Blogs! What are they good for? ABSOLUTELY anything

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Validation time...COME ON!!....Let's validate.

Ok, wow, I knew it wasn't going to be all peachy creamy but yikes.... fifteen problems with my site. I was going to paste it all into here but then my post would be three pages long, breaking one of the cardinal sins of the previous 5 rules. Most of the problems seemed to be little issues with coding that didn't have an effect on the actual functionality of the website so I'll put it down as beginner's errors.

With regards to copyright laws, then yes, I would definitely say my website infringes upon a couple of those as I have an unathorised image of Michael Jordan on my site that both him and FLEER trading cards would have an issue with. Unless they're really cool, in which case, I'm golden.

5 most important rules for writing on the web

1. Get straight to the point.
Jakob Nielsen's article may be from 1997, but it still has some points which are valid up to today, especially the one about being concise, scannable and objective. Most people, including myself, do tend to just scan through web articles so it is important to get your information and view across as efficiently as possible. Personally, most times I read an article or site it is because I searched for a specific topic and the site came up as one of the results, so I tend to just scan quickly through the page finding my desired information rather than reading the whole article. If I don't find it within 20 seconds, I'm out of there.

2. Linky Linky

Provide links, oh boy, you better provide LINKS, if a person has stumbled upon your page it is because they are seeking certain information. Giving them further options to pursue their desired interest is bound to give you a lot of brownie points. Upon reading Nielsen's 2008 entry on How little users read I was surprised to find out that the BACK button is only the third most used feature behind clicking hypertext links and buttons on the site.
Really??? Third?? There is no way I would click on more "buttons" on a website than I would the back button but that's just me. Having said that I do tend to click on ads just because I want to open another window, and once it is open I tend to write the address for the website I'm really seeking. Hope that hasn't skewered the results too much but I wonder how many people do the same thing?

3. Don't use long paragraphs
I think humans, thanks largely to television, glossy gossip magazines and the net, have looked at goldfish for long enough and decided, Fudge it!, I'm going to be just like you!
Seriously, any paragraph longer than 10 lines in a row will get you overlooked. If you have something important to say, either say it quickly or break it up into little pieces. Which is why I will not go into this into any more depth...sorry, move on.

4. Write scannable text
Really, I guess, this all goes back to reason number 1, but yeah, please, if I can type a word and see where it is on your web page, my job, and your job, is DONE. If not, at least make it easy to find, slap some bold text on it, or lat least ink the page to something worthwhile and relevant.

5. Make it fancy...or don't.
This really depends on what sort of site you are trying to push. If it is a website for a big company or an ambitious start up, then yes, make it sharp, bells and whistles and so forth, something that makes the consumer think if you go through that much trouble to make it look professional then his or her money is worth investing on your brand. People are attracted to bright colours and lights sure, but if your website is more of an information hub then keep it simple and easy to load. Horses for courses on this one, just make sure your desired audience is catered for in the right manner.

website/webspace problems

Have tried and tried to connect to Curtin's server through Filezila in order to access my Curtin web space but cannot do so for some reason so I am unable to put up the website I made online. Oh well, was fairly simple anyway and the screenshot from the previous task pretty much sums up all the links and info available on it so at least you get the gist.

Hot chicks with douchebags

One of my favourite blogs, not just because it's hilarious and stupid, but, well, yeah, really it is just because it's hilarious and stupid.

http://hotchickswithdouchebags.com/

html vs blogging

After doing the previous exercise with html and seeing how much effort goes into making such a small amount of information available on a basic site, it would seem as though blogging certainly has its benefits, as it allows you to customize your blog space, content, text and images in a much quicker and user friendly manner. With html there is a lot of double checking and re-writing involved, and it can be easy to get lost amongst all the code mumbo jumbo.

Nonetheless, making an html website definitely gives you a much bigger sense of achievement, and still allows you a wide range of creative scope to muck around with.

I wouldn't say I like one over the other, as blogs and websites serve different purposes. While I like being able to go to media intensive websites such as espn.com to get my latest basketball news, I also love going to simple blogs such as Basketbawful to get the same news in a much more satirical point of view.

websiiite

Well, that was fun.

I managed to get the website for my basketball team done without too much of a hassle and even though it's fairly basic, I still linked to our sponsor's website, our basketball fixtures website, our facebook/news website and added a contact email address. All fairly basic, yes, but still quite informative and efficient nonetheless.

And, yes, I do feel a certain sense of accomplishment, and can't wait for the other web design units coming up. The whole process really, really appealed to the "creative yet willing to do repetitive tasks" side of me.

Anyway, here is the screenshot of the site's main page as it stands so far:

Damn you Christian bale pop up ads

One thing I didn't like about Joe Barta's site was the ridiculously annoying flash ad that just kept looping over and over. Had to disable flash or loop it forward so it would finally stop. Apart from that, it was great going through that tutorial. HTML in its raw form can definitely be a bit overwhelming to look at initially but the tutorial exercises available definitely helped make sense of it all. I managed to follow all the web page code instructions without a hitch so that was a pleasant surprise.
Now I just have to think my about some small details of my webpage for a little bit and will hopefully have it ready by end of the day.

Module 3 - Creating a website

I had forgotten much of the old basic html principles so it was great to go back and do the tutorial So, You want to make a webpage! by Joe Barta. He makes the instructions really easy to follow and so far I have gone through the first half of the lessons and have found a lot of stuff I had forgotten coming back. Shouldn't be long now until I make my first site, thinking it might have to be something to do with my social baskteball teams and their respective comps.

Mailing Lists and Message Boards

I am not a fan of email lists, in particular the newsletter types that seem to just clog my inbox with outdated news. I belong to a couple of mailing lists, such as NBA.com 's to keep me updated with basketball news and results, but by the time it arrives in my inbox I already seem to know everything it includes. This is also the case with a number of music lists that always bring me BREAKING NEWS!!!!, but it is more like YESTERDAY'S BREAKING NEWS!!!!

The whole concept seems so outdated and stilted, especially in light of the manner in which the internet has become much more fluid and reactive. I tend to prefer message boards where people can discuss said news or any other interest that they may share in common. Message boards usually consist of a number of different topics on one main subject area, such as InsideHoop's NBA Forum which allows users to discuss the National Basketball Association and whatever latest saga is going on with their respective clubs.

I also had a browse through some of the discussion lists available on Yahoo's group page such as Your Dallas Mavericks and M.Ward and was left a bit undecided on the merits of email lists. The information on M.Ward's page was scarce and the posts were few and irrelevant, although this wasn't all that surprising as he is not all that well known by mainstream music audiences. The Dallas Mavericks site I expected would be much more active as my beloved Mavs are currently embroiled in a battle for the Western Conference in the playoffs. It was, and while there were quite a few messages regarding the latest victory, I don't know if I am a big fan of the way the messages are delivered to one another. Reading through them it seemed a lot messier and confusing than the same conversation would on a message board. Then I found out you could group messages by topic, making it all a bit more organised, but even then the manner in which threads were organised was less appealing than a message board. The format on Google's Android Developers group was a bit easier to follow than Yahoo's but still not quite as informative as a message board.

However, I can definitely see how they can be useful to some people, the fact each response by each member in the group is emailed to you allows for quick notification on replies to certain posts or threads. This doesnt occur on message boards, where you have to regularly check back to see if anyone has replied to your thread so that is one advantage email lists have over the boards.

Module 2 : Email

With just a quick glance at the header, there is a lot of information one can gather from an email message.


Firstly, the sender's email address lets you know their username and domain name.



If it is a work email, most people are allocated their full name as their username, with the domain name being the company's name and location. eg : johncitizen@victoriabitter.com.au. (not a real email address I would hope, either way, DON'T send anything to it {you just clicked on it didn't you?})


For personal email accounts the majority of people tend to avoid using their real names as a username, in part due to privacy concerns but mainly because ilovebarrymanilow@gmail.com was just too good to pass up.



The subject line, usually located right below or next to the sender's address, lets you know what the email is about. In some cases, such as when sending files to one another, the subject line is all that is required. eg:

To: Gregmatthews@yeahyeah.com

Subject: "March Payslip".



One can also see at what time on what day the message was sent and if it is a group email, to who else the email was sent.

cc and bcc are best used when sending an email that is of interest to more than just one person.

cc allows you to send a copy of your email to a group of people, and bcc allows you to send a copy of the same email to someone without the other recipients knowing about it.

When it comes to attaching files or documents to your email, if you do not know what type of operating system your recipient has, it is best to send the attachment as a plain text file(ASCII) or rich text file(RTF) as these formats can be easily read by most applications.

Personally, at home, I'm not a big fan of emal filters, mainly because I'm too lazy to set them up, but they are actually extremely handy and at my previous workplace they were a vital tool that allowed me to organise incoming emails in their appropriate mailboxes or folders. This saved a lot of time and effort and reduced the risk of misplaced or overlooked emails.

Come to think of it, maybe I should set up some filters in my personal email account, as at this very moment I have 8331 messages in my hotmail inbox, but as it is a personal account I only ever really get emails from friends so it is not a life or death issue. At work I had filters set up so emails from different departments were sent to different folders, allowing me to do reports more efficiently as I did not have to search high and low for the emails in the main inbox.

Further exploration on Tracerouting

I also downloaded A-Tool bar and used its trace feature to Traceroute from my computer to curtin.edu.au and this time it only took 17 hops as opposed to 21 for the HowStuffWorks website.
The milliseconds taken to complete the task were a lot quicker and I'm guessing that the reason it took less hops to trace was due to the fact that it did not have to connect to any overseas routers like it did with the HowStuffWorks site, which was based in the USA.

Tracerouting

So I Tracerouted from http://computer.howstuffworks.com/ to http://www.curtin.edu.au/ and it took 21 hops to get there.
According to the information on tracerouters on HowStuffWorks the three millisecond numbers show how long it took a packet of information to get from my PC to the router and back again and the average of those was 249.66 milliseconds. Finally, it also told me that Curtin's host IP address is 134.7.179.56.

File Transfer Protocol - Capitalization matters.

File Transfer Protocol task


For the ftp task firstly I had to download the ftp client Filezilla. Then I was asked to ftp to recall.curtin.edu.au which was quite simple and straightforward, and once there was required to find the README file.

After browsing through a couple of the folders I was able to find the file without much of a problem and according to the README file : Capitalization matters.

Found ftp to be very interesting, feels like I’m hacking into someone’s system and is quite an easy way to access and copy files from one computer to another over a network. Filezilla reminds me a bit of some other Peer to Peer programs such as Soulseek, in which you can explore User folders for anyone that is online to see if there are any files or live music sets in their system worth downloading. *I don’t personally use this program anymore as I may or may not have heard whispers that sharing music over the web might just be considered a tiny bit illegal nowadays.*
I have often stumbled upon URLs with ftp:// at the beginning and always wondered why those sites would display in a folder format more suited for windows explorer but now it all makes a bit more sense.