Tag Archives: technology

Notes on IMAP

Posted on by
Reply

IMAP- Internet Message Access Protocol

Designed by Mark Crispin at Stanford University in 1986.

All activity takes place in an email server and each device remotely connects to this server

Continuous intelligent communication between your devices and the IMAP server

Allows you to access email from multiple machines- laptop, smartphone, office computer etc

IMAP allows you to flag emails as “urgent” etc

Using IMAP you can create folders that will be shared across your devices

Supported by Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail

IMAP downside= it can take up plenty of space on a mail server thus causing your inbox to fill up, email browsing can sometimes be slower because the device has to download info off the mail server every time a new mail is viewed instead of just reading the file off the local device

Latest version is IMAP4- you can search through your mail messages for keywords while the messages are still on the mail server

Difference between POP (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP- in POP all your email will be downloaded to the computer and then deleted from your mail server, whereas with IMAP it remains in the server and you can access it via another IMAP mail client

IMAP advantages- messages stored on the server and are not affected if your computer fails

Watts Six Degrees Introduction

Posted on by
Reply

Upon reading the Introduction to Six Degrees by Duncan Watts, I found myself thinking how much we as a contemporary society enjoy a new (or old) piece of technology that makes our lives more convenient and/or comfortable.

I have been asked to house sit for my Dad’s friends for a couple of weeks and some of the reasons I said yes include: the remote control windows and blinds, the Apple TV, the coffee machine and the amazing heating, as well as a chance at autonomy for a bit.

I can’t think of many people I know who would voluntarily say “I would love to move to a desert island and live with no technology for the rest of my life”. People might say they would like to do this for a bit but then come back to the reality that is this age of technology.

I can safely say I enjoy my comforts. Being able to turn on the TV when I am at home on a sick day seems essential. As does being able to check what’s going on in the news on my way to uni on my phone, and for these reasons I agree that power plants seem to be even more vital than roads at this point in time.

Let’s be honest in the future roads could be replaced with something high-tech who knows.. Or maybe we will all be driving flying cars.

Whatever the next major invention may be, you can guarantee there will be people lining up to be the first to try it, as we have seen with Apple products. People have a fascination with the new and the shiny.

Essays V Blogs

Posted on by
1

I am going to be honest and admit that when we were first told that this course was mostly assessed through blogs I was a little surprised and confused. We are so used to being told to sit down with a pen and paper and write an essay, that the idea of sharing our thoughts and new findings in such a public sphere seems really out there.

Upon reading Adrian Miles’ article about Blogs in Media Education, I have to one hundred per cent agree with him in that a process such as this seems much more applicable to the work force that we are one day aiming to step into.

By writing an essay- using a static formula that we all now know like the back of our hands, and simply handing it in to a teacher who is, let’s be honest, probably very sick of reading them, we can learn nowhere near as much as we can by using a blog. Being able to access the work of others and soak in their ideas can be unbelievably valuable and using blogs allows us to do this.

Blogging is also likely to be a crucial skill in years to come in which we are searching for employment. Already when applying for jobs in PR and marketing I have been asked how tech-savvy I am and whether I can create Facebook pages, Instagram and Twitter accounts and blogs. Not once have I been asked how good I am at writing essays.

Unless we are looking to become academics, blogging seems a much more practical skill to have than essay writing, and I think that most of us have written enough of essays for the formula to be stuck with us for life anyway.