Good Flash template site.

http://www.flashmo.com/

http://www.flashvillage.com/

This is I think great and stylish if people looking for using flash to final project.

Daisuke Ito

more CSS stuff

Hey everyone,

Here are a few links of articles and things that go over in better detail what I talked about very confusingly today. Thanks for putting up with my rambling - hopefully it was able to help someone.

These are the articles I used to get the hang of what I know so far about CSS and most are really short (like less than a page).

Divitis: What is it, and how to cure it - an article on "divitis" or using divs instead of working with the html tags that might be better for a certain purpose... this is a REALLY interesting article if you're into it and covers how i did the heading replacement for my 3rd assignment

eric meyer reset - This is the Eric Meyer Reset.css that I used on my 3rd assignment to set all the HTML to a common denominator before I set the properties that I wanted. It's not really necessary, but I did find that it helped me get a good starting point

Centering a div - here's how to center content on a page with a hack included for earlier IE versions - I would add position:relative to the wrapper if you want to absolute position things inside it.

and here are some other helpful articles for laying out things with CSS:

block versus inline elements - block and inline elements function differently and changing a div to "inline" can allow you to put another one right next to it.

the float property - the float property determines where a CSS element is in relation to other elements.... i haven't quite wrapped my head around this yet, but maybe it will help you somewhere for more complex layouts.

css media types and how to use them - If you look at the code for linking a CSS file, you may see the media="screen" attribute (you definitely will if you created it with dreamweaver). I was curious so I looked up what that does.. apparently you can have different CSS for viewing your site on your computer screen, on a phone, when you print, etc. this talks about how to use it and is pretty cool because you could have your page look totally different when printed out than how it looks when it's on the computer.

-Ed

Uni-Form

Not sure if anyone is interested, but there's a project called Uni-Form CSS that is a standards compliant CSS framework for designing and laying out forms in a modular way and styling them with CSS. I just learned about it and thought this would be a nice addendum to the forms email from the weekend if anyone else was interested in using a form on their final project.

Check it out!

Hi Everyone,

Here is a link that you might find helpful if you are trying to download videos to use on your website. http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Save_YouTube_Videos_To_Your_Hard_Drive


Chris Gladitz

Twitter Locative Media

Wow, I just found this and it's amazing:

http://twittervision.com/

Locative Media

So this has ended up being my first actual assigned blog post.

I've tried valiantly to blog about our other assignments after reading them - in many cases sitting down and writing for an hour or more. In fact, I've generated countless words - hundreds of sentences - but every time I go to click the post button I come to the inevitable realization that I'm really not saying anything at all.

I'm sure somewhere my 11th grade self is cursing me for saying this now considering how much BS writing I did in highschool. I can just hear myself saying, "JUST TURN IT IN, ED!" But as I've grown I have come to realize that writing that doesn't go anywhere or say something really substantial is just a waste of paper, ink, bytes and other people's time. That's not to say it's not useful from a writing development or brainstorming stand point, but it's definitely not appropriate for blogging IMHO. So bottom line is that I haven't posted any of my reactions thus far in the course.

FINALLY, however, I think I've connected with a topic to some greater extent than "this is cool because" or "this is dumb because". The discussions and readings surrounding Locative Media have really caught my attention because I think that we're looking at something here that is about to break in a very, very big way.

So lets get down to it: I firmly believe that Locative Media is poised to be a very influential force in the coming years and is very likely to become the primary way we experience life and physical/metaphysical spaces in the very near future. With the increasing number of web and GPS-capable mobile devices and the ever more flexible means of creation and content sharing through web 2.0 technologies, technically anything that is posted to the web could be tagged to a specific location and compiled. The technology is available and ready to go but the true power is only just starting to be realized. The few projects we looked at in class were novel in their time, but just don't really seem to really embrace the big picture. Fortunately I think a few companies are starting to get it.

Already, Google is paving the way with their mapping of... well... EVERYTHING. They're going to be the kings of Locative Media because everyone will end up having to use their data to tie anything to a specific locale. This is already happening through Google Maps and Google Earth interactions with wildlife research centers and other entities. Other recent web 2.0 startups such as Flickr and Twitter (through their flexible API) seem to be catching on as well by providing users with the ability to associate GPS coordinates with their posts. People are beginning to realize that while "content is king" without meaningful metadata that can tie the content to other relevant sources you quickly become lost in the web. We have become a world of networking and Locative Media seeks to network ideas, concepts and content (very metaphysical entities) with the physical world - essentially it is an extension of virtual reality that we recently discussed after the reading of "Connecting Bodies in Space".

Attaching the metadata to the content and opening up databases with API integrations are really the only missing links here, but they're developing every day. The functionality exists already, but privacy, Intellectual property concerns, and widespread adoption are the only barriers to enabling this rich and vibrant experience.

We talked in class a bit about how Locative Media is a lot like a tour. The more I think about it the more I come to realize it really is a tour in the fullest sense - basically it's what a real tour should be - going to a place and being able to know anything about it or related to it with the touch of a button. Every day places have countless thoughts, ideas, images, states of motion attached to them every instant that goes by. Locative media keys into the idea that these aspects can be captured and recalled at will to create a unique experience and understanding of a physical space that can span ideologies, senses, and time. This is the best kind of tour - you don't just get told about it, you can experience it to a greater degree.

A few newspapers have already opened their archives up with APIs allowing programmers and developers to manipulate and mashup their articles and research in new ways and experience the idea of Newspaper as a Platform. This is the next step towards advancing locative media, which essentially is just a small aspect of what I like to think of as Media Universiality. Everything is connected and Locative Media is just one way of connecting two or more seeming separate things through the use of the web.

It's not that the idea of Locative Media is brilliantly unexpected or earth shattering in it's concept - but the results definitely have the potential to be groundbreaking.

psychogeogaphy

The reading on psychogeography is good in that it is a break down of our current assignment. If you are having some trouble getting going on this project you might want to read the article. It gives a list of questions to ask yourself about the neighborhood you are observing and also a list of things/places/ideas to consider as possible topics. The article also brings up a good point that the idea of locative art and psychogeography can be used to not only educate but to improve the neighborhood or city that you are in. It is also interesting to think about the mental effects of living in a certain area/neighborhood. I think delving into how an area's geography affects the psyche of the people who live there would be an interesting idea for a locative art web page.

Chris Gladitz