web
Evan Mitsui, Gloria Leung, Charlie Cho and Oliver Janousek
As my studies at BCIT’s new media program draw to an end this week, I sadly had to say goodbye to the online crew at CBC B.C. I had been working there two days a week since January for my practicum requirement, and here are a few of the projects I got to work on:
Photo galleries
User-generated content is an important component of the site, and maintaining the galleries can be a time-consuming process so I helped in keeping them up to date. The weather and encounters with wild animals galleries had daily submissions from great photographers across the province. I was amazed by some of the submissions, such as the owl that crashed through a window (it was OK!) and the two moose licking salt off cars in a driveway (in Fort St. James).
Also I created a gallery (largely from my own photos) for the Chinese New Year festivities in Vancouver’s China Town.
Another photo gallery project was for me to collect photos from the Illuminate Yale gallery. Regional Web Developer Gloria Leung had great photos from her building, but we needed some different angles, what to do?
We knew there were some great shots on Flickr, but could we use them. Ended up adding some fantastic photographers to my Flickr contact list so that I could message them and ask for their permission to use photos. To my amazement, I had responses back within half an hour, and could create an Illuminate Yaletown gallery.
Google maps speeds development of interactive content
For the Road to the Games interactive map I created an icon set (pictured below).
Road to the Games Google map
Creating illustrations 32×32 pixels was a challenge. What was distinctive enough to be distinguishable at that tiny size? And it had to stand out from the map background (Gloria gave some good advice about this – take a screenshot of a Google map to test against).
Found Shadowmaker to be a useful tool in adding the perfect drop shadow. Hurray for automation!
The wonderful part of Google maps (besides it being free!) is the ability to add content to a location – photos, video, text, links. So another part of my map project was to keep it up-to-date. Since it was an Olympic map, the name “GM Place” needed to be changed to “Canada Hockey Place,” for instance. And grabbed new updated photos of David Lam park and Robson Square.
Google has so many tools of use for webmasters, and the practicum has got me thinking about how I might incorporate maps into my websites in the future. (Though I was disappointed to find lakes missing from Yellowknife, NT, my former home. Apparently, it’s too far north for detailed mapping.)
I have been working on a portfolio site for my URL www.ehargreaves.com, and have now uploaded a home page. I used the menu from my After Effects/DVD project, exported the clip as an FLV file, then imported it into Flash.
Once the FLV file was inside Flash I added invisible buttons over the DVD navigation. These buttons all link to external sites – my YouTube and Flickr streams, and this blog. The “_blank” tag on the button links cause other tabs to open (the intended effect), but this also causes the Flash to become deselected, so then the buttons don’t have their sound/roll over effects again unless the Flash document is clicked on 
That means I have to get going on the inside pages. Once I have these pages to link to, I will remove the “_blank” tags because my links will lead to internal sources.
My plan for these inside pages (which I will create in Dreamweaver) are to add:
- a video page, using my YouTube content as embeds
- a photojournalism portfolio in the big-photo style of Boston.com
- a new ‘About’ page, which will link back to this blog
WordPress site upgrades also needed
I will also continue to make changes to this site. A prominent RSS feed button would be nice (the text version gets a bit lost), and eventually a custom theme. I will be picking the brains of other bloggers at two upcoming conferences: WordCamp Whistler and 2009 Northern Voice.
Still mulling Twitter options. I like having the update feature since my tweets are mostly about technology, but if I get too busy to blog for a few days, then Twitter takes over. I would welcome suggestions 
CNN, Facebook partner
Interesting story on journalism.co.uk about CNN’s plans to incorporate social media into its coverage of President Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20.
So of course I had to log on and become a Facebook fan of CNN to see what it was all about. The event promo says:
What will your Facebook status say when Obama becomes President? CNN.com and Facebook are partnering to enable you to update your status, and follow you friends’ updates, while you watch the inauguration live online, all on http://cnn.com/live …
Whether you’re at the office, at home, at the library, or anywhere else, you can share this moment in history with your Facebook friends live, as it happens.
The story links to NPR (National Public Radio), which is requesting help with its social media coverage, including
- Mobcasting: audio recordings of voicemails left by listeners about their thoughts and feelings on inauguration day
- An inauguration tag of #inaug09 for Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blogs, etc
- Maps of user-generated content
iReport blog gathers news from masses
The maps feature is also prominent iReport, a site run by CNN with the disclaimer: “Only the stories marked ‘On CNN’ have been vetted by CNN for use in CNN’s global news coverage.”
Its world map feature lead me to a report on this fun gadget, a HD Video Recorder Snorkle Mask with Lights, shot at the CES in Las Vegas.
This massive crowd-sourced blog generated 225,003 reports worldwide last month, 1,085 of which ran on the CNN site also. That’s quite a content generator for the amount of resources needed.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.ppiwidget.com/campaigns/as3base.swf?inst_id=115013" height="280" width="336" /]
So now I am enrolled in the Star Trek webmaster program. Embed!
This wee widget I grabbed from its site packs in a lot of functions, and acts as almost a mini-website for the upcoming Trek movie (T minus 121 days!), featuring a photo gallery, synopsis, downloads, and of course my favourite movie trailer.
What a great way to promote a movie, get buzz going online. And its cool interface transitions (like the website) mimic the way DVDs transition once a button is clicked, slick.
I would advise seeing Trek’s amazing high definition trailer, give you a taste for the Imax version of the movie, coming May 2009.
High definition viewership online is rocketing according to a recent story on TechCrunch: Move Networks Streamed 100 Million Hours Of HD Video On The Web Last Year.
The article says that Move Networks, which powers the Web video streaming for ABC, Fox, the Discovery Channel, and Animal Planet, streamed 180 million hours of video, 100 million of which it claims was in high-definition. And with Hula and YouTube adding HD services, “you can expect that 100 million hours to be dwarfed this year across all the major Web video services.”
Yeay to less pixelated video offerings!
