social media, and the world we live in today.

Let me start off by saying this video is great:

I have used this video (from prevous years) in a lot of my other comm classes because the way we communicate with each other is changing each and every day. I took an interesting class last quarter which was media literacy or Comm 444. It was one of the most eye opening classes I have taken while at Western Washington University and it continues to probe my interest in social media and what kind of effect it has on us as scholars and individuals.

The video above makes a powerful statement and that is "Social media isn't a fad, its a fundamental shift in the way we communicate." I cannot help but to agree with this statement. It is pretty obvious that the way we communicate has changed significantly in the 21 years that I have been around. I know that, my parents know that and my grandparents know that. I find it comical that the older generation that I surround myself with is astnoished at some of the stuff I can do on a computer when they couldn't even dream of doing what I can do, and all I know are the basics.

There are quite a few articles out there talking about how social media is changing the way we communicate and how it has made out generation stick out from all the rest, but I have my own opinions about a few of the bigger social networking cites that are all mostly household names by now. Those include: facebook, twitter, youtube, linked in and blogger.com.

Facebook:
In my opinion, facebook is the most popular social networking cite that is out there. In the video, it stated that if facebook was a nation it would be the third largest nation in the world. Before there was facebook, there was myspace but that has fizzled out over time. Facebook has made it so that you can have a bunch of friends, keep in contact with people around the world, and share what is going on in your daily life. There are plenty of businesses and corporations that use facebook to get their information out there, which is great because they can reach the younger generation and reach a very wide array of people as compared to other media outlets.
In terms of facebook and social media, I think that it is an extremely useful tool for getting a message out there. At the same time it does have it's downfalls if you don't know how to use it. Nothing is worse than people posting negative things, or terrible pictures. Doing that sort of thing can ruin someone, literally. As a student hoping for a career in the future, I really need to watch what I say and what I do on facebook. Employers look at that sort of thing, and wether you like it or not, they judge you and decide if they want you at their company or not. All in all, I believe that facebook can either help you or hurt you in terms of careers, you just need to be aware of what you are doing and how you are portraying yourself online. One's something is on the internet it is difficult to take it down.

Twitter:
I don't understand. I have a twitter account, and honestly all I use twitter for is to follow people and see what is going on in the lives of celebrities. I have talked to other students, and it is possible to use twitter to further your career. It can be used to follow professionals in your area of study, and you can have a heads up on what kinds of events are going to be coming up. At the same time, twitter can have the same downfall as facebook in terms of putting yourself out there. I think that in all social media and networking we have to be careful what we post because it is possible that someone is always watching. With that being said, I feel as though there are also a great deal of benefits in participating in social media because there is so much information out there. Being on these websites causes that kind of important information to find us, and though we may not like it...there is really nothing we can do about it.

LinkedIn:
I haven't spent much time on this cite but what I have gathered from being at Western is that I need too. There are professionals on this website that are scouting for people to come work for their company. The video at the beginning of this blog said it best, a large percentage of employers look for their future employees on LinkedIn. This is a forum for us to present ourselves in the best way that we can and to connect with people who are in similar careers or are in careers that we would like to be in someday. This cite is very different from twitter and facebook, and I think that is great. It is a professional set up and is something that as college students we can really use to our benefit. In my final quarters at Western I plan to build up my profile in the hopes of getting a job in the field I have studied. I think that LinkedIn is a view into the future. Before school I had never heard of it, and because of that I think that this website gives students a leg up on the competition. This is a great tool for finding a job and I see it getting bigger and bigger in the future. It is a solid example of how social media has changed the way we communicate.

Blogger.com
I am new to this, but I have wanted to blog for a while now. I know now that it is very easy to do and plan on doing it for a very long time. With that being said, it is important to be knowledgeable about what you are posting so that you don't get yourself into trouble. It is the same basic concept as facebook and twitter. What you post can come back to haunt you and that is something you don't want if you are trying to get a job.

Overall, I think that social media has had a huge impact on the world we live in today. We are bombarded with images, advertisements and everything else on the internet every single day and this has brought about social change. We have changed in the way we consume products and we have changed in the way we put ourself and our business out there. We are able to start social revolutions, we are able to spark a thought in a lot of peoples minds with just a simple status update. All that being said, social media has made it so that we can easily put ourselves out there and it has changed the way we further ourselves in terms of careers. This can be a great thing because the doors for opportunity are opened more because of our ability to put our ideas and personalities out there.

Audacity...awesomeness.

When I first started going to college I set out to be a Radio Personality, that dream has since changed. I bring up the career of Radio broadcasting because audacity has opened my eyes to that career once again. What Audacity is, is awesome. This program, which is a free download online, allows you to record yourself, make extremely easy edits and to add music without any difficulty while using it. We were introduced to this program in my Comm 350 class this week, and I am very excited to use it. I downloaded it on my personal computer today, from this website:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
It was super easy and pretty self explanatory. I started using it right away to work on the assignments for class. I think that this program is super helpful and can be super useful when it comes to putting your voice out there and having your ideas heard.

Like I said before, this program also allows you to add sound effects or music to compliment your recording. In terms of using music, I have been taught that you should stick to using free music. This is due to copyright issues and you don't want to use someone elses music if you don't have permission. One of my previous instructors put entire fear in me when it came to using others music for my own projects. There are way to many rules when it comes to using other peoples stuff, so stick to the free cites. We were shown a couple of great websites in class (I'll link to them below) but there are many other ones out there to be discovered and used. Another quick thing about music that I have gathered from my classes is, if you want to use copywritten music just don't use more than 30 seconds of it. So just sample it or make it quick, try to refrain from using the entire song.

Free Music Links:
http://www.pacdv.com/sounds/index.html
http://www.freemusicbeds.com/

I found these cites to be really useful, and they literally have hundreds of different sound effects that you can use and easily upload to Audacity.
In my previous post's I have mentioned other programs that we have used in my Comm 350 class, photoshop being one of them. Out of the programs I have used so far I find that Audacity is the easiest to use so far. I would explain it, but it really is self explanitory when you begin using it. It's a simple press to record and you can easily edit your recordings by simpling selecting an area, adding to it or deleting it, it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
Music is easily added and edited by using the different tools in the top left corner.

With that being said, I am throughouly amused and impressed with Audacity. It is easy to use and has inspired me to look more into podcasts and start listening to them. I have never really listened to them, but after seeing how easily they can be created, I am sure that people have put a lot of good and interesting information out there.

CRAP! or... Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity.

This week's blog is a little later than it is supposed to be and I take full responsibility for that. However, I do live in the great north and it has snowed like crazy here and I happened to not have power for a little while causing this blog to be past it's due date. I will however prevail and post regardless. Today's or rather, this weeks blog is about C.R.A.P. otherwise known as Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity. These are the four basic design principles when it comes to designing anything. In my cause it directly relates to the website I am building for COMM 350 at WWU.

The first website that I found t be really useful (and one that I actually printed for my portfolio) was this one:
http://www.presentationzen.com/chapter6_spread.pdf  This website gives a pretty good rundown of what these design principles are and I thought it gave really good visual aids.

The second website that I found to be useful was this one:
http://www.plu.edu/~scotttj/designkiosk.pdf
I'm pretty sure this was done by a student, but regardless it still has very good information. The information presented on this website comes from The non-designers design book by Robin Williams, Not the celebrity in movie Robin Williams, it's an actual author. =]
I actually have this book and find it to be really useful with it comes to design. There are tons of great tips and visual aids to help you when it comes to designing anything that you need in the professional, or personal world for that matter.

The last website that I recommend for this concept is:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/design-better-with-crap.html
This website gives a pretty good rundown of what Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity is and talks about how they work together to make something successful.

Overall these are pretty important concepts to understand because they can aid in making effective visual aids and make your website, or anything else that you use professionally successful. These concepts make sure that you get your point across, but at the same time do it in a way that is visually appealing and catches the eye of the reader or viewer.

Once again, my sincere apologies for the late blog, it will never happen again as log as this quarter lasts.! 

Photoshop!

This week in my Communication 350 class some of us, including myself, got to know the wonderful program title Photoshop. We only learned the basics of the system but just learning those basics was enough of a start to want to learn more. During the class we talked about looking at the page you are working on as a collection of layers. This is helpful because it makes it so that you can look at the page you are working on as a bunch of different sections and move them around accordingly. Here is a website and a quick youtube video that I found helpful understand the concepts of photoshop layers.

Website: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-78e3a.html
Kind of long, but worth it because it is straight from the adobe website.

YouTube Video: This is a quick 4 minute video that gives viewers the basics when it comes to layers in photoshop.

 The second thing that we learned about this week in class was Text Effects. There are so many things that you can do with text using photoshop. For some reason I found these effects particularly difficult to do without some additional help. What I found most difficult was that there are so many different things you can do with photoshop that you often don't know where to start. Where I ended up starting was this website: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/50-great-photoshop-text-effect-tutorials-part-ii/  from this link you can basically choose what text effect you like the best, or want to use then select it. After you select it the website walks you through how to create this text effect on photoshop. 

Reading about it can be helpful but I found myself going back and fourth between pages which was somewhat annoying. Fortunately there are a lot of videos on YouTube to help with text effects which you can listen to and then do at the same time. I found this almost to be more helpful than the website. Some of the videos are longer depending on what text effect you want to use, but well worth it because these things turn out really cool. Here is a 5 minute video that gives a basic rundown on how to do a text effect.: 

Photoshop and Dreamweaver were what we started to learn this week, but we just scratched the surface. There are so many different things that can be done with these programs but this is just some of the basic information that I got from class this week. There are plenty of sources out there if you want to get more advanced with your techniques or if you just want to do different techniques in terms of what you are creating. That's all for this week. 

Top 10 Rules for a Website and Introduction

My name is Carli and I am studying Communication at Western Washington University. I recently took part in a class where we had to design out own websites, and it turned out to be very informative. This quarter I am taking a similar class, but one that goes more in depth into what a website should be and all the different aspects of designing one. 

The website I worked on with other group members can be seen here: http://thenuntilnow.weebly.com/.

From working on this website I realized that it takes a lot more than what I thought to put together a decent website. For this blog I will also being discussing 10 of the rules I would go by when creating a website. Part of the assignment for my new Comm class is to discuss these things so here it goes. 

1. Planning is critical: It's critical because if you don't have a plan for the website, it's difficult to know where to start. 

2. Pick a few major points and stick to them: Doing this makes it so the website is clean and easy to navigate. 

3. Pick a layout that is attention grabbing: you want something that will attract the viewers eye so they don't navigate do a different cite due to boredom. 

4. Try to use colors that relate to what you are presenting online: Nothing is more distracting than a random color scheme. 

5. Put valuable information on your website, but don't make it too wordy: Too many words makes the viewer want to do something else. No one wants to read through a website for hours unless they have to for a school or work requirement. 

6. Add pictures! : Visual aids are the best, enough said.

7: Make the website interactive: If you give the viewers something to do that will grab there attention it will give them more incentive to come back. Example being....Facebook?

8. Page should be complete: There shouldn't be any loose ends or something that is "under construction."

9. Test your target audience: When developing a new website test it on who you want your target audience to be and ask their feedback, this will make it so you can revise your site based on the feedback.

10. Revision: Go through and make sure everything is just the way you want it to be and revise it based on feedback or comments you have received. 

This top ten list is strictly what I would reccommend when developing a website, these are the tips that I find most useful and are purely based on experience. =]