Sunday, September 30, 2007

Week 3: Flickr DNA

This page enables anyone to explore the public photos of individual Flickr members, which Flickr will “organise, analyse and create a high-level overview”. Members are able to request that photos they don’t want the public to see are marked “Private” so they won’t appear on the DNA profile. Anyone can join this by adding the DNA button to their profile. I looked at some “Random Persons” profiles and there were some very professional looking photographs on display. Photos can also be grouped according to subject – e.g. “Nature” has over ¼ million photos available.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Week 3: Mashups

My understanding of a mashup (which I had never heard of before now!) is that it is a web application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated webpage, i.e. they allow anyone to combine existing data from different websites in new ways. Apparently these are relatively easy to design and can be accomplished without a huge amount of technical knowledge.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Week 3: Technology

I have had a look at the tutorial for Flickr, and immediately thought that this would be very handy for sharing family photographs, as we have family members doing OEs, and others with new babies, so this would be a sensible alternative to emailing photos.
I signed up with Skype about three months ago and now have free conversations with a friend in England who also has Skype software installed on her computer. The software is free to download - all I had to do was buy a $20 microphone from Dick Smith and plug it into a computer slot.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Week 2: Social networking sites

I have had a look at MySpace and Facebook. The pages I looked at on MySpace (2 of them) were hard to read because of dark backgrounds. I don't think I will be becoming a regular contributor or viewer of these sites because the principal theme seems to be "Look at me!" and I'm just too old to be bothered with that nonsense!

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Week 1: Introduction

Chocolate Pudding

2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp cocoa
1 cup sugar
50g butter, melted
1 cup milk


(Turn the electric jug on before you begin.)

Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa into large bowl, then stir in sugar well. Make a hollow in the centre and add the melted butter and milk mixed. Stir until mixed but don’t overdo it.
Put into a large greased dish (it will boil over in the oven if the dish is too small) and smooth out the mixture.

Sauce:
2 cups brown sugar
4 tbsp cocoa, sifted
4 cups of boiling water

Mix brown sugar and cocoa and sprinkle over mixture in dish. Pour over the four cups of boiling water carefully. Bake at 350ºF or 180ºC for 55 minutes. Check it’s not still gooey in the middle before taking out of oven.