Seminar

Research

http://learningagreement.blogspot.com/

Curent work
noise Ning
Noise
Portrait of a Nation

Loads of links

Very briefly, this is work form MIT in America. It was project that mapped in real time the activity of users in a city. In this case Rome.

In essence what they did was use mobile technology such as Bluetooth and GPS to turn the city into a social network site. What I am starting to work on is using the idea of a city as a social network and applying some of these ideas and theories to H Building. This is involves number of difeferent elements. Alfred Korzybsk quote that the map is not teriorty is perhaps key here, in that the work will be about mapping the use of the building and how people interact with building and the spaces. This ties back into work such as the design of Harry Becks London Underground Map, where distances don't matter or the work of Edward Tufte, and the visualization of information.

The other element of this which I think is crucial is allowing users to interact with something in order to collect information about a space. What I have learnt over the last year, and in particular the last month, is to keep things simple with regards to using technology. So I will be looking to use ex sting Web 2.0 technology. For example an initial starting point was simply setting up a Blog or Twitter account in one part of the building and feeds into another area of the building which is displayed publicly. Another idea is using the Flickr tag method used by a site such as http://www.thechemicalbrothers.com/live
In regards to what information I will start to map and collect the basic starting point is I'm on an art and design course so text and images will be the key thing to collect initially.


http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/wikicity-0830.html

http://senseable.mit.edu/wikicity/rome/

http://senseable.mit.edu/wikicity/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map-territory_relation

http://realtime.waag.org/

http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/

http://www.senseofthecity.nl/sotce/sotc.jsp?cmd=autoplay

http://www.mlgk.nl/

http://www.carloratti.com/projects/015.htm

http://mobile.mit.edu/component/option,com_deeppockets/task,catShow/id,32/Itemid,76/

What I've been doing for the last two months

I had an initial six weeks worth of work with Noise Festival in Manchester, which has carried on. They are charity who run a biannual festival of new creative work by under 25's. Work is submitted and showcased online.

There site is here It's odd as I've referred to this site a lot throughout the past year. So was pleased to get the work. What has been enjoyable over last few weeks is to be able to test some of the ideas and research I've done over the past year.

As an example www.portraitofanation.net is a site I have designed for Noise festival in partnership with Heritage Lottery Funding and 17 city councils. Portrait of a Nation is a series of arts projects running across the UK for the next twelve months and to be showcased at a festival next year as part of Liverpool's Capital of Culture celebrations.

This is potentialy very exciting project. The idea is to provide a user generated content site that will showcase work for each city and the projects they are working. Ideally they could do this throughout the course of the whole year. There would be a combination of private areas where cities and projects can be worked on and a public area for contributuons from residents of the city.

So that is the basic pitch, I did the mock up visuals and a mock up of the site. Which was presented at a meeting to HLF and the Local Councils.

Update

I should really update this.
At the moment I have been mostly getting pissed off with a PHP form that should have been finished weeks ago but has been coded it in a stupid, bizarre way; getting exteremly worried about this site and the fact I've not done any work on it for nearly a month.

Oh I've also talked to the head of BBC interactive department and been given the contact details for the head of Google Maps in the UK.

I'll update this porperly over the weekend.

Stupid boasting

It's funny this time last year I thought it would take forever to build a site like that, now I could have most of it done in a couple of weeks.

Currently being put to the test. Deadline for Portrait of Nation website is two weeks away.

Learning agreement part 105

OK, learning agreement is here. Learning agreement 500 word !!!!
summary still to do. Hard copies need burning/printing and handing in on Friday.

Exhibition needs finishing this weekend.

After a shock to the system first day working for Noise on Monday, I'm getting into it.

Basically chucking a whole load of MA related ideas at the Portrait of a Nation brief I've been given. All very Web 2.0.

Bookmarks

Arrgh not enough time and my web server isn't working. Looks like I'll have to come home one night this week to finish this. Bollocks.

Questions are all done, work is all uploaded(looks like there's nothing there execpt crappy unfinshed code and bad page layouts) and learning agreement text is done.

Exhibition tag search

This is another exhibition test.
Tag search
Use's Javascript with Flickr. I could add the Lightbox Javasrcipt to it, it needs a user id adding to it, which I can't figure out how to do.

It's good as it uses a search form and pulls out the a list of related tags. The design is crap though. The CSS needs restyling

I'm also looking at the tag cloud again, it might work if I can add a gallery slideshow to it. I don't know, after tomorrow I'm not going to be able to do anymore work on this until next Saturday. So I'm going to have to decide what to use.

More Learning Agreement

Struggling to finish this. Might leave it for today, I'm still not clear about the questions I'm going to use, how I'm going to seperate work form here, it's all a big mess (which is meant to be the point) I should really organise it some way but at the moment I feel thats a task for another time.

Exhibition

This is a rough idea for the exhibition in a couple of weeks. Basically it's a Joomla page with a Flickr plugin. Images are randomly pulled in from a Flickr user and displayed using the Lightbox tool. Javascript refreshes the page every 30 seconds. It's far from ideal, it's only limited to ten image blocks, so you get repeated images. There's no real use of tagged images. But what is good about it is uses a lot of the tools and ideas discussed in the learning agreement (open source, mash ups, free code) The lightbox tool is good as it stops people navigating away and onto the Flickr site.

It would be good to try and use a search tool or tag cloud which incorporates the Lightbox tool.

Learning Agreement Text

Learning agreement text is here. I had toyed with hosting it on my own space as a HTML page but it needs to go on a blog. As this whole MA is becoming about using web 2.0. I still need to work on the layout of it how it will link to this blog, bookmarks and uploaded work.

I also need to work on the questions for the bookmarks and work. I guess I can do that as individual blog posts.

Exhibition Tags

Quick tag test.

Test two

Some ideas for the exhibition. PHP tags look to be a quick and easy way to create a base of images to work with.

Noise festival

A very intense, bizarre, strange, couple of days.

The upshot of which is I'm now working with Noise festival

Noise

Ning

MA Image Gallery

Photography Gallery

photographyleeds

Learning Agreement

neilowen.org

Graphics at Leeds Met
Login
c7002834
s***100


36 Photos
Usergroup

monkey_bananas

Old site

Learning agreement part 3

Learning agreement
Testing layouts for the learning agreement. This uses an RSS feed and a basic Flashr/ Flickr viewer for a users Flickr images.

Processing

Rough text sketch built in Processing
Demo

Building an interactive interface or search tool in Processing is my other idea for the exhibition.

Exhibition part 1

Starting to pull together ideas for the exhibition in September.
Probably going to upload and pull images through Flickr. My initial idea was to use an RSS feed or Javascript badge, but you are a bit limited in the user interface and how the images are shown. The images need to open in a separate page but I don't want to take people straight to the Flickr site. I looked at re-using the Lightbox plugin but couldn't find an easy way of working it with the Flickr badge javascript.

I revisited the Flashr API that I was trying to use months ago. Finally got it working, it's a very basic demo from an old tutorial. At the moment it's simply pulling in my Flickr feed. But I can see it being customized, reskinned and altering how images are being pulled in.

Demo

This is a good little slideshow tool which I'm going to try using with the Leeds Photography site on the student pages.


Ways of searching for images are going to be kept simple. Either colour or tags, Findr is an excellent example of what could be done with tags and word association.

Learning agreement part 2

I've started to upload all the work from the last year to my own web space and to a new Flickr account.

www.neilowen.org will have links to all the work I have done so far.

My new Flickr account is here This is solely for ant MA related work (will make random feeds a little easier)

I have some rough ideas for site layouts, it will incorporate the RSS feed from here and the feed from Flickr. Archiving of work is interesting, whether it's tags, dates, ideas, software. I'm not sure.

At the moment I just need everything up and online.

www.photographyleeds.com

Live test site for photographyleeds
Works fine on my machine using Firefox. Not been tested on any other browser's yet.

I'm really quite pleased with this. It doesn't look much but it feels like a culmination of a lot of research and work from the past few months.

To recap all the images are being pulled in from Flickr using the Javascript from the Flickr badge. Restyled and redesigned using CSS. At the moment there are three group pools on there. Eventually it should run the Leeds FD Photography pool showing current/random student work.

My Blog is being pulled in using Javascript, again restyled using CSS.

RSS feeds are all being pulled in using Javascript, restyled using CSS.

The front page is a hub or meeting point that brings users together, in this case students and staff. At the most basic level it is a collcetion of links to students Blogs. The simple reason for running the site this way is, Flickr and Blogger are good, free tools that work well as a way of publishing text and uploading photos. For the people who are using this site there is no need to over complicate with an additional logins in to Ning or Drupal.

Site at the moment

This is the non drupal site front page. Flickr random images from a number of group feeds. Done using the Flickr badge code.

RSS Feed code from my Blog account, could be from any blog. Both feeds work fine.

CSS styling for both is being re-designed. Should have the live verion of the site up tomorrow. Should also have a mock up of a students page tomorrow.

Work in progress part 4

I was thinking last night that at this stage for the Photography site I don't need to use Drupal. Sure it's useful to know how to use the software but all I need is a front page with links to Flickr, students names and students blogs. Some interesting RSS feeds on the front page and a group blog that staff can access and contribute to and feeds in to the home page. Maybe it's about keeping it as simple as possible. Two login's (Blogger and Flickr) and Photography Leeds it a simple meeting point. Everything else is done through RSS Feeds and external links.

I really like this approach, re-using what has already been built, skinning and rebuilding it. Blogger and Flickr are being used as a server or host. They already have tools to upload and comment on work so I don't need to be re-inventing that. And maybe this is where being a designer becomes back into what I'm doing. Being able to meet aesthetics with function and usability.

Final screengrab for today

Before I balls up the DIV's and PHP tomorrow here's what the Photography site looks like at the moment. Starting to look worryingly close to the mock up screenshot I posted last week. Log-in postion is a pain in the neck at the moment.

Work in progress part 3

This is using the Flickr badge tool. Appears to be the esiest way to pull images from a group pool, without getting stuck with the PHP, API tools. Simple cut and paste, strip out Flickr's CSS, HTML etc. Next step is to try and organise the rows, at the moment this is just four pieces of the same code. Also need to add an external links so users don't navigate away from the main page.

I also like the design of PictoBrowser so might have a go at designing something similar.

Teleabsence I

Created by the same people who did the Flickr plug in in the previous post. Teleabsence I

This installation consisted of a screen displaying a slideshow of pictures which were being remotely uploaded online with a cameraphone. The sequence of these images was being shown as received, presenting itself as a mobile work-in-progress experience.

Work in progress part 2

Playing with this plug-in PictoBrowser Plug-in for Flickr

Simple way of displaying a groups pool of images using a Flickr widget. Needs to be randomly generated for what I want for the Photography site. There also doesn't seem to be anyway of fixing a Flickr user to it.

Work in progress

Rather messy work in progress using Drupal Basically looks the same as the old Joomla site which is what I want. Working on the PHP and CSS of the templates, stripping it all back.

A little summer reading

A little summer reading
(HOW) DOES THE INTERNET AFFECT COMMUNITY?
Cultural Formations
in Text-Based
Virtual Realities
Studying Online Social Networks
These bodies are FREE, so get one NOW!: Advertising and Branding in Social Virtual Worlds

Social Networks in virtual worlds

Notes from watching this lecture by Aleks Krotoski.

Interesting starting point for Social Learning Theory and Social Network Analysis, based within Second Life. What is of interest to me is the idea of people in power, people with influence, gate keepers of power/influence and the people who are able to innovate. The connections between all these people. I think this could be an interesting way of mapping spaces within H Building.

Learning agreement part 1

Done on line. A series of links to research work, test pieces, written work etc.
This site BodyTag is a good visual reference to how it could look.


Work could be categorized by date, research, test pieces, finished work etc. I like the idea of keeping the design that simple, basing it on calander type format.

For the work at this stage I have a range of bookmarked research done online
see here
Which ranges from visual references to social networking sites to technical sites. There is also a more traditional bibliography.

Work completed so far ranges from very rough test pieces done using Javascript, CSS PHP to more complete scripts, websites and mock ups.





Examples of what needs organising. This all needs organising and showing in some way, mainly as a way of helping me to see what work has been completed over the past 10 months.

What needs adding is more context and analysis of social networking theories. Applying these to emerging web 2.0 sites. Also implementing and testing these theories through actual application. Hopefully work for the course publication and interim exhibition will allow me to test these ideas.

Initial exhibiting and assessment ideas part two

Design a user interface that people within the Universty can use to search through and find examples of work from the Graphic Arts+ Design at Leeds Metropolitan University course. The work is then projected on a large scale at various busy points througout the University eg coffee shops, vending machines, corridors, entrances. Alternative locations to where work would normally be shown. If possible the work could also be projected onto the exterior of the building at some point during the week.

There is already a database of work on the courses website that can be used to select work from. My role would be to design a user interface that allows people to search through a selection of work. This can then be projected at different points throughout the building.

As part of my contribution to the course publiction I would be interersted in mapping and researching potential locations for the project throughout H building. This could take on a variety of forms from floor plans to photography to graphs.

Initial exhibiting and assessment ideas

Interface based (Colours, tags etc)
Existing work from Graphic Arts students
Promotion/ showcasing for first year. Whole University
Week long exhibition
Internal and external projection
Onto the exterior of building- relate to the course publiction about H block
Interior were to project- popular spaces. Coffee shop, vending machines, student unions etc.
How to project- scale, random. Who selects the images, are they in another part of the buliding
Or one specific space which would generate a lot of use eg vending machine, student services
Number of projections
How to encourage use

Foundation Degree Photography intranet part 5

Joomla is one content managment system I've looked. Another CMS is Drupal, along the lines of Joomla it's a bit trickier to use but seems to have more Flickr modules. At the moment I'm going to use Drupal to bulid the Photography site. With Joomla as a back up option.

Foundation Degree Photography intranet part 4

First couple of mock up's of the front page. Re-working the Joomla site from a couple of months ago.

Foundation Degree Photography intranet part 3

Foundation Degree Photography intranet part 2

Initially it sounds quite straight forward: each student has a Flickr account and a blogger account. Easy enough but the course has 40 first year students and 40 second year students. Staff need to be able to see all the blogs so they can comment on work.
The simplest solution is a nice HTML page with a list of all students Names, Blogs, Flickr etc A Ning site was the other option but I'm not convinced by Ning.

It would make sense to have a course front page with feeds from students Flickr accounts and Blogs. As well as having course info, RSS feeds, competitions etc. An online notice board. I also like this idea as it encourages interaction between students, satff etc individual blogs are fine but it's crucial to see every ones work.

This I know is doable, something as simple as Joomla site with a front page with a feed from the Photography departments Flickr pool. A list of RSS feeds. A second page simply links to students names and their Flickr, Blogger, Youtube accounts.

Foundation Degree Photography intranet part 1

Background

As part of the Personal Development module on the Foundation Degree Photography course at the Leeds Art College students are required to use blogging to record their personal and professional development throughout the two years of the course.

The module descriptor states

Taking the form of a blog (with emphasis on multi faceted discussion between specialist staff, external agencies and students) this module runs throughout the second year and requires that the student explores all aspects of the photographic field, continually updating themselves with related articles, images and websites; aspects which impinge on their interests, practice and proposed progression. This module links with the professional practice element of the course supporting it both technically and conceptually

As the lecturer in multimedia on the course it will be my responsibility to make sure students (and staff) all have blogger, Flickr and YouTube accounts. At the most basic level this will involve a two day induction for both the first and second years. Setting up accounts, user groups and showing examples of how people can use blogging, Flickr etc.

The use of blogging and Flickr is something I touched on in the Digital Post-Production and Distribution unit. This unit will give me an opportunity to push the ideas of Web 2.0 for artists and designers.

The students and staff on Vis Com, Graphics and Digital Media, as you would expect, are already using blogging, Flickr and other Web 2.0 sites to promote their courses show work and so on. One of the interesting aspects of this unit is to see how photographers use these kinds of sites.

Shipley College intranet

One of the Ning sites was originally going to be used as part of a college intranet for the courses I have been teaching at Shipley. The idea is quite simple: students have their own Flickr, YouTube and Blogger acounts and the college/course has an overall Ning account. This would pull together all students work, allow satff and students across all courses and departments to see work students have done.

Any written work is uploaded to Fronter (the colleges exiting intranet) this is already being done. Any visual work (videos, websites, anaimtions etc) has to be submitted via the Ning site. Staff wouldn't take in any hard copies of students work. All the work would have to be submitted digitally, as it is an E-Media course.

Staff would also be able to link to might be films, videos, tutorials, competitions that they think students would be interested in.

Even without using Ning, students should really have their own Flickr, YouTube and Blogger acounts. They are free, an easy way to store work and are useful alternative to buying webspace.

The above is something I propossed a few months ago, and has not really been taken any further by the college.

Ning

Previously I was looking at Ning as a solution to creating alternatives to college intranets.
Shipley
Sandbox
LeedsMet

I've decided against using them for now. They feel a lazy solution, to what I'm trying to do. I want to have more control over the design of the interface of the site. There isn't any real effort in putting them together.

There are also practical concerns with them, the adverts can't be removed without payment. The numbers of users visiting the sites will increase bandwidth and costs. This would be a major problem with the Leeds Art College FD Photography site which is potentially going to have 80 students using it.




What I do like about Ning is the way it pulls together existing sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Blip etc and the Ning site is a way of grouping people and work from a range of of other sites in one space. That I think is interesting and an idea I want to work with. Ditch the idea of having a seperate gallery and simply run all the image uploading through Flickr, YouTube etc.

Drupal

Drupal

Stuff

Bits and pieces of half finished work and ideas for the summer or whats left of it.
I'll write in more detail about these tomorrow.

Ning, thanks to Annabeth. Interesting social networking websites.

I'm trying to set these up at Shipley and the Art College, hopefully for the start of next term. How far I'll get with these I'm not sure.
Shipley
Sandbox
LeedsMet

Also looking at some Flash interfaces to use with the PHP Flickr scripts I've got. Though I'm thinking these may just be basic action scripts or Processing programmes. My starting point is a few simple intercative image tools. Basic rollovers, image clouds not quite sure yet.

Other work: I also worked on the HND Photography end of year show (website, slideshow etc)

Picasa

Using this to build a slideshow for the end of year show.

 
 

Picasa test

 

HND Photography website

Working on this for the end of year show, 22nd of June. Simple slideshow, artist work and personal statment. Uses Smooth Gallery javascript, HTML and CSS. Only 20 more students to do.

LoveBytes

Have been working all week so haven't been able to get along for any of the events but I might try and see the Universal Everything talk. Mainly to see some of this work A lot of it is done using Processing, which is something I'm looking at getting to grips with over the next few months once the collges have finished and I have some time to think.

George Paul Landow

As suggested by Adian I'm trying to get hold of some of his writing.

Users Groups

Re-visiting possible tools/designs/ideas for using with Flickr. I feel much more comfortable using PHP at the moment. This is a simple script from phpFlickr.com that I intend to re-skin. I'm tempted to try and incorporate into the colr pickr template.

Usergroup.php It should list a all the groups a user on Flickr has joined. My username is monkey_bananas.

Gallery work

After the last post I spent four or five dyas re-working and re-designing the gallery site. I abandoned the designs that I had been working on (I'm re-using these for the art college webpage) I went back to what the site was meant to be: visualy led, easily upadatable and interactive. A hub for other users work. I looked back at the sites that had interested me when I was working on my statement of intent. In particular the two Noise sites http://www.noisefestival.com/ and http://www.noise.net/homepage.asp

The UK site is interesting as it was bulit using Joomla, which I've been working with for the last few months. It's a good example of what can be done with the software. I'm trying to find out what gallery component was used. Joomla works on a system of adaptble plugins and modules. I've sent a couple of e-mails to the site owners and the company who built the site but have not heard anything yet. It's funny this time last year I though it would take forever to build a site like that, now I could have most of it done in a couple of weeks.

Here are some screenshots from the current verison of my site. At the moment I'm using the Flickr4J module which is pulling in images from my Flickr acount. It's an intersesting plugin and actually outputs a nice little gallery. If I could adapt it to show a groups set of photos it might be better than the Zoom gallery.

Gallery

The Joomla image gallery site, looks like shit at the moment. I had a decent version of it up and running but was unhappy with the design so am in the process of re-working it and testing some Javascript. One of the problems with Joomla is you can only one site running so at the moment, so so you are always viewing the most recent version of the site. At the moment it looks like there's been no progress but that's only because I'm reworking an old template. To be brutally honest I'm a bit fed up with it, the last few days have felt like it's going backwards. I also want use some of the Javascript techniques I've learnt to put together a web page for the Leeds Art College HND show, I like the ideas of using the Lightbox plug in to create a simple/gallery portfolio to go alongside the slide show I'm creating for the show.

I should be able to up-load the old templates and grab some screenshots from there. I've also got a basic HTML/CSS/Javascript layout that will illustrate some of my designs.

Updates

Done a lot of work on the CSS, HTML design and Javascript of the image gallery site. Various template layout's are here Image Gallery Templates. I'll upload some CSS/HTML links tomorrow.

At the moment I've the stripped the content of the site write back, eventually I want a minimalist gallery along the lines of this image Simple text, whitewashed "gallery" with a shadow effect.

I've also been using the scriptalicous Javascript library to add drag and drop effects. I've also installed the Lightbox2 plugin. All this can be seen on the working version of the image gallery Hopefully the CSS will decide it wants to work over the next few days.

I've installed the Flickr4J plugin which is a great tool for pulling in images from Flickr. I'm looking at some Flickr hacks that may be able to make better use of this feature, as a way of searching and finding images. I'm also considering if this is a way of replacing the Gallery section or maybe using the Flickr plugin as a way of showing development and progression of ideas. Not entirely show how that is going to work yet.

Design, Layout,, Joomla

Working very, slowly on designs and templates for the gallery site. oh and I've found some Flickr related plug-ins for Joomala eg Flickr4J and Lightbox

Creative Commons Websites

More Art College research

These are some sites that take a different approach to portfolios. Kris Krug is a more personal and incorporates a blog, links to his flickr account, comments from viewers and so on. Static is his studio/professional site. Light Stalkers is a gallery site for photographers. Show Studios is another portfolio site that incorporates rolling, magazine type content. It's worth getting students to think about how they can incorporate their Flickr account or blog into their site design.
www.kriskrug.com/
http://staticphotography.com
www.lightstalkers.org
www.showstudio.com


These are links to websites that allow interaction from users in the form of uploading work or commenting on on other peoples work. JPG Magazine is worth looking at as users of the site can upload work and vote on which images will be used in the printed magazine.
www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm/
http://jpgmag.com/
http://moblog.co.uk
www.flickr.com
www.everystockphoto.com

Creative Commons

Work I've been doing at Leeds Art College regarding licensing of images online

Hi Jo,
I've attached a draft web based task for the students. For this task I
decided against looking at specific websites, I'll do that briefly on
Thursday and again when I come back after Easter. I will send you a
list of sites I think they should be looking at but I don't want them
getting hung up on designing or analysing sites.

Instead I want them to research Creative Commons licensing as an
alternative way of copyrighting and distributing work online.
Basically Creative Commons lets you share your work under licenses
that ask for an attribution or a web link rather than payment, and
restricts whether people can alter or change your work. This has
particular relevance to students who are uploading work to Flickr,
DeviantArt etc
Links about it here
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/comics1
http://www.creativecommons.org.uk/index.php
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/10/digging_deepercreative_commons.html
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

For the task I want them to research Creative Commons licensing and
how it is being used by photographers as a promotional and
distribution tool.
Then decide how they are going to licence their images they have
created for this brief.

It sounds a bit dull but it's not and it's something they should all
be thinking about if they are putting work online. It raises questions
about ownership of work, traditional distribution versus new
distribution methods, how you market and promote yourself, who uses
your work and what they use it for, how much control you have over
your work, your attitude to other people using your work and so on.

There is also some discussion about what effect Creative Commons
licensing has on traditional stock photo agencies such as Getty
images. There's an article about that here
http://blog.auinteractive.com/its-the-end-of-stock-photography-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel-fine

It would also be interesting to here your opinion on this approach to
copyright and ownership.

The best place to start for background info about Creative Commons
licenses are these links
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/10/digging_deepercreative_commons.html
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/comics1
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

These are examples of sites that search for Creative Commons licensed
images, so you can see how this type of licensing of images works
http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm/
http://www.everystockphoto.com/index.php

Design Classics: Harry Beck

Design Classics, BBC 4 at 22:00 on Sunday 18th March 2007
London Underground Map.
A look at one of the classic British designs - the map of London's Tube network, originally created in 1931 by Underground employee Harry Beck.

Interesting film about Harry Becks map. Some useful ideas for my own web design.

Image Gallery

Done a little work on this week, started to pull the Zoom Gallery apart. I need to plan the layout of the gallery, get the structure right. I'm going to go back to the floor plans I looked at a couple of months ago.

I've found how to switch image gifs in Zoom so I need to design my own logos and signs.

Art Review

Article in Art Review about Flickr. Some interesting points about everybody having a MySpace or Flickr account and how do you stand out. Also how people are using Flickr as an archive tool for old photo's, negatives and scanned imagees.

There was also a reference to The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by
Walter Benjamin which I'm reading at the moment.

Bookmarks

Current list of MA Bookmarks.

Everything I've looked at over the past few months, far too much to list on here. A wide range of sites, from intial reserach into online community and gallery sites to current research into technical and practical solutions to the MA website.

Joomla Work 3

More work in Joomla. CSS is working, sort of. Needs testing in IE, Safari etc Managed to get the Zoom gallery to work. I needed to fix the PHP code which I could do, hurrah.

So the bare bones are there, at the moment the design is not even started. Zoom Gallery is a horrible looking interface, the lightbox, top ten rated, comments on work are all things I want to use but I need to investigate how you strip away the Zoom aesthetics.

Joomla Work 2

Some more work on the Joomla site. Can't get the footer to work in Firefox but the CSS rollover's are now working and the Joomla modules are being styled.

Joomla work

First attempt at my own Jommla template using CSS. Screenshot as this will change a lot in the next few days. Pretty simple design at the moment, mainly just trying to see how the template alters in Joomla. Also fddling with the PHP in Joomla, the link to the Zoom gallery isn't working yet.