A College Student’s Idea of a ‘Well-Branded’ Digital Image.

For my samples I chose to look at Colleen Wainwright's "Communicatrix", Chris Pirillo's site, Kelly Rigotti's "Almost Frugal", Bob Baker's "The Buzz Factor"  and on Linked in, I looked at Thomas Clifford and Jason Alba.

I think the key element to all of these sites is that the owners did a great job of ensuring that we, the viewers, knew what the point of the site is.

These websites and blogs are fairly simple, well laid out, and make it easy to find the information that is needed. A potential employer could easily find out who these people are and what they do that makes them special without a lot of extra work. A great example is Colleen Wainwright's "About" page. She has it laid out like an FAQ where she poses questions and then answers them - often in a humorous way, but always thoughtful and interesting way. This made me want to continue reading and would make it more likely that I would want to pursue this person in business.

On Linkedin, which is essentially a social resume site, the focus lies on a few things: having a complete resume with a lot of relevant experience and insight on those experiences, and good connections. The connections seem to be very important on Linkedin. If, for example, you have your employer, boss, and other industry people as your endorsements it is probably more likely that an employer would want to contact you. Ultimately Linkin sites seem to be much more straight forward than blogs or personal sites. They are focused almost solely on the work you have done and what would make you a good candidate for a job.

Other things I noticed are a strong focus on social media, having a strong and friendly photo of yourself, and focusing on your strengths and interests.

Five Criteria for a well-branded digital presence in college:

1. Clarity - be up front about who you are, what you are interested in, and what your motivations are. This doesn't mean talk about your friends
2. Professionalism - be professional! This doesn't mean you can't have fun or but funny, just make sure that the vulgarity is gone, the photos of you drinking with your buddies aren't visible, and (depending on the goals you have) your political and religious views are not a focus.
3. The future - talk about your long-term goals and what inspires you, both on a daily level and to meet those goals.
4. Resume - let people know what you have already done so they can see your accomplishments. As a college student your grades, clubs, and other non-academic achievements could be important.
5. Visibility - Make sure that your site can be seen and accessed by people! And make sure that if you do you have a personal facebook or journal page that it can NOT be seen by those who shouldn't see it.

My own digital presence is fairly lacking. I have had a lot of visible accounts in the past, but I have tried very hard to lock them down. I have either made most of them completely private or "friends-only" so that my friends and family are the only ones able to view my posts and photos. I also have a number of other blogs that are not connected to my name in any way. The one thing I do have open is my Linkedin profile. I have been meaning to expand that, but have no had much to add to it for a while. I think I will definitely add more information as well as add more contacts. In the future I will create a personal site for my resume and as a way to have sort of a digital business card I can send to people.

Usability Study

Craigslist
http://www.craigslist.org

Communication and Message:
What is the purpose?
To allow people to buy/sell things, find/post jobs, and communicate in community oriented forums.

Intended Audience:
It does not seem to have an intended audience. It seems to be aimed towards anyone (likely adults) who has something to say, buy, sell, or who is looking for a job or employee.

Content:
Is the content organized in an intuitive manner?
Yes, the website is very simple and laid out with almost all content/links on the main page itself. Very little digging is required to get to where you want to go.

Usability & Interface:
The website is very consistent throughout. The three main page styles are the directory page, the pages listing posts under each section, and the posts themselves. All are very consistent in style and presentation and make it easy to get back to where you were before. There are no graphics which makes load time very quick and less confusing. There are also options at the bottom of the main page to choose different styles for mobile, tablet, and regular formatting.

Navigation:
Very consistent throughout the site. It is extremely easy to tell which items are links and which are not due to the color scheme selected. The site is basically a directory of links.

Overall Success:
I don't have any real suggestions for the site. It is extremely basic and effective which is likely one of the reasons it is so successful. Ease of navigation and use are key parts of the site.

Video Review

For this post I will be reviewing 3 Youtube videos and 2 Vimeo videos and comparing/contrasting them based on their quality as well as pointing out the trends I see in the overall content of the sites.

Vimeo - 

Video 1 - "Made on Earth" by Enrique Pacheco

An extremely beautifully shot piece showing many different landscapes, both natural and man made. The shots are time lapsed and sped up and most have a gradual pan over the site. This combination of effects allows sunsets and sunrises to change the natural lighting and reflection in each landscape and is a really wonderful effect. The music is extremely powerful and works great with the imagery. It feels like a highly polished professional production.

Video 2 - "Ordos" by Charles Lanceplaine

A skate video shot in a city in China which is nearly uninhabited, but large and almost new, this video is extremely well done. The shots are well chosen, the angles are great, and the music works well with the piece. The location alone shows that the production is not just that of some random skate kids, but a group of talented people who either have connections or know what they are doing. Very interesting and fun.

Youtube -

Video 1 - "Skweezy and my son Pnut" by ChAinHanGlOw69 aka Skweezy Jibbs

In this video our host, Skweezy Jibbs, rants about a bunch of nothingness and then introduces us to his "son" Pnut. Who is a monkey. A fairly pointless video but I have seen some videos by Skweezy Jibbs in the past and they have been pretty funny, unfortunately this one wasn't. Overall the video and editing quality is pretty low. I think this is part of the appeal though, as it is supposed to be the web show of the character Skweezy Jibbs, and he does it out of his apartment. Other than a few cuts and credits there is little done. The lighting and music have little to no positive impact on the overall product.

Video 2- "Hey It's Pomplamoose - Theme Song" by PomplamooseMusic

A very high quality theme song recorded for the Pomplamoose live webcast. Pomplamoose, for those who are not familiar, is a musical duo who record the creation of their songs and upload them as music videos. The videos show clips of each individual sound being recorded, including the vocal layers. Their music is really quite unique and the videos show a great deal of creative editing techniques to create something that is extremely fun and interesting. The audio quality is high as well.

Video 3- "Deep Dish Fastfood Pizza - Epic Meal Time" by EpicMealTime

Epic Meal Time is a short that has been on youtube for a few years now. Each week or so the Epic Meal Time crew assembles to create some sort of culinary monstrosity. The goal of this is to pack as many calories as possible and include as much meat (usually bacon) as they can into the food. This week was a fast food pizza. The quality of the video is fairly good and it seems that whoever is working the camera knows what they are doing. They combine indoor and outdoor shots, shots during the creation of the food, and a final scene where they eat it. The music helps impact the overall piece by making it seem that much more "epic".

-

Ultimately, it seems that Vimeo caters to a crowd that is significantly different than Youtube. Vimeo's content is generally very high quality - often seeming extremely professional. These videos likely had budgets and crews working on them. Youtube seems to be largely for a crowd that is doing it themselves. People who makes videos in their homes or with friends. While many videos on Youtube are high quality and well made, they still lack that "professional" polish. While Vimeo content seems like something you would see in an indie movie theater, Youtube content is largely content you may see on Comedy Central or MTV.

Podcast Project

For this podcast, Mike Hershberger and I talked about the various elements of VOIP services, specifically Skype, and how they are used.

Using Skype

Skype is a VOIP (voice over IP) service that allows anyone with an internet connection to make voice or video calls to both Skype users as well as home and cellular phones. There are a few options for service. A free account allows you to make voice and video calls to other skype users as well as text messaging, while paying as little as 1.2 cents per minute for a subscription plan will allow you to make calls to any phone in the world from your skype device. As far as devices go, Skype is available on nearly any device one could think of: PC, Mac, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and even Skype enabled televisions. Nearly any computer made in the last 5 (or even more) years could run Skype based on the system requirements I found. For Macs it only requires 1ghz processor,100mb of disk space, a headset, high speed internet, and OSx 10.5.8 or newer. The PC requirements are even lower.

In order to actually use Skype, it is extremely simple. Once you sign up for an account, install the software, and login, all you have to do is do a search for the username of the Skype member you want to call. Once you dial the user it rings, much like a real phone, until the user accepts or declines the call. Once you are connected you can speak with the other person with just your voice or, if you have one, choose to use your webcam to do a video chat. I made a few different calls for this project and they were both very simple to complete.

I find Skype calls to be both fun and useful. When I was in Costa Rica last summer I was able to make calls home with my phone via skype anywhere there was wifi for around. I only spent around $15 for 3 weeks of calls. It really is exactly like a phone call if you are doing voice chat, but the video chat is a whole different experience. It's much more personal than a phone call or text because you can see them as well as hear them.

Overall I think Skype is a great product that will be around for a long time. I can't wait for services like this to be integrated even more into our daily lives.

Googley

Yesterday I went to a presentation given by a software engineer from the Madison Google office. In the hour  he had to speak, he went over a really wide array of information. From life at the office to how Google goes about solving problems.

The most interesting part of the presentation, for me, was the information on their data centers. Seeing pictures of the meager beginnings of Google (nothing more than a bunch of computers and monitors set up on a banquet table) then transitioning to the servers they built themselves to fill their co-located data center space to the maximum, and then to their absolutely massive data centers they now have was really quite impressive.

At one point I asked about what languages would be good to focus on and he said that Google likes to find generalists. People who are good at a bunch of things rather than experts in one particular language or field. From his comments it seems like it would be smart to learn Java as well as look into languages such as C++, Python, Google's "Go" language, database programming, and specifically mentioned to look into programming for multi-core processors.

Overall I think it was a very good presentation, but I found myself wishing it could have been longer and more in-depth.

Storycorps project.

For this assignment we were instructed to go to storycorps.org and pick out 5 pieces to write a brief overview of. Two of these pieces were to be animated and three just audio. Storycorps is a pretty interesting project where people are given the chance to record a story from their lives and have it converted to a short segment on the website. There are a number of interesting pieces, but here are the ones I chose along with the reviews for them.


Audio
1. I came into the German bar you were bouncing

The audio starts out with the story name and an explanation of the title right away. The story is organized by audio bits from both participants, each pieces the story together in small clips, presented as a conversation with one another. They met because she needed money to support her family and decided to enter an amateur stripping competition and ended up meeting the bouncer and together they went to college. They hadn't even completed the 10th grade, but they were able to finish together and obtained biology degrees. There was no music throughout the story until the end. It serves as a nice close to the story.

2. Most of my interaction with people was the worst moment of their life

A man telling a story of having to inform a mother that her husband and father of her 3 young children had died in a car accident. The key piece was having to explain to a child what had happened and why he felt it was important to be honest rather than lying or covering up the truth. He ends the piece by expressing how difficult it was to do this all the time, but that he felt he was born to do it. Once again, no music until the end of the piece.

3. I have spent a lot of years just hiding it

This piece was a woman telling a story about how she didn't feel special as a kid but found acceptance with a group of white supremacists and the extremes that these beliefs went to and how much it took for her beliefs to change. She tells a story about how violent the group was, often drinking and going out to look for fights. One night they went out and confronted a vehicle full of black men and the women's boyfriend beat one of the men with a bat, resulting in his death. She managed to get away from this group, and while she never stopped feeling guilty about what had happened, her beliefs had changed and now her own son is standing up for a child who is different in his school. Music at the ending.

Animation
4. The Human Voice

An extremely uplifting piece told by Studs Turkel, who according to the website and the intro to the animation was a great inspiration for the creators of the project. Turkel tells a story about an experience on the subway in which a young couple were late and caused the conductor to announce a 30 second delay. This resulted in everyone giving a death glare at the couple. Turkel tried to lighten the mood by making a light-hearted joke, only to receive the same treatment. He then asked a baby "sir or madame, what is your opinion of the human species?" resulting in a giggle from the baby and Turkel exclaiming "Thank god, the sound of the human voice." A very nice piece presented, once again, as a first person recollection. No music until the end. This anmiation could have easily been presented as audio only, though the animation certainly adds to the story, though mainly for comedic value with this piece.

5. Germans in the Woods

This particular animation was presented in nearly identical fashion to the audio only pieces. It was a man recalling a story from his past, explaining in detail the events that led up to him having to shoot a young german soldier and how he has felt haunted by this his entire life. I believe it would translate perfectly into an audio only piece, but the animation really added a lot more depth to the piece. It helped to bring his words to life as well as add a bit more humanity/sadness to it. The music was just like the others, added only at the end to signify that the story was coming to a close.

Five Criteria

It is hard to really pin down what makes for great audio/video, but I think that these 5 points are fairly essential for a truly engaging piece.

1. Clarity. Both in aural quality as well as storyline. You want the listener to understand the speaker as well as the story being told.
2. Flow. If telling a story, you want to make sure it is told in a logical order so the listener can piece it together properly. If telling the story out of order, the listener should be able to clearly recognize this.
3. Connection. The listener should be able to make some sort of connection to the story. Even something as simple as a story about turning your homework in late and the anxiety it causes can do that as it is something most of us have experienced.
4. Imagery. Whether it is video or audio, the piece should provide strong imagery for us to play out the story in our mind. Describe the important places you go or the things you do in a way that people aren't left guessing too much.
5. Music. Don't let music or sound effects overpower what you are doing. It should blend in and serve as a beginning, end, or transition unless the music itself is part of the piece or can significantly add to it.