Internet use

According to a new study entitled Born to Be Wired: The Role of New Media for a Digital Generation, young people 13-24 spend an average of 16.7 hours online each week. This means time spent on the Internet has outpaced even television use. The study also found that 82% of young people 13-18 own or use a computer. This generation will continue to make use of new technology as the web becomes even more important part of society. You can read the press release about the study here.

less really is more

I recently had to visit the website about Arkansas (www.arkansas.com) for the webistie review. At first glance, it was very basic and the design just seemed somewhat elementary with few colors and images. But as i browsed throughout the site, i found continuity and then realized the huge demographic for this particular site: children-seniors. it had to be appealing to virtually anyone! And then the simplistic features seemed to have rhythym to keep any education level interested and definately not lost...successful really.

New way to rent movies

I recently signed up for the free trial of Blockbuster's online movie rental program. Their website makes selecting movies very easy, and they have been quick to send the movies. You select whatever movies you want to watch and add them to your list of movies. They send up to three dvds to you at a time with a pre-paid return envelope. You watch the movie and send it back and they send you the next one on your Queue. Their web design is really nice and easy to navigate. It's a neat place and a neat online service. My first three movies are on their way and I'm excited!!

Blog Uses

If you're interested in finding out the impact of blogging and the different uses it has, check out this site. It is all about the blogging world from a teacher's perspective and you can read about the pro's, con's and struggles teachers are facing as they try and incorporate blogging as a teaching tool. Also you can find out what tips they have to offer to help make blogs more "blog worthy". I found some helpful hints people of all ages can benefit from.

Internet Fraud

E-Bay users beware! If you are a regular user of E-bay or any other internet acution site, you may already know the dangers of Internet Fraud. I was a recent victim of internet fraud through a purchase I made on E-bay. I was impressed, however, on the services that Pay-pal offered to try to resolve my dispute and that's what my blog post is about. I filed a complaint and found their website very helpful. They responded back fairly quickly and had the complaint resolved in just a few days. To my loss, however, they could not recover the funds that were charged to my credit card and I still never got my purchase. Though Internet Fraud is possible, there are a few steps that can be taken to avoid it. They can be found here.

Helpful with developing your own website!

I have found it to be true that netscape composer is the easiest way to make a quick website for those who have no extra time. This program can be found for free on http://netscape.com and can assist you with html as well.

crummy website

I visited www.onlinephotography.com and viewed the website for some needed material. This website was very basic and acutally noted a link that proclaimed "why this website hasn't been updated in years." I couldn't believe this website had advertised it's novice and old-school technique of internet information. It was clearly obvious that there had been no update and care taken of the site, therfore, making navigation very long and strenous because of the lack of links and features. This made the website have a long vertical scroll, which is my pet-peeve, and had links only on certain points of the feature (like a bullet, instead of an underlined link). This made browsing longer and confusing.

Nielsen weighs in on Bush vs. Kerry

Jakob Nielsen is even getting into the swing of politics as the election season progresses. His latest alertbox looks at the email newsletters sent out by both major political party's campaigns entitled Bush vs. Kerry: Email Newsletters Rated. As could be expected he gives both political parties email newsletters very low scores.

As a side to Nielsen's statements, I'd like to say that I have rarely seen a site that Nielsen gave high marks to, that I did not consider plain and dull. Just take a look at his usability guru site Useit.com.

Outgoogling Google

In her Web Watch column on WashingtonPost.com Leslie Walker discusses howAmazon's A9 search engine reaches beyond google's basics. A9 serves up Google's search engine results (which they buy from Google) and adds a couple of extra features which sound a whole lot like popular Amazon features. For example, they let people store and search their personal web history, bookmakrs and files and then produce recommendations of websites they think you might like based on your surfing habits.

Bloggers' Journalism

I found an interesting article on USATODAY's website about how blogging is changing the face of journalism. Blogging does not follow the rules of traditional journalism, yet it is becoming a force even the major news media must listen to. Should these blogs be policed or should bloggers be allowed to say what they want since we live in a democratic society?

Blogging for the campaign

I started thinking about blogs and how popular they have become. This was the first time for bloggers to be admitted as press to the National Presidential Conventions. George W.'s campaign site even includes a blog. It will be interesting to see if these blogs influence the way people vote or encourage a new segment of the population to start voting.

Arkadelphia Weekend

The Internet is my favorite way to keep up with what's going on outside the bubble-I found www.missamerica.org where you can follow OBU's Lacy Fleming and the other Miss America contestants throughout this past week and tomorrow night's competition. You can even vote for who you think will win! There's information about the past Miss America's, the organization itself, scholarships, etc. I thought about the color scheme we talked about in class yesterday-the blue hues and black background really stand out on the homepage and set the tone for the "gracefullness". Anyway-check it out and find pictures of all prelim winners and other exciting info.

Is it time to forget about download times?

In Poynter's E-Media Tidbits, Steve Yelvington points us to the latest survey of broadband penetration. In many markets high-speed internet connections at home now out number dial-up connections.

This revelations pushes us to question if we still always need to be conscious of the download time of our content on a slow line to the internet? It also makes me wonder if we are losing some broadband customers because our content is not as interactive, multimedia as they expect.

3 tips to banish fear of blogging

Debbie Weil, the web writing wizard, believes a good blog can be an integral part of business and help a business make money. In her email newsletter, WordBiz Report, she is promoting an article entitled Advice to the bloglorn: top 3 tips to banish fear of blogging by Lois C. Ambash. The article is a little technical and very long, but if you want to understand the side of those advocating blogging for business, it is a good read.

International news

I am an Mk from South Korea and I have found it really hard to hear about overseas news in the states. The best place I have found is to go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/?ok and you will be able to find out more about the international news and not just on the terrorist and danger country's. This has been very informative for me and I hope this will help you.

No flights to Dallas

I decided to follow the Flying Hamster of Doom's advice and check out studentuniverse.com. I tried finding a flight from Little Rock to Dallas. I sat there for about ten minutes and the page said it was still searching. I then tried finding a flight from Little Rock to Austin and immediately a list of flights popped up. I don't know how long I would have to sit there before the site would tell me if they found any flights to Dallas or not.

The Cheapest Tickets in the World

I have recently had to find a plane ticket to travel from Little Rock, Arkansas to Charleston, West Virginia. I fly often and have searched a lot of web sites for tickets. The best web site I found for students was www.studentuniverse.com. I found that the flight was almost $80 cheaper than its leading competitors www.cheaptickets.com and www.travelocity.com. If you are thinking about flying you should really check it out.

Ants on LSD

In the latest installment of his "Alertbox Newsletter, Jakob Nielsen declares "much of the Web is like an anthill built by ants on LSD: many sites don't fit into the big picture, and are too difficult to use because they deviate from expected norms." He goes on to complain about how many web sites don't follow any of the design conventions established on the web.

Time saving websites!

I love to work on websites and so I work with netscape composer in which you could find on : http://www.netscape.com. If you have a hard time with HTML this program helps you and you can add things on with HTML on this program. If you really don't have much time to work on your website I would suggest you download this program. Another great program to work with to help you in making funky pictures or frames ect. use Paint Shop Pro. You can find this at http://www.jasc.com to order this program.

Informative Website

Here is a website I found that has a lot of general information about building websites. Buildwebsite4u.com The site talks about web graphics, html, style sheets and many other aspects of websites. It also offers other good links for more indepth information on each subject.

blogs are funny

My first blog experience has been at the curtesy of Lannie's cousin. I was never familiar with these so-called "blogs," but they are an interesting thing where you cn post anything content you want...just like i'm doing now. I thought it was interesting how you can set up graphics with you content and have different feaures on your post. it's also interesting to me how your blog can make your own website address. I look at it like a daily journal or a diary.
"My mood is happy"

National Geographic

I have been surfing the web lately tyring to find a web sites based on good design. I went to the ones I knew would be well designed. I went to web sites such as, National Public Radio a respected radio station and also National Geographic. I was a little disapointed in these web sites in that it was a little tuff to find you way around them. I hower, found that CBS' web site was almost idiot proof. If you get a chance you should check out each one of these sites.

What makes a blog a blog

I've been trying to define what exactly makes a weblog. I've started off on a web search to try to help me find some authoritative resources on this.

One of the best articles that I've ran across on this subect is entitled "What makes a weblog a weblog?" by Dave Winer. Winer is currently associated with Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, but he is a blog pioneer founding early blog software company Radio UserLand and part of the team that came up with the RSS specification for syndicating blogs (and all sorts of other things) on the Internet.

Welcome to the Online Design Class Blog

Welcome to the online design class blog. Students in Ouachita Baptist University's Online Design class (COMM 3043) are encouraged to post to this blog items of note that are relevant to what we are discussing in class.

For example today we talked about how to write CSS (cascading style sheets) and we referred I referred the students to several css tutorials and references.