Before writing this blog, i decided to read all the questions i was asked to answer(as my mom use to tell me: always read everything before you start your assignment). The first question was, 1) Feedback and visibility: What happens when you make an error? How do you know it’s an error? Depending on the site, how you do you know are using it successfully or not?

The website that i use most often is definitley ESPN.com. As a sports aficionado, i visit this site every day, and very rarely do i come across errors or any type of problem. When I do, i already have the knowledge to know that ESPN.com is a very solid website and is run to perfection, so any error i come across is due to connection problems or because of lag due to to much access to the site.  When i do recieve an error while on ESPN.com, it is when i am trying to move to a different page than the one I am already at. Most of the time this comes when I am within ESPN.com’s fantasy sports area. In the fall, when i was part of the NFL fantasy football league, there were a couple of times when i would try to pick up or drop a player from my team, and an error would pop up, ussually indicating that the site i was trying to access was not available.

As a loyal supporter of ESPN and ESPN.com, this did not bother me, and i would come back to my computer and try again. I do believe this might be a reason i have stayed so loyal to ESPN.com. Userability on the website is very smooth, and almost every page on their site is accessable.

In terms of the site’s constraints, ESPN.com imployes vast ammounts of people for the sole purpose of writing and controlling the site, so there is always available content. The one constraint that the site has is when you try to access in-depth stats and analysis.  ESPN.com offers an “insiders package”. If you pay a certain ammount a year, or if you subscribe to ESPN “the Magazine” then you can access these links. usually the”insiders Package” allows the user to access special articles devoted to evaluating a draft class, or rating the best position players in the NBA or so forth.

Up until about 4 months ago, i wasnt able to access this, until i realized i was a subscirber to the magaine, so i was capable to acess these special links. And again, as a huge sports fan, these articles and analysis definatly make the site better, and provide more interest into probing ESPN.com

The mapping of ESPN.com is basically straight forward. As an avid ESPN watcher, the expectations of what i think the webstie should look like and the acutal look of the site are quite the same. Are there minor changes i would make if i were in charge? obviosuly, but as for my expectations of the site. They are all met.

The site does use some metaphors to emulate everyday life, but most of these are used in the titles of the main story on the opening page,such as: “Will The Sun Set on Phoenix?” (referring to the Phoenix Suns(a NBA championship competitor) playoff game tonight. If the Suns lose, they will be eliminated from the playoffs.)

The consistancy of ESPN.com is there every day. I always knwo what to expect when i acess the main page. THere will be a main story or article on the left hand side, and next to that will be 9 to 10 links to other important sports stories within ESPN.com. Next to the story links is the video panel, where there are 5 or 6 video packages that are availble to watch. I have been accessing ESPN.com for about 8 or 9 years now, and the consistancy has stayed about the same. (minus visual changes the site has improved on)

 ESPN.com is one of the most complete websites that i have ever used or been a part of. Thats the reason I go back to it every day for my sports information, becuase i trust them. And i belive trusting a website is the most important aspect of website control. Being able to go back to the site every day, expecting the same format and layout makes the information you access much easier to digest.

Second Life is probably one of the most puzzling computer programs I have ever used. Not puzzling in the sense that i don’t know what to do in the program, rather Puzzling, meaning; What the hell is the point of this program??

It seems like it is a online RPG for sophisticated adults/young adults. Visually, this game/program looks like the Sims, and after wandering through the 2nd universe i have still little to no understanding of the programs point.

I created my character, Boaggrius Boksernbaum. (Boaggrius is the name of the giant that Achilles slays in the beginning of the movie, Troy)

When you sar SecondLife, it places you on orientation island,  place where you feel out all the concepts of secondlife. I was so lost, the tutorials probably took me a hour before i was free to roam the Second Life.

Just trying to change my characters outfit was daunting. The program ran extremely slow, and doesn’t give very many different clothing options, even though i saw other characters wearing ridiculous items. However, as I continued, i realized thtin Second Life, just like in real life, you need money to do anything fun. However, how do you make money in Second Life?

I felt like alot of interaction between my character and the surroundings is extremely difficult. Not every item in Second Life is tangible, what can i pick up, and what cant I?

The biggest problems I found in second life is the usability of the program, movement is shaky, graphics are poor, it was difficult to control my characters movement. In real life people know how to do things based on situations they have encountered or things they watched on TV and so forth. But in Second life, I have no idea how do do anything other that walk, fly, and teleport to other areas. I feel like  second life’ platform is way to large to have any sort of uniformity and continuity.

It is a fun program to mess around with, but i see no real productive reason for its existence.

I have been working with a demo version of Adobe Captivate, which is a screen capture program used to show demonstrations and other things on the computer.

I have been using this program on a PC, and I do think it would work alot better on a MAC if the program is available for MACs.

The program is pretty easy it use, but there are alot of different options you can use, so I definitly reccomend watching the tutorials for each part of the program to get a good understanding/walk-thru. I tried creating a file without watching the tutorials, and I was very lost. the program interface is pretty intimidating if you havent used it before, so again, I reccomend the tutorial videos.

The captivate demo that I downloaded for my PC from CNET.com is a 30-day demo. the program can be purchased for $699.99.

The features that come with the program are pretty good, lots of different effects that you can use such as zoom, and different tools that enhance teaching and demo files. One of the eaiser parts of Captivate is the aduio recording part.

Once you have captured all the video you want, and you are ready to record, Captivate replays thefile you just made, so you can record your voice over the correct spots on the screen capture file. The program reccomends that you use a microphone plug-in on the computer.

Captivate lets you import content from a variety of formats, including SWF, FLA, FLV with metatags, MP3, and image file types (such as GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, ICO, EMF, WMF, and POT).

The only file format that I could save my project as was a adobe Captivate project file (.cp)

The file output is relativly large. My example file has 12 slides and no audio and was 60.3MB. The more effect, slides, and audio you use, the larger the output will be.

Overall, I like captivate. On a fast computer, it will work very well. After working with the program for an entire weekend, I have learned alot about the program, it is pretty easy to use. for screen capture for PCs I would say tht this program is probably one of the best.

here is the link for my example file

I just tried to add my file using the “add video” button above, and it said that the file did not meet the requirements. This is the one problem i have had with Captivate. It wont let you save a a quicktime file or a flash file, so i am not sure how toget the file onto webpages. But I know there has to be a way to do this, but I have not figured it out yet.

Adding video into the We-Town.com site is a relativly newthing. I have mapped out an easy way to do so.

There are two ways to add video to  posts in the site and my Gliffy visualization has diagramed this well.

Visualization of adding video

Please note, that although I mapped out how to add video, I myself had trouble actually adding video. Trying to imbedd video from youtube resulted in a blank flash video box in the post instead of my imbedded video. I was able to add a video file from the computer to the Vidavee film manager at the bottom of my post on We-town.com

Isnt that a wierd question. How do I know what to do?. How do I know how to take a shower correctly, put on a matching set of clothes and go to class?I think this concept we are discussing about mental models is really interesting.

 One example from Boxes And Arrows was really interesting. It had to do with being able to properly go to a restaraunt to eat food. What do you need to know before going into the restaurant. How do you get seated? can you just go in and sit down and wait to be served?

How we formulate the answers to these questions in our heads before having to make the decision is based on our personal experiences. Have we seen it happen on TV before? Have we actually been to a restaraunt before?Having information likes this is what makes a mental model. I tried surfing the net to answer the question, where do I go if I cant find what I am looking for?.

First I went to google.com, being the mothership in the galaxy of the internet. But with a question as basic as this, google was relatively useless. So I decided to try Ask.com, formerly Askjeeves.com, but sadly, Jeeves is no more. I digress, you would think ask.com would be the perfect place for me to find the answer. I would be asking the internet where to go if i cant find what im looking for on the internet. Ask.com was as helpful as google, and google wasnt helpful at all.

I think that if people cant find what they are looking for, they make their topic more basic, as to attract as many possible listings as possible, then they can dig deeper into their topic at those listings. 

Then I realized I had been using a site for years that answered any and all questions I had, but with a catch. The site only dealt with movies and television. Of course I am talking about www.imdb.com. Any question you have about an actor from an obscure early 90’s comedy? I almost guarantee that they imdb.com will have the answer.  The site is used by millions of people just as a site to provide answers that people had regarding movie trivia. The amount of knowledge this site holds is too far beyond the amount of time it would take you to try to learn it all.

I’ve never been a fan of politics, foreign or American. I never have really had a grasp on what goes on outside the US, call me stubborn, or the product of poor use of the American media, but I’ve never really seen eye to eye with what we do outside the US, so I stay away.

(Mainly due to the fact that I figured the Internet was not prevalent that much in that region because of constant warfare and destruction keeping their societies technologically behind.)

I felt like the one area that the government would be behind in controlling in these countries (the Myanmar case blew my mind) is Internet writing. the first thing my brain thought about when I read of the man being detained for writing a blog in Saudi Arabia, was African-Americans being arresting for voicing their freedom during the Civil Rights movement. I know it doesn’t really compare but just the thought that people now can’t even voice their opinions through text on the Internet sickens me. Not being able to voice your opinion in the street, or not carry out your beliefs in public in one thing, but some of the security measures they are taking is absurd.

Reporters Without Borders said last week that Myanmar authorities have stepped up their surveillance of the Internet since the beginning of the year, pressuring Internet cafe owners to register all users’ personal details and to program screen captures every five minutes on each computer. (FROM Good Afternoon Myanmar).

Wasn’t privacy suppose to be one of the benefits of the Internet? Being able to write and publish what you want with LITTLE threat of persecution. (My mom has a funny animal cartoon strip on our refrigerator. It is two dogs sitting at a computer, and they are in a chat room for cats, and the one dog says “on the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog”)

I feel like this is how the Internet should be treated. These other countries are removing that barrier between the writer and the reader, giving them no privacy. Earlier I said that I believe a lot of these problems in foreign countries stem from uptight intolerant religious fanatics. In these countries holy books, or in their religions, is there any mention of restricting freedom of speech via the Internet?

I thought the quote from URL Not Available: China is a perfect representation of the power-trips alot of the foreign countries are having.

Although China is also battling a seemingly insurmountable pollution problem, the regime appears determined to ignore Western calls for greater openness. “Why can’t China accept that dissent and argument are part of being a normal country?” asks leading Hong-Kong based academic Rebecca MacKinnon. “Why behave in such an insecure manner that violates international human rights norms, damages China’s international image, and distracts media attention away from the Chinese people’s genuine achievements over the past 30 years?”

The questions asked in this quote are all the questions I have about why countries like China do this, and i think its disgusting and inhumane, this is probably why I try to stay as far away from politics as possible.

Before I start, I just want to say that the whole concept of the speech that I listened too was borderline creepy, but in the most interesting way. Before the podcast started, I saw images of Howard Reingold, and I honestly had no idea that a guy who looked like he had been searching the beach for burried treasure with a metal detector could be so credibile with information about browsing the internet. Reingold honestly looked like a casul version of Captain Kangaroo for the early 90s.

The only other complaint I had, before jumping into the meat of the assignment, was the concept of Second Life.  Just looking at a program like Second Life shows us how far the advancment of technology has come. I thought the concept of an online university was bogus. The thought of an institution such as Unviersity of Pheonix online was rediculous. I think that the creation of a working 3-D virtual university, even if it is only the creation of NMC, is absolutely amazing. However, does’nt it mean that if people had Second Life caracters enrolled in a virtual college, that there must be a massive ammount of time taken away from actual life as oppsed to Second Life? This is what puzzles me about Second Life. I could’nt get to the podcasts before thinking about what I know of Second Life and looking at these images from the online, vrtual lecture series.

But I digress, the real point of this series was to inform us about infomation. More importantly how a person(internet user) can properly search the web, weeding out rumors and speculation from actual credible information.

Howard Reingold discussed how he himself got started and involved with internet technology and new media. He said it began when his daughter was in middle school and high school writting research papers. He woul question his daughter about the sources that she obtained her material from. He stated that on the itnernet there is relativly no gurauntee that what you find is authoritative or true. The credibillity of the author of the site is sorely needed so that a multitude of different people can easily identify that author as being reliable when the users accsess the site and uses its information as a source.

 Right off the bat I though of my earliest experiences writting research papers back in late middle school. In 8th grade alone I had to produce three lengthy research papers in three different topics. I had a 12-15 page history paper, a 10-12 page science paper, and a 8-10 page critical thinking essay for english. At this time, the full force of the intenet had just been integrated in most schools in my area. So, for our papers, our teachers made us get alot of our information from the web, as going to full libraries is hard to do when being only 12-14 years of age.

My whole grade would meet together with the head teachers in each department and they would teach us how to use the general functions of web-browsing. They would teach us about how to use search engines such as yahoo, excite, hotbot, lycos, altavista, and a host of other basic search engines at the time. most of the companise have stumbled since the internet search field and have had to merge or purchase other internet tech companies since the start of inernet browsieing.

After we began writting our papers, we still meet frequently with the teachers and had deadlines that we had to meet. I remember that when we had to turn in our list of possible sources, such as citations, breif bibliography and a list of websites, our history teacher scheduled a meeting with us soley on how to refine our searches becaue he felt like most of the material we had gathered from the web was not credible and unreliable.

We were taught how to phrase our queries differently so the searches would be more efficient. But after doing some research, and especially after listening to Mr. Reingold, though being eight years later, I have realized that lot of search engines get there results from the same pools of information as other sites. So after doing a steady number of searches in one specific field, won’t the results start to overlap after awhile regardless of what search engine you are using?

I am really starting to feel like a lot of new terms I am learning for my new media class have the same meaning. After a while i felt like every word that we learned had to do with how a computer-user uses a website.

After reading Craig Bellamy’s blog, I got a bit more confused because the words he defines are all conglomerates of different words put together to have a multiple-use meaning. For example Transmedia navigation. You would think it would it meant how to search and use a website, but it means the ability to follow the flow of stories over a multitude of different news convergences.

After last weeks blog, when we were asked to define the three things needed to make a good website, this weeks reading an information take our explanations a little bit deeper.

This week, we aren’t just looking at one website, but how a user controls multiple websites. I liked the quote used from one of our readings: ” All the water-cooler speculation moved on-line” There are tons of websites with nothing but chit-chat, gossip and rumors, and it is up to the user how he/she interprets the numerous sites information.

The term participatory culture, is effectively just that. a culture in which you participate in. It is how the user participates in the on-line culture of sending information across the entire Internet. Participatory culture doesn’t just fall on the shoulders of the website.  The user has to be capable of maneuvering throughout different sites using the tools a programs accessible to gain the best possibly grasp on the information that is provided.

One of the easiest websites to use as an example for a effective medium of participatory culture is wikipedia.com. I know I keep bringing up wikipedia.com, and many college professors don’t like it as an accurate source for information, but I think that it has become, over time, and as it expanded, into the ultimate “on-line water-cooler”.

At first wikipedia.com was your typical on-line encyclopedia, but after time, more random people started to post their views on different topics, and after a while, it became a hotbed of citizen-encyclopedic information. If a person has information on an obscure topic, they can post it on wikipedia.com and it will become the main information for that topic.

The problem with wikipedia is that it is misleading. If you go there top find in depth info for a research paper, you might find info you need,, but the info is most likely not written by an accredited source. How does one know if what the author  has wrote is 100% accurate or if it is just their point of view.

I don’t think wikipedia encompasses all of participatory culture, but it is a super-sized forum of endless information provided by millions of different authors. Isn’t that what participation is?

One of the most important things about a website is how it looks. The colors, the layout, the sidebars, everything visually appealing to the viewers eye. If your website isn’t appealing, or if it is under-developed, users will be frustrated just looking through the site, and will probably look elsewhere.

One site that I access multiple times every-day is ESPN.com. I continue to go to ESPN.com for all my sports needs because, not only do I know that they will have all the information that I need, but visually, the site is appealing, and it is full of tools and applications that make viewing the site easier and better.

The site is layed out in a two color color-scheme of black and red. ESPN usesblack and red as their “trademark” colors. They use black and red on their virtual sets for TV broadcast, and for the bottom line they run on TV. for a while ESPN changed their colors allot, but for the last couple of years, they stuck with black and red, so the colors would become identifiable with their product.

ESPN.com not only has a good color layout, but their man page is layout like a magazine front page. A main article with a large picture, sidebars on the top side of the screen, and as you scroll/scan down the page, polls, captions, and links to other pages and tools appear, just like magazines hint to articles in other sections and what not.

Another site that I use allot, which is a complete contrast to ESPN.com is laxpower.com, which is a up-to-date, complete database and news source for everything involiving high school and college lacrosse. As a former “elite” HS lacrosse player, I would go here everyday to check the stats that the site keeps on every team in every league and state. I played college lacrosse for two years and would use the site all the time to see national rankings, forum posts from other lacrosse players, and just about any other piece of info about the current lacrosse world.

Although I visit laxpower.com all the time, I do so mainly just because of its content. I have had to ignore the fact that the site is visually unappealing. The site doesn’t look like its design has been updated in 5 to 10 years.

The site’s main colors are grey and green, but there is not allot of green on the pages. the sidebars are also grey and have black color font which is not appealing to the eyes. All the links are typical-blue, and the site doesn’t use allot of tables or boxes to organize its info on the main page.

When you get into the site deeper (all the statistic pages) it looks like your just looking at a basic stat sheet, with old-style typewriter font.

Check out these two links. The first being a standings of every team in Division 3 lacrosse. it is tough to read and not appealing. Now go to this ESPN.com site for standings for mens basketball. The way ESPN lays their information out is less stressful on the eyes of the viewer.

The third website I will discuss in called TheDCscene.com. This is the website that I worked for this summer, and is run by NBC universal. It is a younger website with less people working on the design and less overall funding. It starts out with a black welcome screen, that makes you click to enter. it has pictures of things and DC and casts a good image of what the site might contain.

The main page is really nicely laid out with 8 different tables for each section that the site covers. with in each table is a picture of the main article, then a list of five links about other current articles in that subject. The site is loaded with pictures and color because the site is designed for people ages 21-30, so the site needs to look fresh. The problem I have with this site, is that since it is owned and managed by NBC universal/ NBC4 in Washington DC, the sidebars are peppered with buttons going to places unassociated with the DCscene. It might make overall searching better, but who goes to a entertainment guide, then clicks to go to a place about home & garden?

On the other sidebar of the screen, the page is loaded with ads for different products, always blinking and moving. I feel like that brings down the class of the site, but at the same time, ads help pay for the production of a site.

Overall, I think that site design and visual appearance is almost key in creating a site. As I explained, a site doesn’t have to look amazing if it is certain that the info it has is deep enough and important enough to viewers that their appearance wont scare them off .(Laxpower.com)

Websites are now the store-fronts of the new generation. The way it looks and runs impacts how many customers it interacts with on the page. Even before being asked this question, I do believe that I still would have been able to break up information into about 3 categories when discussing how to design a website. It really comes down to the looks, content, and use of the website.

When you browse the Internet for anything, weather it be for new, sports, or shopping, the sites that can attract the users eyes are the most affective. Webdesign from scratch.com had good information on making sites appealing to “browse”. Users don’t want to read through lines and lines of text when looking for their information. They want it in bullet forms and easier to quickly scan down the page. Using colors, and different boxes(really, the whole layout and design for the site), your site needs to look attractive, because a site could have all the information in the world, but if it cant sell it well with the sites looks, many people will fly right over it.

The second aspect of that needs to be covered when designing a proper website is that it needs to be use-able. Because of new Internet technology and computer tools, so much more can be done on a website that just click links and download music. You can watch videos, play games, edit music tracks, use graphs, just tons of stuff that keep the user busy within your site. The information from a podcast I listened to (Note: Podcast- I should have mentioned this in my previous sentence), had tons of info on ways to sell your site. It was from Clearcastdigital media. One of the main reasons that I consistently go to espn.com for ALL of my sports news, is because their site is so deep with interactive features with-in all the content makers for a extremely well rounded site. I can watch video highlight and news packages on my favorite basketball teams game, and I can see stat graphs tracking the progress of a games score that’s not being aired on TV. Tools are so important because the more time a user spends on your site, the more the user can trust and rely on the site to always be there when the user needs information.

 The third and final piece of of a design for website is content. . If the tool and features of a site are considered the “guts/organs” of a website, the content is definitely the”meat/muscle”. When a user gets past the design and looks of the site, and really digs within the site for info they want, the more links, new stories, posting, basically words, there are, the more the user will want to come back with just the slightest bit of hesitation. A real life example of this has to be The InternetMovieDatabase, otherwise known as IMDB.com. Any time I have just the slightest bit of question or concern about “wasn’t she that girl from some movie?”, or basically any sort of movie/TV show related inquiry I go to imdb.com. You know why? because it is 100% exactly that. A database. The fullest, up-to-date database that there possibly is for movie/television. It is so rich and full of content, that I i need to find a specific quote from any given movie, or even priceless trivia for that matter,I’m almost guaranteed to find it on the sidebar of the movies imdb page. You could have the coolest looking site but with out content, it might as well be covered in ads, because without content, there is no need for design.

I think website design is really circular. You need content to support your design, but without design nobody will get to your site. every part of the design process needs a solid performance from an other part in order to be a sufficient and dominant website.