Firstly, we learnt about FTP and & Athene, basically FTP stands for 'File Transfer Protocol'. This is a software tool used to share files through a computer network; such as the Internet. There are four main intentions of FTP, they are:
* to promote sharing of files (computer programs and/or data).
* to encourage indirect or implicit use of remote computers
* to shield a user from differences in file storage systems among various hosts.
* to transfer data reliably, and efficiently.
In order to see how this worked, we created a Word Document with a few images, and then used a Software Program called 'Fetch' to upload the page onto the CSU server; known as Athene. It was really easy to see how FTP works through this means, as it demonstrated to us that even though you may not have web development and creation software (such a iWeb or Adobe Dreamweaver etc), anyone with access to Word could simply create a page for the Internet.
We began to create our web pages through iWeb and found this to be quite an in depth program, very user friendly and easy to use. I have previously created a web page in Dreamweaver, however the iWeb program was easier to work with as it does a lot of the work for you! Its mainly a layout and typography based program, all the user seems to have to do is add colours, fonts and images, whilst iWeb automatically creates the links between pages!
This lead us to the RSS and Counters section in the course. I personally really liked this part of the course, as I had never really understood the concept of RSS and it was explained and demonstrated very easily and logically! RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication' and what it does is even cooler! It is a 'family of web feed formats' that are constantly updating and refreshing as new content is added to the internet site of interest. So how it works? You go to your favourite site, and check if it has an RSS symbol (as pictured) in the URL (the typed web address) bar. You simply click this, and it will become one of the RSS feeds you are able to see. Your computer stores this (usually under the 'Favourites' Tab) on your computer.
You can take this one step further by adding feeds to your own blog pages. You do this by following the top steps, and once you click the RSS button and get the new URL, then if you're using 'Blogger' you can simply add a 'Feed' to your Blog page...and its all done! The information shown is always up to date, this would be great for someone wanting to keep up to date with the latest trends, news, music...the list goes on. Yet another trick is to turn this into JavaScript and add feeds to your own webpage! I simply used a Feed 2 JS website to write the HTML code for me, then added it to my web page as a 'HTML snippet'.
The counters were also quite interesting! I think they are a great idea to keep an eye on how much traffic you have visit your website! This would be particularly valuable to a business' website so that they could make sure their business/products/services were being advertised and marketed correctly. I had fun with this part of the lesson, and am quite happy with the counters on my Blog and Athene Webpage.
We then learnt about a website called Technorati, which is one of the most annoying websites I think I have ever had the displeasure of using! Definately not a site I would voluntarily use! It was quite complex at times to navigate around and the functionality of the site is quite... well useless in my opinion! Ok, perhaps a bit harsh of me to say! Basically its a search engine that searches through blogs and then gives them a rank and an authority. In class we tried to gain some kind of rank and some authority and pretty much failed miserably! I am not sold on this idea of Technorati yet, but something tells me that I will get the hang of it at some stage!!
After all this learning, all that was left to do was create a web page! My Web Page has 7 different pages including:
* Home
* About Me
* My Designs
* Favourite Photos
* Blog
* RSS Feed - Deviant Art, MPI104, Apple
* Contact Me
I think I have created an appealing site, what do you think?
I am looking forward to my next Multimedia subject as I think with the World of technology we are ever changing and constantly upgrading! So bring it on I say!
Sarah
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