Muddiest Point -- PNG

If PNG is better than TIFF and GIF, why isn't it the new standard and used instead of TIFF and GIF? Currently TIFF and GIF still seem to be used as the standards.

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Week 6 Readings -- Networks

The readings for week 6 were all fairly repetitive. I felt like they were all saying the same thing about networks in different ways. The concept of networks wasn't new to me, but I hadn't really thought about it stretching all the way to Global Area Networks. Going from PAN to LAN to CAN to MAN to WAN to GAN sort of reminds me of those Russian stacking dolls. I have networked the computers in my house with a wireless router and ethernet, so the hardware terms were also fairly easy to understand. I'd be interested in knowing where to get advanced information on setting up home LANs and security if anyone has any information. My network is setup on a MAC and I have a PC connected to it. We connect PC laptops into it and sometimes have issues with being knocked off the network. I get good signal strength but haven't been able to get to the root of the problem yet.

Assignment #3 -- Personal Bibliographic Management Systems

http://www.citeulike.org/user/melissajosef

Here is the link to my library in CiteULike. The topics I researched were global information infrastructure, museums and online projects, and school libraries and education.

Muddiest Point

How can online students get access to student software? Do we have to wait until we are at Pitt or is there a way we can order it and have it sent to us?

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Week 5 Readings -- Data Compression, You Tube, and Imaging Pitt Project

The readings for this week covered a lot of territory...
Overall I felt the data compression article was fairly easy to grasp. The whole idea of lossless versus lossy compression makes inherent sense to me -- haven't we all spent enough time downloading files and e-mailing photos to be able to apply this theory to our own experience? I particularly found some of the information on audio interesting as I've downloaded a lot of music. Some of the music on the "free" sites is of low quality and the article does a good job of explaining how this can happen.

The second article was much more in depth and gave a deeper understanding of compression, but I was losing it a little bit with the algorithyms. I think I get the bottom line for where is is acceptable to use lossy compression and where it is unacceptable. Obviously you can't have a computer program download unless it is compressed with lossless compression or it won't work properly, but a photo may not have to be 100%.

The review of YouTube was interesting. I hadn't thought of it as a tool for libraries. Let's face it -- many of us are used to getting hysterical videos from friends via e-mail with YouTube links. My daughter and her friends did a short movie and posted it on YouTube. I watched the Republican and Democratic National Conventions on YouTube. Why not put a library tutorial on YouTube? Sounds good to me!

The First Monday article on the Imaging Pittsburgh Project was a wonderful review of the design of a digital library from the start to finish. What I found most interesting was that they were building a library of photographs primarily -- and a huge number at that! After reading the article, I went to the site and checked it out. It is pretty neat. I'd be curious to know if it is meeting the goals of each of the contributing members.

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Muddiest Point -- Blog Postings

I am confused about blog postings in general. Are we supposed to summarize the readings for the week or post our opinions and thoughts about the readings? Is the point of our postings to inspire discussion about the week's readings or show our notes of what we've read?

Week 4 Readings -- Metadata, Dublin Core, and Databases

I have to say, databases have never been an area that I've been enthralled with, nor bothered to learn much about other than the big names like Oracle and dBase. I had no idea that they had moved on to bigger and better things in the area of databases until reading this article. I'm still not sure what the bigger and better new databases do that the older versions didn't do, but assume we'll learn more about that in the lecture. My basic view of databases is that they are kind of like my external hard drive for my Mac where I store all of the big stuff I don't need right away. Clearly a necessity in our profession with the amount of digital information we are dealing with on a regular basis.

The next article on metadata was all new territory for me. As I understand it, metadata basically forms the backbone of digital information systems and search engines. Gilliland's article covered many different examples of metadata and different ways that people are interpreting it, but ultimately that is my understanding. Both Gilliland and Miller, who wrote about the Dublin Core Data Model, argue for moving towards some form of standards in order for systems to work properly. This obviously makes sense, but the question arises as to which system? I suppose there is a debate going on somewhere about which model is best...

Week 3 -- MAC, Linux, and Windows and Muddiest Point

My muddiest point is figuring out when to post...

I really liked reading about all of these except Windows. Windows just read like an advertisement. I found it boring. I use Windows XP and Vista at work and I use a MAC at home.
I loved the write-up by Amit Singh on the MAC! I plan on going back to it again as a resource. I am pretty good with my MAC, but he had so many great things in his article including some ways to play with the system. I thought it was a great tutorial. Also, in answer to the class question about fans, I think there are 5 or 6 fans on an iMAC and they are distributed across the system.

I also liked the Linux article although I've never programmed. I think it's interesting that so many programmers are developing as open source programmers. It makes me far more willing to pay for "free" software that I like. I feel like I need to support the starving artists.

My Flickr Posts

I hope I've done this right... I haven't used Flickr before, but I posted a slideshow version and a version with thumbnails. Let me know if anyone has trouble viewing. Hope you enjoy my little bit of family nostalgia!

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