BITS’ Birthday!

Last BITS event for the year…..

Google Social Search

Google has recently launched a new feature to their search engine called Google Social Search. It enables people to find information relating to their friends with greater efficiency. It works by taking connections linked from a Google Account/Gmail Account, such as Twitter and Facebook, and uses them to customise your Google Search.

It is important to note, that all information is already on the web – so it isn’t classified as invasive, however people should be careful of the content that they publish onto the Internet, as it is now easier to find.

Personally, I use Google’s Services very limitedly, so it will not greatly effect me; however I cannot help but feeling that the Internet is really turning into a stalker’s dream. While I acknowledge that Google is trying to make something useful, when I use Google’s search engine, I would not want it to be cluttered with the goings on of my friends.

If anything, Social Search will deter me from using Google if it really takes off, as when I search, I want to find my information as quickly as possible.

Yahoo! Pipes

Yahoo! Pipes is a free service provided by Yahoo! which allows people to manage their RSS, Atom etc online feeds. This is useful as it enables one to search/sort feeds more efficiently. Yahoo! Pipes allows the input of any website, and has inbuilt features which will check if feeds are available for that site. Once a site that has feeds available is inputted, the user can chose from a wide variety of different operators to allow them to sort feeds.

Mashup is a word used to describe a Pipe, as it allows specific content from various websites to be grouped together.

I used Yahoo! Pipes to sort all of my posts on this blog which do not have the word ‘task’ in them. You can see my results here –> http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=4877dcb51ca1062f95e6b1d9b65fa3b4

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

RSS, known as Really Simple Syndication is a modern method of organising data that is on the internet. RSS users can subscribe to feeds, such as the news, blogs, sporting information etc. It collects short snippets of data from each source, and automatically collects them together, so it is easier for the user to scan through the data more efficiently.

While RSS is becoming more widespread, not all websites support it. An easy way to find out if a website supports RSS, is to use a browser such as Safari or Firefox, which has built in RSS support.

RSS uses the World Wide Web Consortium’s RDF (Resource Description Framework) as a guide to tell a feed aggregator to read a file. This RDF is based on XML, and is responsible for putting tags around existing data. These RSS tags are essentially responsible for the aggregator to display the content, as well as components such as time and date.

 

ACS Quiz Night

Last Thursday, the ACS (Australian Computer Society) held its annual quiz night, which Bond and Griffith students attended.

This was also one of the social functions that BITS had helped to organise.

The night was pretty fun, I got to meet new people, and spend time with old friends….and my table came second! Ha!

There will be another BITS function in early December, so I will write about that later.

Laptop Charger Broken

Recently the charger of my beloved PowerBook G4 has died :’(

I have a couple of choices regarding what I should do next:

• I buy a new charger for $200, for a laptop which is already 6 years old
• I buy a new MacBook Pro now, even though they are due for an update in February
• I see if I can borrow a charger, and wait for the new MacBook Pros to come out.
• I just don’t use a laptop, and try to survive of my iMac and iPhone >.>

Its a tough decision. I really love my laptop even though its ancient, and I would still like the option of using it even when I do take order of a new laptop…

I guess I’ll just have to see what the most viable option is.

Google Wave

Over the last two weeks, I have been playing around with Google Wave. I was able to get an invite from a friend, and so far I have found the web based application…interesting.

As the site is only in its beta, I have only around 8 friends, which really limits its use, however once the site is released to the public it will become more useful. Google Wave lets you create ‘Waves’ which are really just like a blog post mixed with an IM. You can chose which friends you wish to share the ‘Wave’ with, and you can do various things with the ‘Waves’.

• Your chosen friends and you can post as many new posts as you’d like, and you can go back at any stage and edit any one of these posts.
• You can format any messages.
• You can add widgets such as Maps, which you can further alter. eg, you can draw on a map to show a friend a location, or route.
• You can see your friends create/edit in real time, and they can see the same of you.

Google Wave really isn’t about social networking to the degree that Facebook or MySpace is – it’s very closed. You cannot browse friends of friends, and the only way to add some to Wave, is if they are a current Wave user and you know the email address affiliated with their Wave account. Google Wave is really a more dynamic way to share information.

Google Docs

Google Docs is a free, online application which has word processing, presentation, spreadsheets and form functions. It is available to those who have signed up for a Google ID, which can be made from scratch, or adapted from an existing email address.

One of the great benefits that Google Docs has to offer is that it supports Real Time Collaboration with other people – a feature that has been the crux of Google’s new product, Wave. In a similar fashion to Google Wave, the beta version was available to a small number of people in 2006, but was finally released to the public in July 2009.

Google Docs is aimed to compete against Microsoft’s Office suite and Apple’s iWork package, with word processing, presentation, spreadsheet and form pages able to be created, imported and send via email. A great feature included is that a user can save their file in various formats such as OpenOffice, HTML, PDF, RTF, Text and Word.

Google Docs has support on most popular browsers, such as Firefox, IE, Safari and Chrome; and this means that Google Docs can be accessed and used on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux distributions.

Despite these benefits, users are limited in file size. Documents cannot exceed over 500k, image cannot be larger than 2MB and  spreadsheets cannot support over 256 columns, 200 000 cells and 99 sheets.

As well as this, being web based means that Google Docs can be targeted by bugs, which can jeopardise privacy in some documents. Although bugs can target any software, online applications are more at risk.

JavaScript Tutorial Sites

W3Schools (www.w3schools.com) is not the only great site where you can learn JavaScript. I have researched three other great sites that you can check out if you want to learn JavaScript in way to how W3Schools teaches it. I find that looking at different websites is useful, as W3Schools teaches JavaScript (and its other languages) without really giving a full overview – which can make trying to figure out what theyre on about sometimes very hard to place.

Anyway here are three other sites:

• http://www.javascriptmall.com/learn/contents.htm – This site is great because it outlines all of the content into chapters, with the first chapter giving an overview of JS, so its easier to see the relevance of other parts, which are explained in later chapters. It also explains concepts in an easy to understand manner, and moves slowly, so that a beginner can pick up everything.

• http://www.learn-javascript-tutorial.com/ – This is another site which is kind of a blend between W3Schools and JavaScriptMall. Like JavaScriptMall, it has clear instructions and easy to understand descriptions, however, like W3Schools, it also gives good scripting examples (these examples move slower than those of W3Schools, so its easier to understand the process and method of scripting)

• http://www.developertutorials.com/learn-javascript/ – This site targets people who are more familiar with JavaScript, thus its easier for more advanced users to understand. This site is great for learning more advanced techniques, as well as practicing JS basics.

L4D2

Well I’m pleased to see that Left 4 Dead 2 has finally been un-banned by the Australian Government, which means that it will be possible for us all to play it!

I’ve already pre-ordered my copy (pre-orders come with an exclusive weapon), and will be able to start playing during November (the 11th if memory serves me right).