Classroom Review

Acumalation of Idea and Content

2009-03-23T03:27:00.000-07:00

The Idea behind my personal website, a networking professional platform for students of creative endeavours at UCA starts timingly on April the 1st (April Fools) first in Print. The magazine idea and name is 4ROOM. Content is piling up and marrying the two print media along with the web version is due yet to be fully harnessed making both mediums mesh and ensuring certain content remains exclusive to the particular media in which it is published.

Assessment Criteria Discussed for Individual Project

2009-03-17T07:06:00.001-07:00

Basic Outline and Boxes to Tick during the creation and long term management of the individual web site assessment.

A. Individual Website Assessment Criteria
1. Strong Concept
2. Relevant News
3. NIB's
4. 2-3 Features
5. Nice user interface (user-friendly)

B. Several Ideas Already in the Making

1. A Website with download able layout designs for magazines and or online journalistic content including news geared towards the news about Newspapers and Magazines and other printed medias that are converting to the digital era. (Idea formed after Googling Peter Saville a leading Graphic Designer)

2. An online version of an A4 art magazine that I am independently publishing in Farnham. Relevant news geared towards the art world and art at UCA. (Note: This magazine is ran by me even if I plan on commissioning written work from the artists themselves, thus keeping artistic, layout and editorial control. Every issue will have completely different contributing artists/writers. The online version thus will be able to encompass more interdisciplinary networking on and off campus. This idea is the ultimate exploit of the Internet.)

WEB Metrics

2009-02-10T06:22:00.000-08:00

An enhanced understanding of how the industry in journalism is changing, not just in terms of online material but also for video, audio, and print which is making a firm move for advertisers specifically to online formats because stats are more readily available to advertisers.

I had previously aware of Google's stats of my own personal web page but had not considered following it to track interesting things like the source of hits and or times and specific parts of the web site being viewed. Today's lesson proved to me that implementing my new addition to my personal web page with journalistic material can be monitored by the stats given by google. This stats implements a use that will help me guide myself into a more professional overview of content that should be either removed, updated, or added. It essence this Web Metric tools will allow me to enhance chief editorial decisions about my web site's content.

Assessment Requirement

2008-12-10T03:21:00.000-08:00

A personal website featuring:
1. Personal/Biographical Pages about the Student
2. Past Work done on the course, re-designed and enhanced for the web
3. A new original feature, at least 1,000 words in length, written and designed to exploit the multimedia/interactive potential of the Internet.

A Critical Evaluation of Manyroadstorome.com was printed and turned in with cover sheet of assessment turned in material.

Enhanced Journalism

2008-12-10T03:08:00.000-08:00

Personal websites like the one designed for this unit may give viewers an idea of what you produce on a professional level, but it doesn't enhance journalism in the sense that it is an individualistic portrayal of information from your personal point of view. I believe the blog format enhances the viewing of journalistic material far better than a website achieves, at least on an individual level. If you were working for a newspaper that displayed printed material online it might be useful to know how to hyperlink material which cannot be done on paper.
Both the use of multimedia and hyperlinking can enhance the amount of information a viewer can research but through a personal website I find it difficult to hyperlink viewers away from my page if the whole idea is to keep them on your website viewing your material. The other major problem is that because there are so many different information providers already on the internet you have a large amount of content to compete with.

Using Web Based Multimedia

2008-12-10T02:54:00.000-08:00

Using web based multimedia is easy enough but when you want to imbed multimedia on a web site the best way to go about it is to hyper-link your viewers to other sites that host such things as video and or audio material. I use www.vimeo.com to load up video. I haven't explored using audio on its own, except for using www.myspace.com but that means I have to direct my viewers directly to the site where as the video site displays an imbedding code that I can copy onto any website.

I used www.vimeo to imbed video into a blog about an eco-conference I went to on the Isle of Wight. While I was at the conference I was able to use my own hand held digital camera to film discussion and then very easily make editing and compression changes for uploading my short film to vimeo with the same ease used by youtube users. I chose to use vimeo because it has far less amounts of people with the same title of my own video which ensured that when I embedded it into the site viewers were viewing only my video and not reams of other videos with common criteria.

User-Freindly navigation and interfaces

2008-12-10T02:48:00.000-08:00

I am under the belief that since the internet is a click and go kind of atmosphere unless you cram your website with a lot of un-useful information its always going to be user friendly. Your navigation buttons should be at the top of your website and should be in a language that your viewer can easily understand.

Throughout the navigation of my site, easy tabs with easy labels are at constant view on all pages making navigation and uploading of the site easy for any user.

Information Architecture

2008-12-10T02:36:00.000-08:00

Since information architecture involves organizing, structuring and labeling your website it is a continuum of web designing with more emphasis on the actual functionality of your website. In other words how the viewer will navigate through your site. After visiting many different websites I realized one of the most irritating things about the navigation on websites is trying to find the button that is going to navigate you to a different piece of information or page on the website. Some designers head their navigation buttons at the top, right after a logo or photo for the page which is simple enough but for my design I decided not to make any picture buttons but to use the words themselves as links and to change the background color according to the page the viewer wishes to see. Since this website is designed with the basic idea of incorporating my profession as a writer with Journalism I tried using "newsy" words that might catch the attention of people in the same profession.

In a section titled "writings" I attempt to design something that can be updated on a regular basis for journalistic purposes as well as other media possibilities. I am still under contemplation about how to enhance this part of the website, but am not sure what is the most effective form of doing so.

Publishing online and web site design

2008-12-10T02:21:00.000-08:00

I already bought a domain name last year from an online company called one.com. I constantly strive to keep it up to date. For the purpose of this Unit I deleted my old design in an attempt to appear more professional in terms with Journalism. The company that hosts my online site also makes online publishing software much more user friendly. I find it completely difficult to use software created for programmers such as Dreamweaver. I am not unfamiliar with using it, but have found it easier to publish my online material quicker. Because of HTML coding embedding flash, video, and or audio has been the most difficult thing to incorporate in the design of my web page. I think that for anyone who is just learning how to exploit online media using hyperlinks is often the best way to incorporate different media to your main web page while at the same time linking you and your audience to different sources.

The design of my web page was made to make it easier for viewers to read my online print material easier. I have been learning how to link PDF files into my website but am still struggling to achieve doing so. As far as journalism on the Internet, I think that the design layout used by blogs is ideal for multimedia stories because it labels and archives stories by date and time. It can be updated, but leaves the viewer a choice between reading the latest to the oldest copies of covered subjects.

Using PDF documentation has proven to be a good way of shifting long written work into a space where viewers can focus on written work, although in the future I might want to scan the actual newspaper where my stories have been published in order to give it a more professional look. Using the PDF files has a downside, links cannot be imbedded in order to serve the viewer an intergrated web viewing experience.