Bluetooth aka the medieval King of Denmark..

Bluetooth is a wireless communication protocol for exchanging data over short distances. It was created by Ericsson as an alternative to using cabled RS-232 data transfer. It uses the short-range radio frequency band to transmit data wirelessly.

The technology was popularised mostly by its implementation within mobile phones, which allowed people transfer pictures, sounds etc. freely over Bluetooth as opposed to sending them via MMS (and normally a paid service).

Of course, the short-range limits its full capabilities as a communications device but nonetheless the technology does provide for a need such as hands-free headsets, bluetooth GPS dongles that communicate with a phone or PDA, and any other comms transfer between devices that are within a short-range.

Bluetooth is now overseen by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group which monitor and manage the standards and licensing associated with the Bluetooth technology.

Chowow

Evolution of an Illustrator toolbar

This screenshot shows the various stages.

Here is a screenshot of the Illustrator toolbar that I recreated with vectors. I used layers to trace over the original toolbar, then add fill colour and outer bar.

My version of CS3 dosen't have Illustrator, so I had to get a trial. I downloaded version 10 as it was 80 odd meg as opposed to a gig or so for the latest version and I didn't want to blitz out my bandwidth allowance!!

Chowz!

Website development update

Ok,

So got the site almost complete, bar a couple of tweaks here and there.

Pictures and video are now being shown on a popup, and the image tiles are being shuffled at random (properly, this time!) on a timer delay.

We have a few background images that we need to decide on, and we are also going to tweak the middle banner too so it looks a bit more pro.

Also to update is the video thumbnails, which at the moment are the stock Adobe flash ones.

Vectors vs Bitmaps

Vectors are typically much smaller files as they consist of a series of vector 'points' that describe the image. This in turn requires some kind of algorithm (player/viewer) to reproduce this image on screen by rendering all the shapes according to the vector list. They are particularly suitable for more simple graphics made up of shapes and block or gradient colours.

Bitmaps are usually larger files as they consist of colour information for each pixel, which is multiplied by width and height. Although compression is often used, the file sizes can still be larger than vector files. Bitmaps are suited to complex, detailed pictures like photographs, and can be rendered on most devices.

Website Development Update

Since the last update I have spent some time developing the code used to construct the web site and now have a basic working prototype.

Our navigational banner is displayed along the center of the screen, with gallery-like thumbnails displayed above and below. These re-arrange themselves periodically to give the website a more 'live' feel.

The images are only temporary at the moment and will be replaced by our sourced assets when ready.

Clicking on the linked images will bring up a full-size picture or play the video clip associated with it.

Clicking on the info links will display the relevant information in the lower half of the page, with the gallery still displayed in the upper half.

Branding

Branding is all about creating a recognisable identity. This could be for a particular product or company as a whole.
Successful branding can take the form on an image, logo, tag line, motto, slogan or any combination of these.
Sometimes even certain colours are associated with certain products, a good (and obvious) example being Orange. Another being the yellow arcs of McDonalds, or just the simple 'arrow swipe' of the Nike brand.
Branding is enforced by advertising campaigns which can span all types of media, from television advertisments, to billboards, internet banners, viral media etc.

The Flow of Happiness....

My site-map mash-up (complete with poor hand-writing!)

This afternoon we were looking at Coca-Cola's Happiness Factory with the task of attempting to create an accurate site-map for the website.
You quickly realise how convoluted things can become on big websites with the many pages and routes available.

We will be doing something very similar for our promotional websites, and this provides an early indication of what is required.

Chowz!

Promo website prototype

Dynamically displaying images..

So, i've been playing around in Javascript to test a few things for a basic skeleton of our website. I've been working on some methods required to implement our ideas.

Ideally, we will have a dynamically loaded set of images for the front page, which basically means that the amount of images we will be displaying dosen't have to be fixed and is determinate on how many images are available.

This means that we can just add more images as and when, and hopefully the page will render with those additional images without changing anything. The size of the thumbnail images is also adjustable without having to externally resize them or again, fiddle with any HTML stuff.

Any amount, any size..

Also to look at, is to make the images appear in a random order on each refresh, this will add a little extra to the look and make things little 'fresh' perhaps.. ;)

This could possibly be expanded into a time-based feature, whereby the page will auto-refresh every so often on idle activity. A cool idea of this is that it could be left on display and constantly update itself like some sort of interactive billboard type thing!

Chows!

Forums vs Blogs

Hi,

A discussion forum

So, what are the differences between Forums and Blogs then..

Well, forums are much more of a collaboration and rely on many people to share information for it to become useful, and a blog is a much more personal thing where the main content is created by the individual to which others can respond to.

Forums are especially useful for finding out things or getting help from others or just random chat due to it's discussion type format and blogs are ideal for sharing personal opinions or experiences with others.

Forums can be split up into different topic areas which people can participate in, and blogs are typically about one persons particular interest or experiences.

Chow!

Photoshop express....

So, today we followed through another tutorial from Julian... 

This time, some Photoshop skills to create a cool looking TV ident type logo.

I learn't some new techniques, and quite liked the layering idea to create the psuedo 3D effect instead of relying on 3D vector text, nice.

Chow!

GP what?!

The 'General Packet Radio System' or GPRS for short, is a service for providing packet radio access on the GSM network. Packet transfer provides an efficient way to exchange data to and from mobile and packet networks and so this is very suitable for such things as IP (Internet Protocol) and can also be used to transfer MMS messages because of its higher data rate.

So GPRS is partly responsible for all the MMS pics that we exchange and for the ability to spend (or waste!) hours browsing the internet on our phones (but not in class of course!).

The GPRS specs are written up and maintained by the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI), which is a part of ANSI, which may be more familiar to some people, as i'm sure a lot of us have heard of ANSI this, ANSI that standard etc. If you don't already know, ANSI stands for American National Standard Institute.

One of the benefits of GPRS is its 'always-on' feature, which remove the need for dial-up and connection as in normal GSM communication. The access is always on, and for example could allow emails to come through to your phone automatically as in 'Push email'.

The most common devices that uses GPRS is (unsuprisingly) mobile phones, but it can also be used by home broadband access USB dongles, and really any device that requires a consistent and high rate of data transfer, whatever that data may be, whether its web browsing or even data transfer between stock markets!

Now, if only I could be the beneficiary of some large stocks and shares!!

Chow!

WOT is WAP?!

WAP (or Wireless Application Protocol), is a communications protocol standard for use in wireless networks. Devices that use this protocol are mainly mobile phones and PDA’s.

WAP was developed to allow a more interactive experience at a time when most mobile devices were unable to support full HTML browsing due to the technical limitations of the device and the required bandwidth to download the content-rich websites that we are now used to using on our phones.

So before this, WAP allowed a much more cut-down experience that was suited to the technology available then. WAP sites were mostly text-only or with very limited graphics due to the limited bandwidth and commonly consisted of a series of menus, or pages that could be navigated on the phone. A typical example would be a news site, where you selected what news you wanted to look at, and are then presented with a list of relevant stories which you could then select to view.



A much nicer example of WAP (shame it's about showbiz though...)




Early 'CRAP' WAP...

 



As technology and bandwidth got better, WAP sites improved, but nowadays it is largely redundant as most modern mobile devices typically support full HTML browsing and hence are able to render most websites as full and as rich as they were intended.


Chow!

Website pre-production

Here is a technical overview of our pre-production planning.

The site will be produced using a wide range of technologies and can be split into these areas of development:

• Overall design and layout.
• This will be done by means of team collaboration to sketch out and discuss various ideas before going ahead with an agreed design which we will mock-up using Adobe Photoshop.

• Individual web page production.
• These will be developed and constructed using HTML and Javascript and will adhere to the overall design using our created assets.

• Asset production.
• Film material will be recorded using digital video camcorders and edited with Adobe Premiere.
• Still photographs will be taken using a D-SLR and edited in Adobe Photoshop.
• Graphical content will be produced in Adobe Photoshop.

Using forums

Today we began to use a group discussion forum.
A discussion forum allows people to share ideas, ask for and offer advice, help, share opinions and anything else that requires group communication.
It differs to email communication in that people can join and leave a group discussion and take part as they wish as opposed to email with is far more direct and would rely on you knowing who to email for advice etc. rather than being in a more open forum that anyone can use.

Chow!

What important information from W3C will we now consider before producing our website?

After reading about and researching the W3C standards, we can now consider some approaches to web design and accessability for our own website.

Some of these could include:

• conforming to W3C standards in order to make site as compatible as possible between all browsers
• periodically check our website against the W3C validator during development so that anything that needs to be fixed can be
• make sure correct HTML mark-up is in place to assist the blind or sight-impaired if they are using a text-to-speech parser
• avoid any garish or unsightly colour schemes
• consider css styling to give option of changing text size
• make proper use of keyboard tabbing so that navigation is still (mostly) possible without mouse
• stick to standard, readable fonts of a decent size (at least 14)

In general it is all about making our site as widely available as possible to anyone with a standard browser and making the information available to the most people.

Chow!

First meeting - Interactive Promotional College Website

This morning we had our first 'official' meeting, where we discussed our Proposal, Treatment and Schedule.

As part of our discussion, we did consider covering the college as a whole, but it became clear that this could potentially involve a great deal more work, and become difficult in deciding where and what parts of the college to promote, their priority of importance etc.
In light of this, we agreed that we would cover promotion of the Media department, including detail and breakdown of the 4 courses on offer.

We decided we would need some interviews or 'sound-bites' from key staff and agreed that I would email those staff with a request for interview and possible availability.
Upon receipt of emails, we will then decide on a schedule for those interviews and who will take them. Ideally we would aim to have all the interviews we need by early next week.

As well as interview footage, we also require other video/still material which could include;

• exterior
• interior / tour
• students working
• footage of someone using relevant software
• inside the studio
• recording of someone else recording

We will try to take this footage as creatively as possible and using some techniques such as panning, zooming and focussing.

This will effectively become our 'stock' footage which we can then incorporate when and where appropriate into our final edits.

We plan to spend most of next week editing and finalising as best we can our video footage in preparation for the website.

Chow!

What is SMS?

Mention the term SMS and most people will correctly associate it with text messaging, but I wonder how many of those people actually know what the abbreviation stands for, let alone how it works?

SMS stands for Short Messaging System and forms the basis of a text communication service that is most commonly used by, but not limited to, mobile phones.

Standardized communication protocols allow a whole range of mobile phones and other devices to exchange short text messages back and forth.

The first SMS was sent from a computer in 1992, wishing Richard Jarvis of Vodafone a "Merry Christmas". Initial use by customers was slow, gradually increasing to over 205 million messages being sent in the UK alone in 2006.

Nowadays, SMS communication is so widely used that we probably sometimes wonder how we ever survived without it!

First week

Hi,

Welcome to our first post, where we will briefly describe our first week on the course.
The first couple of days were covered by the usual induction tasks, form filling, tests, etc.
In the middle of the week we were given our first assignment, which was to create some film footage of the B-Side festival preparations at Portland. This involved taking relevant footage of the venue, art pieces and also some interviews with the artists. We then had to edit the footage to create a short three minute clip with the best bits, using Adobe Premiere.

As part of this task we also have to write and submit an essay titled 'Video for Interactive Media: What You Need to Know'. This essay is to cover three main topics which are:

• What is digital video?
• How we used Adobe Premiere (capture, edit, export)
• What is YouTube and how to upload videos?

We are now in the second week, where we are learning blogging techniques! Could you guess? ;-)