In Washington, 17/12/2008, Yahoo announced that it will cut to three months the time it stores personal data gathered from Web surfing, making its retention policy the shortest among peers. Due to the pressure from European and other data protection officials to do more to protect the privacy of users, Google halved the amount of time it stores personal data to nine months. The European Union has recommended that Internet search companies keep data no more than six months and urged the sector to adopt an industry-wide standard.

Adobe will be releasing six different versions of creative suite 4.

Adobe Creative Suite - CS4 Design Standard ($1,400, $600)
Adobe Creative Suite - CS3 Design Premium ($1,800, $600)
Adobe Creative Suite - CS4 Web Standard ($1,000, $600)
Adobe Creative Suite - CS4 Web Premium ($1,700, $600)
Adobe Creative Suite - CS4 Production Premium ($1,700, $600)
Adobe Creative Suite - CS4 Master Collection ($2,500, $900)

On Monday, Intel launched Dunnington six core processor, “Xeons 7400” specially designed for virtualization applications. It’s the Xeon line–server processor, and not a desktop. Three processors are dedicated for low voltage offering. The cost ranges from $856 to $2729; “Xeons 7400” has 50% more best features compared with “Xeons 7300”.

Who is responsible for the community site content? Web Master or site members!
Apart from being useful in sharing content, social networking sites have become one of the best platforms for buyers and sellers to meet in a free open market strata, where they get to engage in commerce. The sellers promote their business by posting their items for sale in a site marketplace. If people surfing the site, find a particular item useful, they will buy it. All the posting and purchasing processes involved in the execution of the sale are done online.

But the downside to this is that fake companies utilize this opportunity to post counterfeit items. People trusting such sites purchase products blindly, only to find out that their purchase was ‘not such a good idea’. Once they come to know the truth about the product after usage, they seek legal assistance to help them out in such cases. The result, often reflecting badly on the site involved and its administrators. They are charged as responsible for posting such content on their site and fined heavily.

Even in the recent lawsuit between Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) and eBay (eBay is The World’s Online Marketplace®, enabling trade on a local, national and international basis), a French court ruled that eBay was responsible for counterfeit items sold on the site and for selling genuine products outside of authorized channels. The court ordered eBay to pay around 40 million Euros, which works out to approximately $63.2 million. The auction website has also been ordered to stop selling fragrances and cosmetics from those brands immediately, or face more fines. (Source).

Now arises the question of who is actually responsible for the content posted on a website. If one argues that web masters are responsible, you can always come up with the counter-argument that it would be tedious for the site owners to control the content posted by millions of users. So the responsibility lies solely in the hands of the site members who contribute to the content.
Similar situation can be seen in the content posted in networking sites. People upload inappropriate content such as porn videos, racist slurs, copyright content etc without the knowledge of the web master. Due to such irresponsible posts, the site is rendered unsafe for the genuine users. Even though such sites take necessary actions by hiring teams that work solely for the purpose of approving uploaded content and installing special software to restrict uploading of such content, such illicit material still finds a way to surface through. Also, such efforts end in vain due to delay in processing as millions and millions of bytes content are uploaded every day. With the constant threat of losing customers to competing sites looming large, the web owners relax the measures taken against such uploads, which paves way for posting inappropriate content.

Gone are the days when the only way to communicate with people sitting far away was letters. In the modern world, everyone shares information with people through communication means such as phones and the internet. With the internet available to a very large section of the global society, and that too at very reasonable costs, online chatting is now a preferred mode of communication. It’s possible to chat with anyone sitting in any corner of the world, as long as they are online the same time as you are.

Although online chatting is a means of socializing and getting to know people all over the world, there are security issues related to it. Certain basic safety precautions need to be followed to make sure that chatting is a pleasant experience.

Safety precautions include:

1. Make sure your screen name never includes your genuine name.

2. Don’t share your videos and photos with unknown people.

3. Don’t reveal personal information to people you don’t know and protect your personal identity.

4. If you receive messages that make you feel uncomfortable, don’t respond to them and try to avoid chatting with that specific person; blocking the user is a good option.

5. Don’t organize to meet up with your new chat friends. If necessary, meet up in busy place and make sure you’ve informed friends or family about where you’re going.

6. If you receive any unexpected files from people you don’t know, don’t accept or download the files as they could carry viruses and completely ruin your system.

7. Saving copies of your chat conversations is a good idea, in case you need to use them in future.

8. You must know how to report the problems to the chat room moderator.

Follow these simple precautions and make sure that chatting online is an enjoyable experience for you, and not something that could get you into any kind of trouble.

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To animate is to infuse life into something that is inanimate or without life. An animation film breathes life into painted or sketched characters. The hero and heroines are not real life movie stars or animals and birds.

Animation films involve the quick display of a series of images to give the illusion of movement. It is a kind of optical illusion of movement. The phenomenon is known as vision persistence.

Animation effects began long time ago and not some new invention of the movie world. In the cave paintings of the Old Stone Age the animals were having many legs on superimposed positions in an attempt to capture movement. In the 1800 flip books became popular when by rapidly thumbing through these special books the viewer got the impression of movement. However it was not until the debut of motion picture films that animation films really took off. No one person can be credited to be the creator of animation films. It involved several people in several projects.

Georges Melies was the first one to dabble with special effects in movies by using animation techniques. Accidentally he discovered it - the stop-motion animation, when his camera happened to break down. He was shooting a bus. But when he fixed the camera a horse came in the view and the net result was that the bus changed into a horse! J. Stuart Blackton came to combine the techniques of hand-drawn animation and stop-motion for the first time at the turn of the 20th century. Blackton is often referred to as the first successful animator.

French artist Emile Cohl made a film from hand painted cartoon strips name Fantasmagorie in 1908. The film depicted a stick moving and meeting other objects like a wine bottle that becomes changed into a flower. Sometimes the hands of the animator entered the scene. Each frame was drawn on paper and then each was shot on to a negative film that gave a blackboard effect. Thus it can be said that Fantasmagorie was the first animated film to make its debut.

Soon many other artists began to experiment. One was newspaper cartoonist Winsor McCay who began to work with a team. He came to produce some noted films like Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur. In the 1910`s cartoon animated films began to rule the scene. The technique came to known as cel-animation.

Warner Bros and Walt Disney studio came to be legendary names associated with full animation industry in the film world. Limited animation uses less detail. Japan and United Productions of America produced animated films using this method. Another popular technique is rotoscoping. In 1917 Max Fleischer patented it. Here the animators copy frame-by-frame live actions.

The other methods are stop-motion-animation, clay-animation (using clay figures), cutout-animation (using paper and cloth), silhouette-animation, graphic-animation, model-animation, object-animation and puppet animation. In pixilation human beings are used in stop motion roles. This allows for surreal effects like disappearances and appearance. The latest technique of computer animation includes many kinds of techniques. These are made digitally on a computer machine.

Thus we find that in animated films drawings and or paintings are photographed individually by stop-frame cinematography. One frame is slightly different from the other thus giving the illusion of movement. These are moved in rapid succession - about 24 frames in each second. Animation can be regarded as a film technique and not a distinct category of film. These films were ideal for depicting fairy tales and captured the hearts of children for all times to come. It is difficult to find an adult who will not admit enjoying animation films.

This article can be accessed in portuguese from the Article section of page
Roberto Sedycias works as IT consultant for

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Web 2.0: what does it really mean?

Tim O’Reilly created the term Web 2.0 in 2004 as a title for a developer conference. Actually, there is not a clear-cut definition for Web 2.0 but it typically describes a form of user-to-user communication over the internet. For unlike Web 2.0 is not a technical innovation. With offers for social interaction such as Blogger.com, Del.ico.us, facebook, Flickr, GarageBand, Habbo-Hotel, MySpace, Linkdin, Spoke, Studylounge, YouTube, Wikipedia and Xing, the Web 2.0 merely documents the realisation that the internet was always a social forum for exchanging opinions and banal experiences and never just a digital market place.

In simple term, just it needs to understand that Web 2.0 is the current version, characterized by social networks (Orkut), online multigaming, audio, video and text sharing and communities built around them, wikis, blogs and so on so forth.

Web 2.0: A super-medium of Business

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. It is a medium enriched with all the possible facilities of doing business such as buying/selling/auction (eBay) classifieds (Yello, CraigsList) job search engines / aggregators (Monster, Bixee). A clear picture of B2B, C2C, B2C, B2C2B markets is provided by Web 2.0.

Writing Semantic Markup for Designers

A web designer avails a lot of facility when s/he uses 2.0. To understand what useful it can be it is one of the biggest steps in realizing Web 2.0 is the transition to semantic markup. The most popular markup languages, HTML and XHTML, are used primarily for display purposes, with tags to which designers can apply styles via CSS.

Designers can describe content, but only to the extent that it fits within the (X) HTML tag set. For example, designers can mark up content as headers, paragraphs, list items, citations, and definition lists using the heading, paragraph, list, citation and defination list tags, respectively. For some simple documents, these tags are adequate to describe content effectively. For most documents, however, there is no way to accurately describe the content with the (X) HTML tags we have available. In Web 2.0, this description is not only possible, but also critical.

Providing Web Services not the Place

During the early years of the Web, before content had semantic meaning, sites were developed as a collection of “pages.” XML technologies enabled content to be shareable and transformable between different systems, and Web services provided hooks into the innards of sites. Instead of visual design being the interface to content, Web services have become programmatic interfaces to that same content. Anyone can build an interface to content on any domain if the developers there provide a Web services API.

An interesting interface built using eBay’s Web services is Andale, a site that tracks sales, prices to give auction sellers a better idea of what items are hot, and how much they have been selling for.

Online Privacy

E-commerce is a wide array of interconnected business concept in 2.0 equipped with modern technologies and cultural phenomena. With the advent of E-commerce, many opportunities are now available to business: transcending geographic boundaries being open 24 hours and expanded profiling and marketing capabilities.

For deliverance to your customer, you need to know you customer, though the customer may rather keep that information private.

An immense amount of data is being collected not only from browsing on the internet, but from credit cards, mobile phones and frequent buyer programs such as “fly buys”. Retailers may exploit the personal information every time a user uses his or her credit card. In the beginning, the Internet allowed a certain level of anonymity. With the development of 2.0, this is no longer the case. People feel susceptible to privacy invasion.

Be a driver, not a passenger

Interactive Web 2.0 applications such as online diaries (blogs, see box), online libraries (wikis) or virtual worlds have changed the way that consumers gather information. Instead of settling for the role of passive customer, the active Web2.0 user wants to contribute and discuss the latest news. Interactive platforms challenge existing business models and demand on appropriate reaction as information spreads through new channels.

Be authentic: it is an advance way of communication

Web 2.0 heralds a new era of communication with a massive increase in information supply and news, opinion and services flow directly from user to user. Financial institutions can take advantage if they stay abreast of this development. However, any Web 2.0 presence of a financial institution must be authentic and consistent with the institution’s brand and corporate culture. To leverage the potential, the need for an immaculate reputation and the right type of brand is becoming ever more important.

Conclusion:

From the concept of emerging technologies such as the Semantic Web transforming the way the Web is used (and leading to new possibilities in artificial intelligence) to the observation that increases in Internet connection speeds, modular web applications, and advances in computer graphics will play the key role in the evolution of the World Wide Web.

Now, even 2.0 is left behind the need and web-planet is looking forward for the new invention. Web 3.0 is the future, supposed to be characterised by natural language search (algorithms infirmed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) research); referred to as GGG (Global Giant Graph) by Tim Berners-Lee, who is father of www.

We have been realizing that Web 2.0 is well documented and talked about. The power of the Net reached a critical mass, with capabilities that can be done on a network level. We are also seeing richer devices over last four years and richer ways of interacting with the network, not only in hardware like game consoles and mobile devices, but also in the software layer. You do not have to be a computer scientist to create a program. We are seeing that manifest in Web 2.0 and 3.0 will be a great extension of that, a true communal medium…the distinction between professional, semi-professional and consumers will get blurred, creating a network effect of business and applications.

Kontiki Radisson is a prolific and genre-bending writer known for works in web and blog sphere. his technology oriented articles are perfect blend of artistic aproach and complete knowledge. you can experience his greatness by this article.

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Dana Fine

This learning activity consists of a series of questions that the student answers by circling the correct responses. The learning activity is “conditional” because the user has a choice of answers and the learning activity will respond a certain way, depending upon the answer that the student selects. You can choose to have the student answer questions and give a score at the end, or you can use this as a learning tool and direct the student to the correct answers. For the purpose of this example, we are going to direct the student to the correct answers. The student can be directed to a particular answer by means of text or audio instructions. After the student answers the series of questions correctly, he sees a congratulations screen specific to the learning activity.

Functionality:

First, instructions appear describing the learning activity, with directions. The student then answers the first question by clicking the choice that he wants. If the answer is incorrect, he hears “Wrong” and sees text indicating that the answer is incorrect. This text can also include hints or directions to the correct answer. The student must answer correctly to proceed. After successfully answering the question, the student continues to the next questions until he completes all questions. He then sees a message indicating what the answers mean, usually with audio congratulations and applause.

An Example of a Circle Answer Conditional Activity:
INSTRUCTIONS:

Fractions are fun! In this learning activity, you will choose the correct fraction that fits the description for that line in the table. (Note that this method of instruction is directed answering. You do not have to do directed answering. You could have the student make the best choice.)
Picture or chart indicating questions and answers available: Example, fill in for your learning activity:

Fraction Description Choices Score
Fraction greater than 1 1/2 22/23 9/6 5/8 2/4 9/12 1 (if correct and since we will not let them go to the next line until the correct fraction is chosen, this will be the correct score)
Fraction equal in value to 4/5 1/2 3/4 22/23 25/20 20/25 8/25 1
Fraction less than 2/4 1/2 6/12 1/3 22/23 7/12 5/10 1
Total Score 3

This process continues for each row. After answering successfully, the following message is given to the student, along with applause:

Ending Text Message (may be a picture) Audio is generally applause. Example, replace for new activity:

Fractions are fun! Congratulations!

Below are some variations of the forced answer sequence examples where this method of learning is useful:

Example: 1 To test your understanding of company regulations about what you can and cannot say during a presentation, circle the items that you cannot say during the XXXXX presentation.

Items are listed from 1-10. (As each item is circled, the student is informed whether the selection was correct. There are five items that cannot be said during a presentation -At the end of ten tries, or if all the correct items are selected, applause is given, and a score indicates whether the right five choices were finally selected).

Example: 2 Any form that needs to be filled out correctly, like evaluation forms. You can guide the student through a section of a form and indicate how to properly fill it out.

Dana Fine is a Senior Instructional Designer at SyberWorks, Inc. SyberWorks is a custom e-Learning solutions company that specializes in Learning Management Systems, e-Learning solutions, and custom online course development. Dana is also a frequent contributor to the Online Training Content Journal. The Online Training Content Journal blog looks at best practices, techniques, and trends in online training development and e-Learning instructional design.

Here is a link for you to check out the “Fractions Are Fun” learning activity

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