Entries from April 2007 ↓

Health Tools Online has a great series of interactive graphics detailing human anatomy and various medical conditions and surgeries.

I didn’t look at every one, but the anatomy of the heart caught my eye.

It’s a very good graphic, with nice large text and little animations to show how the heart works. The design and layout of the stage are well thought-out and attractive, the illustrations are detailed and colored highlights make it very easy to see what the text refers to. The explanation is divided between interior and exterior functions. The exterior animation is accompanied by zoom, rotation and move options, while the interior explanation has more animations that show how and where blood moves through the heart.

I’m confused by just one thing though. The “move” function. This lets you move the heart around the stage, including into text boxes and partially off the visible area. I can’t figure out why this is there. I don’t see any reason to move the heart from its original location, especially when you can rotate it. (By the way, the rotate button is a little hard to use.)

Otherwise, I think this is a great example of how interactive graphic should work. I wish I’d had access to something like this in high school biology.

Side note: They’re using something called Holomatix 3D instead of Flash, which I assume allows for the rotate functions.

The obligatory end-of-semester post:

This semester has been the most fun and the most challenging so far. I spiced up my CSS skillz and learned enough Flash to be able to produce a good amount of what’s already being done as well as to push my myself further. I learned a lot about design, and am pursuing further studies on my own. I learned the value of a budget. I took driving lessons and will be getting my license and a car very soon. I made some very important connections to people in my department, people who can teach me and connect me with other VIPs. I had just enough free time to keep my head from exploding, but not so much that boredom got me into trouble.

I lined up two summer jobs that will add some experience to my resume so that I can get a great internship and then a great job. I will still be working at the Help Desk, but I also joined the new media department at the Independent Florida Alligator and will be updating and redesigning the Citizen Access Project Web site. I’m also taking an advanced editing course.

Having invested so much of myself in learning Flash and upgrading my coding abilities in the last few months, I’m eager to revisit storytelling and learn how to combine multimedia technology with extraordinary reporting. I don’t know if I’ll get that chance this summer, but I definitely will in the fall.

Google News Report USA claims to “estimate referrer traffic to the source” from Google News.

Headlines from the Google News homepage are ranked according to “appearance day and time, prominence on the Google news page, number of appearances, and others.”

At the bottom of the page, the author also lists the top sources of articles appearing on Google News, New York Times and Washington Post are #1 and 2.

Not being so much a numbers person, I’m not sure how accurate this is. And, of course, its only an estimate of referrer traffic, not a ranking of actual traffic. But given how possessive newspapers are of their content, maybe this will show the naysayers that Google News can help their traffic instead of hurting it.

I took this video at the University of Florida Public Interest Environmental Conference (PIEC) after-party in March. It’s a little long, but well worth it, I think. And yes, my hands are shaking.

I’ve decided I like Brightcove better than YouTube. Faster upload, better quality, nicer interface.

One of my favorite high school memories was stopping at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way to school. My teachers were caffeine junkies as well, so I’d pick up a couple extra cups for them.

The saddest thing about moving to Gainesville was the sudden lack of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. I’ve learned to manage instead with AMP energy drinks, but at least once a week, the craving surges up.

Now, at last, my wish has been granted.

According to Mashable, Facebook is looking to to launch a local classifieds service targeting poor college students.

The idea is that it would be free to list items within your network, but you’d have to pay to post an item in other networks.

Facebook is already trying to be the new Twitter. The buzz about Facebook looking to buy Twitter died this weekend when Facebook updated their “status” feature, allowing users to update and check status via text messages, as well as providing a site and a feed for your friend’s statuses.

Last week in class we talked about the way Web site popularity and growth is measured. Advertising agencies want to know how many people visit your site before they pay you for advertising space. Thus, pageviews, a way to measure how many people click over to a page on your site.

With technologies such as ajax becoming very popular among Web sites, pageviews become an obsolete measurement. Instead of loading a new page, new content is loaded dynamically.

So how do we measure growth and popularity?

In class, we said: time.

And so does Nielsen.

The two major firms that track Internet traffic are playing down the significance of ranking Web sites by “page views,” the number of pages viewed on a given Web property each month. Instead, they are offering other metrics, such as time spent or visits.

But there are problems with that, too. I can open up a tab in Firefox (or, now, IE7) and totally forget about it. It’s still counting how much time I’m spending on that site. I get most of my news and daily reading via RSS. No time measuring there.

So, in the movement from “static web” to “dynamic web” what metric system can we rely on?

P.S. These metrics aren’t just used by advertisers. I check my site and RSS stats regularly to see how you all respond to me and to test changes to the site.

Usually the incoming traffic sources tracked by Feedburner are pretty mundane. People search for my name, or find me through other sites, mostly ones I’ve also linked to.

Today I saw “journalism student change the world” as a search term that led someone to my site.

Yes. Exactly. Awesome.

A little weekend humor: my editing teacher showed us this video, which highlights everything I hate about mass media.

Who is Sick? allows users to enter and track symptoms on a Google Map.

While I can see where this could be useful, those circumstances are unusual and improbable. Like the boyscout who carries twine, a knife and a match in the pocket of his tux.

Otherwise, it just seems like another compulsive Web app.