Marketing Where To?

i plan on marketing Where To? on both Myspace and Facebook this is fairly straight forward as i use the sites i can simply (andim osrry to say) spam my freinds and contacts. despite being annoying and possibly evil it does work. i will also start distributing flyers in bars and pubs where ever i go and speak to publicans when ever i can as well.

the biggest issue here is that i will only advertise to people with some sort of similar taste to me and that is not the plan for the web site. a sticker campain is often overlooked but again that will only really attract a younger audience (ie teens to 25)

Web Marketing is the obvious way forward not only through other networking sites but reaching high rankings in search engines although achieving this free is not so easy. banner ads are not feasible at this time as again hey will cost me money.

Assignment 3: Mashup editor

There are so many review sites that update regularly i wanted to be able access them all with one powerful search easily . i thought this would be an ideal addition to my Where To? Main welcome page. Unfortunately due to not many of these feeding new reviews from RSS I was only able to use www.worldsbestbars.com.  This allows me to choose a different city everyday and display the best half dozen bars there in. users can also use it as a search if they go through the link to the pipe itself.

I decided to make the application using Yahoo pipes because of the vast number of Modules available and the very detailed help and tutorial sections. Google Mash up was my first choice but the program is still in exclusive testing stages and accounts are very hard to get hold of. I was disappointed that the Run Pipe button could not be changed i believe Google Mash Up allows this change to be made.

 

my Yahoo pipe is located at

http://pipes.yahoo.com/whereto

 

Assignment 2: Where To? Ning build

WWW.WHERETONIIGHT.NING.COM

Concept

I’m sick of reading online review that make the bar or restaurant sound fantastic and then when you arrive the place is full of 80 year olds listening to Hank Williams and gurning at each other. At this point you realise the review must have been rewritten by one of these gurning 80 year olds. why can we never see who wrote the review and what THEY like to do in their spare time? now we can with Where To?.

Where to was made onlnie using Ning Social network editor.

Design

I wanted the design to be simple and easy to follow. the idea is not to be full of videos and music. As a rsult the predesigned colour schemes work very well as they are clear and well thought out. i designed my own banner image using Photshop and blending a selection of photos together along with so of my own pictures i also used onlnie photo stocks (requesting permision where needed.

Content

The Idea is forum based reviewing idealy these would be fully databased and searchable but thsi will be doen in tiem when theree are more members and i can implement a fuller system. User profiles are again fairly straight forward with the possibility to add colour schemes and pictures.

New reviews will be posted on the main daily along with a photo if one is supplied. these will be linked to each users profile to aloow users to compare taste before deciding whether they are likely to agree or not.

I hope that as the site grows venues will be able to pay to advertise (after a member has reviewed it) with larger pictures perhaps even videos.

Naive review of a web 2.0 application LastFM.com

LastFM.com is a radio and music sharing site. it’s based around the idea of a downloaded “scrobbler” on the users machine which records all music played by the user. it then compiles a playlist online and recommends new and unheard of bands. the site revolves heavily around the “scrobblers” so listening to music from any other machine will not add anything to you wish-list.

The Primary areas where web2.0 is clear is the use generated radio station. any user can listen to any other user’s station. playlist can be created and embedded in other sites, myspace pages, bloggers and profiles across the web.

The Function of the web site is a fantastic idea but it takes along time to set up a playlist of any length. playlist can be automatically configured from one favourite band but these seem to be pretty random or very narrow in taste.

parts of the site are hard to navigate with graphical buttons in place of text this wold work well if they were clear but their purpose isn’t always obvious.

below i have embedded a radio station created by a user with similar taste to me, thank you Colouroffire from poland!

p.s. on further inspection WordPress curently only accept enbeded media from certain sites, LastFm is not one of them.

Hey

This blog has been created to chart my progress an research during Multimedia Design course at Kingston University London