Overall, I found this course suitably challenging and thought provoking. I have enjoyed it very much and think it will place me in good stead for my future semester and subsequent years at university. It has opened my eyes and introduced me to such new topics as semiotics, with which I had never encountered before beginning the course. I thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing the essay and I also looked forward to going to the tutorial every week.
Thanks
Friday
Microsoft Excel
I found this tutorial far more challenging then the word one. Having used excel during school in accounting I thought that I had a reasonable grasp of it. Unfortunately, no. I had some trouble mastering the Gain/Loss formula, and then, after twenty minutes trying, it still wouldn't work. The advanced exercises in macros were just as difficult. However, I use excel when i do up my budget for the month, as well as at the end of every month when I work out my spendings in comparison with earnings and subsequently savings. So, i think that i will use formula's more now and it will make my life a bit easier, and doing my general journal a bit quicker. Furthermore, I think that now I will jump onto some of the tutorials in the help section of excel.
Microsoft Word
I found this exercise really great. I had always seen the track changes being used on documents but had no idea how to do it myself. As well as this I had never before used mail merge so it was a good function to learn as well. This software has many obvious uses that would be of help to me. I can see myself using track changes quite a bit when proofreading my assignments and as well, the next time I write an email for a job application, I think that I will use mail merge. It would no doubt help people in many industries to learn these functions, most particularly, secretaries, hotel clerks, receptionists and accountants clerks off of the top of my head. I already knew how to use all of the other basic functions that the tutorial showed us.
3D chat rooms in comparison to Instant Messenger (msn)
This week required me to compare and contrast 3D chat environments and instant messenger programs. Having used windows messenger for some years now, I feel as though i have a fairly good grasp of it, however in regards to the 3D chat rooms, I have never experienced them. That was, not until the tutorial in which we were given a lesson to explore them. I tried three; Active Worlds, IM and Habbo Hotel. The first one, Active Worlds was much like a game interface where you could navigate a character around a 'world' and talk to anyone you liked. You could fly, swim underwater a run really fast. I didn't stay in it for long, but just the interface itself got me wondering. I thought that perhaps it could become an alternate universe for some people. A place where they could be cool if they wanted, change what they looked like, run super fast or do pretty much whatever they wanted. Obviously, it is a lot harder to do this in an instant messenger program like windows live because the people that you are talking to are generally your friends, not just 'some randoms' that you might have 'met' in a virtual reality. The second one that I used was IM, and it was much the same, from what i could gather, as windows live messenger, except that you could create a virtual avatar and do some other little things. The third, Habbo Hotel was i little different. I remember playing Pokemon once and the interface reminded me of that. The graphics weren't very good but it still had the essentials of having an avatar, which you could mold to who you wanted to be and you could talk to people by walking around a room and clicking on them.
Tuesday
Week Four Blog, (1) and 2 (b)
The first part of the week four tutorial task required me to look up online journals or articles. I chose to use the avenue of newspaper websites for the simple fact of, they give a reasonably educated point of view on a large array of subjects, and, I am studying journalism. The topic that I began researching was the internet and how it can cause people to become introverted and lonely. I found one journal article on this topic from the Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society. However, this was too limited a topic so I decided to research about two aspects of the internet. The avenues that I researched these through were what I said before, newspapers. I found some articles related to the internet being used as a tool for sex offenders and also, how the internet is killing off the dvd sales of pornographic material.
The article about the internet being used as a tool for sex offenders focused on myspace, and how convicted offenders were able to set up accounts. The article was titled, Myspace outs sex predators. At first, myspace claimed that it could not reveal the sex offending accounts owners names due to privacy disclosure laws. However, under pressure from the U.S government, it yielded and subsequently set up a software program called, 'Sentinel Safe'. Since this software was installed on March 2nd of this year it has deleted 7000 sex offending profiles. The program doesn't simply delete the profiles though, it takes down the names and contact information of sex offenders for government officials.
I retrieved the second article from the Sydney Morning Herald. It focused on how he internet was supposed to be a 'boon' for the pornographic market. However while internet sales are still steadily increasing, dvd sales have been rapidly decreasing. This is due mostly to the easily accessibility of pornographic material from the pc via the internet. As well as this, the article focused on how, because of sites such as google video and youtube, anyone with a camera and 'two people that want to have sex' can make a pornographic video. The article was titled, Internet takes the lash to porn.
Question 2b required me to answer some questions about search engines.
- What is a search engine? A search engine is a system of retrieving information on a computer, whether it is through the internet and world wide web or just on the computers hard drive. However, in this instance, through the internet and world wide web.
- How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?
The way that search engines rank what they find varies immensely from one search engine to another. This usually determines the success of a search engine; whether it ranks stuff effectively and returns what the searcher is looking for.
- Who, or what, makes one page (that you might get in your search results) more useful than another one, so that it is put at the top of your search results?
From what I can gather, it depends on the keywords that are entered, in collaboration with boolean operators that determines what turns up and how relevant it is. Also, some search engines use the spacing between key words as a method of searching as well.
- What are some of your favourite search engines? Why do you like one more than others?
My favourite search engines are google and wiki. The reason why I like them is because of how they rank the information and the vastness of the information that they can locate.
- Can you find some current news stories about search engines? )for example, Google has been in the technology news a bit lately).
Google takes online software applications offline, Mylivesearch aims for beta to better.
The article about the internet being used as a tool for sex offenders focused on myspace, and how convicted offenders were able to set up accounts. The article was titled, Myspace outs sex predators. At first, myspace claimed that it could not reveal the sex offending accounts owners names due to privacy disclosure laws. However, under pressure from the U.S government, it yielded and subsequently set up a software program called, 'Sentinel Safe'. Since this software was installed on March 2nd of this year it has deleted 7000 sex offending profiles. The program doesn't simply delete the profiles though, it takes down the names and contact information of sex offenders for government officials.
I retrieved the second article from the Sydney Morning Herald. It focused on how he internet was supposed to be a 'boon' for the pornographic market. However while internet sales are still steadily increasing, dvd sales have been rapidly decreasing. This is due mostly to the easily accessibility of pornographic material from the pc via the internet. As well as this, the article focused on how, because of sites such as google video and youtube, anyone with a camera and 'two people that want to have sex' can make a pornographic video. The article was titled, Internet takes the lash to porn.
Question 2b required me to answer some questions about search engines.
- What is a search engine? A search engine is a system of retrieving information on a computer, whether it is through the internet and world wide web or just on the computers hard drive. However, in this instance, through the internet and world wide web.
- How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?
The way that search engines rank what they find varies immensely from one search engine to another. This usually determines the success of a search engine; whether it ranks stuff effectively and returns what the searcher is looking for.
- Who, or what, makes one page (that you might get in your search results) more useful than another one, so that it is put at the top of your search results?
From what I can gather, it depends on the keywords that are entered, in collaboration with boolean operators that determines what turns up and how relevant it is. Also, some search engines use the spacing between key words as a method of searching as well.
- What are some of your favourite search engines? Why do you like one more than others?
My favourite search engines are google and wiki. The reason why I like them is because of how they rank the information and the vastness of the information that they can locate.
- Can you find some current news stories about search engines? )for example, Google has been in the technology news a bit lately).
Google takes online software applications offline, Mylivesearch aims for beta to better.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
