Second Project Draft Link...

Here is the link for the draft of my second project on open source. I still have quite a bit of developping that needs to be done before it can be anywhere near a final draft, but I got a really good basis down to start myself off with.

http://student.wiu.edu/BM-Becker/Project-two.html

Abstract for Project Two:

Okay, so my ideas for the second project are still a little choppy and kind of chaotic the way that I put it together, but this is basically what I've got going through my mind at this point:

For the second project I have selected a number of concepts that I might want to work with, but I'm pretty sure about the one that's probably what I'll do. I picked out copyright, language and publications from the lists. I had a question though: is it possible to do this project on the concepts listed at the top, such as Intellectual Property? I was not sure if the concept had to come from one of the bottom two lists or not. I kind of want to take the concept "copyright" from the list of "the cutting room floor" and also talk about intellectual property along with that. That is the main concept that I am interested in, mostly because when we had all of our class discussions over the week that we spent on IP, I just wanted us to be able to have more and more classes on it. It is a subject that is very interesting to me and it also kind of overlaps with my first project on code. In my first project I often discuss "hacking" and code, and hacking deals with a lot of security issues which could in some ways relate to IP and copyright issues. I like the idea of dealing security and the internet and what is who's and all of that sort of information. In conclusion, I'd like to do something with copyright and IP.

Project One Draft

So I finished my Draft for Project number one, but there is still quite a bit that I would like to do with it before the final draft is due. I have a lot more ideas for it that I just need to put into action. Here is the link for my draft: http://student.wiu.edu/BM-Becker/Project-one.html

Images

The discussion about images on Wednesday was really interesting. I liked the discussion about the different advertisements like with the Panzani add and the Michael Jordan ad. I think it is weird how you see the Michael Jordan advertisement and automatically jump to saying that Michael Jordan has a long wingspan, when he in fact does not have wings at all, but just long arms. Someone in class made the comment that this advertisement makes sense because Jordan is seemingly flying when he jumps really high to make a slam dunk. A point was made against this though saying that Jordan cannot actually fly and Banash said that he felt Jordan's jumping ability is not all that great anyways. It's weird how an image like the Jordan ad can have so many different meanings and interpretations to different people.

10 years old

The fact that the Don Gentner and Jakob Nielsen article is ten years old should still make it relevent today. Regardless of the fact that most of the stuff being discussed in this article and the problems that arise are ones that have been solved for the most part. It is relevent, because it is good for people to understand how things once were in this aspect and how much things have truly evolved since then and also how they can continue to evolve. In disussing the "WYSIWYG" part of writing a document, this has certainly come a long way, when in writing a document one can see much more on the screen or as much as they want to be seen, other than what will be simply be printed out of the work they've done. I think that this article is important in continuing to understand how much more improvement can be done as people are constanty complaining about computers and about how all these improvements need to be done. This article shows that a lot of improvements have been done since ten years ago, but there could still be many more.

IP

I enjoyed all of the class discussions last week over IP and found a lot of this new information very interesting. In some ways I agree with John Dvorak and in some ways I don't. I think that Creative Commons could possibly help some people to understand licensing and such, but then at the same time it could hurt them, if they are not aware of the actual copyright laws. If people do not know that by simply writing something down, it is copyrighted, then they may think that this creative commons thing is absolutely necessary just so no one else will be allowed to steal their work, and by the copyright laws this could not possibly be further from the truth. I really do not see the point of creative commons for the most part and even when I read through it for the first time, I found it highly complicated and confusing even in its simple state that the creative commons people tried to put it in. It has already been put into a state of human understanding instead of a bunch of legal gibberish, but it seems as if the creative commons people kind of drag it out and make it way more complicated than it should actually be.

Abstract for the assignment: CODE

I would like to do my project on the keyword, CODE.

I chose code for this assignment for the following reasons:
· The first reason that I chose code is because I had never taken any sort of thought process to all of the different codes that exist on the web before this class. I just never realized before what it was that web pages are made up of and that they actually require all of this hidden code to make up all the different aspects of web pages including: font, size of font, color, background, spacing, links and lots of other characteristics.
· The second reason that I chose code is because of the organization that is involved and which was particularly discussed in the “Absolute Powerpoint” article by Ian Parker. This article among some others encouraged me to truly analyze the Powerpoint program and breakdown how worthwhile it is depending on the situation in which it is being used.

This is a list of questions that I intend on working with and engaging:
1.) Is code a concept that is important for the general public/users of the internet/web to become familiar with and understand?
2.) Are there certain codes within the web that are more difficult to comprehend than others and if so…
3.) Then why are they more difficult to understand and in what type of situations does this sort of intensified difficulty apply?
4.) What sorts of websites have code that is easy to hack into and change and how often are these sort of sites hacked into, and also…
5.) Who are these people doing the hacking onto websites with code that allows them to do so and why are they doing this/what purpose does it serve/ are they trying to implement negative or positive changes for the web?
6.) How can code be useful for particular classroom activities and in what kind of classes or departments would code be most useful to education and endorsing learning?
7.) In what ways is code linked to accessibility and why do creators of some websites choose to take the easy way out with code, knowing they are doing so, and make these sites less accessible?
8.) What does it mean to "hack" a website?

Accessibility

From the tagged readings on accessibility and also from the discussions in class and the assignment that we had to do in picking a WIU website to assess, I learned that the web is not quite as accessible as I had thought it would be. I never thought about it in ways that people with certain disabilities would have a more difficult time using/accessing the web than others. I know that I usually have a fairly easy time accessing most websites, except for when I'm trying to search for something that is slightly more of a topic not mentioned quite as much and I'm on Google, Yahoo or some other infamous search engine. I know this is probably going to sound really stupid, but until our activity the other day in class, I did not even know that you could use the keyboard/tab key on websites when trying to access the different links or work your way through the page. I think I need to experiment with technology a little more often, rather than just accepting the basic necessities that have been handed to me throughout life. The "Introduction to Web Accessibility" article made me realize how much more effort the creators of certain websites need to put into them in order to embrace the needs of all people, whether they have some sort of disabling disability or not. I think one of the most important things that I got from this article is the idea of these creators having the need to be more committed to and trained for these websites that are being created for the general public's use.

Del.icio.us account

So I started a Del.icio.us account finally and put some links on there that are really interesting to me that have to do with flying and dancing. My URL is del.icio.us/FLBonnie if anyone is interested in looking and maybe if you want to comment about it. I am still kind of confused as to the whole point of this delicious thing, besides saving some sites that are of interest. All I can say is that I hope my house gets internet soon, because I can't stand not having it. I will post more later on today.