Web Expressions - Peer Review
November 28, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Welcome back! (sucks doesn’t it?)
This week I have opted to finish up the peer review process on your websites as there are still a few of you that have not yet been in front of the class! Next week, our class periods will be used to work on your sites (thus, we will not be meeting). If you have questions at any time during that week, please, e-mail me and I can attempt to answer your question via e-mail and/or we can set up a time to meet.
I will also be available via AOL Instant Messenger Monday-Thursday if you want to contact me quickly. IM Name: WorkBork.
Your webpages will be due on Friday of Finals week. I will begin grading them that weekend.
Web Expressions - Week 11
November 21, 2005 | Leave a Comment
This week we finished up the slides on Video. We have a quiz next Monday…and don’t forget to do your 2 blog posts this week!
Web Expressions - Lab Cancelled
November 16, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Folks, as I’m sure you are well aware, myPlymouth has been acting extremely sluggish the past few days. A few of my co-workers and I have been tasked with finding a resolution and have been instructed to research and fix the problem. As such, I will be unable to attend a lab today…we will do the movie lab on our return from Thanksgiving.
Now, since you will have 2 weeks to prepare for that lab, I think I might add a little bit more to it :)
Here’s what I want you to do for the next two (lab-wise):
- Think of a topic for a video. Remember the types of video we discussed in class?
- Explanation
- Entertainment
- Tell a Story
- Personalization
- Find the resources you want to use for your video and save them to your M:Drive. For this video you will need to incorporate a title screen (or intro), your actual movie (perhaps cutting to text descriptions wherever), credits, music and/or voice-over.
- Here are some resources:
- Google Video (search for whatever you want)
- Google Images (search for whatever you want)
- After you have decided on your topic, post that topic on your blog…along with some ideas on what will happen in your video (from music that will be playing in the background, to scrolling text, to actual video footage)
Amazon Tags!
November 15, 2005 | 3 Comments
About Time! According to CNet, Amazon is heading down the road of tagging. This is great news in my book. I’m a follower of the Web 2.0 movement and have really been turned onto the idea of folksonomy (tagging) by products like Flickr and thus have recently brought MasterWish on board with tagging.
While many people out there have used tagging in Flickr, Gmail, MasterWish and various other web 2.0 apps…there are still many out there that express their opinions on tagging as “Tagging…WTF is that?!”. Having a large web company such as Amazon with its HUGE following jump on the band wagon with tagging will help bring folksonomy to the masses.
While exciting that this is happening, Amazon is slowly rolling tags out to their users as evidenced in this excerpt of the CNet article:
The idea, apparently, is to slowly experiment with tags and to give users some power over how certain Amazon products–books, for example–are categorized.
For now [...] only about half of Amazon’s users can even see tags on the site.
Its only a matter of time before folksonomy will cease to be a buzz word and start appearing in the english dictionary. Everybody and their brother will know of tagging and the world will be a happier, easier to search place. I can only hope
Firefox Rocks
November 15, 2005 | 1 Comment
Firefox rocks. If you haven’t heard about Firefox (due either to living under a rock or having spent the last year and a half roaming the Sahara desert) then its time to hop on board. Firefox is a slick, open-source and functional browser with a shlew of features:
- Tabbed Browsing
- Themes
- Extensions and Plugins (downloadable add-ons to increase the functionality of the browser)
- Adherence to many web standards that IE has been slow to adopt
- A sexy icon
So its a browser…whoop-de-freaking-doo. What’s so great about it? Well, as an user that browses the web for fun and as a profession, I tend to have a multitude of sites open at the same time. With IE, this means a crap ton of windows open that are difficult to navigate between. Well, with Firefox’s tabbed browsing, I can have one window open with 10 tabs, no problem! (I also have some tab extensions installed to give me added tab manipulation).
Extensions are a huge selling point. They are end-user developed and distributed right from the Firefox site. These extensions allow a user to put all kinds of additional functionality in their browser. There are extensions geared towards web developers, weather, music, searching, downloading, aggregation, etc.
The tabs and extensions sold it for me. I was hooked from day one and would fight tooth and nail before I gave it up. If you haven’t given it a test drive, I’d suggest doing so…right now. Do it.
Web Expressions - Week 10
November 14, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Here are the slides for this week (and next)…the topic is Video!
Great discussion in class today about MMO Gaming/Multimedia and Video.
Here’s that news site that I discussed in class: Slashdot.org
bstat Search Cloud
November 13, 2005 | 8 Comments
Casey over at MaisonBisson has developed a sweet WordPress plugin called bstat. I’ve been using it since I installed WordPress as my blog. Well, one thing that is missing from the plugin that I decided I wanted was a search cloud (like a tag cloud, only for incoming searches)… I recently created a tag cloud on MasterWish so decided to use that. Here’s the function.
Special Functions
- bstat_search_cloud
Usage:
bstat_search_cloud(post_id, maxresults, days, starting_font_size);
- post_id is the post_id for the story, usually provided by a WP variable. A value of 0 is used for grabbing all search terms from any post
- maxresults is the number of search terms you wish to retrieve
- days is the number of days back to look
- starting_font_size is the starting font size of the smallest search term
Example:
<h3>All incoming search terms for this post</h3>
<small>< ?php bstat_search_cloud(0,50); ?></small>
OMG Girlz Don’t Exist on teh Intarweb!!!!1
November 11, 2005 | 1 Comment
This article on Escapist Magazine is amazingly funny and oddly true. It summarizes the assumptions that most on-line gamers have regarding gamer girls…attractive ones at that. Here’s an excerpt:
I am a girl on the internet. Yes, I said it. A girl on the internet. There really are quite a few of us. I can type. I can play games with the best of you. And you, my friend, are about to get owned by a girl.
[...]
[boy1] Teleios is a girl.
[boy2] omg, r u serious?
[boy1] yup, i heard her on vent.
[boy2] omg pics, now.
[Teleios] No.
[boy1] c’mon. you’re not a girl if u don’t show us pics.
[Teleios] I am a girl.
[boy2] then show us a pic.
[Teleios] no.
[boy1] teleios is probably a guy using a voice thing cuz she won’t show a pic.
[boy2] ya, there are no girls on the intarweb.
Sadly, this is true. I have even made assumptions that certain people were male when I’ve played games and I am thrown for a loop when I find out that the person is actually female…and yes, some of those people were attractive female gamers. What is important to note that this isn’t necessarily a sexist assumption. In the past, the number of male gamers dwarfed the number of female gamers by large margins. With the emergence of MMORPGs and increased advertising directed towards females, we are seeing an increase in the amount of “Holy Grails” out there playing a multitude of different genres of games! Its actually really cool.
Image copyright to Escapist Magazine
MasterWish Enters the Web 2.0 World
November 9, 2005 | 7 Comments
MasterWish has been my labor of love for the past 6 months. The site - create by Zachary Tirrell, Jon Emmons, and myself - was opened to the public (in beta mode) in the middle of September.
Over the past month, we’ve been pretty excited about the whole Web 2.0 craze. The initial release was fairly solid but it lacked a few key elements to make it a 2.0 application. The three of us have wanted to bring MasterWish fully into the Web 2.0 world, so with a great deal of planning and even more coding, I am comfortable to say that MasterWish is now a fairly solid Web 2.0 application.
MasterWish has:
- Folksonomy Features (tagging)
- Easy item adds via a Favelet
- Ajax for quick and easy assignments of items to lists, buddies to groups, buddies to your buddy list, copying items from other people, etc.
- Buddies/Contacts
- Group-Level access to Categorized Wish Lists
- Fine-grained access control on your user information (so you can distribute information to people on a case by case basis). Here are some things you can distribute to other users:
- Real Name
- Address
- Many clothing sizes (shirt, bra, inseam, ring, head, etc)
- Color Preference
- etc.
Currently we are working on a very sweet feature to allow for collaborative lists. This will make wedding registries a LOT easier and my office at Plymouth State (which currently uses MasterWish for book orders) will be able to create an office wishlist and allow multiple users to contribute.
Christmas is coming around the corner, so if you haven’t checked it out for your wishlist needs, you should do so. You definately won’t regret it…and your family will thank you for it!
Web Expressions - End of Week 10
November 9, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Seeing how we have no class this Friday due to Veteren’s Day, I figured I’d post the ‘End of Week’ blog post a bit early.
What to have done for next week:
- Weekly Blog Posts…keep those coming! Keep browsing your fellow student’s blogs and commenting on them. You are getting graded both on your blog posts and your blog participation through commenting (as I’ve mentioned before)
- We have a Quiz on Monday about Audio, so review the slides!
- Make sure this week’s lab is complete by Wednesday
- Keep working on your websites. We’ll be doing more critiques next week.
- Delete the Internet
Web Expressions - Sound Lab
November 9, 2005 | 5 Comments
You will be messing with Sound for this lab! w00t! As I mentioned before, we will be using WavePad to edit sound. The program is pretty cool, and best of all, its Free! In this lab you will learn some basic concepts about audio as well as get a chance to play around with some sounds to see how it works first hand.
Here’s the prep work:
- Open WavePad (You can find it by clicking Start > All Programs > Classes > Web Expressions > WavePad)
- Click the Help > Help Contents menu.
- Click on General Audio Concepts (Samples, Channels etc..)
- Read it. This is key to understanding what we are doing in this lab
Here’s the Audio Editing Exercise:
Use WavePad to edit an audio clip.
- Find and download a sound file. Get one from The Daily Wav (save it to your M:Drive in your Home directory)
- Open the sound file in WavePad
- You should now see a wave pattern in WavePad. Click play (at the bottom of WavePad) to play the sound file.
- Now its time to fiddle with effects! Click the Effects menu in WavePad and check out what you can do. Play around with it. As you add effects to the sound file, keep track of what effect your used and what the settings were in that effect. (you will be blogging this)
- When adding effects, highlight different parts of the wave (by clicking and dragging on the wave) and then adding the effect. This will allow you to add different effects to different parts of the sound file
- For this assignment, you need to add at least 5 effects to the sound file! (one of which must be a Simple Speed and Pitch Change)
- Once you have the effects that you like on the sound file, save the file 3 times as a .wav format using different qualities.
- Save the first version as CD quality (44,100/16bit)
- Save the second version as Radio quality (22,050/8bit)
- Save the third version as Telephone quality (11,025/8bit)
- Now open the 3 audio files that you created and listen to the difference in quality. Also, look at the size of the files and note the relations of file size to sound quality.
- Blog your sounds. Use http://oz.plymouth.edu/~your_username/folder/file.wave Your blog should have:
- a link to the original sound file
- A list of the effects you applied to the sound file
- a link to the CD quality sound file
- a link to the Radio quality sound file
- a link to the Telephone quality sound file
- Write a brief summary of the relation between sound quality and filesize
- Repeat steps 1 through 8 with a different sound file
If you have an urge to add sound to your website, refer to this tutorial.
(Lab compliments of Dee Brown)
School Bans Social Websites
November 8, 2005 | 204 Comments
This is week-and-a-half-old news, however it struck a nerve so I figured I’d post it. According to this article on App.com, Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta, NJ is threatening students to make them stop participating in social networking with websites such as MySpace, Facebook and Xanga. The article states:
Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.
While public and private schools routinely block access to noneducational Web sites on school computers, Pope John’s order reaches into students’ homes.
The primary impetus behind the ban is to protect students, McHugh said. The Web sites, popular forums for students to blog about their lives and feelings about their teachers and schools, are fertile ground for sexual predators to gather information about children, he said.
While it seems like the school is trying to protect its students, they are going about it the wrong way. Its a violation of free speech to police the students in this way. Educating the students about the dangers of a web presence would be a more reasonable approach.
Leetster
November 8, 2005 | 1 Comment
World of Warcraft, as I’ve mentioned before is a very popular game. WoW, however, is more than just the game aspect…it is extremely social. Players can create guilds - which are organizations in game - and participate in a variety of player created events and interactions with other players. Guilds typically create websites (like this one: Crimson Eagles) to allow these players to communicate, strategize, complain, and brag.
The websites are great…but the drawback is that those websites tend to be closed to those outside the guild, preventing others from seeing how players interact. Enter Leetster. The MySpace or Facebook of the WoW world. Leetster is a web based community site allowing players to create accounts and browse other users that play. Through the site, you can post screenshots, images, links, likes, dislikes, characters, etc. You can add friends and enemies and even use Leetster as a guild website!
The developers oaf and Pakhuda are from the Bleeding Hollow server and seem pretty savvy with JSP (their language of choice for the application) and have been using some pretty snazzy Ajax features for editing your data. Another sweet feature is the ability to completely customize your profile. Here’s mine.
A word of warning, this site is very open…so be aware that rough language may abound and flaming on the forums is typical…but overall its a pretty good time. Its nice to see the faces behind the characters! Since its creation, it has been open to the Bleeding Hollow server for testing but a day or so ago they opened it up to the rest of the WoW community. If you haven’t checked it out, do so! Its a good time!
License Plate Irony. My Wife Parked in a Bad Spot
November 2, 2005 | Leave a Comment
This happened a year and a half ago and I never blogged it (in part because I did not have a blog then). I have been looking through old photos and artwork and found this so decided to share it with the world. I found it pretty ironic.
Its pretty funny if you look at the scene then check the license plate.
Windows Live
November 2, 2005 | 3 Comments
I just read an article over at Slashdot about Windows Live. It seems that Microsoft has decided to attempt to clone Google/ig, while currently Microsoft’s “Windows Live” is simply a mimic, they promise to have much more.
What’s Google/ig? Its a drag and drop portal-like web app that aggregates rss feeds and some handy tools; like the weather, movie reviews, word of the day, etc. Google/ig is simplistic. Its sexy. Its Ajax heavy (which isn’t a bad thing). I’ve been using Google/ig since they released it to the public and have been thoroughly impressed. Once again Google has set the bar high enough that Microsoft has taken notice and is attempting to duplicate….and they are doing it well.
Whats sexy about Windows Live?
- Its Free
- Its Simplistic
- Its using a crap ton of AJAX
- Windows Live supposedly expects to have an online Microsoft Office Suite that will be paid for by using ads rather than money from my wallet (sounds like Writely)
- Check out this article at TechCrunch.com for more stuff that is planned.
But in addition to all that, it seems Microsoft has adopted the Web 2.0 method of using a perpetual beta. Think about it. When was the last time that happened from Microsoft? Oh, and along with the public beta release, they also have a happy-go-lucky communication with end users. Right now I’m looking at the Windows Live site with Flock and see the following at the top of the page:
Firefox Users
Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)
Smiley face and all. Seems more personal. Seems more enticing. Makes Windows Live seem to have promise. Alright, so its just a smiley face and I may be jumping to conclusions…but I highly doubt that even Microsoft can fight the Web 2.0 and its heavy social aspects and its community driven contributions. Is Microsoft conforming? We can only hope.
Well…I can see a major drawback.
- It uses the .NET passport. Major suck.
In closing, while Windows Live looks nifty and has some pretty cool stuff, I’m loyal to Google and will remain an avid Google/ig user until Windows Live does something that actually wows me and makes me crap my pants.
