assessment 2 summary

Term 2 has seen the introduction of a few more things to mpi104. These include FTP's, technorati, the use of iWeb, fetch, using page counters and RSS feeds.

To begin summarising mpi104 over the semester I'll list changes that have happened since the assessment 1 post:

• My flickr account now has 83 photos on it
• My del.icio.us account now has 54 bookmarks
• My mpi blog now has 14 posts including this one.
  

Blogger...well, as you already know, this subject pretty much lives hand in hand with blogger. We post all our information on it and 'experiment' with aspects we're learning such as RSS and links. My blogger page consists of my weekly posts, some extra ones, links to my athene page, flickr page and del.icio.us page. There is also an RSS feed to the mpi class blog as well as the Sydney Morning Herald, Google Reader and my athene page. The athene one updates as new albums are created on my site. I've recently put up a visitor counter, a YouTube video feed, technorati link and links to the labels I've used in my posts...i think that's it! Throughout the semester I've made changes to my page using HTML (which we learnt a bit about), most recently changing my header with a pic. I've played with fonts and colours too but changed a lot of them back to the original. Blogger's been a good way to post work, I use it in GRP224 as well and have found it really useful for that.

Flickr has been pretty easy to use. I don't know what I'd use if for out of this subject though. Maybe displaying works. I look at most peoples photos on facebook. Anyway, I've become friends with people on there, some I even went to school in the UK with so it's been good to see their pictures. I've labelled all my photos and even discovered 'notes'.

Gmail and Google documents were a big aspect too. I started using google docs on my other blog too but lately have just been using the blogger interface. It's quick and simple. Recently we were introduced to Google Reader which is pretty much a giant RSS feed of all your favourite sites. I knew about it before we looked at it but it didn't interest me.

This brings me to RSS feeds. Pretty much a way of receiving updates from sites in a simple way/format. I've been using them for quite a while now and have 4 on my blog as stated above. I've also put one on my athene page linked to my mpi blog. Adding the RSS feed onto the site was a little annoying as I had to get the link converted to JavaScript first, which took some looking into.

I honestly don't use del.icio.us at all. I put links on there but it hasn't been useful at all to me, everything I do is from this computer and therefore stored on here. It's a heaps good idea though!

Technorati is pretty much a blog search engine. It is different as all the data is live, like a blog is because they are constantly updated. It allows people to see where their blog is ranked. Mine has changed significantly since day one. For some reason it's gone from 4,978,471 to 10,280,622 and i STILL have no authority! There must have been a mistake with the original number I got.

Inserting page counters to our blog and athene site was looked at so we could understand our site traffic eg. when most people log on. All forms of data can be logged so people can understand their site users better and cater for them more effectively.

iWeb, athene, FTP and fetch all work together so here's a summary on them all! We learnt about FTP and how we could upload to the uni FTP server using fetch. Fetch allows us the connect to the athene server, which we can then drag and drop files (our website) onto...simple! I created my website using iWeb. It's pretty user friendly and comes with a fair few templates. I used one but modified it a little and added my own stuff.

counters and rss...

Counters keep track of visitors to sites. When a person visits, the counter goes up one digit. They can be in the form of plain old simple counters, invisible counters and counters that log data on visitors.
They are useful because they allow sites to know who/when and if people are visiting.

RSS stands for really simple syndication. Essentially it is an easy way to subscribe to information from websites. That way updates to the sites/itunes/email are sent to you without visiting the site. You receive headlines, allowing you to see the updates whihc you can then choose to view should you want to.

technorati

Today we looked at the website technorati. Essentially it is a search engine for blogs like this one however it is so much more than that. They monitor the world of blogs or weblogs and allow people to search fresh information about everything imaginable on the web. It gives real time up to date info as it searches something they call the Live Web. When searching the internet using something like google, the searches are generally static and inactive. Technorati is 'connected' to the blogosphere and is notified of new content as it happens, therefore letting you know what, when and where things are happening, who and when they were said and how it may impact you.

My technorati rank is: 4,978,471
My authority on technorait is: ZERO - don't have any.

I guess in the coming weeks this site will become more useful, at the moment i'm not too sure what it's gonna do for me.

changes #2

So i got pretty bored again before and decided to make a few changes, here they are:

• changed my header using an image off my computer
• uploaded a pic for my profile
• put in a visitor counter to the right - was down the bottom but looked stupid
  
• label links down the right hand side
• and some youtube links to random pixar movies cos they're good!

Wow!

b.o.r.e.d. - put website up

So im pretty bored right now so thought I would put a link up to my mpi website. There really isn't anything on there yet but meh. I also figured out you can run two websites off the server so I've set another one up for grp223 but haven't put it up yet. Anyway, cool beans. CYA!

ftp - how excitement

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is a network protocol used to transfer data from one computer to another through a network eg. internet.
Essentially, it is a method of transferring files over ant TCP/IP based network. This allows users to use/alter files on other computers on that network, regardless of the operating system.
Using FTP has its advantages:

• It promotes the sharing of files
• It shields users from Variations in file storage systems among different hosts (all data can be accesses o matter what formats are used)
• Data can be transferred reliably and efficiently.
  

It does however have its downfalls and risks too:

• Eavesdroppers can pickup on file contents and passwords as they are sent in clear text, this can be minimised using secure connections such as SSL.
• It is a high latency protocol
• No data integrity check is performed at receivers end - data may be corrupt.
• The original ftp is a relatively insecure method of data trasnfer as there is no method for data encryption. The risks can be minimised using "either SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol), or FTPS (FTP over SSL), which adds SSL or TLS encryption to FTP."

Hope u enjoyed my riveting report. BYE!

assessment 1 summary - pass pass pass pass pass

So this is my summary of mpi104 so far. The subjects essentially revolves around blogger so far, we put everything on it. My blog currently has 7 posts, this will make 8. Umm I wouldn’t say that any of my posts are actually interesting but here’s some links to prob the most interesting ones. Post about del.icio.us, one on my new photos and then one on the wonders of css . Recently I added a few things to my blog. These included the Sydney Morning Herald RSS feed and the flickr feed which can be seen on the right nav bar. I also changed some background and font colours using the html editor, I’ve talked about this in a previous post. Throughout the weeks I have added tags or labels for each post. This makes searching for them easier. I’ve made comments on other peoples blogs too, I can’t remember who’s so I’ve put a link to the mpi104 subject blog which I’ve commented on. The subject has introduced us to html, we made a pretty basic/quick web page, im sure there’s more to come!

The subject also introduced me to gmail and google documents. I’ve always had a gmail account but didn’t use it much and google docs (using right now!) has become very useful for publishing directly to my blog.

Online storage of photos on flickr is something I knew about but wasn’t all that interested in. Since starting mpi I have uploaded 77 photos, most of which are holiday snaps. I’ve now become flickr friends with people I know, commented on/ labelled too many photos and I have 3 sets of photos. My three favourites are; here, here and probably this one, hard to pick.

Another ‘element’ of mpi is del.icio.us. This allows users to store bookmarks online so access can be made wherever you may be. Pretty handy for travellers and busy people…or students. Saves remembering lots of addresses. I have 46 saved bookmarks, most of which are other peoples blogs and sites I regularly visit. Things like eBay and netbanking etc. my three favesss would be eBay, thepiratebay.org and facebook. These interest me because I get cool stuff on eBay, piratebay gives me all my movies/music/software and facebook has consumed my life.

I think that’s pretty much everything!

new flickr photos

Uploaded new photos to flickr the other day, about 60 from my trip to Macau etc. so thought i'd share that little bit of info and post some pics here!

changes

I made some changes to my blog using the html editor. umm changed the main background colour as well as those of the side bars...was gonna change the font but i like it the way it is so just changed the colours of a lot of them. I could have made these changes in the template manager thing but thought I should 'get involved' and use the html editor. A while ago i added the flickr feed to the sidebar as well as the sydney morning herald rss feed. Enjoy!

templates in blogger...

The template editor allows you to change most of the basic elements of your blog. This includes background colours, fonts and their colours. The advantage of the templates is that no html coding is required to change elements as they are predetermined and selectable. This is great for novice users and those that really don't wanna get into the code, allowing them to personalise their blogs.

Template editing using this method may be a little restrictive for some though so html editing is also available. This allows users to change to fonts and colours that may not be available They can also import new images as well as change the shapes of sidebars etc and even rearrange the structure of the page/template.

Using the html editor I changed a few things which i'll explain further in another post! cya!

the wonders of css

So how advantageous is CSS??
CSS allows the user/creator to seperate the design from the content of the page. One of the biggest advantages of CSS is that you can use it to control more than one design element at a time; for instance, you can make it so that all the titles are all one colour/font, then, if you want to change that later on, one change in the style sheet coding alters them all. ANother advantage is the use of external style sheets. Using these designers can implement multiple page designs for the same site without altering the content. Accessibility issues are something CSS is also useful for. Since the content is separate from the design element, accessibility programs access the site with greater ease.

Oh! so looking at the page with no page style makes the page pretty uninteresting! Theres no images. The only colour is in the form of blue hyperlinks and the page layout is non existent when compared to the previous page with styling - no structure!

del.icio.us

So i'd heard of del.icio.us before this subject and understood what it was and did but never really saw the need for it as most of the internet stuff i do, i do on my own computer. Aaaanyway, i can really see the use in it, especially for students and travellers as they may never know what computer they might be using next...saves remembering all those sites, more room up there for stupid stuff.

Well, heres my del.icio.us account.

..found three other sites that are similar to del.icio.us (so sick of typing that!) they are....drumroll:
Furl
Digg
Post Toaster
All three are pretty similar..digg is more community/blog based...i guess.

Not much else to report...cya next term!

flickr!

Ummm...flickr. It seems like a pretty cool site, i dunno if i'd ever use it for anything outside of this subject though. It would be a good way to share photos with family or something but i'd probably prefer to use something like facebook for that. It seems well layed out and reasonably user friendly, i'm still not totally 'one' with it though.

Well, here's the link to my account. I've also attached one of my photos I uploaded to it.

1st Post!

Hiiii..
So i totally saw the new Rambo movie the other day...it was honestly one of the goriest/greatest movies i've ever seen.
SO, here's a link to the trailer. Watch it, you'll wanna see it: Rambo!!

Enjoy the blog!! That is all