I’ve always seen PowerPoints as a beneficial piece of visual representation for speeches and presentations; however, in some cases PowerPoints can be very stressful on the eyes and cause problems for the viewers because of the complication of the powerpoint.  This often happens when the presenter tries to add too much on one slide.  Back in high school I learned the technique of TMI… TMI is “too much information.”  I use this to dictate when I have too much information on my slides.

I base this on 3 factors:

1. Can the slide be easily understood?  The slide does not have way too much text so that the font is small or the text isn’t jumbled in a weird format.
2. Are the photos/symbols easily seen and understood?  The photos aren’t too small, but they aren’t too big overlapping texts or other photos.
3. Are the colors complimenting?  This is actually really important because certain colors put stress on the viewer’s eyes such as lighter  colors like a light blue.

These 3 factors have always been beneficial to me for determining what a powerpoint should have and shouldn’t have.  In the article “PowerPoint is Evil” by Tufte, the author gives examples of good and bad slides in powerpoint and how the main success of your powerpoint falls on its quality.  It does not bore the viewer, but it does not do any harm to the viewer such as irrelevant information or photos.

The “Many Eyes” website offers a good program to build a visual representation of information.  This website offers different options for visualizations allowing the user to build a strong presentation.

The PowerPoint on the Gettysburg address was interesting… however, I believe its something that just can’t be represented through this visualization because it creates confusion in the viewer if they have no idea whats being discussed.

This is my chart I did on fertility rates in the United States for Caucasian children between 1800 and the year 2000.  I used an encyclopedia of demographics to find this data.

For this weeks reading I took a look at the 2008 and 2010 Feltron Reports.  The information was difficult to understand to say the least.  I had heard of these prior to reading them as the study has been published in many places.  They were definitely not what I expected.  I thought it would just be statistics of everything that Nicholas Felton had done for that year; however, its actually a complex set up of data over a course of time.  It was very interesting as I went through page by page because I had never seen someone do a study like this.  It seems to be very tedious.  I found the 2008 Feltron report a lot easier to understand than the 2010 report because the information was more simply displayed.  The 2010 Feltron report was a lot different than that of the 2008 because it offered statistics of a catalog over a course of a large number of years. This made the 2010 report a lot less interesting to me.

I then went to explore more reports.  I definitely prefer the reports that record his personal activities for the year because that seems like something I’d like to do sometime just to see how it turns out.  I believe that the work put into tracking your activities may be a lot, but to produce data like this is just amazing.  I idolize Nicholas Felton for his hard work.  There’s just so many variables that can be studied in regards to activities.  In all, the Feltron reports were very interesting and I will continue checking through this site to see what else I can learn.

View George Mason, Past and Present in a larger map

When making this map it stressed me out because I couldn’t find pictures of the campus from the 90’s; however, I believe this serves as an accurate presentation of Mason’s transformations over the years.

This reading, as a whole, was a lot of content.  I found it very well put together though and it gave me ideas for how I could possibly approach the final project in this class.  The easy navigation throughout the digital article made it easy to find my way through the reading.  Its very interesting that authors accredit Vannevar Bush’s envision of hypertext as the foothold for their article.  Thomas and Ayers offer their piece of digital history as the first step to more types of scholarship.  The authors believe that digital scholarship still needs improvement, which it does, and that they can address these four points in order to make digital scholarship of history as useful/reliable as its counterpart of written journals and articles.

• how to present narrative more effectively
• how to represent event and change
• how to analyze language more precisely
• how to create visualizations as compelling and complete as narrative

After reading the article it was easy to see that a lot of work had been put into this digital piece of history.  Slavery is, often, a critical issue when addressed.  The authors do a great job at producing a thorough analysis of how it affected two communities.  For me, the strength of this website definitely came in its simple navigation; however, I believe nothing will ever pass up the simplicity of a paper article just because anyone can turn a page.  Not everyone knows how to use and function through digital scholarship.  Another strength I found in this website was the access to resources.  The site offered links to encyclopedic articles as well as other sources used for the analysis.  The utilization of charts and maps was very beneficial in their analysis because this allows for simple comparisons to be made.  One chart they used was the following to show statistics of laborers in Augusta and Franklin during the year 1860.

I found this chart to be very informative and simple to understand.  The authors did not add anything to complex that would cause difficulty in the understanding such as color or a three-dimensional chart.  I believe this method for relaying information will be very useful when it comes to the final project in this class.

Digitization of the past is still a new technology.  I believe that much history will be digitized in the future just for storage-sakes; however, it may not always be as engaging as exploring something in person or reading the physical manuscript.  Overall, I found this article very useful and will use it as a resource for the final project.

For me the chart exercise was quite simple.  Google offers a very easy interface to create charts.  It starts with choosing what type of chart the user would like to create; there are many choices such as a bar graph, line graph, pie chart, etc.  Following the choice of the type of chart I was able to to create my piece.  I used two variables.  The amount of protein and carbohydrates I have consumed over a course of 3 days.  I then inserted my data into the data set.  It gave me a pretty accurate comparison of what I had entered.  I find this tool to be very useful and I feel that it can be used to show a comparison of a historical piece which will be very useful when it comes to the final project.

For the map I just did a basic map of the area around my house.  I practiced using some of the tools such as shapes and markers.  The shape represents the area of my house.  The markers represent different things.  The marker on the house represents where my room is, the markers on the lakes represent Lake #1 and Lake #2.  I believe these tools will be very useful when it comes down to the final project because they will allow us to display our data in a nice fashion.  The map maker will definitely come into good use when marking places where historical events and acts went down.

Test

• Choose 3 out of 4 short answers.
• Essay (what would you need to build a digital project)
• Detail and Reasoning = Rubric

Notes

• Loss of information through digitization (images, music, video)
• Know about technologies used in websites (statics, databases)
• Analog, digital documents (Morris reading)
• Legal limits of pieces (before 1920=public domain, 20th century=in copyright, different for other forms, closer to present day=more legal issues)
• Preservation (Chapter 8), access, security, trade-offs
• Literacy in the computer world
• Be able to assess a typical subject and be able to address the issues regarding it
• 4 principles of fair use: 1) nature of the work: creative works, works that were personal 2) extent of the use: amount being used 3) intent of the use: why are you copying this, commercial vs noncommercial 4) effect on the market: how does it affect the original source of the content, damage to the market
• Markup Language: HTML = Subset of SGML (Base)…. XML = larger subset than HTML… KML = Google… <i> </i>…. HTML is a display language…. XHTML = version that conforms with XML

Content

• Short answers (Pick 3, points are hit, paragraph or 2)
• One essay (Couple pages, synthetic, case study given, how would you do it)
• Know things that came up in books/readings
• Relatively straight forward
• In copyright vs Public Domain
• Digitization
• Four principles of fair use

This story really opened my eyes up on all the information access to the internet can give us.  The fact that the hackers used two big name companies, Apple and Amazon, in order to hack Mr. Honan just baffles me.  Why don’t these companies have a better online security interface seeing as they are two of the most used on the entire internet?  My other question is why only protect an account with public information?  By public information, I mean a billing address or the last 4 numbers of a credit card.  Some people may not think the last 4 is public information, but just look how many places the card is used.  Its really not too difficult to take a peak at the numbers while, lets say, working on a cash register.  The fact that Amazon literally gave them the last 4 numbers of the credit card just through the use of fake information is ridiculous.  AppleCare really should have required more information in order to access Mr. Honan’s account.  The fact that the hackers actually got in and erased all his data makes me feel for him, but I say that he is not at fault.  The companies that have allowed this to happen are at fault.  Now lets get to how the got all this back.

I was amazed that Mr. Honan was able to recover 75% of his drive.  The goal of the hackers was not to access his bank accounts or delete all his best memories, but to “prove that they could” hack into an account via the use of the Apple and Amazon.  I do not think Apple as a whole had a big part to do with the recovery of information, but the personal interest and customer service of the associates at Apple.  As quickly as Apple had given away his information, he got it back through the work of good employees.  Its no surprise that Mr. Honan is now a fan of backing up his data.  Apple’s idea of secrecy may not be the best thing in terms of its security mechanisms.  They need to let their customers know what is being done to protect them from online hackers like the ones the gained access to Mr. Honan’s information.  Honan mentioned that Amazon has now improved its security precautions which is a good thing seeing as so many people place orders from that company every day.  If hackers with the wrong intentions got into his Amazon or Apple account, who knows what might have happened financially.  Thank god his bill was only $1,690.

Exercise

After reading Mr. Honan’s article I feel I need to work on my digital security.  Lets evaluate the practices I use now.

• I use different passwords depending what account its for.  I categorize all my accounts.
• I do not use the same front name for e-mail, school, etc.
• I keep a written copy of my passwords.  I believe there is no safer way of protecting information than yourself.
• I add security questions and recovery questions to many of my accounts.
• I add a phone number that must be called in order to change anything.
• I add in automatic security updates for my computer, IPod and Phone.

Looking at what I do to protect my account makes me think I need more.  I feel no digital information will ever be completely safe.  I guess that’s cause I grew up in a world where we had the big transition from pen and paper to keyboard and computer.  Hackers have proven that they can access high value information through their tactics.  Today in this age, digital security is something that we all need.  It is definitely an important job of the future and I will work to improve my own digital security.  After all these readings I feel somewhat safer, but also somewhat more accessible to hackers.

May all your online information be safe.

TV NEWS is quite an interesting internet archive.  Before we start getting into the ethics and legality of the website I just wanted to discuss my experience on using it.  I like the idea that they had all the biggest topics in a collage of words on the homepage.  Seeing as we’re in an IT class, I clicked the technology link.  This took me to a variety of the videos ranging from CSPAN to SFGTV2 which are both public television stations.  One problem I encountered was the broadness of the search… It literally came up with every video that had technology within it.  The advanced search was useful, but definitely not on the level of other top search engines and research databases.  I actually really like the website, but now its time to get into the issues regarding the ethics and legality of this website.  Are they breaking copyright laws?  The four “Fair Use” guidelines are a great resource to use when evaluating this website.

1. Purpose – In the about section on the website the purpose is stated as “offering permanent access for researches, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections in digital format.”  I see no problem with that as they are not looking to make any commercial gains through this website.  It also states that the website is a 501(c)(3) or in other words a non-profit website.
2. The nature of the work is rather factual and the amount of creativity put into the archive is very minimal.
3. In relation to the whole, TV NEWS is right on the track only using snippets of the original clip.
4. From my experience on the website, I believe that the effect of the work would not affect the potential market because the website is not producing live feeds.  People can still go to their normal places in order to get the news right on the spot.

I have concluded, through the use of the four “Fair Use” guidelines, that the ethics and legality of this website are on par.  It does not violate copyright law.  The sole purpose of TV NEWS is to be informative, and seeing as it is one of are civil responsibilities to be informed I see no problem with this internet archive.