Welcome

WELCOME... I am a student studying interactive media at Weymouth College.
In my course I have been introduced to Blogger where I am now writing blogs about Digital Communications. If you can leave me feed back about my posts, or how you think my page could be improved in general, your comments will be read and will be very much appreciated. Thank you :)

Wednesday, 3 November 2010

Another day... Another post...

We have been given time in Jackey's lesson to get on with our assignment. This has been helpful because it has allowed us to get some of our notes typed up. I have receieved an email from Sophie which contains the budget, this will go in our pre-production file. We haven't been able to get on with any work on Flash because only a few computers in the college have Flash on them. This is a problem which is slowing us down alot in terms of getting the website working. :( I have updated the schedule which helps us determine how long we have left to do all of the tasks. Louis and I have decided that we will come in on Friday and get some filming done which we can use as cut-offs in our interviews.

Monday, 1 November 2010

1st November - Work. Work. Work.

Today, Sophie, Josh and I were using Adobe Premiere to edit some more interviews for our promotional college website. We cut out parts of the interview which weren't relevant and also made the video's fade in. We also faded the audio when someone else started to talk in the interview. Louis was using Flash and Photoshop to get the basic website so it functioned. As a group we decided that we needed to get some short cut off clips from around the college so we could add it to the interviews. I think today went really well and everything seems to be coming together. I really hope I will be saying the same at the end of the week!

Branding

Branding is one of the key aspects in a business, whether the business is small or large. When you get a brand name which is recognisable means that people can relate to your product in competitive markets. The brand is telling your customers what they can expect from the product. Once you have a brand it is important to be consistant, this is the key point to getting a successful brand. Strong brands allow the customer to build a trust between themselves and the product. Your brand is not only a name and a logo it also has to convay a message.

Wednesday, 20 October 2010

Discussion Forums and Blogs.

Discussion forums tend to give a feeling that everyone in welcome to add their own thoughts and opinions. Forums allow anyone to start a discussion about anything and wait to get a response by anyone viewing that forum. Discussion forums are usually helpful because the person looking at your discussion is often interested in it and are likely to give constructive critics or advance, rather than start a slanging match because they don’t like what you have to say!


Blogs still allow you to comment on the post but it is less open for discussion like forums. The blog is usually written by one person who has researched a topic on the internet and added information from different sources. Blogs often come from one individual or in some cases, a team of people if it is for business.


“In the context of business communication, these are often used to talk with the marketplace and to join the conversation that existing external bloggers may be having” - Jeremiah Owyang, Columnist for Forbes CMO Network.

Email and IM

Emailing is a way of communicating by exchanging messages across the internet.  Emailing is a quick way of sending information to whoever you want. An advantage of emailing is that you can communicate with people quickly no matter where they are.
Although there are many advantages of using email services, there are some disadvantages too.  Emailing allows you too attach files and images which can be seen as a plus side to using email but that feature allows people to add viruses /malicious malware to the email.
Instant messaging is usually seen as a fun way of keeping up with friends and sending files to each other. Most instant messaging services only allow you to send a short message. IM has a few advantages over email. For example, you don’t get junk mail. Like Email, it is possible for other contacts to send you malicious files which can harm your pc.
Personally, I use email more than IM because I find it more convenient as it doesn’t require you both to be online at the same time.

Tuesday, 19 October 2010

MMS - Multimedia Messaging Service

MMS is similar to SMS in the way it allows people to communicate by sending messages. However, SMS is just a simple way to send a short message to a contact, whereas MMS allows you to send images, sound, text pages and videos.

MMS was first used in Japan when camera phones first come out. At first there were a few technical difficulties in opening the picture message that you had received because it was in a different format to what the phone would usually be compatible with. 

****I found it quite difficult to get information MMS that I could understand. If anyone can give me some help in understanding this, please write some info

MY WONDERFUL WORK...With a bit of help from Julian, of course.

This is what I created today in Julian's lesson. To create this I used Photoshop CS4 and followed a tutorial on Youtube. I found it very interesting and learnt some new techniques. The technique that I think will be most useful is the gradient tool to create a 3D effect.