Aled's Cyfle Blog

Moving on...

2008-03-01T10:45:00.003Z

Just thought I'd write one last post on this blog before its shut down completely.

I realise it's been almost a year since I last posted everything, but I didn't finish things off right. Here's the latest (and last):

I work at Cube now, as their Lead Developer. I got the post after finishing a placement there via Cyfle.
We at Cube just launched a beta version of Sesh.tv - a Welsh-language video-sharing site where the best films might be shown on S4C.
Orball, one of the projects fellow D10'ers made, won the interactive media award at Ffresh. The project I worked on, The House, was also nominated.
I now blog/keep a tumblog at lemwn.com - if anyone still reads this, I'm now over there.

Thanks, and goodbye.

The crazy insane last week

2007-03-26T15:37:00.000Z

We've all just finished the course, and are all moving on to pastures new. I just want to thank all the guys at Cyfle; all the tutors; but especially to Gareth, who's been fantastic. It's a shame really that this is the last Dimension 10 for the foreseeable future. Anyway, I'd like to finish off this blog by mentioning some notible events of the last week:

1. Our graduation showcase went well on Wednesday, and we had many many industry people over to look at our work. To showcase the work for the night (and for the next year), we bought tenzeroseven.net; which has a profile of each of us which shows our work. James designed it, I built it.

2. I finished my portfolio (at last) with examples of all the work I had done in the past 6 months.

3. We visited @Wales, a business incubator for you digital startups, which was very interesting; and got a visit from Richie Pugh, the Nesta Project Manager for Wales, who told us about their insight out scheme.

I might blog here a little more, but for all intents and purposes, i'm finished. I'll probably blog to tell y'all where I'm blogging next, and maybe (if I don't blog elsewhere) blog about the next six months internship I have at cube.

Thanks for listening!

Being nosy...

2007-03-19T09:35:00.000Z

I came across twitter a few months back while reading modernlifeisrubbish, and could instantly see its appeal for other people. I'd never really use it because I'm too lazy, but tom marban today found a little mashup called twittervision. It's a combination of the twitter data and a Google map to create a nice and visual way of following people's location and activities around the world.

I could look at this for hours.

Being Unique...

2007-03-12T12:56:00.000Z

Last week, we got a visit from Jon Stethridge, Managing Director of Unique Media and Unique Media TV, which I think are two different sections of the same company. They're an established design and communications agency from the Bristol area over the border in England.

They've become specialized over the years to provide video streaming services. He came to give us a short workshop on the process of shooting, cutting and encoding video for the web.

When we finished our impromptu group chat about various aspects of the web - politics, web2 and social networking etc., we got down to business.

As I have a degree in Film and TV studies, I expected to know everything he was about to explain to us, but my expectations were quashed slightly due to the realisation that shooting and cutting film for the web is a totally different affair.

It's a little obvious when you think about it... keep long shots to a minimum (only once to establish the situation). Keep to tighter shots when filming (not shooting) a person, and avoid excessing or unnecessary zooms, pans, crabs etc.

The reason for these limitations are nothing to do with things like screen sizes or their refresh rate or a computer's processing power, but rather with encoding the video to keep its size to a minimum. The more pixels that change in every frame, the higher the file size. We were also told not to use dissolves in any video shot for the web for this reason... in the short sequence of a dissolve, every pixel in the video is a different colour, meaning that every pixel has to be encoded, resulting in a higher file size.

This, I suppose, applies to all digital film formats. It certainly was a very useful resource for when I go to Cube, who do a lot of encoding as part of their work.

Post D10 placement

2007-03-07T09:23:00.000Z

Theres only 2 and a half weeks left until the end of the course!

However it's still a very busy time... we have another module to complete for our post-graduate diploma which is offered with the course. We've also got to finish our documentation for our recent projects, and organise our graduation show which is two weeks today!

The show is in Cardiff Bay's City Canteen Bar, but before that we've all got to design our own portfolio site, and James and I are to design and develop a gateway site to all of our various portfolios.

After the course finished, I've been offered a place on another (similar) course with Cyfle (it's already started, with Ioan, Owen and Rianne being the other trainees). It's lucky that both courses end the same time, because I'll be skipping the training aspects of the course and heading off into a 6-month internship at Cube Interactive, based in the bay.

I'm excited with this, as I've met the guys already and seen what work they do... they've mainly been providing interactive services to some of S4C's programmes, which includes not only websites, but also flash video technologies. In fact, last year they provided online video streaming services to many of the top summer festivals in Wales. They also have some interesting happenings going on over there over the next couple of months (hush! hush!)

Work Experience

2007-03-04T17:23:00.000Z

I spent the last two weeks at Merlin, a PR, Marketing and Events management company, based in Cardiff Bay. While it doesn't actually sound like the company does much with interactive media and web design, they provide their clients with the whole package, which includes all kinds of interactive elements.

I was in the studio with the other designers, and I must admit that the way they work is unusual (from my point of view anyway). There's about 6 people in the studio who produce all design materials for the various account managers.

Unfortunately it was a slow first week (and me being ill didn't help either), so I didn't get much to do. However, by the end of the first week I started to get involved with CSS-ifying a website Merlin had built before for the Dovey Group, Cardiff-based property developers.

In addition to this, I asked if I could keep myself busy with designing and developing a concept re-design of the current Merlin website (a 6 year old design). Its purpose wasn't to replace their current design, but to serve as a portfolio piece for myself.

I'd like to thank Paul, James and the rest of the Merlin team for the experience and support during my placement.

My conceptual site and my work on the Dovey site will be up on my portfolio site. I'll be posting about that when its finished!

Greenfields + Blueteeth

2007-02-24T15:13:00.000Z

During our manic 6-weeks of non-stop work, we had a break for a couple of guys from Greenfield Media to come over and speak to us about their work with an emerging market... Bluetooth Broadcasting.

Rob and Geraint gave a presentation of the work they've done in the past few years - notably in the National Eisteddfod and the Wales Rally GB. It was interesting to find out that its been an experimental ride for them so far.

They started off by sending simple text messages to people with bluetooth on, often on a very small scale (for instance - in a tent in the eisteddfod). They also explained of the difficulties they had at larger venues, such as Cardiff Arms Park - where they had technical problems that would mean that people got the same messages over and over again. Recently, they said, they've been experimenting with sending larger files and short animated adverts.

What made the presentation even easier to digest was they turned it from simply a talk, to more of an experience. They told us at the beginning to turn the bluetooth feature on on our mobile phones, and during the presentation, we'd get humorous interruptions by the ringtones going off - showing that a bluetooth message had arrived from the Greenfield laptop.

And, bluetooth broadcasting being a relatively young field (with only about 5 companies in the UK doing it), it can only grow in popularity. The possibilites are pretty much endless, and it'll be interesting to see where Greenfield will play its part.

Another level of RSS for updated pages

2007-02-23T09:22:00.004Z

With the rise and rise of RSS, I find myself subscribing to more and more feeds. This is great for knowing when people update their blogs, but not for when they update other areas of their website.

I don't visit the websites in my feed list until I see a blog entry that takes my interest and I either need to read more, view images/flash movies that aren't in the RSS entry, or doesn't publish the links. This means that I very rarely visit websites that have good content/articles/work that aren't published in other, non-syndicated areas on the site.

Maybe its me who should make more effort to visit these websites, but after cutting my feed list down from about 500 feeds to 150 of my favorites, I still won't be able to find the time to visit all these websites to check up on their latest developments in non-syndicated areas.

Does anyone know of a way to receive notification of when a website has been updated - preferably through my feed aggregator? Or should websites ensure that every page can be syndicated - providing a simple notification and a link to the updated page?

Mygo-ing to Kazakhstan?

2007-02-19T22:01:00.000Z

Last Thursday was the deadline for our 5-man Interactive TV brief, because on Friday morning we had the video-conference-presentation of the game with the Mygo team in Malaysia (who were 8 hours ahead and about to start celebrations for the Chinese New Year).

We had finished in time, and it was working fine. I was, however, uncertain to how the game would be received. Turns out I didn't need to worry - they were very impressed. They had minor issues with certain elements of the gameplay, and they were only small issues if the game were to go live.

Mygo are expanding their interactive TV game service to countries in the middle east, which include Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia, and they're willing for our game to go live (after making a few changes) in those countries! Not a bad accolade at all.

Our game can be played online, but won't be a massive success for one reason... we built it for TV, and there would be only one instance of the game being viewed by all who watch the channel. If many people were to open multiple instances of the game, the results of the vote would be inaccurate. Feel free to have a go anyway.

Also, with the nature of the game being for mobile phones, you can't interact with the game in a normal "online" way. We've had to create a separate interface that acts as a mobile phone emulator, so if you want to vote or guess the answer, you'd have to use that.

The House interactive game

Mobile phone emulator (opens in a new window)

10 handy online resources

2007-02-19T21:24:00.000Z

In my time at the D10 office I've found many useful resources that I've used a few times, or haven't yet used. I'm going to list them here (in no particular order), more for my safe-keeping than for any readers, but I hope they'll come in useful for everyone:

Cite Bite
The web has become an invaluable source of knowledge, with almost unlimited citation sources. Cite Bite makes citing a helluva lot easier. Submit the quote and the web page where it was cited, and you get a link that you can use. When opened, the link takes you to the quote in that page, and highlights it. Simple and brilliant.
Smashing Magazine
Simply a blog/resource site that I consider to be superb, because it saves me from having to search the web for the best thats out there!
I Love Jack Daniels
While I'm not a fan of JD, I love this guy's writing. I'm uncertain whether its the Jack Daniels that makes the content as good as it is, but I've learned a lot from it. And there are cheat-sheets galore to make sure that you don't forget the basics of everything.
Browser Shots
Browser Shots is a website that creates screenshots of any webpage in different browsers. Never had a mac but wondered if your site still looked good on Safari? This is the site for you
Video Jug
My new favourite teacher. Videos that explain pretty much everything. Its a brilliant concept because its an audio-visual alternative to reading long, hard-to-understand written tutorials.
Bite Size standards
As it says, bite size standards are a collection of short and concise articles on how you can improve the experience of a website for your visitors.
Screenfluent
Inspiration, inspiration, inspiration of the highest standard.
Developers' Home: Detecting mobile phones
Mobile phone development, I'm certain, will soar and become more important within the next few years. But with so many different models and manufacturers, detecting which mobile can do what and deal with whatever technologies is more difficult than with the normal, larger screen browsers. This comprehensive guide gets you to grip with the different ways of detecting the mobile platform that could access your website.
Before and After Magazine
"How to design cool stuff" - not far wrong there really. Despite being a subscription-based website, they do provide various design articles that are free to download in PDF form.
Uncle Mark's Gift guides
A nice and unique idea here. Mark Hurst of Good Experience writes an annual guide to the best gadgets around and also includes handy tips for life. A very interesting read if you have some free time.

Climate Justice

2007-02-13T23:00:00.000Z

About a week ago, we finished Phase 1 of a little side-project we at D10 have been working on... a website for a student-led campaign for Contraction and Convergence.

I was quite involved in it, mainly for hacking away at the Wordpress engine that we used to power it. I also did a lot of the CSS and Javascript programming (thanks JQuery) that's seen on it.

I'm very pleased with the website, which (according to project co-ordinator and host, James) has had over 1GB in traffic since its launch! Pretty good stuff, then.

It's located proudly at climatejustice.org.uk. Hopefully in the near future, as the campaign gains ground, it will be used by many people to co-ordinate an earth-changing campaign.

I'm quite surprised with how easily it all came together in the end - the real pain came with choosing which forum software to use... I think we made a very wise choice with Vanilla.

The site's got some nice touches:

Clicking the sitemap link at the top of any page takes you to the generic sitemap we placed at the bottom of each page, but to highlight where it is, we added a little nifty piece of javascript to highlight it.
Besides each blog entry, there's a little image with a plus sign on it, and when you hover your mouse over it, it shows a couple of buttons to share the blog post with social bookmarking websites (unfortunately, IE6 messes it up - what a shocker!)
The rounded corners at the top of the page utilizes a JQuery plugin written by Dave Melthin - it doesn't use any images - its all code!

However, the most impressive thing on the website is Tom's game: Emission:Impossible - absolutely superb work. Beautiful... Play it and get on the high score!

Phase 1 was basically getting something up for them to be able to show off at their launch - not everything is implemented, and its far from perfect, but we'll have more time to tweak and complete Phase 2 after we finish our other 2 projects.

Inline images within your HTML page

2007-01-31T20:11:00.000Z

I've been working on a Mac ever since starting at Dimension 10, and recently bought a MacBook (woohoo!). I've also been using Bloglines for years as my feed reader.

A few months back I installed Jon Hicks's Bloglines skin, which provides a much nicer interface to the usual bloglines design for Firefox, Camino, Safari, Omniweb and Opera browsers. The skin is built for Mac, though it apparently should work on other platforms too.

Last week I installed the skin on my MacBook (woohoo!), and before installing it I took a sneak-peek at the CSS. What I saw surprised me - the images used in the CSS for various elements had the data encoded into the file. This made the page redundant from any outside sources, and made installing a lot easier with only 1 file.

Since then it's been puzzling me how to do it. I know why people do it, in this case at least... You don't have to download extra images. This means that self-contained web apps such as Loggr and GTD TiddlyWiki - apps in web-browsers that you can download to your computer - could contain images without having to link to them anywhere.

I searched and searched, and finally came across a few good resources. Images in these instances were encoded in base64-encoded binary, which is text that's readable by machines. Ever viewed the source of an e-mail seen a lot of unreadable characters? It's likely to be an attachment, and if its an image, the likelihood is that it's base64-encoded binary.

There's a really good explanation at Wikipedia on the subject, and an online image converter at Greywyvern.

I gathered a couple of important notes on the subject from Wikipedia that I think I should outline here:

Internet Explorer (as is predictable) deals with this kind of data unpredictably. It's the later versions (6 & 7) that have no support for it.
The browser will limit the amount of data processed, which could result in a broken image if the data is more than the limit. Opera has a file-size limit of 4kb.
It's downloaded every time a page is loaded/reloaded, meaning it cannot be cached
It results in a larger file size

However, in my opinion, you shouldn't use Internet Explorer or have large images in your site anyway. With broadband speeds, downloading the data over and over again won't be a problem for the user, but might be a problem for your bandwidth; and though it would make the file size a little larger, you'd be downloading the image itself anyway, with the same data in that image.

I've always fancied a go at coding a self-contained web-app. Knowing this gives me inspiration and ideas. Hmmm, we'll see.

Mind Mapping heaven

2007-01-29T09:36:00.000Z

I've discovered that in this kind of work, planning a project well is crucial. An important part of this is brainstorming and writing it down on a piece of paper.

I get frustrated when I realise that I've written something on one side of the paper that needs to be linked to the other, and even though I know I shouldn't worry about it, I often start again, which wastes valuable time.

I had briefly searched the web to find any software that would do it for me, and all I could find was shareware software that produced, at best, unattractive and confusing mind maps.

But now through Lifehacker, I've found bubbl.us - a service that provides a flash interface for you to build a mind map of your own, save it, and load it up again later. Brilliant! The only drawback as far as I can see so far is that it has no printing facility other than Flash's built-in functions, which makes it a little harder to document what you've built.

I can see myself using this on every project from now on, yipee!

Quick update - Malaysian brief

2007-01-24T00:31:00.000Z

It's hard to find time to blog between handling two official Cyfle project briefs and one unofficial brief, so this is just a quick update on our Mygo interactive TV brief.

Communication is difficult between the two teams. When we get to work, the team in Kuala Lumpur are clocking off. When they get to work, we go home. It means that we're basically a day in limbo every time we post something on our secret forum or email them.

I say every time we post something on the forum - we didn't get round to it until today. The concept we're going for (and hoping the Mygo team will go for too), is a simple, democratic, multi-user hangman/anagram (hangagram?) game, set on a backdrop of an eerie, B movie-styled interface (it's all a mystery, eh?). Take a look at our first treatment:

Hopefully the team will like enough so that we can start developing it. Problem is: How can you develop something for someone else when you haven't got a clue how they do it? I understand that they'd be reluctant to release any pre-made code to us, so I hope we can achieve a good product from whatever information and guidelines they give us.

S4/C rebranding

2007-01-17T13:56:00.000Z

I just thought I'd post my thoughts on the new rebranding S4C have just undergone. I think its relative, since I and Carol did a non-live site for their sgrin magazine.

I must admit I'm not sure what to make of it - the logo obviously symbolises the channel's "moving forward to the future" attitude - the '/' becoming synonymous with the world wide web, and you could think it symbolises "Sianel 4 dros Cymru", or Channel 4 over wales (it works better in Welsh).

Their new website was launched earlier this week, and while its a refreshing take on their old website, I think it still lacks something to make it stand out and be different. If they could sort out some accessibility issues and incorrect translations, I'd be very happy.

View their idents on Youtube, and read more about it on digitalspy.

Interactive TV in Malaysia

2007-01-17T00:35:00.000Z

As I just posted, we've recently been given two briefs. Both have a production period of just under 5 weeks by now, and both overlap each other. By having 2 briefs, we must manage our time carefully. We've been quite lucky this time, though.

As with our 2-man briefs, we could choose who we wanted to work with for our 5-man brief, which was a collaboration with Mygo, a games and interactive TV development company based in Malaysia. However, we decided that, in order to save hassle and potential friction, we asked Gareth the supervisor to split us up. He did, randomly, and we've all ended up in groups of 5, four of which work together in pairs for the 2-man brief. Unfortunately, there had to be a split, and happened with Gareth and Shamim.

So, our 5-man team consists of Shamim, Zoe, Lindsey, James and myself. Both groups have an even split of designers and developers. Next up, which brief went to which group? Only one brief from Malaysia was the interactive TV one, and it was our team (not the self-proclaimed "A Team" :P) that were the lucky ones. All very exciting.

Our brief: To develop a game that could be used on an interactive game channel in Malaysia. Super! Mygo's experienced team of developers will help us, and apparently, if our concept and execution is good enough, it might go live. IN MALAYSIA! Cool or what?!

Video conferencing

Today we had our first of many video conferences with the team in Malaysia - a surreal experience. There's an 8 hour time difference with us in Cardiff and the team over there, so we had the conference in the morning (over here), and in the evening (over there).

see more at James's blog

I say video conferencing... there was a little problem. The "A" team went in first and it worked fine. For 10 minutes, that is. Then the webcam went blank and the video feed was lost. At our end, we could see their team, but they couldn't see our end. I'm sure the "A" team had ~~something~~ nothing to do with a plot to sabotage our conference (just kiddin' guys!).

Anyway, when it came to our meeting, it was a little bizarre. I felt like we were spies, knowing that they couldn't see us, but we could see them. A little unusual also was the time delay - it seems like it happens even on the internet superhighway. We pitched 3 of our initial concepts: a bagh chall game, a penalty shoot-out game, and a mystery treasure hunt game. We found out the bagh chall game was a dead end when we realised that the game had to allow for any amount of users to play at any one time - using their mobile phones.

I was then appointed the contact person between our team in Cardiff and the Mygo team, and tonight (Malaysia's morning) we sent them a more detailed treatment of our lasting two concepts (both of which they liked). I'll write more about our treatments another time, its getting late, and I have a meeting tomorrow!

New Year and People First

2007-01-17T00:10:00.000Z

A nice break: Lovely Christmas, awesome New Year, a lot of alcohol, a lot of hangovers, and 2 new briefs.

I hadn't realised how long it's been since I last updated my blog... I've been slacking - and it was one of my New Year resolutions to blog more!

Its been a busy week and a half since we got back to Cyfle - and this is likely to be the quietest part of the rest of the course. Oh well...

A few days after restarting work, we got the first of our 2 briefs. This one was the 2-man brief, which I'm working on with James. We all got to decide which brief we'd like, and we got a brief to develop a website for Vale People First.

Vale People First is the Vale of Glamorgan group of a global voluntary organisation of people who have learning disabilities. They meet to discuss issues they have in their day to day lives, do a lot of fundraising, and promote self-advocacy in the community. We met Liz Davidson, the VPF co-ordinator and the committee last Wednesday to discuss ideas.

They want a website with a diary, short biographies of all their members, a page to show their photos, and pages to explain to everyone what they do. This brief is going to be exciting because we'll be implementing a variety of different things to get the site complete. Among the technologies are: A bespoke control panel that all members can log in and write diary entries, a Flickr mashup to display their photos, and Flash video.

After our first initial meeting, James and I got right down to business and drew out pretty much everything we needed to do before going into production... and we're meeting the guys again tomorrow to discuss our designs and (hopefully) get them signed off.

So good are we that we've even started our own blog about the process of this brief - sketches, meeting notes, treatments, the lot! It even includes video posts (did I hear you say Wow!)

Check it out at http://vpfwdj.blogspot.com/

I'm diggin' it

2006-12-24T14:37:00.000Z

I never really got digg. I just couldn't read a single page of it because of its clustered design, unrelated/pointless comments, and mass of topics.

However, since reading this post by digg founder Kevin Rose about new features in digg, I'm converted. The tweaks in the design make it much easier to use, and now I can customise which content I want to see - meaning it's be a clustered design of the things I want to know about.

They also have new features on video diggin' and podcast diggin', which give much greater flexibility and makes viewing video's and listening to podcasts much easier.

Seriously, take a look at their video - it'll convert even scrouge!

It's Christmas!

2006-12-18T01:04:00.000Z

Well, not quite yet. There's still a week in D10 to go before we get some holidays, but I thought I'd send out a little Christmas cheer of my own... an e-card!

As I posted earlier, we were given a challenge to create a christmas card... and here's mine. Happy Holidays!

You don't seem to have flash (or you're reading this post from an rss aggregator)

A new approach to web-based WYSIWYG editors

2006-12-18T00:11:00.000Z

I've built a few tailor-made Content Management Systems for websites in the past, and one thing I've realised is that it's impossible to control the way the CMS user inputs content. Most simply cut and paste from Word, which makes awful, untidy, invalid code, and on top of that, they're likely to forget that you need to write concisely (in order to maintain attention). Accessibility is most likely out of the question unless they get plenty of training and theory explaining its importance.

There are several tools you can use to simulate a word-processor within a web browser, but they're often supported by one browser and generate poor quality code.

The best tool I've found for this purpose is TinyMCE. It's a powerful application that can be customised easily when setting up. It's the editor used by Wordpress, and with some work, it will generate valid XHTML code. It also has a plugin architecture with many great plugins to do various tasks.

I recently read an article on 456bereastreet.com that touched this subject and talked about the What You See Is What You Mean (WYSIWYM) editor. A good article that I'd recommend reading if you're involved with CMS's or with blogs. The way its different from WYSIWYG is that its intention is to concentrate on "the structure and meaning" rather than the visual aspects.

I reckon that when users start to get serious about following the disability guidelines, this editor will explode in popularity. It already provides a strong basis for all other editors out there, as it concentrates on what will become the most important aspects of websites - semantics, usability and accessibility.

I'm going to keep a close eye on its developments.

I want one of these...

2006-12-12T10:03:00.000Z

37signals have rounded up some of the coolest inventions of 2006, which include a fun-looking snow scooper, some weird light that appears to be able to wrap around you, and a GPS key-locator.

However, by far the most impressive invention listed is Janjaap Ruijssenaars's floating air mattress, which uses repelling magnets to float. Your's at a snap price of $1.5m. Once I heard about this, it reminded me of an idea I had to reduce the energy needed to run cars.

If cars were to float, then you'd only need maybe one or 2 wheels to power and steer them (mind you, I flunked physics at school). The fact the magnets would repel the bulk of the car would effectively make its weight less, requiring less fuel. You would of course need to line the streets of the world with magnets to make it work, but I thought it was a good idea anyway.

Unfortunately, the cars would probably flip over due to the magnets - as would this bed, if it wasn't for cables at all four corners keeping it in its place.

Belly's gonna get you!

2006-12-11T13:56:00.000Z

Well, maybe not, but with Christmas on its way, mince pies, cakes, chocolate and general high-calorie consumption (with me anyway), I thought I'd mention one of the most innovative uses of the internet I've seen in years. And it's in a Web2.0 vain.

traineo is a community aimed at fitness & weight loss, and you create a profile and monitor your progression to a healthier you. The genius of this is that other people can see your information, and help you by motivating you. There aren't many website dedicated to your fitness available (at least, not for free!), so I can see this thing really taking off - it even as a live counter of the total amount of calories burned by its members!

I heard about it through Techcrunch, and though I haven't signed up to it yet, I'm really excited about it.

As the Techcrunch article mentioned, its not a social networking site in the sense where the goal is to get as many 'friends' as you can get, but to interact with a tight group of buddies to motivate each other.

This is going on my new years resolutions list!

Flash & Christmas Card...

2006-12-11T11:33:00.000Z

These past two weeks we've been working on an Adobe Flash industry brief, and I've been partnered up with Lindsey.

Our brief has been set by Atticus Design & Media, and it's to create an interactive game for BP's alternativenergy initiative - an initiative to lower carbon emissions released while generating power (which accounts for around 40% of all CO₂ emmissions).

We've decided to build a game that follows a journey that a Panda named Peko embarks on, helping out BP to lower carbon emissions and learn about renewable energy. Why a Panda? Because they're an endangered species.
On a slightly different note, we've been given the challenge to create a digital christmas card (again, built in flash), so that the favourite one can be used by Cyfle (I think this is why we're doing it - previous trainees have done something similar in previous years).

I've gone for a traditional-ish theme, and while it's still in development, I thought I'd give a sneak peek at what I'm working on:

Branding...

2006-12-11T11:14:00.000Z

Last Friday we had a presentation called Branding Essentials with Victoria Jones from Design Wales.

As you can guess, it was about branding - what is it, why it's so important, and what processes are applied when going about it. I thought the presentation was excellent, yet obviously focused towards the work of Design Wales.

I had come across Design Wales's website many years ago, and I didn't have a clue what the hell it was. It's a WAG-funded design-support agency for businesses in Wales. What this means is that it will give support and advice to any business about anything relating to design - be it branding, advertising, websites etc. What makes this scheme unique is that it's free. They also have a directory of Wales-based designers that you can search through (which has come in handy for all of us D10 trainees when thinking about where we'd like to go on our two-week placement), and they'll hook businesses up with designers. This means that if you're a designer, Design Wales might get some work for you! Unfortunately, you must be a registered business - no students or freelancers allowed.

Still, they're work has improved businesses in Wales - as was shown to us in the presentation.

We were shown several case studies of different businesses (mainly in the food sector), and got shown how the branding of one company made their business jump about 29 months ahead of their business plan - echoing the importance of branding.

We received many little pamphlets about Design Wales's work, but the coolest pamphlets we received were two trend guides with suggestions of design trends for this coming Winter and Spring.

Flash training...

2006-11-30T12:17:00.000Z

This week we've been learning to use Adobe Flash with Neil Jenkins. He's been teaching us all we'll need to know for our Flash industry brief.

While I've had previous experience with Flash, I hadn't used it for a long time, and this serves as a nice refresher course.

One thing I didn't know Flash had the ability to do was to simulate download speeds of a movie on different connection speeds - you can test from a fast T1 connection down to a retro 14kbps modem connection. It also has a feature called a Bandwidth profiler which gives you various handy statistics relating to the load times and status of the movie - I love this!

We have been working on a flash mp3 player that loads music in from a URL and plays it. I decided to extend it a little, and build the Cyfle AMP, or Camp for short. At the moment it uses hard-coded variables to display various information, but it could easily be modified to import an XML file and parse the data from there. It's far from perfect - it hasn't got a volume control (though I'm not sure how important that is - wouldn't users just use their speakers to control the volume?), and there is a bug with the slider bar.

When flash imports an MP3 file, it can't tell how long a song is - only how much it has loaded so far. This works great when you stream it, because you can (as I have) applied a loading bar to show how much has been preloaded. You can't code it so that a positional slider will accurately show you how much of the song has been played. My solution to this was to fade in such a slider once the file had finished loading, and this is where I ran into a bug. I can't quite work out what went wrong, but it isn't working (it appears when it shouldn't sometimes, it doesn't disappear when it should, etc.).

Anyway, here's my MP3 player:

...that is, if you have flash (and aren't looking at it from an rss aggregator)

If you're interested in the music, you can click on the links in the flash player to take you to the websites where I got them - they were free to download, so I can't see a problem in allowing them to be played in this player.

Re-design

2006-11-29T11:10:00.000Z

Just a quick note to say that I spent a little time last night re-designing the blog. I thought that the older design was a little too bold and "in your face". This version's more calm and subtle in my opinion.

If however you're reading my blog from an aggregator (and according to my Feedburner stats, there's about 5 of you), you won't see any change - but check it out anyway!

Sound design...

2006-11-24T11:33:00.000Z

Yesterday and today we had John-Paul Jones in the office, giving us a workshop on Sound Design. We learned the basics (much of which most of us used creating our Digital Story), and we spent the afternoon creating a mash of words we had all recited. The words were a line each of the opening paragraph of Moby Dick (which I hadn't read, nor want to now).

My mashup ended up a little crude - many words in the opening paragraph of the book can be mashed up to create something quite innuendo-sounding. I might make it less crude and upload it here sometime.

John-Paul talked of the mashes of William S. Burroughs, who I can see possibly influenced groups like the Avalanches (his work is very similar to Frontier Psychiatrist). Even though he himself may not have created some of the funky-sounding mashes you can find (however I'm not certain about that), he was a "spoken word performer", whose spoken words were incorporated into the music.

I also found some audio interviews with Burroughs on the BBC Four website (from 1963) - I'm going to check these out when I find some spare time.

gVisit

2006-11-23T12:58:00.000Z

gVisit is a very interesting application. It's basically a Google Maps mashup - combining Google's API with a simple tracking system. Using it allows you to see where your visitors come from on their map.

So simple to use... makes me so jealous.

Sooo Kule!

2006-11-22T12:17:00.000Z

Kuler, the brand new colour tool from Adobe Labs, is awesome.

It's built in flash and has a community where you can share your schemes.

However, the most impressive part of this site (apart from it being built totally in flash), is the ability to create a complete colour scheme using only one colour. You can choose from 6 rules (I've also listed Adobe's descriptions for each one):

Analogous: Match colours with adjacent hues.
Monochromatic: Focus on one colour with varied intensity and lightness in a single hue.
Triad: Space your colours in a triangle around the wheel for a contrasting theme.
Complementary: Oppose two colours on the wheel for a simple theme based on two hues.
Compound: Combine interesting colours from multiple hues.
Shades: Create subtle variations of the base colour's hue.

There is also of course the option to customise all the colours yourself, but for someone like myself who really struggles with creating nice colour schemes, this tool is fabulous!

You must have an Adobe ID to use this tool, but its free to sign up.

Big thanks to former Cyfle trainee Mei for blogging about this.

Links for November

2006-11-22T11:56:00.000Z

I've decided I'm going to follow in the footsteps of Tom Coats (among many), by posting links here and there. It won't be as often as he does it, but I'll try. It'll give me some incentive to blog more often. Here goes!

The Web Developer's Handbook - a mammoth collection of categorised link that relate to all aspects of web development for people of all abilities.
Web 2.0 Developers - another handy resource, though poorly designed. Don't let the Web2.0 fool you however.
Screenfluent - Yes, yet another "CSS" website showcase/gallery, but this is beautifully simple. It's nice that Thomas Marban has kept it "Web 1" for a change and avoided user interaction.
Launch Feed - A blog that simply tells people about services and websites that have launched. An original idea, well done.
What are microformats? - They're a good idea, but it takes a bit to understand. Tantek Çelik explains in a presentation
Rebekka's Flickr Page - I subscribed to this a while ago, and every time she uploads a picture, she gets instant attention.... for a reason. Stunning photography in Iceland from a very very talented Photographer.
Duckfarm.net - Simply put, it gives you nice wallpapers. For free.
Kuler - a color scheme site... from Adobe Labs.

countdown to one of the best advent calendars....

2006-11-20T23:59:00.000Z

24ways is only 11 days away from starting again... Yipee!

I found this site about half way through december last year, and I was immediately hooked with its range of topics and its clarity in explanation. Hope this year's will be as good!

</drool>

Sgrîn brief finished

2006-11-20T10:20:00.000Z

As I posted a few weeks ago, Carol and I have been working on a website for S4C's viewers magazine, Sgrîn. They don't (to my knowledge) have a current website, and our site won't go live. Mainly due to the fact that its our first brief and it may not be up to standards, but also due to licensing issues (we've been using software with educational licenses).

We had three weeks to complete it, and we just managed to get it done in time (with about 10 minutes to spare!!!) You can see the completed website up and running (for the moment) here.

Carol's design is brilliant, and it was really easy to work with her - not sure if she could say the same about me!

I programmed an ajax interface for people to subscribe easier to the mailing list, and created a back-end for the website, allowing people to easily manage new and current issues, competitions, and send out emails to the mailing list subscribers.

Because the content management system's admin section won't be available for anyone to log in and browse, I've created screenshots of what it looks like. Click on one of the images below to see a larger version:

Loggr...

2006-11-16T22:47:00.000Z

This week has been hard - I've been trying to split my time between our dreamweaver brief and our lunch-hour mockup brief... unsuccessfully. I've noticed I've been working way past the 9-5 hours we do in the office, just to finish in time (I hope). It made me think how truly poor I handle my time, and that the work I do (in a real-world situation) would mean that I'd charge a lot of $$$ (freelance work, for example), or undercharge myself.

As I wondered about this issue, i stumbled upon modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk, Stuart Brown's slice of the web pie (through Mei Gwilym's post-cyfle Welsh-language blog). Stuart had been using software packages to track his time, all of which got him a little pissed off because they were'nt easy to use. His solution? Build his own time-management/timesheet application. That became Loggr.

Despite its tedious Web 2.0 name (he agrees), it is and does exactly what it says - its a dead simple AJAX timesheet app. That's right, AJAX. The beauty of it is its simplicity - no signups, nothing stored - all it is is a webpage containing code that keeps track of your time. It can save it (using cookies) and print it.

Words cannot express how impressed I am with this - I only with it had a way of storing what I did in the work and take it home with me - maybe this is something that will come.

Joe Clark's Micropatronage

2006-11-14T16:33:00.000Z

Joe Clark is on a mission, and he needs help. He wants $7777 Canadian to help him live for 4 months while he looks for $7 million Canadian to fund a research project into the four fields of accessibility - captioning, audio description, subtitling and dubbing.

While these aren't strictly for the web, they are for interactive media on a wider scale. I'm not too certain of what exactly the project will do, but it is something to do with standardizing the accessibility fields and running training and certification programs for building accessible things.

I'm too skint to give him any money myself, but I though it would help if I linked to the cause.

thanks to tom coates for drawing my attention to something truly intriguing.

Being e-green...

2006-11-13T21:40:00.001Z

James has been talking more and more about climate change (and rightly so - how many years before the point of no return!?). He's put up posters in our office, talked about icount, and been to the protest in Trafalgar Square. Its started to make me think more and more about ways of doing what we do in a greener and more eco-friendly way.

I stumbled across treehugger when surfing, and while I remember visiting the site many years ago, I didn't pay much attention to it. Its a magazine about green lifestyle, aimed at all people, not just your stereotypical tree-hugging eco-warrior hippies. As they sum it up, they're:

"dedicated to everything that has a modern aesthetic yet is environmentally responsible."

Great. They've even started hugg. Think of it as an environmentally focussed digg.

Another site I stumbled on when surfing is AISO web hosting - their web hosts are ran by californian sun that shines on their solar panels. Great for 2 reasons - eco-friendly and guarenteed not to crash if there's a power cut.

And lastly in this post (I'm sure I'll write again on this subject) is the Carbon Neutral Company. Now, I haven't looked for its competitiors, so I won't say much, but its a good thing that they help you cutting CO2 emissions and such.

Standards and accessibility

2006-11-07T10:11:00.000Z

While I'm on a blogging rampage, thought I'd post about a nice little accessibility checker.

Similar to the XHTML and CSS validators, the ATRC's Web accessibility checker is a very handy resource to check whether or not your webpages pass their criteria for an accessible website.

I searched for something like this after seeing the BBC's Click magazine on BBC News24, when they ran a story about accessibility. It uses a blind BBC worker as a case study about the importance of accessibility, and explains the forthcoming legal issues with non-accessible websites.

The British Standards Institution has published a guideline for designers and businesses called PAS 78 - a guide which stipulate all kinds of recommendations when designing (and commissioning) websites. Worth a read for the future!

A day in my life...

2006-11-07T09:44:00.000Z

Sarah Goodey asked us in the first of her workshops to keep a 12 hour (9am - 9pm) diary of what we were doing in order for us to realise how efficent (or inefficent) we managed our time. From my diary below, I can only gather that I'm quite rubbish at time management:

0900 - arrived at cyfle office, checked email. had coffee
0930 - upload a website for testing. begin work on the Dreamweaver brief's control panel interface
1000 - refining website with dreamweaver
1030 - working on control panel interface for dreamweaver brief
1100 - short scope workshop with Gareth
1130 - " "
1200 - working on interface for control panel brief
1230 - " "
1300 - lunch
1330 - " "
1400 - working on interface for dreamweaver brief
1430 - " "
1500 - " "
1530 - " "
1600 - " "
1630 - " "
1700 - finishing off day's work
1730 - beer with James
1800 - getting home (2 buses)
1830 - " "
1900 - food
1930 - finished food, watched TV
2000 - " "
2030 - started to work on code for brief
2100 - " "

Talking of project (and time) management...

2006-11-07T09:39:00.000Z

... I don't know where James found this, but this is one of the most accurate pieces of time analysis I've ever seen. True, so true.

The Brief & Project Management

2006-11-07T09:14:00.000Z

Over the past couple of weeks we've been working in pairs on a Dreamweaver brief that was given to us by industry. The companies range from Sequence to Atticus to the brief Carol and I was given, a magazine for S4C's viewer's magazine, Sgrîn.

We had a meeting with Rhys at S4C last friday to discuss some questions we had, and we came out of there very positive. We've also had short workshop with Sarah Goodey, who's been helping us with Project Management. She made me realise how important all aspects of project management (adj. "Getting something done") are. She gave us a link to an interesting website that have articles on all aspects of project management, and to an article on bad project management in particular.

We've set up a testing server, and I'll provide a link to it once we have something substantial to see (we've got a kick-ass design thanks to Carol, and I'm working on a simple AJAX mailing list and backend Content Management System).

HTML, Portfolio, and Attention

2006-10-25T08:37:00.000Z

This week we're learning HTML and Dreamweaver. We'll be getting a brief from industry (i think) at the end of the week, where we'll be working in groups of two. The hope s by then is that we would have built some sort of portfolio site.

We've all been given a directory on a central site to build onto, ~~but since I have a domain name I was intending to build a portfolio on, I'm going to use that. Its name coincides well with this course~~.

I found yesterday's work boring, not because of Steve, but because it was basic HTML that we were learning, and (not that I want to blow my own trumpet) I'm at a higher level than that I feel. We'll be getting onto the harder stuff later on in the week, which will be good.

Edit
~~The domain name is sylw.co.uk~~ A simple portfolio will be uploaded to the central cyfle server. Sylw however is Welsh for Attention. It goes well considering that's what I'll want once the Cyfle (which is Welsh for Opportunity) course is finished and I'll be looking to work in the big bad world.

Our day

2006-10-23T10:01:00.000Z

Today is a day to continue with our own work from the pas few weeks. Last week was Maya, and I'm glad to say that I've finished the TV ident already. Luckily, it was only meant to last a maximum of 10 seconds, so it didn't take all that long to render (at TV production quality, of course). I imported and cut it in Premiere, and then added a nice jazz loop and some sound fx for the final version. Preview it below...
Quick Edit: The video is available on YouTube, but google video outputs better quality (especially if you view it in their player at the originally uploaded size)

...that is, if you have flash (and aren't looking at it from an rss aggregator)

Even though we were taught how to create objects that reacted to real-world physics (gravity, wind etc.), I decided to go for a more humourous, comical approach, and use 'minstrel-type' shapes to be what-would-become musical notes, trapped in a musical score jail.

I must admit that I'm glad that the Maya week is over, not that I didn't enjoy the experience - the end result was much better than I thought I'd be able to do, but I don't have that much interest in pursuing 3D further. Handy to know, and I certainly learned a lot - techniques, terms and basic skills, but it isn't my cup of tea. I found it tough to learn the tools of the trade - Maya, that is. The X, Y and Z axes were hard to get, but Matt made it much easier on us with his amazing knowledge of 3D and Maya.

Over the next four weeks, we're learning Dreamweaver, Project Management skills and being given a brief. I'm really looking forward to this, as its really the first piece of action we'll get - working in pairs, as a team, building something from scratch.

Quick update - Photoshop work

2006-10-16T17:49:00.000Z

I noticed recently that Carol has put her Photoshop work up on her blog, and thought it would also be a good idea for me to do it. While I haven't got all the source images available to put up, I've put the original and final versions up:

I know its a little bit morbid, but I couldn't think of anything that would make the picture a happy final composite

Maya and 3D

2006-10-16T17:36:00.000Z

Earlier than I promised, I have my first 3D animation up on the web... Its a very simple bouncing ball (in very poor quality), rendered from 3 angles and brought into Adobe Premiere for a quick cut.

You don't have flash, so you can't see it

We had our first day of training again, and it started off with a very brief but very interesting history of CGI and 3D, then we moved straight onto Maya's interface. Very very daunting at first, but once we got down to the tools it got earier. I noticed that the complexities of the interface are down to the fact that there are about 3 or 4 different ways of doing things, and therefore 3 or 4 different menus to do the same thing.

We also got our brief today, which is to create a 4-10 sec. ident for a fictional Music TV channel with the tag line: "The future of music here and now". I'm really looking forward for this brief, and I hope that I can create an ident worthy of my own expectations. We shall see.

Digital Story

2006-10-16T09:37:00.000Z

It seems like I'm getting consistently worse at keeping this blog up to date, but I blame it on the work... in the sense that we've been working hard, but mainly because I didn't want to update the blog until I had something to show. Last Friday we finished our digital stories, and today I uploaded the video to YouTube. If you'd like to see it (and have flash), click the big play button on the movie below.

You don't have flash, so ou can't see it

Today we've started work on 3D software with Maya. It's a really daunting-looking piece of equipment, but after the morning session, I felt myself starting to get to grips with it. By tomorrow I hope to upload a film of the first animation we did... a bouncing ball!!

Presentation

2006-10-09T20:06:00.000Z

After starting the blog so well, being a good boy, updating every day, I've fallen short in the last few days. This is kinda on purpose. I've been working on my presentation on Donald Norman, and having presented it today, I'm relieved. I'm not a public speaker, and I was nervous... I think I was a little under-prepared... well, under-practiced anyway. It went better than I expected, which was good.

I really got into the research. Don Norman is a very intelligent man, and I hadn't heard of him until I pulled his name out of the hat. I won't bore any readers (or myself for that) reiterating what I said in the presentation. Its all available on the web. I will say this though... anyone who designs, should take a look at his book, Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things. It'll be a good guide to designing anything in the future.

Today we also got our introduction to Digital Storytelling. Gareth had some good advice I hadn't really heard of before about storytelling, something that I studied somewhat in University. We have to think of a two minute (1 page A4) script on a personal subject for a story. More on that tomorrow though.

BBC

2006-10-04T19:41:00.000Z

Today we went to the Beeb in Llandaf (Cardiff), to visit the New Media (sorry, Future Media and Technology) department. We had to sign a confidentiality form because we saw the work that they were currently working on, so I'm not sure how much I can actually write about ("Torchwood. That's about it.").

We were given talks by various members of the New Media staff, learning about all aspects of the work that they did. Producers, Encoding Technicians, Designers, Developers, Project Managers... all an integral part of the team that produces many interactive experiences, including the Dr. Who site (and the tardisodes, intended for mobile content, produced from scratch by the NM team), and the /wales and /cymru sections of the bbc.co.uk network.

I was a little surprised at how de-centralised they were - the Beeb require that they out-source 25% of the work to independent producers, and the New Media department was no exception. I'm not surprised at that, considering the small-ish size of their team and the amount of work they do, but I didn't realise they had offices all around Wales (that's a little naïve, I know). A lot of the more editorial, content side of their /wales and /cymru websites are local. The "Where I live" sections feature an extensive amount of content for 5 regions within Wales (North West, North East, Mid, South West and South East)... all maintained by English and Welsh staff located locally in those regions.

I admire their workflow and innovation, somewhat because of the many different websites they maintain, but mainly because of the time constrictions and guidelines they must abide by. The BBC websites must follow branding guides to maintain consistency across their websites, and any content must be available on a minimum of 2 platforms (for instance, the tardisodes are meant for mobile phones, but must be made available on another platform - to download on the Dr. Who website).

I was mostly impressed today by the guys who worked for the education sections of the /wales and /cymru sites. Their enthusiasm for providing a pleasing experience on different platforms (particularly for learning Welsh with Colin and Cumberland) was outstanding and really stood out in my mind.

Illustrator

2006-10-03T15:52:00.000Z

Following on from our Photoshop workshop, today it was our chance to get to grips with Illustrator. I looked forward to this workshop, particularly because I had never really used it before - for any vector-based artwork I needed to create for a website (which were mostly very simple logos and interfaces), I used Macromedia Fireworks.

I felt I learnt a lot from this workshop, and again, Ben's way of teaching got me to realise that I could streamline workflow further than I previously thought. I didn't even realise until today how much more powerfull Illustrator is compared to Fireworks, and to an extent, Freehand. Check out the Clown I built this afternoon - click the image for a larger size.

Photoshop and S4C

2006-10-02T22:08:00.000Z

Today we had our first workshop - Photoshop. Having worked a little with Photoshop before starting the course I found it easy to understand Ben (our tutor). I must admit that I didn't learn any wowing new techniques today, but it was fantastic to regain knowledge of forgotten tools, learn cool new shortcuts to the most commonly used features, and learn how Ben tackled imagery to help himself and his clients. His way was much more efficent than I ever thought possible, so I hope that it will help increase workflow with the software package in the future.

In the afternoon we went to visit S4C, one of the supporters of the course. It was interesting to find out what they did and a rough daily plan of their work. We were given an insight into the importance that Television companies/corporations place on websites for programmes. With rebranding in the works, there are interesting times ahead in the S4C New Media department.

Health and Safety

2006-09-29T13:06:00.000Z

Today we had a brief course on matters of Health and Safety in the workplace. I found it to be handy and interesting overall, albeit slightly boring (yet important) in parts (the legal bits). The course covered all the basics, from employer responsibilities to our (employee) responsibilities, and I reckon it was well-presented by David.

Having coming from a degree in Film and Television studies, I was very interested in the health and safety aspects of the production side of the BBC (from which we participated somewhat in their employee training CD). I never really studied the health and safety aspects while doing my degree, and I realised that I wasn't really safe doing some of the filming I did on the course! I'm sure to keep note of those things from now on when we get the chance to do something similar.

Product Evaluation

2006-09-28T14:26:00.000Z

Yesterday and today were were given 5 different products in order to evaluate Jakob Nielsen's Heuristics principles. Here's a paragraph on each and my personal score out of 10 on its usability:

Go for Gold with KIT
"A visually stunning program to introduce children to the Commonwealth Games." (from R-E-M).

Built by B-Dag/Productive Play for the Manchester Games in 2002, this is a piece of absolute rubbish in my opinion - and that's without really looking at the technical aspects (that is, heuristics). It looks like it was done in a rush (and it probably was, though they still had a quite extensive team, from 2 companies, to build it). Maybe they hadn't tested it on their target audience (children aged 6 - 11). They'd have gotten bored with it fast (I did). When I played with it, I couldn't find the menu buttons (and they showed no signs of being menu buttons. There was help at hand... with the help of the Games' mascot, in a corner - I found it after I got bored, and I was more bored after hearing it. It wasn't in an obvious place, and it annoyed me - can you imagine what children would make of it? The clincher here was that the educational games weren't educational at all... they wouldn't reveal the correct answer after any amounts of attempts, and the questions (specifically the geography ones) were actually quite difficult, even for me (and I did it in GCSE's!!!). There's a longer and more detailed review here by Althea Samuels at TEEM, though I'd say she's evaluating a revised version of the program. 1/10.
EuroTalk "learn Italian" (circa 1996/1997)
A problem for us at the very beginning is that we couldn't get it to work - possibly because it couldn't match the minimum requirements (highly unlikely), possibly because we didn't have the correct permissions on the computer (very likely). We kept on getting an error when it tried to save information (after every task we completed). The design was confusing at first, but we got to grips once we messed around a little. There was a lack of consistency with the navigation, which made the task of learning Italian a lot harder. 5½/10.
EyeToy for the Playstation 2
A product with the standard that now expected from console games. Although there was not a lot of text explaining the way to navigate, it was intuitive, easy and fun to navigate. Help and documentation was at hand for anyone who got into problems, which appeared in entertaining animations and films. Feedback on the menu items were a little confusing at first, but you can realise almost instantly that you simply have to continue to tickle the button so that the graphic will turn full circle. The only downside was that there was no way to return to the main menu once you got nested deeply in other options, but I suspect this was intentional to keep its simplicity. 8½/10.
Being John Malkovich DVD menus
The nature of DVD means that if the DVD is being spun in the drive, there shouldn't be any waiting around. Once you got to the menu (which had to be done manually as it went straight to the beginning of the film), you see an appropriate menu with ugly, out of character buttons to navigate to extra features, language selection and to play the film. The most confusing of many elements of the experience was the little "i" button at the bottom of every screen, which led to the help menu (unfortunately, it was the only button that had no text label - the one button you'd want to see if you were in trouble). This "i" button led to a language selection screen, which you had to choose in order to continue... to a simple and pointless legend. There were also many inconsistencies all over the menu - it seems it may have been a job of multiple designers, perhaps given constraints by its studio in order to maintain its branding. 5/10.
SPECIAL 10 Issue 8 DVD menus
This DVD was the best of all the products we evaluated. Special Ten is a music, film and entertainment magazine thats published on DVD. The 8th issue DVD was an outstanding piece of design in my opinion - simple, intuitive, easy to use and addictive. Though there were animation in between menus, they were so stunning that I found myself clicking different menu items just to see the animation - rather that reading, viewing and listening to the content. The only thing that could be said against it is that the text wouldn't be readable by all. 9/10.

Websites Evaluation and Presentation

2006-09-26T13:57:00.000Z

Websites Evaluation
This afternoon we were given the task of evaluating certain aspects of 4 websites. The criteria we used was:

How easy is it to use?
What audience is it made for?
Is it a commercial/educational/entertainment product?
Is it obvious how to use it, even before you click?
Can you tell how it was made?
What clues are there?
Does it contain mostly image/text/sound?
Are you satisfied with the way it works?

Without going into detail, here's my opinions on the websites:

Own Your own C
An appealing website at first, but soon gets annoying. First off, there's not much content, and it doesn't explain what the point of the website is - eventually, we found out that it was for an anti-tobacco campaign in California... Teenagers (the target audience) would get bored fast - I did. It was also a little slow to load, making it harder to maintain attention. 4/10.
Billy Harvey
A nice-looking website at first, built in flash. I thought the navigation was superb, and the speed of delivery was remarkable considering the huge amount of music and images that had to be downloaded. Getting Billy himself to speak and his character to lip-synch the songs was amazing - a beautiful touch. I thought it catered to the target audience (his fans and intrigued music fans) brilliantly. The only bad things I could say about it is that the navigation could be slightly confusing at first, but once you click about a bit, you get used to it. Also there was no alternative content for viewers without the Flash plugin. 7/10.
Fly me to the moon
Once I heard the name of the website, I expected to be wowed, and I was. At first. The very nature of the navigation disappoints rather than make it fun, and while the animation is impressive at first, it gets boring soon. The flight to the moon is a good concept, but the inability to return to certain "docking stations" for information is annoying. Its not a website for most people as it's obiously aimed at the advertising industry. 5/10.
The Bad Luck-o-meter
The page itself is basic and appears to have been made in a rush, so it wasn't a surprise that we were meant to be evaluating the flash experience that it linked to. The Bad Luck-o-meter is a simple quiz about safety and insurance-based things. Concentrating on your home, its a brilliant bit of viral-flash magic. Being able to hear the questions made it easy on the eyes and allowed us to enjoy the amazing graphics. Easy to use and enticing, making you want to continue. While obviously commercial, its also obvious that it wasn't the final version - you couldn't finish the quiz! I can't wait for it. 8/10.

Presentation
We've also been asked to present a powerpoint presentation on one of the pioneers of multimedia design. The name I drew out of the hat was Donald Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group (with web guru, Jakob Nielsen). I'll be posting about Donald soon.

Induction

2006-09-25T18:42:00.000Z

Today was the first day of dimension 10 - 10 of us on an intensive interactive media course lasting 6 months. We were getting to know each other and hearing what kind of briefs we would be given (by industry) and what technologies we were going to learn. Exciting stuff!