In the beginning of the video shooting process I met a few difficulties in coordinating the actions of each team member, but story board helped to organize the process as I could easily explain roles and responsibilities to each person and reach maximum productivity.
Since none of us were familiar with CamStudio software, we experimented with camera views and different perspectives before starting the actual filming process. Different scenes of the video were shot in the sequence of the story board and were named according to their content.
While editing our video materials, we divided them into 3 parts, thus each of the participants could edit the video in order to speed the process. After editing was completed, we uploaded the final cut on Jeff Guiher's external hard drive. I delegated the final pieces of the project to Jeff for final assembly and addition of the closing scene.
10/29/2010
Second Life, Phase 4
For this project phase I created a story board with explanatory notes for each scene, including fragments of dialogues. This approach greatly facilitates understanding and visualization of the video scenario.
During this class, we started shooting the video. To reduce the amount of footage, it was decided to change the video size from Full Screen to 700x400 pixels.
Luckily this day was very favorable for the completion of filming, as the computer lab was free after the class and my team could continue working on the video. It took us 6 hours to film the movie, put all the scenes together utilizing Windows Movie Maker, and add some special effects to make the video look more professional.
During this class, we started shooting the video. To reduce the amount of footage, it was decided to change the video size from Full Screen to 700x400 pixels.
Luckily this day was very favorable for the completion of filming, as the computer lab was free after the class and my team could continue working on the video. It took us 6 hours to film the movie, put all the scenes together utilizing Windows Movie Maker, and add some special effects to make the video look more professional.
Second Life, Phase 3
Today we spent all the class time searching and testing video and audio editing software. Proposed in the beginning of the project Screenr website was inappropriate for us as its users were required to publish their footage online. To replace the aforementioned web site, we found a program called CamStudio which is very simple and doesn’t require special technical skills. Thus it was immediately endorsed by all participants.
To voice our characters, we chose a program called Audiocity, which was recommended by one of the professors. Also, we found several variants of the robot voices that we can apply for one of our characters. It was decided to export most of the sound effects from the Youtube, through a web site http://www.listentoyoutube.com/, which extracts audio stream from video and saves it in mp3 format.
To voice our characters, we chose a program called Audiocity, which was recommended by one of the professors. Also, we found several variants of the robot voices that we can apply for one of our characters. It was decided to export most of the sound effects from the Youtube, through a web site http://www.listentoyoutube.com/, which extracts audio stream from video and saves it in mp3 format.
Second Life, Phase 2
Our story characters included the Creaper, giant monster, robot, zombie and a guy with the brain protruding from his head. That was enough to fulfill of our story.
During online communication, one of the team members experienced technical difficulties concerning incompatibility of Skype and Second Life on Mac OS. He was often disconnected from the Internet due to freezing of the operating system
During online communication, one of the team members experienced technical difficulties concerning incompatibility of Skype and Second Life on Mac OS. He was often disconnected from the Internet due to freezing of the operating system
Second Life, Phase 2
Today for the first time, I met with my team online via Skype to discuss the plot of our video, character selection and appropriate environments.
Before starting this phase, I asked each team member to come up with some ideas for our scenario. As a result of the discussion, we combined our ideas into one story, so each participant could contribute to the scenario development.
Our script was about a guy and a girl who meet the Creaper, which fraudulently lures them into a parallel dimension where the characters try to escape from zombies and the Creaper who tries to kill them after revealing his evil plan of kidnapping humans.
After the script approval, we chose our characters and environments, which included the abandoned castle, graveyard and zombies.
Before starting this phase, I asked each team member to come up with some ideas for our scenario. As a result of the discussion, we combined our ideas into one story, so each participant could contribute to the scenario development.
Our script was about a guy and a girl who meet the Creaper, which fraudulently lures them into a parallel dimension where the characters try to escape from zombies and the Creaper who tries to kill them after revealing his evil plan of kidnapping humans.
After the script approval, we chose our characters and environments, which included the abandoned castle, graveyard and zombies.
10/28/2010
Email management is a very important process in the effective use of this tool. Managing contacts, groups, and attachments are all necessary in order to maximize usage. Managing your email account also includes being aware that some emails can contain unwanted advertisement such as spam and dangerous attachments such as viruses. It is important to flag junk mail and remove the unwanted mail. I have a great deal of experience using Microsoft Outlook in an office environment. As the text indicated organizing your contacts, groups and important documents help to organize time. Organization allows you to send to an entire group of users such as staff important updates. In order to send an e-mail to a specific group of the contacts, select name of the contact group in the To text box, instead of sending e-mails to the individual addresses.
To create a new contact, click an icon "Contacts" on the Windows Mail panel and then in the opened window click "Create a new contact". Windows Mail allows you to enter personal information about new contact, which may include name, home address, place of employment, marital status, as well as notes.
For convenience, incoming mail can be organized according to the special rules. E-mails are distributed into the folders basing on the keyword search in the title, address, or body of the mail. Letters, accidentally sent to the Deleted Items folder can be restored by dragging to another folder. Messages can be removed permanently from the Deleted Items folder by using command “Delete Items” from the “Edit” menu.
In all e-mail is most effectively used if you know the best ways to utilize all that it offers.
Sources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCKQW-dgSig&feature=related
To create a new contact, click an icon "Contacts" on the Windows Mail panel and then in the opened window click "Create a new contact". Windows Mail allows you to enter personal information about new contact, which may include name, home address, place of employment, marital status, as well as notes.
For convenience, incoming mail can be organized according to the special rules. E-mails are distributed into the folders basing on the keyword search in the title, address, or body of the mail. Letters, accidentally sent to the Deleted Items folder can be restored by dragging to another folder. Messages can be removed permanently from the Deleted Items folder by using command “Delete Items” from the “Edit” menu.
In all e-mail is most effectively used if you know the best ways to utilize all that it offers.
Sources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCKQW-dgSig&feature=related
10/22/2010
Second life, Phase 1
During the second class, we developed a story line; found several locations which can be used in the video scenes and browsed different stores looking for “freebie” items. We changed the looks of avatars according to the characters in the script.
Second life, Phase 1
During Introduction to Web technology class we were introduced to online game called “Second Life.” As it was our first experience with this game, we started from the basics which included learning the main control commands and buttons, search options and teleport functions. While interacting with a new virtual environment, we were exploring various game locations, buildings and online stores. Most of the items in the stores are sold for internal currency, the Linden dollar (L$), which exchange rate is 1 US$:269 L$.
Users are able to create an avatar to communicate with others gamers or participate in group activities. Utilizing the built-in editor, we learned different ways of changing the avatar’s appearance, including clothes, face and body features.
10/20/2010
E-mail Clients
Nowadays it is difficult to find a person who has never send a single message via Internet, whether they were using e-mail, instant messengers, IRC, web chats, blogs or social networking web sites. Benefits of online communication far surpassed regular ‘snail’ mail. Numerous advantages of online tools include simplicity of information and data exchange, high speed e-mail delivery, broadcasting and advertizing world wide, effective collaboration with friends, family members, or co-workers, sharing web content via social networks.
However, informal style of e-mail negatively affects the quality of written language. Also the ease of e-mail distribution may interfere with one’s interests, since messages can be easily forwarded to a wide amount of recipients without notifying an original sender.
Online communication requires unique identifier for each user. For instance, e-mail addresses which, despite their vast variety, share the same basic structure and include user ID, host name and a top-level domain (TLD).
In order to create, receive or send messages, e-mail clients or specialized online e-mail accounts are commonly used. E-mail client is special software to handle your correspondence. Most popular examples of e-mail clients are Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows Mail, Microsoft Windows Live Mail, Opera Mail, and Mozilla Thunderbird. To interact with servers, e-mail clients utilize several protocols such as Post Office Protocol (POP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
Usually most of the e-mail clients have similar structure of the message window and include following elements:
• The To line
• The Cc line
• The Bcc line
• The Subject line
• The Attach line
• The message body
• Signature file
E-mail clients are advantageous as they allow to organize correspondence in convenient for users order by utilizing folders tree and sometimes include time planning features as, for example, in Microsoft Outlook.
Sources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzLPmx3xTU
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/img/2007/11/spam100.jpg
However, informal style of e-mail negatively affects the quality of written language. Also the ease of e-mail distribution may interfere with one’s interests, since messages can be easily forwarded to a wide amount of recipients without notifying an original sender.
Online communication requires unique identifier for each user. For instance, e-mail addresses which, despite their vast variety, share the same basic structure and include user ID, host name and a top-level domain (TLD).
In order to create, receive or send messages, e-mail clients or specialized online e-mail accounts are commonly used. E-mail client is special software to handle your correspondence. Most popular examples of e-mail clients are Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows Mail, Microsoft Windows Live Mail, Opera Mail, and Mozilla Thunderbird. To interact with servers, e-mail clients utilize several protocols such as Post Office Protocol (POP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
Usually most of the e-mail clients have similar structure of the message window and include following elements:
• The To line
• The Cc line
• The Bcc line
• The Subject line
• The Attach line
• The message body
• Signature file
E-mail clients are advantageous as they allow to organize correspondence in convenient for users order by utilizing folders tree and sometimes include time planning features as, for example, in Microsoft Outlook.
Sources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzLPmx3xTU
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/img/2007/11/spam100.jpg
10/17/2010
Career Goals
Presently I am enrolled in Digital Media associate degree program, web track. My current profession is a web developer. It is one of the few steps towards my ultimate professional goal of building successful career in the large company or being a head of my own business. According to my approximate estimation, it would take between five and seven years to reach this goal.
Knowledge that I obtained in this class, I was already familiar with and intensively applied in my career. Information search skills are crucial for me, as I always search for manuals, tutorials, books and learning videos online, in order to improve my knowledge or find solutions for complex programming situations. Understanding of web pages structure and HTML is a fundamental knowledge for those who start their career in web development, as content design, page layouts and their style are directly based on aforementioned skills.
Another task of great importance is to be familiar with diversity of browsers and their versions, for I have to be able to write cross-platform code which will be valid and can run correctly in any browser.
However, understanding of web technologies is significant not only for professionals, but also for average users; lack of computer skills in information society will cause obstructions and reduce quality of work performance. And I would highly encourage those, who think about becoming a web developer, to start learning as soon as possible since they have to cover a vast variety of topics and learn numerous programming approaches, in order to be competitive on a job market.
Knowledge that I obtained in this class, I was already familiar with and intensively applied in my career. Information search skills are crucial for me, as I always search for manuals, tutorials, books and learning videos online, in order to improve my knowledge or find solutions for complex programming situations. Understanding of web pages structure and HTML is a fundamental knowledge for those who start their career in web development, as content design, page layouts and their style are directly based on aforementioned skills.
Another task of great importance is to be familiar with diversity of browsers and their versions, for I have to be able to write cross-platform code which will be valid and can run correctly in any browser.
However, understanding of web technologies is significant not only for professionals, but also for average users; lack of computer skills in information society will cause obstructions and reduce quality of work performance. And I would highly encourage those, who think about becoming a web developer, to start learning as soon as possible since they have to cover a vast variety of topics and learn numerous programming approaches, in order to be competitive on a job market.
10/11/2010
Media and Business Search
The information contained in the text clearly presents material on how to use the internet as a research tool. The search tool that seems the most useful for specific research and more detailed search compilations is via the use of resources as lexixNexis which allows very specific and detailed information connected to scholarly and even business related research. This search type of specialized electronically collected data helps to complement the broader less refined searches done via standard search engines as it will allow many sources to be opened to you dependant upon the search criteria that is stated in the search.
Accessing the information is only as easy as how easily the information is found in the website or whichever media is used. This is why searching within the website via a websites own search tool is essential as a tremendous amount of time and energy can be saved searching content through the use of search tools, rather than manual or visual searches.
Once material is found and used it is important that the information is cited correctly to avoid issues of plagiarism.
In order to ensure one does not commit plagiarism, it is necessary to cite all primary sources including websites. However, citing electronic resources is not always easy. In fact, according to the Library of Congress website, “In some cases, [web] content can be posted without a clear indication of author, title, publisher or copyright date. [In these cases you should] Look for available clues and give as much information as possible, including the URL and date accessed.” (“Citing Primary Sources: MLA). Ideally, one would want to cite a web source with the author’s name and article name first. However, as the above warns, often there is no author listed on websites so the alternative is just to give as much information as possible. The Library of Congress also suggests that academic websites that list entire text sources including author’s name are among the most reliable found on the web.
Plagiarism is an important issue in both academic and business circles. Since US law regards original ideas as intellectual property, in a court of law, unique thoughts are treated the same as physical objects. While common knowledge and well known concepts need not be cited, specific ideas or text must always be cited to avoid committing intellectual theft. According to Plagiarism.org, “…plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else’s work and lying about it afterward.” (“What is Plagiarism?”). In other words, using someone else’s ideas without giving them credit or citing them is an act of plagiarism.
Simply using standardized methods such as MLA not only protects the material from wrongful abuse but it adds a degree of weight and professionalism to one’s research and avoids possible problems such as being accused of plagiarism, which can lead to disaster whether one is a student or professional. In order to ensure one does not commit plagiarism, it is necessary to cite all primary sources including websites. However, citing electronic resources is not always easy. In fact, according to the Library of Congress website, “In some cases, [web] content can be posted without a clear indication of author, title, publisher or copyright date. [In these cases you should] Look for available clues and give as much information as possible, including the URL and date accessed.” (“Citing Primary Sources: MLA). Ideally, one would want to cite a web source with the author’s name and article name first. However, as the above warns, often there is no author listed on websites so the alternative is just to give as much information as possible. The Library of Congress also suggests that academic websites that list entire text sources including author’s name are among the most reliable found on the web.
In closing the essentials are knowing where and how to search for information, how to increase the likelihood that your search will yield useful information and the finally protect your work, reputation and the work of others through proper citation to avoid the conflicts associated with plagiarism.
Work Cited:
“What is Plagiarism?” 2010. iParadigms, LLC. 10 Oct. 2010 <http://www.plagiarism.org/plag_article_what_is_plagiarism.html>
“Citing Primary Sources: MLA.” 2010. Library of Congress. U.S. Govt. 10 Oct. 2010 <http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/mla.html#entirewebsite>
10/05/2010
Search Engines
As information, posted online, was accumulating, it required extra search tools to browse through.
There are few ways to find data online; they are based on different approaches, in order to meet specific users’ requests.
Jerry Yang and David Fillo were the first who came up with idea for organizing information into directories. Web sites were distributed between several directories depending on the content and relevance, in order to ease search by grouping similar web pages. Eventually, this directory was renamed into Yahoo and lately has been developed into Yahoo mass media corporation, providing not only search opportunities but also mail, shopping, news, and other services.
In spite of constant competition with directories, search engines still keep a leading role. Google, Bing, Ask, Altavista, Searchme, and others are aimed to fulfill any fancy users’ requests’; whether they look for pictures, articles, scientific works, music, or something else. Moreover, as search engines were becoming more complicated, special query operators were integrated into engines, with a view to improve out-coming search results. For instance, query with a phrase in between quotation marks will return pages containing exact words in the given order. Typing NOT before a keyword in the search box will display a content excluding that word. Though users should keep in mind that query operators may vary depending on the search engine.
Vast results, returning by the search engines, do not always match user’s expectations as the useful links are mixed with irrelevant information. This issue can be avoided by using more powerful services, such as LexisNexis, IngentaConnect, FindLaw, Hoover’s, Dun & Bradstreet, and Dialog, which organize search within a certain field of knowledge thus optimizing final results.
Sources used: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs&feature=related
Sources used: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs&feature=related
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