HIST 390-001 The Digital Past Fall 2013

Interesting article about hackers who have received a lot of attention

Can you name the U.S. city with the fastest internet connection? Not many can. This article talks about how this particular city has the fastest internet.

This CNN article discusses research done to determine what young people do online. Concerned parents may not want to read this.

Here is just an interesting timeline of video game consoles. It does not reference open source issues, but shows the companies that produces each console and when each console was discontinued.

A good article that goes in depth of what Optical Character Recognition does.

ICANN was offering the chance to buy the top-level domain of a Web address. One woman paid $185,000 to own the domain .wed. Now over 1,900 new Web names are going to be introduced.

Great article, Laura, and nice summary of it. Thanks!

This web page has an easy and detailed explanation about what a URL is and its three basic parts: the protocol, the server name, and the resource ID.

In theory that's a good resource, Jimin, except that it's wrong. :) The "server name" could be anything, and has very little to do with the domain name. It is true that you can usually log in to a server (a remote computer) by giving whatever program you're logging in with the domain name, but that doesn't mean that the server itself has the same name as the website. That page is also very, very wrong in calling the the top-level domain (.org etc.) the "domain name." It's important to note that that page was almost certainly written by a librarian, not a tech professional. (Of course, I'm an English PhD, not a tech professional myself, but still.) And when I looked at the source code, I could tell that it was hand-coded in HTML, which indicates to me that it's probably many years old. Wish there were a "dislike" button. :)

This website provides tutorials on HTML, CSS, PHP, and Java Script. Under each category you can learn a history and introduction into HTML or CSS and then learn how to create your own website using the step by step instructions.

Not a bad site, Lauren, though I still think http://w3schools.com is better. Heaven knows there are tons of tutorials all over the Internet. Tons of books, too, of course.

A site that gives you different examples of SQL's and how to use them.

Thanks, Vincent, though learning SQL is a pretty advanced skill. It's unlikely you'll need it anytime soon, certainly not for this class. I do regret asking the question on the exam -- maybe I'll give everyone automatic credit!

Teaches you XML through examples and trying it yourself.

Really interesting and quirky introductory video on what SQL is and what it does. Explains one of the exercises given to us in our notes.

"In a world where databases are present everywhere" -- so true! Very amusing, Erin, thanks. As I mentioned to Vincent, you guys won't need to learn SQL for this class, but that video is actually very useful on just the concept of databases and of what SQL is, so that's useful.

A comparison of some of the most widely-used content management systems.

Hey, I never heard that RSS stood for "Rich Site Summary." Huh. Thanks, Milan.

This Wikipedia page shows all the available online resources open to the public.

Interesting, Taylor. Notice that that page is part of a project called "The Resource Exchange" and/or "The Wikipedia Library." I was just talking to a frequent Wikipedia editor named Jake Orlowitz the other day who's volunteering with the Wikipedia Library; we're going to try to bring him to campus to give a talk. If we do, I'll let y'all know. Thanks for the link!

Which is better, OSS or Proprietary Software? This article poses both sides of the arguments, mainly that OSS is lauded for it's "community" support, while Proprietary Software is backed by professional, tried and true support. The main conclusions were that OSS and Proprietary Software essentially match in content quality until the codes become longer. In that case, Proprietary Software comes out on top.

Good article, Casey, thanks!

For those of you who wish to learn more about coding, this site is perfect. You can learn Java, Python, HTML and many other codes.

A nice, short, clear introduction to HTML, if you're interested in pursuing it further. Last revised 2005 -- even that long ago, most people weren't writing it by hand, but it continues to be useful to know how to do so if necessary.

Explains what is a browser, different types of browsers to try, and importance of updating browsers. His video that also explains browsers: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-is-browser.html

Huh, kind of interesting. At first I thought it was just going to tell me what browser I had, which seems silly. But you're right: the other stuff is useful. Thanks.

Wikipedia's page on the different XML editors that are available.

Probably no one in the class will ever need to use an XML editor -- and in any case, really you can just use a plain text editor -- but thanks for finding it! Everyone I know who creates XML uses oXygen.