Assessment #2

Through these 13 weeks of labouring on my 3 sites, i've come to appreciate the internet and how it works a little more. Also the balance between form and content does play a big role of creating a good website.

For my blog I have tried to make it both interesting and functional. One thing i changed from the first assessment was the template and colours. Originally my blog had a black background with alot of fluro fonts sort of like neon lights at night but it did look a little all over the place. I then changed it to what it is now, using the main colours blue, green,grey and whitewhich i think is a bit more aesthetically pleasing. I also think my posts have got a bit more interesting and longer than my first posts which didnt really say or do much like this one .

For my del.icio.us account i tried to add weird, quirky sites that alot of people may not have heard of but may enjoy. I also did and popular well known sites as well to balance out all the random ones. To help distinguish between them i used tags and bundled all the randome sites in to one bundle and the others into catergories like entertainment and educational. Heres a link to a random site and a popular site .

For my flickr account i put both personal photos and photos that i think are funny or cool. This is so people looking at my account would get and idea about who i am and what i look like. I also chose the layout the way it is so you could seeas many of my photos as you can per page and my sets. So the form of my account helps accentuate how interesting it is by being able to show more in the space allocated. I also, for the description, tried to tell the stroy behind the picture so people might understand why i took the photo. Here is an example of a story behind a photo .

So for the interestingness of the three sites i've tried to cater for everyones interests, especially my own, by having a wide range of different thing within them.

My Visitors

It would be useful to know how many visitors my blog has because then i could know how many people have seen my work and possibly liked my work. The one thing that i would like to know about my visitors is how they got to my site and why the went to it. I am currently using a sitemeter counter on my blog. I'm using a sitemeter counter because it was the first counter i came across and i now also know that it had alot of information about the visitors to my site. I have had 145 hit on my site but i've had more pave visits which is 230. The hits are coming from all over the world but mostly from the United States and Australia but also Canada, Brazil and Italy. My visitors get to my site mostly from google but also from my flickr site. On an average my visitors stay for half a minute which doesnt seem quite long but its long enought to flick through the site to see whats on it.On Flickr you can tell how many people have viewed your photos and with del.icio.us you can see how many other people have bookmarked the same websites as you. Heres a link to my sitemeter site.

Technorati

This post will be a little more detailed than my other post about technorati because i now know more about it. Technorati is just a search engine for blogs with some other features. You can favorite other peoples blogs and people can favourite your blogs. I have no technorati authority and my rank is over 3 million. I dont think these numbers will change much because my blog probably wouldnt interest other people.
Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.
Technorati Rank is calculated based on how far you are from the top. The blog with the hightest Technorati Authority is the #1 ranked blog. The smaller your Technorati Rank, the closer you are to the top.
To tell the truth im not really sure how it all works which is probably one of the reasons my blog is doing poorly but i really dont care. Here is a link to my technorati profile and the technorati article on wikipedia .

Aesthetics

My definition of aesthetics is pleasing to the senses mostly visual. its short and to the point. Now i'm going to talk about two websites, one that is aesthetically pleasing and on that isnt. In my opinion, most websites on the net are aesthectically pleasing because they employ web designers to make sure that they are aesthetically pleasing.

A website that i find aesthetically pleasing is wikipedia . Wikipedia is a very useful website and to me it is aesthetically pleasing. It set set out properly with picture placed down the left and right. Also, if it is a long page there are links at the top of the page to take you to other places on the page so you dont have to scroll down looking for a certin part. It has a nice white background with black writing and also blue writing which means links to other pages on wikipedia about the certin word or phrase in blue. At the bottom of the page there is also links to other pages, in blue as well, concerning the topic and sometimes a table with links to other pages in wikipedia. Boxes are used around some text to draw attention to it as well.

Now to talk about a website that is ot aesthetically pleasing. I couldnt think of a webite off the top of my head that isnt aesthetically pleasing so i looked up bad website in google and came up with the Worlds Worst Website . This website isnt aethetically pleasing but on purpose. The website shows mistakes that some web designers make when designing a website. The website is full of animations,a flashing background, many different coloured boxes and fonts and many other things that arent aesthetically pleasing. this website is a good example of a website that looks bad but has good information.

XML & RSS

What is XML and RSS you might ask, well im going to tell you. XML or eXtensible Markup Language is a general purpose markup language and is primarily used to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems. It is a simplified subset of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and is designed to be fairly human-legible. By adding semantic constraints, application languages can be implemented in XML. Also, XML is sometimes used as the specification language for such application languages. XML is recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium. It is a fee-free open standard. The W3C recommendation specifies both the lexical grammar, and the requirements for parsing. For more information on XML click here .
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.
Users of RSS content use software programs called "feed readers" or "feed aggregators". The user subscribes to a feed by entering a link of the feed into the reader program. The reader can then check the user's subscribed feeds to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it checked, and if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user. RSS formats are specified in XML (a generic specification for data formats). RSS delivers its information as an XML file called an "RSS feed," "webfeed," "RSS stream," or "RSS channel". For more information on RSS click here .
You might also be asking why RSS is important, well, its important because it keeps you up to date with things that may interest you or may be important to you such as the news or sports scores. If that still isnt enough information for you then go to XML.com and/or whatisrss.com .
All this talking about XML and RSS has lead me to set up an RSS reader account. I have chosen to sign up with google reader instead of bloglines for a few reasons. The first is i didnt want to to search for any other RSS reader sites so it was a choice between google reader and bloglines. I first decided to check out both sites first before i made a decision. I looked at google reader first and found out because of my gmail account i already had a google reader account which became my second reason. I also had a look at bloglines to see if it was any different but it looked pretty much the same. Also, google reader is under my gmail account so i dont have to remember any new user names and passwords which is much more convenient to me. These are my reasons for choosing google reader as my RSS reader.

Assessment #1 Blog post

The amount of work ive done in MPI104 so far is fairly big. I usually dont use the internet much but with this course involving extensive use of the internet ive learned alot about different websites and how to use them. Now i have do tell you why i think my blogger, del.icio.us and flickr accounts are interesting or how or why i think they have "interestingness". Firstly, how i think they are interesting is that the dont follow most conventional websites, my blog consists of random fact about myself and Mr T, my delicious account consists of primarily random websites i thought sounded funny and my flickr account is just personal pictures of me and some of my friends. Why i think they're interesting is because it involves me in alot way. Most other people probably wouldnt find it interesting unless they themselves were in the sites. Ive put alot of work into these sites so that someone might view it and find it interesting and i think they are interesting in that way. Meaning my sites are interesting because someone else might find my sites to be interesting. They are interesting because they may interest you. Thats alot of interestings. I have been a bit slack in some areas but they all came together in the end. Ive been finding some cool pictures on flickr and some cool websites on delicious and ive had a good time writing new things on my blog. I had help by looking at other peoples blogger, delicious and flickr accounts to see what i can change in mine or something they hadnt thought of. Ive also posted on pariah productions because i went to school with they guy. Anyway, that is how and why i think my accounts have "interestingness".

Technorati

I like the idea of technorati. I like how i can claim my blog. Anyway, heres a link to my Technorati profile