Data Compression (wiki and dvd-hq)
I really love wikipedia articles, they are my favorite. I never could have figured out on my own that Data Compression means compressed data. Thanks editors of wikipedia for clearing that up. I never would have thought of a JPEG as a compressed file. I guess I always figured it was just the type of file rather than a compression like the ZIP files I was more accustomed to. My favorite type of compression? the OGG Vorbis files. I always get a kick out of these files when going on etree or dreamingtree to download live concerts. I have to say though that the wikipedia article was surprisingly more understandable than the dvd-hq one. Some of the examples in the dvd-hq article were hard to understand and I had to stare at them for a while. Although the picture graphs in the same article were a welcome site breaking down the amount of compression expected in a given file.
YouTube and Libraries
YouTube is a very informative website, but it also is a blackhole. How many times has someone gone onto YouTube looking for something specific only to click on the "related videos" section and got lost in the hours of fun. I definately think YouTube should be an option for libraries in the future since veveryone is getting used to Web 2.0 and all of its social networking capabilities. People would be able to refer to YouTube for instructions or how to fix common problems and let the library staff concentrate on more important tasks.
Imaging Pittsburgh
I really enjoyed this article. It was a change to actually read something that was happening in Pittsburgh. Reading this article boosted my hopes of getting a job in Pittsburgh after graduating. Granted this was printed 5 years ago, but the project would seem to be an on going thing and it would be interesting to be involved something like that, especially here. Anyways, it's nice to see local places getting grants to preserve things about Pittsburgh. Who knows, after the G20 all of the world leaders could send more money this way thanks to Pamela's pancakes.
Muddiest Point
This week's winner would have to be the expected amount of compression of a file. I understood the charts on the dvd-hq article SHOWING the expected compression, but I must have missed the actual science behind it. I know from experience trying to compress files into one zip file, the compression was not that much. Maybe because I am trying to compress already compressed files (mp3, jpeg, etc)?
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I really like "Imaging Pittsburgh" article too. And I like their main goal which is creating a shared gateway to digital image collections of the Pittsburgh region. But i think it will not be easy project for them. Moreover it will not be easy to organize and classify the pictures that they will collect. But i think it is a great idea and it will help to keep Pittsburgh history.
ReplyDeleteI personally think it's fun summarizing a wikipedia article. which is basically a summary. I bet Pittsburgh will suddenly get an influx of money specifically so the cooks at Pamela's diner can keep buying flour and eggs. It will be detailed in the presidential budget. Right next to environmental research.
ReplyDeleteI love Youtube but I hate when I try to watch a tv show and the next video in the series has been removed because of copyright infringement. or worse, they leave the video but take out the audio.