Welcome!
operating system | webmaking | collaboration
business media | webtop services | office productivity
In socialist terms, these tools are the means of production. New media technology provides an interesting challenge: who's in charge?
For example, writers used to hand their manuscripts and copyrights to a publishing company, which owned the editorial, printing, and distribution processes.
Now the writers' desktops have the tools, the means of production: the printing press, so to speak, as well as the paper factory, the bindery, the warehouse, and the truck that distributes the books. Micropayments and merchant status will soon let the writers run their own bookstores. Watch this transformation happening in the music industry.
This toolkit will help put you in charge.
To prosper as a professional in the modern networked organization, you have to do more than type email and surf the Web. You must know how to use a variety of software on your laptop or office desktop.
A computer virus. A search engine. A laptop's desktop. Go to the Start menu to shut down. Information highway.
This area of our lives abounds with emotionally charged, inaccurate, and inconsistent terminology and faulty analogies. I intend this Toolkit section of Ricci Street as an introductory guide, so I have used English as simply and directly as possible.
As with any classification system, much of this Toolkit information could be in two or more places. In fact, some of the information here is on two or more pages in an attempt to have it where you need it. In addition, this section is full of cross-links, as is any web.
The categories below often overlap because the list is meant to be exhaustive. It stops short of programming (Visual Basic, C++, Java, Perl), video editing, proprietary data exchange (EDI, ERP) and proprietary groupware systems (Lotus, Novell).
Suggestions are always welcome.
Getting Started with Windows on a new desktop or laptop PC -- tailored to the Toshiba Win98 laptops
guides at Port 80's Lighthouse [ make link ]
How Stuff Works
About.com's Learn the Net
Beginners.co.uk provides hundreds of free online tutorials from entry level texts on using word processors through to advanced techniques in web development / database design and network routing.
... PC workshop: a half-dozen categories of software
operating system | webmaking | collaboration
business media | webtop services | office productivity
... PC or laptop: hardware
... program or application: software
You don't have to become a propeller-head. But you do have to know as much as possible about the parts, tools, and utilities of new media technology aka networked computers. Where do you draw the Geek Line, over which you shouldn't have to cross?
Where did distributed networks like the Internet come from? What's so different about it?
How do we measure the Internet? What are its parts and structure? How does data move around and get organized? Moore's Law explains why it's growing so fast.
For some background, you may want to consider the difference between bits and atoms.
If you've never made a web page before, fire up you text editor (NotePad, not Word) and let's get geeky! Along with the basics of HTML, you need to learn about making links and about styling text.
... web page: anatomy | management | editor
... web site: anatomy | management | server
To participate fully in the networked world, you should start putting together a PC or laptop "communications center", as it says in the official MBA 504 and MBA 600 course descriptions.
I recommend that you use your laptop like a briefcase. Your briefcase can hold important and oft-used paper and go back and forth with you between home and work. Your laptop then can hold all your school files and go back and forth with you between home and school (and work, if you have a sympathetic boss).
In addition perhaps to not enough RAM, the laptop has three main weaknesses:
the
small display area
the small keyboard
the goofy pointing
device, the green nubby thing or the pad. Yowzers!
My fingers are not fat yet they do not fit those little keyboards, but I'm not complaining. A laptop is what it is and it's far more convenient for traveling than the desktop PC's bulky monitor and box. And wait until we start using hand-helds everywhere. However, the recommendations below will help you get around these inherent weaknesses of laptops.
These are the software programs used most frequently by web surfers and business communicators. They are all free downloads. Several are stripped-down versions of more robust software you can buy. I get along just fine with the free stuff.
To learn more, see the corresponding section of the Toolkit for explanations and exceptions.
Fookes
Software's NoteTab Light- learn more:
Office Productivity text editor
Ipswitch's
WS_FTP-LE 5.08 - learn more:
Webmaking ftp
Yahoo Messenger -
learn more: Collaboration instant messaging
The following are ways to view content that are increasingly popular. You may well have a version on your computer already. If you don't, you will be prompted to download it the first time you request these file types from a web site.
Adobe's
Acrobat Reader - learn more: Webmaking
plug-ins
Apple's Quicktime 4 - learn more: Webmaking
plug-ins
Macromedia's
Shockwave 8 and Flash 4
players - learn more: Webmaking plug-ins
Real's RealOne
Free Player or go to the $$ page for RealOne
Free Player, click on "out free player", and click on Download
the Free RealOne Player Only. learn more: Webmaking plug-ins
You may not need all of the above, depending on what came bundled with your laptop. The following software should be there already:
Notepad
(Start | Programs | Accessories) - I recommend NoteTab instead
Microsoft's Front Page, PowerPoint, Windows Media Player
both browsers (Netscape
and Microsoft's Internet Explorer) - I recommend
Firefox instead
Jasc's Paint Shop Pro, if not,
download 30-day free evaluation - learn more: Business Media graphics editors
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
