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IDM #4 - RUSTBOY

Jewls — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:35:52 -0400

You should have seen this one coming – it’s the fourth of five IDM posts for my Interactive Media I course!

This week on the class chopping block: Rustboy, a Flash site for the Brian Taylor short film project.

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I normally dislike websites that are entirely made up of Flash, but in this case it works. It is the content itself, that makes this use of Flash appropriate. Brian Taylor is trying to lead visitors through the process of his production and efficiently does so in his site.

The layout is very simple – almost too simple. I think for such a graphically based film project, the integration of subtle textures and logos from the film into the main flash design would have helped to develop the overall theme and feel of the site. However, the fact that the design is so simple, also makes it easier to focus on the more important content rather than the marketability of the film.

In the beginning, I said that I tend to dislike Flash sites and this is because of all the obvious reasons. Today, I think one of the biggest problems with Flash is its inability to allow for changes in text size. More people are upgrading to large, flat-screen, desktop monitors or to small portable laptops. In either case, looking at a Flash site like Rustboy could be difficult with such small text. One of the new trends in web design seems to be creating very fluid sites that can be expanded and enlarged for bigger desktops or shrunken for smaller ones, allowing for the clean and easy resizing of text. We know that Rustboy.com hasn’t been updated since January and was originally created in 2001. However, if the site ever should get a makeover, perhaps this fluid design would be something worth considering – especially when working with such detailed graphics. It would be great to see nice, full resolution images of the concept art and storyboards, etc.

The content speaks for itself on Rustboy. Brian Taylor is obviously skilled at what he does. The progress he’s made with the Rustboy character is impressive, however it’s unfortunate that his online efforts seem to have halted since January of this year. Hopefully we’ll see an update or two on the development of Rustboy, and as mentioned by Taylor – a site redesign “to reflect the new direction of the Rustboy movie.”

Jewls

My First Rails (+ HTML & CSS) App: Coming Soon!

Jewls — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:53:26 -0400

So for the last week and a half, I’ve been building a Rails application for my HTML course – Interactive Media I. The Final Project for my class is to create a “significant” website by manually coding HTML and CSS, in a small group. Well, we are definitely shooting for “significant.” I’m not going to spoil the surprise – but I’ll tell you it’s Web 2.0ish, and our professor was really excited about the idea.

I’m coding (with much help from the b/f) a lot of Rails for this, and at first it was extremely frustrating. But, I’m starting to get the hang of things and we’re making a lot of progress. My teammate, AJ (a computer sciences major), is struggling to get MySQL functioning on his XP system – but once that’s up, he is going to try and help out with it as well.

At the moment, I’d say a good portion of the back-end is good to go. Now, we need to begin focusing on and implementing the actual design of the site. So, it’s time for all of us to do some Photoshop explorations.

We’re all pretty excited about the site and I think it will turn out pretty well for my first Rails/HTML/CSS project. Stay tuned for the launch, which should be around early December.

Jewls

Friday the 13th

Jewls — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 14:13:53 -0400

Well the bad luck of Friday the 13th started a day early this year. On Thursday the 12th (of October!), it snowed. This is the earliest snowfall Michigan has seen in somewhere around the last 125 years. I like snow…but not until the end of November, and only until the middle of January. Any sooner or later then that and I’ll probably not be too thrilled. Luckily, I live in Michigan where the temperature goes from 30 degrees to 60 in a weekend. So you can be sure that come Monday, I’ll be wearing a t-shirt and enjoying the sun.

Aside from the Friday the 13th induced bad weather, I’ve discovered that both of my cats have fleas. And, Gibby has a hole poked into her abdomen. So they’re both on flea medications, and I get to vacuum all the carpets and furniture, and wash all of the sheets and blankets, and spray to kill all the eggs. And, I have to give Gibby antibiotics and keep her from licking her wound. If she keeps licking it – we have to buy her one of those white plastic shields that go around the head. She’d love that.

I can only assume that this bad luck will continue through tomorrow, I will keep you all updated.

Maybe since the Spartans are already having a horrible season, the bad luck of Friday the 13th will have a reverse effect and we’ll beat #1 Ohio State… I could also be dreaming.

IDM #3 Jason Santa Maria

Jewls — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 16:09:42 -0400

Here it is, the third of five IDM posts for my Interactive Media I class. This weeks website is Jason Santa Maria, a personal weblog/portfolio for a graphic designer in Philly.

UPDATE: Jason has commented on the collection of critiques by our class and I urge you all to read his response. He’s obviously a very intelligent and humble designer and I’m grateful to have had his feedback.

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This site is alright. I like it better than the last two, however I’ve still found some quirks in it. Over the last two weeks, I’ve seen two style sheets applied to this site and even though it is not up now – I MUST complain about the first one.

The October 2004/2005 Edition featured a thin sidebar image on the left side of the page similar to that of the current layout. My problem with it was that the vertical lettering on the image was cut off on the left side. At first, I thought maybe my browser window was too small for the page, so I spent a moment resizing my window to try and get the whole thing. Well, it turns out that’s just how it was made. I really didn’t like this because I found it distracting and deceiving. Otherwise, the design was pretty interesting.

Unfortunately, the current design features a similar sidebar, only this time the text is horizontal – still cut off, however. This time it’s not as annoying, but I still think it could have been done differently. My second problem with this design is the placement of dirt specs on the background image. I thought there was dirt on my screen – I actually tried to wipe it off. I realize the image is supposed to look like an old page from a book, but those spots are really just unnecessary and annoying.

Lastly, I’d like to comment on the Flash photography gallery. The design is alright. Personally, I like to see thumbs for each image so I can go directly to the ones that interest me. Here, you sort of have to aimlessly navigate through the images with either the previous/next arrows that appear over the image or by randomly clicking the small orange boxes along the top. Also, while it may be a nifty little addition to the site, it doesn’t allow for total accessibility. Someone without the Flash plugin or using a screen reader wouldn’t get any information from this page.

Otherwise, the site is well organized, easy to navigate, and has a relatively obvious purpose.

The Facebook Revolutions

Jewls — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 16:14:00 -0400

It’s been a few weeks since Facebook first started making tsunamis in the sea of social networking sites. We’ve seen the emergence of the News Feed (and the massive backlash that followed), the implementation of an open admissions policy (not so huge, but still a major area of debate – check out the comments on this digg story), and recently announced – a new advertising plan that places ads (either banners or video clips) inside the News Feed will be launched within the next few weeks.

When launching the News Feed without proper privacy options exploded in Zuckerberg’s face, written protest showed its power. Interestingly enough, the venue of our demonstrations was Facebook itself. User-made groups shot up all over the site and within hours had thousands of members. At this moment, the Students against Facebook News Feed group still has 642,000 members.

When Tracy Schmidt suggested that this was Generation Y’s “first official revolution,” I proposed that this first revolution could be the beginning of many:

Maybe now that we’ve got our activism juices flowing, we’ll find the inspiration to work at other issues we feel strongly about but have never had the courage to act on.

Well, shortly after the news about open admissions was released – similar protest groups were formed. However, they didn’t generate quite the same response as the first time around – the Students Against Opening Up Facebook To Everyone group only has around 11,000 members. I had speculated that “Students Against” groups would’ve taken off more after the News Feed instance, especially when another controversial issue like open admissions came along so soon after. Well, this trend obviously didn’t take off. I suppose the lack of response towards open admissions could have been because opening Facebook up to the world and essentially creating another MySpace didn’t directly or immediately encroach upon each and every user’s privacy, where as broadcasting each users Facebook actions to every one of their “friends” via the News Feed, completely without warning or announcement, did.

So, the active online revolution that I expected didn’t happen. However, a slightly different kind of revolution did.

The marketing ploy that changed the WWW

Around the same time that the News Feed was launched, you may have heard mention (perhaps on VH1’s Best Week Ever) of a guy named ‘Brody Ruckus.’ This guy created a Facebook group called “If this group reaches 100,000 my girlfriend will have a threesome.” Well, within eight days this group had over 400,000 members. And then suddenly, the group disappeared. According to Brody on BrodyRuckusThreesome.com, it’s because the people at Facebook “think threesomes are the devil.” However, according to Chris Hughes, co-founder and spokesperson for Facebook:

The profile and group weren’t actually tied to a real user—turns out it was a marketing ploy. Because of that, we took the group down for violating our terms of service. It wasn’t because of the content itself.

It’s been speculated that Ruckus Music, “the premier college-only multimedia service,” could have been behind it all. Well regardless of all the rumors and controversy, this “ploy” started something BIG.

Shortly after the Brody Ruckus group was formed, I was invited to a group called: For Every 1,000 that join this group I will donate $1 for Darfur. It looks like this group was formed in reaction to Brody’s shenanigans. It states in its description:

So all those people that complained about the 100k threesome thing here is something for you. Let’s just hope this gets bigger than that.

Let me just first make it clear that I did NOT join the Brody Ruckus group – I found it immature and distasteful. However, I joined the Darfur group right away since I have always supported this cause. The funny thing was that as I clicked “Join Group,” I almost felt a little guilty. The Observer’s Blog explains it best:

Somehow I find the whole situation fascinating. The willingness of people to expend minimal effort on what sounds like a good cause, especially the willingness to donate money or cause money to be donated. Imagine if everyone who joined the group actually read the linked article about Darfur; that would be amazing.

He’s right, 400,000+ joined this group so that someone else would donate money to Darfur on their behalf. By simply joining this group, we’re not standing for what we believe in or doing anything about the problem ourselves. If Darfur received $400 from Marek Grodzicki (the creator of the group), it wouldn’t seem like an adequate contribution from 400,000 people, would it?

Well, it seems like this sentiment has begun to spread. People have pledged to match Marek’s donation and he states in recent news that he is also asking companies and corporations to match his donation as well. In addition to the Darfur group, countless similar groups have sprouted up all over Facebook to support other causes. Here are a few:

Unlike the Darfur group, most of these noble successors haven’t made it much further than 1,000 members and unfortunately, they probably won’t get much larger. With the rise in popularity of these donation groups, the spoofing spotlight has a new focus as well. Searching through Facebook, I came across about as many spoof groups as genuine ones. Granted many of them were rather entertaining (ie. For every [number] of people that join I will donate $1 to Tom Cruise/a beer to my belly/a pack of Ramen to Kevin/fight a mountain lion/pluck one of my ass hairs, etc.), they could begin to degrade the value of the groups that do have a serious purpose. Just as sentiment has begun to spread and people in these serious groups have started pledging their own time and money to match, the mocking nature of the spoof groups as well as the overwhelming number of all of these groups (spoofs AND genuine) in general, threaten to cheapen the importance these serious groups.

The future of Facebook = ?

So here’s what we’ve seen so far: the rise and fall of “Students Against” groups and the rise of “donations for membership” groups. We haven’t seen a sure fall of the donation groups yet, but I predict that it’s on its way. Facebook users are bound to get tired of joining countless groups just so that a fraction of a cent gets donated to a charitable cause. It’s sort of the youth of today’s mindset that one vote won’t make a difference – and for that matter, neither would a fraction of a cent. So what’s next, if anything?? Once donation groups fade out, will a new type of group be all the rage? Will there even be a next? I think we could probably expect a user response once the News Feed advertising gets underway – but at that point the response could be a boycott (by the original college network – not all the randoms that joined after open admissions – to them Facebook will just be another ad-mangled Myspace) rather than a new string of groups. At least, I know I won’t be visiting Facebook as frequently once a ringtone advertisement that makes outrageously annoying sounds each time I mouse over it shows up in my News Feed.

Snapshot Seekers Theme of the Week Winner

Jewls — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 14:31:56 -0400

To see the full size image visit: JewloftheLotus at deviantART

IDM #2 JUXT Interactive

Jewls — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 18:06:12 -0400

Well, here is the second of five IDM posts for my Interactive Media I class. I liked this website a lot less than the first one: smallTransport, but I didn’t really like that one much either…

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Well I guess I’m really mostly just turned off by this website [JUXT Interactive]. It’s definitely designed to market to a very specific audience. It’s got very masculine tones and fonts that the strong masculine images around the page enhance. I found this design somewhat surprising though, once I’d seen their examples of recent work – which were for the most part more neutral than their masculine home page. I also found it surprising that most of their recent websites and past projects had very interactive, javascript and flash heavy designs, while their own home page was very static and hard. There is also no navigation on the site, you’re just supposed to scroll up and down in hopes of finding what you’re looking for – again, unlike many of their client sites.

But I guess the examples can speak for themselves on the design, skills, and creativity of the JUXT Interactive team. Their example websites are entertaining and in some cases addictive (like this site for Nestea ICE – in which it is your job as a flying forearm to turn the spastic sheep below you into an ice cube by pouring your ultra cold Nestea ICE on him). Nice.

Still, the JUXT Interactive team can’t impress someone with their portfolio of fancy JavaScript and Flash websites if their visitor doesn’t have images, JavaScript, or Flash enabled. Someone who winds up at JUXT Interactive with these things disabled might not be able to decipher the purpose of the page and move on.

With their impressive list of clients, this approach must be working for them though.

What Kind of FAN am I?!?

Jewls — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 21:43:00 -0400

OMG, WTF!! I totally and entirely thought that Grey’s Anatomy started next week. still catching my breath on this one

NO ONE TELL ME ANYTHING!!!!!

I will see it soon enough…

Until next time.
Jewls

I like Writely

Jewls — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 22:44:37 -0400

Whoa, this Writely thing is pretty sweet! As long as you have an Internet connection, there is no need to buy Word ever again!!

Here is a good article that got dugg a couple weeks back: Google’s Writely

If your regularly working with text documents this could be a handy tool to access your work from multiple locations and allow others to edit your documents as well. There are so many neat little features to this site – you can do almost anything!

Email your documents right to Writely.
Make a web page of a document.
Post to your blog.
Roll-back to previous revision and comparison of two versions.

So here it is! My blog entry composed in Writely. :)

Good stuff.

Music Makes Me Happy!!

Jewls — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 17:52:10 -0400

Here’s an interesting interview (found on digg) with a record producer-turned-neuroscientist, who is currently researching how the brain and mind handle and interpret music. Read the article here.

This guy is awesome. I am inspired just by his history alone. A guy going from a kick-ass job as a record producer for the Grateful Dead to a freaking neuroscientist. I can’t even fathom that transition.

Anyway, I thought the interview was very exciting. I never really tried to think about how we perceive music and why we all perceive it differently. I just knew it happened. Now, we’re beginning to understand all these little functions of the human mind and the more we learn the more we can begin to advance and the more we’ll be able to achieve (both, good and bad).

Peace, Jewls