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.