Bitmap & Vector

Vector and Bitmap

In this assignment I’m going to be talking about Vector and Bitmap images, they are both types of pictures, or different way pictures are made to be viewed on screen e.g. computers. Both vector and bitmap images are always 2D.

 When you look at an image on a computer screen you properly wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a vector or bitmap image, its only when you zoom in you can see the difference. Most images on computer screens are made up of bitmaps (raster images). Bitmaps are a map of little dots called pixels. You can see the Bitmaps if you zoom into a picture on the computer screen, the picture starts to look out of focus and you can see the tiny dots that make up the picture it makes the picture look very blocky. Pixels are tiny elements of colour you see on screen that make up all the colours of the image when you zoom in. Since the computer has to store information about every single pixel in the image, the file size of a bitmap graphic is often quite large compared to a vector graphic image. All the tiny dots of colour come together to create the image that you see. According to my research I found on, http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/aboutgraphics/a/bitmapvector.htm ’ Most computer monitors display approximately 70 to 100 pixels per inch--the actual number depends on your monitor and screen settings.’ If you want to edit a bitmap image it is much more complex than editing a vector image this is because you have to edit each pixel individually.

Vector graphics are different to Bitmap graphics because they are made up of paths instead of dots. Another difference is that if you zoom into a picture made of vectors is that the picture can be scaled larger or smaller without losing its quality, which seems to be the disadvantage of using Bitmap. You can create vector graphics in graphic packages such as  Adobe illustrator. If you did want to change the scale and enlarge a vector graphic it would be more succsesful than a bitmap image as it wouldn’t loose it quality and would look exactly the same just bigger. Vector graphics can be changed much eaiser than bitmap images not just by size, you can change the shape and colour and position. This means that you can edit each different object of the image. The file size of a vector graphic is usually very small even if it’s a large picture, this is because the vecotr graphic itself doesn’t take up much computer memory at all. Vector graphic’s unlike bitmap don’t look real they look almost cartoon.

Some software is better at creating and manipulating bitmaps or vector graphics.

Bitmap graphics can be created and edited using packages such as:

·         MS Paint

·         Adobe Photoshop

Vector graphics can be created using drawing packages, such as:

·         Adobe Illustrator

·         Adobe FreeHand

·         CorelDRAW

In conclusion you can see that vector images are more useful if you are thinking of resizing images or changing them. But bitmap images will be more helpful if your taking a picture with your digital camera and planning on keeping it the same without any editing or changing.

General packet radio service (GPRS)

GPRS allows information to be sent and received across a mobile telephone network. maximum speeds of up to 171.2 kilobits per second (kbps) are achievable with GPRS using all eight time slots at the same time. This is about three times as fast as the data transmission speeds possible over today's fixed telecommunications networks and ten times as fast as current Circuit Switched Data services on GSM networks. By allowing information to be transmitted more quickly, immediately and efficiently across the mobile network, GPRS may well be a relatively less costly mobile data service compared to SMS and Circuit Switched Data.

GPRS will fully enable the Internet applications you are used to on your desktop from web browsing to chat over the mobile network. Other new applications for GPRS, also file transfer and home automation - the ability to remotely access and control in-house appliances and machines.

From researching this I have found out that there are so many different ways of accessing the Internet on mobile phones. I found it a bit hard to understand as most of the websites I went on were very technical and I had to read pages a few times before I understood it enough to re-write it in my own words. 

3rd generation protocols (3G)

3G is the third generation of wireless technologies.  It comes with enhancements over previous wireless technologies, like high-speed transmission, advanced multimedia access and global roaming. 3G is mostly used with mobile phones and handsets as a means to connect the phone to the Internet or other IP networks in order to make voice and video calls, to download and upload data and to surf the net.

The advantages of using 3G is that you can browse the Internet on your mobile or portable device at a high speed and download music at high speed. Most 3G phones have a two cameras, this is so you can make video calls with other people.

3G is not that cheap but it's good for people that are on the move such as business people.

From this I have learnt that 3G is good if you want the Internet on the move without having to be linked up to wi-fi. Also from researching it Learnt about other forms of Internet browsing such as 2.5G.

Branding

What is branding?

Branding is used by companies and businesses so that people can recognise them. It is used for advertising. Companies can have brand names and, or brand logos which get recognised and linked wit the company.

For example Nike is a well known brand and it can be recognised not just by there name but there brand logo the tick. Everyone knows its Nike, they don't have to write the name 'Nike' with it because the logo is so well known.

Here are a few links to well known companies that use branding.

• www.mcdonalds.co.uk/
• http://www.animal.co.uk/fe/htm/intro/intro.asp
• http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/

I feel that from doing about branding I have learnt that it is a very good way to get companies known and very popular brands are known from just a logo its a very good way of getting a reputation for products and making people want to buy them.

The Diffrence between Discussion Forums and Blogs

Discussion forums is like an online community where you can share your ideas and thoughts about things with other people, like an ongoing conversation. 


A blog is more like a website. which people can go on and read, you can have people comment on your posts but it is different to a discussion forum as a discussion forum you need people to reply and put there ideas on for the forum to keep going. You cant have a forum with just one person writing in it.

From the knowledge i already had and the things I have learnt about discussion forums and blogs I feel they are both really good ways of communicating and building an online community of people with the same interests. Personally I prefer using an instant messaging but I think blogs can be more interesting as you can present things alot more professionally such as video's and pictures along with links.

What is MMS?

(mms, on iPhone)

MMS
(Multimedia Messaging Service) just like sms its a way of sending messages form one phone to the other. But mms can do more, it doesn't just have to be text it can include sound, video and pictures. You can also send an mms message to an email address! 

I think that mms is good because you can sent pictures or videos to other peoples phones without them having to wait until they check their emails to receive it. But on the down side it costs alot more than a usual text to send an mms, so I think I would prefer to do it by email



Homework. WAP & GSM

WAP
(wireless application protocol)
Is a type of Internet connection. It makes the web more accessible. For example wireless Internet, for laptops and mobile phones. It is based on Internet standards. (HTML, XML and TCP/IP).  A few examples of WAP that are useful -

• Checking train table information
• Ticket purchase
• Flight check in
• Viewing traffic information
• Checking weather conditions
• Looking up stock values
• Looking up phone numbers
• Looking up addresses
• Looking up sport results
• checking emails

GSM
(Global System for Mobile communications)
This is a protocol which is very popular in many different parts of the world. GSM digitizes and compresses data, then sends it down a channel with two other streams of user data, each in its own time slot. It operates at either the 900 MHz or 1800 MHz frequency band.

I found WAP easy to  understand and write about, but with GCM I found it alot harder to understand. I think i will need to do more research into it to get a better understanding on what it is and what it does.

Using A Discussion Forum

We have all just used a discussion forum on the moodle website. We all started up our own discussion and got comments back and commented other peoples posts.

My discussion was about using flash. I chose to do it about flash because when we used it in class I found it hard and couldn't remember the different stages in order. So posting my question 'Does anyone have any tips?' into my Discussion made the comments I got back really helpful and I got some which told me how other people remember. After reading the comments I defiantly I will use some of the advice I received.

This was my first time using a discussion forum and I found it very helpful as i got people's advice and ideas. I think it's a good way to communicate with other people.

What important information from W3C will you now consider before you produce a website?

W3C stands for The Worldwide Web Consortium. They make guidelines and tools to make standards for the web. This is good because it helps the web grow and be available to a wider range of people. It is an important resource.

The important information i found for this website is the guidelines that they have. These guidelines cover a wide range of recommendations for making the web content more accessible to more people. I learnt that following these guidelines means that people with disabilities can also benefit from the web such as the blind, deaf, low vision, limited movement and many more.

From this I will now consider before making my website to have an option of larger text, different colours for the poor sighted and maybe video or speech or sound for people who have trouble reading.

Unit 62: Digital Video Production for Interactive Media, Unit 59: Web Authoring

OUR TASK
We have been split up into groups and are creating an interactive promotional college website. This website will contain; video interviews, video footage, pictures and text.  We are also going to be making a production file, this will include; our ideas, booking forms, meeting minutes and risk assessments. In our blog we are going to be writing about our progress on this blog through out.

In our group there is me, Aimee Simmons, Chris Brereton, Daniel Forgaurd and Adam Powell.

WHAT WE GOT DONE IN OUR FIRST MEETING
We started to write down our Proposal,Treatment and schedule. Also we done a rough drawing of the website layout we want to do. We all wrote down them in rough. In our proposal we wrote down who we are going to interview. About what we are doing and ideas for the website. In our Treatment we wrote down how we are going to contact the teachers to arrange interviews and what questions we want them to answer. We started to write our schedule but couldn't write it in detail as we need to hear back from the teachers to see when they are free to do interviews.
 Tomorrow we are going to take some pictures and video footage for the website. And E-mail teachers.

UPDATE ON GROUP ASSIGNMENT
Chris e-mailed the teachers to see if we could get some interviews with them, Tim from the Media department replied.

'From: Chris John Brereton
Sent: 05 October 2010 13:11
To: norman_lomax@weymouth.ac.uk; tim_abberley@weymouth.ac.uk; justin_legg@weymouth.ac.uk; jackie_arnold@weymouth.ac.uk
Subject: Promotional film material needed

Hi all,

I am writing to enquire as to whether you would be kind enough to offer your assistance for the production of one of our assignments.

As part of a small group of four, we are working towards creating a promotional website for the college and one main component of this is to produce some relevant media content for inclusion on the website.

Therefore, one thing we would like to feature is possibly some interviews with key people in the media department, which of course, includes yourselves!

Ideally, we would like to take a very informal approach and grab some fairly short pieces (or sound-bites if you like) to film that we can edit later.

The kinds of thing we would like to capture are, for example:

• Who you are and what do you do/teach?
• What do you offer students? (facilities / industry-experienced lecturers / proven past results etc.)
• What paths can students take after? (straight to industry / further study / university etc.)
• How well is the college recognised and regarded in industry? (industry links / past students / awards etc.)
• And anything else you wish to say!

If you would like to off your assistance we would be very grateful for this and aim to be as quick and unintrusive as possible as to not disrupt your activities, however if you are unavailable please do not hesitate to say.

Either way, we look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Chris Brereton'

UPDATE ON OUR ASSIGNMENT
We have had a few more group meetings since the first one. In these we took some pictures, started on a flash banner and interviewed some teachers and students.  Also we have managed to agree on what we want the website to look like. Originally we were going to make a promotional website for just the media block of the college. But now we have come to the final decision of promoting the whole of the college.

We have shown our ideas to the class and Julian. Now we are trying to finish off the editing of the video interviews and getting a mock up of our website finished.

We have also given each of us group roles. Chris is the Production manager, Adam is working of flash with Dan and I am doing the Mock up and photo editing on photo shop along with the video editing on premier pro.

I think what we all need to do now is make sure we keep to a schedule and have good time keeping as there are deadlines for this assignment coming up and we cant afford to get behind.

COMING UP TO THE DEADLINE
We are getting close to our final deadline now, which is quite scary because I don't feel our group has been that organised, we have not made a specific schedule to keep to, although we are getting what we need to get done done. There is not that much communication within the group. The video cutting is taking longer than expected and we can only do it in M019 as they are the only computers that have the software, so I need to take every opportunity in that room to get it done. Chris has been working on the website and Adam is doing some flash. I think we are keeping on top of things but its hard to tell as people in the group seem to prefer to work by themselves and not that talkative. I have been asked to do the photo shop mock up for the website but I feel I wont have the time when I need to finish the video cutting as again that's something we can only do in M019, so I think I will talk with the others and see if maybe Dan wants to take on that role as I'm not to sure on what he is doing. I'm hoping we can get it all finished in time as we also need to do our production file. I have found it quite awkward with the group I'm in as sometimes I feel abit excluded which is worrying when this assignment is such a big part of our final grade.

LAST LESSONS BEFORE HAND IN DATE
Our final hand in date has been extended so we have a week longer to get everything done. This has been really helpful as I finally managed to get the video cutting all done. I put it on a memory stick then Chris transferred them to the website. I think personally that our website is looking really good. After me writing my last post the communication in the group has got alot better and the production file is near enough done. I helped Chris on the production file as i had finished what I needed to do. I wrote about the video editing and put in some screen shots this only took one lesson. So we are on track with everything and we will defiantly be finished and ready for the deadline.

After doing this group assignment I have learnt how to work within a group of people that I don't really know,even though I found it abit awkward at times I can see now that if your working in a group its vital to keep communication going. As you need to work together to be able to get things done. Also I have learnt how to get things done for a certain time, this is all really helped as i will need these skills if I ever get a job in the industry.

What is SMS?

Sms stands for Short Message Service. This is otherwise known as a text message. You can send a text message to someone on your phone to anyone anywhere around the world. You can even send one text to multiple contacts. They can also be sent from a home phone.

Sms is a simple way to send a short message to someone quickly. Every mobile phone has the capability to send an SMS message.

SMS doesn't just have to be used for a message to one person to another, you can have text alerts, whether this is to remind you of something you need to do or if its from a news company telling you what the latest news is or even the latest football scores! Text messaging can also be used to enter competitions that appear on TV.