Website Construction: Week 5 (10th December 2008)

Apart from uploading my CV (I forgot to bring it into uni today), my website is done. There are still some padding issues but other than I am happy with the results. The main tasks today was to upload my feature (already written the night before) onto it as a PDF and then convert all the other document files (in Past Work) into PDF. The one thing that made it take it longer than I would have liked was linking things. I didn't realise that to link something from the PDF file to another that you had to do it in Acrobat, as opposed to doing it in Word and hoping for the best.

Other than that, the links are tested and if you click here, you will find The Website Of Max Raymond!

Website Construction: Week 4 (3rd December 2008)

This week I am experiencing major headaches with this website. The padding problem is still an issue and I have tried everything I can to make it better. Nothing is working and even now I'm still confused as to why it looks in Design mode but when opened in a browser it looks like a mess.

I have an idea for my feature. I am planning a write up of the year I've had in terms of reporting gigs for The Musical Chairs and discussing what mediums I've used to tell my review with (like Flickr, a photo sharing website, and YouTube). It's also a good oppurtunity to embed photos and video on the site and seeing how well it works.

Website Construction: Week 3 (26th November 2008)

Lots done today. All the pages are now designed and linked. My biography page has a picture that is optimised. The biography itself isn't long but it tells the reader what they need to know. The current work page has been set up and once my features for my print assignment and online assignment are done they will be linked to. All my past work has been linked to. The only page that might need some more tweaking is the links page.

A couple of problems though:

1. Colour scheme - looks a bit too retro possibly. Might experiment next week with different variations of the scheme.
2. Padding - in Design mode in Dreamweaver, the padding is fine but when you preview it in a browser there appears to be a fair bit of white space. Need to investigate that further.
   

Website Construction: Week 2 (19th November 2008)

This lesson has been pretty much spent one one thing - getting all the pages sorted out. I now have my five basic pages and my sidebar has been created. The colour scheme I have looks a bit retro but for the moment it will do. The only page that is at the moment fully complete is the home page. I've put in a brief introduction and the hyperlinks are all set up.

I also went on Fireworks and designed my banner for the site. It fits in the header pretty nicely and doesn't look out of place.

Website Construction: Week 1 (12th November 2008)

Today I planned how I wanted my website to work. I didn't want to make work too difficult for myself but I also wanted something that was functional and simple. In the end it came down to deciding on five main pages:

Homepage - With an intro to the website.
About - Biography page with a small picture in there too.
Current Work - Links to work that has been fairly recent.
Past Work - Links to all work that is more than a couple of months old.
Links - Links to websites I write for and my own favourite links.

I had also decided on the 'header and footer' design option with a sidebar on the left. The header would have a banner with the title of the website (The Website Of Max Raymond), and the footer would have my e-mail address if any visitor would wish to contact me.

Tesco Digital

Tesco has decided it wants to compete with sites like iTunes and have a slice of the mp3 business pie. Tesco already sells some downloads as a WMA file only but from next month it plans to add three million tracks for download in mp3 format. This would be the latest addition to the line of goods and services that the 'Tescopoly' sell.

It also wants to sell more than just mp3s. In addition to music that is free of DRM (digital rights management) it also wants to sell some TV shows, UK and US based. Unlike iTunes, it also wants to sell downloadable games, similar to such applications as Steam and services on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games consoles.

It is thought that Tesco, due to their reputation for undercutting the prices of competitors (and also often controversially), could offer their music at a rate lower than iTunes, who currently are the market leaders in the UK. iTunes sell music for 79p a track, but in my opinion if Tesco do undercut them it would only be by a few pence. I somehow disbelieve that music could be so low valued when you consider the many people and organisations who earn from each sale.

According to Reuters, Graham Harris, Tesco Commercial Director is quoted as saying:

"We wanted to create an exciting and easy-to-use entertainment shop that Tesco customers of all ages and technical ability can use and trust."

Google Reader & Google News

Google Reader is a tool that I found relatively easy to use. I can definitely see why it can be a useful tool. If I needed to know what the latest news were on my bookmarked sites then I could easily find out on a different computer.

However, I found that having to wade through many pieces of unread news can be annoying. I would hate it to be at a point where the amount of unread news resembles my Gmail spam folder size, i.e. quite a lot! I also don't see any use of for it at home where I have RSS feeds on my browser, saving all the hassle of going to Google Reader in the first place.

Google News is also another tool that is relatively easy to use. If I needed to find news sources then it would be so easy for Google News. I also tend to use Google Blog Search alongside this because then I get the sources and viewpoints from bloggers as well as news sites.

I also like the idea of playing about with the news subjects on the main page. At the moment I have Manchester United as one of those topics but I can also change it to something more topical to get up-to-date info on breaking stories. That could be very useful for my blog posts.

Grumpy Cunts critical evaluation

The idea of Grumpy Cunts was based on the book Is It Me Or Is Everything Shit? - in that we would all write about mundane things, people and places that just irritated us. We also wanted to do this in a way that was entertaining for the reading and functional. There isn't really a blog on the Internet that does what we did in a similar way. We tried to explore different ways of conveying our message, whether that was through pictures or YouTube videos and the like. This blog was different to print in the sense that this kind of thing could not constitute a whole magazine dedicated to it, almost in the same way as Lifehacker wouldn't work as a magazine. Our name would also be highly unprintable!

Our goals were as follows:

• One person to post once each day, therefore making 30 posts in the week.
• To keep the posts at a good length.
• Entertaining the reader.

The audience we decided to target was a quite a general audience, since this really isn't subject specific. That's why I think a blog like this would have the potential to be really successful, as opposed to many subject-specific blogs.

The blog was set up and we decided to go for a simple layout, since Blogger doesn't really offer much in the way of good templates. Adam made us a fantastic looking banner that seperates us from the competition easily. The actual job of posting was pretty straightforward and fairly smooth. Everyone posted when they needed to and our target post count for the week was easily met.

I also decided not to have many house style guidelines, because I felt it would be too restrictive on all of us, so I just said:

• Word length of 250-500 words.
• At least one picture or one video in the blog post.

I was checking the posts and editing any grammatical mistakes to ease the pressure on my writers. This was hard for me, seeing as I had to edit a lot of posts! But at the end of the day, it has to be done.

I think things that could have been differently are as follows:

• A general introduction post - I think that, whilst you can argue that our banner explained it in a nutshell, a proper introductionary post would have helped potential readers a bit more.
• Line space formatting - it's not really a problem with us, it's just Blogger being a pain in the backside.
• More tags - I thought that we should just have limited tags to at least one, but if anyone wanted to add more then I shouldn't stop them, but I think the more tags you have (not too much!), the more easier your blog is to navigate. So I probably should have made a more stricter tags guideline.

My own posts were pretty easy subjects when writing it, but also off-the-cuff. I didn't really think of the subjects until things happened during the day for me to take inspiration from. I also probably could have been adding a bit more YouTube. The other bloggers made some great posts and it was enjoyable reading them all. It makes feel satisfied as a comissioner for me to read such good material!

In summary, the blog worked very well. This was primarally because the subject of the blog was simple and general, yet affective. I think the improvements mentioned above are the only things I would consider improving on because it was a very smooth blog and fully functioning.

Gig public transport

Tonight, I'm going to see Apocalyptica at the Forum in Kentish Town. I'm looking forward to it all except for one small thing. Rush hour public transport. There is no worse a time to travel on the train than the rush hour because they are so damn packed. I am either left sitting next to someone who I've never met in my life, never would want to meet and might occassionally stink because they haven't used deodrant. Either that or I'm standing, which, on a moving train, can be the least enjoyable thing ever.

And then when I get to Waterloo, I hit the tubes. That is even worse. If you ever needed to explain to someone the meaning of the phrase 'packed like sardines' then there is no better example than the tube at rush hour. You have no room to breathe because people are squashing you to a pulp and you can't look up because someone is trying to read their bloody tube book above your head. Where's the damn logic?!

And then when you get a train back, the train is deserted of drunkards, people eating Burger King that stinks or older, middle aged people wearing dinner party suits. There is just no space for me and once again I end up standing, even though my feet are dying from standing at the gig I've just been to.

Grrr.

Wii Wii

Wii Wii is a blog that is dedicated to the Nintendo Wii and has several articles based specifically on it. It's aimed at people who own a Wii and/or people who have a massive interest in the console and/or the gaming industry. The post subjects are quite varied, including news, hands on previews, mentions of the console in the media and so on. According to the tag cloud, the main post subjects tend to be gaming news, video-based articles, hardware news and general/humourous news.

The blog posts are never too long. They seem to be either very brief or at about 200 words maximum, as a rough estimate. It's a conversational tone of writing and a lot of pictures and video content are used to support the articles. There are also a very healthy amount of external links on the articles combined. The articles don't get a lot of comments but they tend to be on articles with news about either the games or some off-kilter piece of news.

Commercial blog network research

GAWKER BLOGS: Lifehacker
The blog is about finding cheats to everyday technological and domestic problems. It is aimed at people who want to be more efficient. It is updated daily and it is updated 15-25 posts on average a day. It covers such dilemmas such as 'Turn Yoghurt Containers Into Sippy Cups' and 'How Do You Do Your Taxes'. The style of the posts are quite friendly and instructive, and are written by a team of writers. The only social interactions with the reader than I could see was the comments page and the Digg mark on one of the posts. Plenty of pictures and links are used. The design, whilst ok, is the best of a bad bunch of Gawker blogs, which in general are just wrong. I don't think the blog makes money.


WEBLOG BLOGS: DS Fanboy
This blog is all about the Nintendo DS. It is aimed at people who own one or are heavily into gaming. Or just nerds. DS Fanboy is yet another heavily updated blog, with lots of posts daily. It covers DS news, DS news that isn't neccessarily to do with the console or games and features. The style of the posts is quite subject-specific, adding to the feel that it is a hardcore site. The blog does use plenty of links and a wide variety of tools including embedded video, pictures and Digg buttons. The design is pretty decent, even if in places it looks somewhat cluttered. I don't think the blog makes money.

The tagline is also made of wrong.

FEDERATED BLOGS: Uncrated
This blog is all about looking at things that are aimed primarily for men to buy - a bit like Stuff Magazine. It is aimed mainly for the adult man and they would want to read it to see what items are available that are interesting, quirky etc. The site does not actually tell anyone the dates of post uploads but I wouldn't be surprised if it was like the two blogs mentioned above. It covers items such as Bacon cookbooks, cars, clothing and a wide variety of other things. The posts are almost very persuasive, in that they're giving them all a gleaming review and are recommended easily. There are links to buy the items but apart from that, there are no other stand out interaction features. The design is excellent - very slick, good choice of colours and properly organised. I reckon there is a deal struck with advertisers as a source of revenue.

What planet is Arsene Wenger on?

Just when you thought there would be a landslide in the opposition against the Premier League's doomed plan to take the competition abroad, someone decides to stick their neck out and side with them.

That person just happens to be Arsene Wenger.

To be fair to the Arsenal manager, he is not just defending the FA for the sake of defending the FA. Instead he's tried to base some sort of argument for the idea of expansion. He's basing this said argument on his experience as a manager in Japan in 1995 (which came as news to me - the things you learn every day!) He likes it for two reasons:

1. It shows a desire to innovate.
2. It is good for the fans of the Premier League abroad.

Adding further to his point about his time in Japan, he says that at the time he was managing, they had to play 20% of their games on a neutral ground to promote the game. Whilst he initally laughed off the idea, he came round to it after going through with the idea. In general, he also keeps on re-iterating that people are being too critical and dismissive far too quickly.

The interview clip is up on BBC Sport but he also talks about other things in the same clip, so I recorded the part where he talks about the expansion and I've uploaded it as a streamable mp3 rather than RealPlayer/Windows only.

Click here to listen to 'Arsene-Wenger-talking-about-the-Premier-League-expansion'

The problem with his point about it working in Japan is the timeframe. This was a plan that was in action in 1995. This, however, is 2008. And the neutral grounds idea is now dead in the water. What's more, the vice-president of the Japanese Football Association, Junji Ogura, has already voiced his disapproval, telling BBC Sport:

"In Japan, we don't allow anyone to play a match that involves only foreign clubs and no Japanese teams."

Not only do the presidents, vice-presidents and so forth of these international league organisations think that the idea is a problematic one, but they also do not want their own leagues underminded. This is especially the case in Asia, where football has boomed in popularity since the exploits of the 2002 World Cup hosts, South Korea and Japan. It's also exactly the same in Australia and in North America.

Regarding Wenger's point about this plan being good for fans abroad, I personally feel that countries such as the USA and Asia get a good fix of the Premier League anyway with the several pre-season tours made by the bigger clubs. Last summer, Manchester United embarked on a heavily-promoted pre-season tour of Asia and Chelsea also embarked on a tour with at least equal amounts of promotion to the USA. I believe that alone is giving the fans of the competition enough of a chance to see the teams they follow each week.

Nice try Arsene, but you haven't convinced me to even think about supporting the idea.

FURTHER READING: The best article I read about the whole saga is this one on BBC Sport. Well worth a read just so that you can gather the complete international reaction.

Welcome To Our TV Show

Parts 1 & 2 of Welcome To Our TV Show

Welcome To Our TV Show popped up on YouTube in the middle of January and is a refreshing antidote to the music performance programs on television like Later...With Jools Holland and Transmission. The premise is simple. Jeremy Warmsley, who features himself as a performer as well the creator of the program, invites Mystery Jets, Laura Marling and Noah & The Whale to gather in the living room of his own house to play some acoustic songs and celebrate Christmas.

The last point I mentioned in the above paragraph is a problem. Yes, I can see why you wanted to celebrate Christmas in the middle of December but I think it was very lazy on Jeremy's part to upload this in the middle of January, when Christmas is all but a distant memory. Because of this, the video ends up being slightly dated.

However, this is the only real issue I have with Welcome To Our TV Show. The video captures perfectly the intimacy of the performances and the general DIY approach to the making of the video. It is obvious from the start that Jeremy isn't out to make a flashy program. The aim is to showcase talent, that would perhaps be shunned by the mainstream media, in a way that is simplistic to its audience, which is something he achieves here.

The artists themselves give sterling performances. I was a big fan of the first Mystery Jets album, Making Dens, and they didn't disappoint here with their performance. Laura Marling was also impressive and I'm starting to see why a lot of people like her music. Whilst the sound levels aren't perfect on this video, it does add to the raw and homemade style.

Overall, this is a winner. Whilst there are competitors in the field for creating your own music show (see Nigel Godrich's From The Basement series, which debuted online), this stands out from the rest of the crowd because of its laid back style, intimate feel and, of course, quality music.

Keeping a blog at university

In regards to the debate over students being encouraged to keep a blog whilst at university course studies and after they have graduated, I tend to agree with what Paul Bradshaw said and what Neil McIntosh said last month in their own respective blogs. I think it is more than obvious that whilst you are studying online journalism that you have to keep a blog of some sort. Otherwise, you're sort of defeating the objective of the course itself.

There's also other reasons to keeping a blog during the course. If you maintain a blog well over the typical three years at uni then you will:

1. Get regular feedback and suggestions to improve it.
2. The writing quality will get better and better.
3. As you find a placement, you will have a portfolio blog with lots of entries that show off your skills as an online journalist.

That's what I would like to get out of the course I am doing anyway - the oppurtunity to improve my skills and to be in a position a couple of years down the line where I am in an employable position. People like Dave Lee have put hard work into their blogs and have found ultimately found a new career, whilst studying at university. That is because they used their time at university effectively, and have thus built quite an extensive portfolio, which would easily impress any potential employer.

As for what employers look for, I still think that the actual writing side is the most important aspect. At least, that's what I'd like to think anyway. But other skills that they look for is:

1. Use of the media that is available to them (video, podcasts etc)
   
2. How aesthetically pleasing their blogs look
3. Blog maintenance skills (and by that I mean updating regularly, making sure everything on the blog works and isn't broken).

Internet statistics

From Internet Stats

• 1,319,872,109 thousand people use the Internet.
• 38.7% of users are from Asia.
• The word growth average of users across the world from 2000-2007 is 265.5%.
• 20% of users around the world use the Internet regularly.
• 71.7% of North American users use the Internet regularly.
• In Europe, Germany is the country that uses the Internet the most, followed by the United Kingdom and then France.

In the UK, according to National Statistics:

• 84% of households have a broadband connection.
• 65% of men and 55% of women use the Internet.
• Whilst a slightly higher proportion of men use the Internet for shopping, women buy clothes and groceries over the Internet more than men.
• Most UK users use the Internet to check their e-mail. Other main uses include shopping and just general browsing.

The net population has definitely grown considerably in the last decade, making the potential audiences for blog sites extremely substantial. However, the stats also show that the Internet is used for various reasons.

First ever blogger?

This site was created in 1987 and but the same site also claims that in 1983 'Mod.ber' was created by Brian Redman...

The Chicago Reader was created in 1985 according to this post...

This article claims that the blog is 10 years old, so, in effect, Dave Winer created the longest-running web log (Scripting News).