Week 6 Semester 2

This video is part of a series that I am posting as a blog about my weekly experience of doing a masters in Interactive Media and Design at the University of Limerick.

Dr. Gabriela Avram's class on WordPress

Today we discussed about WordPress and its fonder. WordPress is a website management tool which was created by Matt Mullenweg. It is a very versatile option to use to build a website. There is a wide community using WordPress including forms which allows people to help one another. It's good for those who are not used to HTML and allows a user to choose from plugins which can make your website much more interactive and personal.

We also talked about SEO (search engine operations) and ways in which to get a better rating from your website. Such easy tasks of uploading new content daily (which Google loves) can get you better ratings. A easy and good way to do this is to link your website to a blog or/and Twitter. 

Also a good plug in to have is Google analytices which would allow you to see who has been to your site, what computer they use and operating system. Also analytices can tell you what page they left from on your website which could potentially help you to see if this page could be improved.

Final note, as you know I'm using Blogger to post daily on, but I'm almost tempted to change to WordPress. Much more exciting, more options, more fun. I will think about this over the weekend.

Group presentation

Today the group presenting were discussing the work being developed in the domain of AI. They discussed how computer games are studying real world experiences and finding new ways to represent this in the virtual world. This was a very exciting presentation because I was unaware of the many new developments within this area. Computer simulation is a field which is growing extremely fast with such developments which allow close to real world experiences. In Japan, it seems that enormous amounts of money is invested into making the user experience closer to that of the real world. 

I found the class activity very enjoyable. The group programed a set of tasks/puzzles that had to be solved to get the prize at the end. There were different levels to the game and once you passed each level, you got to the next stage. What I feel was important was the group allowing the class to experience AI within the one of the puzzles. This reflected well within the formal presentation and their topics discussed.

For me this was very enjoyable and clever how the activity was put together, great fun and the class really enjoyed it. Well done guys.