Week 4: Muddy

This week, Im a little confused about the Open Source Licences. The lecture states that the application's source code is given so users can modify, do whatever they want with it, and even resell.

After doing a little research, Wikipedia cleared it up buy saying that it is a copyright license for computer software that makes the source code available under terms that allow for modification and redistribution without having to pay the original author.

So, Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code or they can do whatever they want with it. Users must comply with the criteria of the developer.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_license

Week 3: Muddy

In this weeks lecture, Using the Web, I found the topic Web 2.0 to be Muddy. The lecture describes it as a use of technology on the internet for creativity, collaboration, and information sharing. That’s a very broad definition and I needed more information to understand what Web 2.0 actually is. After doing some research, I found the website Wikipedia, to have a better explanation for this concept and it goes more in depth then the lectures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Web 2.0 includes web-based communities associated with web applications that work together involving information sharing and collaboration on the World Wide Web. The philosophy focuses on the idea that the people who use media, access the Internet, and use the Web should help customize media and technology for their own purposes. It’s a beginning of a new era in technology by allowing its users to interact with other users to change website content. The technologies by Web 2.0 include blogs, tags, RSS, social bookmarking, and AJAX.

Week 2: Clear

The most clear concept this week, was definitely the advantages of using a computer found in chapter one. As computers become more accessible, the greater society relies on them. I can’t imagine going a day without signing on; especially since I have access on my phone. Computers are used in almost every field and are use by millions of people around the world. They are so important because they have allowed us to accomplish many tasks faster and easier. Can you imagine completing those tasks manually? How time consuming that would be.

Computers are particularly important for businesses because they can accurately keep record of important business transactions. They also make it accessible to buy and sell things online causing expansion for a business. More importantly, Computers have impacted the medical field, allowing access for research so diseases can be easily diagnosed. Computers have truly changed the world.

This article “Impact of Computers” is a great reference because it explains in detail the history and major impacts of computers.
http://tatooine.fortunecity.com/vonnegut/320/history.htm

Week 1: Muddy

After reviewing the material in week one, I found the concept of bots or spiders difficult to understand. The material says "the bots “crawl” the web by going to a page and collecting every single link on that page". Huh??? Maybe I was taking it too literally, but I just didn't understand what a bot actually was and why would it want to collect every link. Since this is an unfamiliar subject and I couldn't grasp this concept, I decided to surf the web for more information.

I came across a website called Google webmaster central:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70897

I personally think this site was able to give me a better explanation and more details of bots. It also gave a great analogy; think of the web as looking into a really big book. In order to find anything in the book, you have to look at the index and it will direct you exactly where you need to go. These bots, which are search software, will collect documents from the web and build an index for a particular search engine like Google. So, every time you search for something on Google, the bots help by only pulling up the most relevant URL’s to your search.