Discussion Forums and Blogs.

Discussion forums tend to give a feeling that everyone in welcome to add their own thoughts and opinions. Forums allow anyone to start a discussion about anything and wait to get a response by anyone viewing that forum. Discussion forums are usually helpful because the person looking at your discussion is often interested in it and are likely to give constructive critics or advance, rather than start a slanging match because they don’t like what you have to say!


Blogs still allow you to comment on the post but it is less open for discussion like forums. The blog is usually written by one person who has researched a topic on the internet and added information from different sources. Blogs often come from one individual or in some cases, a team of people if it is for business.


“In the context of business communication, these are often used to talk with the marketplace and to join the conversation that existing external bloggers may be having” - Jeremiah Owyang, Columnist for Forbes CMO Network.

Email and IM

Emailing is a way of communicating by exchanging messages across the internet.  Emailing is a quick way of sending information to whoever you want. An advantage of emailing is that you can communicate with people quickly no matter where they are.

Although there are many advantages of using email services, there are some disadvantages too.  Emailing allows you too attach files and images which can be seen as a plus side to using email but that feature allows people to add viruses /malicious malware to the email.

Instant messaging is usually seen as a fun way of keeping up with friends and sending files to each other. Most instant messaging services only allow you to send a short message. IM has a few advantages over email. For example, you don’t get junk mail. Like Email, it is possible for other contacts to send you malicious files which can harm your pc.

Personally, I use email more than IM because I find it more convenient as it doesn’t require you both to be online at the same time.

MMS - Multimedia Messaging Service

MMS is similar to SMS in the way it allows people to communicate by sending messages. However, SMS is just a simple way to send a short message to a contact, whereas MMS allows you to send images, sound, text pages and videos.

MMS was first used in Japan when camera phones first come out. At first there were a few technical difficulties in opening the picture message that you had received because it was in a different format to what the phone would usually be compatible with. 

****I found it quite difficult to get information MMS that I could understand. If anyone can give me some help in understanding this, please write some info

MY WONDERFUL WORK...With a bit of help from Julian, of course.

This is what I created today in Julian's lesson. To create this I used Photoshop CS4 and followed a tutorial on Youtube. I found it very interesting and learnt some new techniques. The technique that I think will be most useful is the gradient tool to create a 3D effect.

..Making our lovely college website!

Today we spent an hour and a half on our college website assignment. We didn't want all 4 of us trying to do the same thing so we split what we had to do up, making it easier to get our work done. Sophie was in charge of the story boarding. She also made a flow chart which showed the buttons we would have on our website. Louis was working on Flash to get more of an idea on how our website would work. Josh was using Adobe Premier to edit the video's we got from students around college. I started to make a photoshop mock-up which would show the home page of our interactive wesbite. I used Google earth to get a birds eye view of the college. At the moment I am still at college and because only the minority of the computers in college have Adobe Software on them I cannot complete the mock-up until I get home. I will definitely be finishing this tonight as tommorow our group will be showing Julian what we have done so far and I don't think a simple mock-up will be too impressive! I think today went really well in general, although I wasn't too happy with the quality of the image I was using from Google Earth. I'm really pleased how our group is working together and I'm sure the end result will show how much effort everyone has put in to it.

Revolting ART + DESIGN

Be daring, be different,
Be all you can be but have integrity, imagination and purpose.
Believe in what you do.
Don’t be a slave to mediocrity or convention but contribute something new and exciting and different.
Everything else is just about being the same.
- 

Ross Cleaver, Creative Director of Revolting Art +Design

LEARNING - What we should be doing at college, right?!

I read Sophie's post and learnt that GPRS was developed to try and help 2G with the speed it can send and receieve data. GPRS allows you to be receiving information as well as being on the phone at the same time.
In 2000, GPRS was released, it was known under something called phase one, phase one only allowed you to send information to one device at a time. GPRS is hoping to bring out phase 2 which will allow you to send information to more than one device at a time.

Thank you Sophie for helping me understand what GPRS is about.

If i have made any mistakes, don't hesitate to correct me :)

>> 3G << This took me ages.. so READ!!!

3G technology  first started in 2000, since then it has become more and more popular. In 2000, 3G was a completely new technology out, it was not linked to 2G technology. As it was something new on offer it started off with a few problems. 3G’s biggest problem was that it was extemely expensive.  In order for 3G to work, new networks had to be built which added to the cost. After a year of getting 3G together, Japan launched 3G in 2001.

3G allows network providers to offer their  customers more. For instance, people with 3G on their mobile phones can video call. Other advantages include having the internet wirelessly whenever you need it. 3G systems provide quick internet access to all kinds of data like map and positioning services. 3G can be used for whatever you choose whether it’s multi-player gaming or even shopping whilst you are sitting at home.  (obviously being able to shop 24/7 is my favorite feature of 3G!!)

Although 3G is now being put onto even the most basic phones, it wasn’t like that the entire time. 3G was only a feature which was added to smart phones such as the iPhone, Blackberry and other brands which sell more advanced mobile phones.

Interviewing

At college today we had to interview students about how they feel they are getting on at Weymouth College. I arranged the interviews at the weekend so it made it easier to get the videoing completed more quickly. We used the equipment which we booked out for today which was a small video camera, tripod, spare battery, microphone and a wind protector. We did the majority of our videoing in the student lounge whilst it was quiet this morning but we also did some filming in the performing arts department and in the college square. We got all of the interviews done we wanted which was good because we had only booked the equipment out for one day. Also, we uploaded the video's onto the computer which allows us to get editing shortly. We will be importing our files on to Adobe Premiere and getting them ready so that they can be used on our website.

WAP and GSM

WAP is an application communication protocol which is used to access services and information. WAP is for mobile phones and other hand-held devices. It is a protocol designed for micro browsers (a small piece of software that makes minimal demands on hardware, memory and CPU.) which allows you to create web applications for mobile devices. HTML, XML and TCP/IP) are the internet standards which WAP standard is based on. 

WAP can be used for many different things, such as checking weather conditions, purchasing tickets, looking up addresses and even looking up sport results as well as many other things. WAP is good as it provides people with a service which they can use wherever they are, this allows you to get information quickly.

GSM (global system for mobile communications) is used all over the world to allow people to roam between mobile network operators. GSM can be used for practical and every day services. GSM offers more than other network technologies and offers users a wider international roaming capability. GSM uses digital technology and is a second-generation [2G] cell phone system.

Mobile network T-Mobile uses GSM technology for its cell phone network. This allows T-Mobile users to access information and services whenever they need to.

Some of the advantages of using GSM include: 

.A stable network which had robust features.

. You’re more likely to maintain a good amount of signal inside a building

. GSM covers virtually all parts of the world so international roaming is not a problem.

Using a forum on Moodle

Today I added my own discussion to Moodle about saving files in different formats on Photoshop. I got positive feed back and other students thought my post was helpful. I also commented on other discussions and gave my opinion on what they had to say. I found the forum useful as it allowed me to communicate with other people in the class without having to speak to the face-to-face. I will definitely be adding some more posts to the forum and if I ever find something difficult I will definitely be asking for help!

W3C - Important Information

What important information from W3C will you now concider before you produce a website?

I learnt that W3C develops guidelines which allows the web to be accessible for all, dispite disabilities and conditions which may make it harder for someone to use the web. Before looking at the W3C website I didn't even think about how websites need to be created to accommodate all people, I just imagined that only people like myself, who doesnt have any disabilities would use the web.

Before you make a website it is important to concider that all different types of people will be using the web, for example, here are some factors which will need to be focused on.

 color blindness

stress injury

blind people

dyslexia

aging-related conditions

 cognitive disability

deaf people

Getting together the Proposal and Treatment

Today we started off by having a discussion on the proposal and treatment for our website. To do this we broke down what we had to do into smaller sections which allowed us to get a brief schedule which could later have more detail added to it. As we are working in a group of 4 we thought it would be best to split up into pairs when we needed to get information. As a group we decided what we wanted our website to look like and as a result we needed to get images of the college buildings. We got these images today and uploaded them onto the computer. This will allow us to edit them and get onto the next step in our schedule.

Group Discussion for college website

Today we got into our groups and had a discussion on some ideas which would be good for our Weymouth College website. We had a range of ideas but decided on one idea which we thought would be the strongest. In tomorrows lesson we have decided that we want to get a booking form filled out so that we can take out a video camera which we would use to interview a range of different students around the college. We are also going to use still images on our website which we will take on 2 cameras, bought into college from home. We are hoping to get the still images onto the computer tomorrow as well so they are ready to be edited and used on our website.