Extra Credit: Creating an Avatar

Creating my avatar fun and a lot easier than I thought. To make it, I used the website Doppelme. However, this was the 3rd website I tried to use. I first used Meez and IMVU, but I found them to be fairly difficult to use and did not have as many avatar options as Doppelme. I really enjoyed the Doppelme website because it was relatively quick to make an avatar and the site was very user-friendly.

Doppelme offered a variety of skin tones, expressions, hair style/color, eyewear, hats, clothes, shoes, and accessories. By having such a wide variety of options, the user can explore many different combinations and choose the one that best resembles them. It was very easy for me to find the right features that best portray me, such as the black hair, brown eyes, tan skin, and clothing style. Overall, I really enjoyed creating my avatar and learned about many of these websites in the process. I will sure use the website for different avatars I will make in the future.

Tutorial 3: Types of Multimedia on the Web

With more one billion users of the Internet today, the Web has expanded a long way since the formation of it in 1969.  In addition to its size increase, the Internet has also changed in the way websites present their information.  Once limited to only text, the Internet has expanded to also include graphics, animation, audio, video and/or video reality. The use of two or more types of this media is referred to as multimedia.  Most Web pages today include the use of multimedia as often it enhances the information provided on the page.  In this blog, I will introduce the many types of multimedia including: graphics, animation, audio, video and virtual reality.

Graphics

This digital photo was taken by Albert Lopez.
Like most digital photos the graphic was saved in the file
form JPEG.

Graphical images are popular to use on websites as they display non-text information such as images, graphs, drawings and photos in a digital format.  Often accompanying text, the use of graphics is a way to provide additional messages not included in the text. If you chose to upload graphics to your Blog or Social Networking page, you would notice that you're images have some scrambled letters following the title of your image.  This is the code for the type of format the image was saved as.  The Web contains a wide array of graphics in many different formats, but most often, graphics will be in JPEG, GIF, or PNG format. Different formats allow for a graphic to vary in size and image quality but often there is a trade-off between the two.  JPEG is one of the most popular because although it compresses the image to reduce it's file size, the image quality is not compromised in the process. A JPEG format is often best used for digital photos. Other graphic formats found on the web includes; BMP and TIFF.  Specific graphics are easily searchable on the web through search engines such a Yahoo! and Google. Searches for images appear as 'thumbnails' or icons of the image, but when clicked on can be brought to it's original size.

Animation
Another way to make a Web page more appealing to the eye is through the addition of animation.  Animation is often a display of concurrent still images to create the illusion of motion.  Much like a flip-book the images move quickly to appear as if there is movement on the screen. Such movement can be used to draw attention to a region of the page such as an animated title or a ticker to show a countdown.    Animation is usually seen in Web-based games.

This animation was created by Albert Lopez using www.crazyprofile.com/text_animation/

Audio
The multimedia listed above can also be used in conjunction with audio. Web based audio includes but is not limited to music, voice-overs or any other type of sounds in digital format.  Audio files can be added to Web pages through simple download of individual files to the site.  After the media file is downloaded, a software player such as iTunes, RealPlayer or Windows Media Player is needed to play the file.  Audio files also come in different formats to adjust file size and/or sound quality and again a trade-off exists between the two. Some common audio web formats are AAC, WAV, WMA and MP3. Audio files have become very popular on Web sites and can help to create an ambiance for a website when playing in the background.  For example, if a hotel wanted to create a calm setting for it's website to reflect the peaceful feel of the hotel, it could play serene music in the background. Sites that just play audio tracks for listening entertainment have also become very popular recently such as Pandora and Grooveshark.  These websites use streaming audio or an audio file that can be played as it is being downloaded to it's distribute music in the form of online radio. Here's an example of online audio files.
Cymbals:

This audio file was created by Albert Lopez.  This is an example of a MP3 formatted file using a Public Domain audio file of cymbals playing.

Video
Another type of multimedia available is video in the form of video clips or live video.  Video uploading sites such as YouTube allow for video distribution, sharing and viewing of videos across the Internet.  Videos can be seen either through a link on a website, through a video distributing site such as YouTube or can be embedded directly on the website.  Video clips can enhance a site as it provides information in a much different way and somewhat interactively. Clips can vary from movies, TV shows, video diaries, tutorials, advertisements etc. As the internet has increased  the number of it's audience over the past few decades, more businesses have taken advantage of the Internet as an outlet for advertisements.  As more of these advertisements come in video format, video will be seen in more and more websites that originally only included text. Because these files are often very large and therefore like images and audio they need to be compressed for less download time. Here's an example of an online video.

This is a video created by Albert Lopez.  It is uploaded through blogger.com and recorded through my Macbook. 

Virtual Reality

Lastly, Virtual Reality or VR is a type of media that allows for virtual activity in a computer-simulated environment that seems like a 3-D space.  Users can use the space interactively in the VR world by moving through a display of 3-D images.  Applications of the VR world can be used for entertainment (games), education (models of molecules, organisms), or as a way to showcase any structure (as in architecture etc). The website, www.secondlife.com is a great example of a VR for entertainment.

This image was printscreened by Albert Lopez.
Second Life as shown above, is an example of a Virtual Reality.

The Web has come a long way from when text was its only type of media.  Today, websites include a multitude of media. In this blog, I have showed you five types of media; graphics, animation, audio, video and virtual reality.  I hope that you have learned a lot about the many types of media available on the Web today!


Works Cited

"Cymbals." Public domain: free downloading & streaming. Web. 25 Mar 2011. <http://www.archive.org/details/cymbals_360>.

Lopez, Albert, Dir. Video Example. Blogger: 2011, Film.

Lopez, Albert, Photographer. Beach graphic example. 2011. Digital Photo.


Shelly, Gary. Discovering Computers 2010. Boston, MA: Course Technology Cengage Learning, 2010. 92-96. Print.

"Text Animation." Myspace text animation, piczo text animation, html code. Web. 25 Mar 2011. <http://www.crazyprofile.com/text_animation/>.

"Virtual Reality Example." Second Life. Web. 26 Mar 2011. <http://secondlife.com/whatis/?lang=en-US#Meet_People>. Printscreened by Albert Lopez

Database Project: Using MS Access

Before working on this project, I had never used Microsoft Access. I have heard so many great things about it in the past, but never actually used it. After watching the Access videos, practicing activities, and completing this project, I now see why so many businesses and people give it such great reviews!

One of the most important features I learned about Access was creating reports. I find this feature to be very helpful when presenting co-workers with data at meetings. Thanks to reports Access creates, data can easily be analyzed when grouping and sorting out data. When working on the project, I was able to quickly look at all the customers in a specific city, and see the most recently departed first. Another really important element that I learned to use was queries. Queries can be extremely helpful when you want to limit the amount of data in a table (like we did in the project). Moreover, queries allow the user to do so many different things including create, retrieve, update, and delete large amounts of records.  I found it very useful using queries to filter data through different fields. In turn, using queries are very advantageous when wanting to create a report with limited data later on.  

Overall, I learned so many other features—especially since I had never used the program—but it would take many more paragraphs to talk about them all. Most importantly, I learned how great the program is, its features, and how I would apply them in the business world and my future career.

I believe that adding payment information in the “New Members Form” can be useful when members fill out their forms. A text box can be integrated that will tell the gym owner what type of fitness plan they would like to sign up for. The form will copy this information and update it on the “members” table. Another way to enhance the functionality of the database is to add a field that shows the next payment due dates for each member. This can be useful to owners when sending reminders to their members, and can be useful when creating reports for finance meetings.

Web 2.0 Presentation: Keep America Beautiful

Link to Web 2.0 Presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8XBxhUyNcs

Creating this Web 2.0 Presentation taught me a lot about very useful technology and resources that I have not used before--such as Camtasia and a few PowerPoint features. Critiquing my own presentation was both interesting and useful. I learned a lot about my presentation and myself as a presenter. In regards to my presentation, I strongly believe it had logical flow and sequence of content. I first set up environmental problems that led up to non-profit organization I wanted to focus on, which was "Keep America Beautiful". However, I do think I could have added more details on a few slides--however, I did not want to put too much information and bore my audience. In addition, I believe I anticipated questions and answered them in the right place. I provided useful information, referred to a few questions that the audience probably had, and I answered them right after that.

In my presentation, the attention grabber was the shocking fact provided by a reliable website discussing Recycling and Waste. The attention grabber was the fact that the US is the #1 trash-producing country in the world, in other words, about 5% of the world's population makes up 40% of the world's garbage. In my opinion, that is a eye-opening fact that has made me more conscientious about the amount of waste I produce. I certainly asked a few questions that probably go the audience thinking more about the topic, such as "who does this affect?", and "How can I help this organization?". I feel that such questions allow the audience to reflect on the topic's issues, and thereby be persuaded to donate to the organization. On the other hand, I do believe I could have asked more profound questions that sparked the audience's curiosity a little more. Moreover, I made sure to set the context with a concise explanation and to be clear about the presentation's purpose. Although what I was trying to share was pretty clear, I think I should have done a better job at validating some claims.

Furthermore, I stayed away from errors and inconsistencies, as well as typos within my slides. Unfortunately though, there were a couple of small speech errors in the narration; I tried to avoid them as much as possible, but I had a hard time editing parts of the audio. In regards to the slides design, I tried to keep my slides simple to avoid clutter and ensure readability. I made sure my font was large enough to read and I used good font colors that stand out such as black, orange, and blue. Apart from reading a few facts from the slides, I explained a few pictures, and provided additional information relevant to what I wanted to show. I thought this was important because I did not want to put too much information in each slide and I tried to avoid signal-to-noise ratio from bullets and pictures. After completing my project, I criticized another student's presentation to help me realize how I could improve my presentations in the future. I ended up learning a lot about my peers, their designs, narrations, as well as the different types of media they used. I also learned about very interesting organizations, and great techniques on how to persuade someone to donate.  

Overall, I found this project to be highly interesting and useful for my career in the future. I became a bit more familiar with Youtube and some of their features as I uploaded the presentation. Most importantly, I learned how to use Camtasia for macs. Before this project, I was not familiar with any programs that recorded presentations from the computer screen; I learned a significant amount about how to use Camtasia, its features—and in general, how to improve my presentations. I strongly believe that learning how to use such programs will improve the quality of the business plans I will present throughout my career. This knowledge will also be very useful in the marketing aspect of business. Marketing companies can use these powerful resources to persuade the consumer more efficiently and effectively. I will certainly use what I’ve learned from this project in the future when I start my own business. Finally, I think learning how to use such resources is essential in this very competitive business environment. Globalization and information technology are becoming significant factors in the continued progression of economic marketing schemes. Therefore, by applying these new skills and using such resources, I will definitely have a competitive advantage in my career.