Wednesday, May 30, 2007

StatCounter

I'm using StatCounter to see how many visitors i've had to my site. It is up to 87, and i think quite a few of these are from me visiting my own blog and the main day it is visited is Thursday, (when the workshop is on). Most people get to my site through other bogspots and del.icio.us, and my highest visitor length is from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.

I like knowing how many visitors my blog has. using the StatCounter is a great tool to find out whether my site is successful or not. Its useful to know which pages are more popular. If some pages are being overlooked it probably means i need to improve or make the navigation to those pages more obvious. Or entice my visitors to find out more about these pages.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

what is technorati anyway?

The technorato website says:

Currently tracking 82.7 million blogs

Technorati is the recognized authority on what's happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”

But it all started with blogs. Blogs are influential, personal, or both, and they reflect as many topics and opinions as there are people writing them.

Blogs are powerful because they allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation, and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it.

On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc. We rapidly index tens of thousands of updates every hour, and so we monitor these live communities and the conversations they foster.

The World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.

Technorati. Who's saying what. Right now.

Another good answer to this question is right here

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Live Earth Concert



Well didn't end up getting any tickets to Spelndour In The Grass. They had the worst ticket selling system ever!
So anyone else who missed out there is another option to listen to some live music...

Live Earth Australia Concert - 7-continent, 24-hour Live Earth concerts to be held on 7/7/07.
The Australian concert will be staged at Aussie Stadium in Sydney.
Tickets for the show go on sale in Australia Friday, May 18 at 9.00 a.m. (AEST)
The global concert will begin in Sydney and continue across all 7 continents with concerts in Tokyo, Shanghai, Johannesburg, London, and Rio de Janeiro before concluding at the Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

The lineup is no where near as good as Splendour but still sounds ok:
Blue King Brown
Crowded House
Eskimo Joe
Ghostwriters
Jack Johnson
John Butler Trio
Missy Higgins
Paul Kelly
Sneaky Sound System
Toni Collette & The Finish
Wolfmother

Live Earth Blog

Thursday, May 17, 2007

no excuses


Another way i keep in contact with everyone is through facebook. Some people i know refuse to use myspace so another good way of finding long lost souls and just chatting to friends is through facebook . At first i found it kind of confusing because i was so used to myspace but after a while its pretty useful and i'm still discovering nifty little things you can use with it. So i'm going to add it as an aesthetically pleasing site..

bad websites

I found that these websites were not aesthetically pleasing.
The text is difficult to read. There needs to more contrast between the background color and the text color. Some have poor choice of a background/text color and size. I think background colours need to be simple and should not compete with the content of the page for the users attention.
Constantly running animations are distracting when used excessively. Also in this category are excessive, large, flashing & obnoxious advertisements. The message gets buried in a sea of clutter!
Fake error messages are annoying too. Some of these bad webpages also had fake error messages that trick new computer users into clicking on an ad.
I think the main thing that makes these webpages bad is that all the colour makes clutter. Trying to fit too many things onto one page makes it confusing and difficult to navigate.


bad website


pageant style


fuzzy martain's lair ?


bob's awesome links


I thought microsoft would have a good design microsoft

aesthetically pleasing

These are some websites and blogspots i found aesthetically pleasing.
Some of them are pages for designers and magazines so no doubt they are set out well but i like the way they are all easy to read. I found that these pages which had minimal things on each page were easier to navigate, nice and spacious. They had a lot of pictures which i definately like on a webpage because reading things off the computer screen gets tedious after a while, i guess it depends what you're looking for though.



idn magazine



riot magazine




this way design



ken olling

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

its all about what things look like

AESTHETICS: The term aesthetics comes from the Greek αισθητική "aisthetike" and was coined by the philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in 1735 to mean "the science of how things are known via the senses." And in English, mushc the same study was called studying the "standards of taste" or "judgements of taste."

And answers.com tells me that AESTHETICS is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature and expression of beauty, as in the fine arts. It isthe study of the psychological responses to beauty and artistic experiences. A conception of what is artistically valid or beautiful: minimalist aesthetics. And something that has an artistically beautiful or pleasing appearance.

So i need to make my blog easthetically pleasing because no body wants to read the content if the form is ugly.
I need to think about what makes a good website -- Design (things like colour choice, alignments and visual interest), Message (Content- the goal of my website, target audience, what I want them to do. Provide appropriate and, in this case, interesting information), Architecture (Organise pages so the audience can understand), Be easy to read and well organised, Be interactive (good interactivity engages the user and makes site memorable).

Friday, May 11, 2007

SCM magazine


Making a little street magazine is my assignment for GRP2223. So far I've done the cover.. please leave any comments and tell me what you think. I'm using interviews of EES, a photographer and Rin the scientist for the inside. Still haven't got many ideas for these 3 yet but they will come.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Issey Miyake



Everything we've done in graphic design so far has been made on the computer so the latest assignment where out GRP223 class actually has to make a package for a fashion exhibition is kind of refreshing. And a little challenging, i hope it doesn't turn out too dodgey looking. This is the logo and invitation I've made so far for the assignment.

Issey Miyake : How we should live

Any graphos or anyone else should let me know what you think.. changes ? suggestions ?

And for anyone else doing the assignment here are some good links to sites on IM:
official website
The official website is actually really cool. The type and layout is very clever, good inspiration.
products
isseymiyake-watch

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

what is XML

learning the eXtensible markup language....

XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is.
HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data looks.

What is XML?
* XML stands for EXtensible Markup Language
* XML is a markup language much like HTML
* XML was designed to describe data
* XML tags are not predefined. You must define your own tags
* XML uses a Document Type Definition (DTD) or an XML Schema to describe the data
* XML with a DTD or XML Schema is designed to be self-descriptive
* XML is a W3C Recommendation

XML was not designed to DO anything.
Maybe it is a little hard to understand, but XML does not DO anything. XML was created to structure, store and to send information.

yes.

RSS feed


RSS (Really Simple Sindication)
RSS allows you to see when sites from all over the internet have added new content. This is important because you don't have to remember to visit each site every day. You can get the latest headlines and articles, audio files, photographs or video in one place, as soon as they are published.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Technorati

i'm new to technorati?

BLOGGGG

this is my blog its pretty damn interesting and i like the word smog but i need to quit smoking coz the other day i went for a jog and only ran 100 metres before i had to rest on a log but its winter now so theres too much fog to drive to bendigog so i'll just have to sit at home and read a catalogue because its the only mail i ever get people must think i'm a dog or a frog or a hedgehog but only a gollywog would know how to unclog a synagog because its full of eggnog at christmas time i'd like to eat a hotdog and play leapfrog and visit the peeps in family guy who live at quahog

N-Dog