Silent in the Morning

This chapter provides readers with a look into the new technologies and Websites such as Flickr, Myspace, Wikipedia, and del.icio.us.

Brigg’s highlights these four because they have changed the way people consume news and information.

As for why the chapter is labeled “Web 2.0”, Brigg’s explains how the term “Web 2.0” refers to Web sites that get at least some of their value from the actions of users. Often the concept is compared and contrasted to “Web 1.0,” a term describing the construct and limitations under which much of the current Web was constructed.

If you had to take anything out of this chapter it would be the fact that Web publishers are now just creating the platforms, while relying upon their users to provide the content.

Flickr: launched in February 2004, was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver-based company. One year later, Yahoo! bought the photo-sharing Web site but has done little to integrate it into its massive portal. Flickr is more than a place to share personal photographs. It’s also a community platform that uses tags to power its organization and makes photos of specific topics easy to find.

Wikipedia: essentially is an online encyclopedia that is controlled by its users who provide information to the public on a wide range of topics. The site is controlled solely by its users and can be edited and altered at any point necessary.

Myspace: the most popular Web site on the planet in terms of page views. News Corp. purchased the site in 2005 for $580 million. By registering and filling out profiles, users create the content. They use “blurbs,” “interests” and “details” sections to present their online persona, and communicate with blogs, photos, video and comments. The site is dominated by teens and young adults.

Tags from Flickr.com

MySpace.com home page.

In the first chapter, Brigg’s provides readers with the essential concepts and terms necessary to thrive in the “digital age”.

The first section focuses on megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes. According to Brigg’s,the whole digital evolution can be explained in bits and bytes. A byte is a unit of measure for digital information. A single byte contains eight consecutive bits and is capable of storing a single ASCII character.
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) first published a standard in 1967. It defines the 95 printable characters that are the text in computers and communications devices. Essentially, it’s everything on your keyboard: letters, numbers and basic symbols like % and &.

Why this pertains to online publishers is due to the fact that  the speed of an Internet connection plus the size of the file to be downloaded determines how fast someone can download your content. Below is a diagram of the bytes and their size:

Source: Marshall Brain, “How Bits and Bytes Work,” April 1, 2000.

The second section separates the Internet from the World Wide Web. Prior to reading, I thought both terms were the same, however, as Brigg’s explains the Internet refers to the network of connected computers that share information. While, the World Wide Web refers to a way of accessing information through the Internet using the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and Web browsers. It does not include other protocols such as e-mail, instant messaging and file transfer (FTP).

Briggs continues on in the chapter explaining RSS Feed, Instant Messaging and File Transfer Protocol.

RSS Feed: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, which is a great name because the concept is just that: Really simple. It allows you to subscribe to an information feed that gets delivered directly to your RSS reader or Web browser. So instead of visiting several different Web pages each day or performing the same Web searches over and over, you can set up RSS feeds to do it for you.

File Transfer Protocol: A simple process for moving those big files that e-mail can’t handle is called File Transfer Protocol (FTP). There are dozens of free software programs available to execute the task. Digital audio and video—and some PDF and PowerPoint files—can exceed 1MB in size. Some video files even exceed 1GB. It’s not a good idea to transfer files larger than 1MB with e-mail since most network servers are not capable of handling them. However, when would you use FTP? Use it if you have shot some photos or video or recorded some audio and you want to publish it online on your Web site with the story you are working on. All you need to transfer a large file (or files) over the Internet, besides some free software, is the account information of the server where you want to send the file.

Summary: A simple way to fine tune one’s digital literacy is to add RSS and chat daily with people using Instant Message. It will certainly open people minds to the wonderful opportunities that the Internet offers, as well as, prepare one for the changes that will occur down the road.