Examples of Noisy Storytelling

Frankly speaking, I am not sure whether I can evaluate as "a noisy storytelling web site" this web site that I am going to mention. However, when I first typed the URL, and a window popped up, I seemed I was in a mess, honestly.

http://www.animal-lovergifts.com

Yes, it has many images and some animated images. Even so, I cannot feel comfortable at all. So, I think this is a really good example of the type of web site that has a lot of images, but that fails to attract users, ironically.

For me, the key concern with a bad example of storytelling is whether or not I can catch what this web site is for at the first glimpse. If I cannot easily understand what it wants to say, it seems to fail to communicate the story as well as the main concept.

These are the web sites that confuse me a lot, or that make me run away from them immediately.

http://coe.west.asu.edu/students/stennille/ST3/desertwq.htm

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/biomes/desert/desert.shtml

http://www.desert-storm.com

Examplse of Good Storytelling

Personally, I prefer the web site that has a lot of flash and images helping me concentrate more on contents. Maybe one of the reasons for that is that I tend to easily get sick of reading soon.
Especially when I read academic articles(research) or some topics that I am not interested in, this would be more serious.

Since last quarter, my project team has worked on the project "the Desert Reclamation." When I analyzed the related web sites to our project, I found one web site which has really cool storytelling.

http://www.oneworldjourneys.com/sonoran

The topic regarding to the desert could look boring, and be a little hard to attract users. Why? How many Internet users are interested in moving to the desert and saving global warming?

However, with a really nice flash intro, this web site shows really cool photos and very well-organized stories, and these are absolutely enough to attract those who are not interested in before and visit it without purpose.

Besides this sonoran web site, this company has at least two more fantastic web sites as I know.

http://www.oneworldjourneys.com/jaguar

http://www.oneworldjourneys.com/georgia

These two web sites has the very simialr style to the sonoran desert web site's, of course. However, it is just enough that I applaud them.

These are really awesome!!!

One more...http://whitehouseanimationinc.com/kunstbar.htm

Lo-Fi Grunge Style

• http://www.smallprint.net

This is no longer the web site that Curt Cloninger mentioned in the article, Fresh Style for Web Designers: Lo-Fi Grunge Sytle.

• http://www.sueellen.org

Now this web site is for photographer, Riku Pihlanto, who shows his/her portfolios here. This photographer shows the masterpieces in a way of photo essay that he arranges a series of photos he has taken. This format is pretty good to see photos, but it seems to me that this is little far from the subject of evaluating how readable it is, with the concept which is mentioned in the article.

• http://www.nokiantyres.fi

This looks totally different from the previous style mentioned in the article. When the author picked up this web site, he mentioned in the article like this.

Saksi uses a solid-color block at the top of the page and then repeats that color in the navigation bar to indicate hierarchical location… This site is clean, navigable, and readable, yet still “cutting-edge” enough to appeal to your average quasi-daring, thirty-something mountain biker.

This site completely changed to ordinary format, that is, there are clear grids, and it is more clearly partitioned and formal. I went to the web site regarding “The bicycle tyre unit,” newly opened. - http://www.suomityres.fi/

In my feeling, it looks pretty attractive. Of course, it is hard to say it follows “cutting-edge format” and “a seemingly design-centric style.” However, white color (foreground) on the black color (background), blue cross, and a huge image on the top-left corner are enough to attract the readers, I think. Black and white color arrangement can represent concentration. And the right-oriented blue cross is enough to represent the bike’s dynamic.

• http://www.mesoa/com/lite.himl

Like other examples, this site also changed a lot. Through the previous style of this web site, the author explained incorporation of an animated gif into the layout of the collage. – Motion Within a Collage

However, now, this is like an exhibition of who I am, what I know, and what I am able to do. The distinct thing of this web site is the very narrow strips of information in the middle. The author say that this style has a refreshing, relaxing visual quality, and visitor can focus his undelpeted attentions all the more intently on the strip of information. Scrolling? He also said that the spirit of David Carson would say that a bit of intentional scrolling challenges the visitor and gets him involved. Yes, it is. The font size is very small to read. And the font color is unclear on the white background color. However, ironically, I have paid attention to the contents and his/her portfolios.

Archiving Digital Assets

Building a DAM to last: Archiving Digital Assets

By Alan Zeichick - May 2003 Issue, Posted May 19, 2003


After producing digital assets, what do we have to do with them?

The article, Building a DAM to last: Archiving Digital Assets, by Alan Zeichick, starts with this ongoing argument. This article points out the problem with reuse of DAM.
This argument is so popular and commonsense that there might be no more explanation about it, I think. Both of producing and archiving digital assets are very critical and influence the business value, either directly or indirectly. It definitely makes sense.

Let me tell my interesting story regarding this article as an example.

The article addresses that once the architecture has been determined, it is time to spend money, not only on the software infrastructure, but also physical storage systems. Moreover, a little surprisingly, many digital assets repositories lack a robust backup or disaster-recovery system.
That is my story!!!

A couple of weeks ago, I determined one host company and have stored my digital stuff. Ridiculously, this company’s serve was recently attacked by hackers, so all system was in a mess. The problem is that this company did not serve a backup system at all.

Spend money!!! My problem might be my effort that I was trying to the cheapest hosting service.

DAM, BAM and DRM

DAM, BAM and DRM

At the very beginning, this article says like this.

It is becoming increasingly important not only to mange contents, but also to control brand assets, digital rights, and more.

Yes.
At the time when the term, digital, was not familiar, it was quite enough to keep it in mind to manage content itself. However, it seems not optional to consider brand asset management and even digital rights management these days. We should be able not only to locate and access their digital assets, but also to exercise complete control over their content, its use, access to it, and more. It is because we live in so-called digital area.

This article shows how good and important such systems as DAM, BAM, and DRM, are.

Thanks to DAM (Digital Assets Management), we can

• Easily create new product and services,
• Quickly and easily extract content for a new project,
• Save time by simplifying the process of locating, retrieving, updating, and archiving assets.

Unfortunately, these are not, however, enough to satisfy our needs in the digital era.
So, BAM (Brand Asset Management) was introduced as a substitute for DAM. Based on the existing capabilities of DAM, new functionality became added: routing, approval, deployment, and repurposing contents for both online and print worlds. Brand assets can cover every part of business process, like helping market, selling, and closing business.

Like BAM, DRM (Digital Rights Management) is introduced to the public as an updated version of DAM. The article says that DRM provides users continued and protected control of contents in an end-to-end system. DRM capability gives the publisher fine-grain control over protected and encrypted contents. In addition, DRM capability adds value and offers additional security.

Then, I needed to figure out DRM in detail, so I looked up the definition of DRM
Wikipedia says,

Digital Rights Management or digital restrictions management (abbreviated DRM) is an umbrella term for any of several technical arrangements which empower a vendor of content in electronic form to control how the material can be used on any electronic device with such measures installed.

The name "rights management" implies that vendors can only use this technology to exercise their actual legal rights. However, nothing in DRM itself guarantees that its use will be restricted in this way. For example, DRM allows vendors to abridge the buyer's fair use rights if they choose, without providing buyers with any corresponding means of asserting them. Thus opponents have come to call the technology by the name "restrictions management."

The actual arrangements are called technical protection measures, although the distinction between the two terms is not particularly clear.

Then, I looked for some examples of the application of DRM to the real business.
This is one business scenario for Window Media DRM.

Rental Services

Many consumers download movies on a rental basis over the Internet to their computers. Windows Media DRM makes this possible by supporting time-based licenses. This means that movie download services can create licenses that satisfy consumer viewing habits while ensuring that the content is used in the way the content owners intended. For instance, consumers might rent a movie that allows them to begin viewing it anytime within 30 days, and for 24 hours once they start playing it.

Windows Media DRM 10 enables this content to be transferred to portable devices that support video playback, such as Portable Media Center devices.

All About Hypertext

Well, honestly, the very significant reason why I can not follow the authors' intentions might be my unstable understanding of "hypertext." So, I looked into its definition, an wikipedia says,

In computing, hypertext is a user interface paradigm for displaying documents which contain automated cross-references to other documents called hyperlinks. Selecting a hyperlink causes the computer to display the linked document within a very short period of time.

Hmmm...
Then, I read those articles again.
Frankly speaking, what I felt is that they all were explaining hypertext with difficulty vocabulary to understand, at least to me.
Especially, in the article, "patterns of hypertext," Bernstein mentioned - I completely agree with him at this point - that there is no vocabulary to describe the complicated hypertext structures so that it is really hard for the readers to understand the designs.
That is why he analyzed and finally came up with some common patterns, along with some vocabulary.
The patterns he introduced in his article are below.

1. Cycle
2. Counterpoint
3. Mirror World
4. Tangle
5. Sieve
6. Montage
7. Neighborhood
8. Split/Join
9. Missing Link
10. Feint

As Curt told me that this article is a little out-of-date - it was published in 1998, - I wonder how many readers have the same feeling as his. Definitely, in 1998, not many users were not familiar with hypertext itself and its structures. Of course, I do not mean that these days a lot of people can understand the design of structural hypertext that Bernstein depited as complicated one.
I am pretty sure, however, that at least much more people than in 1998 became familiar with what it is and how it is applied to the Web design.

At the end, he mentioned, "By developing a richer vocabulary of hypertext structure, and basing that vocabulary on structures observed in actual hypertexts, we can move toward a richer and more effective hypertext criticism."
Even if I read the definition of hypertext so many times, the reason why I hesitate to explian it verbally might be the lack of vocabulary. I want to think so, and that is still our assignment left to us.

Attractive things work better

I am sorry to say like this. However, I couldn't keep reading this article to the end.
Attractive things work better.
Aesthetics in product design is now fully applied in many field, and we should consider this perspective in design the web.
These ideas in this article are just commonsense.

As techonology has developed and the number of the skilled web designers has increased, it is true that a lot of web pages look similar. A few days ago, a CEO of Samsung Inc., Mr Lee announced that the key point is "Design" in any field. That is, most have the similar techololgies and skills these days, so DESIGN becomes the most important key factor to succeed.
I definitely agree with him.
In the case of web sites, we have so many choices in looking for the information on the web and in searching for the relevant web site. Imagine that many sites has the similar services. Which site am I supposed to visit? Easily one solution comes up. It is the web site that has attractive design. It's pretty simple.

Anyway, it becomes clear again. Understand what the users want, and which style, color or layout they prefer. That is the key.

My Top Three Tips of the Visual Design

What are your top three tips for the visual design of a "web story"?

1. Using photos
In online writing, using photos is a very useful tip that not only helps deliver what I want to readers effectively, but also keeps their attentions to articles. Especially, the effect of the second merit is really outstanding so that taking and selecting photos which is willing to be uploaded to the blog often become hard-work to me.

2. Colorful font
Some of online article are too long to lose readers’ attention and interests. In this case, if some important part of the article is highlighted by making it colorful, the effect could be really great.

3. Emoticon
As people have sought any ways to decorate their online writing or homepages more splendid, one of those ways is “emoticon,” short for emotional icon. It is mostly used in instant messenger, such as MSN or Yahoo instant messenger. Even though it is small, it is absolutely enough to express the writer’s emotion at the moment when he/she was writing so it is really useful to let readers figure out the mood of articles without any extra explanation.

traditional narrative element of storytelling

For me, the traditional narrative elements of storytelling have intrinsically same background as other writing genres because, for instance, the web-based article, looking very technological writing, has the similar elements to be good storytelling. Let me think. Of course, it is based on the article, “The element of Good Storytelling,” by Kimberly Appelcline.

Setting? Sure, it is commonsense. This is necessary to tell what you want to say effectively in either circumstance. All the time, the background of a certain topic is important to understand the intention of the author, of course.
Character? Well…It is really hard to say.
Plot? Of course, it is needed. This is the similar case to setting. There is no doubt that online storytelling would have a lot of digression if it does not have a well-organized plot.
Of course, if online article has backstory and detail, it will really help the readers understand what the author is saying.