2) Initial Ideas
3) Research into these ideas
4) Development of Ideas
5) Final Idea & research
6) Development of my Concept (2d)
7) Prototype (3d)
9) Links & Resources
Year 2 of Foundation Degree in Creative Digital Communications. Critical Studies Unit, this unit is about looking at systems/interfaces which we use in society, Including Blogs, Social Networks, Sat Nav, Forums, Google maps, XBox live,
5) Final Idea & research
6) Development of my Concept (2d)
7) Prototype (3d)
9) Links & Resources



Teleconference-
This is used by businesses, education facilities and even social networks through the likes of MSN - the instant messenging site.
It basically means to communicate via webcam.
"A teleconference or teleseminar is the live exchange and mass articulation of information among several persons and machines remote from one another but linked by a telecommunications system. Terms such as audio conferencing, telephone conferencing and phone conferencing are also sometimes used to refer to teleconferencing." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleconference 11/12/09 2.33PM
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The App stores -
In previous years if you wanted to write in a text document you’d need one device, if you wanted to send a text you’d need another, but now with advances such as i-phones and smart phones this is no longer the case. And with the addition of ‘app stores’ such as the ‘apple app store’ the Nokia ‘ovi’ store we have access to so much more than we would have ever expected, take the musical instruments for example with these you can blow into the microphone and press the virtual keys on your i-phones screen and you can actually make music!
The first ‘app store’ was by Apple on the launch of their smart phone the i-Phone, so that you could have almost anything in one place! This took off by storm with over 100,000 developers in their first year with more than 65,000 apps created generating over 1.5 Billion downloads in just the first year! There are apps for all kinds of things as demonstrated in the i-phone review website - www.appsandhats.com/
(above figures taken direct from the apple website on November the 4th 2009)
Ovi is Nokias answer trying to break into apples amazing success they posted the statement: “Nokia World confirmed that since May 26th, users have downloaded 10 million pieces of content from the Ovi Store. Compare this to iPhone App Store which surpassed 100 million downloads in the first two months and 1.5 billion after a year.” However how correct this is compared to the apple app store is unlikely as Nokia are saying ‘pieces of content’ which also includes the downloads of ring tones & phone wallpapers so how many downloads out of this 10 million are actually apps? We don’t know.
Source: http://mobileinc.co.uk/2009/10/nokia-ovi-store-gets-10-million-app-downloads-in-3-months-apple-app-store-gets-2-billion-downloads-in-14-months/
12:38pm 04/11/09
Another app store is the less talked about Google Android app store, The Android store has far less apps than the Apple store yet a statement read: “While the Android system launched with around 10% the number of applications available as the iPhone, a media research firm says nine applications had between 10,000 and 50,000 downloads in the first day. That's compared with just two applications doing in the same range on the iPhone Apps launch.”
Source: 12:42pm 04/11/09 http://www.infopackets.com/news/business/google/2008/20081104_google_android_off_to_a_good_start.htm
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E-Portfolio's
E-portfolios or online portfolios are a relief for anyone in the design industry, previously when applying for employment the majority of the design world will have found it difficult to show case their works. But now with the help of the web Artists can publish images or links to their works so that employers can view their potential before meeting them in person.
A Great example of this is the design company http://www.sofake.com/ who have created flash videos inside of flash videos to create their design portfolio, to navigate around their site you need to press the grayish looking squares under the image.
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Blogs
I have been looking at the different ways of which blogs are used.
The main category’s I looked at where personal blogs and corporate blogs.
Typically when I think of blogs I think of some one sat at home typing into a pre set template such as Blogger or Word Press, creating almost an online diary.
But through looking into different blogs you soon get a true in sight of what people use them for.
They range from online tutorials, show casing work, sharing tips, ideas, views and opinions, rating movies and music and having online discussions.
Two great examples of these are Lauren Luke who created video pod casts and posted them online of her passion/hobby for make up and colour, she showed examples and tips through her pod casts so that others could follow. She now has 3 million hits and has been offered her own makeup range.
The other great example is of a Gary Vaynerchuk who has a passion for wine and so did pod casts and entry’s about different wines, he now has celebrities featuring in his blog.
In corporate use they are used so that customers can have more a personal insight not given by their professional websites, these blogs tend to look completely different to the commercial sites where they sell products or services.
They tend to have links to groups such as twitter and social networks which you may not associate big company’s with. And can be really in formal which you may not find through their big website, such as a recent blog post I read reading: ‘sometimes we suck’ which was an apology to customers after the company’s server went down for the day.
Famously they will tweet or tell us about new products coming out or updates but they have to be careful about what they are posting, recently a manager of a large company sent out a message how he was ‘dreading today, because I have to fire one of my employees’ which obviously all the employees saw online and felt on edge at work. The media got a hold of this and created a huge story about how it was unfair to post such a comment. So they have to be a little reserved when posting comments
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Social Networking is the connections you have with friends, family and colleagues
Social Networking Sites or SNS is a website developed to link you all in one place,
There are now millions of social networks avaliable and its even questionable to which the first one was!
Jeremiah Owyang quote “I just asked my friends on Twitter what their first social network was (see their responses), and most gave a varying degree of responses of web based communities, a few claimed early BBS systems –I didn’t see anyone claim email”
Quote Taken 13.34 04/11/09
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/07/09/email-the-first-social-network/
Jeremiah Owyang went on to say:
"People often make the mistake that Friendster, Tribes, or some early social site was the first social network. People also make the mistake that Facebook is the largest social network to date, in reality, the largest social networks are email. Let’s run the numbers: Microsoft told me that Hotmail has 375 million active accounts worldwide, Yahoo mail is reported at 280mm, and Facebook only has 200 million but growing.
Email is the First –and Largest– Social Network
Well if you agree that Facebook, a private community of your friends is a social network, then so is email.
They both have the same requirements
1) profiles (emails have signatures),
2) Ability to connect to each other (the act of emailing, and often responding,
also, take for example a great deal of Facebook, Twitter, and Plaxo messages enter into our email inboxes, I can read Twitter DMs, and Facebook messages in my email –then choose to respond. What’s the difference?
Quote Taken 13.40 04/11/09
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/07/09/email-the-first-social-network/
After voicing his view that email could have been the first social networking site he does have some good logic, because your email account is like your 'home' online its the place where everything is posted to, its the main website you go to because you can recive all of the feeds from other sites that you are joined up to and you do visit it every day.
* So whats the largest social network?
Immediately I'd think Facebook, but looking at the above theory I am thinking towards email in a new light!
Yahoo mail is reported at 280mm, and
Facebook only has 200 million but growing.
But what about Google? Some think that it is making a huge network under our noses! They are the first point of call when people want to find something out! such as when Microsoft launched their new search engine http://www.bing.com/ it was ironic that millions of people went looking on Google to find out about it !
But back to the point, websites such as Blogger require you to have a Google mail account to sign in or sign up!
From 1997 to 2001, a number of social networks took off!