Monday, April 21, 2008

The Past 8 Weeks (Assessment)

Over the past 8 weeks I've been taught how to use a range of web tools from blogs to well even google docs, which I used to write this very post infact. I'll now go through them in turn. (note: the links in the titles of each section link to my sites on those subjects. I.E click the "Blogger" link and it will take you to my blogspot) 


Blogger was perhaps the first tool we were taught how to use, to those who dont know, Blogger is a weBLOG site that is similar to a forum, with the exception that comments are not displayed on the front page of the blog. We also learnt the basics of HTML in tandem with blogger, as they are integral to each other. 
click Here to go to one of my blogger posts 


Flickr Flickr is an image hosting site that I had not heard of until class during week 4, which is odd as I use image hosting sites a lot, Flickr is pretty much the same as all other image hosting sites I have seen, you upload images and can link to them, since I have an account on other image hosting sites I havent been too fussed uploading massive amounts of images to flickr, and as such I only have 12 individual images, and 2 sets. Here are my favorites: 


Del.Icio.us Delicious is a bookmarking site, a concept which I found rather odd at first, especially when Damien first announced that we would be using a site to create bookmarks, I mean dont most internet browsers already have that capability? Regardless I started using Del.icio.us and while I can see how it is useful, you can access bookmarks from any computer, I also find it a little useless actually, if I have a site bookmarked on my internet browser it is through sheer laziness, as I usually memorize everything I bookmark anyway, bookmarking just allows me to click instead of typing the web address, where as with del.icio.us you need to go to the site, then sign in, then find the link you were after. Of course that is just my opinion I'm sure other people may find it more useful then I do. at the moment my Del.Icio.Us has 21 links, of them I use these the most. 


Other Items of Interest
As I said before we  are learning HTML, the main internet  source language code that can be used to create websites and thats barely scratching the surface, with HTML we have been experimenting with out Blogs and coding them.
I have also been experimenting with the Templates provided by blogger to achieve better aesthetics and have decided on two that I like, "Dark Minima" which would make any space graphics of my own that I upload seem to fit in, and "Rounded 4" is a smooth layout with a more organic yet organized.