Cloud Computing

If you are reading this, you most likely already know what cloud computing is, so  I will discuss the importance in my field. For starters, having all your information stored on your “cloud” to be able to access anywhere you have a internet connection is amazing! not only is it nice to have everything availble no matter where you are but think of the space you would save instead of downloading or installing it on your computer. Computers are also prone to crashing where you can lose your precious applications. Just think how this can effect international buisnesses! Instead of having to have several central servers for each department or branch, they could run everything by cloud computing and they would have all they need as long as they have a internet connection! People joke about making million dollar deals through their Iphones, well this sure makes it easier. Buisness people on the go can use their phones with internet to log on and do buisness from any where they are…million dollar deals fro the phone! From what I could tell this is something that is still in the process of trying to catch on but when it does it will be huge!

http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/web-20-and-cloud-computing.html

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/579826

http://www.newsweek.com/id/166738

Web Standards

What is this I am bringing up?? Wikipedia defines it as “a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web”. If your interested,here is a link for the official internet standards ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/std/std1.txt.  To me having to follow a certain protocol or standards while using the web is smart. if not any and every crack pot will do things their own way and its tough luck on everyone else.  Having standards means that people as a whole can use the internet and most internet applications. if there were no standards of how things should be conducted, what one thing might work for someone, it wont work for the next. As web designers we have to try to make our sites as accessible as possible to as many people as possible and if there were no standards to follow how would we know who to cater to so to speak? The only concern here is who is controlling these standards? it seems that the more i research things the more i see how much the government is controlling. I am not into big brother conspiracy but seriously we can not let everything in our lives be taken over by the government. Where will they stop? Random rantng i know.

ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/std/std1.txt

http://www.robertnyman.com/2007/05/21/what-are-web-standards-a-comprehensive-explanation-of-what-is-comprised-in-the-term/

http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/checklist.htm

Twitter

Twitter is pretty much facebook status’s and thats all. You can set up to use your phone to text updates, to recieve all updates or certain peoples updates on your phone, when you recieve updates, if your “tweets” as they are called are posted on facebook or some other social networking site. Twitter can have many different uses but mostly is used between friends to keep eachother updated on what they are doing at the time. If you really stop and think about it though, it can be used for so much more. If you used twitter as a company you could send out a memo of sorts to all the employees, if your a business, a great new fast way to advertise,  or as web designers, a very fast way to keep up on the latest in the design world. you could have a twitter for nothing else except to network out to other designers and use it to help each other grow and learn the newest things in a design world. Its just one more thing that brings communities of designers together. If you had a problem you could send a tweet out saying “stuck on this” and someone could very quickly text back a answer to what you are doing. twitter is a very versatile tool that for right now is only being used as a fun way to keep in touch. i have seen a few businesses start to use it and send out promo coupons available on twitter only but not very many. Once people realize the potential twitter has, it will grow very quickly

http://prnonsense.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/twitter-in-step-with-society/

http://karenfreberg.com/blog/?p=699

http://momsathomemarketing.com/blog/work-at-home/654-tips-on-twitter-helping-you-make-more-money

Pods and Vods

This Post is about podcasting and vodcasting. Since im pretty sure we all know what they are im going to skip the definition and go straight to the point im trying to make about their usefulness. Now days, esp this generation, as a whole are very impatient, very “give it to me now” (no thats what she said jokes) type of people and that is where podcasting and vodcasting come in very useful. Instead of sitting there trying to read things and learn about things via text, through these different types you can actually interact so to speak with the information. It makes anything, in my personal opinion, more interesting. In my field of web design i have to keep that in mind, the goal is to keep and captivate people so that they will explore the site and also come back. People are much more likely to stay and watch a intresting looking video or a cool sounding podcast then trying to read all this text. There are so many different things you can do with podcasting and vodcasting and as designers we would be stupid not to realize their importance. There is only so much you can do to text to make it look creative but together with podcasting and vodcasting, your limits grow tremendously. You as the designer have a chance to be very creative and put a little of yourself into it.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/12/prweb486319.htm

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/podcasting.htm

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/07/20/WhatIsPodcasting.html

Communities of Practice

What is it? It is a group of individuals who gather together to share information and experiances to the others so that everyone can learn and grow from them. By researching this, I had to stop and ask myself why I didnt really think of this before. In highschool i just studied by myself and if i didnt know something that tough luck, i probablly wasnt going to get it right on the test. If I had gotten together with people then we all could have benifitted eachother and helped eachother instead of relying on our own individual skills and knowledge. This is very similar to the web 2.0 in the fact that for our industry this is huge, without having people you can turn to and sharpen your skills with so to speak, then you will get left behind and lost. But by helping eachother and contributing to these groups, we will survive and maybe even stay ahead of the rest of the design world.

 

 http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml

http://www.ewenger.com/theory/

http://www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm

Professional Blogging

So researching into this potential job oppurtinity was to say the least interesting. On one of the articles I read they made the point that in a few years blogging will be considered a fulltime job whereas it used to be considered a hobby. I personally dont think I could sit down and be a professional blogger because I need some more variety in my life, but I can certainly respect those who do, do it as a profession. The keys to being a successful blogger are more then just writing posts all the time. You have to research the topic you are blogging about, go comment on other blogs, to help get your name out and make sure you comment make when/if someone comments on your blog. If someone is just sittinging there writing a bunch of BS then obv people are not going to continue to go to your site and tell other peope to go to your site which is what it takes to be a successful blogger. now anyone can have a blog for fun where they put all of there random input and nonsense in a blog but that is not being a professional blogger, that is blogging for fun.

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/05/20/11-traits-of-successful-bloggers/

http://sunshinenjoy.blogspot.com/2007/04/if-blogging-were-profession.html

http://performancing.com/blogs/becoming-a-professional-blogger-was-never-as-easy-as-today

Collective Intelligence

Collective Intelligence is the gathering of information and compiling it usually within groups. It can be either gathering information about what you like, eat, drink, where you go, information taken from you through your cell phones, gps, ect. Or it can be a gathering of information voluntarilyfor the purposes of learning and growing together in whatever area you were in or looking for. This is both awesome and kind of scary for me. I love the fact that we are becoming more and more open with each other and are sharing our knowledge instead of trying to hoard it. I think thats amazing and thats how we all grow and make technology better but at the same time i do not like the thought of people “Snooping” into my personal life to find out what i like and things like that. It could very easily be the next version of telemarketers! Think about it, people or buisnessses could find out all this information about you and your personal life and turn and sell it to any company for them to have a better understanding of their market areas. Or in one of the articles it mentioned that insurances companies could use it to find out everything about you to see if they will cover you before they approve you. That doesnt really seem right to me. I am excited about collabrative collective intelligence because it will help me in my field by answering questions that i do not have the answers too but i am not excited about this potentially new advertising style.  

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/business/30privacy.html?_r=1

http://www.co-intelligence.org/CollectiveIntelligence1.html

http://www.co-intelligence.org/Collective_Intelligence.html

RSS?

Well there are several definitions of RSS. They are Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, and Really Simple Syndication. All this fancy wording really means is that RSS uses things called feeds which make it really easy and nice on web developers because we can gather these feeds and have them sent to 1 web site instead of trying to bookmark all the sites that we find fun, useful, or just interesting. It saves not just web developers, but everyone alot of time if people know how to use them and gather them in their aggregator so you can preview the information and see if its worth reading completly. Its a really quick and easy way of staying up to speed on the things you find important

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format))

http://www.whatisrss.com/

http://www.rss-specifications.com/what-is-rss.htm

P.S.E- Personal Learning Environment

What is a Personal Learning Environment (PSE). It took me the longest time to figure out what it is and really its in the name, its a learning environment that’s personal! Duh! What it is, is a way to learn that fits you, the learner. What do you want to learn and how are you going to learn it? You decide what it is you want to learn, and by gathering the tools on how you will learn that, you create your PSE. At first i wasn’t sure how i felt about it because it didn’t make much sense to me, but the more i thought about it, the more i agree with it. We are so used to just learning what the teachers feel are important and honestly that’s high-school, just memorizing and then as soon as the class or test is over, you forget it. That’s not really learning and I feel like with PSE, YOU decide what your learning and YOU know why its important for YOU so that way you will remember later on in the future.

http://www.prolearn-academy.org/Events/summer-school-2008/workshops/personal-learning-environment-ple-2013-a-new-learning-concept-or-a-new-learning-system/

http://www.psfk.com/2008/08/personal-learning-environments.html

http://www.knownet.com/writing/weblogs/Graham_Attwell/entries/6521819364

Web 2.0, What is it exactly?

What is Web 2.0? After doing a bit of research and reading a few articles, Web 2.0, to me means a more user friendly, interactive Internet. Instead of being closed off about products, in web 2.0, company’s will be offering alot more free applications such as widgets, bit torrent and things of that sort, which for us the users, that is very nice! We not only get to have these great applications available to us but we also get to contribute, customize them, put our own spin on things. So when I think of Web 2.0 I think of how it can effect and help people because it will be a whole bunch of people coming together and sharing what they have learned through life experiences, and I think the Web will be a better place because of it  

 

Sources

http://www.andybudd.com/presentations/dcontruct05/

http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/webbuilding/archives/page9344.cfm

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html