Good reporting on socnets

I especially liked the LABS section on Mashable! covering the Top 10 Video Sharing Sites. We’re briefly covering 3 of these: Xanga, Facebook and MySpace on our Interaction Design blog. (About Mashable — With more than 150,000 subscribers via email and RSS and in excess of 1 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on social networks.)

Dan just showed us the new emac blog

So here’s the link to the new emac blog.

“Ethnography” Talk by Dan on Nov 14

I just wanted to give everybody a “heads up” that Dan will be speaking to the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) on November 14, which is World Usability Day.

He will be talking about “Ethnography in Product Design and Development.”

The meeting will probably be held at the Art Institute of Dallas (located at Park Lane and Central Expressway, aka 75) , starting at 6:30 or 7:00.  I will post the official announcement as we get closer to the day.

Please come join us.   (posted by Janice Quick)

P.S.

Usability is the degree to which something – software, hardware, or anything else – is easy to use and a good fit for the people who use it.

UPA is a national organization with a DFW chapter for those who promote and advance the development of usable products.  Members come from across the broad family of disciplines that create the user experience.

Word Usability Day is a series of events to promote the benefits of usability and user-centered-design.

Free WordPress Themes

Good morning all!  I came across this link: http://www.bloggingthemes.com/  If you do not like your WordPress theme, here are a few more that you can try out.  They are free so once you find one you like, click on the thumbnail and follow the directions.

I hope this is useful for someone.

.hma file formats?

The digital recorder that we checked out was a Sony Walkman mp3 recorder.  It was the only type of recorder available after two tries, so we went ahead and used this recorder.  We have some good content recorded, but when it came to downloading the files, what I found was .hma file formats (?)   Some of the advice floating out in google-land says don’t mess around trying to convert these files.  Oops.  Don’t know if anyone else has encountered this problem…. any advice?

Blog activity

I am sure we went over this in class at one point but I am still kinda unclear about it. I have a Word Press blog going and one with Blog Spot as well. I dont really touch the Blog Spot one at all but that is the one I initally set up and is also the one linked to my name on this blog. I really utilize the Word Press Blog more. Should I start using both or just stick to one like I am doing? Can anyone answer this question for me? Also, my Word Press Blog is www.bella11.wordpress.com

Check it out guys and give me feedback

How do we give credit for photos and artwork?

Dan, I had a question and I thought others in the class might have similar questions.

You talked a lot about music and how important it was to not violate copyright laws.  What about Photography and Art?

1. On a blog.  If I do a review of a photography exhibit and copy one of the photos from a web site to include in the blog, what do I need to do to give credit to the artist?

2. On a podcast.  If we do an enhanced podcast so that we can show a screen shot or photo while the audio plays, do we need to say where the photo comes from.  For example, if I talk about an ipod and grab a picture of an ipod from Apple’s site, is that ok?  If I talk about a car key with the built-in remote that opens and locks the car, and I grab a picture from the Ford site, is that OK?  

Just wondered how careful we have to be with photos, screens shots, etc. that we get off the Internet.  Thanks.

Janice