Final MPI104 Assessment Week 12 2010

I have learnt a large amount of new information while studying MPI104 this semester. I started not knowing anything about the interworking of the internet and internet sites and, as well as HTML and all the things you can use the internet for. First we learnt about HTML, using tags, codes and links, which I found a little confusing and overwhelming but I am not beginning to gain a better understanding of how this all works.

We also learnt how to use Google for more then just a search engine. We discovered many Google applications such as Google calendar, alerts, Gmail and more.
Each member of the class was also asked to create a blog. We were to use this blog to write posts on everything we had learnt. We learnt how to change the aesthetic appearance of the blog and add different elements. We were also taught how to add links to others blogs, comments and blog posts.

I started a Flickr and Delicious account and found both of these sites very interesting and useful. I am able to upload my own pictures and videos to filckr as well as view other members. I joined a couple to Flickr groups and chose some favourite photos and put these in to a favourite section. I also made groups for some of my own photos. Using delicious I am able to put all my favourite and regular websites in one spot. This is extremely useful as I am able to access this site on the internet wherever I am, making it easier to locate and quickly find websites. I continue to use both these sites.

We learnt about CSS and templates. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. We did research and found out information such as advantages and disadvantages. Because CSS allows separation of content from presentation, it gives easy access and flexibility for changing things such as fonts, colours and layout. Many things can be changed using templates, such as colours, font, background, sizes.
We also did a similar exercise for FTP and Web publishing, researching and sourcing information about advantages, disadvantages and uses.
We were also taught how to use Technorati. Technorati is referred to as a blog digest. You sign up and claim your blog. This increases the popularity and visibility of you blog.

I learnt how to use RSS feeds and add these to my blog, as well as how to create an Athene account through the University and how to create a webpage to place on this site using iweb. I also added a counter to my Athene page and my blog and worked on the aesthetics.

There was a lot to learn and take in during this course and I did enjoy learning how to use the internet and different sites which can make technology a bit easier. It all seemed rather confusing and overwhelming at times as I am quite technologically challenged, however I feel I am become better them more I use and discover about computers and the internet.

Technorati

Technorati is referred to as a blog digest. You sign up and claim your blog. This increases the popularity and visibility of you blog. It searches blogs and looks at the amount of activity on this blog. Technorati ranks blogs using Authority. Authority is based on the number of unique blogs indexed by Technorati that have linked to your blog in a certain amount of days. The more blogs you have linked to your blog the better or more popular the rating.

I can see the possible benefits of this site, however I find it all very confusing!

FTP and Web Publishing

Uses and Positives

FTP(File transfer Protocol) is an easier way of setting up websites. FTP is a standard network protocol used to copy a file from one host to another.

It doesn't need different end host configurations eg. operating systems and file names. This makes working with the program a lot easier then some others.

Another positive is that it is used with a user based password authentication, making it safer to use.

Negatives and risks

There can be many safety concerns when working with any program on the internet. Some security risks which FTP faced were:

Bounce Attacks
Spoof Attacks
Brute force attacks
Sniffing
User name protection
Port stealing

Another negative is that FTP is difficult to tunnel over SSH.
These problems can be minimized by employing encryption tools.

We learnt how to make a web page using FTP, Fetch and Word. I learnt how to use the fetch program, I still need practice as we have just started using this program in class and I do not have much prior knowledge of web pages or creating working we pages and putting them on the internet. This was quite interesting to learn about and sometimes difficult. It took me a little while to understand the process and get things such as links working.
However I learnt that this is a simple method for making web pages and will be very useful to use.

Here is a link to my web page that I created while learning to use this program.

Web page