Podcasting

What is podcasting?

Podcasting is a way of automatically downloading audio files to your computer. You can then listen to this audio on your computer or transfer them to an MP3 player.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/services/podcasting/

What is a podcast?

It's a new way that a web site can automatically send you music or radio programming to your portable device. To do this, you subscribe to the podcast by downloading a small piece of software that manages all of your podcast subscriptions. When connected to the internet, the software searches for the latest edition of the program on the accessed website and will download it to a folder on your computer, ready for when you next plug in your portable mp3 device. This means that you don't have to manually search for new programs to download on this website. It happens automatically!

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/services/podcasting/help.htm#what

So what is all the fuss about podcasting?

Portable, flexible and global.

Is it of any interest to you as webdesigners of the future?

Provide emotional context and overall tone. Enables people with vision impairment and reading disabilities to access information and entertainmant.

What are the possibilities and limitations?

Possibilities:
Creative entrepreneurs and smart technologists may make it easy for podcasters to create hyperlinks to pre-defined cues in audio files, deliver on-the-fly closed captioning, automatic index creation or full-text transcripts.*

Limitations:
Podcasts lack rapid comprehension - the user does not know immediately whether the contents are useful.*
Lack of access to high speed connections, may have to pay, file sizes and file compatability.

*Source: The value of podcasting
http://blogs.bnet.com/church/?m=20050708

All sources accessed on 17 October 2006.

Web Page Contents & Their Attributes

Icons
Logos: smooth, transparent
Banners: collage
Photographs: jpeg (cannot use background transparency or be animated)
Graphics: gif or png (png's enable background transparency but have high file size and like gif's can produce unwanted pixels on image)
Vector: mathematical description
Raster: pixel
Images in general: for web use 72 dpi, for print use 300 dpi

Code of Ethics

A professional in any industry endeavours to uphold and advance the honour, dignity and effectiveness of the profession by observing high standards of competence and ethical conduct.

A professional should act with professional responsibility and integrity in their dealings with the community, clients, employers, employees and students. In doing so they acknowledge and demonstrate the following values and ideals as Standards of Conduct:

Priorities
I must place the interests of the community above those of personal or sectional interests.

Competence
I must work competently and diligently for my clients and employers.

Honesty
I must be honest in my representations of skills, knowledge, services and products.

Social Implications
I must strive to enhance the quality of life of those affected by my work.

Professional Development
I must enhance my own professional development and that of my colleagues, employees and students.

My Profession
I must enhance the integrity of my profession (eg. the information technology profession) and the respect of its members for each other.


Source: Australian Computer Society Code of Ethics

Design

A web designer must consider three important elements in any design: layout, colour and typography.

Layout
The layout features of a design give form and space. These features extend to depth, balance, consistency, resolution and dynamism.

Colour
Colour has decorative appeal that creates interest and draws attention. It also captures association and emotion. For example, red is a hot colour and evokes passion while blue is a cool colour and evokes tranquility. A designer must also be aware of the different cultural associations of colour as well as the limitations others may have have when viewing them. For example black in western culture is associated with mourning whereas it is white in Japan, while many people may suffer from some form of colour blindness. To ensure harmony and continuity and avoid confusion, colour schemes should also be matched and consistent.

Typography
Typography is the ability to present words in ways that enhance and extend their literal meaning. Relative emphasis and different styles of text are two means to achieve this. Examples include the use of headings and indents that promote or demote words producing a hierarchical ordering of thoughts and the many font families that reflect a theme.

A designer knows that all three aspects must complement the other in order to achieve the desired objective. This is fundamental for any good design.

Source:
* Judith Cooke's TAFE Website Design class
* Visual Interface Design for Windows by Howlet.

Project Management

Project management is the ensemble of activities (such as tasks) concerned with successfully achieving a set of goals. This includes planning, scheduling and maintaining progress of the activities that comprise the project. Reduced to its simplest project management is the discipline of maintaining the risk of failure at as low a value as necessary over the lifetime of the project. Risk of failure arises primarily from the presence of uncertainty at all stages of a project.

Project management is the discipline of defining and achieving targets while optimizing the use of resources (time, money, people, space, etc). Thus, it could be classified into several models: time, cost, scope, and intangibles.

Project Management is basically divided into five parts:

1. Requirements analysis
2. Engineering and Design
3. Procurement
4. Development or Construction
5. Maintenance or Post Development System (or Software) Support

Not all projects will visit every stage as some stages will not be needed or projects can be terminated before they reach completion. Some projects will also go through steps multiple times.

Many industries utilize variations on these stages and while the names may differ from industry to industry, the actual stages typically follow common steps to problem solving - defining the problem, weighing options, choosing a path, implementation and evaluation.

Requirements analysis begins the process by defining the requirements and specifications, first in coarse terms, followed by increasingly refined terms, until a clear concept of operation and design can emerge. It is critical to the remaining steps that this step be complete and not changed because the cost to make changes to the requirements is exponential as one moves from step to step.

The basic design, conceptualization and engineering comes under the category of Engineering Works.

Procurement is the purchase of raw material like brought outs, materials, tools and tackles, etc required for the project.

Construction includes implementation, installation or construction project including testing.

Maintenance ensures the project is monitored and controlled and remains at peak performance. It could even initiate a new project managment cycle if required.

Project management lifecycle of "A Bushcare Day"

The stage names for "A Bushcare Day" project are not similar to the general stage names indicated above. This reflects the individual nature of the project. Because of this generalisation, some stages of "A Bushcare Day" fall into more than one general stage of a project. For example, Morning Tea Break falls under both Requirements Analysis and Maintenance or Support. This is because Bushcare volunteers determine the next working day location and work to be done whilst having a tea-break. Thus the list below shows some stages belonging to more than one general stage of the project cycle. Please refer to MS Project Document "BushcareDay" for the list of tasks.

1. Requirements Analysis: Preparation, Morning Tea Break
2. Engineering and Design: At Start of Day, Before Commencement of Work
3. Procurement: Preparation, Finish Up for the Day
4. Development or Construction: Start Work, Recommence Work
5. Maintenance or Support: Morning Tea Break, Start Work, Finish Up for the Day

Sequence of Stages for "A Bushcare Day:"

1. Preparation
2. At Start of Day
3. Before Commencement of Work
4. Start Work
5. Morning Tea Break
6. Recommence Work
7. Finish Up for the Day

Project management tries to gain control over five variables:

time
cost
quality
scope
risk

Three of these variables can be given by external or internal customers. The value(s) of the remaining variable(s) is/are then set by project management, ideally based on solid estimation techniques. The final values have to be agreed upon in a negotiation process between project management and the customer. Usually, the values in terms of time, cost, quality and scope are contracted.

To keep control over the project from the beginning of the project all the way to its natural conclusion, a project manager uses a number of techniques: project planning, earned value, risk management, scheduling, process improvement.

Three "A Bushcare Day" Scenarios that show how project management variables can be affected:

(a) Only a few volunteers attend the day

Time: Time is not affected
Cost: No cost accept loss of potential free volunteer contribution
Quality: Quality of work is not affected
Scope: Less work is achieved
Risk: Work required to be done is not achieved

(b) It rains

Time: All time is lost
Cost: All free volunteer contribution is lost
Quality: Irrelevant
Scope: Nothing can be done
Risk: Risk has eventuated resulting in lost work

(c) Hot weather

Time: Less could be achieved in the alloted time
Cost: Possible reduction in free volunteer contribution
Quality: May decline as a result of sun/heat exposure
Scope: Less work achieved due to heat conditions
Risk: Injuries from sun-stroke, snakes and black ants affecting performance.


(Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management)

What is Web 2.0?

Definition:

Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.

(Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0)


Wired News.Com Excerpts:

SAN FRANCISCO - 10:42 AM Oct. 06, 2005 - No one may be able to agree on what Web 2.0 means, but the idea of a new, more collaborative internet is creating buzz reminiscent of the go-go days of the late 1990s.
Web 2.0, according to Tim O'Reilly, is an "architecture of participation" - a constellation made up of links between web applications that rival desktop applications, the blog publishing revolution and self-service advertising. This architecture is based on social software where users generate content, rather than simply consume it, and on open programming interfaces that let developers add to a web service or get at data. It is an arena where the web rather than the desktop is the dominant platform, and organization appears spontaneously through the actions of the group, for example, in the creation of folksonomies created through tagging.

"Web 1.0 was commerce. Web 2.0 is people," (Ross Mayfield).

Satish Dharmaraj knows he's facing a tough battle taking on a flagship Microsoft product, but thinks that Web 2.0-style collaboration and the efforts of the open source community might be his saviour.
"I would not like to take on the big boy by myself," Dharmaraj told Wired News. "I would love to take Microsoft on with IBM and Google and Apple on my side."

Written by Ryan Singel.

(Source: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69114,00.html)

Scalable Vector Graphics

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML.
(Source: http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/)

"Scalable Vector Graphics will let you draw graphics using inline code...and it's efficient!"
(Source: http://www.webdeveloper.com/design/design_svg_example.html)

Basic SVG tags include:
svg
style
g
desc
defs
use
text
rect
circle
path
line
polyline
polygon
rotate

Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts

General:

Ctrl + a - Select all
Ctrl + d - Deselect
Ctrl + z - Undo
Ctrl + Alt + z - Multi-undo
Ctrl + c - Copy
Ctrl + v - Paste
Ctrl + x - Cut
Ctrl + s - Save
Ctrl + n - New Document
Ctrl + p - Paste
F1 - Help
[] - Resizing brush

Toolbox:

t - Type
v - Move
d - Resets palette to black and white
x - Switches foreground to background on palette

Colour Blind - Lizzy

Hints to create:

Choose Eliptical Marquee to select the eye.

Select Image/Adjustments/Hue-Saturation and vary levels to change colour.

Select Image/Image Size and change Resolution to 72 pixels/inch.

Save for Web as .jpg and ensure quality does not exceed 10 seconds.