Jessjahart’s Weblog
It’s Jess’ blog!!Archive for February, 2008
Comparison between Hilary and Obama’s websites
It is very important to catch the audience’s eye in the initial glance of a web site. Looking at both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama’s presidential websites, I was able to compare and contrast the two and see which one was more visually pleasing, user friendly and appeared to be most credible.
Throughout my research I was able to compare and contrast the content on each political web site of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, focusing on form, content, and writing style. Then I focused in on the web sites structure and design to find out if it was helpful in search of political information. My initial reaction while browsing through both Clinton and Obama’s web page was surprising. I was surprised because I am not familiar with politics online and noticed that both sites were set up very similar; both user friendly from the start and the design was very square, bold and simple. Clinton and Obama both had big bold tabs up top where you can click on where you want to be directed. Both sites used the American colors of red, white and blue and had everything simplified for its audience.
Form and Content
Surprisingly again, the content of both websites is similar in that the focus is on making contributions and up to date information on the standings of each political leader in each state. Both sites list where the race is at thus far between the democratic candidates. While dissecting Clinton’s page, I noticed that she has, in order of importantance, issues that she would like to step in as a leader and take charge of such as: strengthening the middle class, providing affordable and accessible health care, ending the war in Iraq, improving our schools, etc. While reading these key issues that need to be resolved in America, I felt that Clinton’s committee who designed this web page did an excellent job of presenting these issues and organizing them. Obama’s form and content is also strong like Clinton’s and focuses in on important issues; however Obama has his issues of concern in a different order of importance. Obama mentions civil rights, disabilities, economy, education, energy and environment, ethics, faith, family, fiscal, foreign policy, healthcare, etc. Although on these sites it does not say that these are in order of importance, as an audience member I would assume that they may be organized in such a matter.
Writing Style
Both Clinton and Obama’s writing style is easy to read and comfortable in a sense that the average American can relate to it. To be honest, I was most impressed with Barack Obama’s writing style on key issues because he always starts with an inspirational quote and then he stated the current problem in bold first, following with his plan of action in detail listed second. Clinton’s was written in paragraph form on how she will lead this nation to solve the problem within that particular issue. I preferred Obama’s method because he made it easy to follow and read in a way of listing and his quotes were thoughtful and to the heart and it is the first thing that the reader reads before continuing on with his lecture on changing the future.
Structure of Information
The structure of both sites I found extremely helpful and easily accessible. On each page, there are options to easily re-direct you to another page that may be of interest to the audience. Plus, as an audience member I felt that I was in the loop with the constant updates on each politician’s current involvement. Also, they have the other communities that you can get involved with like facebook and MySpace, UTube, Flicker, etc. in case you would like to follow up in a more fun and friendly manner. Some prefer communities like this where they can post comments on politician’s pages, especially the younger generations. I feel that the structure of both Obama and Clinton’s web design appeals to all audience types and gives the audience plenty of options to choose form in becoming more involved and part of the campaigning process. Again, both web designs are set up in a way that makes it easy to navigate and successfully find the information needed.
Hillary for President. http://www.hillaryclinton.com/
Obama ’08. http://www.barackobama.com/index.php
Reflection post on discussion leader project
On Wednesday I presented my powerpoint on Online Commerce and had a great experience. I was pleased with the discussions that came out of my presentation. I felt that each group had alot to bring to the table and alot of great points to make. I mentioned the difference between online commerce and “real world” commerce. I mentioned the pros and cons of each and I felt like I was very informative and got my classmates to think about issues regarding different types of online commerce. I really enjoy the approach that this class has on small group presentations. I felt that this was a more comfortable setting and I had more to bring to the table in a small group presentation setting.
Should social networking sites team up with online commerce?
I do not think that online commerce sites like Amazon should be able to advertise and allow people to buy on Facebook or MySpace at all. Social networking is already way too involved in people’s personal life and to have more involvement in buying, selling, trading, would just be beyond my acceptance. This is my personal choice and thought on this matter!! Recently, I deleted my MySpace account because there were too many advertisements and too much involvement in people’s lives that I was not close with and I felt like I should be physically interacting with my friends who I want to see instead of writing about it and interacting online. I personally feel that social networking and e-commerce can be a little much; therefore, combining them together may discourage people from having MySpace, Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Contra Costa News Vs. Dayton Daily News
While I was observing both news sites on-line I found that both Contra Costa and Dayton Daily News felt similar. As I was navigating on one and then the other, they both felt very close in comparison. I like Contra Costa better overall because in the end it came across as more user friendly. I liked how the RSS search was in the upper right hand corner like I was expecting whereas in the Dayton News, it was at the very bottom in small print with about ten other options below making it slightly more confusing. Both sites had upper tabs where you can just click on a subject like news or sports and below it automatically pulls up sub categories to choose from. I found this very efficient. Both sites had blogs sites, but it was hard for me to determine how to post a blog myself if I wanted to. I feel that Contra Costa was interesting in that as a reader you can post comments to articles that you read. I have never seen this before or have actually paid attention to this in the past, but now I will since I have seen it done on Contra Costa News. Surprisingly I did not see any podcasts available on both news sites, but I may just not have been able to find them. I even went under entertainment to search and came across nothing. I did a general search on both sites for podcasts and it came up with websites that I could go to and order podcasts. Lastly, I thought both sites were plain and blue and could use some more color and spice. Not necessarily more pictures or video, but more colors added to make it more vivid and drastic.
Overall, I was very surprised that both a CA news site and Ohio News site were similar in their format and structure. I enjoyed a few things about each that were different; those being, the bold letters on the main page of Dayton News and the Rss button and color coded sections on the main page of Contra Costa. Both sites did seem easy to use making it user friendly to a large audience.
Online Commerce
Reflect upon your experiences with electronic commerce (banking, Amazon, iTunes, etc) in light of these articles.
After reading all three articles, I felt like I was definitely not the only one who gets discouraged when trying to do purchases or ask questions online. Although, I would rather do what I need to do online because it is more convenient, it can also be a huge hassel when the system gets clogged, or my answers do not get answered. A key example of this is on credit card company websites like Capital One for instance. CapitalOne.com is not as easily set up for me (as the consumer) as I thought. About a week ago I was online and after about twenty minutes of searching for a way to cancel my account, I ended up having to call customer service which was a complete disaster. I was on hold more times than I can count and the representative ask me way too many questions and try over and over again to discourage me from cancelling.
I was most impressed with the Circuit city article because I did not know until I read it that Circuit City has their site set up similar to a MySpace in which customers and employees can interact and respond to one-another by posting to the site. Circuit City has its own online community and it seems to be working for them because the customers are getting involved and our making suggestions on to how they can better their service. I think this is what other companies should follow, especially banking and credit card companies. They need to have an interactive site where customers can ask questions and company workers can instantly reply. This seems much more efficient than using the telephone, but could also cause an overflow of people using it and not enough workers able to respond to this demand.
My advice and suggestions based off of my own peronal experience with online commerce is that companies should ONLY offer services that they can keep up with. All too often there are computer errors, long wait times, or no response to emails that I send out. This can be very discouraging!!
Questions:
1. Do you think having real life employees active online supporting / interacting with customers would be more helpful in serving their customers and promote their business?
2. Do you agree with what Circuit City has done in developing a social website for its company or is this too much like a social service rather than a business? Is it too much like Myspace, will people begin to meet and interact on this site for other reasons rather than just shopping?
Internet technology and the impact it has on politics
How does Internet technology impact politics? Do you agree with the premise of these authors? Why or why not?
I do agree with the premise of these authors, especially Kath E. Gill’s article “The Race of the Website’s 2004″. She makes great comparisons between the websites of Presidential Candidates Kerry and Bush and how their websites can either help guide voters or discourage voters accessing their site.
Having a busy site like the Bush’s site according to Gill, can distract attention from what the voter is trying to find on the site. Bush’s site was more top heavy, Kerry’s had more direct links to blogs, volunteer, center contribute, links that were easy to access and more pleasing to the western eye! I believe that the easier a political candidate’s website is to navigate the better position they are in and the more support that they will get from U.S. voters. It is difficult when I search on a presedential candidate’s site, like Obama’s (most recent site that I visited) and it is hard to find exactly what I am looking for. It makes me frustrated and wonder why it is not more user friendly and more pleasing to the voters needs. I believe the most important things that I look for, which are very similar to Kathy E. Gill’s are:
1. Navigation and design of site: if it is easy to use and a clean website than I am much more interested in staying on and browsing through.
2. Consistency: search tools, standard left hand text, header, titles, etc. should all remain the same even when you click on something and it takes you to another page.
3. Computer compatibility: Candidates should make sure that their site is compatible and can be downloaded on all types of computers, whether old or new and big or small.
4. Verbiage: Whoever is designing the candidates site should make sure to use a universal language; for example, remember that you are speaking to the citizens of America not people in governmental positions. Or not just east coast or upper class. Know and understand the wide range of people that you want to gain support from. Some people may not follow politics as well and need to be able to read and understand the website.
Furthermore, it wouldn’t hurt to allow voters to make comments on the politicians web blogs, giving citizens the freedom to speak and express their opinions online. This is something that Kerry allows on his site, which gives voters authority to ad comments to Kerry’s blogs, something very appealing to some individuals.
The technicality of a website is very important. It needs to flow efficiently and smoothly in order to gain approval from its audience, who in this case are United States voters. I feel that having digital media critics like Gill, helps to better improve future campaigns and presidential websites!
Peace Corp Social Networking
Peace Corp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_corp
500 Contributors overall
Feb 17, 2003 Tobin Richard is the first contributor to the site
The content of the article is based on the history of the Peace Corp and its development by Congress. Throughout my research, I found that Wikipedia focuses mostly on the government’s establishment and details about the way it came to be, not necessarily its current success and struggles or where it will be in the future. It was much less focused on personal acts of service by Citizens of the U.S. The site did honor their philosophy and seemed to focus in on this right from the beginning of the Wikipedia article, which is to:
“Promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which shall make available to interested countries and areas men and women of the United States qualified for service abroad and willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower (1)
”I have selected this topic on the United States Peace Corp because I am extremely interested in joining the Peace Corp and I am interested to find out more about the acts of service and relief that volunteer can bring to other countries.
The topic appears somewhat biased in that it favors the Peace Corp owners and directors. Wikipedia talks about the history, establishment and success of the workers, but not the actually volunteers who, in my opinion are giving a whole lot more by putting themselves out there in a new and uncomfortable environment unknown to them. I understand that Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia; therefore, I did expect there to be historical information, but also more current up to date information about today’s Peace Corp and its current development and success of the volunteers and International development. The sources cited throughout this article, did however seem credible, for most of them were either straight from the Peace Corp’s main website or from Congressmen. Considering that Wikipedia is a free site that allows strangers to voice their own opinions, I was shocked that there were not more volunteers who wrote on what the Peace Corp is like today or what the future holds.
Contrast to the Wikipedia site, while doing a ProQuest Advanced key search for Peace Corp, I discovered that there were 37 documents and of these, the majority focused in on safety, security and future expansion of volunteers. While browsing through the ProQuest articles, I noticed that many were political and talked about support for the Peace Corp from politicians. Secondly, I noticed that several articles were of personal experiences in the Peace Corp and biographies of people who have come and gone through the service. Overall, I honestly felt more pleased and satisfied with ProQuest because the information seemed much more trustworthy and informative. ProQuest is a source used often in Universities and is treated as a credible source by scholars. I thought that Wikipedia would be more pleasing for the simple fact that it is now this new digital social network in which we can communicate our feelings and believes about a particular subject of interest or expertise. Also, I am not comfortable with the format of Wikipedia, the quick facts and dates and that focuses less on storytelling or personal insight. Wikipedia was very factual and jumbled with its many distractions off to the left hand column. Also, there was very little written on Wikipedia about the Peace Corp, although there were helpful external resources available to search for on the web.
Peace Corp. Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. Feb 13 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Corps
Peace Corp. ProQuest. 2008 http://proquest.umi.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/pqdweb?RQT=512&querySyntax=PQ&searchInterface=1&TS=1203128114&moreOptState=CLOSED&clientId=2302&h_pub_title=&h_pub_title1=&h_pub_title2=&h_pub_title3=&h_pub_title4=&h_pub_title5=&h_pub_title6=&h_pub_title7=&h_pmid=&h_pmid1=&h_pmid2=&h_pmid3=&h_pmid4=&h_pmid5=&h_pmid6=&h_pmid7=&SQ=Peace+Corp&FO=AT&OP1=AND&SQ1=&FO1=BITXT&OP2=AND&SQ2=&FO2=CITABS&OP3=AND&SQ3=&FO3=CITABS&OP4=AND&SQ4=&FO4=CITABS&OP5=AND&SQ5=&FO5=CITABS&OP6=AND&SQ6=&FO6=CITABS&DBId=-1&date=ALL&onDate=&beforeDate=&afterDate=&fromDate=&toDate=&Oppubtitle=AND&pubtitle=&Opsubject=AND&subject=&Opcompany=AND&company=&Opname=AND&name=&Opgeo=AND&geo=&Opcc=AND&cc=&Opsic=AND&sic=&OpSF=AND&SF=any&OpLA=AND&LA=any&OpAT=AND&AT=any&revType=review&revPos=all&STYPE=all&sortby=REVERSE_CHRON&PageSize=10
Interplay between technology and society
Technology plays a huge role in society. Through the internet, audience members can easily obtain the information necessary to post blogs, post photos, email, social network with friends and search for businesses or companies. The internet opens up several doors and fortunately, due to public licensing people are able to view information but not steal information. Privacy on the internet protects people and their personal information that they display. The future of technology is changing drastically! From the telegraph to the internet, this new digital era is making people’s lives more convenient. The future news will shift due to consumers need and desire to only read and pay attention to news articles of interest. And with easy access to any article on the net; now, internet surfers can just skip the many news stories and advertisements of non-interest and just go straight to the subject or story they value of interest, just like Nick discussed in his class presentation. Thus far, it appears that technology plays smoothly in society and the future will only tell if it will continue to play out smoothly or not!
Blogging Technology
What are the implications of blogging technology on established media?
In the article “From Tom Paine to Blogs and Beyond” Dan Gillmor presents implications of blogging technology stating that it remains with you forever and the content can and will be heard worldwide. He references the September 911 attacks and how many people across the nation were typing on their web blogs the day of the event, expressing their feeling of emotions form the attack. These messages were discovered across the world and embedded into people’s lives forever. Blogs, a type of written journalism, is openly available for everyone to hear and judge or apply to ones own life! Through this open source, people are able to find out instant information whether accurate or not and can obtain more information instantaneously from the internet through online blogging and online journalism.
NPR’s podcast is a great option for NPR lovers to have right in their hands wherever they go. Since this 2005 article, NPR has done its research and is making the consumer happy, which is the best solution to this issue of Podcast’s. Furthermore, getting the public radio information out to its audience without too much advertising in the way is also a plus. In this article, all the implications for podcast appear to be good and favored by the public. It is in high demand by the consumers and therefore would be an effective tool to have for the everyday busy person that wants to be able to turn to NPR at their leisure. Shorter content for the listener will keep them engaged and adopting a philosophy along with the model will benefit both the radio station and audience members. NPR is making content available by thinking smart and listening to what the consumer wants and needs for everyday convenience.
Questions:
Is Pod Casting the same as Blog TV? How are they the same or different?
If Pod Cast is used for the Apple IPOD, is there another similar feature that works for MP3 players or black berry phones, etc.?
Do you think in the future of our ever so growing technological society, all small hand held devices will eventually have the option of pod casting or TV blogging?
Reflection on class 2/6
How do we account for bloggers that are paid by major corporations to post positive recommendations about a certain product?
This is an excellent question that I didn’t think about until now!! I think these types of bloggers should be monitored. Or every blogger should have to display their line of work / business prior to blogging or signing up for a blog site! Also, consumers should be aware of this prior to purchasing products online! They should be responsible for the fact that some information is not controlled and may be misleading on websites. I think there should definitely be a way in which a legal/privacy contract or agreement should be made by companies pledging that they will not be involved in false advertising, comments or displays. It is not fair to the paying customer who wants to truly know what a product is like. I believe that the company should recognize that it is not the companies fault if a product is not recommended or liked by a customer because it is a consumers choice, it doesn’t mean that consumers will not still continue to buy products. A perfect example of this is Amazon, they will always be consistently used by consumers for goods, especially books and cds. I always buy books online for school and work that are needed. Also I buy books online for my own personal use and I have come across bad comments and I just move on and look for similar books that catch my interest. It doesn’t discourage me from shopping on Amazon’s site if one customer or a few customers discourage a product. It makes sense as to why big corporations do this to make themselves look better, but it truly is not fair to the customers they are serving!!
