We put the Funk in disfunctional.

If musicians could say what we have to say in words then we would not bother trying to say it in music.

Music is what feelings sound like

Searching & Finding

Name a search engine that is appropriate for searching blogs. Turn the text of your answer into a link to the search engine’s web address.

Technorati

Perform a search on that search engine for anything that interests you. What did you perform a search for?

Record Labels

I have found an interesting blog post from the list of search results and have made a comment on their post. This is the link to that blog post here.

File Formats

Name one file format for images that is suitable for using in websites.

Jpeg.

What type of image would you use that particular file format for?

Photographs usually use a Jpeg (JPG) format.

Name one file format for audio that is suitable for publishing on the Web.

MP3.

Give three reasons why that audio file format is suitable.

i. Mp3 file formats can be compressed several more times than cd quality files and still retain the same high sound quality

ii. As MP3 files can be compressed more they can be dowloaded much faster.

iii. MP3 files can be also used for streaming.

5. Name two common video formats that are suitable for publishing on the Web.

Avi files and MPEG4 files.

Web Hosting

• Name one UK-based company who provides web hosting for individual websites.

Fasthosts

• What is their current, cheapest price for hosting a .com domain name for a year?

From £3.99 + V.A.T. or £43.89 a year

Collaboration

• Give one example of collaboration with others over the Internet.

Myspace

• What methods of communication would help such collaboration be successful?

1. Forums
2. Audio streams
3. Portfolio of work
4. Blogs

Distributing Media on the Web

• Name one website where users can upload video files for free. Give your answer as a link to that site.

OurMedia

• Name one website that allows users to listen to free, streamed music radio and to upload their own tracks for others to hear. Give your answer as a link to that site.

Last.fm

• Give three advantages and three disadvantages to distributing music on the Web, as compared to other methods of distribution.

Advantages

1. Easy to listen to.
2. very cheap.
3. quick to find

Disadvantages

1. You probably wont make much money, if any at all.
2. Due to the vast amount of music available, yours maight have trouble getting found
3. People may steal your work

Dharmasphere Wiki

1. Franz Ferdinand – The Fallen

2. Hard-fi – Peaches

3. Strange world – K series

4. COBURN – We interupt this programn 

5. Second Sun – Playground

6. Aarmin Van buuren – Hymne

7. Thrillseekers – by your side

8. Cirez d – Punch Drunk

9. Jamiroquai – Space cowboy (david morales mix)

10. Daft punk – Neptunes remix

THE FIVESTAR TUNES

5* – ZANY – Science and Religion

5* – LED – Breath

5* Brainbug – Nightmare (The Second Chapter) (Bonito & Tropper mix)

5* conil – Malibu Beach

5* Love Sensation – LP remix

2. Inflexible Search Engines
Overly literal search engines reduce usability in that they’re unable to handle typos, plurals, hyphens, and other variants of the query terms. Such search engines are particularly difficult for elderly users, but they hurt everybody.
A related problem is when search engines prioritize results purely on the basis of how many query terms they contain, rather than on each document’s importance. Much better if your search engine calls out “best bets” at the top of the list — especially for important queries, such as the names of your products.

3. Horizontal Scrolling
Users hate scrolling left to right. Vertical scrolling seems to be okay, maybe because it’s much more common.
Web pages that require horizontal scrolling in standard-sized windows, such as 800×600 pixels, are particularly annoying. For some reason, many websites seem to be optimized for 805-pixel-wide browser windows, even though this resolution is pretty rare and the extra five pixels offer little relative to the annoyance of horizontal scrolling (and the space consumed by the horizontal scrollbar).

(More on scrolling and scroll bars.)

4. Fixed Font Size
Style sheets unfortunately give websites the power to disable a Web browser’s “change font size” button and specify a fixed font size. About 95% of the time, this fixed size is tiny, reducing readability significantly for most people over the age of 40.
Respect the user’s preferences and let them resize text as needed. Also, specify font sizes in relative terms — not as an absolute number of pixels.

5. Blocks of Text
A wall of text is deadly for an interactive experience. Intimidating. Boring. Painful to read.
Write for online, not print. To draw users into the text and support scannability, use well-documented tricks:

subheads
bulleted lists
highlighted keywords
short paragraphs
the inverted pyramid
a simple writing style, and
de-fluffed language devoid of marketese.

6. JavaScript in Links
Links are the Web’s basic building blocks, and users’ ability to understand them and to use various browser features correctly is key to enhancing their online skills.
Links that don’t behave as expected undermine users’ understanding of their own system. A link should be a simple hypertext reference that replaces the current page with new content. Users hate unwarranted pop-up windows. When they want the destination to appear in a new page, they can use their browser’s “open in new window” command — assuming, of course, that the link is not a piece of code that interferes with the browser’s standard behavior.

Users deserve to control their own destiny. Computers that behave consistently empower people by letting them use their own tools and wield them accurately.

7. Infrequently Asked Questions in FAQ
Too many websites have FAQs that list questions the company wished users would ask. No good. FAQs have a simplistic information design that does not scale well. They must be reserved for frequently asked questions, since that’s the only thing that makes a FAQ a useful website feature. Infrequently asked questions undermine users’ trust in the website and damage their understanding of its navigation.
8. Collecting Email Addresses Without a Privacy Policy
Users are getting very protective of their inboxes. Every time a website asks for an email address, users react negatively in user testing.
Don’t assume that people will sign up for a newsletter just because it’s free. You have to tell them, right there, what they will get and how frequently it will hit their mailboxes. Also, you must provide an explicit privacy statement or an opt-in checkbox right next to the entry field. Otherwise, you have little hope of collecting email addresses other than mickey@mouse.com.

9. URL > 75 Characters
Long URLs break the Web’s social navigation because they make it virtually impossible to email a friend a recommendation to visit a Web page. If the URL is too long to show in the browser’s address field, many users won’t know how to select it. If the URL breaks across multiple lines in the email, most recipients won’t know how to glue the pieces back together.
The result? No viral marketing, just because your URLs are too long. Bad way to lose business.

10. Mailto Links in Unexpected Locations
When you click a link on the Web, what do you expect? To get a new page that contains information about the anchor you just clicked.
What don’t you expect? To spawn an email program that demands that you write stuff rather than read it.

Mailto links should be used on anchors that explicitly indicate that they’re email addresses, either by their format (donald@duck.com) or their wording (send email to customer support). Don’t place mailto links on names; clicking on people’s names should usually lead to their biography.

Again, interaction design must meet users’ expectations. The more that things behave consistently, the more users understand what they can do and the greater their sense of system mastery. Violated expectations create a sense of oppression, where technology rules humans and reduces their ability to steer the interaction.