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Ideas
Amazon Tags

Musicovery

ColrPickr

Cover Pop

Technical

Processing

Flickr API

Basic scripts

User Age

36 Photos

monkey_bananas

William Latham

This was an odd discovery. I attend a lecture as part of BAF Game a few weeks ago, I was taking students from Shipley so wasn't sure what the lecture was on. This was shortly after talking to Ian about Richard Dawkins, memes etc. So it was a surprise to hear him discuss a lot of the issues that I had been thinking about and reading about. What was also interesting was seeing the work he'd done with genetic programmes, something Dawkin had started to work on. I also find the fact he'd started as a fine artist and moved into computers/new technology interesting as I had started as a painter/sculptor and am moving into web based work. The other surprise was to find out after the lecture that he is currently a professor at the Leeds Met. So I intend to try and contact him at some point.

Link to an online copy of the lecture

Musicovery, Amazon Tags

A couple of interesting web tools, which after having tried a bit of PHP coding I have better understanding of how they work.

Musicovery is similar to LastFm/ Pandora. It groups artists, songs genres and interestingly mood. (Dark, positive, calm etc) I also like the interface design to this site which is more sprawling, messy and less static than LastFM/Pandora. It's an interesting approach to break away from a standard list format.

Amazon Tags is program created in Processing. It's a simple idea, take the 1000 most popular Amazon tags, create a tag cloud and animate it. What I like about it is the 3D'ness of it, the sense of movement, these products are always selling so why not reflect that in the site design in some way other than numbers/sales figures. I also like the fact the size of the tags alters depending on how often they have been tagged. Again it would be possible to create something similar with tagged images on the University site.

PHP, Flickr, tests

So I've been trying to get an idea of how PHP, Flickr, API coding might work, As I mentioned Flickr allows people access to their codes, photos etc through API kits. There are also a lot of third party applications that give you coding options. So over the last week I've started to test these out.

After a lot of cursing and swearing I managed to get this simple program to work
Form script
It's a very basic script but the point is it allows users to submit a query and get a response. The theory is from there why not ask a question and the response be a series of images.

So that's the next step. After a lot more cursing and swearing I got a basic script up and running that shows a users last 36 photos. This is a example of how that could work. Again it is very simple script, but it took a lot of work to get it to work.
Users Last Photos
The problem with this script at the moment is it can only find my last 36 photos. Other peoples usernames don't work yet. So I will need to tweak the code to fix that.

The theory behind all this is that for the website thing I'm developing the PHP coding will gather images in specified way. For example a users last 36 images, date they were added or a tagged name for an image. Then another program such as Processing or Flash will allow you to start moving and re-adjusting the webpages.

What will be interesting will be developing ways for people to search for images. It would be good to avoid the usual ways that people find images. The ColrPickr is an intersting approach to this problem. Actauly a simple starting point may be to use the traditional search mthods and start adding visual elmnts through a programme such as Processing.

Teaching at Shipley

I posted this on the Shipley College website after a lot of moaning by tutors about students wasting time on MSN, flash games, Facebook, Meebo. It relates in particular to discussions I've had with Aiden and Ian and other tutors at Shipley College about how courses should be structured, what lessons should cover and how teaching can/should be delivered. It's an odd feature of the courses I teach on (E-Media, Games Development) that they have been set up and housed in the Business/IT sector within the college. When in fact the skills needed for the courses are traditional art and design skills.

As some one who teaches on the BTEC National and First Games Development course I've found some of the comments very interesting. Bear in mind the Games development courses are fairly new/experimental courses and the way they are taught and run are a very different compared to a traditional maths or IT lesson. But certainly from my point of view it is no longer a matter of students playing on the odd flash game or using MSN, it is a whole change in technology/ culture/society and as a lecturer you should respond to that in some way. A lot of the programs the students are using are great teaching aids.

I've had students use YouTube to look at old black and white horror movies, obscure Russian horror films, Japanese animation. These are things they'd never get to see in every day life and it's all free and available online, so why not use it. I've had other students who've taken 15mintues out of the lesson to make a Flash animation and upload it to YouTube. Is that a waste of their time? They're being creative, working independently, learning software but it could easily be classed as messing about or wasting time. I have another student who was basing a game on War of the Worlds and only ever seen the recent remake. So you use Wikipedia and YouTube to show him it was originally a book, then a radio program and then a 1950s film now he's hooked on the original idea and couldn't care about the remake.

Yes there will be students who sit on MySpace all morning but banning these programs is not the answer. I would also challenge the notion that children today are unable to focus on more than one thing at a time. There is a generation of kids who can quite happily listen to their Ipod, check their e-mail and get on with their work. Yes there should be clear structure and boundaries in the lessons but teachers should also take an active interest in the software students are using and rather than dismiss it as kids wasting time or messing about, see how they could use it to their advantage.

This link my be of some interest to you

http://www.futurelab.org.uk/about_us/index.htm

Notes from tutorial with Ian

How does this software work
PHP, Java, Flash etc
How far do I get involved with coding/programming
Design, sketch, rough build pass it on
Using technology
Youth of today
education
Current structure of art/design courses
Cross over points- my role as a media/art/IT/ lecturer
How do you incorporate this new technology
Already being used by students (YouTube, Wiki, MySpace, Meebo)
Speed of how this is picked up YouTube 18months, already a fixture with students
What is learning, particularly within art, design, media
Is it still necessary to divide structure courses in a traditional way
Again how do you avoid things just becoming a big mess
Example students making 10minute Flash animations, uploaded and on YouTube within 20mins. Independent learning, software, experiment
Ease of use, barrirers to learning
Future Lab
How much freedom are you given within a course structure
Further education versus Higher Education
Purpose of Further education
Games Development- stuck in the middle not art, not design, not IT. Where does it fit in, does it fit in. Does it need to fit in.
Second Life- promotional tool.
Ready made audiences, outside feedback.
To do: start using ideas from Flickr hacks> my own work (return to archive idea)
move onto a MA Design/Fine Art version of site with searchable, movable elements.
Six students as test
Whole university

processing

One of the pieces of software mentioned in "The How the Cover Pop is Made" is a program called Processing. This is an excellent programming language.

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound. It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.

The key thing about this is it aimed at people who want to program visual images. It is possible to create 3D images, you can zoom into images, move things around, images can slide around the page, you can peel back images to reveal the image beneath. All the stuff that I have talked to Ian about in the tutorials could eventualy be done using this progam.

Cover Pop

Jim Bumgardne who made the Colr Pickr also made this great little program Cover Pop


How it Works

Thanks for visiting CoverPop. I made the first CoverPop, a few thousand science fiction covers, on Saturday, Oct 16, 2005, after thinking about it for a couple of weeks, but not having time to work on it. It took me much of the day Saturday to make.

The 3,448 covers were arranged horizontally by time, with earlier covers to the left, and more recent covers to the right.

The covers were arranged vertically by hue.

Colr Pickr, Filckr Hacks

After getting stuck with RMagick and Ruby. I went back to my original idea for a simple colour scheme generator. So I started off by googling "colour scheme generator" and one of the first links I found was this
Colr Pickr
A really simple idea click on anywhere in the colour wheel and a dozen Flickr images that match the same colour tone form the wheel are shown.

From here I found out about this Flickr API

Flickr has an open Application Programming Interface (API for short). This means that anyone can write their own program to present public Flickr data (like photos, tags, profiles or groups) in new and different ways. There's a long list of API methods available to you to work with, and we love it when this happens, so... go forth and play!

So this now gives me more options, not only am I limited to the University as source of images and work.

Ruby, RMagick and other things

I've been trying to get my head round Ruby
Ruby
Why's Guide to Ruby
Try Ruby

After a week of trying it out I managed to get a very simple text programme that would understand when someone clicked on the correct buttons it would respond with what colour background your website should have. What I couldn't do was get images to show up.

I then found this tutorial which looked straight forward. Ha!!
Render Collages in Ruby
From here I found
RMagick which looked a great version of Ruby that reworked the language for images. So far so good.

So I start working on a couple of basic RMagick tutorials only to find they won't show up in a normal Windows XP screen, with no obvious explanation as to how to view them.

After a lot of reading round trying to find a way to view RMagick I found out about
GTK+ and GNOME Now these are interesting as they are used to design open source software such as the GIMP. The problem is they require a lot of work in terms of learning the software and how to programme them, they also lack the aesthetic feel I want. And by this point I'm moving to far away from my original idea of a simple colour generator.

Discussion with Aidan

Offshoot website for MA departments
How niche sites might work
Using words to find new stuff
Harsh
Meaning of words
Avoiding being pigeonholed
Being pigeonholed
Girls Aloud
Amazon recommends
Things you've never heard of
Boxing people in without knowing it
Finding similar people into the same things
A way for designers to find work
RSS feeds
Sky Sports News
Scrolling, updating
Constant updates
Work coming in
Last FM/Pandora How they are made?
Tagging
Meems IMeems
3D versus 2D
Social psychology

Notes from Tutorial with Ian

Ruby
Ajax
Visualizing what the site would look like
Re-using existing code from the University
Clusters
DNA
Random searches
Un-random searches
Piaxelated
Tags
Text
Google search
Image search
Finding people
Finding work
Chairs
Art design
Who people think they are
Why spend time designing a site when it is already there
Adding programmes that enhance the site
Working as a designer
Avoiding the big idea
Knowing how things work

Colour: Meaning, Symbolism & Psychology

The Channel 4 test has lead me onto thinking about adapting existing colour tests as a way of generating palates and designs. Again it would be a way of starting to incorporate a visual element into what I'm creating.

Colour Quiz
Web Page Colour

What is more interesting to a designer, is the emotive power of colour.
Colour communicates!

We all know that red is a warm colour, because it is associated with fire. Blue is a cool colour, because that is the colour of the sky, and water. Green is a fresh colour, we associate it with grass and lush foliage. All these associations are programmed into the human ROM.

Art and design tests

Not been able to find anything that matches exactly what I want to do for the initial test page.

The closest ones I've found are a BBC art and personality test

Pick A Palette
This Channel 4 one is meant for interior design, it's a simple test that would create a palate of colours and design style to work. You could substitute the text for images, the colour palate is a good idea.

A bigger bang

Big article on Web 2.0 in the Guardian's Weekend Magazine

One thing that struck me from reading all the interviews was the sense that you needed to have a "big idea" a lot of people interviewed seemed to have had one excellent idea, then didn't know where to go next. The more I think about it I'd rather use whatever I create on the MA as a starting point. Some kind of web thing the for the MA department leads onto more web design ideas, viral promotion, self promotion etc. It would be easy to get hung up on coming up with an idea rather than work or ways of working that could be used in my professional practice over the next few years.

Tim Guest

Interesting article in Edge magazine by Tim Guest who was discussing Second Life and virtual worlds. Some interesting discussion about how IBM are using this software. Virtual worlds such as Second Life limit the number of people who can be online in the same space so they differ to traditional web in the sense that millions of people can be looking at a screen but in Second Life only a limited number of people can fit into a virtual room so it means business may become more tailored to the individual.

I can't find a link to the article but there is a piece by Tim Guest here discussing Second Life

Notes from tutorial

Starting points
Testing to see what people like
Find out what tests exist at the moment (abstract, impressionists, cubist)
Developing templates form this
Options for skins
Personal space
Scrapbook but with a purpose (Archive, vanity, selling)
Adaptable elements, six templates with ten elements that can be altered
Set up a simple interactive test
Fine art versus design
Use both fine art and design MA departments
10 questions. What do you like, why do you like it?
Profiling
How people perceive themselves
Tagging, recommendations
How to tag without words
Animations, visual. Remember art and design a visual language
Amazon homepage- lastFM. Personal recommendation site. If like this artist you might like this. Pandora!
Linking people similar work, not just within the Uni. Other artists, designers writers etc.
Random
Meme's Richard Dawkins, genes, genetics, evolution natural selection
How do things survive
What makes a site popular
How can you encourage use
Popularity, viral promotion
How could these things evolve
Links to viral advertising
How things can spread
Second Life any links? (Silver Spurs movie?)
Letting go, editorial control
Have a simple test up and running in the next couple of weeks, aim to have skins by Christmas? Work permitting.

imeem

imeem is another social networking site. What is different about this one is it incorporates elements from a number of other sites. it has photosharing similar to flickr, so you can upload your photos. It has elements from LastFM, you can post your own playlist which other people can listen to (this is an intertesting feature that LastFM doesn't have) and comment on. What I like about this site is it is starting to move awy from being purely a website that does one thing (photosharing, blogging or instant messaging) and trying to combine them into something else. You can download software, similar to flickr's uploader or instant messenger to share your photo's, music, video and so on.
This is an example of how it could be used
but it still fells like an akward mix of all the current social networking sites out there.

The problem with the design of the site is it slightly bland. It's clean and simple, which is a nice contrast to MySpace but there doesn't seem to be anyway to reskin your pages. I'd like the option to do that. I've also found the user interface difficult to understand, it's not clear if you can import photos from flickr in the same way you can import your IM contacts. It seems all over the place.

But there are a couple of interesting design features
This is the "imeem tag cloud"

this is simlar to something Ian mentioned in my tutorial. It's a flash animation that has random tags which users can click on. Now this is not that different to tagging on flickr but by simply animating gives it a whole new appeal. Again this could be pushed further. If it's an animation why do the tags have to be words, why not images or photos?

Another simple thing i liked on this site was the grouping of what people have uploaded and the tags they have used.

Ten Images

Ten Images for Wednesdays seminar

Images
Best viewed as a slide show.

moBlip

Interesting viral adverting for Thom Yorkes album The Eraser.

moBlip

The aim of this project was to promote the Mercury Prize-nominated album ‘The Eraser’ by Thom Yorke, frontman from Radiohead. This took the form of a global viral mobile campaign, utilising java and mobile internet across over 70 mobile networks. MoBlip spread through word-of-mouth and was shared directly from user to user, spreading internationally across fan communities. Recipients of the text message are asked to submit their location. In return they receive:
• A marker on the map at xlrecordings.com/moblip.
• An exclusive Realtone from the new album.


Users can then track the spread of MoBlip across the world. To view MoBlip, go to www.xlrecordings.com/moblip. To join MoBlip, enter the address http://moblip.xlrecordings.com into your phone browser. The website included full integration with Google Maps allowing fans to zoom in on satellite images to track the spread of the MoBlip per district. We witnessed a viral spread of 1200% in 5 days. The campaign was recently nominated for BT Digital Music Award

Key words

MA Statement of Intent Key Words

Challenging work that balances aesthetics with technology is a valuable skill.
The ability to use this technology is a becoming a crucial part of professional practice for artists and designers
Ability to deliver work to an audience quickly
Potential audience
Careful consideration to how people will use this new technology
Designers also need to explore how they can use this technology to their advantage
Rated and commented on by visitors
Publish your creative thoughts easily
Help artists and designers, develop, promote and sell work
How work can reach an audience

Law in Action

Law in the virtual world Radio Four 24/10/06 4pm

Brief discussion about legal issues in virtual worlds, such as Second Life. Who's law do you obey in spaces like this. American, European, UK? Is this an opportunity to create a new global legal system? Who will decide these issues?

This ties into the idea of content creators in these virtual spaces, it brings up issues of copyright, intellectual property rights etc.

Content Creators

Content creators

Interesting article about the sale of YouTube, discussing who should be paid out of the deal. Is it YouTube who provide the service that allows people to upload movies or should it be the general public, the "content creators", who are filling YouTube with movies. This is also bring ups issues of copyright and legal issues of who owns the work once it is on a site.

BT Digital Music Awards 2006

Stumbled across this after "Dusk 'til Dawn" on Channel 4. A couple of interesting pieces on how bands and musicians can use blogs and social networking sites, (MySpace, Bebo etc) to generate interest, promote themselves, find an audience and so. Interesting ideas on how to find work, filtering work, sites which can now do this "So much music out there how do you know what's good? Who tells you these things" Comes back to promotion, I guess.

Shame it's being presented by Alex Zane otherwise it might have been more enjoyable to watch, and Steve Lamaq is on it which is probably why it's on after midnight or maybe because Sandi Thom is peforming live.

Just had look at what these awards are actually for. A bit of an odd mix of awards for blog sites and websites that in some way promote digital music.

The top 200 websites is a great example of democracy in action, Chris De Burgh, Trail of the Dead, Duran Duran all in the top 50.

These actually look like interesting links relating to mobile download promotions
Best Artist Promotion
White Stripes - Denial Twist project
www.xlrecordings.com/denialtwist

Best Use of Broadband
MTV Overdrive
www.mtv.co.uk/overdrive

Best Use of Mobile
Thom Yorke Moblip
www.xlrecordings.com/moblip

Tutorial notes

Notes from tutorial with Ian on Thursday

Is it a website, software, hybrid
Ring fencing ideas
Does this create more intense or focused work?
Who decides the content of the site?
How do you make users return to the space to see new work or upload new pieces of work?
Personal connections, the ability to meet people
How this informs the work on a site
Anonymity
Does it matter if similar sites already exist? No as there are always new approaches, new ideas, a different angle (Fizzy drink)
Don't waste time trying to create something new, explore what is already out there
Ability to redesign the site
Personal taste
Giving users the power to create their own space
How much power?
Too much power
Legal issues, owner of these sites (YouTube, MySpace) conflict of interest, copyright
Wiping out your site
Connections lists
Seeing things on screen versus how you imagine them
Bolt on, mash-up, plug in
Who decides how a site or programme is used?
Does it matter if something is altered re-interepted by the users?
As a designer how comfortable are you giving up control of something you have designed?
Do you give users a range of options to limit what they can do?
Hierarchies. Based on what? Personal opinion, democracy, dictatorship
Archiving work as a way of generating content for a prototype
Fodder
Second Life

Noise Festival

Noise. This is an excellent site and an excellent way of promoting work. The idea is it runs as a virtual gallery and festival space. People submit creative work (fine art, 3D design, music, fashion, and word) which is rated and commented on, anybody can do this; the most popular work makes it to the front page. A panel of judges decides on the best work to be selected for media showcase. I actually found out about this the same week I submitted my MA proposal. It incorporates all the elements I'm interesting in researching. It is well designed, easy to use. There are starting to incoporporate, gallery space, blogging elements, links to My Space, mp3 play lists and so on. Back in February they had a great flash version of the site which allowed you to re-design the site yourself. The scope of the site has also changed, initially it was a regional festival in the North West of England but it seems to have expanded to cover the whole of the UK. My only criticism is why it has to limit itself to a time frame, what happens in November when the festival ends? Can you still submit work? I prefer the approach of the original Australian site which is has no deadline and people can continually upload and showcase work. Another approach would be to allow continually uploading of work, the highest rated make the front page or front gallery space. Alongside that there could be separate festivals/competitions for different creative areas.

Your Gallery

This is the Saatchi Galleries online web gallery.
Your Gallery
I personally think it is very poor in terms of layout, design and usability. Uploading your work is a pain; there is no simple "upload new work" button you have to go back through your user control panel to do that. It would be good to allow people to comment directly on work, in the same way Flickr does. Even simple things such as you can't enlarge images on an artist’s page. This may be designed to stop people stealing or copying images but for a site promoting visual work it is annoying not being able to explore work in the same way you would in a real gallery space.

Five Questions

Five Questions

What are you creating?

At the moment there is no obvious model. My initial thoughts were a website that would be the main focus. With offshoots that allow people to upload and download work onto a variety of platforms, (mobile, handheld, DVD, PC) Already that is changing.

How is it changing?

There are a number of interesting, connected websites that could be brought together in some way, not just as a traditional website but more of a social networking site. The web browser Flock is a good example of this approach. It takes existing technology, in this case the Firefox web browser, adds a new skin and elements from Flickr, YouTube, Blogger etc. to create something new.

Do you need to create something new?

No. It may be a case of researching what already exists. Finding out what works in terms of aesthetics, interface design, ease of use and so on. Then using that research to start developing and designing something from there.

How much input will you have into the content of what goes on the space?

None. At this stage I want the work that is uploaded/showcased to be unedited. I will be designing something that allows people to show their work how they want.

Will the site have an effect on work that is shown?

The site won’t be used to create work. I don’t want it to have a direct effect on peoples work but I would like users to think about how they develop their work If they have a video piece can it be adapted in some way for mobile streaming or quick downloading, this might start generating new work or ways of working.

What type of work will be shown?

Anything. I want as little control over the content as possible. It will be up to users to generate their own content.

Is their a wider scope than just web based media?

Yes, for example DVD’s, live events, magazines, books and so on; One Dot Zero is a good example of this approach. Again though it would be the users who are producing the content I would be offering an outlet to sell and promote their work. It may take the form of publishing on demand, similar to T-shirt site Threadless where users rate submissions and the most popular shirts are printed and sold.

What effect would publishing on demand have on work that is created?

Again it may not have a direct effect but it may mean designers have a better understanding of what people think about their work. It would allow opportunities for feedback from potential customers or clients. You would also know if there was a market for your product.

Is it important that work is sold through the site?

The point of the site would be to generate interest, showcase work, prompt discussion, get feedback but at the same time have opportunities for people to sell themselves and their work.

What potential problems can you see with the project?
If the projects becomes too broad and starts to lack focus. Not enough users. I don’t want to become bogged down in the technology behind these types of site and end up wasting time on technical exercises.

How can you overcome some of these problems?
The project becoming to broad is not a problem as such, I need to research as many different areas as possible and allow for different outcomes. What I need to be sure of is my research is relevant and can be applied to what I’m creating. Studying at the Leeds Met gives me a base of potential users within the Art and Design departments. I’m also keen to explore ways of marketing and promoting whatever I create, it is an important aspect of many social networking sites. How do you generate interest and maintain interest in your site?

Is it possible to market these types of sites?

I’m not sure; it may not be marketing the traditional sense of advertising and press releases. Sites such as Last FM or YouTube work through word of mouth, but you need to generate some initial interest. Again it may be down to user content that generates the interest or it could be the ease of use and design of site. Ideally it would be a combination of the two.


Where will you start?

My starting point will be a blog site. That pulls together initial thoughts and ideas. Links to resources, images, websites, pieces of code, anything that I feel is relevant. It will also enable me to start putting together a rough prototype of the type of site I want to create and some of the elements that will make up the site.




Do you normally work in this way?

No. I normally approach a project by sketching and coming up with a finished idea before starting to create work. But this approach to generating ideas and designs is new which is good as I’m not repeating work I’ve done in the past. I’m able to change the skin, layout, design, content of the blog quickly and am starting to get a better idea of the direction the project could potentially take.

Will you be using any traditional art and methods in this project or will it be purely screen based?

For generating ideas I will also be using sketchbooks and notebooks. I would also like to incorporate some traditional art and design techniques (collage, animation, hand drawing) into the design of whatever I create. I like the aesthetic of collaged, hand drawn images and how they change once they are incorporated in digital design.

Can Britain produce a success like YouTube?

Guardian article from Monday about Web 2.0, current popular sites and the difficulties of setting up a site such as YouTube in Britain.
Can Britain produce a success like YouTube?
Don't give up the day job ... yet. Dotcom difficulties

There was also an intersting short news/discussion item on Radio 5 last Sunday talking about googles purchase of YouTube. It mentioned that what had made YouTube popular was that it appealed to peoples vanity, that they want to be famous or be on TV. This was in contrast to the previous wave of dot.com start ups that had to rely on selling a product to succeed.

Flock

A possible approach to what I create is Flock. A "social web browser" which uses Mozilla technology. It has Flickr, Photobucket, Blogger all built in. This is a different way of thinking about networking, rather than a website. Does it have more potential than a traditional website? Could you apply the ideas of adaptability, reskinning, personalizing the site. (See Googles personal home page)

Blog Skins

Currently playing around and reworking the layout and design of this blog.

A couple of useful starting points sites for basic blog templates,looking at other peoples layouts, finding ideas, resources for code etc. I will upload images/links to some of the more interesting skins from Blog Skins later (the site is down at the moment)
http://blogtemplates.noipo.org/
http://www.blogskins.com/

Heart Sugar was designed by Camilla Henrikke, I found the link to this site a couple of years ago. I've always liked the layout of this site. It's a simple design but the use of the hand drawn elements and real objects really appeals to me (as you can see from my ideas for the MA poster) I also think it works well as a digital/ screen image. It's an interesting contrast to the aesthetics and layout of a lot of other websites. Her other site Wallflower has a lot of interesting layouts and images.

http://gothbrooks.blogspot.com/ I like for the little drawning of the train in the corner. Again it is the hand drawn contrasting with the digital that appeals.

I must listen to more Schooly D and less Coldplay

At some point I will fix the "My links" section on here but don't want to while I'm messing with the layout. In the meanwhile here are some interesting "social networking sites"

Threadless is one of my favourites, it allows anybody to submit T-Shirt designs. The designs are then scored and the most popular ones that month printed and sold. It's an interesting approach to selling and marketing a product. The layout of the site is also one of the better ones around. With a simple but well designed interface. One of my favourite features of this is the Whats in Stock? section. Far more interesting than listing the numbers.

I've only found out about Stickam recently, it launched at the begining of the year. The main site is similar to MySpace, YouTube, Flickr etc and combines elements from those sites (video, pictures, chatrooms etc) What makes this site unusual is the use of webcam and live streaming, and being able embed these elements in other sites or 'blogs. It can be a very odd and voyeuristic site.

Here's a couple of articles about it
Who will use it
Review of Stickam

Last FM

It's elementary! Once you've signed up and downloaded Last.fm, just listen to music through your computer's music player – as you do every day. The name of each song you play will be automatically sent to our servers and saved in your musical profile. We call this “scrobbling,” and it's the basis of everything we do at Last.fm, from personalised recommendations to radio, music charts to musical neighbours, and much more.

Over ten million times a day, Last.fm users fuel the social music revolution by scrobbling their tracks. Ready to share your musical insights with friends, family, and the world? It's free, easy, and a lot of fun: go ahead and scrobble!

I've not used this much recently as i've got a new computer which has no music on it yet. It's always amusing to see the charts or your most played songs and realise that your music taste is not as eclectic as you thought. I must listen to more Schooly D and less Coldplay.

The Hype Machine

is an experiment that keeps track of songs and discussion posted on the best blogs about music.

It a simple databse of MP3 blogs that allows users to search for tracks and artist but it's a useful way of grouping blogs together.

Ideas for MA Graphic Arts and Design poster

A couple of starting points for layouts.

The Ragged School postcard/advert. The Ragged School is an excellent space in London. Just behind Borough Market, it’s mainly used for fashion shoots but I’ve seen a couple of exhibitions there and it makes a very interesting and unusual gallery space.

MA Proposal

This is the short, 500 word version, of my statement of intent that I submitted to the Arts & Humanities Research Council

The longer version that I submitted to the Leeds Met can be viewed here

Neil Owen
Arts & Humanities Research Council

The development of multimedia technology, such as websites, online media streaming, interactive CD/ DVD and downloadable video content is a rapidly changing area of graphic art and design. Over the last few years the number of people using technology such as broadband internet, video iPods, camera phones and video phones has increased. This presents new challenges for designers: what is the best way to showcase work? How can this technology be used to sell work and attract new clients? Being able to use this technology to create innovative, challenging work that balances aesthetics with technology is a valuable skill for designers. As a self employed designer, I am keen to research new ways that my work can reach an audience and potential clients. The ability to use this technology is becoming a crucial part of professional practice for artists and designers. This technology can be used to develop transferable skills that can be applied to a wide range of different art and design disciplines. I have also worked with a number of artists and designers, who are unaware of the range of technology available and the potential it has to reach an audience. I will use the MA in Graphic Art and Design to research how new technology can be used to develop, promote, showcase and sell work. I will also explore the opportunities that this technology offers designers to reach a potential audience and how this technology can be used to generate interest in work.

What I intend to produce

I intend to produce a cross media- platform that will allow artists and designers to upload and showcase their work. The main focus will be a website, which I will design and develop over the course of the year. Alongside the website I will use a range of different media and technology to present the work that is uploaded. This could include online interactive technology, video streaming of work, the use of subscription services, interactive CD/DVD, delivery to mobile devices such as video iPods and phones, downloadable content and an area for users to comment and produce online blogs. I will also explore ways that this technology can be used to in the advertising and promotion of the online hub.

I will initially ask students from the Leeds Metropolitan University art and design departments to upload their work. This will give me a base of potential users. Over the course of the year I will develop the site to allow artist and designers based anywhere to upload work.

Work that will be uploaded will be unedited; artists and designers from any discipline will have the opportunity to show their work. I want to encourage cross promotion and exchange of ideas from different art and design disciplines.

The users of the site will be able to document, discuss and develop their work as well as presenting finished pieces. The website will be a continually, evolving space that will allow users to test, explore, share and showcase their ideas.

The car was four foot long ... fucking Noddy

Ok this is the blog for my MA research. This will have links, images, ideas, code, statement of intent, work for the Wednesday sessions and so on.

The title for the blog comes from this sketch from Chris Morris's "Jam" radio/tv show. There's a lot of swearing involved but it is very funny.

4ft Car