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.