production processes brief [i]
today's production processes lecture was pretty interesting; stuart addressed various concepts of project procedure and management - which is useful stuff. we've split into research clusters to investigate a couple of businesses and their particular project cycles: ray, steve, lou, liz and myself are going to address bbc wales' online department, and the pop factory's production department.
i've just uploaded my report for production processes [i], it's under the submissions dropmenu. this was a great brief; i analysed www.thepopfactory.com as it's going to be pretty relevant when i get my hands on redeveloping the site early next year. i've been pretty critical of it, but i guess thats what comes of working with it for the last three months... *must get out more*
skype callto:
skype is the VoIP software that, amongst others, is currently giving the telecoms giants a bit of a headache. it allows you to call any other skype user in the world for free, or any offline phone number for the price of a local call; all via the wonderful internet. skype recently added a new feature to their website, giving you the code to place a link on a webpage so people (who have skype installed) can call you directly from your site.
it seems to be a twist on the original icq webpage icons that would indicate if a user was currently online; and you can even get droplists giving people the option to call you, IM you, leave an answerphone message, or send you a file - all from the webpage. it's a great way to advertise that you are available on skype, and connect with other users.
long live the internet revolution - give it a click!
golden pixil awards
www.goldenpixilawards.co.uk
this is the website of the welsh "new media" awards; and oh god, i can't believe that archaic flash intro page - shouldn't it belong in the museum of twentieth-century internet mistakes? combined with a poor standard of writing style and lack of...well, anything in terms of valid content, this site is more reminisent of someone's first attempts at flash than anything else.
note: never make entire websites from flash. please.
if this is the award's official website, i'm not sure what to expect of the standard of work that'll be submitted; so i've applied for some tickets so we can find out - will keep you updated :)
its good to see that taxpayer money is being spent well
scripting...
...i had some problems with the blog yesterday: having messed around with it too much, the formatting fell apart and all my posts vanished! i finally figured out i'd not closed some of the comments tags properly, so the browser wouldn't display anything inbetween them...*moron*
btw, the blog totally screws up in IE; i'm not that bothered for now, to be honest: you shouldn't be using that browser anyway! i also wanted to add a google search for my posts, but it wouldn't return any results, so i gave up after fiddling for an hour. i'll have to come back to it another time.
more successfully, i've added some scripting for peek-a-boo comments on my posts. its pretty funky, instead of the comments appearing in a popup, they *magically* appear below the relevant post when you click the comments link, and then disappear again with a second click. check 'em out...
tinkering again
this is turning into a rather dangerous obsession...i think i must have spent around 12hrs this week on either posting or tinkering with the html - although once i'm finished, i'll be content for a while :)
after the brainwave of posting projects as .zip downloads in the sidepanel, i visited lou's blog this morning to find she'd gone one better and slapped them into a dropmenu. bitch. so, i figured i'd steal the code for myself.
except i've got two. so there
busy busy busy
things are getting busy at the pop factory: it's little over a week until the 2005 music awards. i spent this morning checking out the stats on the public votes, checking which nominee's had posted notices on their websites, collating the txtmsg competition entries and on lots of other routine stuff. this afternoon was a lot more hectic, sorting out goodie bags, decorations for the various rooms, electrics and catering. i need to speak with stuart about next week, as they want me up there for a few extra days to help out, on top of all the uni stuff i need to do. it's going to be a long and tiring week.....
on the bright side though, i managed to blag a photopass for feeder's show at the CIA. tpf are running a text competition to meet'n'greet the band as well, which means i get to do shots of that too! forwardrussia are playing barfly tomorrow night, and shaped by fate, johnny truant and dignity dies first all have shows next week too. dammit.
i've just taken on another website project as well: *stupid*; i really shouldn't have, but the guy is offering £200, and i've got a christmas and holidays to finance! its only a five page site, so hopefully it shouldn't a hassle.
anyway, i'm off to watch hitchhikers guide to the galaxy before bed...
creative commons
i've just added a creativecommons.com license, and somehow managed to spend an hour playing with the html code for it - which isn't so bad, as all this fiddling with the source code is helping a treat with getting used to xhtml. such a nerd. or is it a geek? which is the cool one...
catching up...
whoohoo! i've just got everything up to date from the past few weeks. you leave these things for a couple of days, and it all goes to pot!
note to self: remember to update more often.
i've been fiddling with the html template as well, tidying up the code and rearranging the archive sidepanel. previous posts and post archives, as well as a link to the blog's rss feed are now all under the archives section. there's also a new sidepanel for briefs and coursework submissions called projects, all submissions will be posted there as winzip downloads.
i also came across statcounter, who offer a free webtracker service, ideal if you wanna keep an eye on how busy your blog is...and it's free! although i can't understand why blogger don't offer this service already?
finally, if you like photos, and you like cool websites which do cool things: go and get yourself a flickr account - it's free and it has to be the best way to share your pictures online!
the most powerful man in the world
i love blogging. i'd been meaning to get one together for like a year, but until it was a requisite for uni, i didn't have anything interesting to write - and probably still don't. anyways, the great thing about blogging is how information can spread: one user will post an article, and then a reader may like the post so much that they decide to syndicate it on their own blog, and so on...
i've just recieved a comment from rj, so i went to check out her blog and found an interesting post from a couple of days ago about mr bush being foiled by a locked door; there's something viciously entertaining about watching the most powerful man on the planet (on paper, at least) embarrass himself once again
i <3 firefox
what napster did for filesharing, i believe mozilla is doing for the web. napster brought p2p and filesharing to the attention of the masses, and massively improved the user experience. mozilla's firefox browser is a result of the browser wars of the nineties, and makes browsing the internet easier, faster and more secure than ever before. its tabbed browsing beats down explorer's clunky one-window-per-webpage, and the program is lightweight and fast, without any unnecesary baggage like explorer: if you want an additional feature, you simply download it...
best of all, its free!
and i've just come across a great plugin called sessionsaver, which restores any webpages you were viewing whenever you last used firefox: even after crashes or powercuts!
for those of you who haven't yet tried firefox, click the logo in the sidepanel to download it - you'll never go back to internet explorer
new york new york, so good i'll visit it twice
presentation days seem to be coming around a bit too often for my liking at the moment. steve, lou and i gave our presentation on locative media this morning, as part of simon's ccs module. it went pretty well, although i'd had a hard time researching the background and history of the discipline, as its so new various bodies are still defining the standards! i guess simon enjoyed it, by all accounts he's a bit of a locative media don, so the subject's pretty close to his heart.
locative media refers to location-specific digital content, and is very interesting from a practical perspective, with current applications including: google maps, geojogging, locative-txtmsg content and WAP; however the academic aspect of it barely exists, let alone offers anything of interest. so instead i'm going to write my contemporary and contextual studies essay on possibly the best website in the world: flickr. i've used the site for almost a year now, and am fascinated on how it manages to combine photo-sharing, social networking, tagging, web applications, flash, AJAX, email, blogging, moblogging, photoblogging and a billion other cool technologies that are revolutionising the internet at the moment.
and now, the grandest of news:
we're going to new york city baby, yeh! i've visited nyc once before, but only for 12hrs during a stopover, so the chance to go for a week for £450 is awesome! there's eight of us going: moi, ray, jack, joe, steve, alicks, lou and liz - its soo exciting! hopefully, we'll be flying out of bristol too - which means drinks & munchies at my house the night before ;)
an aspect of social networking websites which fascinates me is real-world meetups: combining virtual friendships and shared interests with physical reality. so i reckon it would be pretty cool to meet up with some nyc-based music photographers from flickr while i'm out there :)
ucd brief [iii] - presentation
another presentation! this week we had to present our research and evaluations from the last two briefs for the rest of the group. i feel a lot more confident presenting my own work, rather than something i've had to research, as its much more personal and there's a tendancy to know the subject matter in a lot more detail. over the last few weeks, i've also rediscovered how much i love creating presentations with powerpoint - although i guess i should pay more attention to the content rather than how pretty it looks.
the presentation and notes are under ucd[iii] in the projects sidepanel
ucd brief [ii] - DUE report
following on from the report for brief 1, the second report was based around nielson's discount usability evaluation (DUE) method, and included aspects of data collection, scenario analysis and heuristic evaluation. learning from the troubles i had with the late submission on the last brief, i made sure i started this one plenty in advance, and considering it was an extention of the previous report, found it pretty easy; although it was quite time consuming. jakob nielson's site, useit.com, is very comprehensive and offers online access to the majority of his published work - an essential stop for anything usability-related.
you can find the report under ucd[ii] in the projects sidepanel.
on another note, useit.com also includes a recent paper on blog usability guidelines, which is well worth a look
ucd brief [i] - product redesign report
user centred design is very much a conceptual module, covering various aspects of product development, user testing and evaluation. i thought that i had escaped this stuff after two years of it during product design, however it turns out that the topics which apply to interactive media are much more accessible (and enjoyable?) than those we covered for 3d products. the first brief required an understanding of requirements specifications, usability specifications, cognitive processes, low fidelity prototyping and how to apply norman's design principles.
because of all hours i've been putting into the pop factory website over the last couple of weeks, i didn't get down to starting the report until monday night - but once i'd got into it, is was fairly enjoyable: i found that a lot of the theory which i'd picked up from product design was also pretty relevant here, which was a big help.
you can download the report from the projects listing on the sidepanel
ccs mindmapping
following simon's mindmapping session on some of the subjects we've been investigating, these are the key themes which alicks, joe, steve and myself came up with...
artstation
• group collaboration
• interactive exploration
• rural issues
• education
• corporate sponsorship
• contextual meanings – representation
• locative media
• local mapping
• local knowledge
• survival of artists – decreasing funds – leading to creative industries
• wireless/GPS
• power shifting – localities
• exploring new media possibilities
• enhance LandMAP – raise awareness
• 3D mapping
farenheit451
• entertainment industry dominance
• renegades
• ownership
• political control/correctness/ownership
• ‘ignorance is bliss’
• media control
• loss of knowledge
• information formats
• reflect modern society trends?
• orwellian society – utilitarian
• control
• knowledge is power. power is knowledge
• copyright/control
creative archive
• peer to peer distribution
• on demand content
• online communities
• information distribution
• manipulation
• future technologies
• non commercial
• utilising broadband capabilities
• public cccess to BBC Archives – free!
• enhance social fabric
• copying & reuse
• freedom
• UK only – locative?
• user centred reporting
• file sharing
• transference of media control from corporate to localised individuals
thepopfactorymusicawards.com
i finally launched thepopfactorymusicawards.com last night - it's been a struggle to get it done on time, as well as deliver something which wasn't completely shite. originally, i was going to sub it out to my man over at blinksworld, as dave has a tendancy to deliver kickin' sites very quickly; however, he's pretty snowed under at work at the moment - so i've had to build it myself. it only took about half a day to draw and a day to code, but its been a few years since i last built a site from scratch and to get it done in time i've coded with html4.0: my xhtml/css is no where near par yet. and there's been so many little alterations to make over the last week, its taken ages having to alter every page indivudually.
i'd forgotten what a pain dreamweaver is as well - i prefer to handcode html, and its very frustrating when dreamweaver decides to alter table widths etc of its own accord - although i've never learned the program in much depth, so i'm probably just using it wrong.
i also got to play with text messaging domains, which is sooo cool! i'd read about these when they were launched a few years ago, and it was great to finally get to experiment with one. we bought the keyword 'tpf' from itagg.com, which means any that texts sent to 60300, with tpf as the first letters gets forwarded to our inbox. they're suprisingly accessible too, anyone can set an account up. we're even earning from it - which should pay for the aftershow drinx ;)
but its been a good experience, and reminded me how much i love developing sites. its also shown me that i need to pull my finger out and learn xhtml and css properly - i never want to build a site without proper separation of code, style and content ever again!
on that note: i've sent my xmas list to santa:
and finally...
it was the 2005 awards press launch this morning, at the hard rock cafe in the centre. cherie asked me to go along to take pix, which of course i was more than happy to oblige. the automatic played a short set too - check out the whole photoset on flickr
graduations, websites and caffeine
it was my graduation today! ok, so its only my hnd (or have|no|degree, as my housemate kindly pointed out) for multimedia product design, but i thought it would be cool to have two graduations ;) the ceremony was at st david's hall, and it was pretty nerve racking walking up on stage in front of sooo many people, especially when there wasn't anyone else there i knew. but best of all were the robes: they're so....so cool! i can't wait for real graduation day! say 'cheeeeese'...
on another note, it was placement day yesterday - and i've got a busy busy busy weekend ahead of me. i need to complete the website for the pop factory music awards by monday, as well as the ucd brief for debbie. on top of that i'm shooting the bloodhound gang tommorrow night (oh yeh!), and i'm doing some shots for robots talk in two's on sunday afternoon.
think i'm probably gonna o/d on caffeine and nicotine
googlezon 2014
a must-see movie for anyone interested in the evolution of the internet, and where we might be headed: googlezon 2014
soda visit
matt gould, of soda.co.uk fame, visited us this morning and gave a presentation on a couple of their recent projects. the main focus was on sodaconstructor, at sodaplay.com; an experimental program that began life as a little project by one of soda's team. a groundbreaking concept and word of mouth has earned it a huge following (250,000+ users!), and even spawned it's own fansite.
there's no set goals, instead users construct shapes from lines and dots, and then apply mathetmatical rules (such as elasticity and gravity) to allow them to move. you can also save your creation and share it with other users.
i had a little chat with matt afterwards, and it seems they're investigating commercial and educational possibilities for the applet, as well as allowing third parties to develop api's for it. exciting stuff... go play!
it was pretty cool to get an insight to the history of the product and company, i just wish i wasn't so damn tired after last night
up to date!
it's 5am, and i've just finished bringing my journal up to date. i missed yesterday's critique with stuart (do i even need to mention i overslept?), which is kinda lucky because its given me a chance to get the backlog of work online, and fiddle with the template. i think i've covered most of the important stuff from the last month or so, and now thats done, i can concentrate on posting more frequently :)
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