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.