My Finale

So... It has come to an end. It is pretty crazy how quickly this semester has gone. As for Networked Media Production, it has been a really interesting course and I can honestly say I do now think differently about the way I use the Internet and Networked Media. My Blog has also been a real learning experience, as I have learnt and experimented with new online technologies. I believe I have benefited a lot from learning from Tutors/Lecturers who have recent real world experience working because of their work with IceLab. At times I didn't quite always understand some of the ideas behind Networked Media but as I have gone through the course I have learnt a lot.

I wasn't sure which 3 blog posts to choose but I have chosen basically my last 3 running up to my assignment because it is interesting to see the work process...

- My Music

- My Entertainment Media

- My New Favourite Website

At first when I started my blog I thought I was going to include a lot more video and images but I found that just me writing every week was nice and personal. I tried to do that with these blogs and this shows by the way I have called it "My Blog" this was just a temporary idea but I liked it because it is literally "My Blog" and I have intended to write about "Me" and Networked Media. I also called every blog post "My ..." just mainly to keep it interesting and also it enabled to keep it personal. 

Overall I have enjoyed this Unit and it has honestly taught me a lot and I think differently because of it. Who knows... I might even continue with my Blog...

My Rationale ll

Ok I have now completed my Data Visualisation. I am really proud of it. I have learnt a lot. After finally deciding on doing a Data Visualisation I started to collect data over a two week period. I gathered information about how much music I listen to, how much television I watch, radio, internet amongst other daily activities. Once this data was all collected I struggled with how to represent the data in a easy, effective and interesting way while being able to incorporate the Networked Media aspect, because that is really important to me. After looking at many possibilities, Michael then showed me 'Google Docs' and it saved me! It is really great. It is exactly what I wanted to use for presenting my assignment. It is easily set out and it makes it a good way to view the data. When looking at ways to make my graphs aesthetic and presentable. When using Google Docs I did some research into Data Visualisation and the work of Edward Tufte. Due to the restrictions of Google Docs I don't have a lot of choice as to how I  can set up the graphs but after reading about Tufte's opinions I am still happy with what Google Docs offers. I experimented with different styles of graphs to display different information and then chose styles that suited the data. I preferred using graphs that showed change in the visual aspect of the data as the data changed. I saw this was important for a Data Visualisation. I found that I tended to use bar charts due to the fact that it shows change in the data in the way the bars/columns are set up. I thought the pie chart was also effective and I found that one of Google Docs advantages was the use of interactive charts, which I found was suitable for Networked Media Production due to the fact that data can be retrieved easier via interactive visualisations rather than static 2D hard representations.

I really hope I do well in this assignment because of the work I have put in however, even if I don't do well I will still be happy because this assignment has taught me a lot about my daily life and activities and even how Data Visualisation is useful and how we can construct Networked Media. As I said in one of my other blogs I have actually done similar things in the past to discover how my week is constructed so this isn't actually the first time I have done something like this. However, from this assignment I have learnt a lot more about the ways to construct a visualisation.

My New Favourite Website (Google Docs)

Google Docs is totally awesome. I have been struggling a lot recently with how to present my assignment. Originally I intended to just set up my data on Photoshop and then just post that somehow on the net to incorporate the "Networked Media" aspect. Then Michael showed me Google Docs and it is so good. It is exactly how I wanted to present my assignment. It enables me to have my data accessible in a excel document and still have great looking interactive graphs. That Feltron website was the inspiration for this assignment and so to have had a similar idea on mine is really good. Google Docs has helped me to create something kind of similar so I am really pleased about that. I am still working on it so hopefully it will be pretty good by the end.

My Entertainment Media

So I have been collecting my 'data' for my assignment. I was originally just collecting information about my songs but found that to be pretty average so now I am collecting information about a lot of the other entertainment media that surrounds my life. I am retrieving data on the amount of television I watch and the amount of radio I listen to as well as how much Internet I use. This will be an interesting study to see how many hours of the day is taken up by entertainment media. I have actually been finding this really interesting. I have actually done similar things in the past, in my own time (sad I know), for my own interest to find out how the day is divided into different things and activities that make my day what it is. I have also gathered information about how much time I spend on the bus because I when I am not driving to Uni I bus which can take quite a bit of time. I will usually listen to music on the bus so I am going to do a comparison of how much time I am listening to music is taken up while traveling on the bus. It should be pretty interesting. I hope to learn a lot from this assignment.

My Music

One of my ideas for my project is to collect the information about the music I listen to over a period of time (probably about a week to two weeks) and then put it together into a visualisation. I have already started to record some data and write down how many songs I am listening to in a day etc. however I don't know what to do from there. I will talk to Nathan in my next tute about how to display my data on the web. I also got the marks back for the last assignment and to tell the truth I wasn't completely happy. I want to make sure though that with this next assignment I can get some more feedback so I can do better in this project.

I thought that this video we saw in our tutorial was appropriate.