52 Posts: Week 2

Progress this week on the web design front… I’ve made a functional if simple internal webpage for my browser homepage.

 That is my progress so far… obviously in static form.  Not that there is anything especially interactive about it so far, only standard website links (with simple status actions to indicate visually when I hover, select and have visited sites).  The list of sites is just my preferred version of book marks (I hate all that scrolling thru ‘favorite’ bookmarks).

It was good to finally get away from my cook book approach; to pose my own design ‘problem’, and then solve my way thru it using a combination of image making skills with basic web design skills. There are so many tools to help with this stuff.  In some ways I can get lost in the tools and information.  So far I’ve found a reasonable combination of tools, from specific books (such as the classroom in a book series), lynda.com tutorials, to titles on design in general.  A recent find I am especially enjoying is: “Above the Fold: Understanding the Principles of Successful Web Site Design” by BrianMiller.

 

Another interesting analytical design resource is this new one, recently out in beta the HTTP Archive it has tons of info on how the top 1700 websites (interesting number in itself… why not 1500 or 2000?) .  Based on the FAQ page they select the 1700 from the union of 6 website rating services.  It looks to me to be a well thought out tool for analyzing something as complex as webpage performance in relation to the type of design elements used.  Anyway in the end there are pages and pages of information about how each site is coded even giving suggestions for better design efficiency. I compared the Adobe and Second Life sites … interesting comparisons.  SL had fewer ‘issues’ than Adobe’s; although, that may be due to the higher amount of media posting on the Adobe site.  To a newbie designer such as myself I find the level of information to be a bit overwhelming in both its complexity and volume.  Still I found it interesting, with the potential to be useful as I learn more.  So if there are any web-heads out there… go crazy with it.

 

As for Virtual World explorations, not much new to report on that front this week; although, I did enjoy the retrospective of Oberon Onmura’s work.  He has put up 5 works (some old & some new) over at Push.  It is interesting to see the origins of some of his more familiar pieces.   I am always impressed with the elegant minimalism of his designs and how creative he is with his use of scripting.

Brave New World – HyperGrid…

Recently I posted about the Sim-on-a-stick.  At the time I was able to get the server running on my laptop and access my own sim.  But I couldn’t manage to invite any friends.  Later that day I tried to do the same from my Win 7 desktop.  Sadly it didn’t work.  (Probably a 64-bit issue)  In the process I loaded the Apache server, MySQL and PHP5 on my desktop…  it still didn’t work.  Eventually I became distracted by my Dreamweaver project.  After posting about the Sim-on-a-stick and talking about it to a few folks I didn’t think much of it.  Obviously if I was thinking about it others were as well, others with far better technical skills than I.  Today I learned Oberon Onmura set it up successfully and at the invitation of my friend and fellow metaverse explorer Jo Ellsmere, I was able to log into an independent OpenSim running on Oberon Onmura’s “older & not so fast” desk top (running Vista and a single Gig of memory!)….

Some may wonder… what is the big deal?  OpenSim right?  Yes… sort of… more like OpenGrid… or as several have labeled it… Hypergrid.   A completely decentralized Grid – You want one Region of your own to control completely?  Go ahead install it. Run it & invite your friends.

Like so many advances, it raises more questions than it answers.  What of inventory?  As it stands today… you Create it … you move it around the Hypergrid.  Will it stay that way?   How will creative freedom and copyright be impacted?  What of “the Boys at the Lab” as sororNishi calls them?  If the Hypergrid is so completely decentralized, what value do they still bring to the table – scale – community - history?  What type of economy will develop… will there be common currency?   Or will I have to make my own hair?  Will the technologically savvy rule the roost?   And just what is that ‘roost’?   How will being connected to ONLY those you want to connect to change things?  Will the serendipity of community be destroyed?  Perhaps it is as Dusan wrote recently… perhaps the lab created (unintentionally) a critical mass of emotional bandwidth allowing us the experience of Place.  How will Placeness be impacted by a hyper-decentralized-grid, it remains to be seen?  Clearly we are entering new space that will likely create a new Place. At this point (particularly for the Artists I know) it is the ultimate Sandbox… in more ways than one.  

Stay Tuned… More to come…