a bit of food for thought

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/06/infamous-hacker-facebook-hired-developer/39316/

fish game

i completed my drag and drop game and submitted it on time :)

fish game

i completed my drag and drop game and submitted it on time :)

Worst Game I’ve Ever Played

Worst Game I’ve Ever Played

The worst game I have ever had the shame and pain of playing is one that is considered by most as “the best massive-multiplayer online role playing game in the world” I however strongly disagree. Yes I am one of few gamers who hates world of war craft.

The reasons why I hate world of war craft is firstly the ridiculous price of the “game” at £20 for each instalment of the games (currently being 3) and at roughly £8.99 s month it would cost £168 to buy all the games and a year’s subscription an insane amount for one game.

I never actually purchased wow I did however pick up a 14 day trial version of the game which hit the bin and off the pc all in the same day. What I did find when I played was myself in a very cheap looking world with a load of other people going “what the hell do we do then” I wondered around a bit until I spoke to an npc (non-player character) who wanted me to take his present to his mate for him so I agreed and had to run for 20 minutes to deliver this present to a very ungrateful npc who’d only give me 200 coins, least to say I was annoyed.

One of the worst things I find about the game is the fact that when you die you get to keep all your items where’s the challenge in a game where everything you do has no level of threat or danger to it.

As well as having random people kill me who were much higher levels than me I didn’t stand a chance. And I didn’t exactly find this game welcoming for new players.

If I had to describe wow on a whole I’d say wearing barbed-wire boxers would be more enjoyable than playing that game ever again.

Todays college

worked more on drag and drop assignment so far alls well that goes well.

Research

The media industry can be very profitable especially for highly skilled web designers who may charge anywhere from between £35-70 per hour for their services, as a student the most I would likely make would be about £5-10 an hour.

However ethical issues could arise from students working for such low charges an hour as companies could target students to design their products and this could damage the professionals businesses by taking business away from them and having to lower their rates per hour to compete with the students.

However although the work seems glamorous  as such high pay rates you could lose all your reputation if you fail to meet a deadline, especially when taking on a job from a large company such as Shady records who could lose millions if you fail to deliver your product on time.

Although you should always negotiate on pricing to get the best deal for you as well as helping to protect the high pay of the industry, if you struggle with a job bring someone else in the business in to help you complete the job before the deadline.

2nd year of college

i have begun the 2nd year of college on interactive media level 2, the first assignment is a drag and drop game, let the fun begin

privacy laws

Privacy

In recent years there have been many concerns about how much private information people post on to websites like facebook.com and internet delivery companies like play.com

Facebook.com has been heavily criticised over the last few years for its privacy settings or as some see it as lack of or interest to even protect their users from others online.

One way in which facebook.com has been criticized is the way that all default profiles are set to allow anyone to view content on them even if they weren’t friends with that person, there was also criticism over the way that it seemed facebook.com had made it difficult for users to change their privacy settings.

Facebook.com was also slated for putting in its term &conditions that any information you post onto facebook.com they own, this wasn’t highlighted until a family in the north of England found their family photo being used to advertise the BNP and when going to law enforcements facebook.com solicitors just told the families solicitor ‘did you not read the terms and conditions?’

In the United Kingdom the Data protection act of 1988 was designed to protect users at home and in the work place where it enforces employers to inform employees if emails and other forms of communication are being monitored, it’s the same for everyone any company that has your information has to inform you if they want to do anything with it e.g. sell to advertisers so they can make money off you, although companies are crafty about getting away with it.

Other ways companies have to inform you is if you telephone them up and they try monitoring phone calls for training purposes you must be informed.

There are also privacy laws to protect criminals from vigilantes when they are released although some people are against these laws because they feel it will put their children in danger if a paedophile is allowed to live in their town unknown of his past crimes and with a new identity what is there to stop him or her reoffending.

Although some people support the law saying people should be allowed a second chance and everyone has the right to privacy.

Other privacy laws when it comes to information point out that for any information gathered there must be an outlined reason for its use e.g. asking for a telephone number when no contact through telephone is going to be made.

Data must be deleted when it is no longer needed.

There is also the law that some data is too sensitive to be asked unless under extreme circumstances e.g. a rape victim being interviewed by police about his or hers ordeal.

National Readership Survey

The National Readership Survey (NRS) are an organisation founded in the UK who monitors newspapers and consumer magazines to see which people read which, they use surveys which cover who 250 magazines and newspapers as well as using calculated estimates to work out which people read which newspapers.

To perform this the NRS survey roughly 36,000 people a year age 15 and above, they go to the person taking part in the surveys house and interview them for, on average, 25 minutes.

This is their first question as sourced from their free to download questionnaire off their website:

I usually read or look at this topic when reading magazines or newspapers:

1 YES

2 NO

· SPORT

· CARS/MOTORING

· FOOD AND DRINK

· HOME IDEAS, DIY

· GARDENING

· FASHION/CLOTHES

· FILM AND VIDEO

· CLASSICAL MUSIC

· ROCK/POP/DANCE MUSIC  

They also ask questions about people future plans such as:

About you and your household’s future plans. Which of these activities do

you or any household member expect to happen over the next 6 months?

1 GET MARRIED

2 HAVE A BABY/ANOTHER BABY

3 RETIRE PERMANENTLY FROM FULL TIME WORK

4 MOVE PERMANENTLY FROM THIS ADDRESS

5 CHANGE JOB

6 OBTAIN A BRAND NEW CAR

7 SPEND £500 OR MORE ON BUILDING, DECORATING OR

HOME IMPROVEMENTS

8 NONE OF THESE

To help them group people into classes they developed their own class system called the NRS social grade:

Their grading system was originally designed to help them understand which groups of people read which types of newspaper but have since been used by many other organisations including government officials and have become the foundation class rating system for market research as well as Their definition is now maintained by the Market Research Society.

Quantitative And Qualitative Research

Quantitative And Qualitative Research

Researching consumers is very important to companies as it allows companies to learn what consumers think about sorts of things the companies deems important enough to be researched.

For example a media company might be interested in what media services consumers use, to do this they may send out researchers on to the street to ask people walking by or if they are targeting a specific audience such as teenagers they may send researchers to places where they will find teenagers such as skate parks youth clubs and or schools. They will normally gather this research in the form of a tally and then present the results in a table, for example;

What Media Service do You use most?
Facebook	21
Bebo	8
YouTube	7
Teen comedies (e.g. Inbetweeners)	7
magazines	0

This is called quantitative research as it deals with numbers and statistics. There are two main types of research quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative research is research that can be counted and is in the form of numbers and or statistics.

Qualitative data is about opinions and can be in many forms, for example a qualitative research may sit with a focus group and ask them for all their different opinions from the design of the product, how they feel about the way the product functions, if they would purchase the product and most importantly to the research anything they disliked about the project as well as other questions, the researcher will write down their feedback and later write it up into a report to hand to his or hers superior, who will then decide of what is of value and have the product changed to fit the focus groups research better.

Quantitative research shows companies the figures straight and nothing else, this type of research is useful companies as they can ask any question such as ‘Do you prefer diet or normal coke?’ survey 100 people or more or less and work out the percentage so for example 69 people may say normal and 7 may say neither or no opinion and 24 will say diet, so 69% prefer normal to 7% who don’t mind or don’t like coke. This research shows a company like Coca Cola that their normal coke is more preferred to their diet and that they should advertise more heavily on normal coke in their adverts instead of diet coke.

Other questions companies may ask is which products you prefer so for example Coca Cola researchers would draw up a tally with the leading drinks brands or other types of drinks that coca cola offers, e.g. Coca Cola, Fanta, Iron bru and Pepsi. Ask people for their opinion and they would find which of their rivals e.g. Pepsi is doing better than them and or if other products are more popular with consumers than Coca Cola.

The problem with Quantitative is that it offers no real feedback to companies it only shows what consumers preferred compared to other products for example someone asked if they prefer Iron bru or Coca Cola may say Iron bru but actually never really buy either drinks because they prefer other drinks products like Pepsi.

Qualitative research can give great feedback to companies as well as other consumers for example sites like amazon.com and play.com allow people who have purchased items to review the product and rate it out of 5 stars, amazon.com also allows users to rate peoples reviews asking them ‘Was this review helpful?’ and answering with yes or no.

The way this research is useful is that it can offer great constructive criticism to companies for example the star rating gives a quick overview of whether the product is liked or hated and the actual review shows the companies which parts of the product they like and or what they would have liked to have seen more of. Reviews can also work as good advertising for companies as it allows consumers to get an honest opinion of a product.

Focus groups are one of qualitative researcher’s favourite research methods as it allows them to sit down with a group of people who are the products target audience. The researcher will normally give the group some time to review the product on their own before sitting down with them and asking their opinions on the product getting some good feedback. The only problem with focus groups is that the researcher may accidentally or intentionally lead the group to answers for example the researcher may ask ‘do you like the colour scheme?’ of the product to which the group would reply no and then the researcher may ask ‘would you prefer it if the colour scheme was red and black?’

To really benefit from doing consumer research companies have to perform both quantitative as well as qualitative to understand consumers and receive the information that they want because both types of research offer good valuable information to companies as well as letting them see how people see their company whether it’s in a positive or negative way.

CV

Zachary David Hill-Walsh

2 Chestnut Place, Roman Road

Weymouth, Dorset

DT3 5HP

 Mobile: 07854326017

 Home: 01305 455812 

 Email: Zacsback@Hotmail.co.uk

Personal Statement:

As a keen designer I focused mostly on design aspects within my projects at college as well as partnering my design skills with coding in flash to create good professional standard projects from the beginning of the course.

During my school career I spent I.T lessons studying different types of design software such as serif Drawplus. I am keen to gain a job on a design team as a junior to an experienced designer who has valuable knowledge of design as well as experience from the media industry.

Education:

BTEC level 3 Interactive Media covering the following units (2010-2011):

1: Pre-production Techniques
2: Communication Skills for Creative Media
3: Research Techniques

12: Understanding the Interactive Media Industry

54: Digital Graphics

56: Digital Communication

59: Web Authoring

62: Video Production for Interactive Media

All Saints CoE Secondary School (2005-2010):

C English

C Maths

C History

C R.E

C Geography

B Science

C Science (Double Award)

Attended St. Johns Primary School (1998_2005).

Work Experience:

 12^th – 26^th July 2009 worked at Abbotsbury Swannery.

August 2009 began working at Sea Chef Restaurant and takeaway.

My work experiences have all involved working with a team of mixed ages and races, e.g. at the swannery I was the youngest person their by about 6 years where as at the Sea Chef the majority of the team are within a close age range to my own.

Working well with the team has been essential to me to provide a good high standard expected of customers of my employments. As well as socialising well within the team to make work more enjoyable.

Main duties as a kitchen manager is to ensure everything is clean, tidy and stock is all filled ready for service, as well as making sure everything is switched off and cleaned appropriately within the kitchen at night.

Interests

Music

One of my favourite things is music which has come across a lot in previous projects I have worked on e.g. I created a music application to allow users remix their songs on GLbasic as well as inventing a concert event with unique logos created in illustrator for the event back in my first year of college.

One of my favourite things is attending festivals like ‘bestival’ with my friends when I can afford it and organise enough people to attend with me.

Sport

My favourite sport when I was growing up was to play football supporting Manchester united since I can remember, my favourite part of football is giving the other team a bit banter when we win, my least favourite is receiving banter from the lads when we lose. but as I got older I found myself drawn more towards tennis down at my local sports centre  where I met and played with a lot of new people and have since focused tennis more into my personal life because I enjoy the sport a lot.

Living Life

Probably my favourite part of life is going out to parties and out on nights with my friends for a good night every now and then as my dad always used to say ‘you only live once, so get out there and live’.

Gaming

Since about age five I have been interested in video games, ever since the original game boy design, graphical content and storyline have always been important to me in this field today I focus mainly on online gaming such as Xbox live and the features they allow you to use to compare games and communicate with friends via the technology.

My favourite types of games for online have been FPS games while strategy games like the age of empires series.

Other games like the Sim series have always been a big hit with me also.

Skills

Computing:

Excels in Photoshop as well as being well skilled in flash, illustrator premiere pro and sound booth, as well as being skilled in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and publisher.

Language:

Good extensive vocabulary of English language and literature.

Driving:

Have provisional licence, currently learning to drive. 

Interactive Media Jobs

Interactive media Jobs

There are many different fields and companies to work for in the media industry offering different roles experience and most importantly different amounts of pay. Below is a list of jobs i looked at whist surfing the web. 

Programmer for tamba internet:(£35000-£40000) excellent programming skills in AS3, PHP, After Effects and Flash Media Server. Html5 considered a bonus.

Software Developer for BBC worldwide: (£30000-£45000) providing technical solutions, designs and implementations for new and ongoing software development projects. Rapid prototyping tools and techniques

Experience of working within an Agile software development environment.

Experience in carrying out quality reviews of other developers’ code.                                     

Knowledge of configuring and deploying applications to web application containers.          

Experience of new web technologies such as AJAX.                                                                

Flexibility in thinking, with the ability to embrace changes in the business.                                

 Proven organisational and time management skills with the ability to manage multiple tasks and changing priorities to meet deadline. Excellent interpersonal and relationship building skills, with an ability to influence and drive other team members where required.                        

Strong problem solving, conceptual and analytical skills. Passion for quality assurance in a technology environment.

Digital Solution Architect for executive recruitment services (£43000-£70000)

detailed understanding of web analytics, Web 2.0 technologies, will have development experience with .NET, J2EE.Java, SQL, XML, HTML/DHTML, have experience with enterprise software (e.g. WebSphere, WebLogic, Oracle, MS Solutions) and or open source technologies, and have data and object modelling, design patterns, relational database and web technology experience.

Copyright law Improved

Copyright is a right given to any product you create, which is copyrighted in your name instantly when you finish working on it. The law protects your product, or work being copied or plagiarized by others without your prior consent, the law still protects your products for up to 70 years after your death.

There are three main moral rights of the copy right laws, these are the right of attribution which means creator of a work has the right to be identified as such, this means that if you have the permission of the original creator to use their copyrighted ideas you have to credit them in your work to show that they are a part of your work and to recognize them for their piece on your work. Some people who allow people to sample their music only want to be credited with the work where as others want royalties for their work.

The right of integrity which means the owners work may not be altered or changed without consent is to help protect copyright owners from theft as well as improving things especially in the music industry, some argue that if know one copied other music there would be more musical beats out to improve the industry, but others argue that sampling and using extracts of others peoples music improves the industry by creating remix’s enhancing the song or take a classical track and turning it into a hip-hop track thanks to a rap artists unlocks the full potential of the idea.

The false attribution rule means no one can create a copyright product and attribute it to someone else. Although this is very rare to happen it is against the law to create something and claim it’s copyrighted in someone else’s name or makes up a name and pretends that its owned by the made up person.
An example of this would be someone who sets up a website selling products and then sets up another website pretending to be a customer or a reviewer of their own website and saying that their websites product are really good value for money and so.

Although prior to the internet days the copyright law was rarely needed to be enforced as copying books and other media products took so long it wasn’t worth doing as the cost of photocopying each page plus time taken would not be economically beneficial
However online movies and other products can be downloaded in a matter of minutes meaning a lot of products are being stolen.

Some people are against the copyright laws claiming that you can’t own culture and that people should be allowed to use other people’s products. They argue that culture grows off using all available work to create new work thus opening new work for people to enjoy.
They also argue that for educational purposes copyrighted material should be allowed to be used.
For example a couple of years ago the BBC set up an educational website where it printed a lot of valuable educational material for school students however educational books which retail on average £12.99 (and have been criticised on prices of educational materials) complained that the new BBC website was stealing its business by offering this information and the BBC was forced to close down the site and offer its ‘bite size’ website instead much to the disappointment of students and teachers who supported the site by pointing out that none of the sites information was plagiarized from anyone else.
The Creative Commons (CC) is an organisation dedicated to pointing out which products have been given prior consent to be used by others for certain purposes which the original owner of the product has licensed it for, for example one owner may allow his work to be used for education purposes using (CC) while another may allow anyone to edit their work and do as they please. The creative commons symbol can now be placed on YouTube videos when people upload to show that people may use your videos to create their own for example.

Sites like YouTube have had many long legal issues over copyright often being criticised by record labels and copyright owners for not checking to see if videos contain copyrighted material, YouTube claims that it only checks videos when they are flagged by users as it would be impossible for them to check all videos because that claim that 20 hours of video are uploaded every hour to their severs.

However YouTube has come down harder on copyright laws in recent years allowing music companies to check the audios of videos using a computer system to see if anything is copyright although this has proved unpopular with users it has remained popular among the record companies.

An image found using google advance search to only allow creative commons images.

pokemon research improved

To help aid me in my next assignment ‘constructing a response’ I have been researching Pokémon using Diigo pages to help track research found.

Pokémon was created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996 and was originally released as a pair of interlink able RPG games which then grew into the second most valuable game based media franchise with many bi-products branches growing off the original tree of the game such as the trading cards.

Satoshi came up with concept of Pokémon from his childhood hobby of bug catching. The franchise target is audience is children with both boys and girls being interested in Pokémon with tough scary monsters like Charizard for boy boys and cute ones like Togepi for girls. Although many fans of the series are older and the franchise is more of a phenomenon in Japan with cars, trains and planes all decorated in Pokémon.

Many believe that the hypodermic needle theory affects children most when it comes to games like Pokémon, claiming that Pokémon has caused children to become obsessive with the franchise always collecting, buying, swapping and playing the video games although some reject this theory saying that the media cannot influence anyone so directly and that kids are just being kids and interested in the game possibly due to peer pressure with all their friends playing Pokémon and not wanting to feel left out.

The reception theory has probably been the reason that Pokémon is subjected to so much criticism in the western world which sees things differently to an Asian community because they have been brought up in a different culture for example Jynx was seen as racist figure outside Japan whereas inside Japan it is thought to be based on an ancient women’s dress codes. 

The cultivation theory is that although the media cant directly influence us it does affect the way we see things for example due to famous companies being around for so long (e.g. Coca Cola) which has been around since pre-WW2 when neurologist showed test subjects images of certain brand logos the part of the brain we used to recognize family and friends was active showing that brands like these are sublimely trusted by us and we feel that it’s going to taste better than for example a non-branded product. In Pokémon the theory comes in from the fact that because Pokémon can be quite a violent world especially in some of the movies, the children won’t become violent but they may perceive the world as a more violent place.

There are three main responses to media products being the dominant, negotiated and oppositional response.

A dominant response is totally accepting the message. There are many Pokémon fans who have this response, buying all Pokémon products and even special cars shaped like Pokémon.

This response is normally associated with the hypodermic theory, it was also criticized by Southpark when they did a parody of Pokémon where all the children became obsessed and pressured their parents into buying the toys for them.

The next response a negotiated response fans with accept some messages and make up their own opinions of others and possibly rejecting some other messages, so for example some fans will agree with caring and looking after animals (Pokémon) but reject the idea of ownership over an animal.

The last response the oppositional response means you totally reject the idea completely so for Pokémon it would be some totally against all aspects of Pokémon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRriJSTifDM&feature=related the person in this video clearly has an oppositional view to Pokémon.

Pokémon has also been very successful financially according to http://www.vooks.net/story-18529-Pokemon-franchise-statistics-released-theyve-sold-a-lot.html a post dated at Oct 13, 2009 21:46 claims that the RPG games from the original Japanese only ‘Pokémon blue’ game for the game boy all the way to the latest versions of fire red and leaf green for the Nintendo DS that a 130 million copies have been sold overall.

The site also claims that over 14 billion of the Pokémon trade card games have been sold as well as stating that the 12 Pokémon movies making over $680 million Australian dollars net profit in just Japan. The article also tells us that the company has roughly 3,500 other Pokémon products ranging from Pokémon dolls to Pokémon shirts and lunchboxes.

The company has amassed $24 billion Australian dollars (£15.6 billion) worth of sales worldwide and £7.8 billion is from Japan alone.

The Pokémon franchise is owned by the Japanese gaming company Nintendo which had a net income of $2,523,070,032 (USD) for 2010.

However like all companies it has faced obstacles on its path such as the anime series episode ‘Denno Senshi Porygon’ which was removed from the series due to a scene which hospitalized 650 children with seizures a company apology statement was made and the episode was edited to remove the scene however many countries in the western world refused to air the new episode.

In the U.S three episodes where banned for a period of time after the 9/11 attacks, 2 because of their name and 1 because it contained the destruction of a city.

Other controversy claims that Pokémon is anti-Semitic with one episode showing Jessie James, Meowth and a load of team rocket grunts performing a ‘Hitler salute’ one Pokémon was also depicted with a backwards swastika but Nintendo said this wasn’t to cause offense as pre-ww2 a backwards swastika was a symbol of peace in Japan.

Fundamentalist Christians have also claimed that Pokémon supports Satanism and promotes evolution to children as the Pokémon evolve and can be controlled by ‘magical talismans’ (most likely the gym badges in the game) as well as using demon stones (probably the fire stone and the others which allow Pokémon to evolve) their main complaint came in with the fact that there were physic Pokémon as the bible states that physic powers are given to those by the devil.

A parent’s committee tried to sue because they claimed it encouraged children to gamble due to this Nintendo removed the game corner on later versions of the video game but this was heavily criticised by fans claiming that the games corner was one of their favourite parts.

Other controversy came in with the lack of ethnic minorities in the show with Brock being the only one in the first series especially due to Jynx who most believed to be depicting a racist image of a black woman with fat red lips and bleach blonde hair although Pokémon fans stood up for Pokémon claiming Jynx was most likely based on an ancient Japanese tradition where women tanned heavily and dyed their hair blonde.

Pokemon Research Updated

To help aid me in my next assignment ‘constructing a response’ I have been researching Pokémon using Diigo pages to help track research found.

Pokémon was created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996 and was originally released as a pair of interlink able RPG games which then grew into the second most valuable game based media franchise with many bi-products branches growing off the original tree of the game such as the trading cards. According to http://www.vooks.net/story-18529-Pokemon-franchise-statistics-released-theyve-sold-a-lot.html a post dated at Oct 13, 2009 21:46 claims that the rpg games from the original Japanese only ‘Pokémon blue’ game for the game boy all the way to the latest versions of fire red and leaf green for the Nintendo DS that a 130 million copies have been sold overall.

The site also claims that over 14 billion of the Pokémon trade card games have been sold as well as stating that the 12 Pokémon movies making over $680 million Australian dollars net profit in just Japan. The article also tells us that the company has roughly 3,500 other Pokémon products ranging from Pokémon dolls to Pokémon shirts and lunchboxes.

The company has amassed $24 billion Australian dollars (£15.6 billion) worth of sales worldwide and £7.8 billion is from Japan alone.

The Pokémon franchise is owned by the Japanese gaming company Nintendo which had a net income of $2,523,070,032 (USD) for 2010.

However like all companies it has faced obstacles on its path such as the anime series episode ‘Denno Senshi Porygon’ which was removed from the series due to a scene which hospitalized 650 children with seizures a company apology statement was made and the episode was edited to remove the scene however many countries in the western world refused to air the new episode.

In the U.S three episodes where banned for a period of time after the 9/11 attacks, 2 because of their name and 1 because it contained the destruction of a city.

Other controversy claims that Pokémon is anti-Semitic with one episode showing Jessie James, Meowth and a load of team rocket grunts performing a ‘Hitler salute’ one Pokémon was also depicted with a backwards swastika but Nintendo said this wasn’t to cause offense as pre-ww2 a backwards swastika was a symbol of peace in Japan.

Fundamentalist Christians have also claimed that Pokémon supports Satanism and promotes evolution to children as the Pokémon evolve and can be controlled by ‘magical talismans’ (most likely the gym badges in the game) as well as using demon stones (probably the fire stone and the others which allow Pokémon to evolve) their main complaint came in with the fact that there were physic Pokémon as the bible states that physic powers are given to those by the devil.

A parent’s committee tried to sue because they claimed it encouraged children to gamble due to this Nintendo removed the game corner on later versions of the video game but this was heavily criticised by fans claiming that the games corner was one of their favourite parts.

Other controversy came in with the lack of ethnic minorities in the show with Brock being the only one in the first series especially due to Jynx who most believed to be depicting a racist image of a black woman with fat red lips and bleach blonde hair although  poke fans stood up for Pokémon claiming Jynx was most likely based on an ancient Japanese tradition where women tanned heavily and dyed their hair blonde.

Media theroies

the media influences our daily life without us even realising, research on the brain by neurologists have shown that we recognise certain brands such as coca cola in the same way we recognise family members and close friends.

many people feel that they dont follow media trends yet they'll buy 'trusted' brands such as coca cola simply because they dont realize how influenced they are by the brands.

has spent the day finishing as much work as possible.

resubmitted PART A and B of organisations and workflow with more information in them
aswell as completing gl basic game and document and submitting cv and diigo pages.

pokemon information

Pokémon Franchise Value

Pokémon was created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996 and was originally released as a pair of interlink able rpg games which then grew into the second most valuable game based media franchise with many byproducts branches growing off the original tree of the game such as the trading cards.

According to http://www.vooks.net/story-18529-Pokemon-franchise-statistics-released-theyve-sold-a-lot.html a post dated at Oct 13, 2009 21:46 claims that the rpg games from the original Japanese only ‘Pokémon blue’ game for the game boy all the way to the latest versions of fire red and leaf green for the Nintendo DS that a 130 million copies have been sold overall

The site also claims that over 14 billion of the Pokémon trade card games have been sold as well as stating that the 12 Pokémon movies making over $680 million Australian dollars net profit in just Japan. The article also tells us that the company has roughly 3,500 other Pokémon products ranging from Pokémon dolls to Pokémon shirts and lunchboxes.

The company has amassed $24 billion Australian dollars worth of sales worldwide and $12 billion is from Japan alone.

The Pokémon franchise is owned by the Japanese gaming company Nintendo which had a net income of $2,523,070,032 for 2010.

However like all companies it has faced obstacles on its path such as the anime series episode ‘Denno Senshi Porygon’ which was removed from the series due to a scene which hospitalized 650 children with seizures a company apology statement was made and the episode was edited to remove the scene however many countries in the western world refused to air the new episode.

In the U.S three episodes where banned for a period of time after the 9/11 attacks, 2 because of their name and 1 because it contained the destruction of a city. 

Interactive youtube video

we have uploaded the video on to youtube however, due to copyright laws, our losing video was taken off youtube therefore we will have to reload it with a different audio.

the written work has been completed to a high standard.

Interactive media jobs

today we looked at jobs in interactive media, how much they pay (average), how to apply and where to search for them.

interactive conversations

image showing me and kyle talking on msn and xbox live.

The internet offers many diifferent ways to communicate from video calling on msn or simply text conversations, along with social network sites  such as facebook and myspace allowing people to express their opinions and views to others while also being able to communicate with others.

The internet has become a very social place over the past few years most likely due to the fact that the number of internet users has increased and there is more demand for social networks ect. Instead of the old fashioned blog days.

companies like skype have found gaps in the market by providing users with ways to phone land lines and mobiles through the internet aswell as calling other skype users.

picture showing me emailing kyle.

facebook or twitter

although im not a big fan of spending loads of time on social networks (facebook being the only i ever signed up to) im going to create a twitter account to see what all the fuss is about.

GL Basic

although i had already started on a project i decided to change it from a shoot em up game into a music remix application as i felt more intrested in doing this as it was unique to what everyone else was doing.

resubmitting

im currently trying to get all work up to pass and above standard fociusing mainly on the business assignments at the moment.

interactive youtube video

after refilming all parts of the video we are now finishing off the pre production video.

we've already done are pitch and completed a research log at the moment im currently working on the 1500 word 'development of video technology'

Interactive Ethics - Copyright laws

Copyright is a right given to any product you create which copyrights it in your name instantly when you finish working on it. the law protects your product, or work being copied or plagiarized by others without your prior consent, the law still protects your products for up to 70 years after your death.

There are three main moral rights of the copy right laws, these are the right of attribution which means creator of a work has the right to be identified as such.

The right of integrity which means the owners work may not be altered or changed without consent.

The false attribution rule means no one can create a copyright product and attribute it to you.

Although prior to the internet days the copyright law was rarely needed to be enforced as copying books and other media products took so long it wasn’t worth doing.

However online movies and other products can be downloaded in a matter of minutes meaning a lot of products are being stolen.

Some people are against the copyright laws claiming that you can’t own culture and that people should be allowed to use other peoples products.

The Creative Commons (CC) is an organisation dedicated to pointing out which products have been given prior consent to be used by others for certain purposes which the original owner of the product has licensed it for, for example one owner may allow his work to be used for education purposes using (CC) while another may allow anyone to edit their work and do as they please.

vector and bitmap images

vector and bitmap images

A bitmap, raster or pixmap, as they are known, is an image that is made up of pixels each coloured seperately to show the image in a detailed form, with more pixels providing more detail, although the detail of bitmap images means they have large file sizes which take longer to load they are rarely used for flash games however because of detail they are normally used on webpages.
one problem with bitmap images is resizinging them larger as it strectches the pixels and quality is lost as the individual dots become visible. the average computer screen moniter has roughly 70-80 pixels per a squared cm of the screen.

below is a vector image which has been magnifyed to show the pixels.



there are alot of different types of bitmap file formats such as jpeg, png, gif, bmp and psd and so on.
in photography digital camera or any device with a camera can take images and normally save them as a jpeg file which is the most common type of bitmap file on the internet.

a vector image is an image not made up of individual pixels instead they are made up of complete shapes and curves, their quality tends to be lower than bitmap images although they are faster to load which makes them ideal for flash games. They use mathematical formulas to work out what they will appear as on the screen,
because of this and the fact that they dont use pixels they can be resized without losing quality, due to this great advantage companies, for example, nikie whose logo is a tick, use vector images for their logos as they can be resized for poster print or for business card sizes without having to create each indiviudal logo at that size which would cost the companies more.
The advantage of not having individual pixels is smaller file sizes which load faster.

Gamers who play call of duty black ops will have noticed that when creating your playercard call sign you use vector images layered upon eachother to create the image you want.

it is possible to convert bitmap images into vector by using programs such as adobe illustrator by using the rastorise effect and the image will be converted from a bitmap into a vector, although some minor details may be lost the image will look the same if not better.

internet protocols

some information i found while researching protocols

Internet Protocol
first thing about internet protocols is that a web protocol and an internet protocol are not the same thing although most people mistaken it as being the same instead of realising that the world wide web is a service provided by the internet along with other services such as email and instant messaging.
however there are many different kinds of protocols within the internet and web protocols within the Internet Protocol Suite that each perform different rolls within the internet.

The Internet Protocol IP is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams packets across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite. Responsible for routing packets across network boundaries, it is the primary protocol that establishes the Internet.
The Internet Protocol is responsible for addressing hosts and routing datagrams (packets) from a source host to the destination host across one or more IP networks. For this purpose the Internet Protocol defines an addressing system that has two functions. Addresses identify hosts and provide a logical location service. Each packet is tagged with a header that contains the meta-data for the purpose of delivery. This process of tagging is also called encapsulation.
IP is a connectionless protocol and does not need circuit setup prior to transmission.

The Transmission Control Protocol provides reliable, ordered delivery of a stream of bytes from a program on one computer to another program on another computer. TCP is the protocol that major Internet applications rely on, applications such as the World Wide Web, e-mail, and file transfer. Other applications, which do not require reliable data stream service, may use the User Datagram Protocol  which provides a datagram service that emphasizes reduced latency over reliability. TCP provides a point-to-point channel for applications that require reliable communications. The File Transfer Protocol  and Telnet are all examples of applications that require a reliable communication channel. TCP provides a communication service at an intermediate level between an application program and the Internet Protocol. That is, when an application program desires to send a large chunk of data across the Internet using IP, instead of breaking the data into IP-sized pieces and issuing a series of IP requests, the software can issue a single request to TCP and let TCP handle the IP details. which is why the internet protocol suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP.

new gadget - fish

i added an extra gadget to my blog purely for entertainment purposes, if you scroll down you'll find some fish that you can interact with and feed. the reason behind this was because i was scanning through the gadget to see what types of gadgets were so far avaliable and which were popular

rebranding Assassin Creed; Brotherhood

for ross's assignment im going to rebrand ACB to make it looked more action packed and exicting so that it appeals more to its target audience

movie website

i completed it got everything working except one glitch where if you go onto the photo gallery page and returned to the homepage it duplicated the mouse i tried fixing but so far no success.

another problem ive encountered is when i put my project onto the disc, the trailer wasnt working, i tried re-converting the video in flash and reburning the C-D but the trailer still fails :(.

reasons why pokemon is so sucessful

1. it has a friendly feel to it
2. it can be addictive espically with the challange posed by its slogan 'gotta catch 'em a'
3. the pokemon games are on hand held based consoles so can be taken and played anywhere.
4. it appeals to girls because the pokemon are cute and friendly.
5. it appeals to boys as alot of pokemon look big, strong and evil looking.
6. the cartoon series is written to always end on a cliff hanger so people want to see the next episode.
7. the trading card game have made it even more popular
8. the spin off products such as lunchboxes and pokemon dolls have enlargend and furthered the franchiese sucess.

website assignment

so far on julians assignment which is due in on monday ive created my website, handed in my scope of work and am now working on other paper work for it.

market research draft

Market Research

Before companies release any products they perform market research to get feedback from their target audiences there are many different types of market research each costing different amounts and being more or less reliable as valid research.

Market research is carried out in many forms such as surveys, with which you can ask your target audience straight forward questions you can get good feedback on your product. However getting people to respond to surveys has been increasingly difficult for companies over the years with roughly only 3-15 % responding to mail surveys and 50-60 % to telephone surveys although 1 to 1 interviews in places where your target audience is mostly like to be yield a 90% return rate, however it can cost up to £70 to the company per an interview. Online interviews are relatively cheap and responses from them come through quite often for companies.

Another technique used is focus groups where a moderator has a scripted set of questions to get discussion going in the group to see what they like and dislike about the product or packaging as well as ways to improve on the product.

Companies sometimes hold personal interviews which are similar to focus groups and include unstructured, open end questions.

Field trials are also a good way for companies, by placing the product in one store and observing how it sells can give them insight into what to improve on or if prices need adjusting.