Over this years MPI course i have learnt:

About google, how it works, why it is such a big internet superpower and all its sub-areas such as documents and callenders ect. I have learnt how to use them to my advantage to keep my web experience as simple and organised as possible. I have also gained knowledge about other sights that help out in that department such as Flickr, to organise pictures and collect photos of interest, Del.icio.us to have a portible favorite websites list, and technorati, keeping track of net-goers using your page(s).

I also know how to make a basic web page using CSS and Tempelates. I picked up some basic CSS coding and mixed it with a basic template to crate my Blogger blog, and a altered a complete Template using Imac for my athene webpage.

I have learnt about RSS feeds and what they are used for and also how to manage and the benifites of web counters. I have added both of these things to this blog and my Athene Imac page.

Counter

I also added a counter using bravenet.com. Its quite handy because i can tell how many individual users have visited my blog, as well as monitoring traffic - not that there is that much. I also set it to generate a random hit number for every visit to keep the hits more personal. Cool.

RSS

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a time based document that changes whenever the document is altered, and is used to publish frequently updated content such as blogs and podcasts. An RSS document is often referred to as a FEED, as the document can be fed to any net user.

Subscribing to an RSS feed allows net users to keep updated on whatever interests them, as they get notified when the RSS feed changes.

This is the RSS FEED for my blog.

I subscribed to an RSS feed for youtube's fetured videos. See --->

Summary

Over the last seven weeks I have become familiar with sites such a s Blogger. Del.icio.us and Flickr, developing an online presence as well as a greater awareness of what I can do on the internet.

So far on blogger, I have made a total of seven posts, one for each week – keeping up with work. I have covered my thoughts on HTML and CSS as well as flickr and Del.icio.us.

I altered the look of my blog by choosing a preset template to work around, available on blogger. To customise this template to my liking, I selected the “edit HTML” option, where I used CSS to:

- Change my background image by using the body { background-image: url( I found a picture of a petrochemical refinery from Google images and pasted the url inside these brackets ) tag

- Then straight after set the background properties to FIXED do it didn’t scroll with the page and create a confusing mess using the ; background-attachment: fixed; tag

- Set the body of the blog to show semi-transparent black posts using the background-color:#FFFFFF; filter:alpha(opacity=70); tag

I then used the template to change the font, colour of my text, titles and borders because the style sheet got too confusing for my tiny mind.

Apart from work, I have used blogger to
comment on friends posts

On Delicious I have 29 saved sights, my favourites being
imageshack because it’s a great, accountless image hosting page
and

espew because of the free music downloads

I have also been updating a few photos onto Flickr, not my own because i don't have a camera, but some interesting things from the net. Oh and i also joined some sort of club about cats yawning... it's strangley addictive.

Templates

Templates are a preset structure of CSS codes that relate to the layout of a webpage. They allow you to allter fonts, colors, paragraphs, tables, backgrounds and the entire look of a webpage.


templates conveniently seperate the actual written content and information in a web page. This means you can change them separately, avoiding confusion between the two. Templates do not allow you to change the written content in a web page.

CSS

CSS seems to be an upgrade on the basic style and web page formatting of the old school HTML. It allows the page builder to quickly make changes that apply to the whole page as apposed to having to sift through the HTML content and add in changes to every tag it may apply to.


without the page formating of CSS, the plain text format is boring, confusing and lacking in visual structure. It certainly makes viewing the internet more enjoyable and productive by organizing information neatly into tables and brightening up the page for the viewer.

Similar Sites

Here are some other bookmarking sites I found


startaid.com


netvouz.com


simpy.com


What's with this... there are so many link saving sites and i had no idea, do i live under a rock or something?

Del.icio.us

Delicious has to be my favourite account I have created so far for MPI. This is because it solves the ongoing problem i have with my favourite sites being lost to me when ever I go internetting on different computers.


The problem started when my Dad got rid of Lime Wire because it apparently gave the computer viruses... so I resorted to downloading Mp3s from the internet. This proved not to be an easy task because of all the copyright laws, and there were next to no mp3 search engines available, in English anyway. The only way I could remember the multi lingual web addresses was to save the illegal Mp3 sites in favourites... a handy tool if you are not changing computers constantly, which I was and still am. This is why I am so excited about Del.icio.us, because i can save all my music web pages in one place that can be accessed via the web, from any up to date computer.


Here is my Delicious Account, for anyone interested in 80% virus and Lime Wire free music downloading sites, mostly in German and Kurdish.

My thoughts on FLICKR

Flickr certainly offers a decent, free image hosting service that also offers a fun online community. The ability to join groups and add friends is a step up from most other free file sharing sites. The sight may be too much to worry about however when time is an issue, as the user has to log in and then follow a series of links and uploading forms just to upload. Once the user has becomes familiar with the look and controls of Flickr, this sight may become a useful and fun way to upload and share files.

look what i uploaded with my own Flickr account!

Hairless Cat

JEFF

After my strenuous search for a bald guinea pig failed (apparently they are only used for scientific research into skin care products) I have decided really want a bald, wrinkly pet cat, a breed known as the Sphinx. His name would be Jeff.

advantages:

no allergy's

feels like an old person

and you have to sun cream it regularly.... mmm

Disadvantages:

they're expensive

have special dietary needs

they get sun burnt easily

you have to give them baths because they do not lick them selves

they are sensitive to temperature change and you have to knit them carigans... actually no thats an advantage.

they are hard to train so they shit everywhere.

In other words... THE PERFECT PET!

Now my only problem is trying to smuggle Jeff through South Campus's tight customs program/strict no pets policy. bummer.

cool. Now you can watch this delicious video of a 

Sphinx Sleeping !

enjoy!