Alex's REALLY REALLY cool blog

OJ and ethical issues

2008-04-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

For our blog this week Kodi posed us a question about Online Journalism and liebl.
He said, "One of the ethical issues not mentioned in class this week but nonetheless crucial to OJ is the potential for libel. Because of the ever-present nature of archives in this new form of journalism, people whose names may have been cast in bad light eons ago don't appear to be cleared at all -- online. Journalism doesn't correct or retract archives."

For me after reading the 3 articles that he provided, I thought this is a non issue. I think the Slate said it best, "you may think reputation belongs to you, but it doesn't. It lives inside the heads of other people, and now inside Google. It's their possession. If you want to change it, do something to convince people and the Web that you aren't who they think you are."

It is not the job of times or any other news organization to go back to every single article and fix what at the time was printed was fact. If a person was charged with a crime but then charges were later dismissed, it does not change the fact that they were charged. That is the truth and going back to edit it so it doesn't show up in search engines would be changing history in a way.

I do think libel is an issue with online journalism but I feel that this is not libel. I feel that people are more likely to slander individuals online because most online publications do not have the same editing processes as print papers.

Lions, Tigers and RSS feeds, OH MY

2008-04-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

During the course of this course, kodi asked us to make an rss feed. RSS stands for "rich site summary or real simply syndication" according to make-rss-feeds.com Rss feeds are made with XML and after a little bit of practice are not that hard to make. Feeds are nice because they provide a link with little room for information to get lost with the page. My team, TEAM PINK, was able to create and rss feed rather quickly, in fact we were the first and we did it from scratch. There were some issues at first but I was able to figure them out after I took a look at the page source for another rss feed.

Flash effects

2008-04-29T07:42:00.000-07:00

So The week of the 15th we started working with flash. I had some experience in flash, I liked making stick figure movies in high school. Kodi had us do 7 different tutorials in groups. The first 3 were just getting to know flash. The other 4 were Fade in, Zoom in, Blur, and photo slide show. It was a little difficult because the tutorials were meant for windows so some of the commands were different. I really only found one way to use flash on my site was in the banner. I used the Zoom effect and the Fade effect. I feel it is an effective use of flash on my site. The overall experience was okay and I did not mind working in groups. It was a good way to expand my learning by helping others.

Behaviors on my site, just a little late....

2008-04-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

So although I am a little late on this post, I feel like its better to have the behaviors working before I link to them as an example of my work. Sooo first thing first. Swap Image and open new window are in the same link. I thought it would be cool to incorporate the both. I have it on my homepage on the left hand side nav bar. I tried to have it on my published work page but it would not work. Something happened and neither Maeve or myself could figure it out. I did a pop up window and play a sound on my Links Page. I think it works well the pop up window lets everyone that all the links open in a new window, and the sound... well I just used that for entertainment. I made it myself in garageband. I used jump menus on all of my pages. I put it on the upper right hand corner of the page. It works well as an alternate form of navigation.

Most of these behaviors are used on journalistic sites. The open new browser window is used on site to illustrate more info or for movies and slide shows. An example is the Gallery of pope John Paul II early childhood. The link is on the left "Gallery: His Life"
Kodi's example of Swap on his Nyc24.org article is a good one. Jump menus are a good way to navigate to another article about a similar subject or to personalize a page. I think the one that works the least is sounds. Clicks sounds and sound bites I think add the least to a page. Audio clips of speeches i think work well however.

Thats all I for now..... hopefully i will be better with the coming blogs.

Campaign 2008

2008-02-18T22:16:00.000-08:00

Even though November elections are more than 8 months away Campaign 2008 has been in full swing for a while and mainstream media has made sure that they have been following every second of it.
All of the major news networks and their accompanying websites and partners have devoted hundreds of hours to make sure they grab as many people into their coverage over the next. My question is what makes each so different. If one outlet, say msnbc's political site has this great story that at the time its publish no one else has, I'm positive within one hour of publishing Fox New's political site will have the same story.
So the most difficult part of Campaign 2008 for the voter is finding good ORIGINAL coverage. A good one stop shop for coverage is ThePage. Although it is run by CNN and Time Magazine, it brings everything you could ever want to know together. It is a great example of what online journalism can do.
This site is all about CONVERGENCE. It brings together text, video, and sound clips. It provides a unique experience for users providing tons of information all in one place.

J295 Websites

2008-02-06T22:10:00.000-08:00

In order to better understand web design and what makes a good website, Kodi provided students with a list of sites students should look at.
The first site I looked at was How do you get started, really? It is a web site by Mindy McAdams and it is a "resource for web workers" She talks about the 7 components of Deign, which she referenced from Alex W. White's book The Elements of Graphic Design. She talks about how: Dominance, Hierarchy, Balance, Space, Color, Unity, and Gestalt; all contribute to clear and effective communication.
Kodi also provided 3 web sites with content from Jakob Nielsen. Now although the content was from 1999, 2000, and 2005 they did provides some useful information on whether navigaions are useful and how to organize content on your page. The page from 2005 was about the top 10 web design mistakes of 2005.
The Design tutorials that kodi provided were interesting however for me they provided little to no help me. I have some design skills and I found the tutorials somewhat basic.

2008-01-31T08:30:00.000-08:00

good old facebook

2008-01-31T08:27:00.001-08:00

First Post

2008-01-31T08:03:00.000-08:00

This is just the first blog entry for my Journalism 295 class. We will see how well this goes....... never seemed like i could get into this but since i have to do it for class ill just get hooked. as the kid 3 seats down from me just said...... "and it begins"