Stephen J. Allen - Blog Post #3

In order for this meme to be funny, someone would need to know that dirt and gravel are two very common blocks in Minecraft that are considered to be the most useless. The majority of people just toss them out. When playing multiplayer, people can share blocks between them. People will occasionally give their friends dirt and gravel as a joke, because they are virtually useless.

This is funny for a number of reasons. The first should be clear to most, parents tend to think of vieo games as violent, bloody war scenarios. The second is because Minecraft is what is called a “sandbox game,” which means that it is an open world that the player can roam freely. The third is because the easiest way to explain Minecraft to someone who hasn’t played it is by saying it’s like Legos. Fourth is an example of a very complex and difficult structure built in Minecraft, which is what many people strive to do. Last is what a player’s first house would probably look like.

Both of these pictures required a knowledge of advanced photo editing and creation software. The first image takes advantage of selection, compositing, sampling, and original animation. The figures are superimposed over the members of the Beatles from the cover the album Abbey Road. The second piece of fan art is all original, although the subjects and settings are taken from the game. 

My New Favorite Site (With Links!)

                The topic I have chosen for my final project is happiness and positivity.  I found a website related to these subjects. The website is called gimundo.com (tagline: good news… served daily).

                I think the site is designed and organized well. At the top of the page, there is a menu bar that has all the sections of the website.  These menu options all have a simple symbol right next to them. For the home page- a house symbol, for the news article section- a news globe image, for videos section-a video camera, for links around the website-a symbol indicating a computer network, for stuff they like-puzzle pieces, for the blog-a pencil, for daily newsletter- a letter, and for the search-a magnifying glass.  I think these symbols added to the overall site to make it look nice, simple, and easy to navigate.

                As far as the links to other pages go, they have a “best of the web” section. This section is really easy to follow. Each link has a tagline to it written in blue, such as “Before I die”, then a description written in black which says, “Artist ask New Orleanians what they want to do when they die” , followed by the link in blue. This makes it easy to know what you are directed to each site for.

                I really enjoyed the links that they give. The links are all very eclectic, but they all have to do with something positive and happy. They all fit into the “good news” theme of the website. Most of the links seem to link to specific articles rather than specific websites having to do with the topic of happiness. I think this can be seen as both a lack and strength. It is a lack if you want to be directed to other websites in a networking kind of a manner.  I wish they had a page of links to specific positive websites around. But it is also a strength because it substantiates their own site as being the site to go to for positive and happy thinking. So I am kind of torn on whether people would use this site as links to other places. But for a theme of “good news”, I guess links to articles on the web works for them.

The topic for my final project will be centered on the books and movies of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. A website I found on these topics is called TheOneRing.net: forged by and for fans of J.R.R. Tolkein (also known as TORn). This website contains news, information about parties, gifts to shop for, and other information concerning everything related to J.R.R. Tolkein’s books and now movies.

            Most of the links I found were related to everything middle earth. For much of the product there was a link to Weta, the company that made the armor, swords, and other materials used in the movies. There were also links to other fan sites and groups such as the Happy Hobbit on youtube. The use of these hyperlinks helped connect the J.R.R. Tolkein fan community with information, products, and even humor. The site encourages the use of these links by their placement, many of which were located under the, ‘community’ tab.

When you type "magicthegathering.com" into the search bar, it will transfer you to

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Summoner/.

This is the official website for the card game Magic: The Gathering. On this site there are many links to the various versions of the game like Magic: The Gathering Online, and Duels of the Planeswalkers 2014. Also, at the top of the screen are a selection of buttons that help guide you around the site.
The button labeled "The Multiverse" will take you to a page where you can learn more about the mythology of the game. What is a planeswalker? What are the five colors of mana? What is a plane? There is even a small amount of the history of the Magic Multiverse listed on this page, but if you are looking for a more comprehensive source then MTG Salvation is a much better place to get lost in.

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/

The "Trading Card Game" button links to a where you can learn more about playing the game, what you will need in order to play, and a list of sanctioned tournaments and events. It also has a nice promotional banner for the upcoming release of the Theros block (which I'm stoked for.)

               

"Daily MTG" Will take you to some forums where different cards and aspects of the game are discussed, as well as some articles written by Wizards of the Coast employees.

 "Digital Games" offers more information about the online version of the game and the Duels of the Planeswalkers games.

And "Merchandise" is the button you push if you like to be a poor guy with a lot of nerdy swag.

Linking with LoL

The ability to fuse links between different web pages, articles, pictures, and videos is a powerful tool which has set the internet apart from all previous forms of media. Take for instance the League of Legends website. One could be lost for days just following the different interior links to articles, videos, new champions, news updates, and much more. There are also outside links to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LoL Esports which all in turn promote inter-connectivity as well. Some like LoL Esports only have a direct correlation with the original website and that's it. Others like Twitter or Facebook do not solely revolve around the LoL website only acting as a means to promote the original website further. Without the LoL website LoL Esports would not exist, but without LoL Facebook or Twitter would still exist. Some links are their to help establish and promote the website, while others are there to help the child website grow and achieve popularity. 

By being able to link these sites together, the exposure this website can achieve becomes even greater than it could on its own. If there was not a link to Facebook on their site, the likelihood of a user going to Facebook on their own lessens and the lower their search engine optimization (SEO) will be without the "likes" and comments that users are able to give them on Facebook.  This will put them lower down on the list of search results with search engines like Google or Bing, Thus creating less exposure and less people might join the game and spend money on the extras the game provides.

The way the linking is set up on the website itself is very aesthetic and encourages the users to click on them regardless of why the user originally came to the site. Just seeing a link like this to Twitter is far less appealing than the screenshot of the links above. Their link area is larger than just a simple button and they have added art from their game to make it "cooler" to click on. They even have gone so far as to include the exact way the logo appears of the linked websites, leaving no doubt as to where the user is headed. The placement of these large links happen at the very top right below the main header. There is no trying to dig for them in the footer or being lost in the sidebar. It makes following the links convenient and not as much hassle as other websites make it. 

Stephen- Blog Post #2 (Hyperlinks)

When I’m playing Minecraft, I frequently visit the Minecraft Wiki in order to answer a question about the game. The wiki is a great place to go because it has a lot of detail about everything in the game, but it also has a lot of ways to reach other resources.

An example of links within a paragraph leading to different sites.

Toolbars with links.

On the main page, there is a list of related sites. These are also available at different times while exploring the site, displayed as hyper-linked text on various pages. There are links for the Minecraft website, forums, Mojang (the game developer) blogs, the Facebook page, the YouTube channel, a server list, and several community pages. There are also instructional videos linked or embedded on the pages. 

These links can be extremely helpful if you’re looking for something in particular or are just exploring around. There are also options for viewing the site in different languages. The site also makes it very easy to navigate to the different sites because, as I said before, they are conveniently placed on the homepage and as links while moving around the site.

It is beneficial to see the kinds of sites that can be hyper-linked and the various ways that it can be done in order to make it easy on the visitor. It is also nice to see that not every hyperlink has to be displayed in the same way: underlined, blue text. The links on this site are often in toolbars or drop-down menus. 

Numerical representation where new media is concerned is the digital code that makes new media programmable. Data is digitized through sampling and quantization into the numerical representation. For example, kilobytes are the numerical way to measure Word documents, Excel pages, and many other objects on a computer.

            Modularity is the varying structures that all objects of new media have which can   maintain separate identities from one another even when combined. For example, a power point or a prezi can contain text, colors, pictures, movie clips, music, etc. Each element has maintained its own structure even though it is combined into one means of presentation.

            Automation is, “involved in media creation, manipulation, and access” (32). On the lowest level this involves a user while on the highest it uses the computer itself (artificial intelligence). An example of high-level automation could be computers that play chess. They have the rules of the game programmed into them and are able to decide which pieces to move and then they do so.

            Variability is how a computer can assemble, through databases, multiple versions or suggestions related to one object. An example of this would be the Pandora music website. Based on the music you listen to, it will select similar styles of music and recommend them to you.

            Transcoding deals with the combination of the cultural layer (how humans structure and use the computer) and the computer layer (how the computer systems work). Transcoding is how the cultural layer can be formatted into the computer layer. An example of this would be dating, normally an outside ritual that can now be done online through the computer.

            I feel that transcoding is the most important factor in, “culture undergoing computerization,” because that is essentially what it is. Transcoding is like translating a language, the meaning in both languages is the same but different words are used. Transcoding takes culture and translates it into computer format.