DAT203: How not to design a website, and the future of the iPad

In today's practical, we've had to pick two of the world's worst-designed websites, and we managed to come up with these examples: alexchiu.com and the official Space Jam film website at www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm. alexchiu.com featured a rather inconsistent design theme, a profusion of formatting and spelling errors, and a heavy reliance on animated GIFs to add emphasis on links and certain titles. Also, we found out that when we click on a different language, the design of the website is completely different, rather than having the same design throughout, which is supposed to be the convention no matter what language is used.

Although the official Space Jam website was designed sometime in October or early November 1996 (which was approximately about a month or two before CSS existed, and before CSS became the norm), it featured many bad design features. The website used repeating backgrounds, inconsistent text, frames as title bars (which can cause confusion as the user cannot tell whether or not the logo at the top left actually is the button that returns to the home page of the website),  usage of the frame as a menu bar, and clashing colour schemes in certain pages, thereby rendering the text hard to read. We also found validation errors and spelling mistakes after we ran the Space Jam website through an online validator, so, even though it is almost an online 'museum' page, someone at Warner Brothers didn't really pay attention to ensuring that the website at least complies with W3C standards at the time and didn't think about the many little spelling errors that the website had. Even some of Disney's older websites had more of a consistent theme, at least.

Now, on to a different subject. We had a debate about how the hypothetical iPad 5 would evolve, and how it would eventually render conventional computers (desktops and laptops) obsolete. There is evidence that mobile devices are starting to overtake conventional computers in terms of sales, and with the proliferation of cloud computing, it could eventually replace the need to sync the device with a conventional computer. According to the IDC, an independent technology research firm (source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9199918/In_historic_shift_smartphones_tablets_to_overtake_PCs), they are, indeed, outnumbering conventional computers, and even though they are already ahead of performance, the evolution of mobile technology is starting to make mobile devices outperform desktops and laptops in terms of speed, and eventually, they would be just as fast that even the most graphically-intense task could one day be performed on mobile devices such as the hypothetical iPad 5, or even its successor.

DAT201: Research Theme: Hacktivism and Tactical Media

For my readme (which is a communication of ideas for the artefact), I am researching the themes of Hacktivism and Tactical Media. Hacktivism and Tactical Media is, to an extent, a form of guerrilla communication, and has developed from previous forms, but takes it to a whole new level. The real definition of Hacktivism and Tactical Media varies according to source, but the many examples I've found from at least 3 sources included "media activism using traditional political work with technology" (A Virtual World is Possible. From Tactical Media to Digital Multitudes), "a method of engagement using re-engineering as creativity" (Digital Media and Technology), and a "critical form of interventionism" (Tactical Media).

Recently, many examples of hacktivist interventions have occurred. During the WikiLeaks saga, activists have taken to the digital platform to vent their anger against organisations that have severed ties with WikiLeaks following the publishing of sensitive US Government data. They used what is known as DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks, which uses deliberated connections to cause bandwidth overloads, which then drives the website offline. These types of interventions tend to have mostly democratic goals, to vent anger at governments, to send out a very strong message of disapproval, and to promote better democracy as well.

The term 'tactical media' was coined as recently as 1997, to describe a form of digital interventionism that, as the name suggests, uses tactics to deliver the message. Last year, in IDAT108, we was shown one example of 'tactical media' in a lecture, which came in the form of a manifesto/documentary film about the 'remix' culture, which involves recycling copyrighted media in a world where corporations are heavily fighting for tight control, and where copyright needs to be updated for the 21st century. The 2008 documentary RiP!: A Remix Manifsto explains the whole subject about the problems of copyright and how it has impacted on remix artists, as well as promoting the concept of open source, even going as far as promoting itself as being the 'world's first open source documentary'.

There is a link to both Hacktivism and Tactical Media. One hacktivist, Jaromil, pioneered the idea of linking the two. Jaromil, famous for one of the world's most elegant form of UNIX shell fork bomb, which consists of just 13 characters, created dyne.org, a website dedicated to promoting the freedom of expression using free software.

Sources:

• A Virtual World is Possible. From Tactical Media to Digital Multitudes - http://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/espai/eng/art/lovink_schneider0603/lovink_schneider0603.pdf - Lovink & Schneider (2003) 
• Tactical Media - http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=0IyN2OKQzgQC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=Hacktivism+and+Tactical+Media&ots=sVi2LcrnNF&sig=-MNyUDC4dAmDKax1Il2SU7FoFlU#v=onepage&q=Hacktivism%20and%20Tactical%20Media&f=false - Raley (2009) 
• The New Digital Media and Activist Networking within Anti–Corporate Globalization Movements - http://ann.sagepub.com/content/597/1/189.short - Juris (2005)
• Tactical Media and Hacktivism - http://jchasef.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/tactical-media-and-hacktivism/ - Digital Media and Technology - jchasef (2008) 
• RiP!: A Remix Manifsto - http://www.ripremix.com/- Gaylor (2008) 
• Dyne.org - http://jaromil.dyne.org/ - Jaromil 

IDAT 101: Looking into technology for our strategy

In addition to our chosen space (in a club environment), I've looked into more technologies for our strategy, which will boost the scenario a bit more. These technologies include:


The Tenori-on: http://tenori-on.yamaha-europe.com/uk
Korg KAOSS PAD: http://www.korg.co.uk/products/dance_dj/kp3/dj_kp3.asp
DMX512 (the industry standard for lighting in stages and discotheques): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMX512
And ambient lighting, in which we are still exploring.


There's more to come, so stay tuned!

IDAT 108: Now I do know more technology, didn't even know it existed 1000s of years ago!

Just as I was doing homework for IDAT 108, I know realised the many different links technology had in the past centuries, even before we had what we now call technology. It was only recently that the term applied to all those fancy gadgets we took for granted in the late 20th century, and still do in the 21st century. Now let's hope that these links will come full circle at the seminar tomorrow.