Reading Comment for Week 11 Readings (Since I was confused about not having 10 reading scores already)

Obviously I think that Wiki's are an extremely tool and asset to all people but most likely in the workplace. I think a majority of my classmates will agree with me. It seems that it would be a no brainer to have all information and data stored in one particular place without ever needing to be moved. This would cut down on the loss of data and streamline the editing process. I do however see a couple of setbacks to this. For one, anything can be edited by anyone as long as some rules are followed. Therefore, we don't actually know what the source is behind the data we are reading and if it is reliable or not. This is why most of my papers throughout my college career were not allowed to use Wikipedia as a source, as layed out by the professors. Also, there would still need to be collaboration in the workplace so that a particular piece of data is not being edited by two different people at the same time. However, even with the minor drawbacks a Wiki can be a very valuable asset.

Muddiest Point Week 10 For My Last Point of the Semester

We stated in lecture that search engines return data in a ranked order of similarity. Obviously there are algorithms that do this quickly. However, we also stated that this can be changed to return data ranked by anything such as authod, date, etc.... I guess what I'm muddy about is how the user goes about doing this in the search engine such as Google? Is there an option somewhere that lets you determine how articles are ranked and returned???

Homework #6 (WEBSITE)

Here is the link to my personal website for homework #6:

http://www.pitt.edu/~swb5

Muddiest Point, Readings, and Comment (All in 1 Post)

Muddiest Point (Week 9):

I am confused as to what the advantage is of using XML over HTML, or if there is even much of a difference? Specifying all of these separate tags, created via the user, only seem beneficial if we were going to have other machines read our file?? Other than that, it would seem much simpler to write in HTML. I hope this is not completely confusing or off base.


Readings for Week 10:

The speed and effectiveness at which search engines work is absolutely astonishing to me. I never understood how they could return so many web pages in such a short period of time before I read these articles, in particularly the piece about “crawler machines”. Actually, even after reading that it is still almost baffling how it takes but a few seconds for a search engine to scan billions of web pages. Even more so is the fact that they can eliminate duplicate pages so that the return is not polluted with the same data over and over. I wonder with the few search engines there are, and with their stranglehold on the market, have engines reached their plateau? Meaning is it even beneficial for a company or individual to try and compete with the likes of Google and Yahoo? Also, is there any room for advancement?? It seems as if they are as good as they can be, as fast as possible, I’m not sure how or why resources would be invested to improve them. However, There must be something to it with Google releasing the new Google Chrome so I guess time will tell.


For Zhen : Comment for Week 10:

I commented in the Technical Discussion board this week in Susan and Jennifer’s thread. See it here:

https://courseweb.pitt.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_9047_1%26url%3D

Muddiest Point, Readings, and Comment (All in 1 Post)

Muddiest point (Week 8):

I don’t understand why we would want or need to use the meta tag in the header. We say that the data is not displayed on the screen for people to see so why even put it in there?? I understand the machines can read it but how is that going to benefit anything?


Thoughts on Readings for week 9:

Ok, I’ll start out by saying that I am very unfamiliar to XML before and after reading these passages. I guess you can say I know more after than before but wouldn’t want to proclaim myself as a pro. From the readings I seem to gather that XML is closely related to HTML judging by the snippets of code that have been provided on the sites. It does seem however that XML would be more proactive, meaning that it knows that coders and users will make mistakes and it helps correct or flag those mistakes. I think it is also very important and a great feature that it helps documents be compatible across platforms and any other variables that may be different from system to system. That being said, it seems that XML would be the way to go for a serious developer or user, even though it seems a bit more complicated to learn and use compared to the HTML language.



For Zhen: Comment for week 9:

Zhen, I commented on Peter’s blog regarding HTML. See this here…

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4619180577856147392&postID=5538865292843294899&page=1

Homework 5: (Koha Book Shelf)

Here is the link to my Koha shelf:

http://pitt4.kohawc.liblime.com/cgi-bin/koha/bookshelves/shelves.pl?viewshelf=7

Muddiest Point, Readings, and Comment (All in 1 Post)

Muddiest point (Week 7):

In the slides we show that the web is growing at 25% per month. That absolutely astounds me thinking about how big the “internet” can really be. Which brings me to my question/statement, Is there a limit on this thing we call the web? Is there a point that we can get to and be like, ok, that’s it we can’t grow anymore? It kind of boggles your mind if you think about it, will it ever stop?


Thoughts on Readings for week 8:

After this weeks readings and noticing our last assignment, I am pretty excited in thinking that we get to design our own web page. I learned very minimal HTML like four years ago in my freshman year here at PITT. It was really neat to me, and actually fun to do for school. As I went through the HTML cheat sheet, I want to let anyone know that reads this to keep that handy. I’m not sure what our assignment will consist of but I think without a doubt that will be your best asset to get it completed. One thing I do remember however is that it is kind of difficult to program HTML and make it look smooth and professional. The layouts need to be chosen, buttons moved, pictures and what not so keep that in mind while working with it. Another thing people may not know is that you if you go to any website and click view at the top, and then click on “view source”, you can see the HTML layout for that particular web page. A lot of times it is very confusing because most websites are so elaborate but none the less, that is the code.


For Zhen: Comment for week 8:

Zhen, I commented on Jake’s Blog regarding the Homework that is due tomorrow. See it here…

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=633484337573796975&postID=5872372284220813288&page=1

Assignment 4 (Screencast video and images using JING)

I did this assignment on showing students how to use their PITT FTP account (most don't even know they have one)

Instructional Video Link : http://www.screencast.com/users/SBell929/folders/Default/media/f0c68721-3b57-43f7-9955-017f9673c25b

Annotated Image #1: http://www.screencast.com/users/SBell929/folders/Default/media/49d6269c-4d14-40e7-9412-7b7aaf38f283

Annotated Image #2: http://www.screencast.com/users/SBell929/folders/Default/media/b485c34e-54c6-4a17-bc44-3ec54c86e072

Annotated Image #3: http://www.screencast.com/users/SBell929/folders/Default/media/9d02e83d-8207-4404-9fab-435cb7dcc292

Annotated Image #4: http://www.screencast.com/users/SBell929/folders/Default/media/b9465df5-ecbf-40c8-bf34-03f4751d2159

Annotated Image #5: http://www.screencast.com/users/SBell929/folders/Default/media/422f04bd-38e6-4680-a1ba-7252801d0cd4

Muddiest Point, Readings, and Comment all in 1 post.

Muddiest point (Week 6):

My muddiest point for this week concerns Homework 4 which is due on Tuesday, October 7. I think I understand that our video is recorded by Jing on our desktop or any piece of software that we choose. My question is to whether our instructional video needs to have audio (i.e. us talking/instructing), or if that is an optional feature.



Thoughts on Readings for week 7:

My main interest was on the internet article from HowItWorks.com. That website is extremely useful, not just in IT related material but if you need tips on how to do/how anything works. With myself being a Computer Engineer and loving to take IS classes, I didn’t need the website to tell me how totally awesome the internet is. After reading Digital Divide articles for the last homework, it’s so amazing at the gap in knowledge from person to persona bout things like the internet. It’s hard when you think about it, to comprehend how a piece of information can go from your fingertips to someone’s eyes half way around the world in a matter of mere seconds. For anyone that thinks the internet is just a fad and they don’t need to learn it (older generations), one statistic just needs to be shown to understand the size of the net. That is that we are currently using IPv4 IP addresses which can account for say a little over 4.2 BILLION different addresses! Now the kicker, We may be at some point going to run out!!! That is why we the IPv6 has been created to be its successor. Its address space is enormous that would provide us with ten billion billion billion times as many addresses as IPv4!! The internet my friends, is mind boggling.



For Zhen: Comment for week 7:

I commented on Nicole Plana’s topic of RFID technology as well as the other posts there. This is in the General Discussions section of the Discussion Board.

Homework #3 URL (CiteULike and Zotero)

Here is the link to my Homework #3 library at CiteULike.

http://www.citeulike.org/user/SBell929

Muddiest Point, Readings, and Comment all in 1 post.

Muddiest point (Week 5):

If ASCII stands for American Standard Code Information Interchange, what does the rest of the world use? I was assuming it was ASCII as well since it might get extremely confusing trying to communicate with several different standards, at least confusing for the respective machines anyway.


Thoughts on Readings for week 6:

At the moment I am currently working in the IT Unit at my internship at the Ellwood Group Inc. headquartered in New Castle, PA. Therefore, as I was reading the articles I can relate to and appreciate each and every network that has been developed. I mean lets face it, without LAN's and WAN's etc, there is no internet, and life right now would be very very different if they had not been invented. We would basically still be living in the 70's, no questions asked. I think the coolest of the networks are that of the Personal Area Networks. How neat is it that us as a person, can have our own little network set up around us within about a 20 foot circle. You may not think about how your Bluetooth headset communicates with your phone, or how you communicate with your laptop via bluetooth (nor do we have too), but the PAN technology is the answer. I bet there are alot of soldiers who appreciate having a personal area network in the field for laptops, information, and headsets. Overall, networks in general are becoming faster and faster and I'm not sure there is an end in sight. Then again we could still be using Dial-Up to connect to the internet if not for developments over the past 20 years, so who really cares if there is an end in sight anyway??


For Zhen: Comment for week 6:

Zhen, I commented on Jenelle Elmquist's question regarding Assignment three.

Muddiest Point of the Muddiest Point (Week 4):

I was confused on the point of being able to run 2 different operating systems on the same machine. I realize that you can pick which one you want to boot up and lose just the hard drive space that the OS occupied, butI am more curious about the actual files and programs. Would these files and programs be Operating System specific or would any place on the hard drive be available for use by either OS. If that was the case I would think there would be compatibility issues if both were not kept exclusive from one another.

Thoughts on Readings for Week 5

I myself think that data compression is very cool, with a perfect example of that being the online museum with images of Pittsburgh in the past. Now granted anyone could travel to a museum and see the same images in person, but think of how cool it is that we can leaf through 100's of years of history with the click of a button. None of that ofcourse is possible without the use of data compression to get these photos uploaded to the web. YouTube is another fine example that is used in the readings of data compression, which I use quite frequently myself. There is a wealth of data information uploaded to YouTube waiting to be used by anyone that wants it. I never took into consideration it being beneficial for a library to use such as suggested, but now that I read that I can definitely see how it could benefit me as a student.

On a side note, the only thing that sometimes irks me about doing data compression is like when I tried to compress my digital photos. My photos were so huge that were taken by my camera that compressing them into a thumbnail sized photo caused considerable data loss. I determined that this could be considered lossy compression after reading these articles.

For Zhen : Comment for week 5

Zhen, I posted an answer to Margaret and Theresa's question reguarding the flickr assignment in the Technical Discussion board for my discussion/comment point.

For Zhen: Comment for Week 4

Zhen, I commented on Dom's blog which can be found here.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7391116961538719622&postID=3358624845408819742

Thoughts on Readings for Week 4

To be completely honest, before reading these articles I had no clue what the term Metadata even meant. Then when I read the one definition, "Metadata is data about data", I was thoroughly confused. Looking back after reading I'm not sure what was so confusing about that statement, its just data, about data. Perhaps what brought it to understanding was where they mentioned the metadata users make for pictures, such as headings and descriptions. Thus, during the Flickr assignment, we created metadata. It was just data, i.e. the heading and descriptions, about the data, i.e. the pictures that we uploaded. Thus I realized how very important to everyone metadata really is. Without it, we would not know what any data in the world contained until we read through it in its entirety. Much like databases, metadata provide us with a sort of filing system, or at the very least a heading to make life easier in the world of data. Without metadata and databases, much time and effort would be wasted just in the organization and finding of data before we even began to use it.

Muddiest Point Week 3

I never understood why a portion of the hard drive is designated as virtual memory. Don't get me wrong I realize it is a very small portion of the drive itself, however, wouldn't it to be just as easy to have more ram installed, or install a larger piece of ram to begin with?

For Zhen (Regarding Week 3 Comment Point)

Zhen, After sending you the previous email, I realized that I was at fault. I was confused as too what week we were on and as to when a comment was to for its respective week. I now see that comments are due by Mondays and that I only had two comments up on my blog. Therefore I posted a response to Lori Ridenour's post in the Digitization forum as to whether digitization was worth it or not. I realize this is a day late, figured I would post anyway to see if I could still get the point for my blunder.

Flickr Link (Assignment #2)

I uploaded all Thumbnails to the site. This was a problem because my digital camera takes enormous pictures with the setting I use. Some are even in the format of 16x9 so that I can make DVD's of my pictures. Therefore when I resized my enormous pictures it was hard for the photo editor to compress them into a thumbnail with becoming grainy. Therefore some of my pictures appear a little blurry, as well as being able to tell the different formats.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30331233@N07/?find=sbell929%40aol.com

Thoughts on the Readings for Week 3

The readings on the operatings systems Windows, Mac, and Linux are pretty interesting. I will start by saying that I am a PC user, always have been, probably always will be. I do not believe that a PC is better than a Mac, or vice versa, or any other operating system for that matter. Thats just what I've always used and am fluent at using it. I absolutely hate sitting down at a Mac or a Red Hat machine on campus because to be honest, I don't know what I'm doing and it takes me forever to accomplish anything. This is what I believe is most people's train of thought. Thus, I don't think that Microsoft's Windows will go away anytime in the near future. It may be replaced by Mac OS at some point as the generations grow up and pass on. However, I do not see, Linux in our Case, making any progress in peoples day to day lives. The user friendliness of the OS just isn't there as in its counterparts. I have come to realize that most people don't like drastic changes.

Anyway, this is just my opinion and what I was thinking when I read these articles. Feel free to disagree because I know there are many many people out there who do. I am just one person that Windows has hooked for life.

For the TA's

For week 2 I posted a Technical Question/Discussion for my discussion point on the discussion board.

Muddiest Point of week 2 class

Muddiest Point (Week 2):

The clock speed inside of a computer is utterly amazing. I was just wondering what is used, or how it is that this speed is measured? Also, for chip manufacturers, is there a range that is acceptable for a chip that is declared to be operating at 1GHz speed? I am sure that these speeds are not exact so I was just thinking of how much leeway a chip manufacturer would have?

Reading Thoughts For Week 2 Readings

I am posting my thoughts on the week 2 readings now because I was confused (as suggested by my muddiest point) on when our thoughts should be posted. Turns out they need to be posted on friday, before week 2 actually arrives. So here it comes now, with week 3's comments to follow soon.

My only real thought on these readings, obviously, is on Moore's Law. To me its not really a law, its more of an observation, but not the less a very good. It just boggles my mind that every two years the number of transistors on a chip and the storage of hardware doubles. As stated in the article, this trend seems to be more of a self fulfilling prophecy than an actual trend. Its like you learn in economics, If someone of importance suggests or mentions that something may happen, people in general will work hard to make sure that it does happen. So who knows, maybe we could gone over doubling everything in two years, say quadruple everything. However, maybe I'll see in my lifetime when technology just runs out of room and engineers can no longer accomplish, and fall short of Moore's law. Will this be considered a failure? Will it happen? I guess time will tell.

For the TA's

I commented in the Technical Discussion section of the Discussion board. I tried to give an answer to Joyce's question. Not sure if I assisted or not but should be good for the 1%.

Reading Thoughts and Muddiest Point (Week 1)

To start off, here is my MUDDIEST POINT: First and foremost is the deadlines for readings and assignments. To my understanding the assignments have to be done by class start on Tuesday, which includes the reading thoughts. The due date is 9/2. The readings however I think have to be read by Friday, and as stated in class commented on by then as well?? Therefore do we have two separate due dates for the same assignment/discussion/thought????

Reading Thoughts: The articles make valid points for both the information technology industry as well as how libraries are adapting to them. The truth is, if libraries do not adapt with the times, they will obviously become (I believe) obsolete. Our libraries here at Pitt have done an exceptional job of making almost all of their material available online to us. Through all of this though, It still brings me to the thought of Who is actually going, physically, into the libraries now?? I know I do not. Not saying that is good or bad. I know some people do just for the sheer love of reading and books, but when it comes right down to it, if I can do something from the comfort of the web or with my available technology, that is more and more how it is done. I believe even as libraries change and adapt to provide the technology in house, students/people have the same opportunity outside of the library walls.

My 2600 Blog

My Intro to IT Blog is up and running. I think.