MY WEBSITE evaluation

Evaluation of my website

i created my website on my photography in Dreamweaver, as a way of broadcasting my work professionally in a website, as a portfolio. I used flash several times to make it more interactive and user friendly.

I looked at other photographer’s websites that inspire me as structure, and it gave me ideas on how to present the pages and good colour schemes that look professional.

My first page is a welcome page, i have made a short flash slideshow to capture the attention of the viewer of the site, and used black and red and white as a general colour scheme, as black and white will not take the attention off my photographs when looking at the page, however the red will, so i can use this when i want something highlighted. I used masking in flash to create a heart shape, as though i am drawing it, by creating a new layer, and key frame by key frame, putting a small dot on the red of the heart, then masking the layer so it created a ‘growing vine’ or drawing effect when exported and played.

On all of the pages i have put an audio track that is atmospheric, and plays automatically when someone goes onto the site. I thought this would add to the users experience and look more professional.

The red enter button under this short intro slideshow, or clicking on the flash slideshow will take you to the home page. On the home page it is very simple, i have a welcome message and a photograph of myself , and my camera. Top left of the page, i have a logo which i made in flash, spelling my initials SKG, in a joining way, almost like a logo. I used the theme colours and masking to make this look smooth and in-keeping with the page.

The left hand navigator has links to my video work, my portraiture work and my landscape work.

The portraiture link goes to a slideshow, in which i used tweening to make it look better than just slide to slide images, and in the landscape photography section i created buttons so that the user can flick thru my images one by one.

4chan.org, and urban dictionary

4chan is a website that i have come across, which is basically an online live message and image board, where people can post anything they want to, and it gets updated within a few minutes.

the threads are created by anyone, and it is almost seen as an ‘underground’ message board where people disguss anything really.

4chan describe it as :

”

4chan is a simple image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images. 4chan’s collaborative-community format is copied from one of the most popular forums in Japan, Futaba Channel. Different boards are dedicated to different topics, from Japanese anime, manga, and culture to videogames, music, and photography. Users do not need to register a username before participating in the community. Feel free to click on a board that interests you, and jump right in—anyone can contribute!”

also described more, informally by ‘urban dictionary’, an online dictonary, running on web 2.0, very similar to wikipedia in a way, describes 4 chan as:

you have just entered the very heart, soul, and life force of the internet. this is a place beyond sanity, wild and untamed. there is nothing new here. “new” content on 4chan is not found; it is created from old material. every interesting, offensive, shocking, or debate inspiring topic youve seen elsewhere has been posted here ad infinitum. we are the reason for “not safe for work“. we are the anonymous army. cross us and you will fail. anonymous is everywhere. you depend on us every day. we bag your groceries, we fix your computers. anonymous sees you before you see him. sitting at desks around the world right now is a nameless, faceless, unforgiving mafia composed of the best of the best”’

similar to blogging, your youtube, there have been many ‘famous’ bloggers coming from this site, such as BOXXY, a hyperactive blogger, with 2,538,082 on just one of her videos.

boxxy is known as an internet meme, defined as ”belief system, or pattern of behavior that spreads throughout a culture either vertically by cultural inheritance (as by parents to children) or horizontally by cultural acquisition (as by peers, information media, and entertainment media)” examples of this would be the common usage of the word ”LOL” becoming a shortened expression for laugh out loud, to now being used as its own word. there are lots of memes generated from the 4chan users, such as the infamous ‘pedobear’ ‘advise dog’ and corage wolf.

there are also alot of ‘lol cats’, on these type of websites which are simply photograhs of cats, with funny meme captions. ”www.icanhascheeseburger.com” holds a huge archive of lolcats, along with ‘www.lolcats.com.’

WEB2.0 has revolutionised how we communicate, it has made it easy for anyone all over the world to upload videos and text, and animated gifs, and images, to such websites as 4chan, myspace, youtube, etc etc, and discuss and interact over current issues in society.

most of these sites seem to mock ourselfs in a way, they raise issues that we wouldnt have got to talk about to such a wide audience without web 2.0.

the users of 4chan use photoshop and flash to create things to post. which is a non profit making broadcast of things people make for ‘lulz’ or for humor.

Youtube

youtube, is an example of the changes that we have in technology since web 2.o.

youtube is a website which allows its users to upload and watch millions of videos from anyone across the world in seconds.

you can sign up and have your own channel on which you can upload anything from home videos, family holidays, video blogs, to news reports, comic sketches and music videos, which can then be broatcast across the world, for free.

with such broadcasting there has been alot of ‘celebritys’ come from youtube, one of the most ridiculous is the ‘sneezing panda’ which is a 15 second film of a panda sneezing, gaining, to date, 33,007,783 views on just one of the thousands of remixes, and replicas, and re dubs of the sneezing panda.

as well as the funny videos, there are comedian channels, that have become very big, such as smosh and picnic face, collage humor and others, it seems that youtube is a video broadcasting site, which almost is there to give comic entertainment. it brings us together, by mocking alot of the broadcasting. it is not always meant to be so serious, and thats why we like it so much, it almost feel quite personal, and we find it funny because it is directly from the public.

its comedy brought to you by other people like ourselfs.

Fred, only uses a camera, and is a comedian, who presents his sketches as a video blog. We can learn alot about online video blogging, from this, because its a parody of blogs in a way, we can identify the structure of them, and the main things in them. ‘fred’ has become incredibly successfull from this, even having a presidential campeign, which spread across america. considering all he used was a handy cam, and youtube, shows how web 2.0 has completely changed how we view the media now, and how we broadcast.

practising using flash

i have done a few practise pieces to show how we can use flash in different ways, and to get used to it for when i create my flash in my website.

animating a mouth, by using motion tweening and moving the mouth into shapes on each other key frame

i made a slide show in flash, using tweening, of my photography, to get used to using images in flash.

link to the photos to go into the webpage

because the photos on flickr are old ones and i dont have the password to get back into the account

http://suzikglobe.deviantart.com/

web 2.0

web 2.0 is bascally a label, for a different kind of application of the way the web 1.0 works. whereas in web 1.0 you would request information, you are now given it anyway. It works in a way that us, as the users of the internet can update it as and when we like. whe have things such as facebook, and myspace, which use web 2.o to connect us to the world.

its successful because the person updating the information on it does not have to have a deep understanding of the internet, html if fault tollerant, and there are many tools out there to help us create html.

the main differences between web 1.0 and web 2.0 , are that the pages you would have in 1.0 would be static, and non interactive with the audience. you would have framesets of information, and you would have to look hard to find what you want. with web 2.0 it is much more interactive, and you can interact with the page, you have catogorys and tags to use, and it makes it alot more accesable to gain information.

a very popular thing in out internet culture, is blogging. Blogging is where a user (could be literally anyone that has access to the internet) can write an article on websites suuch as this (wordpress.com) and they can get feedback, and tehir views and ideas broadcast for free, immediatly to the entore world.

web 2.o also makes it easier for small buisnesses and proffesionals to set up an internet shop, or gallery to broadcast themselfs.

An interesting way of recodnising how we have progressed from web1.0 to web 2.0 is by using the wayback machine.

this lets you see what websites lookd like in the past (its a useful internet archive when looking at htmll and css)

notes from todays lecture

Todays lecture was about the issues surrounding survailence, and internet privacy.

The issue surrounding internet piracy is that we dont always know if we are being watched. every time that we type a question or keyword into a search engine, there is footprint of information left behind.

this can have its advantages and its disadvantages, because it could help websites help us to find the things that we want to find. For example ebay, it keeps loggs of all the things that we search and show interest in and suggests things that you miight like to buy. this is an advantage to both the customer and the sellers. it can also help to find criminals, using facebook etc.

There are also disadvantages, such as the moral issue of watching what people are buying selling, interested in. Does it breech our human rights to have some level of privacy? Also, surrounding the news. If a search engine looked at things that you are interested in, or a news website, and handpicked the news that is fed to you, then you would only actually be hearing the news that you have searched for in the past, or they think that you would want to hear, which could taint our views on things.

statistics

viddeooo

last module final piece

i dont actually know what i meant to be posting but i guess this is?