The time has come… its my final blog post for Networked Media Production and its a little bit sad.
My nominated posts are:
http://chelseanikolic.wordpress.com/2009/05/22/last-lecture-for-this-unit/
http://chelseanikolic.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/multiplicity/
http://chelseanikolic.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/this-week-in-networked-media-production/

The main content of my blog posts is me reflecting on what I have learnt in lectures, as well as tutorials, my feelings and my progress through the unit, as well as certain things I have found on the internet which helped me understand certain things better.
My page has had 106 hits which i’m pretty suprised about. I have my blog’s url posted on my facebook site, and know that many of my friends have visited and left comments.
I have both my tweets and flickr photos on the blogs sidebar, and my blog also links to both my production projects from this unit.
I have enjoyed keeping my blog for this unit, and have learnt alot about blogging in the process.

Throughout this unit I have struggled with the concept of posting stuff on the internet. I am required to have a low internet presence for family reasons and so the concept of voluntarily posting things on the internet has been a challenging one. As a result of this, when setting up the blog I made it as hard to find as I could with my limited experiance, for example, it doesn’t show up in search engines. As such the connectivity I have with other blogs and an audience is currently limmited to whoever I give the URL to, which in this case has been the NMP mash-up, friends and family.

 This hasn’t stoped me from looking at other blogs, but it has meant that I have been very reluctant to leave comments or record where I have been. I have also tried to write as little information about me in the various blog entries as possible with the exception of the brief posts in puppets. Although these posts tell people some of my interests, they don’t say much about anything else.

There is a growing role of social media within our society -just look at Twitter, Myspace and Facebook- but whether it is as wide spread as some claim… for me, the jury is still out. 

In this article , the claim is made that “10% of Twitter users account for 90% of all tweets” as opposed to Facebook “where the top 10 per cent of users account for only 30 per cent of all content”. This would mean that most people join to see what the hype is about, try it for a month or so and then get bored. I guess if you compare the ability to continuously tweet, to the ability to keep a diary, (at least in my experiance) there are few people diciplined enough to keep it up for an extended period of time.

I think this is also reflected in blogs where there are sparodic entries every couple of months where it would appear people have gotten too busy to write one week and then one week becomes 2, 3, 4 etc… and the blog ends up becoming a series of sporadic posts. Although, if it is a series of really GOOD sporadic posts this doesn’t matter as much

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t some people who do have the dicipline to write regularly, but in many cases, it would appear that you can tell to some extent the reason someone joined the bloggosphere by the amount of activity on their site.

From what I have seen, people who create a blog with a specific purpose and direction, tend to have a greater presence in the bloggosphere then people who have created a blog for the sake of having a one, and fill it with random ranting. This summation doesn’t mean that there aren’t some random blogs that have generated a huge following, but in the majority of cases, this seems to be what happens.

Most successful blogs seem to build their followers by finding a specific niche to talk about, which people specifically search for and then join in on. The other less guarenteed way of creating an audiance is to let people stumble onto your site and create a feed-back loop where the more people look at it, the more popular it becomes to look at.

Therefore the ammount of connectivity a blog has within the blogoshpere depends on several factors:

• the aimand frequecy of the author
• the subject/s covered(if the subject/s they write on are popular, the chances of the blog also being popular is greater)
• who their friends are (if they have popular friends then people might check out the blogs these friends are following)
• chance (people randomly stumbling onto a blog they like)

• Whats all the twitter about?
• The power of crowds
• Cyberbullying

The purpose of this blog was solely to document my learning, interaction and involvement with Networked Media Production over this semester. As an indicator of how popular my blog has been in the wider context of the world and the blogosphere I have signed up for a stat counter as well as monitoring the ‘Blog Stats’ built into WordPress. In analyzing the traffic through my blog I have discovered the majority of interest has been displayed by other class members. Obviously they are travelling the same road as I am and it always seems to help in understanding the context of your work when you have a comparison or two. I admit I have definately kept up to date with multiple other blogs in the Networked Media unit. I follow 4 blogs in my Blogroll, but I mainly keep up to date by reading posts through my Google reader – I have the RSS feed to all 6 NWM classes. I am also very aware that A LOT of my ‘hits’ in my stats are in fact me! I like to view my own blog after updates and often log into WordPress via my own blog URL. Other than this information, I have found the Blog Stats quite insignificant. I can however, understand that for a more popular blog or for commercial use the ‘visitor hits’ information would have much more value.

Comments wise; my dad seems to be my biggest fan Haha…I dont have many other comments on my blog – however people has visited it according to my blog stats. Even though my Dads comments have been a small part – I feel they have helped me in learning and developing even further as a part of the Media Network; as he has raised questions and queried me even futher about issues I have have writing about. He has also recommended I look at various other related links – which is a very important part of the concept of Networked Media. This proves that my blog has been a successful vehicle for making me a working part of this Network.

My blog effectivly demonstates my understanding of the Unit content and contains related video, pictures and many links to related articles, sites and added information.

The Three nominated posts are:

Crowdsourcing: Consumers as Creators

Data Visualisation

Mash Ups and API’s

Reflective meta post

My blog stats: views per week

According to BlogOhBlog its important to analyse traffic that comes to your website because it can really make or break it. Of course in the case of this very blog I never really intended to generate any traffic but rather use it as purely an assessment piece for my Networked Media Production class. At the beginning of my blog I was rather adamant that people would actually read my blog, well apart from the people in the Networked Media class. I can say now – after becoming somewhat addicted to checking blog stats – there’s always someone who’s interested in what you have to say no matter how small or insignificant it may seem.

So back to analysing traffic… by looking at my most basic data – the average visitors to my site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis – I can measure my blog’s overall activity. BlogOhBlog comments on this approach:

“It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is mostly an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your website visitors to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.”

This is obviously true when you consider the amount of people who come to my blog purely by accident and not intentionally visiting or reading content from it. One way of further analysing this is to find out how long on average my visitors are spending on my site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

It was interesting to look at the search engine term stats for my blog as I noticed my top search term (at 10 hits) was “hollie bracewell”. Hmmm. Very surprising and slightly creepy.

In terms of how my audience is using my site, my stats revealed that my most popular pages/blog entries were Project A, Project B and my About me page. This doesn’t come as any surprise as I would presume students from the class were interested to see what I’ve created and everyone likes to sticky-beak around the person who has created the content.

Top posts for "Hollie's Network" blog

The referrers for my blog were directed mostly from my fellow students’ blog, “Marijike”. I would presume it was mostly Marijke herself who was clicking on my blog as I am listed in her blogroll. My other top referrer was this tumblr site but I can’t work out for the life of me what this web page is, or who it belongs to. If anyone knows, please share as I would love to know.

Referrers for "Hollie's Network" blog

A lot of other referrers were directed from WordPress’s tags. For example, my Twistori tag for one blog entry was listed in this WordPress page. This makes it evident that tags are really key to the functionality of networked media even outside my own blog.

In relation to how my blog functions as networked media it has allowing me to contribute ideas and information to the production of media. By linking my blog with many other various sites I am allowing it to be actively part of networked media. My blog is part of the blogosphere which subsequently acts as a global connection.

The role of such a service as blogs allows me to share my opinions and views. It is a tool to stay informed with cultural issues and to reflect culture back into society. Its a way to be culturally aware and contemporarily aware of the social issues around us.

By discussing and analysing already existing content, ideas and opinions I am actively particpating in the network effect: the more people who use a service, the more effective it becomes. In other words, I am basically helping to share content, ideas and opinions.

Nominated 3 blog posts

1. Data visualisation bringing trends to life and creating a focus on big picture thinking
2. Multiplicity and crowd sourcing: online fundraising
3. I am a sponge: a cultural sponge.

Nominated three posts:
Presentation – colour : http://secretiveseeker.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/youtube-interesting-ness/

Fanfiction: http://secretiveseeker.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/fanfiction/

Youtube-interestingness: http://secretiveseeker.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/presentation-colour

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
During the course of the semester, for Network Media Production, as our ‘weekly homework’, we were required to post blog entries. There were no restrictions as to the content we could post – obviously, we couldn’t post anything that is under copyright or borderline illegal, but at least, some entries were supposed to be related to what we studied in Network Media Production. We were allowed to post things that were related to our areas of interest. That way, it meant that, no matter what, some entries would be high-quality.

We were encouraged to browse other blogs of interest, make connections and produce high-quality blog entries. From observation, it is clear that blogs with the most connections, highest amount of readers, contained high-quality entries, and stuck to their purpose. For example, if it was a blog dedicated to art, the entries were all about art rather than a mixture of writing, random things, the internet etc. There is something about that level of dedication that makes people want to come back.

My blog was a mixture of things. I didn’t update a blog entry on a particular day – just when I felt like it. There was nothing constant about – it’s basically one big mess. With that said, there was nothing to look forward to – because there was guarantee that the next blog entry might be about the same thing or another thing.

My network media production related blog entries are less interesting and lacking in quality. We studied creative commons and copyright, html, web-based applications, social networking sites and categorising the world but I found it difficult to blog about those things without copying the lecture notes. For the social networking websites, I could find various news articles about them and analyse them, but then, there were differing views. There is no way to know for certain which article is speaking the truth besides knowing it is legitimate. As for the others, it was definitely easier to show what I’ve learnt e.g. tagging posts, categorising blog entries and sourcing the articles.

However, just from a quick look at the statistics, there was an entry that was the most popular on my blog, with fifty four views, just because of the tags. Ironically, this entry exists because of the previous Network Media Production assignment, which I had done on poems. According to word press, the most popular searched terms were ‘medium-length poems’ and the derivations of it which is the title as well as the tag for that particular page.

For the past three months, since March, I’ve had a total of two hundred and fourteen views on the blog. Thirty views in March. Fifty-eight in April, seventy-six in May and so far, fifty views this month. Between 27th May and 3rd May, there were a total of 13 views. Then in the second week of May, there were a total of 17 views. There had been a 30.77% increase in the views. But in the third week, the views had decreased by 5.88%. Between 18th May and 24th May, it had risen again by 12.50% – the peak on Sunday. Then in the last week of May, it had decreased again – this time, by 5.56%. Surprisingly, this week is the ’peak’ – so far, the count is at 50, with the highest number of views on Tuesday – the day I embedded a youtube video.

Unfortunately, even with the page views, no one has commented yet. It is like the blog is in a bubble – with holes for the spam to get through. Perhaps, the content is not what they are looking for. It is plausible – considering the most popular blog post has fifty three views. But then again, I haven’t made any connections – like commenting on other blogs, besides browsing through interesting blogs.

My Project B: geo-narrative

Check out my page for Project B rationale!

I chose to create a Data Visualisation for Project B.

Here is the Data Visualisation.

The data which I visualised is based around the concept of how much information people put on Facebook about themselves and their friends. Before begining the visualisation part of the project, I collected several sets of data from my facebook friends. These sets were:

• Number of “Pictures of”
• Number of Networks they belonged to
• Relationship Status (not listed/ complicated/engaged/married/ in a relationship/ single)
• Birthday (not listed/ day and month only/ day, month and year)
• Religion (listed/not listed)
• Number of Mutual Friends
• Number of Total Friends
• Number of Picture Albums
• Current City (listed/not listed)

Once I had collected this data I divided it again into 2 groups -numerical and categorical. I then sorted the numerical data by the categories (eg the number of…. by relationship status. I found that not all the data I collected was needed to create the visualisation so I discarded 3 of the sets of data as they weren’t very interesting.

For the remaining sets of data I felt that the Relationship Status set had the most potential to be interesting and chose to focus on it as a way to further sort the other sets of data.

In my visualisation, I have defined each relationship category by using the colour wheel- red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple- and I have defined each numerical category (Number of “Pictures of”, Number of Mutual Friends, Number of Total Friends, Number of Picture Albums) as a percentage of each colour to show that the sets of data still belonged each relationship status. I then created a set of pie graphs for each individual by using Illustrator. This resulted in what looks like a bar graph but was actually just made up of the small pie graphs.

Some of the issues I found whilst using Illustrator included that the graphs started out in gray scale and I had to hand pick each fragment to colour it. It was also quite fiddly to position each pie as I had to select it and move it manually.

I also created some graphs of the averages of each category and then separated and layered the segments belonging to each category together for easy comparison. They also look quite cool

I found some really cool examples of data visualisations on the Internet, but wasn’t able to treat my data in the same way because I don’t have the required programming skills and my data set was small enough to do by hand. Initally when trying to figure out how I was going to display the data, I used Many eyes to get an idea of how my data would behave in different sorts of graph. This was quite interesting but limiting as well because I found that it automated a fair bit of the process (meaning I couldn’t control the displays in the way I wanted) and also didn’t display my categorical data much at all.

I used the design convention of pie graphs and bars of data to communicate most of the information, yet at the same time I broke convention a little when I separated the pies in the 3rd set to illustrate the direct comparison between images.

I guess the main thing that separates my work from other works in the feild is that this data relates directly to me because it belongs to my friends and (as I found out when collecting my original data sets) no one else has the exact same set of friends as I do.

RATIONALE:

I have decided to create a Geo Narrative for my Project B. It follows the exciting story of my best friend and I on our World Trip last year!

Obviously not every breathtaking second could be included! So, although of course we did the ‘tourist thing’ with all the sign seeing and such…this story does not show you the usual ‘tourist’ path – its about the interesting highlights, fun times and quirky bits of our trip! Take a look…

Marijke and Mel’s FAB World Trip!

This is 100% accurate (non-fiction) account of the first part of our trip. I plan to add the remainder of the year’s events separate to this assignment, it’s a little long! All images and video are my own (unless obviously referenced: there may be one photo)

By combining the use of text and images in geographical context I have networked sources of media so they work together and ultimately serve one purpose – to tell a story. Each one of these components contributes to the network and provides an individual asset. The pictures give the viewer a visual image to look at while reading the text – combined, this creates a picture in the viewers mind which is put into geographical context via the use of Google maps.

Each individual tag on the map contains a short summary of the highlights that occured in that city. This idea is that the story is told through mainly visual elements however the text is there to enhance this. I have also incorporated many links to sites, articles and photos that are relevant and related to the places and events we visted. This is a crtucial part of the Networked Media concept. By linking relevant sources of all media types, the viewer is able to research into the subject themselves and learn more about it – finding out what they please about the place or event that I have initially interested them in through the geo-narrative. I have also included a link to one of my videos in the Geo-narrative; this adds a whole new level of engagement with the viewer as they are able to hear and view one of my experiences. This again being an asset to the Media Network, as the more variety in media that is linked and referenced to my content – the richer the viewer’s experience.

I found Google maps to be an unpleasant media to work in -it is very clunky in the way that you have to enter information. The small windows are extremely inconvenient as you cannot even view an entire thunbnail with out scrolling! It would be a lot more pleasant to use if the windows could be made bigger during the editing process and you could click between consecutive windows with a ‘next’ or ‘previous’ button. This would also benefit the ’story telling’ effect as the viewer could easily follow the order of events correctly.

View Exorcism in a larger map

Rationale:

For this project, I have chosen to create a geo-narrative. I have to admit, in the beginning, I wasn’t sure about the story the geo-narrative would be based on. But then, I browsed around the Creative Commons section in Flickr for any cool images that could inspire a story or something. I saw a photo of a Shinto Shrine. It was very nice – I wanted that photo to be a part of the story. But no idea came forth. Until I did some research and figured out the purpose of a shrine. A church can be used to exorcised spirits – because it’s holy ground, filled with good spirits. It stands to reason that a Shinto temple may have the same purpose. At any rate, I had the near-end of a story in my mind. Since it was a requirement that of the 10-12 photos, only up to six can be others, and the remaining photos have to be my own, I looked for photos that I already have which can be used in the narrative, and objects which might be useful for the story. So it was then, all the pieces of the story connected together and I had somewhat of a story for my geo-narrative.

I wasn’t sure at first whether to create the geo-narrative using Google Maps. It was only after watching a demonstration of its success and effectiveness for geo-narrating, even though it isn’t the primary purpose, that I was certain that it might be wise to use a web-based application that is some-what familiar.

I encountered another problem whilst making the geo narrative. It was until after I tried to import the photos into the box, that I realised I needed a URL for my photos. So then, I had to find a image web-hosting site. I came across Picasa (part of Google) by accident. It looked like a decent site – quite neat and ‘presentable’, easy to use without any fuss or clicking the ‘help’ button. So, this was the website I chose to upload the pictures onto. The website provided a URL that could be used to embed the images in Google Maps.

That was it. All done in eight simple steps, if you include drawing lines and marking the places as separate steps each.

For all the trouble I had encountered whilst making the geo-narrative, the result is surprisingly satisfying. In reality, it is not a story I would read if it didn’t have the images to make it more interesting.

For more confusion, or in case the map is not working:

http://maps.google.com.au/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=114631344173519283564.00046b01bbadf2fd0787e&z=3

Sources (in case I’ve forgotten to credit the original photographers):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rainerebert/2930507109

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmf164/991851921
http://www.flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/

I like colours. Thinking back, when I’ve had to make a website or a game, the colours were mostly always flashy. Bright blue. Neon Green. Baby pink. *shudders*

Not bad enough?

There were the occasional accidents where the text colour was light green against dark blue. Or purple against dark pink. Now, that was very painful. I don’t mind bestowing that pain on anyone else – except it makes the website look painful. No one would dare to visit it again.

I think that colours play somewhat of a large part in professionalism and statistics. You wouldn’t want to visit a site that makes your burn, would you?

Black and White tend to convey professionalism and neutrality. It makes sense -Yin and Yang. Neither are colours, simply shade. The next best colours – in my opinion – are a dark red/maroon and dark blue. It is less professional and neutral, but given that we are surrounded by colours day and night, seven days a week, I think that a little colour puts the reader at ease.

Music is not good. Pop music isn’t good for a blog or website that’s trying to convey to the audience that yes, they are a professional website, full of important information and exclusive news. But that’s just my opinion.

I was just thinking about it after I considered why I chose to a certain site to host the images on. I figured that a) it looked neat. Not all over the place. Professional. b) It was white. Those factors may have contributed to the reason why my images are hosted there, besides the fact that it’s secure and safe, and was linked to Google.

For project B of the unit, I chose to do option 3, which was to make a video for Youtube, offering an analysis and critique of the service. I chose this option as I am a media student and enjoy making videos!
At first I didn’t have alot of ideas, so spoke with Mitchell about how I could go about it. He gave me a brilliant idea about “pointing to things on the screen” to explain how Youtube works. I took that idea, then toyed with a few possible ways of doing it, then from that created the “fake news” idea. I felt the ‘news’ was the best medium for getting a point across to an audience, it works for the normal news doesn’t it!
I had a basic idea of how I wanted it to look and how everything was going to happen, and looked to other videos on Youtube for a bit more inspiration. I tried countless search words but couldn’t find anything close to what I wanted to make. Annoying, but a good thing I assume!
I watched a few (boring) tutorials, and knew that they would be much more appealing if dressed up a bit. I also watched alot of news broadcasts to see the way they are presented, then began writing my script.
The requirements of the project were to both analyze and critique the service, so much of the script outlines simple things such as how to sign up, how to upload videos, and also do a search, to name a few. I created the 2 characters, Hank and Frederick, who in the end became Hank and Hilary due to MANY technical issues (refer to blog post below for a detailed outline of that story.)
Hank and Hilary do a small critique of a few aspects of Youtube, but my main critiques are adressed in the “have your say” segment, where the characters read from emails which have been “sent in by viewers”. These critiques include video uploading times, the comment option on videos, as well as the current “Youtube-Celebrity” trend.
I borrowed a uni camera for filming, and at the last minute, had to play the role of Hilary. My housemate filmed the (second) production, and as a result, had some problems with the film, including it being too dark. I used Final Cut Pro to edit my video, and the only way of salvaging what I had filmed was to make it black and white. At first I was quite devastated, but in the end, thought it gave an old-school feel to it and was quite cute. To me, the black and white emphasises that we are talking about internet technology, and not focusing on film or production technology. It makes the video much more simple than having colour.
I incorporated a lot of audio into my film, including background music and “sparkle” noises, which I obtained from freesound.org . The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. The opening and closing music is an original creation made for me, by my boyfriend.
When it came to uploading to Youtube, I had countless problems! In the end, I got it to upload, which proves I have definately learned something about making and sharing networked media!!
I posted my video as a video response also to one of the chk chk boom girls videos, as she is mentioned in the video. I also tagged my video with words that will make it easier to find.
In the end, i’m extremely happy with my production. After MANY hours spent working on it in the computer labs, it has turned out pretty cool. Of course the filming and editing isn’t fantastic, as I have barely any knowledge in it yet whatsoever (I don’t start sound and video editing till next semester!), but i’m pretty happy with what I have achieved. I think it definately provides a good analysis and critique of youtube, in a cute, fun and un-boring way. Plus we had an absolute blast making it!
Here’s my video below, as well as a link to its page on Youtube, because for the video to be relevant, it needs to be watched on the Youtube screen. Enjoy!
Watch Youtube News… keeping you in the know! HERE

SEMI-PERMANENT

May 18, 2009 at 4:45 am

Categories

(Computer tech, Semi-Permanent, Typography, illustrations, photoshop)

Tags

(Daniela Federici, Design, Gears of War 2, Graphic Design, Magazine, Photographer, Scott Dadich, Semi-Permanent, Six Feet Under, The Invasion, Timba Smits, Vernon Wilbert, Wired, Wooden Toy) ·

Anthony Pascoe

March 16, 2009 at 3:02 am

Category

(illustrations)

Tags

(Anthony Pascoe, Buffy, charactures, illustrations, Sarah Michelle Gellar)

Ghost in the Machine – Awesome illustartor!!

March 27, 2009 at 12:22 am

Category

(illustrations)

Tags

(bob dylan, ghost in the machine, illustrator, marilyn monroe, tape)

The Swine Flu.

ACT: 4 confirmed cases (phew!)
NSW: 64
Victoria: 301
SA: 6
WA/NT/TAS: 1 each

__________________________________

I was just browsing around Youtube, looking to watching something interesting. So, I found this – thought it would be interesting, because I don’t have that virus (yet), I have been getting those kind of messages from some of my friends. They usually come with a link which I’ve learnt not to click.

Quite helpful…

YAY! I’ve learnt to embed a youtube video.. hehe

Source/Video: jdh358

A couple of weeks ago in class I signed up for statcounter.com and added my Networked Media Blog. Here I am able to get information and statistics about people visiting to my blog. I believe this is a handy tool, which would be beneficial if used in the right way – its not such an asset to me at the moment… I think most of my page loads are actually me! However this concept could also be taken too far; some people spend ridiculous amounts of time on the internet and the ability to get details on the actions of other users could easily be abused.

Yes poject B was coming along nicely. Had the entire script written, borrowed the equipment, even had me some actors! Recorded it all, all was good. UNTIL… I went to go over the footage and realised THERE WAS NO AUDIO!! After an hour of playing with buttons, trying to listen with headphones and trying to upload the footage to my computer, I realised that the audio settings on the side of the camera had been switched to external recording device. So had I had an external microphone I would have had all the audio I needed. But did I? NO! Yes I will admit, there were many swear words spoken, and even a few sobs of “oh my god its the end of the world!”, but came to the conclusion that to pass this assessment item, I indeed had to shoot the entire video AGAIN!
At this point, one of my actors had left the premises, so there was no choice but for me to play the role myself! So I had to enlist the help of my housemate to record, and his friend to hold the cue cards, and the entire thing was shot again.
So it all ended happily you assume? WRONG! When putting my footage onto the computer the next day, I discovered that it was extremely dark, to the point where you could barely make out any of what was going on. The audio however was perfect! I tried to fix it on final cut, and the best thing I could do to salvage the content was to make it black and white. In the end it turned out looking kinda cool, it gives it a sort of “old-school” look to it. Hopefully I can edit it in a way to completely pull it off without it looking like a massive disaster. So yeah, it still looks promising!

The moral to this story kids?? ALWAYS ALWAYS CHECK EVERY SINGLE SETTING ON A CAMERA BEFORE YOU RECORD. AND TO BE SURE, CHECK IT AGAIN A FEW MORE TIMES!!!!!

“

Critical times at Twitter, Facebook & MySpace

Steven Livingstone-Perez | Wednesday May 27, 2009

The last couple of weeks may ultimately come to be regarded as a bit of a critical juncture in the history of social networking. Firstly, we’ve seen Demi Moore’s husband Ashton Kutcher beat CNN to be the first Twitter account with one million users (and is well on his way to 2 million). As much as this and his subsequent interview on Oprah (who has also started Tweeting and is closing on one million followers) has brought a staggering number of new users to the social networking site, it has also come in for heavy criticism that it is somehow selling out. In my opinion, Twitter is simply becoming mainstream and hence the game is changing.

Furthermore, Facebook – already competing directly with Twitter when it introduced it’s Twitter-like real time update features – have now introduced the option to get updates via SMS, a feature Twitter removed in the UK last year. This allows the hundreds of millions of SMS-savvy mobile users world-wide to plug into and get updates directly from their friends.

Finally MySpace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe and co-founder Tom Anderson (the first ever MySpace user) are stepping into other less high profile roles at the company. It is likely Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. who bought MySpace in 2005 are looking to bring in someone who can generate revenue from the social networks 130 million users as Ad revenues haven’t reached expectations.

Common across all three is how to generate revenue from their platforms.

There is no undermining the fact that many millions of people gain value out of these social networks. Personally I go to a number of events, buy books and software and even plan much of my socializing all via one or more of these (and other) social networking sites. The question is how to package this value – something that would make it much easier to provide a price/value offering. In Twitters case, perhaps they won’t – maybe they’ll become the messaging framework for the consumer Internet. Twitter provide a much rawer and less defined social context than the other networks and their future value may well lie in being the infrastructure to other sites build around their technology or, as some have speculated maybe Yahoo or Google will buy them.

Their mainstream popularity driven by celebrities is clearly caught the imagination of these large companies & many of the public keen to connect with their heroes. However, as pointed out by Internet entrepreneur and creator of RSS, Dave Winer (and something we have discussed in depth at Valebrity) how much longer will many of these high profile celebrities and their management companies continue to promote Twitter, Facebook and even MySpace? It is likely that these companies are already making favorable deals with these companies or considering their own hybrid social networks under their own management.

It is for these reasons I feel MySpace may well be getting more criticism than it deserves. At Valebrity we are constantly talking with Musicians, Comedians, Actors and the like. We’ve noticed a huge percentage of these and their fans have strong MySpace presences before any other network. This is from the more popular to the up-and-coming artists and their fans. MySpace seems to be the place to be in the music business therefore it seems obvious to us that if MySpace can concentrate on music they may well be better positioned than the others to generate some real revenue.

Perhaps being focused on a popular niche that clearly works for them may benefit MySpace over the other less niche social networks in the long term.

http://livz.org

 Source: http://hi-techscotland.com/article/09-05-27__critical-times-at-twitter-facebook-and-myspace

I cant say I am ever very keen to get out there and spend hours seaching for good blogs and reading them. I am however (probably for exaclty that reason) a big fan of the Google reader. Having the ability to access one point, which has all the lastest and greatest from all the blogs you follow is so convenient. Especially in regards to keeping up to date with this Networked Media course. I only have a few people from my friday classs added to my blog roll, however I follow all 6 class Aggregator’s in my reader so I am immursing myslef in everything that is happening in realtion to this class. However I have noticed some blog posts do not display in full on the Reader…I’m not enitrely sure why this is? Some show full content with photos and everything – others display the headig and one line of text and you have to go to the actual blog to read it. Obviously not a major drama just something I thought I’d point out!

I have really enjoyed the lectures and tutes of this unit. I have found them well delivered, thought provoking and interesting. I have been doing 2 web based units this semmester, which has been…..interesting, given the noticable absence of useable internet at home. Out of the 2 this one has been much nore enjoyable. I guess this could be for many reasons such as being conducted face to face (the other only has lectures on line which has proved challenging given that I only hav access to the net at uni…) but mainly because it hasn’t just been spoon-feeding me information. The lectures and tutes have been thought provoking on both practical and theoretical levels and in this way I guess I have interacted with this unit more then the other one.

It’s interesting to find out how much I take for granted, when it comes to the net. I have never really cared before about the hows and whys of the net. I have just assumed that when I press the button it will take me where I want to go.

I hadn’t ever really thought about the true impact of the internet on society either. Sure I knew that it had had a “huge impact”-or at least that is what people told me, but I remained sheltered from the understanding of just how big an impact the net could actually have on me or the world.

The sudden development of this knowlege came as a bit of a shock. Well actually a BIG shock. 2 of the most noticable results of this sudden development were demonstrated by the short term side effects of dreaming in blog posts and html. Both of which were…. odd experiences. Really odd.

Having moved on from this experiance (I can confirm that I no longer dream in either blog posts or html..), I am looking forward to continuing to expand my knowledge of the digital world in which I am living.

Now to find the time……

And the internet connection……

Twitter has truly come into the public spotlight in the last 5 months. Until I began one of my uni courses I had never heard of it let alone considered how much a message of 140 characters or less could change the world. Or maybe it hasn’t…
One message hasn’t has changed the world. The millions of individual messages sent by twitter users worldwide, has created a storm of media stories (see these examples of politicians and celebrities). Anyone who is anyone would appear to belong to this social networking site happily tweeting away in response to the question “What are you doing?”

This constant stream of twitter is continuing to grow as people get swept into the torrent of messages flowing from this site, and I can’t help but wonder what the effect tweeting will have in the long run.

What will be the new social rules regarding twitter? What priority should twitter be given within our life? Should we tweet as events unfold- during lectures, meetings, ceremonies, and in one extreme case whilst fleeing the burning wreckage of an airplane- or should we wait until the moment is over and tweet discreetly after the fact?

Twitter allows us to be the source, broadcaster and consumer of any sort of news we choose to create. With this power shouldn’t there also come a sense of responsibility? and if so how much?

Once said, words of any sort are hard to erase and the implications of a single message can be huge. In the busy world of twitter the emphasis is on what is happening in the now. It is about sharing your thoughts, feelings and activities with the world at any point in time, be it day or night, drunk or sober, when filled with joy or filled with anger.

Surely then, a tool as simple yet powerful as a single tweet, should be handled with care, lest we regret words posted in haste.

Illustration I did for this blog post

I was shopping in Electric Shadows Bookshop a few weeks ago and I came across this awesome book. ABC 3D by Marion Bataille.

You Tube have a short video on the book itself, you should check it out here!

For one of my graphic design courses this semester I was working on a promotional package piece… which was something made out of paper in 3D form that a customer or consumer would be entertained by and want to keep coming back to that company. My company was Aldi, and I was focusig on strawberry recipes. I was searching Electric Shadows for some inspiration, and came across this book as I was walking out the door. I bought the book, not necesorily thinking it would be helpful to my assignment, but it was a cool book – so why not hey?

As I looked through it when I got to my car, I thought some of these pop-outsmight work with my strawberries…. there’s no harm in trying, right! And that is exactly what I did!

Here are some pics of the awesome book….

So in the end, I did draw inspiration from this spectacular book!! I used something similar to the B, creating a cake recipe where the strawberries pop out of the top of the cake when you open the card.

I love reading.

I read books – fantasy, science-fiction, romance, crime etc.

Such as Harry Potter, or manga like Naruto, or the Black Magician Trilogy (Trudi Canavan), or Star Wars,

But most times, they don’t offer enough information for the readers to feel truly satisfied with the story. Like Harry Potter – I think that we all imagined something other than ‘canon’ at some point when we read the series. I, for one, never expected the Horcruxes…

So, there are a lot of holes in Harry Potter – as in, we can write whatever we want, as fanfiction. Some people follow canon. Others want Harry to be stronger or Malfoy and Hermione together – AU, it is called. And as a manga, Naruto too has a lot of opportunities for the readers to explore, imagine, and deviate from the canon path. Look on fanfiction.net… Harry Potter, as one of the biggest fandoms, have 400,888 stories – and that’s only “Pure Harry Potter” without any crossovers. I imagine that if those were combined, then the stories might be in the millions.

I do get obsessed with fanfiction, occasionally. I’ like lots of things – Naruto, Twilight, Harry Potter etc. All popular fandoms. I’ve been delving (as in… reading not writing) into those. And it’s made me realise how different they can be. I don’t think the category (as in anime/manga/book) have anything to do with it. But more the demographic they are aimed at.

Naruto – boys and girls alike. All ages.
Harry Potter – children, teens, young adult. Both genders.
Twilight – Girls. Young teens, children, young adult… maybe adult.

So with those things in mind, it explains why some fandoms (on fanfiction) are more/less successful than others – in the way that the writers actually explore the world and be creative, rather than just writing a character romance without getting to know the world.

For example, Twilight. It’s a good book series, really it is. It has a good cast of characters, and the way they are portrayed is very original. But because it’s a fantasy romance, most often, Twilight fanfiction is romance more than anything. AU/Canon, Edward and Bella (or some other character) will be or are together. In fact, the Twilight fandom is most famous for the lemons…

Then there is Harry Potter. Yaoi, Heterosexual romance and Yuri. Adventure, other ‘boy-who-lived’fics, Neglected harry, Slytherin Harry, Genius Harry… the list goes on. But at least the Harry Potter fandom is growing. The writers are getting more creative. There is a lot to play with in the Harry Potter playground.

Then there is Naruto. Romance. Action. Adventure. Great fanfiction. Mostly. There’s a balance in it – romance and action. There’s a lot that focuses on the main character – Naruto. But I like Sakura… and she’s not exactly popular. And thanks to a well-written fanfic, I think I like the Neji and Sakura pairing.

And when all three are contrasted and compared… well, I think I do like Naruto – it is slightly more realistic than Harry Potter, I think. But Harry Potter provides a balance between romance and action. Twilight is quite imbalanced. There are more things to life than just romance… There are a lot of ‘not-good’ Harry Potter fanfic writers – same with Twilight, probably because they are a kind of introductory series to fantasy. That, and lots of kids read them.

How is it related to Network Media Production?

Judging by the qualities (shhh…) of most of the stories online, it’s easy to see that most writers are actually in their teens. At a certain age – say, eleven years old, people are particularly influenced by the society around them – during that age of confusion where everything is changing. I guess, that’s also the age when children go riding off into the sunset and dreams about a magical world. Or alternate realities. And the age where they can get obsessive with the idea of fantasy or a particular character, or book series. So, they start looking on the net, for any unofficial stories to that fandom and bam- they arrive at fanfiction.net. 

And they are lost. 

But thanks to fanfiction, at least they’re still quite grounded in reality. If fanfiction didn’t exist… no one can expect them to not dream about their favourite characters instead of improving their english skills.

Think about it.

The internet has the power and the influence to change people. Just with one click of the mouse. It’s daunting. That “I” could have been different, if fanfiction didn’t exist. Like the eleven year olds, I would probably spend my time dreaming rather than dreaming

data vis of the bible

So the final lecture was called Data-Everywhere, and focused on data visualisation. Data visualisation is basically creating images, animations and diagrams to convey a message. So communicating data visually! Its unbelievable the way people are able to display sets of data, something I was never aware of!

It would have been cool to do data visualisation for my last project, but I found it all so overwhelming! Some of the stuff out there is pretty impressive, and I just don’t think i’m quite creative enough lol.
Here is an incredible video I stumbled across while looking at different data visualisations. It’s the clip for Radiohead’s “house of cards” and is created entirely of 3D data… no cameras!

There’s also a making of video which shows the things they used and steps they took to make this visualisation. Definately worth a look!

Also, the Bible data visualisation we looked at (picture at top of this entry) was pretty crazy. It was made to define the textual cross references found in the Bible.
Amazing stuff… If only I had that amount of spare time on my hands =)

Soo the choice has been made – I am planing to create a Geo-narrative for Project B. I have never really explored or known about the capabilities of Google maps before, the ability to customize your own map is an extremely useful tool! It is the perfect way to share and communicate a story, a road trip or any series of different geographically placed events with another person. Whether it is simply giving someone clear directions to a place or tracking a trip step by step with a narrative and embedded photographs. This is what I have chosen to do – I am going to retell my 2008 World Trip by pin pointing major locations on Google maps and embedding photographs with text to give brief descriptions of some trip highlights.

So finally…. after much thought, stress, lack of ideas and impending doom… I have decided on what to do for my project B. I have chosen the analysis/critique of youtube option, as I think it will be lots of fun cvreatively. Mitchell gave me a bit of an idea in last weeks tutorial and I have come up with a really great idea (I think) of how i’m going to do it. Its going to be lots of fun… and fun projects usually turn out to be the best.

I’ve made a bit of a start on final cut pro which has gotten the ball well and truelly rolling, now just need to concentrate on writing the script and doing the filming! Don’t want to give too much away yet so stay tuned for the final product!

I went to Semi Permanent when it came to sydney this year in April and it was such an eye opening experience. There were so many inspiring people giving speeches – letting us delve into their work and understand how and why they are the people they are today.

There were a huge amount of people at this function, many of whom have different disciplines to each other – some intertwining with multiple disciplines, while others are interested in the one field.I knew a few people who went to the lectures, however if you didn’t have a mobile phone with you – good luck at finding your friends. Here is proof of only a dample example of the majority of people who attended this spectacular event.

monstrosity of people

I enjoyed both days immensely. One of my favourite speakers was the very first guest speaker… who was very nervous at first, but got so comfortable within the hour of his speech that he ended up running overtime. The genius is

Timba Smits!

Timba is a very down to earth kind of guy, wants you to be involved as much as you can – is a nitty gritty perfectionist with absolutely awesome talent! He’s not afraid to share what he is thinking, or what he has accomplished. However, he did mention that he doesn’t like showing off his work while he is still working on it – something I can completely understand. Timba is extremely dedicated to his work – infact he spent days creating his own type for his own magazine called “Wooden Toy”. The type was in the shape of branches, which took many hours to produce just one letter. I was fascinated! I had an image, however the website isn’t working at the moment, so it has discontinued below (I should have saved the image to my computer – my bad)

WoodenToy Type

Timba went through stories of how he got to where he is today – which in my opinion is very successful. He has commented on spending many long nights in front of the computer, sometimes not sleeping for days. Something inwhich takes dedication on its own, for a one time thing – let alone doing it on multiple occassions. He even went into detail telling us about the time that his studio got broken into, he showed us an image of his fridge and how all of the coke cans had dissappeared overnight, while the flvoured water still sat in exactly the same position – something which wouldn’t keep them awake to finish their deadlines. Timba tried to get us involved in his life through him telling his stories and vocalising it the way he did. He wasn’t afraid to swaer – and oddly enough, when he did swear, it was in the appropriate places and never failed to make people laugh.

All of his work is inspirational, everything down to the last page of his magazine. I purchased his recent magazine while I was at Semi=Permanent – even though I had never heard of him. His work was so inspirational that I needed to take something home with me that could inspire me with hopefully something that looked so astounding like his works.

Out of the many artists, designers, illustrators etc I found Timba one of the greatest. He would be up in the top 3, probably my second favourite, possibly first. It was a pretty close call… Everyone had so much to offer us, but I was able to link myself to Timba – understand where he was coming from – take things away from his speech that I could use in my works in the future. He taught me to take things from an image and use them in the text as a graphical element, such as the texture of someones skin, or the fabric from their clothing, and incorporate it into the type or as a backdrop or a small image on the page somewhere. The way he does it comes so naturally to him, although I believe it would have taken him years to master the knowledge he currently has today.

The other three people I really enjoyed listening to, having their wisdom shone down onto me was Daniela Federici, Vernon Wilbert, and Scott Dadich.

Daniela Federici

is a photographer who first started out in melbourne at a small newspaper firm and ended up at vogue, and within two years had moved to New York for better and much brighter things. She showed us her photographic images – whom she has worked with many famous people such as Angelina Jolie, Delta Goodrem, Anna Nicole Smith, Brad Pitt, Celine Dion, Ryan Phillipe and the list goes on and on. Such work includes these images below:

Daniela’s images are strong, her life has been so impressive, and I am thrilled, honoured and intriegued that I got the chance to listen to her speak, listen to her views, listen to her life story and how she bacme to be the person she is, the person she aspired to be!

Vernon Wilbert

also gave a very inspirational speech.

Vernon Wilbert has created the introduction to ‘Six Feet Under’ , along with the introduction to the film ‘The Invasion’.Vernon had me intrigued as soon as I heard he had worke don the fil ‘The Invasion’ because I had only watched the movie the night before. It was so strange, I have the largest movie collection at home, and i decided to watch a film that someone in the lectures had an impact on. I took it as a sign – a sign that I knew he was such an inspiration – an awesome human being!

Vernon created the commercial for “gears of war 2″. For me, this isn’t something I would generally be interested in, but somehow I found myself compelled to his story telling. What I found interesting when I got home from the lectures was that my brothers had his game – something I wouldn’t have noticed without his help… and now I am going to take much more care in what I see – for I think I was loosing out on so much with not realising the briliance of the creation of the game.

I feel sorry that I wasn’t familiar with his work, but i’ve made a pact with myself to follow his work. To open my mind up to things I wouldn’t normally look into.

Going to Semi-permanent was one of the greatest things I have done in my graphic design course, and I’m so grateful I got the chance to do so.

Scott Dadich

is the last person I’m going to talk about, and most likely will be brief.

Scott Dadich owns his own magazine also, titled ‘Wired’. It is an excellent magazine, not only focusing on design and artistic creations, but also has things involving the world and what its up to. One issue of ‘Wired’ even had the chef Martha Stewart – in which she baked a massive sized Wii cake… Scott said it tasted delicious!! hehehe

Scott has created his ouwn typeface which took hiom over a year to design. He originally created a typeface and then realised someone else had already created it. This happened to him twice. Now he has his own typeface, with a magnitude of different settings such as spaces, height, kerning etc. Something which would take a long while to do, a lot of patience, brains and good will

All in all, I highly encourage you to go to semi permanent if you have the opportunity!! It is

AWESOME!!!

After the data visualisation lecture I was left feeling more acquainted with the benefits of this networked media tool in comparison to my previous blog entry about this topic. 

Most data visualisations caused me to question what the purpose and real benefits of data visualisation are. After watching this clip spoken by data visionary Hans Rosling at TED I was left feeling more certain that there are indeed many great benefits.

As opposed to boring statistics, data visualisation helps to tell a story and a pattern for the world which is easily read and understandable. Being able to present data in this intuitive, animated and stunning way helps to create solutions for real world issues. It is a completely new way of looking at things. Rosling is truly bringing trends to life and creating a focus on big picture thinking.

Hans Rosling at TED explains his data maps

Rosling raises some interesting issues about the need for a search function to enable access to publicly funded statistics freely. Doing so will give rise to more data visualisations. This will subsequently allow society to increase their understanding of social and economic development in the world. Rosling commented on this topic: 

“Some countries accept that their databases can go out on the world, but what we really need is, of course, a search function. A search function where we can copy the data up to a searchable format and get it out in the world.”

Rosling ends his talk by examining the increasing number of internet users in the world today. Fittingly this demonstrates how significant it is to make publicly funded data available. 

“Rosling believes that making information more accessible has the potential to change the quality of the information itself.”

- Business Week Online

Info Graphics and data visualisations are both ‘making data visual’. They make figures and statistics easier for the human eye and mind to understand. Info graphics involve smaller numbers and more common things like how many drinks you has this week – data visualisation however is more complex in that it illustrates numbers and statistics of unimaginable size in a way that makes it possible for humans to understand the size of the matter. Comparison is the most effective way to do this. If a person is shown a group of very large numbers it is difficult for them to understand their relationship to each other: which is bigger and by how much? But if these amounts are translated into different sized shapes related to their size; humans are able to understand the relationship faster simply because there is a comparison. Humans notice difference in shape, colour, size, movement, scale and position very quickly and easily. By utilizing this we are able to create very clear, effective data visualisations. Hans Rosling has done some very impressive work doing exactly this – see Gapminder.

So I was just trying to work out what happened to all my blog stats. Seems as though WordPress has replaced the old blog stats chart with an Open Flash Chart. Read the full story here.

New stats chart for WordPress

I thought I only had a graph showing just the total views and no apparent information about Referrers, Clicks, Top Posts & Pages, and Search Engine Terms. It seemed as though they had disappeared. But it’s just a matter of looking where they disappeared to…

Within the four headings: Referrers, Top Posts & Pages, Search Engine Terms, and Clicks you have to widen the results to something more appropriate (I just use “All Time”). Due to this new chart the default for WordPress blog stats seems to be set to the current day and hence why it appears as though there isn’t any stats there (obviously only if you haven’t actually received any hits for that day). And when you click one of the four headings the default there seems to be set to the “7 Days” view.

Hope I have solved this problem for anyone!

So, I put my own username into the Google search bar. Umm.. most of the results shown were simply links to websites where I am a member of. But there were a few surprising results that have made me feel like a stalker!

A link has led me to “All Tracked Stories” – a website that displays all stories tracked by at least one user. It feels nice for someone to track um-one of my stories, I guess. It’s cool and all. And really quite awkward – I can’t help searching for my friend’s stories. Really.

Reminds me of the blog stats I see – a website that I’ve recently been introduced to (IP addresses) and the Google WEb History. Instruments of Hackers and STalkers! But yes – I won’t be doing anymore stalker. For now *shudders*

-lots of things
-”manyness” – how many? – subject
-easily reproducable
-limits of humanness – more than we can handle

netwokred media?

network = lots of decives, of media forms, of users, of media content, of platforms/services, of technologies

dealing with multiplicity?

machine
*search
-categories – data structure/taxonomy
-sorting/filtering – ordering by structure/taxonomy
-tags – folksonomy – user generated – using users/humans to evaluated
social
-’most popular’ – using users/humans to evaluate
-other users activity – flickr – contacts
-”mob effect” – popularity ->popularity
-blogroll/links – recommendation = “word of mouth”

multiplicity is good!

statistics -> more is better!
its all out htere
mashups (thruyu – aesthetics of multiplicity – lots of sources)
network effect – more users = more useful (how many?)
-peer to peer- distributed computing (seti@home)
-advertisements
-crowdsourcing- everybody does a little bit ($0.02)

Previously I found this website called Fundable which is an online fund raising site aimed at anybody and for just about anything. People can use it for personal projetcs, collecting money for events and trips, short films, vet bills and even fundraising to help pay for friends and family presents.

Similar to online auctions, Fundable’s pages are created by people who use this site. Each project has a description of how much money needs to be collected and what it will do. Once enough pledges (not payments) have been collected, Fundable turns them into real payments and sends the total to the project’s organiser.

No one takes a risk when making a pledge: if a collection expires before reaching its total in pledges, Fundable deletes all pledges and never charges money. This lets you participate in a group purchase or fundraiser without worrying about what other people will do. No one pays until and unless everyone else makes a pledge!

Similar to Fundable is the website ChipIn. ChipIn allows people to go in on a purchase together. The big difference with ChipIn is that it’s free, unlike Fundable where it charges 8.9% for its services. There are smaller differences as well like the capability for users to offer products or services for sale to groups. But ChipIn doesn’t require that a project reach its goal before it will disburse money; you can configure a project to send whatever is collected to the organizer after a certain amount of time. Fundable is all-or-nothing.

Another similar type of crowd-funding website is SellaBand. People invest in a SellaBand artist or band and once they have achieved the required amount of investment, investors receive a limited edition copy of the album. On top of that, the artists and their fans share equally in the revenues of the album. SellaBand is an exciting way of discovering new music, changing the face of the music industry and being part of the fun.

These sorts of crowd sourcing websites make it quick and easy to raise money for something which would deem physically impossible without networked media. It’s an innovative way to build a network and reach potential donars that are beyond people’s immediate reach.

The aesthetics of multiplicity remind me of a photographic exhibition I saw recently when I was in Melbourne. This was the exhibition of German visual artist Andreas Gursky. His photos in essence are concerned with the experience of life in a globalised world.

Being able to view the photos face-to-face I was blown away by their huge size, intricate detail and the use of vibrant, bold colours. Gursky uses computers to edit his pictures and creates art in a larger space than the subject photographed. Although his work isn’t typically considered as using multiples it does present the same beautiful qualities that multiplicity presents like the notion of ‘many-ness’. Like the complexity of data visualisations, Gursky’s photos are appealing and captivating.

One particular photo which I was really fascinated by was “99 cent”. It is amazing to think that you can find beauty in some of the most strangest things like this 99 cent shop. This snapshot of many-ness shows how the most mundane things can be interesting to look at.

Andreas Gursky's "99 cent"

Similar to Gursky’s work is the photographic collection of Peter Funch, titled Babel Tales (as found via Networked Media Production delicious bookmarks). I really like how he has combined photos to create a new scene. It’s yet another example of how using lots of something is more captivating to the eye.

Peter Funch: Babel Tales

Like re-mixability, both photograhers capture moments in time and alter them or combine them to create something entirely new.

Both the works of both photographers I have just discussed are not elements of networked media, however I thought they wer worth discussing in terms of multiplicity. They both demonstrate, in some form or another, the same aesthtics of multiplicity.

Crowdsourcing – is this the future of design with out professional designers??

Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a task usually performed by an employee or paid contractor, and outsourcing it to a large group of people. By leaving this call open to anyone, small tasks (sections of a big project) can be completed by individual volunteers across the globe, collaborating to make larger projects happen with ease. This is usually done via the internet as it is a readily available networked connection of billions of people.

For example SwarmSketch is a form of outsourced design. Each user is allowed to contribute a small amount of line per visit to the site, they are then given an opportunity to vote on the vaue of lines submitted by other users – which determins the opacity of each line (voted less value to the drawing=lighter shade of grey, more valuable=darker/black).

This leads me to the idea of crowdsourcing for commercial product design – as Paul Boutin talks about in his article Crowdsourcing: Consumers as Creators.

“Every business has customers who are sure they could design the products better themselves. So why not let them?

…companies get unpaid or low-paid amateurs to design products, create content, even tackle corporate R&D problems in their spare time

…as design software improves it will only get easier and cheaper for outsiders to create and submit professional-quality product specs that once required expensive in-house work. Look for more and more companies to find ways to tap the creative wisdom of the crowd.”

This idea is taking “user oriented” design to a whole new level…it could well be becoming “user created” design. In some cases, this eliminates the need for companies to hire designers at all. If all product design ideas are contributed by volenteers via internet competitions for example – all the company needs to do is put the product into production. The compay also has a garentee of success to a certain extent, as it thas been genereated through consumer preferences.

Crowdsourcing is a new concept that is taking the digital world by storm. The baisic concept is getting many people to undertake part of a particular task for very little (eg $0.02) or no money, often in their spare time. It is a user centred inovation which takes the old saying “many hands make light work” as its motto and can achieve many results in a short amount of time.

It is a kind of outsourcing but instead of outsourcing to either a particular person or company, the brief is put up on a place such as Mechanical Turk where many people can access and complete a small task such as verifing dates, providing comments and descriptions of something or anything else that someone wants to find out about.

Another way of using crowdsourcing is shown at the site Swarmsketch where each contributor can add a line of about 100px long and at the end of a particular length of time creates a sketch on a given theme using the combined total of lines.

Crowdsourcing can also be used for photo sites such as flickr where by using a Creative Commons Licence, anyone can upload and use photos posted by others.

One of the issues that I can see arrising out of crowdsourcing specificaly related to art and design, would be that it may create a percived threat to the design industry by taking work away form those qualified to do it, and it may cause conflict when it comes to the sale of an object created through crowdsourcing as to who owns the work and who gets the profit from the sale.

These are some of the images created by a Swedish artist by the name of Erik Johansson…. They are totaly surreal and awesome

Another week in Networked Media Production, another topic for our ever expanding minds to absorb.

Multiplicity is the topic of this week… week 11.

So what I took from this weeks lecture was that multiplicity is basically the mathematical aesthetics of data, and how things can be structured in this manner. We had a look at some digital pictures which were made using mathematical formulas. We also learnt of the usefulness of crowds, how taking information from a number of people is much more useful than taking information from one. A group of people will know more than what one person knows. We finished off the lecture looking at a photosynth video, which showed amazing ways of visualising data. It was mind blowing to see that a picture of a certain object or place can be made entirely from using other peoples uploaded pictures of the same object. Because of course, everyone takes photos from different angles, different distances, of different parts and with a wide range of different cameras. Check out the photosynth site at

http://photosynth.net

Below is an image from photosynth which is made using multiple images.

Until next time… byebye!

I think I’d have to say Information Aesthetics and Data Visualisation is the topic that has interested me the most since beginning this course. I don’t know much about creating them it as yet, but the work have seen so far is spectacular!

Plain old statistics are boring…majority of them are to me anyway – unless it is something that I am specifically interested in. However; by making a data visualization out of these numbers the majority of statistics become very interesting to look at! Unlike than regular graphs, you are able to capture and fascinate a much wider audience by presenting information in a visually impressive way. For example; who wants to look at boring numbers about the Blogosphere, when you can look at this!:

Data Visualisations like this one, and many more – give a much more understandable version of the information. It is far easier to see how the information fits into the big picture with a visual representation than it is reading figures and trying to visualise it in your head.

As I said; by capturing more peoples interest with Information Visualisations your draw more attention to the statistics behind them – which some people may not be aware of at all. I feel this is a major key to making the community aware of important, current issues. For example: child obesity – if a Data Visualisation was made into a TV ad that showed the youth of today the problem that is at hand in a Visual way, they may be much more likely to undersatand its importance and it would therefor have much more impact. This approach could be applied to many issues at hand today, that need to be publicized.

Web 2.0 is the newest version of the internet, having taken on a high interest in 1996.The term was first used by Dale Dougherty and Craig Cline and shortly after became notable after the O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004.

Check out this website on Web 2.0!

This week was the first week back at uni after 2 weeks of holidays… which went extremely quickly of course. Our lecture was about Web 2.0, and to be honest, I didn’t completely understand the term. At home, I decided to google web 2.0 and see what I could find, and a site which helped me understand it is http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

On this page is a table which outlines the differences between web 1.0 and web 2.0, as well as a map that makes it clearer to understand. I’m pretty sure I have my head around it now!

Something I found rather interesting in the lecture was the statistics on web use, and how much its use has grown. With web 1.0 in 1996, there was an average of 45 million global users, whereas with web 2.0 in 2006, there was roughly 1 billion global users. A huge difference, which proves exactly how big the web has grown, and continues to grow. The great thing about the web growing is that with each user, the usefullness of the web grows. This is the network effect.

In the tutorial we all had a look at each others blogs and where everyone is up to. From this, we were all given a bit of feedback on how to make our blogs more visually appealing, and how we could fix up the content.

Only 2 more lectures left in this unit which I can’t believe! Its gone so quickly… but its been really interesting. For now though… there’s still more to learn =)

Web 2.0 thrives on user participation. So much so, that it is said that “we are the web”. Today the value of online facilities, products and information is often determined by user generated content. If people are able to comment or give their opinion on a particular subject – that subject becomes rich with information and ‘value’ that can be assessed by other users; and is therefor extremely valuable. For example: amazon sales increasing when a book is recommended (user contributed value) This creates a positive feedback loop that just keeps getting bigger and better as users add to it.

The value in having millions of people able to access any one piece of information at a time is priceless.

The video showed in our lecture today is an awersome example of how the way we communicate has evolved. The flexibility and convenience of hyper text and the internet has enabled informaion to be shared, combined, built on, critiqued and linked to; at the click of a finger, anytime, anywhere in ther world.

I am so excited cos now Violet has a friend
dad and I spent our day off making a puppet stage -which is AWESOME- and the whole kit will make its debut at the Family Camp we are helping run this weekend

My new puppet Tiffany

Recently after a ‘Contemporary Issues in Design’ lecture I became quite fascinated with data visualization and the many original and intriguing ways it can be represented.

Smashing Magazine describes data visualisation:

“The main goal of data visualization is its ability to visualize data, communicating information clearly and effectivelty.”

Information Aesthetics is one weblog I found which explores the symbiotic relationship between creative design and the field of information visualization. I particularly like this infographic advertisement for Sprint:

The fact that this is an advertisement really shows the power of data visualisation. The way the information is given to viewer is very engaging and actually quite amusing. (Definitely beats looking at some crappy Excel pie graph). Data visualization is changing the way we view content.

It seems that with all this social media around us on the web we’re being inundated with locations, opinions, emotions, hometowns, and photographs, all of which are being sorted and compiled in some way or another. A great example of this is Twistori.

Having looked at Twistori got me thinking whether data visualisation (when used in this manner) is a useful tool or not. Okay so I know there are definitely lots of examples of data visualations that have benefits. But what about sites like Twistori, Twitter Blocks, We Feel Fine and Digg Labs. While they are entertaining and intriguing, how could these data visualations be effective? Are they enhancing our lives or helping us to reach goals?

Right. So those where more thought-provoking questions. Attempted to answer them but failed to get anywhere which sounded somewhat intelligent. The best I managed to get at is that these particularly useless sites are just another networked media tool which allows for greater social comment and discussion. They also allow us to understand ourselves better to some extent.

On the other side of the useless sites are the more beneficial sites. One site I found which could be very useful for analysing web traffic is Crazy Egg. Crazy Egg lets you explore the behavior of your visitors with a heat map. More popular sections, which are clicked more often, are highlighted as “warm” – in red color.

For some odd reason I really liked this site. Probably not very useful unless you are looking for any lost luggage but either way I thought it was rather fascinating. Is This Your Luggage is a photo collection of several pieces of lost luggage, unpacked and photographed for your voyeuristic pleasure (or to find the right owner, according to the website). The thought of me traveling overseas soon makes me feel a little unsettled that my panties could be on display for all the world to see in the event I did lose my luggage…

Despite the seemingly useless data visualations on the web they are becoming more important to network media.With so much information available and a rapidly increasing digital age data visualisations are popping up everywhere. In fact I found a a million examples which I wanted to document in this blog entry. They have the ability to enrich the users experience and to help understand more about the world around us and ourselves.

Recommended sites/blogs about data visualisation:

Smashing Magazine

Viget Labs

Flowing Data

Visual Complexity

Found this rather very-NMP-related blog today. Definitely worth checking out. Mashable is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Networking news. It reviews new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on the web.

In my attempt to write a paper for another unit, once again, during online research I managed to find a million things to write about with relevance to NMP. It’s difficult not to think of something to discuss when this unit is about all things networking. And well, thats what the internet manages to do so well: network. 

Stumbled across this guys blog and found this youtube video which comments on the dissenting views of Twitter. I think it sums up my outlook on Twitter very nicely. 

Admittedly I have my own Twitter account. I am following people but am I actually interested in their so called “tweets”? No, not really, in fact I never actually look at them in the first place. Do I want to make tweets? Once again, no, not really. I don’t think what I have to say in one 140 word sentence could be at all interesting or necessary to read. And like the youtube video brings to issue, who am I talking to anyway?

No one and EVERYONE. Oh so true! No one cares but everything is readable by everyone. 

In a highly communicating world I would never think that Twitter would be such a revolutionary approach to a new means on communication and networking. Are Twitter users just exhibitionists who are convinced that people care about what they have to say? Or are they tapping into something which I’m not fully understanding the benefits of?

Ah, who knows! Either way one less social networking site for me to want to use is always a plus: I spend way too much time online.

 Take an existing website that includes significant user transactions. Diagram the site’s information flow, with particular attention given to user management – login, passwords and preferences. Critique the way the site handles that flow: how could it be improved? Compare the site’s approaches with alternatives used by similar sites and explore why they might have made the decisions they did.

WORDPRESS.com

I have chosen WORDPRESS.COM as the page I will be critiquing on its information flow.

WordPress.com has a lot of pages insides pages, with a lot of subheadings. All of the pages get opened in the same window, so if you need to look at a few subheadings, there aren’t a lot of windows opened at the bottom of your page. The majority of pages link back to the home page (except for the “WordPress for ipod” page. The page doesn’t have a link back to the wordpress home page, which I found unusual.)

WordPress has a lot of information on their site, and in some cases there are a few ways to get to that information – for example: on the home page, there is a tab for Blog, and a section in the first column about the blog as well, giving you two variations of how to get to that page.

The process to sign up is very straight forward and easy to understand. It only takes a few minutes to sign up, and there is even a strength password protector – stating whether or not it would be easy to hack into your account. This is a great idea, and would make people think otherwise about the passwords they are entering.

The site has a neat flow to it, having things in categories which then in turn have sub-categories if needed. For a site that has a lot of information, it could be confusing if you were a first time viewer, but once you have been on the site for a few minutes, the feel of the site becomes familiar and distinguishable. The amount of words on the home page can be daunting – I was confused and hesitant about using this site to begin with, but that was due to the fact that I was unsure of how a blog worked. I didn’t understand that words, script, typography etc had so much meaning to this site – but now that I understand that, the site doesn’t seem wordy at all.

The layout has a clean look to it. There are three columns which are clearly labelled and have extra links to click on to enter further.

You can find information on one thing just by one quick movement of clicking the tag in the tags column.

The most popular blogs are right in front of you, so generally you might find something that interests you as soon as you log into the site.

You can bring other webpages into your blog as widgets, such as twitter.

HOME PAGE – (index page)

There are 6 tabs at the top to indicate where you might need to go.

Home, Signup, Features, Blog, Our story, Advanced

• The header has the WordPress logo and type on the left-hand side, and if you click on it, you are directly taken to the same index page, but the curser is not in the username section to encourage the viewer to either signup or sign in. • There is a search field on the right-hand side to search for blogs throughout the wordpress.com site.

• There is a border underneath the header telling you to “Express yourself. Start a blog” and “sign up now!” The “sign up now” button is clearly visible, which also gives you options to see the free features in the block surrounding the sign up button. The block tells you what wordpress entails as a free blog space, and gives you the option to sign up today on that page instead of having to go back to the home page.

• WordPress tells you how many bloggers there are, how many posts have been made, and how many words that were written today – which I found quite interesting.

• The index page is broken up into 3 columns.

First column

• Section for Username and password

 • You have the option to click ‘Remember me’ if you want your username and password remembered on the computer you are on.

• ‘Lost your password?’ link.

• ‘From our blog’ – Has info from wordpress’ blog – There is also a tab at the top to get to it also, so they are making sure you look at the page.

Second column

• ‘Hawt Post’ and ‘Hot community posts’– Random blogs that are very popular.

 • ‘Hot VIP posts’ –Blog of the day highlights the most popular content on wordpress.com – If you click on the arrow, you are taken to the page that has multiple posts that people have visited the most. There are subheadings on this page also –

1. Top blogs, The most popular wordpress.com blogs are ranked here according to a special formula

2. Top posts The most popular wordpress.com posts are ranked here according to a special formula

3. Growing blogs – gained the most popularity recently

4. Archives – Archives for each month on top posts, top blogs and growing blogs.

5. About. – How blog of the day works

 “We count up the visitors to all public blogs and posts in a rolling 24-hour period. No personally identifiable information is stored. Several times throughout the day, we summarize all of this data in different ways to produce lists of blogs and posts that might be interesting.

BOTD does not use numbers shown on the Blog Stats page of your Dashboard. Some page views are excluded for various reasons. We use proprietary formulae to calculate the popularity of a site.”

If you click on either the ‘Hawt post’, the ‘Hot VIP Posts’ or the ‘Hot Community Posts’, you are taken to the subheadings page.”

Third column

• ‘Right Now in Tags’ – Tags that are most popular

• Buttons for ‘WordPress for iphone’ and ‘wordpress.tv – your visual guide’

‘WordPress for iphone’ is the only iphone app that let’s you write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog from your iphone or ipod touch. This is another page with 6 tabs at the top of the page. Download, Development, Blog, Screenshots, FAQ, Forums.

1. Download – Connects to the itunes store, opens itunes on your computer.

2. Development – WordPress for iphone is an open source project, which means anyone can play a part in its development. Gives you details on the development – headings are: Source code, Getting involved, Roadmap, and credits.

3. Blog – Newest versions to be uploaded, bugs that may in the new versions – blogs that are involving the iphone and its updates.

4. Screenshots – Examples of the application of wordpress on the iphone.

5. FAQ – Frequently asked questions regarding wordpress on the iphone.

6. Forums – Forums to discuss anything to do with wordpress on the iphone. You need to be logged in to make a post.

There’s a link at the bottom on the right-hand site which takes you to the itunes site to download the application or get information – The same as in the download tab.

There is no link to get to the wordpress home page however!

‘wordpress.tv – your visual guide’ is your visual resource for all things wordpress. This is another page with 5 tabs at the top of the page. Home, WordCampTV, How-To, Blog and Contact.

1. Home – A selection of the most popular videos – Latest videos, latest wordCamp videos, and popular videos. You can scroll down to the one’s you are interested in, and can click directly on them to view it. This is a quick way to find something that you might be looking for.

2. WordCampTV – You browse by category by: Audio, Behind the scenes, highlights, interview, presentation video or slides. You can click on those categories to check out more, or you can search by entering your own information for a more specific search in the search field – by entering the location, year and type.

3. How – To – Help and tutorials for beginner and expert alike. – Again here, you can browse by category or look at the featured videos.

4. Blog – A blog by the wordpress.tv crew on what is happening now, or what might be happening in the future – basically anything they feel they need to share about the site.

5. Contact – To contact wordpress.tv if for recommending a wordpress-related video, requesting a tutorial or giving some feedback. You must include your name and email address, and website is optional.

There is a link at the bottom of all the wordpress.tv pages which you can click on if need be…

Blog at wordpress.com, Contact Us, Dev Blog.

The footer at the bottom has extra links to click on as shown below.

The home page gives you a lot of information, but it is set out so the information isn’t given to you all at once. You get the basic knowledge of what the site is about on the home page, but as you delve into the site, you learn a lot more. The sub-headings and sub-category help this process by not overpowering the viewer and giving them too much information at once.

Sign Up

FREE SIGNUP

• You need an email address to become a member of wordpress.com. You will then get your own wordpress address such as you.wordpress.com.

A selection of over 60 customizable designs ranging from professional to crazy and fun for the blog – which can be switched anytime throughout your blogging experience.

3 gigabytes of file storage

Your blog can be public to the world or private for just your friends.

Premium features completely optional

Integrated stats system – up to the minute stats on how many ppl are visiting your blog, where they are coming from and which search engines are sending ppl to your blog. Integrated stats system is also available as a “plug-in”

Continuously saves your posts so you don’t lose anything.

The tags you add to you post are sent out to the public in their tag system.

WordPress uses akismet – a spam deterrent. Blocks spammers from leaving comments on your blog.

Contact support and forum 24 hours If you already have a blog and wnt to move it over to wordpress you can import your content from Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, TypePad, or an existing WordPress blog.

WordPress is in over 50 languages

You can have as many blogs as you want

Sidebar widgets for Flickr, del.icio.us, Meebo, and more. You can add “widgets” to your sidebar and rearrange them without touching any HTML code or messing up your blog. Just drag and drop the sidebar widgets around, and instantly you can have fun stuff in your sidebar. We’re adding new widgets all the time based on your feedback and requests.

An email gets sent to you email address. you have to go to your email address and click on the link to activate your account.

If the email doesn’t go through directly, (it should arrive within 30 minutes) you can fill out details. Your name, last name, and something about yourself for your viewers to read.

If you want to sign up for multiple accounts using the same email address, there is a button to do so underneath after you have logged in. You can log in the new blog just created with the original password, or you have the option to change it.

If you want to sign up using the same email address, you cannot sign up the same way you signed up for the original account because it will say that email address is being used. You must use the button underneath “Register another blog”.

To sign up

• Create a username (only letters and numbers are allowed)

• Password

 • Confirm password

• Email address

• Read agreement and accept terms of service

• Choose between getting a blog or just a username.

• NEXT

• Blog domain (example.wordpress.com)

• Blog title

• Language (There are over 60 different languages to choose from)

• Privacy – click “I would like my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati, and in public listings around WordPress.com.”

Logging into wordpress.com

You enter your username and password into the field on the left-hand side.

You have the option for the computer to remember you.

If you choose for the computer to remember you, when you enter in your username, your password will automatically be added, so all you have to do is click LOG IN.

Multiple blogs

• To register for another blog is easy. Once you are logged in, there is a button underneath your username – Register another blog. You click on the link, type in another username, the language you prefer to type in, and if you want the blog public or private and it is now created. You can log in with your original password.

• When you log in, your dashboard has the names of all of your blogs in it, instead of just your main blog.

Logging out of wordpress.com

 • To log out, you need to be in your dashboard and the logout button is on the top right-hand side.

• You have the choice to log back into your blog on the left-hand side in the header

• You can enter yours or another’s username and password and log in

Links at the bottom

• You have the option to get a free wordpress account

• Lost your password?

• Click on the logo to go back to the index page.

Features

The features tab goes through the features of wordpress.com

PREMIUM FEATURES

• Customise css code – personal touch – $15/year using the sandbox theme to create an entire new design.

• Get your own identity – domain name example.com for $15 per year, and mapping an existing domain name is $10 per year.

 • Extra storage – 5 GB for $20/year, 15 GB for $50/year or 25 GB for $90/year.

• Ad-free. Logged out viewers see ads on occasion on your blog, so if you would prefer your viewers don’t see ads, pay $30/year.

• Unlimited users – $30/year

 • Gifts – spend money on your friends who have wordpress and let them spend the money on the premium advantages.

So even though wordpress.com is a free blogging site to use, there are still a few things that can catch you out in which you might have to pay for. All in all, I believe this to be a fair trade. You are getting the basic service for free, as opposed to some services, and it is optional to purchase the items stated above – whereas if you were to pay for a blogging site, you have to choose how much limit space you would like, and the bandwidth etc.

Blog

Blog is where the wordpress staff blog their information. Currently there are blogs on twitter and P2: The New Prologue. This tab isn’t the only place to find these blogs. As mentioned earlier, they are placed in the first column on the home page also, so the viewer can easily access the page.

There is also a search field in which you can search something specifically – by a blog or the archives date. There are also tags on this page as well to help you with your searches.

Support

• This tab is where you would go for knowledge on how to use the wordpress.com website. There are some popular questions on the left-hand side for easy access, otherwise you can type what you are wanting to know into the search field on the top right-hand corner.

• There are ten topics to choose from if you wanted to sort through your questions by topic.

• The topics are on the page twice, once down the right-hand side column and a larger view with sub categories in the main centre.

Our Story

Our story fills you in on WordPress.com and the functions the site entails.

Advanced

Advanced Services

We’ve got some things that might be of interest to our more advanced users:

• WordPress.com premium features — Paid upgrades for your WordPress.com blog.

• WordPress.com VIP hosting — Host your high traffic or commercial blog on the WordPress.com infrastructure.

• WordPress.org — Run your own WordPress installation (more info on WordPress.com vs WordPress.org).

• translate.wordpress.com — Help translate WordPress.com for international users.

• m.wordpress.com — Access your blog(s) from your mobile phone or PDA.

• Site stats — In the interest of transparency we share some relevant internal statistics about the site.

• WordPress.com Firehose — A real-time, XMPP based stream of newly published WordPress.com posts and comments.

When logged in and posting on your blog

• When you are logged in, your blog(s) is on the left-hand side when on the home page.

• You can upload an image as your profile image if you wish such as the black and white image below.

• Below is an example of what the dashboard might look like. There are many links on the left-hand side to help you with posting a blog, or maintaining your dashboard the way you would like.

• If you click on ‘Posts’ you are taken to a page that has all of your published posts. (If you haven’t published a post yet, there is an option to ‘Add New’.) You have the choice to edit them here if you need to.

• With blogging, there is so much you could do on your blogging site. The simple things are: Posting, adding media, linking, creating pages, commenting on people’s blogs, and polling. These are the subheadings in the dashboard. o Posting – You write text and post the text into your blog.

o Adding media – adding images or video to your blog.

o Linking – Linking text to a website or image.

o Creating pages – You can have as many pages as you like, one is automatically given to you title ‘About’.

o Comments – You can comment on other people’s blogs or they can do the same for you.

o Polling – To use polls in WordPress, you will need an account with the sister product, PollDaddy.com.

The information flow on wordpress.com

The website wordpress.com has a repetitive flow, so it is easy for the viewer to become accustomed to the site. There is a lot of information that needs to be understood before using this particular blogging service; however I believe the site has handled its information flow very well. The tabs and sub-tabs are a great idea, breaking down the information into six different categories. If you can’t find what you are looking for or have a question that needs answering, there is of course a support tab for any queries. WordPress has a lot of functions you can use to build your blog into something fantastic, and it’s a matter of using trial and error to see how the results shows up. Of course there are definitions on what can be done, but to truly achieve what you want out of your blog, you should play around with the functions and see where you get.

I think it would be extremely hard to hack into someone’s account, due to the password protector. This is a very honest thing wordpress.com has done. They want the protection of their clients as much as the clients want it.

WordPress.com uses multiple tabs in different areas on the page if they are an important link and the creators want the viewers to read them (or they are very popular, so it makes sense to have a few links to be able to get to the site). This is also very clever, and not too overpowering. It doesn’t feel like they have placed the links everywhere on the page – forcing you to go there. They usually have one in the main tabs heading, and a link in the main page also. All in all, I think the website has an easily compatible information flow, and could be understood by many.

Things that could be improved on:

Email addresses – When joining wordpress.com, it is said you can have as many blogs as you like. On the home page, after you have logged in, there is a link underneath your details ‘Register another blog’. If you want to register another blog and use the same email address, you have to sign up by clicking on this button instead of using the original way and clicking on the Sign Up button. I only found this out by trying to create another blogging account with the same email address – using the sign up field, but being denied access due to the same email as my original blog. This should be stated more clearly, as I created a new email address thinking I couldn’t create another blog with the same email address.

Main home page – Clicking on the button link to ‘WordPress for iphone’ takes you to their page, but there is no way of getting back to the original home page of wordpress.com.

‘WordPress.tv’ is similar, but does have a link at the bottom of the page to blog at wordpress.com. The link isn’t very noticeable. It took me a while to realise there was a way back to the wordpress.com website without having to type the site in again.

The wordpress.com button on the left-hand side which usually takes you home, is now the home button for those individual site – WordPress for iphone’ and ‘WordPress.tv’. These sites should either open in a different window, or have a link to get back to the original home site.

Alternatives used by similar sites:

I have looked at a few other blogging sites, such as Tumblr, Livejournal, Pixelpost, Typepad and twitter.

With all of the sites, the login is the same – very basic – entering your email address or username, along with your password. However there are a few differences in the preferences that one can change for the layout of their blog.

Tumblr – The preferences on tumblr were quite simple to fit in with the elegance of the site.

• Email address

• Password

 • Editor – edit posts using ‘rich text’, ‘plain text/HTML’, ‘markdown’ = choose one

• (Choose yes/no) Dashboard – show full size photos o Show notifications on dashboard

• (Choose yes/no) Twitter – configure

• Login – email address and password

o With wordpress you have an API key which is stated in your personal profile that you don’t share – it’s just like a password. This gives the site just that little bit more safety.

o Other than this, the preferences for your profile are very similar.

Pixelpost – Free signup with 20GB storage. Once you have reached the limit, you have to pay to continue using the blog. Something you don’t have to worry about when you are signed up to wordpress.com.

Livejournal – you have to pay for livejournal – a downfall compared to wordpress.

Typepad – is a paid service however doesn’t have ads. The minimum is $4.95 per month with a bandwidth of 2 GB and storage limit of 100 MB. There are different prices you can pay; the maximum is $89.95 per month with 40 GB of bandwidth and unlimited storage.

Twitter – is a different type of blogging service, only related to one question “what are you doing?” This question is restricted to 140 characters, but it is a way to keep in contact with the world – and can be a great way to get information out there!

Signing up is easy once again, which seems to be a running theme with these sites. To create an account, you enter your name, a username, a password and your email address. If the username has already been used, the site will tell you to choose another one – so it is unique. The password also has the same thing as wordpress.com where it tells you if your password is weak or strong.

WordPress and twitter have the same stages of becoming a member and addressing the world with knowledge. They both use the strength protector which is fantastic! However twit