English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week my group met online via AOL Instant Messenger on Sunday. Our schedules conflict a lot so I was the odd man out as I had work during this virtual chat meeting. I was caught up to speed that night with email and a document of the entire chat. Our Gantt chart was completed during the meeting. The next day we needed to shift our subject to allow for options to be presented in our paper better. We all decided by email on three different wireless routers to compare. Today I began my research into the D-Link DIR-615 wireless router.

This document summarizes the information that will be used from the website http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127241 for my white paper project. This website, known as new egg, is a third party supplier of various items including software, cameras, and computers. They have no ties with the manufacturer so they are unbiased. The item I researched is a wireless router from the company D-Link, model DIR-615. I reviewed the specifications for the item on this site that were taken word-for-word from the manufacturers specifications.

Date: April 10, 2009
To: Professor Rivers
From: Group 2
Subject: Group 2 Activity Report – Week 13

For week 2 my group started the week off with a group chat on aim on Sunday. During this meeting we discussed how we wanted to divide up the work for the rest of this project. We decided on how we wanted to divide up the different parts of the white paper as well as who would be responsible for posting any of group documents for the remainder of the project. We decided on what solutions for wireless networking we wanted to include in the white paper, and which group member would be doing the research on each solution.

Week 13 got off to a rolling start thanks to last week’s topic picking and decisions on group communication. Upon taking a look at the week's tasks and seeing we needed to develop a Gantt chart we decided we needed to assign tasks to each of us. We decided that we would alternate who writes the group activity blog for each week. This will allow all of our group members the opportunity to accomplish this task. Zephyrus (Jack) took charge of creating the Gantt chart due to his knowledge from previous courses that required Gantt charts.

This week our group had many discussions about what we are planning to do in terms of researching for the white paper. We split the research into four different parts which were problem, solution, technology, and performance. I am doing the performance aspect of the research which will include which wind turbine is the “best” in the category of home application wind turbines. When doing my research I plan to look into the differences in brands and figure out the top three or four brands of turbines.

When I started reading, I thought I might have a lot of trouble finding an ethical situation in our White Paper, since our topic is fairly mundane (comparing wireless routers for home use). Other than straight up lying or misrepresenting information, I wasn't sure how I might address ethics, but with the division of ethical systems, I think it becomes easier to see how each system contributes to possible ethical situations.

For the second version of our white paper, we decided to focus our attention on web browsers. We will focus on the problem of streamlining browser use within companies. The three browsers that we will highlight in our paper are Opera, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. The main purpose for our white paper will be to compare and contrast these three with respect to the needs of small companies, rather than individual users. Some of the main points that we have come up with so far are security, usability, and ability to restrict access.

Group 7's Gantt Chart