Introduction to Computer Networking   

Practical Work: Social Bookmarking
This work will take place in the Nelson Labs on the First Floor in zones A & C

Please read the lab notes below before beginning the practical work

These Practical Work Notes are divided into hyperlinked sections:

Justification
Apparatus
Method 

Homework


Justification:

There are many pages of information residing on web servers across the Internet. Being able to return to a web page that you have visited in the past can be difficult, especially if you have found the webpage on a different PC.
Social Bookmarking is a way of saving your webpages (Bookmarks or Favourites) online so that you can access the pages from any Internet-connected PC.
It is also easy to share webpages with others to enrich your web experience.

Apparatus:

Networked PC
Browser Program
www.delicious.com account

Method:
Part One

1. If you have a  account already, please go to step 6. 

2. If you have a Yahoo account then you can sign in immediately. Please go to step 6.

3. Log in to a networked PC. Access the www.delicious.com website.

4. Create an an account with Yahoo to give you access to

5. Watch a video to show you this process. The video looks best at 480p.

6. Login to .

7. Create a link to my website that contains resources to support your course. The URL of my website is http://engweb.info.

8.  Use the menu on the right of the screen to select "Save a new bookmark"

9.  On the next page type the url of my website then click 'Next'.

10. Type a brief description of the website. This will be useful later when you search for information.


11. Now add some tags. According to
Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on Delicious to help you organize and remember them. Tags are a little bit like keywords, but you choose them yourself and they do not form a hierarchy. You can assign as many tags to a bookmark as you like and you can always rename or delete the tags later. So, tagging can be a lot easier and more flexible than fitting your information into preconceived categories or folders.

For example, if you save an article about how to make a certain kind of cake, you can tag it with recipes sweets yogurt or whatever other tags you might use to find it again. You don't have to rely on the designer of a system to provide you with a category for French cake recipes. You make up tags as you need them, and use the tags that make the most sense to you.

This is great for organizing and finding personal data, but it goes even further when someone else posts related content using the same tags. You begin building a collaborative repository of related information, driven by personal interests and creative organization. For instance, to view everybody's bookmarks about sweets, visit delicious.com/tag/sweets. To see the most popular items tagged as sweets, visit delicious.com/popular/sweets. Read more FAQs about

12. To help us to make the best use of social networking in this particular course, add the course code COMP1379 to the tags. This will allow you to associate the url to this course. You may add any other tags that you wish.

13. You can use the 'FOR' field if you wish to share the webpage with other people. We will not use this just now. Click the 'SAVE' button.

14. Now add THREE more webpages using steps 8 to 13 above. This will be the University of Greenwich's homepage the Portal and this laboratory page. Be sure to add a text description and add some tags to help you find your way back to these pages in the future.

15. Well done, you have completed the first part of this laboratory work.

Part Two

The social aspect of bookmarking will only begin to be useful once we can see the pages from others in our network of classmates. According to
 Your network connects you to other Delicious users: friends, family, coworkers, even new people you run across while exploring Delicious. It is a "people aggregator", collecting your favorite users' latest bookmarks in one place for you to view and enjoy. You can view and manage your network by going to your Network.

How do I add and remove people from my Network?
To add a person to your Network, you can select Add a user to Network from the top right of your Network page and then type their username, or you can visit their bookmarks page and select the Add to my Network link at the top right of that page.

To remove a person from your Network, mouse over their name in the sidebar of your Network page, then click the "edit" icon to the right of their name, and select Remove.

16. Add my username to your network, studentnew86. I will add you later. This will help me to see what you have been doing and what use you have made of your account. 

17. Add FIVE class members to your network. Follow the instructions above to accomplish this.

18. Now subscribe to the tag comp1379 using the Subscriptions link. How many results did you get?

19. Surf to the following webpages and bookmark each one, giving tags and a description for each page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_networking
http://www.howstuffworks.com/home-network.htm
http://compnetworking.about.com/od/basicnetworkingconcepts/Networking_Basics_Key_Concepts_in_Computer_Networking.htm
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505606/description#description
http://www.geeksnerds.co.uk/index.aspx
http://www.ieee.org/education_careers/index.html#sect3

20. Make sure that you show your work to your lecturer or lab demonstrator before you leave to obtain a mark for attendance and engagement.

HOMEWORK
For this week's homework you must add 10 more webpages that are related to Computer Networking to your account.
Make sure that you have added a short description of the page to help you and others use the link and suitable tags.
We will review your work next time we meet.

You must also read my page on the history of computing and networking. You may wish to bookmark this page and comment upon it as above.

 

Page updated by MM Clements 13:30 27/10/2010