Week 9

RSS is basically an auto update service of a sort, it allows people that are subscribed to it, either through the internet or a mobile device, to see when a website is updated by sending either a summary or a complete copy of the update to the person via the subscription. This is useful for sites that update regularly such as blogs as it allows a subscriber to see whether any relevant updates have been made with out the need to visit the website itself.
Google Reader is an aggregator of feeds, both Atom and RSS, so that they can all be viewed in one location. It allows people to check the feeds they are subscribed to very rapidly, rather than having to check them each individually they can scroll through the list to see which have updated recently. It also allows for feeds to be shared between users of it.

FTP & Web Publishing

Well I just realized that I forgot to do a couple weeks work, so I guess my last comment was a little redundant there. At any rate, as far as FTP and web publishing are concerned I now know a program that makes websites so much easier than it would otherwise be. And the FTP program finally let me learn how to upload content onto a website entirely made by myself. One of the advantages of FTP is that it can be used to transfer files between systems even if the software being run is different between them. Unfortunately FTP also does not make use of encryption, meaning that any data that is sent through this protocol can be seen by anyone that can access it, such as passwords etc, though this problem has been solved somewhat by the addition of encryption to more recent versions of the FTP protocol.

MPI104 Final Assessment

Well it's time again for the assessment post and when it comes down to it, while I have learned how to do things that I couldn't before, I just really dislike being made to use websites that I don't have any real use for. Still, I have made a few minor changes to my blog throughout the course, and I have kept up with the class work instead of leaving it until the last minute like I did on the last lot.
Still, thanks to this subject I've managed to learn at least the basics of how to use iWeb to build a website, and also how to host it through Fetch, skills that could be carried over to be used in other similar software for website creation. Seen and learned how to make use of a few websites I didn't even know existed, namely Flickr, Delicious and Technorati. All of them offer a different service that people can make use of, however the uses they have a rather limited in who would make use of them. For example I don't make use of Delicious as I don't need to use other computers often enough that I would need to cart my bookmarks along, and any sites I might visit I already know the url for. Likewise Flickr offers a service that I already got from the Deviantart website. However they do along for a wider variety if people prefer the services they offer over similar ones from other sites.
Well that's pretty much it for the moment so I'll be signing off for now and hope that my assessments go well.