out of all the assignments i have done so far i hate this one the most. is ugly lokos unfinished, worst colour scheme, crappy last minute java script that doesnt work. all the content is there its just the worst website i could have possibly made! i cant belive im submitting it! sorry to anyone who looks at it im sorry. i should have not worked so much this week! arrghhh i hate things that arnt what i want them to be.  i guess this will be my last post. will be greatly appreciated if you pass me on this final assignment rob one again sorry for the poor effot, im disapointed too.

 i think i might fix it all up and make a new one even tho it wont be marked….. yer that will make me feel better.

i have now finished my maya assignment woooo!

here it is im actually quite happy wiht it considering i barely know how to use the software…

 i can now dedicate my full attention to the website. i hope i can get something done that i like and is completely finished….

ciao

yay there is a one week extension on assignment so the final website is now due on the 2nd november.

this means after finnishing the deco1005 website today, i will have a week to concentrate on maya, aswell as researching and finalising my idea. then a whole week to create a amazing website.

 completely less stressed right now…

so we have had a 13 week semester and for some reason i have an assignment worth approximately 60% of my final mark due in 11 days… this is a joke. in saying this i started both my previous minisites the day before they were due, and they didnt turn out half bad. problem… i also have two other MAJOR assignments due. the maya one is 80%, yes 80% of a 6 unit subject which means it is worth about 20% of my marsk for this.

eww i just realised thats no even bad… 60% of a 12 unit subject is about 33% of this semester!

oh k deep breath… dont stress…

here is some feedback i got back from my presentation:

• the possibility that the iphone accelorometers would allow for landmarks to be pointed to and then the tour guide would speak about them. rob also questioned weather orientation was possible with gps, can it tell what direction you are facing?
• the application having the ability to learn your likes, if you always seem to want to hear about the flora and fauna of an area, the tour guide will learnt his and speak more about these.
• research into current audio guides
• get more user feedback prom protyping.
• design a product website.

arrghhhh! im never gonna get this done! i am contemplating jsut downloading a template for the history and theory subject. that or just using the same layout i currents have for my home website… yer thats a good idea actually. sweet thast basically one assignment down cool.

here is the transcript of my little speech kinda:

my completely new idea is called footprint. it is basically a global tour guide built into you iPhone.

It gathers all the information from travel guides, brochures and other travel related information sources. it puts it into one easily accessible, easy-to-use and organised place.

it uses the GPS capabilities and google maps to track the users exact location and gives teh user information about the particular spot. it lists information about literally everywhere in the world from the smallest town, to info about countires or areas of the world.

some of the things it lists:

• up-to-the-minute global weather
• quick facts – timezone, currency, local language
• places to eat, sleep and shop
• any interesting events/facts about the particular spot

what makes footprint different from just using the interenet on the iPhone to look at online travel guides is the interface agent i propose to use in this application.

examples can be found on my minisite but basically its a computer generated character that acts as your personal guide. instead of simply reading information off the screen, the user can simply plug in eadphones or loudspeaker and listen and watch their own personal tourguide. users choose there there own  guide meaning user choice and they guide almost becomes like a buddy.

exmaple: if you were an overseas traveller and you’re english wasnt teh best, going on and tradtional /regular tou may be fruitless and frustrating , not to mention a waste of money. instead the personal guide on your phone can speak in your native language and inform you about the surrounding area.

they would talk abotu the history of the are, things to do and as the user walks and approaches new things the tour guide changes what they are talking about. its like having one of the hosts of getaway on yoru hpone or depending on what your interest area’s are the history channel or a sports host, or if you live celebrity gossip, or the national geographic.

one of the msot unique features i carried over from my last idea is the ability for the tour guide to teach the user useful phrases to the user in the language of that area. it would be intergrated into the tour or could be requested specifically by the user.

oh k so it was due on friday and i finished at 12.

well actually i didnt really finish…

there was definately alot more things i wanted to add more javascript to make the text less overwelhming for the user, there is a few large chunks. in saying this tho i have looked at other students sites and they have alot more huge sections of jstu text than me.

i also wish i had mroe user feedback. but in my defence its due to the fact i have a completely new idea, so i cna’t carry any of the informaiton from minisite one over to teh second one.

better screen shots would be nice btu jstu didnt have the time.

i also jsut generally wanted to make it look prettier with a side bar that had images of all the places aorund the world i wanted to visit and when clicked links to travel related sites telling you about them..

 o well all shall be better for minisite three!

here is the link to minisite two.

just found out i haev to do my presentation on thursday it iwll be good to get it out of the way, plus i desperately need feedback from people and my class mates have been pretty helpful in teh past.

ciao for now x

NOTHING

parklife was unreal on sunday, but other than that i haev done nothing for the past week. awsome. wait i lied i downloaded crazy talk and made a stupid animated picture of myself. it kinda has potential for great things.

 my minisite is due friday thats like four days away. pretty much have no chance of getting it done. firstly i have no idea what to do as there is absolutely no instructions as to what the website is to contain or look like or any guidlines. i think i might email rob… or get someone else to.

 but yer this is all i cna be bothered to write about today the more i think about minisite two, the mroe i feel the need to cry.

ciao x

i need to include rich text meia into this website so im going to download crazy talk and use it as a high fidelity prototype.

i will give various examples of the human – interface interactions. with an interface agent talking to the user. i will then be able to gauge how users are responding to the “character’ and the idea of a virtual tour guide.

 i am all going to acompany this with screen shots i iwll construct in photoshop.

the first will be a map with a “you are here” tag. there will be options which you can select on this same screen. such as: quick stats, history, language, landmarks, tours etc. i will show users this is flip cards so they understand the process or steps involved to get informaiton they want. after a user interacts with the prototypes they will eb asked to fill out a short survey so i can consolidate there opinions and feedback.

yes it is tru i finished my minisite one a whole week ago.

im nto entirely sure if i did the right thing as there was mass confusion about the layout /structure and content required

for the site. i kept a similar layout and changed the colour because i felt a user would be quite alarmed if they click on a link in my navigation bar and were trnasfered to a completely new site. i will however for mini site 2 create a completely new site from scratch just to ensure that i am meeting the requirements and expectations of this course.

 so what do i need for minisite two?

 ”Website documenting revised design and results from prototyping it with potential users. “

this means i need to really work out any problems and kinks wiht my new idea. i need to create prototypes such as an interavtive interface agent on a computer to see how users warm to it. also need a scenario. i have polled users about a few topics relating to travel and how they gain information about places and this data needs to be analysed and the results used to improve my idea…

o and we have our bloody presentation aswell! arrghhh i didnt even think of them. 

 alot to do in two weeks…

o and i have next week off uni so ill probably do alot of bludging and i have parklife next weekend!!!!!

 10 days til Parklife.
35 days til Klaxons.
93 days til NeverEverland.
101 days til Falls Festival.

yay!

basically wikitravel is what my application aspires to be, with some way cooler stuff tho.

The mission of Wikitravel is this:

Wikitravel is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide.

Wikitravel articles should be useful for at least the following purposes:

• For on-line use by travellers on the road, huddled in a late-night Internet café in some dark jungle, who need up-to-the-minute information on lodging, transportation, food, nightlife, and other necessities;
• For off-line use by travellers on the road sitting in a train with a subset of Wikitravel on their PDA, laptop, mobile phone, or digital camera.
• For on-line use by travellers still planning to review destinations, plan itineraries, make reservations, and get excited about their trip;
• For individual article printouts, that is, for printing a list of museums or karaoke bars and putting it in your back pocket for when you need it — or making a photocopy when someone else does;
• For ad-hoc travel guides, small fit-to-purpose travel books that match a particular itinerary;
• For inclusion in other travel books, giving up-to-date information for travel guide publishers.

they have already completed research for me. what they dont want wikitravel to become:

These are some specific non-goals; things people might think we want to do with Wikitravel, but we don’t:

1. Create a travel essay anthology. Wikitravel is not a travel magazine. Articles should be directed toward practical information about travelling.
2. Create a collection of personal travel journals. Wikitravellers usually have interesting stories about their personal adventures which should instead be put somewhere other than our articles — such as Wikitravel Extra.
3. Provide a vacation photo gallery service. Photographs and illustrations should be targeted towards illustrating destinations and sights, not toward showing Grandma how big the mai-tai was that you drank at the luau.
4. Provide a personal homepage service. Each registered user on Wikitravel has a User page; these should be used to support the development of the travel guide, and not as an All About Me and My Cat Web site. One or two photographs on your User page is reasonable; more than 5 is really pushing it.
5. Create a travel chat board. There are plenty of Web-based and email discussion groups on the Internet, where people can talk about their experiences, ask questions, complain, make friends and joke around. Wikitravel has talk pages for each article, but these should be used to develop the article itself, and not as a “comments” area. Anyone can edit a Wikitravel article; if you have useful information about a topic, put it in the article itself.
6. Make an advertising brochure. Wikitravel of course has listings and information about travel-related businesses around the world. We would be thrilled to have representatives of these businesses keep those records up-to-date. However, blatant advertising is not welcome, and overcompetitive acts (like deleting information about rival businesses) is gravely deprecated.
7. Produce a Yellow Pages of restaurants, hotels, or bars for a city. City guides should certainly include information for travel-related companies, but these should be kept at a useful number. Think of a friend from out of town asking you where they should go — you wouldn’t list all 200 possibilities, but 5-10 options for a particular type, budget, or part of town.
8. Build a Web directory. Wikitravel articles can and should have links to external resources about destinations, itineraries, travel-oriented companies, and other travel-related Web sites. However, it’s not a goal to collect all links about any destination. External links should support and complement the content of articles; they’re not a goal in and of themselves.
9. Make a travel guide supplement. The Wiki technique we use for Wikitravel makes it possible for us to include information that’s not in other travel guides. This doesn’t mean that we only include information not found in other guides. Wikitravel aims to be a complete travel guide — not just an additional resource on the side of traditional guides.
10. Make an atlas. Although travel is intimately intertwined with geography, Wikitravel does not describe geographical features of the Earth just because they’re there. Nor do we create separate articles for every crossroads with a name on the map.
11. Make an encyclopedia. Wikitravel aims to tell people how to travel all over the world, not document everything there is on the planet or how it ended up that way. If you find yourself needing references and footnotes on Wikitravel, whatever you’re writing should probably go to Wikipedia instead.

they are pretty on the money. its needs the right amount of information not too much not too little, i need to ensure the inclusion of google maps, GPS and my virtual tour guide would be helpful and not hindersome.