New Media

New Media

With new media we mean the new and upcoming technologies or gadgets in the media branch, like the internet, podcasting, DVD productions or Blue-Ray/HD-DVD's.

Internet

The internet is the most well known new media around. It is a large network of computers (networks) connected with each other by UTP-cables and IP addresses.

There are a lot of people connected to this network nowadays (1.114 billion people; source: http://en.wikipedia.org). Businessmen see this as an opportunity to reach a lot of people throughout a cheap way namely websites and soon podcasting.

Podcasting

Podcasting is a new phenomena on the internet. It works as follows: A website contains data (usually audio and/or video) like TV-show-episodes or music, and will be updated once in a while. You (the visitor) can login to such a website and after that you can download the content with an external program like iTunes or even to your iPod and will be updated automatically as soon as there is new content on that specific website.

The difference between podcasting and streaming is that streaming is live, so when you missed something from a streaming website you can't rewind it. You can compare it with television or radio shows on your TV-set or radio-receiver.

DVD productions (online)

A DVD is a Digital Versatile Disc which can contain data up to 4.7 Gigabytes or even more if the DVD has more layers and is from a different type than DVD-5.

With this amount of data it can be used for DVD productions. DVD productions can be video production, like music clips, promo movies or even presentation pitches.

And besides that, because you have a lot of space, you can add some extra content, like concept art, behind the scenes, chapter selection, presentations etc.

The future is to put these kind of big files/production online, so that your client, which lives on the other side of the world, can watch it whenever he wants, without you coming to him.

The workflow for internet web pages

If someone is planning to build a website they have to go through the following steps:

 Research and planning.

 Developing.

 Testing and de-bugging.

 Upload/publishing.

 Evaluating.

Research and planning

At first you have to consider who your target group is. If you know that you can keep that in mind when you are designing a webpage. For instance: if you are going to build a website for older people it wouldn't be smart to create an animated Flash website and if you are building a website for business men, you have to keep it neat and orderly.

After you have confirmed your target group you start to brainstorm about what the design is going to look like and what kind of colours you are going to use, most companies do already have a house style, so it would be smart to use that in your design.

Depending on how big the website is going to be (how many different pages/subdivisions) you are going to plan how many days you are going to need for brainstorming and sketching, designing, programming etc.

Also bear in mind that most of the companies don't have web space and a domain name yet, so you have to consider this as well in your planning, because when you order web space and a domain name, it can take a while before you can actually access and use it.

Developing

Web designers start to create one or more web-layouts, from which the client can choose from or can combine parts of the layouts. When the day has come that your client is satisfied with your designs, the time has come to go and develop the website. First you are going to decide whether you are going to use Flash or Photoshop to make your design and sketches digitally. Normally you will use Flash for the somewhat younger audience (target group), especially when you are going to use animation and for the rest you will use Photoshop or for the more experienced; combine the two.

When you are using Photoshop and you have finished your design, you have to use the slice tool in Photoshop to slice the design in different part. You have to cut out the buttons, where you gallery or movie has to come and where you're header is positioned.

After your design is digitalised and finished you have to make it readable by your web browser. By this I mean; you have to define what your buttons are, what these buttons doing and where they are linked to. This will be done in Dreamweaver or InDesign.

This is mostly done by a web developer, especially when the needs some databases for a login procedure or a web-shop. When you need a database for your website, it's important that your web-space is compatible, you have to ask your web-space provider for this. When you have arranged all this you can and create a database and add some php-scripts to your website, so your website knows how to cooperate with your database.

In Flash you don't need to slice things up nor working with third-party programs like Dreamweaver or InDesign, instead you have to convert all the separate parts into movie clips, buttons or just graphics. Buttons and graphics are self explanatory. But the movie-clips is a whole other story and a great tool inside Flash.

With this option in Flash you can make your own animations (like an intro or some sort), but it is also possible to create movie-clip inside a button; like an animated rollover for instance.

Testing and de-bugging

When you are done with programming in HTML in Dreamweaver you are going to test your website (offline) in several web browsers. Why several you may ask, because not all the web browsers react the same on the HTML-coding you putted behind the design.

Don't forget to update your progress to your client once in a while, because when you will publish their website on the world wide web and they are not satisfied with it, you have a big problem and a often an angry client.

Upload/publishing

When you and your client are satisfied with the website, you are ready to upload it to the world wide web i.e. if the web

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