Chelsea - Stamford Bridge

Chelsea - Stamford Bridge

Sunday, May 18, 2014

#UOSM2008 Digital Portfolio - Summary

Before UOSM2008 I was already using social media. However, as it turned out, this use had little or no benefit to my future career. I’ve never blogged, had only ~10 tweets, my Facebook profile was for social life only and the LinkedIn was far from perfect. Below are given the online changes of my attitude and presentation divided into main topics.

Twitter (https://twitter.com/Eldar994)


During the module time, I’ve realized the true power of Twitter and started to target three categories of twitter accounts (Fig.1):
  • The module classmates/lecturers, for communication.
  • The companies I support and keep up-to-date with, and more specifically, CEOs of the companies, e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Intel, IBM, etc.
  • Job recruitment agencies, e.g. GraduateJobFeed.co.uk, ProspectsJobs, TargetJobs, etc.

Figure.1

I’ve published ~170 module related tweets (~1-2/day). Now I use the Twitter to share my posts and my LinkedIn updates. My about.me page is connected to Tweeter as well (Fig.2).


Figure.2

LinkedIn (uk.linkedin.com/pub/eldar-alasgarov/67/621/636/)


My LinkedIn profile had most changes as my online appearance. Firstly, I’ve customizing my Profile:  changed the picture, added my Twitter and Blog for communication (Fig.3).


Figure.3

Previously, I was targeting my friends. However, thanks to UOSM2008 I’ve started to target management structures of the companies I’m interested in and/or I‘ve applied for. In three months I’ve connected to more than 370 people, mostly IT professionals, Recruiters, and HRs of the world leading companies, e.g. IBM, Deloitte, Facebook, Siemens, etc. (Fig.4)
                                                                         
                                                                         

Figure.4

I’ve joined groups, both job search and IT related, in order to be up-to-date (Fig.5), and encouraged my friends to write recommendations (Fig.6).


Figure.5

Figure.6

After the upgrades, just in one week my profile was viewed by 50 people and I’ve shown up 32 times in search results in past 90 days (Fig.7).

Figure.7

Blogger


During blogging topics were discussed with the classmates via sharing and commenting on in each other’s posts. I’ve seen different styles of writing and presenting, different approaches and opinions on each topic. Based on classmates’ feedbacks, we were able to adjust and reconsider our opinion in the topics’ summary.


Figure.8

Both with posts and comments, I’ve written 11,041 words. For a non-native speaker, this is nothing but a good practice.


About.me (http://about.me/eldar.alasgarov/)


I’ve never used About.me and was quite surprised with the power and simplicity of it. It gathers all social networks known nowadays into one single page, which you can customize and add a summary. Previously, when exchanging contacts, I’d have to give separately the email/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn profiles. However, now I pass to people my About.me page which contains all information about me online. After improvements suggested by the classmates, Kim Fenton and Francesca Gerard (Fig.9), I’ve started to get hundreds of views on my profile every week! (Fig.10)


Figure.9


Figure.10

Topics


What about the topics covered in the module? Were they useful? Definitely, Yes! And here is a small list of the lessons learned (Fig.11):
  1. Categorization of people into “Digital Residents” and “Visitors” isn’t perfect. There are people who don’t fall under these categories.
  2. The amount of online identities you have doesn’t matter, what matters is how you manage them.
  3. Tips to build/improve your online identity.
  4. We are responsible for the actions performed online as much as in real live.
  5. People do have right to “Open Access”.





Figure.11

Future plans


As currently I haven’t decided on the market I want to focus on, UK or Azerbaijan, I’m currently targeting both and trying to expand my network as much as possible. Once decided, I will use all social media available to be in advantage against other applicants even before we meet our potential employer.

Word Count: 599



Sunday, May 11, 2014

#UOSM2008 Reflective Summary: Topic 5




Picture source: http://library.uncc.edu/openaccess 

So, it is time for a summary and will be honest, this time I was quite hesitating on my decision. I haven’t even provided a small summary at the end of my main post this week, as I usually do. However, thanks for my classmates’ comments, blog posts I have read, and the additional articles researched during the second week, I have come to the point where I support the idea of Open Access (OA) and here are some notes in support of my opinion, both provided for personal research and classmates’:
  • As a student, not using such a great amount of knowledge available with one mouse click is just isn’t right, especially when we pay for it. As Jazzmin Curzon has mentioned, it will “add significant value to the educational process”.
  • As was mentioned both by me and Laura Higgins, most of the scientific and medical research is paid by public funds, so shouldn’t tax payers see the results of these researches?
  • For an author, reusing of the articles and jounalsincreases the popularity of that work and subsequently you recieve more citations (Evie Bool).
  • Scale, Cost and Speed. I decided to merge this three performance factors nicely provided by Francesca Gerard, as you can reach a great number of readers in little or no cost and at a speed that allows your current Internet.

And to summarize, there is one word left to be said. I’m not saying that the articles and journals should be completely FREE. Obviously there is some kind of payment that supports the day-to-day functionality of the journals itself, and ‘yes’, there are a few disadvantages of the open source, such as not centralized system of storage for articles or lack of trust to a specific source because of its variety online. HOWEVER, aren’t we, either students or ordinary people, those who pay for this kind of researches, either via our tuition fees or taxes? Aren’t we those for whom these researches are performed? And isn’t these researches targeting the goal to make human life easier to some extend? If the answer for these questions are “Yes”, then I Do believe that we have right to access the knowledge broadly available nowadays.


“Why can’t we do it in a way where the knowledge is distributed broadly and not restricted” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L5rVH1KGBCY)



Sunday, May 4, 2014

#UOSM2008 Topic 5: Advantages and Disadvantages of Open Access to Online Materials

Note: This post covers only the research archives as an example of content provider (because of the word limit). However, most of the pros and cons mentioned can be applied to other media types as well.
We, students and academics, all had that moment when you search in Google on a specific topic, and the search engine returns you an article with quite an interesting abstract, and you think that:” Here is the one!!”. However, when you press the link it requires you to sign up and perform an online payment, and all your plans for going sleep earlier tonight just ruin and you need to start the search over again (as happened during my search for the current topic, see Picture 1). The dilemma of whether to make the access to online materials open or closed nowadays have become a significant issue, which increases as the Internet expands. According to the study by Simon-Kucher & Partners, 90% of online content will be held behind paywalls (Lepitak, 2013), and subsequently a question arises whether should the content producers make their content freely available? Below I will provide both advantages and disadvantage of the given issue:
Picture 1.
Note: “Open Access” (OA) is a term referred to articles without any restrictions posed by subscriptions (Bo-Christer et al., 2010).
Advantages:
  • First and most important one, open access definitely will lower the transaction costs throughout the process (both publishers, libraries and readers) (Bo-Christer, 2004).
  • Availability of articles everywhere and to everyone, just have the Internet connection (Judy et al., 2003).
  • Authors, who are happy with open access for their articles get benefits, such as wider dissemination, higher citation, etc. (C. Prosser, 2003).
  • This can encourage people for independent learning/researching (Judy et al., 2003).
  • Last but not least, OA can increase “cross-discipline fertilization” of an article (Eysenbach, 2006), which basically refers to the citations of articles to each-other, but not just in the same disciple that they are.

Disadvantages:
  • Open Access journals are rarely indexed in in commercial indexing services, which universities provide for searching quality-assured publications (Bo-Christer, 2004).
  • A journal becomes split in different conditions, in different access point, which makes life a bit harder (C. Prosser, 2003).
  • Access to required hardware (Judy et al., 2003). Let’s be honest, not everyone nowadays has a laptop, PC or printers, and what is more important, reading-friendly devices, such as tablets and readers.
  • Both libraries and authors will get an initial shortfall of revenue, as the number of subscribers will drop dramatically (C. Prosser, 2003).
  • Information can vary in sources, as there is no centralised repository (Judy et al., 2003). Nowadays there are hundreds of websites that provide access to online articles and journals, such as ACM and IEEE libraries.

Believe me, I could continue the list if I had enough word count (please follow the links in “References”).

What do I personally think? Obviously as a student I support the idea of the Open Access for everyone and everywhere, as the world of education can’t improve without open access resources. On the other hand, however, as a person I strongly believe that academics and researchers do have their rights to put a price on their works, especially for those which took them a lot of time to create. Because of this dilemma I have faced with I will not give a small conclusion for the current post (as I usually do), as I have some doubts in myself.  I hope my classmates’ posts and comments will clarify my opinion till the “Reflection Summary” post.


Apologies for a bit longer post this time. Just wanted to make it special.

References

  • Bo-Christer, B., 2004. Open access to scientific publications - an analysis of the barriers to change? IR Information Research, 9(2), pp.170-91.
  • Bo-Christer, B. et al., 2010. Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature: Situation 2009. PLoS ONE , 5(6), pp.1-9.
  • C. Prosser, D., 2003. From here to there: a proposed mechanism for transforming journals from closed to open access. Learned Publishing, 16(3), pp.163-66.
  • Eysenbach, G., 2006. The Open Access Advantages. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 8(2).
  • Judy, M., Carol, J. & Peter, C., 2003. Web based learning. ABC of learning and teaching, 326(7394), pp.870-73. 
  • Lepitak, S., 2013. 90% of online content to be held behind paywalls in three years media company survey suggests. [Online] Available at: http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/04/12/90-online-content-be-held-behind-paywalls-three-years-media-company-survey-suggests [Accessed 3 March 2014].


Tuesday, April 15, 2014

What is it about About.me?

After the experience with the first blog post (not an exercise related one), I have decided to write a second one and this time the trigger to the topic was another classmate’s post, Kimberly Fenton’s. As you might understand from the heading I’m writing about the About.me social network. I will be honest in saying that I have never even heard of it before I have been introduced in this module, #UOSM2008, and to be honest the first impression wasn't good. It has lots of similarities with other social networks, such as:
  • Similar to LinkedIn it sends everyday notifications of the people that have viewed your about.me page.
  • People can send each other notifications stating that they have “complimented” you and it is very similar to dating websites’ “Wink” button.
  • It also does provide a news feed and sends you a weekly updates and news.
  • Etc.
However, a question may arise in our heads, whether what does it differ About.me from others? What is special about it? There is one feature: it allows a user to connect all social networks related to a person, in one place. And I will be honest, this is quite an awesome idea (sorry my informal language). At times when we feel lost among this amount of social networks, at times when we even forget the usernames and passwords for every single one, and when we are struggling to keep the data up-to-date on all of them at the same time, this solution is just brilliant. However, for me personally, not the idea itself gives the interest in this social media, but the simplicity of presentation standing behind it. As you can see from the picture below, there are just a few lines of text summarizing yourself, basic contact information and self-explanatory icons that refer you to respective social network websites. Isn’t that simple?

And last but not least I want to mention one special icon that not everyone might be familiar with. It is the very last one in my list of social networks and I was quite surprised to see it there. It is the GitHub, and for those who don’t know it is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that uses the Git revision control system (https://github.com/). Basically, it is like a Dropbox, but for coding, and for me as an IT person it is everything. Just imagine that I can make my code public and share with anyone and everywhere.


After the actual creation of the About me page, a mutual feedback was given by two of our classmates, Kimberly Fenton and Francesca Gerard. Below you can see our conversion via Twitter:

Based on their feedback, following changes were implemented:The amount of text summarising my personality was reduced, in order to not to make it boring.
  • Telephone number as a contact details was removed, because of privacy concerns.
  • Words, such as “major” or “furthermore” were paraphrased to look more modern.
  • The font style for the heading (name and surname) was made a bit simpler and the content was proofread.
  • And finally, the background image was changed.
To view all the changes applied and the profile itself, please follow the link: http://about.me/eldar.alasgarov  






Sunday, April 13, 2014

"Sign Up or Connect with Facebook"

One of our classmates’, Tim Hodgkins’, comment on my first blog post have triggered me to write this post. In his comment, Tim has mentioned that by using one online profile you can not only use it within one social media, but also use it to sign up for different applications and software. I have agreed with his point, but by that time I wasn't quite focused on it. Recently, however, throughout my development in the area of social media, thanks to our module, I have realized the true power of any single social media. To make it completely clear for a reader, I’m speaking about the moment when you have accessed a website or an app and they ask you to Sign Up OR, which is more important, to Log In using your current social network details, e.g. Facebook, Google+, Twitter. Just for the sake of curiosity, I have decided to search for this kind of applications that allow Log In via social media profile and as my bases I have focused mostly on Facebook. My choice is not surprising as 51% of sites and apps prefer Facebook as a social login (Picture and Reference are provided below).


The results were just unbelievable as there were more than 2 million results for the search request “Sign Up or Login via Facebook”. After the fifth page of search results my tabs in the browser were full of examples and I've decided to stop as it started to get meaningless. Here are the most popular (in my opinion) examples of the websites and app that allow a Facebook Login as a Sign Up:
  1. Instagram (http://instagram.com/) – obviously, as it is part of the Facebook it is not a surprise that it allows Sign Up via Facebook.
  2. Netflix (https://www.netflix.com/Login?locale=en-GB) A huge American Internet on-demand provider with millions of subscribers.
  3. Prezi (https://prezi.com/) A very powerful online and desktop presentation creation tool. There is nothing to be compared with normal PowerPoint slides. This is just a whole new level.
  4. Spotify (https://www.spotify.com/uk/login/) a commercial music streaming service which has direct interaction with record labels, such as Sony.
  5. Yahoo(https://help.yahoo.com/kb/groups/sign-facebook-google-account-sln2077.html?impressions=true) Sounds weird, but yes, you can log in to Yahoo using your Facebook or Google account.
  6. About.me (https://about.me/login) Another social network which I have discovered. Gathers in itself all possible social networks related to one person.
  7. Stackoverflow (https://stackoverflow.com/users/signup) – Not everyone might know, but the StackOverFlow website is the second home for any kind of developer (programmer) in the world. Whenever a developer has an issue, he/she doesn't go to YouTube, Google or Books, they go to stackoverflow.com.
  8. Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/log_in) – Another quite famous video-sharing website, which has quite a lot of similarities with the YouTube.
  9. Slideshare (https://www.slideshare.net/login) As it can be understood from its name, it is a slide sharing website, which contains in itself public slides that are uploaded all around the world.
  10. Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/login/) is a visual discovery tool that people use to collect ideas for their different projects and interests” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinterest). Even Wikipedia gives a better explanation than I do.

And these are just a drop in the ocean of the websites and apps that allow this kind of Sign Ups. However, it is time to state that there are two sides of this kind of online facilities. On one side, you are saving tons of your personal time on everyday Sign Up pages, which are annoying. However, on the other side, you allow a complete access to your profile to the app. They have not only the access to your profile, but even the permission to post news on your behalf. The limit till which you consider to allow this kind of things is up to a user, and only he/she can decide on it. Every person has his/her level of privacy. Personally, I use my fake online Facebook profile, just in case J.