Week 16: As the curtain closes... (i.e. Reflective "meta" post)

By: Kristina B on Flikr (7/10/2008) Some rights reserved.

Well, it honestly feels like this semester has gone by very quickly. Although i have always been a regular networked media user, watching several blogs, news sites and a constant participant in social networking, I'm really glad that i've been exposed to several new sites and concepts.

For example, Del.icio.us is the best place to go if you want to share links with friends or just random members of the public and I've started to read this really cool design blog Toxel. Blogger has allowed me to have several gadgets and feeds in my blog so readers are not just confronted with my weekly ramblings. My blog journey has been different throughout the semester. At first i felt it would be a breeze and was relieved at the simple task but after neglecting to post for a couple of weeks i realised that constant note keeping and link collection was needed to keep up. However, i can never say it has been hard keeping a blog, time consuming maybe, but it certainly hasn't been tiresome.

In future blogging, i would like to develop some CSS for my blog, a nicer background and different fonts and maybe even create my own gadgets for the site because the look of my blog is probably my largest self-criticism. I played around with the templates on blogger and felt what i chose was most appropriate for now. I've discovered what a great advertising tool blogging in, if your blog is popular. For instance, popular celebrity blogger Perez Hilton started as a normal guy writing about celebrities, but through self-promotion and popularity, he is not only a celebrity in his own right, but also a multi-millionaire. This, all from spending time at his home computer!

Unfortunately i wasn't able to find a 'visitor counter' gadget to add to my blog, so i am unaware of the traffic that goes through my site. I formally asked permission from the majority of picture/video sources i have used in my blog as well as advertising, so i hope this attracts some traffic as well as adding a 'Subscribe to' feature on my blog. Networked Media has been a really fun unit, i've learnt new things and i look forward to further practising Networked Media. I've nominated the following three posts for assessment as i not only feel they are my best, but they are also my favourite topics from the semester. Ironically they were studied one after another, which probably makes it easier for marking, but is a funny coincidence:

1. Week 10 - Web 2.o
2. Week 11 - Multiplicity
3. Week 12 - Data Visualisation

Happy Holidays and good luck on your exams!
-Sean

Lost and found I-phones

By: Paul Miller on Engadget (9/06/2009)

Even though i do not own a I-Phone myself, i still think they're pretty cool and with the new one, there is a feature to find it if you have lost it or someone has stolen it. Read the rest of the article on Engadget :-)

Cooking Black eyed peas!

You can cook Black eyed peas? What??

http://www.cooksden.com/black-eyed-peas-w-collard-greens-cajun-vegetarian-recipe/

Production Project B: Geo-Narrative Rationale

For production project B i decided i would create a geo-narrative. As with the other assessments i had not been exposed to such a thing, in fact i did not even know what it was. A geo-narrative (Geographical narrative) is a story told through geography. As the assignments asks, i completed mine through Google Maps. Online, this is the best way to complete it and although i am always using Google maps, previous to this assignment i had no idea it was a feature. I immediately thought to re-tell my recent travels overseas but quickly changed my mind as they may not be viewed as interesting as a fictional tale, so i went with my short-narrative 'Tour le Med'.

Penguin Publishers had released a series of 'Digital fictions' on their website and one of them is a geo-narrative entitled 'The 21 Steps'. I had a look at this to give me an idea of what to expect and it's a really indepth tale. I believe the geographical element in google maps make's the story far more interesting and i'd say that while my story is much shorter and less detailed i have followed the main structure of a geo-narrative. Due to the fact that we had to keep our narrative relatively short, i feel the introduction of images to each marker-point filled the story. I like that in the story i could skip large amounts of time forward without taking away from the meaning, because it is based on different locations. In other words, the images and mapping mean that the author doesn't necessarily have to tell all parts of the story for it to make sense.

I would suggest one of the negatives is when the geo-narrative is complete there are certain elements that remain unpolished. For instance, when the reader goes to each point, the narrative part of the story is not always centred on the screen and the map is at various different zoom levels. These are minor faults and it could also be argued that this gives the reader more space to interact with the medium by selecting where they want the box to be and how much zoom they want.

Though i had to complete this as part of my networked media assesment, i'm considering using it in the future. It's a fun and user-friendly way of documenting travels or adding an interactive quality to an otherwise one-way narrative, a new aspect to networked media. I'm interested to see the possibilities and extra developments that could occur in the future if other sites use the Google Maps API for geo-narratives.


View 'Tour le Med' in a larger map

Week 15 - Nearly holidays!

By: Chrislrmo on Flikr (3/07/2006) Some rights reserved.

Yay, nearly holidays! This week i've been working a lot on my Geo-narrative. Although i planned much of it earlier in the semester, i've had to put it off for a while due to my other assessments. Originally i planned to do a non-fiction narrative based on my recent time overseas, but after thinking about it for a while i realised it would be hard to make that into a interesting tale. I also think it would limit the use of alternative media products. Instead i am mixing some non-fiction with fiction to put together something worth reading, although i wouldn't hold my breath. I'll be using some photos of mine as well as photos off the web (Flikr etc.) The Geo-narrative is a clever concept and one that i didn't know exsisted until i began this piece of assessment. Basically it is a story told through Google maps, which you can set to private or public and it is free.

By: ~BostonBill~ on Flikr (4/06/2009) Some rights reserved.

Although our lectures have long finished, we finish up our computer labs this week. After discussing our upcoming exam with Nathan, we continued to work on our assignments. I'm not sure how i feel about our exam as i have missed out on a few lectures and have had to rely on the notes provided, but i'm going to brush up on htose as well as the definitions of the different mediums we've studied this semester.

Japanese man hole covers

By: Unknown on Toxel via Digg (30/05/2009)

The title may sound very strange, but hopefully the picture explains it all! Check out the rest of the article on Digg :-)