The end. (Meta Post)

I'll start off with getting what i think to be my best 3 blog posts:
The Internet is awesome
DATAVIZZZ
WEB 2.0

I guess why these three are the best of my blog posts is because the content in which they are talking about, is something that i learnt, found really cool or just generally useful and will incorporate into my daily web browsing. But overall i really enjoyed the unit nd learned a lot of new things, and also new appreciations of the internet and its capabilities.

But if you do look at my blog as a whole, you could perceive it as being negative, and yeah i guess it kinda does look like that, but thats due to my dislike of writing code in any fashion. Kinda like maths, i rather give the answer then show working. And don't think that i don't appreciate what something like a cascading style sheet aims to do, i think that its a great tool that can really help programmers, but again, not interesting in the programming side.

Now moving onto the whole 'traffic' thing.

If you were wanting to get a message to a large audience of people relatively cheap, then the internet is a great way to do that! Advertising and linking back to your site will get large volumes of traffic in. This is what we like to refer as "networking" (see what i did there?). and if you do this, lots of people will take note of what you are saying. But that is just one form of networking. If you are a person who likes cats in hats, and you stumble accross this great high traffic site called flickr, and discover that other people want to posts pctures of their cats in hats, you would be in heaven!!! But rather then go through each photo one by one, why not somehow have the ability to source all the photos via tags or headings "cats with hats", and have them present themself on a single page. API's are a great way of networking and sourcing multiple things without having to find them individually. But in reference to our blog posts, my aim wasn't to distribute our thoughts to a large audience, but rather use these blogging sites as a weekly journal on our activites in class. Which is another way that the internet can be used.

So the internet is a great tool which can be used in a variety of manners. So if your aim is to network to other sites in a variety of mediums, then the internet can help you achieve that. But if you don't want millions of people reading up on what you did in class the other day, then chances are, they won't.

Rationale

Geo-narrative:


View The cure in a larger map

I originally started with the dataviz, and came up with some really good ideas. Such as, what if i could show that countries with high amount of cigarettes consumed per capita, was also related to a shower life span. Another idea was to have calories consumed and amount of water consumed over a week, to try and show that during the week, people are generally healthier, then when the weekend rolls around, people get drunk and healthy eating habbits go out the door. But i ran into the problem of either the data i got was conflicting, didn't lead to a conclusion or i just couldn't find it. So I decided to go with the geo-narrative.

I found the geo-narrative a lot easier to compile information and see where I was going with it. I came up with a story, noted down photos that could be used and what i needed to take photos of, and off i went. Probably the hardest part of this assignment was getting in contact with people on flickr, asking them if it was alright if i used their images for a non commercial university assignment... i sent 4 requests, and received none back. It wasn't nessacarily that the users didn't log into flickr, but were probably unaware that they have received a message from me, (or they just ignored my requests). But after looking around a bit more, I discovered the 'advanced search' option, which revealed that i could search for images with a Creative Commons Licence. This was a great tool to use as I could use the image, without having to contact the owner, and already know under what conditions i could use this image. All of the images i got from Flickr required that i not use it in a commercial environment, and that i simply referenced them. And so I did. In the geo-narrative, you will see that under certain images, there is a link to the owners Flickr page, (or the specific image).

Also in the cultural context of this, I know other people found it difficult to find other geo-narratives, and I also found the same. I guess it is a new concept, and In this 'story telling form' I don't think it will really catch on, unless its in a "this is where i went and here's a picture".

So at the end of the day, the use of creative commons saved me a lot of trouble, and i praise the people who invented it.

I also thought i might embed the map into my blog post, to try and show another example of networked media. But if you do need the larger version, there is a link under the map.