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...