A retrospective on 315

I really had no idea what to expect going into Communications 315. I thought that maybe that it would be similar to some writing courses I have taken; Thankfully I was wrong. The course focused a lot more on theory, and hands on with web design. I was really happy to be able to work with HTML code and learn Dreamweaver throughout the course. Sure I had the bi-weekly blog updates but even they were less painful the writing short papers. It helped, of course, that I was writing about technology—something that is of high interest to me.

My enjoyment of posts ranged, some I could careless about and did dutifully as if I were writing any other paper, except possibly with less polish. Other posts I got really excited and passionate about writing on far longer then anyone probably read. Some posts were assignments such as MMORPG and the Future of Gaming. Other posts were out of self interest such as My Proggression of Computing and why Vista Sucks. A post in which I wrote out of frustration of using Vista.

What I really took out of the class however, was learning Dreamweaver. I know I only scratched the surface of the program, but It really let me get a good jumping off point for learning more about the program and HTML code. Before the class I really felt overwhelmed with the idea of jumping right into using a program such as Dreamweaver.

Some aspects of the class I was only partially interested in. The idea of setting up the We-town site I, for no better words, thought was stupid; I never really got the full reasoning behind the site, but whatever. What I did get from the experience, however, was a better understanding of how to really setup a blog to make it work the way I would want it to. Also creating the screen captures I found to be valuable experience. Not that I couldn’t have figured it out on my own, but in the class I found several pieces of software that I found to work well on the Mac and PC. Half of being good with technology is having experience and knowledge combined…which is Wisdom I guess. It is what allows a person to be good at diagnosing a computer problem (what does the blue screen of death mean if you have never seen it before? Or that little time bomb on the old Macs that said fatal error?). When you have little or no experience you believe you just broke the machine; And to the inexperienced it is a meaningless message that only induces panic, and confusion. So what I gained from this class, more then anything else, is applicable experience, in areas of computing I may not have ventured to on my own.

Website Critique

As I have mentioned I visit Digg regularly, so it is really the best option to critique. The sites features have grown and with the growth the design has changed to accomidate said features. Navigating the site is rather simple and self explanitory, however sometimes the navigation is clumbsy, especially when getting into some of the advanced features of the site. Navigating the front page and figuring out the basic mechanics is easy enough, however, adding friends and changing your profile options gets a little more complicated. The site uses alot of simple lines and soft tones. Not so unlike the WordPress dashboard I am typing in right now, although I do admit the color pallete of Digg is not as nice.

Digg does a good job of being accessible and for people willing to put in the time pretty deep. Most users probably just read front page stories and occasionally comment. Other, more advanced users, submit new stories, comment continuously, and Digg and or bury every other story. Overall the site has good consistency, but at times some growing pains are evident with older style scroll overs aparent in some sections of the website.

In terms of mapping, the sites whole premise is a metaphor it uses the analogy of digging. If you like a story then you digg it, if you don’t like it you can bury it. Many sites have since copied this same system with varied results.

The site has a number of affordances including many button style links to different sections of the webpage. As well as pop-up style interface for inserting comments.

MMORPG and the future of gaming and why this isn’t it-yet

I have always been fascinated with the idea of MMORPGs. That is to say I think they are truly the future of gaming, but everything that I have seen so far is so poorly executed it really turns me off from the concept. A similar happens to me when I play the Grand Theft Auto series; the idea of going anywhere and doing anything is good- IN THEORY- but what comes out is generally a bunch of crap. I think the real issue is that in both situations, the developers are trying to take a linear storyline and plot points, and merge them with open ended game play. What occurs is a multitude of simple fetch quests made hard by only the limitations of controls and unpredictability. Do not get me wrong, they both can be a load of fun but until they have me doing more complicated things then killing 10 arbitrary trolls, goblins, gang-bangers, or whatever for no other reason then some pathetic back story then you can count me out. It is comparable to a poorly made action film, the good ones make you a believe there is a plausible reason for all the senseless killing. A bad one just whips it out of nowhere like a roundhouse kick to the face- I am looking at you Chuck Norris. If while I am playing a game I am asking myself why am I doing this? Why do I care? And why are these controls and mechanics so bad? It really detracts from the experience.

On the other side of the spectrum, many of my friends love these games, World of Warcraft comes to mind a game that I, for a brief period, played. I found it incredibly addictive, and I found it appealing that all those characters I saw running around were other people playing and not just random NPCs. In fact for the two weeks that I played the game I had trouble putting it down once I started. You are always an hour away from a new piece of armor, or weapon; one of your friends is always online wanting you to play, and it does give the incredible sense of accomplishment when you complete a quest. But for me there was something terribly wrong, I wasn’t having any fun. In between the accomplishment, and the satisfaction of getting a new piece of armor was like work-boring, repetitive work. Also, despite having logged over 20 hours ( the completion time of a standard game) I had yet to really scratch the surface of what the game was all about, making more of a time commitment then I really wanted, or could afford.

Eventually I see massively multiplayer games taking off. Heck maybe the next Second Life will be as popular as Facebook, but usability needs to greatly improve, and function needs to be expanded as well.

Review: iShow You

I decided to try out iShow You, a video screen capture program created by Shinywhitebox software. The program has a nice, clean interface that is easily navigable. The software costs 20 dollars and is available directly from the company’s website. I tried the demo version which is useless because it puts a giant demo version stamp on any video produced but, again, at only 20 dollars it is a steal.

The software works flawlessly. There are numerous presets on the left hand side and everything from audio to screen dimensions are able to be edited as well. It also includes some effects to be done so that actions, such as mouse click, are more apparent when viewing the video. The software also allows the user to edit everything from file type to quality of the capture.

The formats that the program will encode in are listed on the right.  As you can see the list is extensive and includes almost every format you could want to save in. The ease of use cannot be stressed enough I had captured a video of my self doing meaningless tasks in less then a minute; it is that easy.

Custom Audio tracks can be recorded live or added later if you so choose. It is a full featured program that is also easy to use. I highly reccomend this program for whatever your uses are.

Streamlining the Process

Uploading an image to the newly created We-town community blog is a relatively straight forward process. You can either upload an image within a blog post as you would do with any other blog. Or also could submit a general photo using flickr and tagging the image properly. The process is diagramed below:

As you can see the process is relatively straight forward. When submitting an image the user can either submit it within a blog post or upload images to flickr so they can be put into a general we-town image folder on the right side of the site. However, there is one major issue with the process and that is the fact that there is no album functionality built into the site. It will also potentially become a further issue if you would like to better organize images by particular categories.

How do I know what I know

How do I know what I know? Clearly everything that I know I have gathered from one source or another, in fact very little human thought is truly original I find. Ever think you have a great idea to only realize it has already been done? Yeah me too. But just because you are not completely original does not mean you cannot add upon another individual’s works. In fact the most famous inventors and scientists throughout history are documented as “borrowing” many of their greatest ideas from others. Edison and Einstein  have been accused of stealing the majority of their works from other inventors and scientists. For as unoriginal as humans are we also all have extremely different approaches to cognitive though.

So when designing something for mass use and consumption, there are general constants that  can be relied on in terms of usability. But, also every user is unique in their thought process and designing a product or service that fits every users needs perfectly is impossible. That is not to say that there are trends to follow when considering design. For example when designing a website people tend to look at the top of a webpage first and then the left side and read left to right much like a book. But also, when viewing a website individuals tend to skim for the important information—more like reading a text book. Those are all factors that need to be taken into consideration in design.

One of the biggest contributing factors to how we learn is our parents, our income, our spiritual beliefs, political beliefs often are directly affected by what our parents believe. In fact almost all of our though comes from the ideas of society. It is familiar, and familiarity is important to the majority of people because change is scary. The same principle applies when designing something, the product or service has to be familiar and accessible. Which is why it is important, even if you’re design is revolutionary or infinitely better then the competition or prior iterations.

There are entire websites teaching individuals on how to navigate new products or websites  easily.  Such sites include the how-to site Mahal0. Which explains current trends or news as we as products often in a how-to format. Other similar sites include WikiHow  which has a similar functionality to Wikipedia where users can edit the information. Both of these sites help users navigate and use modern products and services. Linearizing otherwise confusing or abstract products and service.

My Proggression of Computing and Why Vista Sucks

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I prefer Apple products. I own both a Macbook and an iMac, and they have been the only two computers I have ever bought personally for myself. But that is not to say that I have not used Windows extensively. The first operating system I ever used was Windows 3.1 and I enjoyed the experience. I was barely five years old and can actually remember getting the computer.  I played MS-DOS games such as flight simulator,  Into the Eagles Nest, and Scorched Earth and Sim City for Windows. It never crashed. Really, never in my memory do I remember the OS crashing or giving me a blue screen, black screen, or any other colored screen. In fact the computer is still in my parents house and it works perfectly fine to this day. Then we had Windows 95, 98 Second Edition, and eventually XP(we skipped over the whole Windows ME atrocity). Through years of Windows use I never really grew disgruntled until XP. Maybe it was the Fisher Price color palette, or the fact that I got a blue screen 4 times a day, or the fact that until SP2 the OS was basically a playground for viruses, or maybe it was the fact that I have to reinstall any new machine because of all the pre-installed bloatware.

As a self proclaimed ‘Hardcore Gamer’  I wanted a gaming rig that I could throw anything at and it would take in stride. So I saved all through high school to get around 3,000 dollars for a respectable  gaming rig, because to hell if my parents would pay for any of this for me. But then Vista kept getting delayed, and XP was ugly as sin and console games were suddenly looking just as good as PC games. Then I thought about it and decided Vista wasn’t coming before I was to leave for college and XP was so archaic looking I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to make the switch…

To Ubuntu Linux. Now don’t get me wrong I like the whole open source and Linux movement but I can honestly say that it is not quite ready to be used as an everyday computing environment. It seemed fine and Open Office was usable. But there was just too many things it did not easily play nice with; driver support was all but non-existent and getting some seemingly simple programs to work was cumbersome.

Finally I decided to blindly buy a Macbook, just go in, buy one and see if I liked it. I had researched it extensively and besides a few archaic machines in elementary and middle school my mac experience was non-existent. But, suddenly I was a believer, it wasn’t perfect or completely painless and at times it seems downright restrictive but it works and it works well.

So then about six months after buying my Mac I bought Vista and duel booted with Boot Camp. I had read all the bad reviews, but this was not going to be my main operating system after all, and with updates surely on the way it was bound to only get better. Well  it is almost a year later and Vista is just as bad as the day I bought it. So what is so wrong with Vista you ask?

First it is slow, but not in the way you might think. It boots up fast enough and is generally pretty snappy, but for whatever reason the OS hangs on random processes. Insert a disc, downloading a large file, opening the explorer, Vista will all but completely lock up for five minutes or more.

Security is better but at the cost of having an annoying “nagging nanny” asking if it is okay to change your wallpaper or user icon or open a file or program. You can turn this feature off, but that negates the protection and there is noway to set it to only ask, for say, files downloaded from the internet; it is all or nothing.

Programs run noticeably slower then on XP. How much slower? You know how nonnative programs run slower under Rosetta on Mac—that much slower.

But my biggest complaint of all is not how the OS performs but rather why did they need to rewrite the code completely to only boost the visuals? Yes I know there are a bunch of new features such as readyboost, gadgets, better explorer, etc., etc. besides being the ugliest OS ever XP and Vista are almost identical.  Why did they not just rewrite the code to allow it to have the looks of Vista with the underlying code of XP? It is time to scrap Vista and make Windows XP second edition and concentrate on the next Windows.

Balancing Participatory Media

It is a ongoing debate: how much power do you give the mob? That is essentially what individuals are if all are given absolute free speech. Systems in some way shape or form must be in place if any kind of production, voice or ideas are going to come out of the people.

I find it interesting that Scott Karp calls out Digg in his article The Delicate Balance of Participatory Media, for not listening to the community. He even references another article in which Tony Hung states: “based on the utter silence, Kevin Rose deserves a failing grade.” Which I find interesting because I feel of the many social networks that I belong to Digg listens to its users and respect their opinions more then any other site. While it is true many of the top diggers have been upset about the recent changes in the algorithm, the algorithm changes were made to make the system more balanced. The top diggers that he is referring to represent less then one percent of all users so surely this was the right decision to ensure an equal voice among all members. In fact I have found that Digg staff and Kevin Rose have been listening quite a bit. When Digg rolled out a new comment system users immediately complained stating that it was too slow and unattractive. Kevin Rose responded within the day stating they will be working on making the comment system better. Also users have been asking for a picture section and a video section which were also added within months of the initial requests. And when Digg was pressed by lawyers to take down the HDDVD encryption key the Digg team folded to demands and took the story down. Users were outraged and voiced their opinions and within a few hours Digg heard their demands a put the story back up.

On the other hand the ever popular Facebook has gone through a number of changes to which the user base revolted. Such changes as opening facebook to all users and adding ‘Applications’ to the website have caused users to protest and the Facebook Team has responded by stating that ‘you will get use to it’. A gigantic  F*** You to the install base that had made them popular in the first place. The problem is with all of these changes many users have declared the website to be getting old and others still are stating that it is becoming too much like Myspace; this very thought has been echoed by other writers calling the changes ‘Facebook Fatigue’.

Digg has created a slight paradox for itself and the rest of the web however; users now expect this kind of treatment and will not settle for anything less, but is that really all that bad?

Saving Education

Education, at least in the public school realm, changes every five years because a committee suddenly decides that education is failing and that the system is so broken that it is beyond repair. Which is why when I was a child I was not taught how to spell or the proper implementation of grammar. The idea behind this model was that if they just taught us to like writing the other stuff would just follow. The result? I have spent high school and college pretty much figuring out the finer points on my own. Do I enjoy writing? Well now I do, but I hated it with a passion until college, because—well it didn’t understand what teachers wanted me to do, and I was not able to properly express myself the way I wanted because I did not know how to.

I found the video (Re)Visions of Students Today interesting and provocative. Especially the point of old media, such as text books, being archaic.  I also completely agree that that is how I spend most of my time, except that I actually spend less time then that watching network television. But I also think participatory media is dangerous because it is adding more work for already overloaded students. I also feel like class times are largely unproductive and I could easily get the assignments and not go to many of my classes if not for the fact that I go to a small college and professors notice. I feel that many professors under utilize class time or in some instances class time is not required because the same information is going to be picked up from reading. Why would I read my textbook if my professor is going to just regurgitate it to me the next day and then post the notes on PowerPoint in their public folder. That leaves little incentive to actually read the textbook, it also leaves little incentive to pay attention in class when I can just read the notes from class and get the same information in less time.

Change is good, but change is dangerous, sure our system kind of sucks sometimes but if you induce change to quickly and radically some children’s education will be sacrificed. Change should never be forced or resisted it should merely be taken in stride.

The Beauty of The Internet

The beauty of the internet is that it allows the thoughts of any individual to be expressed and heard by a potentially limitless audience. However, the ramifications of such an open and free system is that those individuals can have a voice whether they have a intelligible message or not. This often leads to profanity as well as personal attacks by individuals who have little in terms of concrete criticism to provide.

It is a has been an eternal struggle that only has beccomes more prevalent in the information age. What people need to realize, however, is that the internet was never and should never be considered a one way information source; moreover the freedom it provides is the very allure of it. Many argue that these websites are easily accessible to children and that something needs to be done. To that I say don’t let your children on the internet, or monitor them directly, or better yet set up an account with a limited number of websites they can visit. I know there is a great concern over the smut on the internet and children and for good reason, but by the ages of 13 most children have already been exposed to nearly everything they can be exposed to.