New Media, Spring 2006

Assignment 2: Study & presentation of a current web technology (in groups of 2-3 students)

Cyberspace, and our current implementation of it - the WWW, is a continuously evolving medium. The purpose of this exercise is to acquire detailed knowledge about one current web mechanism, and to disseminate that knowledge to the rest of the class by giving a half-our lecture describing the technology of choice. The focus of this exercise is on the underlying technology, allthough some usage aspects probably have to be discussed as well. Remember: all material produced should be in English language.

Instruction:

1. Find one or two research partners for the assignment.
2. Decide for a web technology to study. A list of suggested technologies can be found at the end of this page. You are however very welcome to suggest your own topic. Indentify also an alternative web technology topic in case your first candidate topic is already taken by another group or in case the lecturer does not think it is uitable.
3. Send an email to the lecturer, with copy to all your excercise partners, containing information about the preferred web technology to study as well the alternative one.
4. After positive response from the lecturer, start your research! Divide the work as it suits you in the group.
5. Write a short report (approximately 10 A4 pages depending a bit on the subject) in a format easily convertable to Adobe PDF (e.g. MS Word, Adobe FrameMaker, LaTex) with the following basic structure:
   • short history and introduction
   • a fairly detailed architectural description of the technology, relating it to other relevant web technologies
   • relate the technology to relevant concepts from the course literature (e.g. hypermedia concepts)
   • state-of-the-art examples
   • future trends.
6. Send in a draft of the report to the lecturer by email. Await comments from the lecturer and adjust the report accordingly.
7. Create a slideshow in for instance MS Powerpoint format based on your report. Your assignment group should be able to hold a 30 minute lecture based on the slides. (25 minutes presentation, 5 minutes discussion.)
8. Send the final report by email to the lecturer. Include a link to your slideshow as well.
9. Prepare for your lecture. It is entirely up to you to decide who is to present what part. If you wish, you could let one of you do the complete presentation. If possible, use live demos to make your presentation more concrete. Remember: English is the language on this course.

Deadlines (also marked in the schedule)

• Thursday April 19 at 23.59: Submission of subject to the lecturer by email. Include alternative subject. Send copies of the email to the other members of your group as well.
• Monday May 01 at 23.59: Submission of draft report/prototype to the lecturer by email. Send copies of the email to the other members of your group as well.
• Tuesday May 02 15.15-17 (group by group, see schedule for details): Obligatory discussion with lecturer based on your groups draft report.
• Friday May 05 at 23.59: Submission of final report and link to slideshow by email to the lecturer.
• Tuesday May 09 at 13.15-17.00 presentation. (Group by group, see schedule for details.) Obligatory participation.

Subject ideas for assignment 2

If you want inspiration for defining a subject for your student seminar (this assignment), feel free to take a look on the following subjects. When you have decided for a subject (from the list below or your own idea), make sure to get the lecturers approval before you start your research and writing activities!

• The Semantic Web
• RSS Feeds and other notification mechanisms
• PHP vs. HTML
• XML
• File sharing architectures
• Macromedia Flash and interactive animation architecture
• MPEG4 and streamed video over the net
• Multi-user networked game architectures
• WIKI architectures
• JMF (Java Media Framework) and related technologies
• Pingback and trackback, two ways of implementing bidirectional links on the web