Blog 2 Pt. III

Take a screen capture of the main page of web site of your own choice and post it on your blog.  Create a table (similar to page 101 of Morville – Chapter 6) describing the navigational labels.  The table should present the name of the label, the destination page’s heading label, and the destination page’s <TITLE> label.  

I decided to do Carsales.com.au due to recently browsing the site, having some familiarity with it,  the current popularity of the site and it being (what I consider to be) a well designed and labelled website.

CarSales website Home Page

Name of Label	Destination Page’s Heading Label	Destination Page’s <TITLE> Label
Top-of-page navigation system labels
Cars for sale	Cars for sale	Used Cars – New Cars- Search New and Used Cars for Sale – carsales.com.au
New car showroom	New car showroom	New car showroom- carsales.com.au
Sell your car	Sell your car	Sell your car- Australia No1 Autosite 3.4 Million Buyers- carsales.com.au
Parts & Services	Accessories	Car Parts & Accessories- Search New & Used Car Parts & Accessories – carsales.com.au
Research	Research	Car Reviews & Research – carsales.com.au
News & reviews	News & reviews	Car Reviews- Read Car Reviews, News Car Advice Online – carsales.com.au
Help	Help	Help Center – carsales.com.au
Our sites	Our sites	Car Sales Network- carsales.com.au
Sign in	Sign in	Sign in – carsales.com.au
Join	Join	Join – carsales.com.au
Bottom-of-page navigation system labels
Terms & conditions	Terms & conditions	Terms & conditions- carsales.com.au
Privacy	Privacy	Privacy Policy – carsales.com.au
Contact us	Contact us	Help Centre- carsales.com.au
Editorial team	Editorial team	Editorial team – Read Car Reviews, News & Car Advice Online- carsales.com.au
About us	About us	About us- carsales.com.au
Careers	Careers	Carsale Careers – Career Opportunities and more! – carsales.com.au
Corporate advertising	Corporate advertising	Find the right online advertising solution for your business – Home- MediaMotive
Competitions	Competitions	Carsales People’s Choice Awards – carsales.com.au
Shareholders	Shareholders	Shareholders Centre home– carsales.com.au
Site map	Site map	Site map- carsales.com.au
Popular searches	Popular searches	Popular searches- Carsales.com.au-  carsales.com.au

a. What labels you did not like and why, and suggest improvements.

Personally, I found the site to be well designed with a consistent, easily navigable and a visually appealing colour scheme. The sites purpose is to advertise cars and various related products and the site obliges this by allowing a user to go online, easily access the desired information and content (not an intentional course namedrop) without unnecessary effort and minimal hassle. I can’t suggest any improvements per say as the website is both effective and manages its use of labels well.

b.  Whether there were any inconsistencies in the labelling system between the pages (in terms of style, presentation, syntax, granularity, comprehensiveness and audience).

Style– The overall website style and appearance is very well designed with a professional and cohesive appearance. A user can browse the website in its entirely but still be presented with the same core page with the elements remaining the same and the content changing. Due to this, Carsales is extremely user friendly and stylistically appealing and this has resulted in it being the most popular Carsales website within the Australian community.

Presentation– The site presents itself very well with the site having plenty of information and links without feeling overpopulated with irrelevant content. Numerous other sites attempt to combine multiple types of navigation methods (such as sidebars as well as top of page menus) but Carsales has a simple and effective layout and this is retained regardless of whatever page of the site you are linked to.
Overall the sites presentation featured no notable inconsistencies with font sizes and types being the same throughout and making an effective yet not cramped use of available space, though this is to be expected due the sites current popularity and (presumably) high budget design and implementation.

Syntax– The site had excellent syntax as each of menu links is clear and describes precisely what the user will be navigated to which attributes to the overall positive user experience. Again, this can be contributed to the sites popularity which would ensure that it is easily navigable for its market, which includes people from a wide range of demographics. In terms of its heading labels, Carsales sticks primarily to nouns and this is beneficial as it retains a certain cohesiveness by not branching out to other syntactical approaches.

Granularity– Carsales presents itself very well overall and has a high level of technical details. The labels each have a unique purpose and seldom overlap into the same topics/links. The labels possess the same level of granularity and are specific enough to allow the user to know what it is they are clicking on.

Comprehensiveness– I personally found the site to be very comprehensive covering all major and several minor aspects that a user may want and/or need to know when buying or selling a car and based off my observations, they have done an exemplary job of deciding what requires its own subsection. The appropriate and more prominent/popular sections had a label for quick access and the less prominent areas were contained within sub-sections though not to the point of being confusing. Unless the user is seeking something unusually specific, all the information required is available somewhere on the website and should be relatively simple to locate.

Audience– Carsales.com has a very wide audience in terms of those who frequent the site as nearly everyone will at some point require a motor vehicle, however, every visitor comes with a specific purpose. Usually it is either with the intent of buying a car or selling a car and based off this knowledge, Carsales has managed to tailor the site to its audience very well. The site employs understandable terminology and avoids technical jargon for inexperienced users and has created a navigation system which can be easily used by its entire target market assuming they have the base knowledge to access the site and are aware of what it is they are seeking.

 c.  Examine at least two other similar or competing web sites.  How similar are the labelling systems?  Is any one site clearly the winner (and if so, why)?

CarsGuide website Home Page, a direct competitor to Carsales

CarsWanted website Home Page, a direct competitor to Carsales

I selected CarGuide (http://www.carsguide.com.au/) and CarsWanted (http://www.carswanted.com.au/) which are both Australian based online Car retailers providing essentially the same service that Carsales does. These websites are therefore direct competitors in the market and have similar though subtly different labels based off observations made from the respective sites.

While these three sites possess similarities, due to providing the same function, there are also obvious differences once a close look is taken, CarsWanted is more a business orientated website offering only Home, About, How It Works, Where We Buy and FAQ in the top-of-the-page navigation system labels whilst CarGuide is very closely resembling Carsales with labels for Reviews and Tools & Advice.

The bottom-of-page navigation system labels for CarsWanted differ from the other two websites due to possessing them previously in the top-of-page navigation. This decision is a logical one as having two of the same links in different places would be unnecessary and may cause some issues with viewers who are familiar with the more popular sites. That being said, this does deter greatly from the overall site navigation and accessibility.
CarGuide on the other hand has bottom-of-page labels which bear a striking similarity to Carsales, with the labels and links being nearly identical and even being ordered the same.

From these observations it is safe to assume that numerous other eCar retailers will follow a labelling structure in the same vein as Carsales and based off its success; it is clearly effective.

While each of these separate sites have positive and negatives, based on personal preference, I believe Carsales is the clear winner out of the trio for a couple of reasons and these may contribute to why Carsales is the most well-known and prominent out of the three with the general public and audience agreeing on some level (even subconsciously) with my thought process.

Neither CarGuide nor CarsWanted have a very well implemented menu labelling system, with the labels not remaining at the top of the web page when scrolling which limits the user’s access and forces them to manually scroll up if they wish to navigate around the website.

Additionally, the colour scheme is not cohesive or aesthetically appealing with CarsGuide having a white on white scheme and CarsWanted having a grey on grey design. While these are not necessary bad choices, CarSales possesses a distinctive black menu with contrasting white labels making them easily apparent and visible to the users. Finally, the Carsales site simply looks better, it has a simple yet distinctive visual appeal that these other sites have failed to induce or replicate.

d. Look at how other students have answered this question and comment on their blogs.

Will Update At A Later Date

Blog 2 Pt. II

Arrange the following list in alphabetical order, then answer the questions below:

#!%&: Creating Comic Books
$35 a Day Through Europe
.38 Special
1-2-3 of Magic, The
1001 Arabian Nights
Albany, New York
El Paso, Texas
H20: The Beauty of Water
Hague, Netherlands, The
Lord of the Rings, The
New York, New York
Newark, New Jersey
Plzen, Czech Republic
Saint Nicholas, Belgium
St. Louis, Missouri
XVIIme siècle

(The placed as the end of each title containing it as it is often ignored or disregarded)

a) Did you put The Hague under T or H?

I placed the H first as ‘The’ in an ordered or alphabetical listing is usually omitted.

b) Did you put El Paso under E or P?

I filed it under E because this list contains English words and is written in the English language, however, El also means ‘the’ in Spanish which (like mentioned before) is omitted from an ordered list. It may be placed in either depending on the list itself though, obviously with a list written entirely in the Spanish language it would be illogical to have it under the E and would thus be placed in the P.

c) Which came first in your list, Newark or New York?

I placed New York before Newark for a couple of reasons, if the space is considered to be a character/symbol then this comes before the character A. Additionally if we were to look at this list in terms of an ASCII table then the value of the space character (32) is lower than the value of an ‘a’ character (97). This is only when factoring the space though; otherwise the result would be inverted with A coming before Y alphabetically.

d) Does St. Louis come before or after Saint Nicholas?

I have placed St. Louis after Saint Nicholas primarily because though ‘St.’ is often an abbreviation of Saint, St. Louis is nearly always referred to as such and seldom expanded into the full word Saint. If it was to be expanded, surely the list would have it written for the sake of consistency.

e) How did you handle numbers, punctuation, and special characters?

I ranked the special characters (#!%&:, $, . ) before the numbers as this is how a majority of lists are often organized and doing so otherwise may result in confusion amongst the audience. In terms of ranking characters, I simply placed them alphabetically to allow easy navigation and for someone to locate what they were looking for without unnecessary effort.

f) Assuming the italicised terms are book titles, what might be a more useful way to organise this list?

There are numerous ways you could organise this list if the italicised items are book titles. Some include: by author name, category, fiction and non-fiction, date published amongst others.
The most logical way to be to attempt to separate the book titles from the other list entries, either in a separate list entirely or at the start of the list followed by the locations or vice versa.

g) If the cities represent places you’ve visited and the book titles are ones you’ve read, how could chronology be used to order the list in a more meaningful way?

If that was the case the best course would be to separate the two types of entries (books and cities) but retain chronological (presumably by date read and date arrived in city respectively) order for both of them. This would be best as it would avoid the confusion of having two different topics organised into one single chronological listing.

h) Look at how some of the other students have organised this information and comment on their blogs.
Will Update At Later Date

Blog 2 Pt. I

Describe what role an Information Architect plays in the development of a web site.

Many users consider a website to be a product of the combined efforts of the client it’s designed for, the web programmers responsible for the coding and the graphic designers responsible for the design phase but often overlook one of the most crucial elements in the process; the information architect.  

BusinessDictionary.com defines an information architecture as a “Set of rules that determine what, and how and where, information will be collected, stored, processed, transmitted, presented, and used. On the internet, information architecture means how a website’s content is organized and presented to its users to facilitate navigation and search functions” (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/information-architecture.html)

In the same way an architect is responsible for organisation and planning of a building (most often a building), an information architect is the person responsible for the organisation and planning of the information on a website. 

Their primary task it to ensure that the information displayed on designated web site is structured in such a way that the user is able to easily navigate and meet their needs.

It’s their job to decide certain key aspects of the site including (but not limited to):

• The functionality the site will possess
• The mission and purpose of the website
• The labelling and indexing/site searching aspects of the site
• Navigation (both the primary and secondary and information organization aspects
• The top end and bottom end designs

These aspects may seem relatively trivial or irrelevant to a front end user at first glance, but once understood the meaning and depth behind each task that the IA performs, it is clear how crucial the role they play truly is. They possess a unique skill set (follow this link for an interview regarding an IA’s skill set http://www.uie.com/articles/ia_essential/) that is indispensable to the companies that they work within.

The role of information architect is primarily invisible to the standard web site user and they are often overlooked as a result of this.

The fact they are often overlooked due to the behind-the-scenes nature of their job, however, in no way diminishes the impact of the job that they perform as if their role was non-existent very few websites would be as effective or as popular as they currently are.

 

If an IA has performed his job exceptionally well then the user will not even be aware of their existence because they are preoccupied with the information being accessed, not how it got there or the structure of it.

However, this also goes the opposite way as it can be easily apparent when an IA has done a poor job based on the user’s interactions with the website. The potential outcomes of a website with poor information architecture design shows how crucial the role of an information architect truly is. If a user can navigate to a website and in the smallest amount of time obtain the information they seek with minimal effort, this reduces the time wasted for the user and they are satisfied with the website and more likely to visit again.

For example, if a site has too much information or the information is not well presented, the site is likely to become cluttered, confusing and generally an inconvenience to use which will limit its impact, use and profitability.

 

The information architect must be aware of certain things at all times both during the development process and after, such as the volume of data/content and whether or not that will increase or decrease, understanding the purpose of the sites, the target audience demographic and the needs of the consumers accessing it, the appropriate terminology for those users, the business’ resources available and the goals and objectives that they have in place for the website.

Due to the nature of their job they are often interacting with various members and elements of website development including but not limited to: clients, site programmers, database staff, graphic designers, department managers, project managers and of course the users they are structuring the content around. 

Blog 1 Pt. IV

In what ways do you think that Web 3.0 technologies (i.e., the Semantic Web) will change a user’s experience when using the Web? What implications will there be for privacy when the Semantic Web is coupled with “The Internet of Things”? Do you think there will be a blurring of what humanity is when data becomes machine understandable and the world is full of completely pervasive computer/sensor devices that collect data on just about every characteristic of the physical environment? Look at how other students have answered this question and comment on their blogs.

In terms of the ways that Web 3.0 will change a user’s experience, I think the process of using the web and getting it to work for you will become much more streamlined. It will seem more as though it is more ‘personalised’ and intelligent, almost seeming like a personal assistant.  One example I read about whilst researching this attempted to show how you could read a whole sentence to a search engine and it would respond accurately despite how advanced the sentence was.  Several time consuming tasks will be able to be accomplished while taking a fraction of the time and effort previously required.
In comparison to the Web 2.0 I also think the presentation, organized and delivery of information and content will be much more ‘elegant’ as well as the way the users interact with it.

In terms of privacy obviously there must be high levels of security with the amount of personal data that will be consistently being uploaded to the Web. This data combined with the information contained in the “Internet of Things” must be heavily secured otherwise breaches of security could have severe consequences. As the technology advances, I believe that the privacy concerns will be addressed as the law will find a way to catch up the technology though as the recent NSA scandal shows, their has to be boundaries to avoid a violation of that privacy (check out the PRISM program to see how your Web 3.0 data could be used without your knowledge http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro3L41SagTA ). Those ‘anonymous’ users of forums/blogs/sites/services are now able to be tracked through the meta data that is sent and these methods of tracking are only going to become more effective.   This balancing act between taking precautions and violating ones right to privacy may take time to adjust and will always be on-going but just as Web 2.0 has shown, it is possible to have the two co-exist.

Humanity will always be clearly defined and able to be distinguished from the machines imitating them, however advanced these imitations may be. Unless these machines are able to think (not simulate though, but obtain genuine inspiration and think for themselves) then humanity will always be able to be separated despite any blurring that may occur. That being said, I am by no means saying that computers will not be able to pass off convincingly as humans or make particular logical decisions, but these decisions will simply be part of the programming and regardless how advanced a level of AI it may possess, it cannot replicate the in depth and complex nature of the brain.
At the end of the day, despite all of the 21st Century bells and whistles, modern technologies are just tools are created for humanity to utilize and will remain that way for a long time.

Blog 1 Pt. III

Carefully read the Terms of Service and privacy policy for a social network on which you have an account. What does it say about how they will use your information? What will they do if there is a breach in security on their site? Write a blog post summarising your findings. State your opinion on whether you are happy with the Terms of Service and are comfortable with trusting the social networking site with regard to privacy and security. Look at how other students have answered this question and comment on their blogs.

 
The Privacy section shows that Facebook not only has the information which must be entered by the user in order to register for a Facebook account  but also stores seemingly irrelevant information. This excerpt was taken directly from the Facebook website and outlines some of the information that is frequently collected.

(https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/your-info)

• We receive data about you whenever you interact with Facebook, such as when you look at another person’s timeline, send or receive a message, search for a friend or a Page, click on, view or otherwise interact with things, use a Facebook mobile app, or purchase Facebook Credits or make other purchases through Facebook.
• When you post things like photos or videos on Facebook, we may receive additional related data (or metadata), such as the time, date, and place you took the photo or video.
• We receive data from the computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access Facebook, including when multiple users log in from the same device. This may include your IP address and other information about things like your internet service, location, the type (including identifiers) of browser you use, or the pages you visit. For example, we may get your GPS or other location information so we can tell you if any of your friends are nearby.
• We receive data whenever you visit a game, application, or website that uses Facebook Platform or visit a site with a Facebook feature (such as a social plugin), sometimes through cookies. This may include the date and time you visit the site; the web address, or URL, you’re on; technical information about the IP address, browser and the operating system you use; and, if you are logged in to Facebook, your User ID.
• Sometimes we get data from our affiliates or our advertising partners, customers and other third parties that helps us (or them) deliver ads, understand online activity, and generally make Facebook better. For example, an advertiser may tell us information about you (like how you responded to an ad on Facebook or on another site) in order to measure the effectiveness of – and improve the quality of – ads.

They also use that data that has been obtained to suggest particular things to you including advertising as stated on their privacy page. It even specifically states that Facebook may use the information to deliver relevant ads to you. This however, is to be expected as advertising is one of Facebook’s primary means of income in a predominantly free website although some users may still consider that their privacy is being invaded.

It also shows that Facebook has backup copies of data even when deleted (they reference this to be similar to the Recycle Bin in Windows or the Trash in OS X) though it is stated that this is not able to be viewed or used by others.

Depending on the type of security breach, the response of Facebook may differ. For example in this case (http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/22/facebook-breach-letter/)  Facebook responded by emailing the users who’s security had been breached and explained the current situation and apologised.  Facebook also has several pages including a Facebook Security page to keep its users current on any potential threats or system bugs at any given time. Certain breaches may also be solved by the Facebook team under the hood without the user clearly/knowing what is happening.

In terms of whether or not I am comfortable with the terms of service and the way that my data is used, that is difficult to answer. I can understand why many people dislike Facebook in the sense that they consider the information and data collected to be unnecessary/unsafe and that is a concern that I too have, however, personally most of the information that is collected from me I don’t mind sharing and is not being published or used for purposes that I oppose. With that being said, I consider some of the information gathered or being used to be irrelevant. However, the company provides a majority of their services free of charge and uses this information as a means of profiting.

This is the price you pay for using the services of Facebook as they use this information to their advantage, for the purpose of advertising amongst other things. It does make me uneasy in the grand scheme of things that one company has such a vast amount of information on over 1 billion users though, if the data collected was being misused the results could be catastrophic; so I can certainly see both sides of this situation.

In short, I think people need to be aware of what information is being collected, how it is being used and then judge for themselves as to whether or not they have a problem with it, but at the current time I personally don’t strongly object to the Terms and Services and trust the network with the information that I have provided, though my opinion may change at a later date.

 

Blog 1 Pt. II

Pulse is available on numerous platforms

Use a feed reader of your choice to subscribe to several feeds for sites that you frequently visit. Write a blog post about your experience after using a feed reader every day for a week. What are at least two benefits and drawbacks of using a feed reader?

I have been using the feed reader Pulse for my devices for quite some time now simply as a way to obtain and select from a wide variety of content. I have always found these applications to be quite useful as they provide for me what I consider as essentially my own personalized magazine with content only I am personally interested in.

One of the benefits of these readers is the way that content is presented. Pulse in particular (in my opinion) displays the information in an organised, visually appealing and easily accessible manner. On mobile devices this is a large factor to me as a consumer. Additionally the fact that so much information is able to be accessed almost immediately after hitting the web is fantastic and all I need to do is open Pulse up and start browsing. Personally these applications nearly replace the need to manually search for news and information over the web and provide the added bonus of removing the clutter and content that doesn’t appeal to me. As I use Pulse mainly on my mobile devices (there is a HTML version of the application), this allows me to take vast amounts of information and stories that are tailored to my taste around in a mobile form factor which is more appealing than carting around books and magazines to me at least.

The issues that I have with the readers are relatively small and are slowly being fixed (primarily through version updates and patches) over time, some of the websites I would like don’t have RSS feeds available currently though these are continuously being updated and will presumably eventually be available.

Also, though I subscribe to feeds which I find relevant and interesting, this does not necessarily mean all of the information presented is appealing to me. . This however, is nit-picking slightly as there is little that could be done to easily fix this issue at the moment and it appears that the issues are becoming less frequent.

Certain features are restricted within the application until signed up to a Pulse account which could also turn off many users although I had an account prior to this week so there wasn’t an issue.

Lastly, the primary problem with these readers is that because there are so many out there from a variety of third parties (Google Currents and Flipboard spring to mind), each has their own advantages, weaknesses and differences. Pulse being a relatively popular reader has few disadvantages but bugs, different various and a lack of updates could significantly detract from the overall experience.

Blog 1 Pt. I

Write a short post introducing yourself on your blog.  Answer the following questions:

• What degree are you doing?
• How soon until you graduate?
• What do you think this subject is about, and what do you hope to get out of it?
• Have you ever maintained a blog before?
• What job are you interested in once you graduate?

Greetings Blogosphere!
Well as introduced on the previous blog post, I’m Daniel Schwass and I am currently a second year IT student studying at Griffith, Nathan though I am unsure if I’ll stay exactly where I am or transfer/take up another degree or anything like that.
As I am only in second year now I have a couple of years left of my degree to complete.

I consider this course to be largely about the different components of the Web (both 2.0 and 3.0) and how this information can be organized, displayed and shared to other people. I would hope to get a deep insight into these matters and understand these concepts thoroughly so I can be prepared in the event that this knowledge is required later on.

I have maintained blogs in the past on a few different websites (MySpace ftw) and have some experience and familiarity with them though this is my first blog used for university purposes so only time will tell how that will differ!
Currently I am still deciding what particular field I would prefer to work in so I cannot be 100% sure what type of job I would like to acquire upon graduation. I am looking at all options currently as I progress through the different subjects and am attempting to get a taste for everything before choosing a definitive field (although I did enjoy Information Systems & Web Design quite a bit).