll need to use it more before I am a total convert.

I feel that advanced internet users need to have a good grasp of differing search technologies as (presently anyway) in order to properly leverge them, one needs to treat them as a ‘toolkit’. Although not everything I tried did it ‘all’ I definately feel as though I could orchestrate a much better search now.

As for Inquistor, Acid Search and all the other Mac clients I tried… I’m disspointed they ddn’t work out for me, especially given the rave reveiws that they get. I’ll have to get under the hood and see whether there was perhaps some user error there.

Module 4 Tasks: Downloading Tools / Plug-ins

Suze — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:30:28 +0000

When it comes to media viewers and players I already have the tools mentioned, having collected them gradually over the past months – usually in response to not being able to do something. Generally they’ve added greatly to my user experience so I wouldn’t be without them. In regards to PDF reader, I recently found an interesting tool called SKIM that expands on the traditional functionality, allowing the user to add markup / notes etc. Very simple, and very useful I thought.

Task Objective

For this task the focus was to familiarize myself with common internet tools to assess their potential user application and value. I have focused here mainly on ones I was unfamiliar with.

Task Outcomes

Search Managers / Combiners

Glooton - I didn’t get very far with this tool, as all the links pointed me to a french language site that I could not decipher. As with any web tool or site that fails to meet it’s audience’s needs this one lost me before it had me. Perhaps it would have perservered were it not for the other options awaiting me… onwards and (hopefully) upwards

Sherlock – I expected that this would be already present in my very new Mac (after all, in addition to al my downloaded additions, my machine came packed with all sorts of cool stuff I’ve yet to familirse myself with)… but alas I searched my machine and could not find any evidence of it!!!?! Thinking that perhaps I was missing something (happens in my life with alarming regulraity) I checked the apple site, and found… nothing… a google search answered the question with this announcement from the apple archives advising that it is no longer supported in the current version. More research revealed that the functionality previously covered by sherlock is now part of:

Spotlight – an advanced hard drive search tool that is part of finder (under services) and capable of fast and polished searching of the user harddrive. An excellent tool for cutting down on all that wheel recreating I do when it comes to pulling up information.
Widgets (via the dashboard) – these are seriously cool, and I can’t believe I ever lived without them. I previously used the world clock widget, mainly to quickly check Perth time from the UK for assignment deadlines ;o) but had been unaware of all the other options available to to add to one’s dashboard…. never again will I have to look up a website to convert ounces to kilos in order to bake something in the UK – YAY! Simple effective tools like this are the best kind. Apples website had even more widgets available for download…. not wanting to get sucked into spending way too much time on this task, I have pulled myself away… but I will definately be expanding my use of widgets…

Acidsearch The above 2 features are both great, but compared with an application like Copernic, the missing link is web metasearch. To solve this one I ran straight to the online mac forums to see what the alpha mac geeks said. While there are a few good applications that work on Mac, the most user friendly and functional seemed to be Acidweb. I like how it sits discretely in Safari.

Bookmark Managers

Now here’s something I need a tool for, I am a huge and mostly ineffective bookmarker. Huge becuase I am interested in damn hear everything and ineefective because I end up bookmarking too much and creating a big monster. So here’s what I checked out to help me find, organise and structure all my digital pies.

URL Manager – This seems like an excellent tool. Safari on it’s own has fairly good bookmark management capabilities, but once the collection of bookmarks grows there is a need for further functionality i.e the ability to alphebetize. Unforunately, as this software is not free I didn’t download it. But I do think this would be very useful for me. I’m going to spend a bit more time looking for free versions to try.

Delicious is one that I have used before, but not enough to do it justice. really value it when I am away from my usual computer… but I tend to go back to safari otherwise.. ideally the most useful bookmark manager would a) be free b) interface with portable applications like delicious c) work accross various browsers – in my case, both firefox and safari

I am hoping that somewhere out there exists a bored developer with lots of spare time and no requirement for money!

Offline Copiers

Pagesucker I tried pagesucker (the trial version), and think that it is indeed useful for offline work. The downside though is that you do need to plan ahead and ‘pagesuck’ your reading in advance, which obviously limits much of the web’s appeal, but then working offline is just that so it’s not a shortcoming of the product per se.. anyway outside of that it is far preferable to my previous method of printing to PDF and saving the documents to my hard drive (I don’t mind admitting that until now this is what I did).

Other internet tools….

Stumble Upon - A bit like Delicious, but seemingly smarter i.e it can learn what i like…. really? It also employs a ‘human crawler’ type technology, which is one of the ways in which the deep web can be better explored.

So all this being true, I really want it to work for me… I’ve heard a lot about recommendation engines, and while I think the theory is fantastic and the way of the future, I am skeptical as to whether it can be done well enough… so this one, which is based on peer recommendation is very very intersting. The big drawback (at this stage anyway) is that it’s not supported for Safari, which is my default browser. I do have Firefox, and I’ve added it there, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s usefulness (for me) will be limited because I don’t use firefox as much…….perhaps this will be so good I’ll change my default though(?)

Module 3 Task: FTP

Suze — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:07:16 +0000

I actually found this task fiddly and time consuming (and therefore pretty frustrating). Initially I tried to use Fetch, the FTP client that I used in module 1, however it wouldn’t work for this…. Ordinarily I prefer to persevere with things that will.not.work but in this case I decided to try filezilla instead, mainly becuase there were specific tutorials available on the Oasis site that I could refer to…. “water flows the easiest way downhill”

This time, with help from the tutorial I was more succesful and managed to upload my site file.

One problem I did encounter was that my images were not displaying correctly. I had no idea what to do about this, although a checkin with my fellow classmates revealed that Flickr and/or Photobucket may be the answer…

My site is now uploaded here

Module 3 Task: Blogs

Suze — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:46:51 +0000

I think that Blogs are as popular as they are for a number of reasons.

They are highly useable and acessable to the masses, who can (and entusiastically do) use them to publish

Personal thoughts and reflections,
Journalism
Academic or technical information
Advice manuals
Product Support (Blogs used to market products)

Blogs are an example of peer media and therefore are a great way of people expressing themselves, or getting information published. Blogs can also be a source of income through such things as AdWords. There are lots of blogs on blogging, how to blog and how to make money from blogging.

I personally can’t see any downside to blogs, I love the idea of citizen jornalism or peer controlled media, and see it as being refreshingly free (or comparitively anyway) from the manipulating influence of large corps – unlike the traditional media. Sure it’s true that the blogger’s sometimes don’t exibit the linguistic skills, polish or general mastery over their chosen language that a traditional journo might, but I think that is a small price to pay for access to an endless supply of rich, raw and candid information…that’s just the way I like it! So from my perspective, Blogs are all good.

In terms of their usability, Blog formats allow users who would not normally have the skills to publish via HTML to do so using simpler template tools, meaning, yet again that the online world is much richer than it would without this app.

Module 3 Tasks: WWW Standards

Suze — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:27:12 +0000

Standards’ task 1:

The 5 Most important “rules” for writing online.

Layout – Ensure your layout is clear and easy to scan
Be Succinct, and use Keywords to retain your audience
Headings – make effective use of headings so users can easily find what they are looking for
Usability – Ensure that you are using a format that will attract the right audience.
Interactivity – Make sure your web page is usable, but stop short of overcrowding it with too many flashy features.

Most standards relate back to the the fact the people “Scan” a web page rather than reading it fully. People do not read a web page as easily or comprehensively as they would a paper document so this consideration needs to be at the forefront of an online writer or designers mind.

Standards’ task 2:

Test your web page according to the W3C standards by going to their validator page. If your page does not conform (it probably won’t!) record in your learning log why you think this is: try and identify the particular tags or code that are causing trouble. Are the problems related mostly to display, usability, or accessibility?

I tested my index.html page and the first attempt had 27 errors. Interesting. I think that the issue was mainly one of keeping the tags in correct format.

I spent quite a lot of time tinkering with my code, retesting and at one point got it down to 6 errors, only to then revert back up to 27 again with the next change. Parking it for a moment in order to take a much needed breather from HTML code, I decided to indulge myself with a little tangent..I’d been wondering whether or not it is typical for pages to conform tightly to standard or whether some error was the ‘norm’ (I know it probably sounds like I was trying to find an excuse to leave mine with error – but that’s not true I promise). So for research I tested a couple of ‘real’ sites, in fact I deliberately used good quality sites for this little experiment – those from the awards list found here

The result was all had errors, some less than 5, others had as many as mine. So what does this mean?

I’ll have to learn a lot more about html before I can comment in an informed way about standards or even build clean error free sites, however it does seem that many sites work well on the web even though coding isn’t perfect. Whilst not best practice however is probably a very common problem as more and more people create web pages using software to circumnavigate learning html.

As for me….I am going to continue to edit my index.html page until it is HMTL Valid…. update coming

Legal Issues:

After reading the material on the copyright website I then looked up the curtain home page and went to the A-Z index. I followed the links to Curtain Policies and Procedures and found Logo Use Procedures.

In summary – the Curtain logo is copyrighted and therefore unauthorised use is not allowed.

On my website I’m certain I would not break any copyright laws. Quite deliberately the images I have used were my own, simply because at the time I was not fully accross the legal side of things and wished to avoid it entirely. I can see though that this would be impractical for any web creator wanting to be impactful, so a god knowledge of legal issues (and the ability to navigate them succesfully) is essential for any online publisher.