Wednesday, 30 May 2007

Webcomics are cool!!

He's a couple of links to the webcomics I read:

The Dreamland Chronicles webcomic

a pretty cool webcomic, a bit childish, but I still like it :P



Alpha-Shade

this comic is made and posted in flash, which means u can zoom into the comic!



Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Webcomic

This webcomic is updated daily, and it is REALLY random.......you have been warned



Gone with the Blastwave

Another good webcomic (Very random, very funny, but hardley updated)




and my favorite:

Ctrl+Alt+Del

Great webcomic with good game reviews too




(there's a couple more on my delicious account)

Thursday, 24 May 2007

Technorati (I'm the master of procrastination)

What is Technorati?
Technorati is a search engine focusing on "citizen media" (i.e.. Blogs, photos, videos, voting)
Technorati started as search engine for blogs however, and is still what it is mainly used for today. media.”
I believe Technorati is mainly different to Google because of the focuses of the two programs. Technorati focuses on searching for blogs and other "citizen media", whereas Google focuses on the web as a whole, with an option of searching by type (Images, Videos, Groups, News)


Rank and Authority:
My current Rank is 845,545 which is a step up from over 2,000,000!
And my authority is 6.
Rank: A Technorati Ranking relates to the number of sources that point to a particular weblog relative to other weblogs. The more sources referencing a weblog, the higher the Technorati ranking (From Technorati FAQ).
In other words, the more people that know your blog, link, to your blog or interact with your blog the higher your rank.
Authority: Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has (From Technorati Blog). Therefore the more people that link to you the higher your Authority, (and im guessing that your rank increases too).


Technorati’s 100 most popular blogs:
Here are some notes and screenshots I made on two of Technorati's top 100 blogs

Good Aesthetics
Seth Godin's Blog - Screenshot and notes

Bad Aesthetics
Boing Boing - Screenshot and notes

Friday, 18 May 2007

Really late post

As you are aware I have been posting late, again.....even though I show up to every class.

oh well, hopefully this will make up for it!!

Me-Looking-Spastic

I mean who would want to see me looking like a spastic?

Aesthetics (another late post, with more coming)

Aesthetics:
Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is a branch of philosophy, a species of value theory or axiology, which is the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. Aesthetics is closely associated with the philosophy of art. (ha! what a mouthful!!). Obviously that wasn't my own words.


My own words: Aesthetics is how pleasing something is to look at, and how well the object/image/website flows.
OMG REALLY BAD AESTHETICS






Bad Aesthetics: TV.com
(http://www.tv.com/)


The basic structure and layout out TV.com is neat and clean. However, the TV.com website appears cluttered and "busy", as shown on the screen shot of the main page. As TV.com needs to show information on the shows it reviews, it needs to represent them using images and this drastically increases the clutter on the main page. I believe the website could improve the Aesthetics if the website didn't contain so many tv shows on the main page, and instead lead the user to more pages containing the different tv show categories.
In other notes: The website functions properly and easy to navigate. The text size and placement is good. The use of many pictures (and video clips) means that users with slow internet speeds would take longer to browse TV.com.



Good Aesthetics: Seraph Inn
(http://www.seraph-inn.com/index.html)



The header and sidebar stay anchored when navigating the Seraph Inn website. The site doesn't use any real contrasting colours either, it instead uses different shades of similar colours. This doesn't affect the legibility of the website though. The character on the top left of the picture fades into the sidebar menu. The menu remains in the sidebar when browsing other pages for easy of navigation. As the website mainly uses text it would use less time loading and browsing than TV.com.

Really late XML and RSS post :S

What is XML?
The American Heritage Science Dictionary defines XML as:
Short for extensible markup language. A version of SGML that allows one to design a customized markup language, used to allow for the easy interchange of documents and data on the World Wide Web or between software components.
Here's what other sites said; Wikipedia and W3C (XML website).
Basically XML is used to simply share information over the internet.

What is RSS, and why is it important?
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts. (Wikipedia - RSS)
By using RSS reader, the user can subscribe to a feed by entering a link of the feed into the reader program. The RSS reader can check the user's subscribed feeds to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it was checked, and, if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user.

The RSS technology creates a quick and easy way for a user to view the updated/new information their subscribed feeds (seleceted websites). This means the user doesnt have to browse through their favorite sites looking for new


RSS Reader Account
I choose Google Reader over BlogLines because I think that having another account branching off Google will make things easier for me, as signing into GMail will mean im signed into other accounts. This means i wont need to remember more account names/passwords.

Thursday, 3 May 2007

Assessment#1 Blog Post

In this post it will list the the fifty items, with note to points I wish to discuss.

☑ is present at assessment (hope so)
☑ has emailed katrina.flaskas@gmail.com/ with their blogger delicious and flickr account details
☑ has emailed me a working link to the assessment#1 blog post (will do)

Flicker:
☑ has uploaded pictures
☑ has progressively uploaded more pictures
I have uploaded many pictures of my friends from home, and some from Uni and by using Sets I'm able to group them simply, however more than three sets being available would help.
☑ pictures have titles
☑ pictures have descriptions
☑ pictures have MPI104-2007 tag

☑ pictures have tags other than MPI104-2007
My picture tags include: pirates, friends, puppy, cat, dog, sister, bmw and car
☑ user has joined MPI104-2007 group
☑ user has pushed picture/s to MPI104-2007 group
I pushed some of my favourite pictures like my sisters puppy and my car in an attempt to “raise the quality” as I believe that most people in the MPI104-2007 group are merely adding pictures for the sake of it, and not showcasing their best work or their favourites.
My sister's dog My BMW
☑ user has contacts
☑ user has joined other groups

I joined the Cars Cars Cars group and the BMW Enthusiasts group, as I (obviously) have a interest in cars. An amusing picture I found in the BMW Enthusiasts group was of a BMW Isetta, honestly the strangest car out.
☑ user has nominated favorites
I have a few favourites, three being pictures of an Isetta and some of friends, one being Meg’s very animated face!
☑ user has commented on other user’s pictures
☑ user has profile
☑ user has flickr post on their blog
☑ user has posted working link to this post (or flickr account) on metablog


Summary:
I found Flickr to be a useful tool to add and share photos on the internet and I know I have not used it to its full potential.
I will continue to use Flickr long after I finish the MPI104 subject.
The option of adding Groups is a great idea, as this makes it easier to view similar images, and also get your picture noticed by the desired target market. i.e. pushing images of a hotted up BMW M3 in a BMW related group.
Obviously Contacts help to keep in touch with our friends and their new images.
The disappointing about the Sets option is that on a free account, you are only able to add three, which I personally found annoying.


del.icio.us
☑ has saved bookmarks
☑ has progressively saved more bookmarks

Unfortunately I lost all my old bookmarks when I reformatted my computer, so I am slow adding more sites as I come across them. So obviously this site will prevent a similar incident.
☑ user has integrated delicious into their workflow as a tool

I am beginning to use delicious more and more. I have stopped adding favourites to Internet Explorer and Firefox and now only add them delicious. I also have delicious as my homepage so I can easily navigate to wherever I want. I can also use delicious to search for whatever I want using the tags that people have used.
☑ bookmarks have descriptions
☑ bookmarks have tags
☑ user has bundled tags
☑ user has subscribed to tags
☑ appropriate bookmarks have MPI104-2007 tag
❑ user has joined a network

I don’t completely understand this point. Have I join a network by adding contacts? (If so then yes) or is there a specific option to join a network.
☑ user has saved links for others
☑ user has bookmarked their flickr home page
☑ user has bookmarked their blog home page
☑ user has delicious post in their blog
☑ user has posted working link to this post (or delicious account) on metablog
☑ user has included link roll (or rss feed) on their blog

Summary:
Delicious has a great potential to help me a lot when browsing the web, as I can easily save internet addresses or use it to search for whatever I want. The searching could prove to be better than Google (if used correctly) as I will find website that people often use and trust.

Blogger
☑ user has links in sidebar
I added links for my accounts (del.icio.us, Flickr and MySpace) I also added links to some people from the MPI104 class.
☑ user has more than the minimum posts
As you can tell from my BlogSpot I'm not much of a writer and not very used to writing blogs. In the future I will attempt to write lengthier blogs with more interesting subject choices. I was think of posting reviews about movies, games, TV shows and the like, as well as updates on my life in general.
☑ user has links in posts
☑ user has commented on other people’s posts
☑ user has updated profile
☑ user has uploaded picture for profile
☑ user has experimented with templates

I have switched between a few templates until I found a favourite. I have tweaked it slightly to my taste as I prefer it to be clean, clear and simple. I didn’t want to make my blog too “busy”.
☑ user has experimented with fonts
☑ user has experimented with colours
☑ user has picture/s in post/s
☑ posts have titles
☑ blog has description
☑ has added a list or other page element to their blog

I added a “Slide” to my blog to add bit of life to it, and also added pictures down the side of blog page.
☑ has listed on technorati or similar service
I'm not sure about the necessity of this, but I have done as requested and am sure you will explain :)
☑ has counter

Unfortunately I've only recently added my counter and wanting to be true to you I started the counter at zero, meaning that it appears (and is probably true) that very few people have visited my blog.

Summary:
Although I have nothing to compare it to; Blogger seems to be a powerful enough tool for blogging and has been simple enough to learn. I am unsure if I will continue to use Blogger after I complete MPI104, but I would be a good outlet for unspoken opions and possible something to use when avoiding assignments.





fin.

Spiderman 3 Advanced Screening

Well well well, guess who got to see Spiderman 3 tonite?
As some of you know the Animation and Visual Effects class was invited to the premier of Spiderman 3.
Included in that group was Erin, Dave and Meg.

I baiscally posted this blog to say hahah beat ya to it!!

On another note, i was very impressed with the eyecandy action scenes and visual effects and a little dissapionted with the over use of emotions in the characters. (I might do a review in the future on it.)All in all i thought it was a good movie, but maybe too much happening in one movie, but don't let me talk you out of it! See it yourselves ya stingy bums!!!