With my hectic schedule and lower back pain, I haven’t blogged much lately; however, I have continued to update my Twitterstream, primarily from my phone and new I-pod touch. These have been short posts pointing to links I’ve found interesting or sharing my observations in a small Wisconsin town.
But this past week I noticed a couple blog posts that I knew I wanted to write about in a text box that didn’t limit me to 140 characters. These two posts, on a meta-level, discuss 1) the impact blogging has on literacy and the future of our country as well as 2) the freedom blogging offers that social media sites like Twitter cannot. Both articles give nods to the multitasking we networked citizens do, online and off, but they’ve reminded me that, in the words of Doc Searls, blogging “is something you do as an independent human being.”
Just as my dissertation argues that NOLA blogs are examples of authentic, personal, and public writing, Palfrey’s and Searls’ posts echo this celebration of voice. Palfrey writes, “To ignore online public discourse and the possibilities for engagement, by young people and old, would be to squander one of the great opportunities of our age.” I’m sure some might argue with me, but like Doc, I don’t think what happens on Facebook or Twitter is discourse. It’s just too brief. While the speed of information and response is awesome, the most interesting people I follow are those that also maintain blogs where I can really learn more about their lives and their takes on current events, pedagogy, research, etc. Again quoting Doc, “Blogging at its best is free speech working in open spaces,” which is a perfect segue into the “How blogs are building a friendlier world” video below:
If you know me at all, you know how ideal this video is for my research into embodied writing and trauma; moreover, I’m so happy to hear Mena Trott describe blogs as “records of who you are” because that’s the description I’ve been looking for. As someone who also doesn’t have a lot of family records, her speech has urged me to return wholeheartedly to blogging and to use it to build an infinite archive of who I am.
Wow. I haven’t blogged here in over a month, with that last post consisting only of embedded videos! I have written a couple posts over on the Katrina Media site, though, so check those out when you have a chance.
Things have been very busy here, such is the life of a still dissertating new Assistant Professor, yet I’ve been loving every minute of it.
Being at a teaching school means I’m observed three times each semester [for the first couple years, I think], and I’ve already received 2 out of 3 evaluations. My main concern this semester has not been the 4/4 load, but the return to teaching face-to-face and 5 days a week after almost 2 years of solid online teaching or a Tues/Thurs schedule. As a result, I’ve been concerned with using all of the allotted class time. I’m not sure why, but our twice a week classes meet for 85 minutes rather than the typical 75. To keep the students engaged and take advantage of being on a laptop campus, I’ve integrated many in-class discussion board posts, online research, group work, as well as reading quizzes and watching of short videos on either YouTube, Blip.tv, or TED.com.
I have three sections of ENG 101, so I’ve focused the course to explore the themes of public writing and social media. As stated in my syllabus, “all assignments challenge students to understand knowledge and information as existing within a broader situational and cultural context.” Their first project was an Annotated Bibliography focused on defining Web 2.0, and now their second project is a Rhetorical Analysis of a Website related to their major/chosen profession. Based on the drafts I’ve read so far, this has been an ideal assignment for students at a polytechnic school. Pushing them to find websites in their chosen field, some of which include golf enterprise management, apparel design, construction, packaging, and vocational rehab, is asking them to be proactive in learning then writing about their chosen career path.
I just hope the students are enjoying this as much as I am!
Chapter 11 covers a variety of topics that I’m already fairly familiar with, and clarified a few of them for me:
Google’s PageRank system and reciprocal links: I read The Search for an earlier class, so I’d been able to understand how just linking with a bunch of other websites that have a ton of outside links (junk links) would not improve my website’s ability to show up at the top of the results. Quality outside links to websites with few other links is a better solution than linking to every other site out there just for reciprocal links.
web rings: I remember these from the mid-1990s; usually, a bunch of websites with a similar theme/topic would make a “web ring” which would link to all the other websites. Most of the time this included a lot of tacky graphics and frames for it to work well. Web rings don’t appear to be as popular, or, if they are, they’re not as eye-gougingly tacky these days in design.
meta tags: meta tags are an important way to make sure that web crawlers/indexers are indexing your site for their search engines. Not only do keywords in meta tags help, but having a full description in your meta tags assists search engines with what your website is about and how to present it as part of a search results page. I’ve just devised some meta tags, including a keywords list that includes not only my name in several forms but also keywords for some of the subpage subjects.
hit counters and other ways to track website stats: These can be really useful if you’re interested in having a popular and/or profitable website. It’s also really helpful for when you use things like Google AdWords and other click-through advertising services, as it helps you gauge what kind of bids you want to pay per click-through from other sites on the web. This isn’t particularly useful for me, but it could be in the future.
http://www.google.com/addurl.html: I’m going to actually be using this to add my website after the class is done, if only for the fact that there’s not a whole lot that comes up when you google my name. The first hit is a newspaper synopsis of my brother’s wedding in 2006, the second is from undergrad when I worked on a comic book exhibit, the third is my rarely-used Digg account (I use it so little that I forgot I had it), and the last relevant entry is from Reunion.com and shows me as living in Kissimmee or Tallahassee (they don’t appear to be certain). That last one isn’t useful, as I don’t have an account with it, and it seems to list my deceased mother, my brother and sister-in-law, and a host of relatives that I either have never met or don’t remember. Putting up a personal website with my resume and interests would give people some actual useful information about me to go on beyond the fact that I have a married brother and I worked on an exhibit in undergrad.
The “hiding from search engines” section is more useful for me, as I’m going to end up doing a wedding website after this semester and I don’t want it indexed all over the internet. I do desire just a tiny bit of privacy sometimes. Besides, advertising that you’re going to be out of town during a specific date period is asking to get your house robbed.
I just submitted an appeal for a VIOLATION 319-IMPROPER DISPLAY PERMIT. Heres the site https://usfweb3.usf.edu/Parking_Services/cmn/account.aspx
Does this piss me off? You bet.
Information and Networks
The chapter unravels the way that theories of information and theories of the network and network society can help
elucidate the social and cultural changes that are part of Web culture.
Cybernetics and information
Content to allow for its storage, conversion, and transmission is derived from a particular approach to the concept of
information.
A Cybernetic/Digital Information Summary
The reduction of all manner of content into binary systems, what is called digitalization is essential to understanding
not only the Web but computer technology and the flowing convergence of many cultural forms into one accessible
pool.
Information, Value and Knowledge
Cybernetics is essential for understanding the Web and its computer origins, it is not the only way to
think of information has been thought of as the basis of our contemporary economy and culture.
Convergence and Networks: Connections over time and space-
There is a spatial dimension, on other words, how the network works over geographical areas and a temporal
dimension, that is the kind of time frame made possible by the network.
The Web culture represents a new concentration on information and its directional flow-
These flows of information that change work and culture are not the result of the Web.
Web culture facilitates the flow of information for the objectives of globalization.
The Globalization has become a virtual synonym for the network society. Globalization has to
be understood nt as some unifying force such as a United Nations-style world government.
Chapter 3
The Web As Communincation
Media and communication researchers have until recently overlooked not only the internet but the entire field of
computer mediated communication staying instead with traditional forms of media that fit more conveniently
into models.
The Internet
A key to the success and understanding of the internet are two fundamental elements a new way of looking at
computers and a decentralized communication system.
Interpersonal communication and the web
Services of the internet can be classified using the traditional levels of communication although none of the
interaction is FtF.
Emoticons
Emoticons are used to compsensate for the inability to onvey voice infections, facial expressions and bodily gestures in
written communication.
Acronyms
Speed is often a factor in online communication. Chatroom aficionados ensure that their line communication
is confined to short bursts in order to maintain the conversational connection.
Chapter 4
Webs of Identity
The technologies of information and communication media in the broad sense of the term are technocultural hybirds.
Information technology often transcends its status as a thing. Enabling a new interface between the self the other and
the world beyond media technologies become part of the self the other and the world beyond.
Negative
Internet has negative consequences on the offline, real lives of those who use it.
There is an ever expanding literature making this stance with regard to the effect of
online life on offline of interenet users.
Positive
The respondent reported no difference in their socializing with friends or on their children’s time spend with friends
since going online.
Home Pages and the Presentation of Self in everyday life
People are increasingly using the Web to create virtual homes and online communities.
Personal Web pages are an important component of the production of culture theisis.
The cultural production thesis
The propaganda tradition in a discontinuous line has reformed in contemporary thinking through cybernetics
and its significance in new media nd computer mediated communication.
Conclusion: The shifting boundaries of identity
Anonymity
Language
Narcissism
Gender
Collective identities/collective networks
Paying for college was my main concern when i picked USF. I didn’t qualify for any kind of scholarships and my parents wasted $15000 in court fees. Out of state tuition room board and meal plan is costing about $31000. Some how I was receiving money from social security. I got an $800 check every month for the last year that I was in high school, so that gave us $10000 to work with. I worked at a carwash for about 2 and a half years and managed to pay for my car and save about $2000 to come down to school with. I need to get a job down here in Florida because I’m damn near broke, but pledging Kappa Sigma has been taking up a lot of my time. My mom and stepdad are paying most of the way but I promised to pay whatever I can and any loans can be put in my name. Paying my fraternity dues is another issue. The minute that pledging is over I’m getting a job and working at least 30 hours a week because money goes like nothing in college. I’ve already spent $1500 since I’ve been down in Florida just on day to day expenses. My car starting having problems on the drive down from Georgia and I forked out $750 to drop the transmission and fix the problem. Hopefully my dad will be chipping in as much as he can. He’s between a rock and a hard place financially.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources rather than an entry about pub domain images wikipedia provides a motherload of links to a wide range of resources. A good start. http://www.libraryspot.com/images.htm Library spot is a good general reference site. Here you’ll find image links for kids as well as adults. Like wikipedia, the site is simple and neat. http://www.readwriteweb.com/ Not much here on imagery. Perhaps the page changed over the past few weeks. http://www.footnote.com/ Cool resource for archive images, mostly text from old newspapers, journals etc. but original photos too. $12 a month or $70 a year gives unlimited access. Browse by photos or you’ll get little more than text images. No luck finding an original photo of H.P. Lovecraft. http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/index.html Photoshop is still the industry standard with many features most of us will rarely use. http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/ Fireworks seems to be the more web friendly version of photshop. http://www.gimp.org/ The official Gimp web site offers free down loads for this basic image editor. Free and simple is a good selling point and I’m using it for my web site. http://www.gimpshop.com/ Gimpshop is sort of a Gimp/Photshop hybrid intended to accomodate photshop users to GIMP( GNU Image Manipulation Program).
The GIMP tutorial gives you a basic lowdown on how this free image editing program can clean up your photos. I began using Corel Paintshop but GIMP was all I really needed. I found everything I needed at Stock.XCHNG and imageafter.com and I was able to edit the images so that they worked in my site. It didn’t take long before I realized that the images didn’t have to be resized to fit into my tables. The pictures automatically fit, so I only needed to brighten them a bit.
Aside from the logical and aesthetic reasons for image choices final chapter in Beaird pointed out something I hadn’t thought of before: Hotlinking. Apparently it is a common problem in socialnetworking where users will benignly create links to their favorite images found on other servers. This could be a positive plug for another site, but more often it is a nuisance- slowing down other peoples servers/websites.
Readings: Last week I chose my fonts Juice ITC for the heading and Aerial for the text. This week we looked at more possibilities in our web site reviews. If I can find the time to mess around with Corel Paintshop or Gimp, I’d like to produce a detailed imaged Green Gaia heading. For now, I’m gathering free images and tweeking their contrast, sharpness and brightness. Resizing and creating links from the html to my server space. I’ve been pasting floral and tree images into my web pages but the images have to be retrieved separately. The Beair chapter 4 readings offer clear explanations of formats. JPEG is the standard created by professional photographers while GIF files are primarily for logos with fewer colors(256). GIF files are compressed taking up less space and therefore easily uploaded. They can have transparent backgrounds allowing them to sit over other images, whereas JPEGs are solid. PNG is basically an upgraded version of a GIF with a greater level of transparency the graphics themselves can be rendered opaque resulting in a cool watermark effect. This chapter also reiterates the significance of CSS. Instead of painstakingly editing images and rearranging them in different design motifs, CSS allows you to establish design rules that will overhaul the effects of the pages in one clean sweep. The same text and images can be be placed in different style sheets without having to micromanage each element.
Chapter 13 in the MacDonald text prepares us with some valuable advice: How to make money through our sites. There are basically 5 ways to do this: 1) donations- an unlikely resource but possible if you can convince visitors that it’s for a noble cause. 2) advertisements- a truly annoying method, but if done well and perhaps for socially responsible or environmentally sound businesses, it can be forgiven. Unless your getting a lot of traffic which means you can command greater fees, your not going to get rich. Register with Adsense. 3) referrals- sort of like product placements, instead of ads you might get paid to write nice “reviews” for generous corporations etc. Register with Amazon Associates. 4) merchandising- pimp your wares. People are buying everything online. If you own a business without a website you are potentially losing fortunes. Attractive and well organized Web sites can allow a retailer to close shop move to a cabin in the woods and operate entirely through their webshop. 5) the last option is to charge people to see your content. This might work for database vendors or big media outlets but less likely for most anyone else.
The best option seems to be to have products or services for sale and to use a service like Paypal. You can register your site with Paypal and let them deal with the creditcard transactions. If someone tries to pull a chargeback on you, Paypal will have a better chance of fighting them and you won’t lose out. Just as important is the fact that Paypal has all the buy now buttons, add to shopping cart, etc tools ready for you to download to your site. That alone should be worth the minor commissions they receive on your transactions.
Chapter 14. Jumps into Javascript and DHTML. Javascript is used to add interactive character to your site (bells and whistles) when you see popups and mouseovers you’re seeing what Javascript can do. I won’t have time to install any tricks before the course is over but reading this chapter and going through the basics gives me an understanding of what I’ll need to know to take me to a greater level of web designing. DHTML is the next step- combining CSS into the mix.
I went around to different rooms collecting items I did not see in the catalog. Some items I picked up were a tree lamp, pumpkin jack, a disco ball, a picture frame and a movie screen. I went back to my room and added a movie screen but it was not playing any videos. I went back into other peoples rooms that had these movie screens and asked around as to how they were able to play different videos. Finally, this one guy was able to tell me that I needed to go to you tube and find a video that I wanted to play. He then told me that I needed to copy the url and paste it into the movie screen using gadget options. I then went to you tube, selected my video and put the url into the gadget options. Once I clicked enter the video loaded and started playing. I then went around looking for people to invite to my rooms. A couple people came and we talked about daily life such as what we do for work, where we go to school, if we were married, how many children do we have, where do we live etc. One guy was from Tampa and lives one mile from USF. He said he was a student at USF for about one year until he got kicked out due to bad grades. He mentioned that he had to go to University in North Carolina to finish his bachelors degree and has now returned to Tampa. I told him I was going to USF as a graduate student and that this was my second semester. He asked if I was familiar with the area in which I said no. He then recommended several restaurants, bars and pubs that I should check out.
I haven’t updated the blog in a while; I’ll be C&P’ing the chapter summaries in another set of posts.
I completely changed the layout of my website, and it’s a bit darker. I found textures that I liked on Urban Dirty, cropped out a section of them, and played with the controls until it looked interesting to me. I ended up with the following to the site: This is the background texture I decided to use. It helps me “fudge” my way through designing for 800×600 pages because it gives the 1024×700-something interesting to look at on the sides that the 800×600 wouldn’t focus in on. I’m not a big fan of using “percentages” for the layers of design, as it messes with how well an image and text fits within the whole page.
This is a completely different banner concept from the original, which looked like this. Honestly, I’m not a fan of pictures of myself, so I ended up vetoing the original layout because I got tired of looking at the banner.
To accompany these two items, I designed the colors based on Hexadecimal codes from the colors I picked out of the image in GIMP. The font in the banner is the only place where I’ve used it, as it’s not the most legible font but it is a really interesting font. I picked a handful of other fonts that’d compliment it (I think “Vivaldi” is the ideal one that I chose; I’d have to check the CSS and make sure), including accounting for browsers that would not have much beyond sans-serif installed. I also did a little work on graphics, choosing to continue the “dark and grungy” theme with the images I made; my “about me” photo has been altered with a “posterize” filter, and I ended up using the “bucket fill” tool to alter the background on the knitting photo. The “airbrush” look was achieved because I took the photo with the knitting on a Scrabble box that had a somewhat mottled texture to the color. I feel pretty accomplished so far, but am still fixing little flubs in the coding.
As for testing my website’s compatibility, I’ve been using Browser Shots. Sadly, the only browser so far of the 31 out of 59 that I chose, IE 6.0 on Windows XP and IE 5.5 on Windows 2000 isn’t showing the photo. I’m going to have to figure out what in the code is having issues, and I may have to use external links for all the images to make sure that they’re all working. Browser Shots is definitely a good website to keep in mind, as there are a lot of users who vary widely in what browsers and OS platforms that they’re using out there.
I usually try to remind these folks that change is never easy but that I hope that they are enjoying the features that they couldn’t do before, such as: direct entry of grades into the grid, exempting grades, dropping the lowest score, creating multiple total columns, emailing directly from the gradebook, seeing the last login [...]
When my “mild-mannered” faculty start to voice their discontent, I’m not
quite sure what to tell them:
“I am assuming I am not the only faculty member with this complaint, but
the Grade Center on the new Blackboard System is awful and frustrating.
I am not really liking Blackboard right now. In addition to the really
delayed system and [...]
It sounds like he does not understand that you can go down a column entering grades by hitting Enter after inputting each one. In the old version, you hit Tab after entering each one. The advantage is that in the old version, we sometimes had more than one instructor entering grades simultaneously for the same [...]
We have also gotten the “help” call that includes “4 letter words” from faculty and a few folks that apparently didn’t read any of the emails we sent since March about the upgrade, nor did they attend any of the 30+ training sessions offered. At the same time, we haven’t heard a peep from [...]
I’ve gotten everything from “I hate the new gradebook” to desperate
pleas for assistance to help them undo some unbelieveable things that
render the grade book completely useless and inaccurate. Yes - most of
the time, it is faculty who ignored all of my dire warnings that
training was IMPORTANT to understanding how the new grade center worked.
But, I’ve [...]
With the opening of the new building everything was so hectic I didn’t have time to post on the blog. We’ve opened the new building and the USF community is enjoying their brand new student center.
The old Marshall Center has started to get torn down. There is information about the new plaza that will be built in its place on the main MSC web site at www.msc.usf.edu. There are also new pictures up on the Flickr page that have the first glimpses of the razing of the old building. Visit the flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/marshallstudentcenter/
The presentation by Steve Andrews was very good. Not only did he give a clear presentation of his stories, he had the actual footage to enhance the presentation, and he managed to link them to Public Records.
Andrews talked about several stories he worked on. He showed how based on tips, he was able to uncover cracks in a local reservoir, sinkholes along the Crosstown Expressway, questionable attendance practices by firefighters, and gross negligence in an assisted living home.
While the slant of the presentation was angled towards broadcast, Andrews had some very good pointers for all journalism students. While for most of the semester we’ve been hearing about how agencies will try to stall you or put you off when making a public records request. Andrews pointed out the opposite side of that coin, where an agency will happily inundate you with mountains of paperwork. It takes patience, and a clear eye, (and also perhaps someone with a little expertise in the field to translate the jargon), to find the relevant information, but the payoff can be big.
But, sometimes you encounter a force bigger and stronger. While Andrews managed to uncover rather incriminating evidence that firefighters were taking extended leaves of absence and still collecting paychecks (at taxpayers’ expense), he ran into obstacles when the Fire Chief wouldn’t take action against them. Or when the subject of another WFLA investigation about his gambiling debts committed suicide.
Investigative reporting is tough work. You need a good “nose” to decide what leads to pursue, and nothing is worse than putting a lot of time and effort into an investigation only to come up empty handed. But the work is ultimately rewarding, when you get to see the difference you make in the community.
The Human Relations Board is a volunteer organization that is operated by the Equal Opportunity Administrator. The Administrator for Hillsborough County is Gail Williams. They hear cases related to the Human Rights Ordinance. The mission statement of the Ordinance is to “prohibit discrimination based on race, sex (including pregnancy and sexual harassment), national origin, age, religion, color, disability, and marital status in employment, public accommodations, procurement and contracting, and housing. Discrimination against families with children (familial status) is prohibited in housing.”
The Human Relations Board hears cases brought about by citizens of Hillsborough County who feel they’ve been discriminated against in one of the areas listed above. It is important to note that their jurisdiction only includes unincorporated areas of Hillsborough County, as well as Plant City. The Cities of Tampa and Temple Terrace have their own boards. Also, they cannot investigate another government body, so if a citizen feels discriminated against by the School Board or the Department of Transportation, they must file their grievances with that agency. Also, any club that requires membership is not considered a public area, and therefore exempt from the board.
Persons who feel discriminated against must file a written complaint to the board, who will then check to see if the complaint falls within their ordinance. If it is determined that they do, then they investigate to see if the complaint is valid. If it is determined that the complaint is indeed valid, then they work with both parties to resolve the dispute. They do not represent either party, and they are obligated to remain impartial.
When discussing cases, the Board must ask the public members to leave the meeting, to respect the privacy of the complainants. There were no cases at this particular meeting, so they moved on to discussion on possible updates to the ordinance, the first time they had done so since November 1, 2000. Most of it was simply clarifying legalese, and making sure the areas covered were in line with both state and federal legislation, and official changes had to be submitted by a subcommittee.
Board members serve three year terms, and three members discussed their leaving the board at the end of the year. The discussion turned to inviting new members to join the subcommittees, and then Gail Williams gave an impromptu overview of the history of the ordinance. Of particular note is the fact that sexual orientation was taken out, due mainly to former County Commissioner Ronda Storms. (Read: “County Commission Votes Against Gay Protection”)
Also of note was a caution to the new board members that even though they are volunteers, and not on the county’s payroll, they still must file financial disclosures. After the meeting, board member Raymond Reed talked a little bit more about the work that the board does.
Reed said that a good number of cases are people who are just disgruntled ex-employees who don’t want to hire a lawyer, and once the board looked into it, they discovered that the reason someone was terminated was due more to their performance issues than to an actual discrimination. But, he noted, “Every once in awhile you get to see justice done, and that’s a good feeling.” He encouraged me to check out a Board of County Commissioners or a School Board meeting if I wanted to see some real action, and also noted that coming out of school was a good time to get involved in public service. He discussed the Human Relations Board, or the Affordable Housing Board as good places to get started.
Paying for college really is a combination of using savings, scholarships and loans. Taking these into account played a large role in which college I eventually chose. Fortunately, I qualified for a Bright Futures Scholarship that pays 75% of my tuition based on my grade point average. Based on this year, each year I will be responsible for approximately $3200 for food, $4000 for room, $700 in books, $3400 in tuition and fees and then there are miscellaneous expenses that have been estimated at $2000. This puts it at an estimated $13,300 a year. By the time I get my diploma in four years, it will have cost $53,200. To accomplish this, I will continue to maintain a grade point average that pays 75% of my tuition, I have taken out and will continue to take out a Student Stafford Loan and my parents have contributed approximately $20,000 plus towards expenses. Since we are now mandated to attend summer school in Florida, which doesn’t fall under the Bright Futures Scholarship, I will need to directly pay for those 9 credits and summer room and board. College has become extremely expensive. I will need to take a part time job when possible to keep loans down, will see my books and buy used ones when possible and will hopefully get a decent paying job upon graduation to begin paying off my student loans.
The modular approach and an emphasis on service helped the MSWeb team succeed in revamping the MSWeb intranet.
Challenges for the User-Microsoft itself, MSWeb is insanely huge and distributed. Let’s use some numbers to paint a
picture of the situation. MSWeb contains: 3,100,000 + Pages, Content created by and for over 50,000 employees who work
in 74 countries & 8,000+separate intranet sites.
Challenges for the Information Architect-the people who are responsible for making Microsoft’s content or aggregating that
content into portals.
Three Flavors of Taxonomies
Search-log analysis
Availability
Politics
Applicability
Metadata schema
URL Title
URL Description
URL
ToolTip
Comment
Contact Alias
Review Date
Status
Strongly Recommended
Products
Category Label
Keywords
Benefits to Users
Microsoft’s intranet environment matured in the mid-90’s, it began to suffer from the same afflictions as most enterprise intranets.
Chapter 21
evolt.org:An Online Community-online community developed an innovative information architecture with almost no budget.
Architecting an Online Community-to succeed they must attract members who are already busy doing other things.
Supporting Different Levels of Participation
Support different levels of access to its content and other resources.
Capital in the Economy-made by producers and payments received by consumers.
Cracking the Nut of Integration
evolt.org information architecture features some major silos
Fit Enough to Survive-created and maintained by one person.
The Un-Information Architecture-there was minimal planning, formal process, or methodology.
Websites
http://www.intranetroadmap.com/
This website very user friendly, reliable content and context when browsing through web pages.
Today I created 2 more rooms. The first one I created was a rooftop that I called skyline. I furnished the room with chairs, a firelog, a telephone booth, a bed, sofa, money and 2 stereo systems. The other room I choose was a lecture classroom I named class. I decorated this room with goth chairs and one high school classroom chair. I was hoping this would give it a feel of a classroom one would find at a university in a lecture setting.
http://urbandirty.com/ This contains 433 photos of gritty, rusty, worn paint etc.. urban textures free for usage. I could probably use some of the earthy textures for soil in my site. The link to grunge textures brings you to a another arsenal of terrific masonry etc. These textures give an organic presence to your web pages. http://www.flickr.com/groups/564994@N20/pool/ Another great resource, however searching for leaves, trees, plants turns up few hits. Yet browsing through the “best textures” reveals some great samples. In other words the internal search engine doesn’t seem to work well. http://www.flickr.com/photos/torley/collections/72157594588432564/ Flikr has many other sources. This section offers some amazing free texture photos, found some great green vegetation samples. http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/textures/ Some great swamp textures here, but the images couldn’t be copied without tracking them on another page. It would be better if you could copy them as you see them. http://www.textureking.com/ Awesome textures found under specific categories. While flikr can send the user off into someones family stock photos, Texture King has links to other photos but you don’t end up looking at wedding images unless you want to. http://www.grungetextures.com/ This is the same link I found through Urbandirty. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/29/grunge-style-in-modern-web-design/ Just when I thought these sites were getting redundant, this selection offers some really sharp texture images. A great variety and some weathered icons to choose from as well. http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/photoshop-tutorials-textures/ Urgent!!! I must return to this site. There are numerous links to great tutorials for creating textures in Photoshop. Some of them give a rudimentary outline of how they created some fairly realistic textures and I’m sure a lot of trial and error will occur before you can produce anything that looks as professional. Fortunately links to each designs author might resolve further inquiries. http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/2007-more-web-design-trends-and-cliches Excellent overview of latest trends of design- texture of course is in but so are cartoon characters. The author, Stuart Brown, must spend a great deal of time online identifying design techniques. http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/screen-resolutions-and-aspect-ratios-worldwide The article posted here complicates things even more with the fact that different regions favor different screen resolutions. Interesting, and I’ll try to keep this in mind.
Readings: In week 5 we began looking at texture in the Beaird text. This week we really got to explore some sites that can dramatically change the look of your site with texture but the text was Chapter 4 typography- a little confusing. In chpt 4 Beaird covers the reasons for choosing particular text styles and fonts. I’ve chosen a JUICE ITC font through composer for my “Green Gaia Growers” heading and a standard Aerial for the body text. The heading worked well in Mozilla Firefox but Internet Explorer did not present the heading with the same beauty. This doesn’t ruin the site but I could get around this with the text created as a graphic file in an image editor. The body text would be too much to consider. Text in images look great but you have to keep returning to an image editor if you want to changed the text without changing its style. Beaird proposes a Scalable Inman Flash Replacement(sIFR) as an alternative but it still seems to require more effort than necessary. For now I’ll stick with standard fonts.
Chapter 11 in Creating Web Sites- introduces us to ways of bringing people to your sites. Meta tags; hidden information tags that describe your site or list keywords can provide search engines with the appropriate links; submit your URL to an internet directory and search engine; share links with others directly; set up a hit counter and server log to keep track of traffic. This is potentially the most important chapter of all. If your going to produce a useful website you better get it out there or it will just lurk in obscurity. Since Green Gaia Growers is solely a creation for this course I will not be promoting it. However, this chapter is earmarked for future reference.
Chapter 12 goes further with the concept of your site as a community. If you want your site to gain in popularity you need to provide interactive features. While television is unidirectional, the internet is about exchanging information. Internet users want to give feedback. For my site, I’ll have a link to the blog for this course. Here people could potentially let me know how wonderful it is, or more likely- how bland and primitive it is!!!
To attend the University of South Florida for four years it will cost me $121,720. Since I am an out of state student it will cost me $50,880 more than a student that lives in the state of Florida to attend the University of South Florida. Each year I will pay $16,710 for my tuition which will add up to $66,840 for tuition for the four years. For Housing and meals I will pay $8,120 a year and will add up to $32,480 for four years. It will cost $1,500 for books a year and $6,000 for books in all four years. Finally for other expenses it will probably add up to $4,000 a year and $16,000 for four years. This will all add up to $121,720 for my college education.
Because I am a student-athlete, my softball scholarship will pay for most of what I owe for my college education. I received a scholarship that was eighty percent for all my four years at USF. This means that I will receive around $24,00 every year because of my scholarship and only have to pay around $6,000 dollars out of my own pocket. Thankfully, my parents made a packet with me that if I received a scholarship to college that they would pay for whatever the scholarship did not cover. My parents have been very generous and I am going to work my hardest to receive the best education that I can.
Logged into Jen’s Coffee House. Seems to be the room with the most visitors. I was there before but we will see how it goes tonight.
So far the dialog is this. “My name is Bond, James Bond.” and “Do you want to play with my boobs?” Oh brother!
I find myself facing the wall. I will check on the help screen to see if there is a way to turn around. It did not work like the help said but it did work.
Well, there seems to be an avatar named “pipka” that is fighting with people. He/She picked me up and threw me down several times. Now He/She is continuing with others. I asked my new friend “Courtney” if everyone puts up with pipka and she said yes. I’m not sure what this is all about but it seems a bit immature to me.
I spent some time chatting with “Grrr” who was informative. What I’d be interested in is finding out the ages of the folks in this room. Maybe I’ll just ask. No answers, I’m not surprised. Could be they just feel I’m interrupting their conversations. Netiquette and all.
Now someone dropped a big anvil on me. I saw a piano fall earlier. This place is really so “middle school”. At least there are people from all over the world. Maybe that’s what Google is aiming for. Brilliant, really.
One other annoying item. When I right click my avatar to pick an animation the box flashes and when I try to move it up to read it better it jumps lower on the screen. I think that Lively has speed issues.
I went to another room called Bowling Alley. Very slow to materialize, lots of objects. Not much happening. Two people talking. One invites the other to sit in a chair. Other sits down and the chair explodes. Hmmm. Now he’s telling her that anyone can have an exploding chair in their inventory and how Google has a waiting list of 100 to be one of their designers.
So I sat in one of the chairs and played the animation to explode. Mildly entertaining! I added four exploding chairs to my inventory, you never know. . .
I’m moving on to another room called Lost. We’ll see what’s up there. First, some load remix music, turned down speakers. We spent the first few minutes body slamming and kicking each other. Maybe that’s how they say hello here. So after a few more minutes, I’m dancing with four women. One asks for me to “Add her” and when I check on her profile she says she is 14. Yikes!
Next I found myself talking with a woman who kept acting sad. She said some other person was bothering her and I tried to tell her not to worry about him but she just got mad at me for not understanding. Oh brother, what a juvenile place this is. I bet the average age IS 14.
This is the background texture I decided to use. It helps me “fudge” my way through designing for 800×600 pages because it gives the 1024×700-something interesting to look at on the sides that the 800×600 wouldn’t focus in on. I’m not a big fan of using “percentages” for the layers of design, as it messes with how well an image and text fits within the whole page. 
This is a completely different banner concept from the original, which looked 
