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Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Week 2 Readings
This summer I was sitting in a lecture at the Municipal Library of Prague. The speaker took out a 2 GB SD USB memory card, and declared 8,000 books could fit on it. More books, he claimed, than anyone could read in a life-time. A sculpture in the main entrance (the picture to the right) was made of 8,000 books to illustrate the difference in size. If you looked inside, two mirrors projected into infinity.
The observation by Moore on the continuing advances with the size of transistors can take what fills a story of a building and put it onto a disk that is less than an inch long.
Here are some thoughts on the articles read for class, not nearly as interesting as the pictures above.
1.) Computer Hardware
This article was a quick overview of what is inside a computer and how the internal parts are connected, and why they are important. On a personal note, I had a computer in the mid-90's where the internal fan broke. No one in the house could figure out where the smell of melting plastic was coming from, until we touched the CPU tower. As we waiting for the new fan to arrive in the mail (it was still under warranty), we came up with a novel solution to the broken internal fan. We removed the CPU case and put a small personal fan next to the CPU. When the computer was turned on, the fan was as well.
I wish the Bus Controllers would have been better defined, even though some of them are outdated or being phased out. Speaking of being phased out, recently I was looking into buying a new laptop and I noticed that getting a modem is now an option I would have to pay for ($44.00 if you use your student discount on apple.com). I found that shocking, but also understandable. Less people have dial up because of the amount of data they may be downloading.
2.) Moore's Law - wikipedia & video - the doubling of transistors
When thinking about this law in relation to digital camera's it makes perfect sense. From my first camera to the one I have now the prices were around the same, but I went from 3.0 mega pixels to 8 mega pixels in six years. When I got my first camera in 2003 I don't remember seeing ones with that resolution.
3.) Computer History Museum
I was unaware, but not surprised such a place existed. It is located in California, and it is free to the public. I liked their online exhibits. The visual examples of the dramatic changes in the size of computers was fascinating, to see the change from Babbage Engine to a tiny computer chip.
I also have a question, is there a way I can put all of the blogs into one blog feed?
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Week 1, Assignment 1
1.) OCLC report: Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers (2004).
The article mentions how people are moving away from "packaged content to social information about location, presence and community...Mobile communication tools are shifting...allowing for increased many-to-many interactions..."(p5).
On the topic of social information and interacting, I recently came across a website that works with your mobile phone to find out where to go and what to do in Pittsburgh (www.spot.deeplocal.com). It works via text message, where if you send a text to 27126 with the word SPOT, or with another keyword you are supposed to receive a text with information about your surrounding location. I've never tried it, but I thought it was a good example of the use of social information.
2. Leid Library
I thought the policy they had for find an avaliable computer for a student was a great idea. Being able to see how long someone has been logged in, if they are a community user, and if a staff person needs to ask them to leave. While I have waited in lines for computers here at the several computer labs across campus, it's never been a long wait, but it still can be annoying. I am pretty sure Pitt has a policy where they can ask people to leave if they aren't doing school work, I've never asked anyone to leave.
I was also impressed with how the Leid Library was able to hav,e what appears from the articles description, a seemingly quick fix if a computer goes down.
3. Information Literacy and Information Technology Literacy
First off their are all kinds of literacies. You can be literate and able to read, literate in health information, and cultrualy literate. So it doesn't surprise me that just being information literate won't automatically give you IT literacy. Right now I would fall under the information technology literacy of someone who knows how to use the tools, such as word processing and spreadsheets.
Muddiest Point:
I have a comment on a question that was asked in class. One student stated that they did not have web access at home. I believe the University does provide a free dial up service. While it is dial up, and it probably is slow, it is free. Here is a link to a pdf of how to access the dial up service via a PC, http://technology.pitt.edu/Documentation/VistaDialup.pdf and for a mac http://technology.pitt.edu/Documentation/Dialing_into_PittNet_Using_PPP_with_MacOSX_Leopard_FINAL.pdf
The article mentions how people are moving away from "packaged content to social information about location, presence and community...Mobile communication tools are shifting...allowing for increased many-to-many interactions..."(p5).
On the topic of social information and interacting, I recently came across a website that works with your mobile phone to find out where to go and what to do in Pittsburgh (www.spot.deeplocal.com). It works via text message, where if you send a text to 27126 with the word SPOT, or with another keyword you are supposed to receive a text with information about your surrounding location. I've never tried it, but I thought it was a good example of the use of social information.
2. Leid Library
I thought the policy they had for find an avaliable computer for a student was a great idea. Being able to see how long someone has been logged in, if they are a community user, and if a staff person needs to ask them to leave. While I have waited in lines for computers here at the several computer labs across campus, it's never been a long wait, but it still can be annoying. I am pretty sure Pitt has a policy where they can ask people to leave if they aren't doing school work, I've never asked anyone to leave.
I was also impressed with how the Leid Library was able to hav,e what appears from the articles description, a seemingly quick fix if a computer goes down.
3. Information Literacy and Information Technology Literacy
First off their are all kinds of literacies. You can be literate and able to read, literate in health information, and cultrualy literate. So it doesn't surprise me that just being information literate won't automatically give you IT literacy. Right now I would fall under the information technology literacy of someone who knows how to use the tools, such as word processing and spreadsheets.
Muddiest Point:
I have a comment on a question that was asked in class. One student stated that they did not have web access at home. I believe the University does provide a free dial up service. While it is dial up, and it probably is slow, it is free. Here is a link to a pdf of how to access the dial up service via a PC, http://technology.pitt.edu/Documentation/VistaDialup.pdf and for a mac http://technology.pitt.edu/Documentation/Dialing_into_PittNet_Using_PPP_with_MacOSX_Leopard_FINAL.pdf
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