Nov 24, 2013

My digital life

So here we have my piece for the #mydigitallife where it displays me and how technology has been a part of my life.

It's all finger drawn on a windows 8 app called "Fresh Paint" all done 10 minutes before class started. 
Here it is:


It's pretty straight forward everything here, below the pictures there is a caption with the year I got it, and a date where it pretty much died, either I got rid of it or it broke down.

And that's all there is to it. I'll have a more detailed commentary on my portfolio.

Nov 7, 2013

Pew Data

As I have discovered from the Pew Databases on teen gadget ownership I have made some interesting discoveries, here they are.

78% of teens own a Cell Phone

37% of teens own a Smart Phone

80% of teens own a Laptop or Desktop Computer

23% of teens own a Tablet

the high level of Cell Phone shocks me slightly, I was not expecting cell phones to have such a remarkable rise over Smart Phones.

Then comes the online usage, which was also interesting:

97% use email

80% use social networking

63% access the internet daily

38% create and share things

54% send text messages

89% use the internet at home

14% create or work on their online blogs

37% do video chat on apps like Skype Google talk and iChat

And I of course am part of all those.

Here is my poster:



Oct 29, 2013

Universal principles of design

From the book: "Universal Principles of design" by Lidwell

There are many topics on design, a few that strike me most of interest, was Legibility, Similarity, and Color.

Legibility: How clear and easy it is to read something on the screen.

Similarity: to have things on the site similar to each other, like certain shapes and colors.

Color: A spectrum of light visible to the human eye ranging from red to purple.

***

Portfolio

For my portfolio I managed to incorporate these 3 themes to it, and this is how:

Legibility:
The text and the title are completely legible. The body text I put it in a complete block of white and kept the font black, because it's the most contrast you can get out of the text without having any form of distracting colors. For example, if would be easier to see:

Black on white, or White on Black. Rather than, Green and Magenta, Blue or yellow, or red and cyan.

[ Snippet of my portfolio's home page ]

[ Snippet of my portfolio's Headder ]

Even though the headder does in fact have a background behind it, the text is still bold enough, and stands out enough to be read as "CID106 - Anthonely."

Similarity:
The portfolio utilizes a form of colored blocks in the backgroud, which keeps a similarity to my micro blog and blog. The blog being colored stripes and the micro blog being circles. This one uses squares.



 
[ The background image for the portfolio ]

 
Color:
If it isn't obvious enough to see, there Is a lot of color at work here.
 
 
Blog
 
Legibility:
On the blog, all the entries are boxed into a while block which can be easily read. As well as the text, it can still be told apart from the background, even though there is no text block under it.
 
 
[ A snippet of the blog ]
 

 
Similarity:
It holds the similar theme with the site, the body text is kept inside a white box just like the portfolio, and the background is something that involves colors and shapes.
 
[ A snippet of the background ]

 
Color:
The color scheme for this blog isn't so universal like the portfolio, in fact it has a warmer color scale, ranging from Purple to red.
 
 
Micro Blog
 
Legibility:
Twitter doesn't really give much control on the layout of the site, therefor everything is held where it is, but at least for when it comes to customizing the color of text, keeping the background color for the blocks white, with the black text.
 
[ A snippet of my twitter ]

 
Similarity:
Here the theme for twitter is several colored circles, so it maintains that color style but instead of squares and lines it's circles.

 
 
[ The background to the twitter ]

 
Color:
As it has been in displayed in the others, it all utilizes color, giving a similar form or theme.
 
And that is how I implied Legibility, Similarity, and Color from The Universal Prin of Design to my Site, Blog, ad Microblog.

Sep 19, 2013

Wildcat Media

Ever sat down on that couch in your suite? Grabbed the remote and flicked through channels? Ever heard of channel 10?

But more importantly... Have you ever wanted to be a Star?

Well, you can, sort of. SUNY IT has a Wildcat Media service, which runs on Channel 10, and they talk about what they provide on their site.


And it is also managed by: James Huchital


This is a photo from his short chunk of information in the Council page



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Where can I find their room?
Well, if you enter the Student center...


Going up the bright set of stairs to the second floor...


Down past the game room and coming up to the second pub where to hang out, there will be 2 doors...

This Photo is only showing one door, the other is on the other side.
And the room the camera is pointed at is what's known as The Students Activity Suite


******************************************************

Entering the Activity Suite we come to this


Ad in here is where you can find room S215, which is the recording Booth, where you are recorded and broadcast to channel 10!

It may not be a worldwide channel broadcast, but at least you can be seen by your colleagues, and get a feel for what it's like to be on TV. Hope to see you on TV Soon!

Sep 9, 2013

Air Droid

I have been using this one useful tool for quite some time now, and it is called: "Airdroid"

Airdroid is a web tool, cross platform that allows you to control your Android through the internet. When you go to their site or use their chrome app. You come to a page that looks like this:


You will also need to have the Airdroid app installed on your android as well.
The easiest method for you to join the airdroid site and the app is to scan the QR Code.

After that, you scan the QR Code as seen on the Airdroid site and you're in business!

To the left of the page you see apps and tools

To the right there is your Phone's information, and the ability to upload Files, URLs, send things to its clipboard and even install unofficial APK's (Apps)


Of course at the top and bottom right there is more tools, the top bar if you want to vide your account, search for apps and also displays battery information, signal strength and type of signal it's connected to, my phone right now is connected to the SUNYIT network, so it's a LAN connection. 




**************************

And with those apps you can do things like view and send text messages, view your photos, take pictures with the phone's camera. Edit and organize contacts, view call log, listen to music, view videos, view and download apps and even browse all of your phone's files.

This tool gives you lots of control over your android phone, and it makes things easier for you if you're more of a computer user, check your text messages on the screen while you're making a blog like I am, rather than pull away from the computer entirely to check the phone.

Sep 5, 2013

Everyone's blogs

I have sucessfully managed to add everyone from the form spread sheet with the links. I added everyone who's link was working, however there was 1 that said "404" so you may want to get that looked at. Here is that link: http://dtakadray1.wordpress.com/

The list is numbered from the first person to submit a response to the last one

  1. Anthonely
  2. Gerald
  3. Shannon
  4. Meghan
  5. James
  6. Alex
  7. Molly
  8. William
  9. Haneysv
  10. Nick
  11. Benden

If you don't see your name, post a comment IMMEDIATELY with your name and link to your blog so I can add it.

Also, the way you are tagged in the Wordpress is on account of the author, so what ever your author name is that's what it will show. I believe that is your username account.

Happy Blogging~!

Sep 2, 2013

My Studies on Aggregating Bloggs

RSS

Just to quickly start things off, in the simplest sense, every blog out there, has this thing called an RSS Feed (Really Simple Syndication). These "Feeds" are generated in blogging platforms for easier access to their posts. For example, this blog has its own RSS feeds page, which reader services like Yahoo Reader, Feedly, and others can access and show you the feeds (Google Reader used to be a main candidate but was discontinued sometime in June). It goes something like this:

Post  Feed  Reader  You

So that's how it goes, your post becomes a feed, then goes to the reader, then it becomes accessible to you (With a link to the original post).


IFTTT

What is "IFTTT" you may ask? Well, if any of you have seen the recent bookmark Steven had posted on Diigo, it speaks about this service. IFTTT ( if this then that) Is a web service that provides an online trigger. As they explain here, IFTTT very simply allows you to create recipes with certain premises.

Let's say, I wanted a post from my own personal blog on Blogger to appear on my Feedly as a new feed.

After creating an account on IFTTT's page, and you select "Recipes" you come to this page:
***

Afterwards, you come up to the famous statement "if this then that" and you select "this"

***

Here you have a WIDE range of options of services to choose from, some even going into the iOS services

However, to be able to use one for the iOS service, you would need to install their app, they give you a download link for it.
***
But for me, I'll be going with Blogger.

It will then Prompt me to activate the "This" Command


It then takes you to a prompt to sign up your account, but since SUNYIT doesn't support Blogger, I need to use my personal account.



After you select which blog you want, you then get this:


***

Now you should have this:

Of course continue to the next step as instructed, and you will be asked what will the trigger from Blogger be.


I'll go with any new post. Then it'll take you to the "that" part.


Now, the list won't be as huge as the first one, because now it's only services compatible with Blogger. Let's select Feedly now.



Then the same thing, you activate the trigger by going to Feedly's service and logging in.



Now you come to setting what will Feedly do.


Then you come down to adding these things called "Ingredients" since the post will appear in Feedly, there are some customization features that you can edit.

For me, what I will do is add the "Post title" and the "Post URl" so when I go to Feedly, that's what I see.



Then you very simply create the action, and boom! you have your recipe.

And you'll be able to edit, see, and either disable or enable them in your recipes window. They do however have a 15 minute interval, so you'll need to be patient.

So, to test this out, I made a post on Bloggy me:

15 minutes later, I see this on my Feedly:



And there you have it!


So then, the formula we would need to complete a junction Blog, would be to have this, several recipes linked to everyone's blogs, and all going to the same Blog, thus, making a post for every new post you guys make! Brilliant isn't it?

Well, that's all I have for now. The studies have been great!
Thank you for reading.