Week 8 summary

First up today is Tom. His presentation is on online communities, but on deviantART in particular.

Online communites give people the ability to have an online persona. Some online communities are myspace, bebo and deviantART.

DeviantART shows the potential of young artists. It is an online community that allows interaction between people all over the world. There is free membership and it is driven by comments and interactions of the people. Each person has a gallery which other members can view and comment on. There are also groups within this community. For example, kids with guns (www.kwgcrew.org) has a site about all kinds of graffiti and stencil art with threads on other art types as well. I think it's a good idea to involve user's designs for the banners on the webpage and I like how it changes every time you reload the page. People feel a freedom showing their designs online because the online persona does not have to match their "true" personality. I found this topic interesting because I myself am thinking of ways to get my design work out there and this is one option that has a lot of potential.

The second presentation is by Robert. His presentation is on myspace.

Myspace is a social website for a network of friends and blogs. It is found at www.myspace.com. On the site you can search for films, alphabetically if you prefer. Under events, it now has information about gigs and events in Australia. You can edit the HTML of your myspace page if you are fluent with html or css.

Myspace is very similar to Friendster, which is the online community that I use. Myspace seems to be more worldwide though, whether Friendster seems to be very popular within the asian community. I think it's a great way to show people your work, music, photos etc.

There is also a third presentation today by Daniel. His topic is MP3s and itunes.

MP3s are available from sites like yahoo.com, bigpond.com and MP3.com. Bigpond runs competitions to get people to buy music through their site. MP3's have a small file size but also a small loss in file quality. iTunes has information about bands, news, rss feeds and of course music. From the iTunes application, you can go to the iTunes store which has information about Apple Products and accessories. iTunes is a good application to use because it acts as a proper music library. iTunes now allows bands to sell their songs online however it does get a profit of approximately 50c/download. If you want to buy music, a 30 second clip is provided so you can try before you buy.

I didn't know that the iTunes store had tv episodes for free download and that you can subscribe to them. That sounds really cool and I think I may try that one day!