IT SKILLS LAB-I

MBA 1st SEMESTER

By: Noor Ahmad
Department of Computer Application
UIM (011)
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UNIT-1

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Syllabus

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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
HARDWARE : INPUT DEVICES
 Keyboard
 Printing devices
 Voice speech devices
 Scanner
 MICR
 OMR
 Bar code reader
 Digital camera etc.

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HARDWARE : OUTPUT DEVICES
 Visual Display UNIT
 Printers
 Plotters
STORAGE DEVICES
 Magnetic storage devices
 Optical storage devices
 Flash Memory

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SOFTWARE
 Types of software with examples
 Introduction to languages
 Compiler
 Interpreter and Assembler
 Operating System Functions
 Types and Classification
 Elements of GUI based operating system

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NETWORK AND INTERNET
 Types of computer networks (LAN, WAN and MAN)
 Netiquettes
 Basic services over Internet:
 WWW
 FTP
 Telnet
 Gopher
 URL
 Domain names
 Web Browsers

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MULTIMEDIA AND ITS APPLICATIONS
 Concepts of Text
 Graphics
 Animation
 Audio
 Images
 Video
 Multimedia Application in Education: Entertainment, Marketing
 Names of common multimedia file formats

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INPUT DEVICES

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 Keyboard
 Is a standard input device of most computers

 Used to type data into the computer

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 Pointing Devices
Mouse
Is a hand-clicked device used for pointing and moving objects

Joystick
Is an input device which is commonly used for computer games

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Track Ball
Basically an upside down mouse

Light Pen
A device used to draw, write, or issue commands when it touches a
specially designed screen

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Voice speech devices (Microphone)
Used to input sound into a computer

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 Scanner
A scanner allows you to scan documents, pictures, or graphics and view
them on the computer.
Two types:
•Flatbed
•Handheld

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 MICR

 Used primarily by the banking industry to facilitate the processing of

cheques.

 MICR characters are printed in special typefaces with a magnetic ink or

toner, usually containing iron oxide.

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 OMR
 The technology of electronically extracting intended data from marked
fields, such as checkboxes and fill-infields, on printed forms.

 Useful for applications in which large numbers of hand-filled forms need

to be processed quickly and with great accuracy, such as surveys, reply
cards, questionnaires and ballots.

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 Bar code reader
 Also called a price scanner or point-of-sale ( POS ) scanner, is a hand-held
or stationary input device used to capture and read information contained
in a bar code.

 Works by directing a beam of light across the bar code and measuring the
amount of light that is reflected back.

 Converts the light energy into electrical energy, which is then converted
into data by the decoder and forwarded to a computer.

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 Digital camera
 Stores images digitally rather than recording them on film.

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OUTPUT DEVICES

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 Visual Display UNIT
 Most commonly used to describe a standard CRT monitor.

 A flat panel display. Monitors and projector are all examples of VDUs.

 The monitor is used to provide soft copy output.

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 Printers
 An output device that produces text and graphics on paper.
 Printers are of two basic types-
• Impact - where the print head will be in physical contact with the
paper (Ex- Dot matrix).
• Non-impact- Print head will have no physical contact with the paper.
(Ex- Laser printer).

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 Plotters
 Used to print engineering drawing or graphics on large size sheets.

 Used when highest quality and greatest accuracy are required.

 Two basic types of plotters:

• Pen plotter- Has a surface where the paper or drawing sheet is

properly fixed. It has a pen holder in a movable arm.

• Drum plotter- Uses a drum where the paper will be rolled. It has a
print head/pen that moves like the print head in a printer.

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STORAGE DEVICES

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 Magnetic storage devices
 A read-write head moves very close to the magnetic surface - the distance
is often no more than tens of nanometers.

 The head is able to detect and modify the magnetization of the material.

 The magnetic surface is divided into very small regions, each of which has
a mostly uniform magnetization.

 The changes in magnetization from region to region are detected and

recorded as zeros and ones.

 Two types-

 Magnetic tape- Audio and video cassettes.

 Magnetic disk- Hard disk, Floppy disk

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Optical storage devices

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 Blu-ray Disk
 An optical disc format such as CD and DVD.

 Developed for recording and playing back high-definition (HD) video and
for storing large amounts of data.

 A single Blu-ray disc can hold up to 25 GB of data.

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 Flash Memory
 A kind of memory that retains data in the absence of a power supply.

 It has the ability to be electronically reprogrammed and erased.

 It is often found in USB flash drives, MP3 players, digital cameras and
solid-state drives.

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Network and Internet

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 Two or more computers connected together through a
communication media form a computer network.

 The Internet is a vast network that connects computers all

over the world.

 Through the Internet, people can share information and

communicate from anywhere with an Internet connection.

 It was conceived by the Advanced Research Projects Agency

(ARPA) of the U.S. government in 1969 and was first known
as the ARPANet.

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 Types of computer networks
 Local Area Network (LAN)

 Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)

 Wide Area Network (WAN)

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 Local Area Network (LAN)
A computer network that links devices within a building or
group of adjacent buildings, especially one with a radius of
less than 1 km.

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Metropolitan Area Network (MAN)
A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a computer
network that interconnects users with computer resources in
a geographic region of the size of a metropolitan area.

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 Wide Area Network (WAN)
A wide area network (also known as WAN), is a large
network of information that is not tied to a single location.
WANs can facilitate communication, the sharing of
information and much more between devices from around
the world through a WAN provider.

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 Netiquettes
Netiquette is a code of good behavior on the Internet. This
includes several aspects of the Internet, such as email, social
media, online chat, web forums, website comments,
multiplayer gaming, and other types of online
communication.

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Some rules for good netiquette:

 Avoid posting inflammatory or offensive comments online.

 Respect others privacy by not sharing personal information,
photos, or videos.
 Never spam others by sending large amounts of unsolicited
email.
 Don't troll people in web forums or website comments by
repeatedly nagging or annoying them.
 Don't swear or use offensive language.
 Avoid replying to negative comments.
 Thank others who help you online.

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Basic services over Internet

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 WWW
 World Wide Web, also known as Web, is a collection of
websites or web pages stored in web servers and connected
to local computers through the internet.

 These websites contain text pages, digital images, audios,

videos, etc.

 Users can access the content of these sites from any part of
the world over the internet.

 The WWW, along with internet, enables the retrieval and

display of text and media on the device.

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 FTP
 File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard Internet protocol for
transmitting files between computers on the Internet
over TCP/IP connections.
 FTP is a client-server protocol where a client will ask for a file,
and a local or remote server will provide it.
 The end-users machine is typically called the local host
machine, which is connected via the internet to the remote
host—which is the second machine running the FTP
software.

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 Telnet

 Telnet is a protocol that allows you to connect to remote

computers (called hosts) over a TCP/IP network (such as
the internet).

 Using telnet client software on our computer, we can make a

connection to a telnet server (that is, the remote host).

 Once our telnet client establishes a connection to the remote

host, our client becomes a virtual terminal, allowing us to
communicate with the remote host from our computer.

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 Gopher
 Gopher was developed in 1991 at the University of
Minnesota.
 Gopher is a menu-driven interface that allows a user to
browse for text information provided by various gopher
servers.
 With later versions of gopher, such as HyperGopher, users
could also view GIF and JPEG files.
 After 1996, most gopher servers were either converted to
the World Wide Web or taken offline.

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 URL
 A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), termed a web address, is
a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on
a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it.

 A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).

 URLs occur most commonly to reference web pages (http),

but are also used for file transfer (ftp), email and many other
applications.

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 A typical URL could have the
form http://www.example.com/index.html, which indicates a
protocol (http), a hostname (www.example.com), and a file
name (index.html).

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 Domain names
 Domain names are used to identify one or more IP addresses.

 Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web

pages.

 For example, in the URL-

http://www.pcwebopedia.com/index.html,

the domain name is pcwebopedia.com.

 Every domain name has a suffix that indicates which top level
domain (TLD) it belongs to.

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 There are only a limited number of such domains. For
example:
 gov - Government agencies

 edu - Educational institutions

 org - Organizations (nonprofit)

 mil - Military

 com - commercial business

 net - Network organizations

 ca - Canada

 th - Thailand

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 Web Browsers
 A web browser is a software application for accessing
information on the World Wide Web.

 When a user requests a web page from a particular website,

the web browser retrieves the necessary content from a web
server and then displays the page on the user's device.

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Multimedia and its applications

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 Multimedia is the field concerned with the computer
controlled integration of text, graphics, drawings, still and
moving images (Video), animation, audio, and any other
media where every type of information can be signified,
stored, communicated and handled digitally.

 Multimedia can be recorded and played, displayed,

interacted with or accessed by information satisfied
processing devices, such as high-tech and automated devices,
but can also be part of a live presentation.

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Multimedia applications can be subdivided into different
categories:
1) Information Systems: The major purpose of such systems is to
provide information for one or several users. The requested
information is typically stored in the databases or media archives.

 Electronic publishing

 Hospital information systems

 Navigation and information systems

 Museums

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2) Remote Representation: By means of a remote representation
system a user can take part in or monitor events at a remote
location.

 Conferencing applications

 Distance learning

 Remote auctions

 Remote robotic agents

 Remote task agents

 Virtual reality

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3) Entertainment: This major application area of multimedia
technology is strongly oriented towards the audio and video data.

 Digital television

 Video-on-demand

 Widely distributed interactive games

 Interactive television

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Concepts of Text, Graphics, Animation
1) Text
Text or written language is the most common way of communicating
information. It is one of the basic components of multimedia. It was
originally defined by printed media such as books and newspapers that
used various typefaces to display the alphabet, numbers, and special
characters. Although multimedia products include pictures, audio and
video, text may be the most common data type found in multimedia
applications. Besides this, text also provides opportunities to extend the
traditional power of text by linking it to other media, thus making it an
interactive medium.

Two types- i) Static Text ii) Hylpertext

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2) Graphics
Graphics are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a
wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In
contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in c
manufacture, in typesetting and the graphic arts, and in educational and
recreational software.

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3) Animation
Animation consists of still images displayed so quickly that they give the
impression of continuous movement. The screen object is a vector image
in animation. The movement of that image along paths is calculated using
numerical transformations applied to their defining coordinates.
Animations may be two or three dimensional. In two dimensional
animation the visual changes that bring an image alive occur on the flat X
and Y axis of the screen, while in three dimensional animation it occurs
along the entire three axis X, Y and Z showing the image from all the
angles. Such animations are typically rendered frame by high-end three
dimensional animation software. Animation tools are very powerful and
effective.
There are two basic types of animations-
i) path animation ii) frame animation.

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 Audio, Images, Video

4) Audio
Audio is probably the most sensuous element of multimedia. It is
meaningful speech in any language, from a whisper to a scream. It can
provide the listening pleasure of music, the startling accent of special
effects, or the ambience of a mood setting background. It can promote an
artist, add interest to a text site by humanizing the author, or to teach
pronouncing words in another language.

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(i) Musical Instrument Digital Identifier (MIDI)

MIDI is the quickest, easiest and most flexible tool for composing
original score in a multimedia project. To make MIDI scores sequencer,
software and sound synthesizer is needed. A MIDI keyboard is also
useful for simplifying the creation of musical scores.

(ii) Digital Audio

Digitised sound is sampled sound. The every nth fraction of a second, a

sample of sound is taken and stored as digital information in bits and
bytes. The quality of this digital recording depends upon how often the
samples are taken (sampling rate) and how many numbers are used to
represent the value of each sample (bit depth, sample size, resolution).

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5) Images
Images are an important component of multimedia. These are generated
by the computer in two ways, as bitmap or raster images and as vector
images.

(i) Raster or Bitmap Images

The most common and comprehensive form of storage for images on a
computer is a raster or bitmap image. Bitmap is a simple matrix of the
tiny dots called pixel that forms a raster or bitmap image. Each pixel
consists of two or more colours. The colour depth is determined by how
much data, in bits is used to determine the number of colours e.g. one bit
is two colours, four bits means sixteen colours, eight bits indicates 256
colours, 16 bits yields 65,536 colours and so on.

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 (ii) Vector Images
Vector images base on drawing elements or objects such as lines,
rectangles, circles and so forth to create an image. The advantage of
vector image is the relatively small amount of data required to represent
the image and therefore, it does not requires a lot of memory to store.
The image consists of a set of commands that are drawn when needed.

Compression techniques are used to reduce the file size of images that is
useful for storing large number of images and speeding transmission for
networked application. Compression formats used for this purpose are
GIF, TIFF and JPEG.

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 6) Video
Video is defined as the display of recorded real events on a television
type screen. The embedding of video in multimedia applications is a
powerful way to convey information. It can incorporate a personal
element, which other media lack.
The video may be categorized in two types-
(i) Analog Video- Analog video is the video data that is stored in any non-
computer media like video tape, laser disc, film etc. It is further divided
in two types, composite and component analogue video.
(ii) Digital Video- It is the most engaging of multimedia venues, and it is a
powerful tool for bringing computer users closer to the real world
(Vaughan, 2008). Digital video is storage intensive. A high quality color
still image on a computer screen requires one megabyte or more of
storage memory.

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Multimedia Application in Education, Entertainment, Marketing

Multimedia is one of the most fascinating and fastest growing area in the
field of information technology. The capability of computers to handle
different types of media makes them suitable for a wide range of
applications. A Multimedia application is an application which uses a
collection of multiple media sources e.g. text, images, sound/audio,
animation and/or video on a single platform for a defined purpose.
Multimedia can be seen at each and every aspect of our daily life in
different forms. However, entertainment and education are the fields
where multimedia has its dominance.

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 A brief account of multimedia applications in different fields can be
traced as follows-

(i) Education
Multimedia is used in different ways for teaching and learning i.e. e-
learning, distance learning, virtual learning etc. The Virtual Lab Project
is a multimedia based e-learning program for technical education for
technical training centers and engineering colleges. EDUSAT (Education
Satellite) is launched for serving the educational sector of the country
for emulating virtual classroom in an effective manner. UGC, NCERT,
IGNOU, IITs and open universities. IGNOU has developed many
multimedia programs for teaching various subjects.

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(ii) Entertainment
Multimedia technology is a must need in each and every mode of
entertainment. It is used in entertainment via radio, TV, online
newspapers, online gaming, video on demand etc.

Multimedia made possible innovative and interactive games that greatly

enhanced the learning experience. Games could come alive with sounds
and animated graphics. Groups of people could play a game together,
competing as individuals or working together in teams.

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(iii) Marketing
Multimedia include presentations, training, marketing, advertising,
product demos, simulations, databases, catalogues, instant messaging
and networked communications, voice mails and video conferencing are
provided on many local and wide area networks using distributed
networks and internet protocols.

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 Names of common multimedia file formats

The following is an outline of current file formats-

1) Text Formats

(a) RTF (Rich Text Format)

(b) Plain text

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2) Image Formats

(a) TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)

(b) BMP (Bitmap)

(c) DIB (Device Independent Bitmap)

(d) GIF (Graphics Interchange format)

(e) JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)

(f) TGA (Tagra)

(g) PNG (Portable Network Graphics)

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3) Digital Audio File Formats

(a) WAV (Waveform Audio File Format)

(b) MP3 (MPEG Layer-3 Format)

(c) OGG

(d) AU

(e) AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format)

(f) WMA (Windows Media Audio)

(g) RA (Real Audio Format)

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4) Digital Video File Formats

(a) AVI (Audio/Video Interleave)

(b) MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group)

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Thank You

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