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.

Week 10

Well this week we took a look at the website Technorati. It's a website that catalogs blogs on the internet once they're registered with them, allowing them to be searched through but people that visiti the site. This means that people are able to find blogs that are relevant to their interests a lot more easily than if they were to search for them through the use of a search engine such as Google. The only problem that can really arise from this site though is if the blog is not registered with Technorati then it can not be brought up by the site in it's search feature, meaning that many can't make use of this site to get their own blog more publicity.

CSS/Templates

CSS makes it much easier for people to adjust their web pages without the need for extensive knowledge of html and without the need to change each individual line of html within the source code. This allows for the changes to be made rapidly and can easily be applied to many different pages at once in the process.
A template is able to change the layout of the entire webpage but only within the limits of what the teplate has been made to handle, this makes them very flexible when making the template but fairly rigid once they have been created.
Accessability is a very important thing to keep in mind when deciding how to set out a website as it allows for people who have a disability such as having difficulty in seeing to be able to make use of the website if it had, for example, parts that were based in audio.

Well here goes the assessment post. So far in this topic I have to admit that I have not done very much, partially because I have a bad habit of procrastination that I really need to break, and partly because some of the things that are asked of me simply do not fit with who I am.

In regards to blogger I have done almost nothing, the only posts that are up there are the ones that were explicitly required by the course pretty much with a grand total of 5 posts once this one goes up, I had actually forgotten that I even had a blog during the holiday break. The aesthetics haven't really changed, I looked at some of the other options but decided to just stick with my original one. Likewise I have not really commented on other blogs since, once again, I didn't even remember having this to begin with, and besides that I tend to just remain anonymous when I'm online, very rarely do I poke my head out to give comment or post on a site. I have recently left a comment on Gatt's blog though it currently cannot be viewed as it is awaiting approval.

As for delicious, once again I have only done what was required at the minimum, I have not needed it since any website that I have needed to access elsewhere I have had memorized or it was to check something on a site that had already been accessed on the computer, e.g. youtube. I have added the majority of the classes blogs to the list, as well as a ew sites that I frequent, namely this, this and this.

And flickr has been abandoned in favor of the tried and true Deviantart for me. I have put up 6 of the pieces that I have done which is the limit of the images that I have really looked at on the site so if you really wanted to see my fav images on flickr at this point in time simply visit my flickr page.

Well that's about it, hopefully I don't fail too miserably at this, and I'll be trying my best not to leave it until the last minute like this again.

More catch up

Well here is the post with links to three other sites that share the same principle as delicious. They are: digg.com
www.reddit.com
www.stumbleupon.com

I didn't give myself the time to look at these due to my truly terrible procrastination skills but really they are essentially the same thing as delicious, so I can't see there being that much difference between them all.