Week 11 Lecture

Datavisualisation or 'dataviz' is an effective way of displaying information in an organised ways so that correlations and causes can be determined. This can allow people to predict future trends in major issues such as global warming, poverty and increasing population.

Dataviz 'translates' data to humans by taking advantage of some basic human instincts. Humans can easily detect shape, colour, position, patterns and movement.

Week 10 Lecture

Multiplicity was explored at a further level during this weeks lecture explaining how collective activity is far more effective in gaining and displaying information. A good example was given in the book 'The Wisdom of Crows' by James Surowiecki. In this book a crowd was asked to guess the weight of ox. It turned out that the average guessed weight was closer to any individual guess which I found very interesting. The fact that no single person could guess the weight. but together finding a closer weight is a prime example of multiplicity.

The concept of multiplicity is especially prominent today in web 2.0. Wikipedia for example depends on other people from around the world to post articles and edit them accordingly. This gives it a much stronger collection of information than any other site. There was also a really interesting idea called 'Photosynth' that used the site Flickr to gather photos of a particular site around the world and create a 3D map of it that the user can explore. This technology is the first of its kind and is sure to harness the true power of networking and multiplicity.

Week 9 Lecture

This Lecture focused on the concept of Web 2.0. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them. The term first emerged in 2004. The more people use a service, the more useful and valuable it becomes can pretty much some up the effectiveness of web 2.0.

Week 6 Lecture

This week's lecture had more of a philosophical theme covering aspects including structure, interfaces, conventions, limitations, patterns a the concepts of Tags, Ontology, Taxonomy and Folksonomy.

Structures and patterns can be ways of doing things, everything has a structure/pattern. Interfaces are used to allow the user access to something, making it as clear an easy to use as possible. Conventions are default ways of completing things (the way you do things), but these can e broken. Everything has accordances and limitations for example the interent has a certain set of accordances and limitations. Limitations provide context.

Objects have design patterns (structures) to best suit their use. Ontology is the study of something existing, being or in reality. Taxonomy is the process of classifying something into groups, certain categories for example. Folksonomy is a system of classifying that involves tagging such as machine tagging in computers.

Week 5 assignment.

I have started working on my website. It is a reference page for the band 'Muse'. The website will contain a number of links to blogs, fan sites, forums and official band websites. There will be profiles on all three members of the band as well a upcoming tours, gigs, recordings etc.

Week 4 Lecture

This weeks lecture was about Mashups and API's, talking about their functions and the difference between the two. Java script was also a smaller focus with its many applications being shown. A mashup is basically a remix of data using API's and wrappers which reform data to make it look more presentable. Mashups gather information from multiple locations in order to do this. Example Youtube mashup videos.

Application Programming interfaces (API's) share data through web and and desktop applications and enable them to be changed and improved. API's are useful because they allow other users to change data and functions of applications through crowd sourcing. For example Twitter has a public API so many users have extended the Twitter application like such websites as Twittervision. API's let you change they way someone interacts with a service, for example the webiste Wolfenflickr.

Java script adds graphics and animations to websites...

Week 3 Lecture

I have gathered the following information for this weeks lecture on HTML, XML and CSS...

HTML was the main focus of the lecture. It was established in the early 90s and translates to Hypertext Markup Language, Hypertext being text that links to other information and markup being the way the language is displayed and arranged for the user to understand. HTML is the most predominate language in the world wide web with a fundamental element of it being tags. A tag must open and close specific parts of the HTML.

HTML just uses text. A large amount is written by databases because it's more efficient, but it's also written in text editors.

The level of accessibility is vital in designing HTML at a professional level. It needs to be easy to understand and created to be available to view on a range of different technologies by users of all types.

XML is the Extensible Markup language meaning it is a more extensible language with any number of tags being used (outside the range of the fundamental tags that make up HTML).

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is used as a set of instructions to the web browser on how to draw HTML. The HTML and CSS can be seen as the 'recipe' for a website with the browser interpreting and displaying them. CSS must be added to the website through relative links.

As for as project A goes, I am currently thinking about doing a band as the main focus.