Website Interactivity

Interactivity in website design seems to be growing all the time, but mostly from an animation point of view. We don't see much of raw video itself being manipulated to provide interactivity. I have dabbled in interactive animation myself when I created my portfolio interface in Flash about 4 years ago. There's a certain amount of consideration the designer should bear in mind about usability. It's sometimes rather easy to get carried away with the way you're adding the content; you forget that people are impatient and require easy access to the information for which they are looking.

One example of somebody who went a bit overboard with the interactivity in their website is M. Night Shyamalan. Sure it's creative, it sets the mood well, but there's no alternative navigation to allow the non-gaming community easier access. I could most certainly imagine my mother giving up on figuring out the website within 12 seconds after being given the controls. Maybe after she obtained the information she was looking for in the first place she'd be more inclined to appreciate the websites construction and interactivity.

One fantastic example of animation in web design is Jim Carrey's website. The designer went completely overboard with the crazy interactive madness, but there's still a bar at the bottom for a simpler navigation alternative.

But I digress, all of this is still animation. When I think of an interactive movie on a website, I think of the old movies that would prompt you to make a decision to progress the story, thereby affecting the outcome. Well I just so happened to stumble across exactly that on this website. It's called Survive the Outbreak, and you are prompted throughout the movie to decide which actions to take to survive during a zombie apocalypse.

Still, this interactive video is not being used for the actual website's design. The only example I can think of (that I know of) that uses real video footage in web design no longer exists. Allstategarage.com used to use Flash to combine a number of different videos into one interactive experience, and there would be some guys building a bike in the garage while you navigate. Luckily, after a little digging, I seem to have found some video footage and screenshots on this website that show what the old allstategarage.com used to look like.

I found an interesting example of something I had never thought of before in interactive online video. James Cameron's Avatar Pandorama takes the video footage from your webcam and attempts to key out your background to put you into the world of Pandora. As you move your hand toward the plant life, the plants move as though you're touching them. I've seen this sort of technology with the Xbox Kinect, but I've never seen it online used with a webcam before.

We have definitely made some interesting and revolutionary progress in online interactivity since I first used the internet in the mid 90's.

Adam Phillips and John Berry

As an animation enthusiast, I have played with Flash for many years. In doing so, I have also stumbled upon many others how have also played with Flash for many years. Funny how that works out...


I discovered John Berry and his Evil Josh and Billy series during my time on Deviant Art, and ever since I have stalked him and his animation and comedy goodness. If you haven't yet heard of this man, you should watch every episode of Evil Josh & Billy. John Berry is also working with this other guy on an animated short called Weird Eddy: Luck of the Oafish, which I hope they finish someday and it ends up on Cartoon Network.


Here's the storyboard video for Weird Eddy, and you should also check out John's Demo Reel and DeviantArt page.


On a less comedic and cartoony note, there's Adam Phillips. His animation work is breathtakingly amazing, and if you have never seen the Brackenwood series, then you have no idea what you're missing. I admittedly haven't checked up on Adam's website in some time, but he teaches a BiteyCastle 2D FX Animation course, and he has been working to get a Brackenwood video game in development. His animation and art skills with Flash are stunning, and the creative stories that he writes behind all the animations are equally stunning.


Adam's website/blog is http://biteycastle.com, and a good first episode of the Brackenwood animation for you to see is Littlefoot.

Browsers and Internet Life

Greetings viewers and classmates, both of whom are one and the same.


     To better illustrate my daily interests, it has come to my attention that I should speak of the websites I visit regularly. But before I explain the websites I visit, (because I'm a tech geek) I should probably start with the browser I use to visit said websites, and explain why it is my browser of choice. I used Internet Explorer back in the days of my earlier youth (around 10 or 11 years of age), but I then discovered Mozilla Firefox. I enjoyed the many features and add-ons that Firefox offered, but as of last year I have come to realize that Google Chrome has extensions that act in a similar manner. Firefox has been growing too large and complex, which causes it to bog down and become slow. Google Chrome however remains fast and simplified, and manages to pull off the extensions without the constant need for updates and extra loading times when opening the program. As a result of these realizations, Chrome has become my browser of choice due to its superior speed and similar features to Firefox.


     As much as I would like to say otherwise, Facebook is my top most visited website, partly due to my instinctive reaction to open it as soon as my browser starts. I try not to live in an online world like Facebook  even though our real world seems to be swapping over to the digital age. I use Facebook to check on how my friends are doing, and to update them on my life - I rarely ever use Facebook for anything more. Living in the world of Facebook causes one to become engrossed in the online lives of other people, and promotes self-centeredness, gossip, a false sense of approval from others, and a lacking of self-discovery. Many of the friends people have on their Facebook friends list are never contacted in the real world, nor have they even met in person. Facebook should not be used as a substitute for your social life, it should merely be a tool to improve it.


     Next in line from Facebook is Google+, which I open at the same time as Facebook in hopes that it might take over the social networking world. Facebook has made many blunders in the past that could have easily been avoided had they respected their users, whereas Google has a good track record as far as I'm concerned. I would rather not go into specifics as to what Facebook has done in the past (I'm lazy), but for the sake of irony, you can click this link if you're curious, http://www.google.com. I treat Google+ the same way I treat Facebook, and therefore have the same opinions. My visits to Google+ are more in hopes that people will swap over to it than anything else.


     In third place after Google+ is Yahoo! Mail. I check my email on a daily basis. Not much is really to be said about that to be honest. We all check our email, don't we?


     One website which I haven't been visiting as often as I used to lately (but I think is worth mentioning) is The Daily Show website. Jon Stewart's show may be a satirical comedy, but he does use valid statistics, and actual news footage. I use The Daily Show as a method of keeping up on recent events, as the comedic approach helps to keep things interesting and watchable. Where the regular news networks only report dramatic things that will keep their viewers' attention through embellishment, The Daily Show makes fun of the news for not reporting stories of actual validity, then tells a more broad variety of stories with a relevant interview afterward. I think modern reporting could learn from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as he does a better job than they do despite his show not actually being an actual news program.


     And now finally we come to Netflix, number 5 of my listing of websites that I visit. Netflix streaming is my method of TV watching, as I do not have satellite service. Using Netflix streaming, I can watch every episode of Star Trek TNG, the first two seasons of Warehouse 13, That '70s Show, Psych, etc. I probably watch around 1 TV show per day from this website. Between Netflix and Hulu+, you probably have all the TV you need right there, which kind of makes paying for satellite service obsolete. Netflix is quite enjoyable - particularly when you're not the one paying for it. ;)

Teleportation

So I have an hour or so before my next class, and I am unable to play the video game of my choice. Therefore, I believe a quantum mechanics ramble on my new blog is in order.

I discovered awhile ago that the technology for teleportation is further along than I once believed. Though it is not quite how I imagined it would work, and I would most certainly not use it with a human body.

I always thought of teleportation to be similar to the transporters in Star Trek, which operated by transforming beings into energy particles, moving the particles to the destination, then re-forming the particles into beings again. The kind of technology we've discovered in reality is more similar to cloning. But perhaps I should start at the beginning...

Traditionally, the crux of teleportation has been its seeming contradiction to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that you can never measure and thus know all the information contained within an atom. The more information you try to gather from the atom, the more of the atom you disturb. By the time you're finished measuring and observing the atom, it no longer looks like the same atom you started with. Without knowing the makeup of the the original object, how could you transfer it to another location across space?

So, the answer to this question, in an extremely simplified explanation, is a little weird. The following will describe how a particle can influence the state of another particle without either particle having any interaction with each other. Meaning that particles that are separated by space know things about each other that they shouldn't.

Particle A is scanned, and the information gathered from particle A transfers over to a new particle B, which has had no prior or current contact with particle A. The result is that particle B, with all the information gathered from A, becomes an exact replica of particle A.

Now, this may sound like replication. But bear in mind that particle A was destroyed due to the information gathering. So, technically, this would either count as cloning, or teleportation. But seeing as how cloning would imply two particles being intact at the same time as exact replicas, I'm leaning toward teleportation.

So, in order to transfer the information from particle A to B, this procedure requires the intercession of a third particle, C, which acts as an information carrier. But the weird thing is that particle C visits particle B -before- particle A, and therefore transfers the information of particle A's construction backward to particle B. Which, I suppose, would support the theory that time does not only travel in one direction. Google it. Kinda creepy when you think about it...

This technique has been used to teleport photons, coherent light fields, nuclear spins, and trapped ions, according to IBM researchers. So, without many of us knowing, teleportation has been, and probably currently is used in labs already.

I apologize for the headache.

Introduction

[10-22-17 EDIT: Because this isn't entirely clear, this blog was originally created as part of a college class project. I simply decided to continue it and turn it into something of my own.]

Hi, I'm Josie, self-proclaimed hypothetical genius, certified mentally challenged, and potentially the nicest and most unusual girl you've ever met. I am writing to explainify my being to you, my viewers and classmates. It all started one day when my father got an idea for a fun night with my mother... Actually, I'd rather not go into that. Let me jump ahead a couple decades...

I'm currently attending LWIT for what will hopefully become my second to last quarter before earning my degree in Video and Web Production. I just finished an internship at Microsoft as an assistant video editor, and I am now working in the print and design department at OfficeMax.

On my spare time, I am a talented (I'm being extremely modest) video game "enthusiast". I have also been designing my own RPG for about four years at my own pace, and every computer I've ever owned has been home-built. I love technology, and at this point I might as well be a computer myself. When I'm not nerd-lusting over something technological, you'll find me cracking jokes with my friends, who are awesome. Seriously, couldn't ask for better friends.

I have a thirst for random knowledge, and when I find myself at a block in what I am trying to accomplish, I relentlessly bash at that block until I finish my work. For instance, I am designing an RPG with an engine that works with Ruby Game Scripting. I do not know Ruby Game Scripting. How am I designing without knowing how it's built, you ask? I JUST DO!

I also have an interest in psychology, but in a non-professional sense. I study human behaviour all the time, sometimes without actually realizing it. I find myself being the diplomatic one in every argument, and I am able to read people with sometimes creepy accuracy, thereby allowing me to anticipate their reactions or needs.

So about this time I bet you're thinking, she's probably single. Unless you're not single, in which case you're probably not thinking anything of the sort. You're probably thinking something more akin to "GEEK!" "OMGWTFBBQ!" or "I wonder what's on TV tonight?" But I digress. Yes, I am single, so feel free and start a line for this little bundle of fun ;)

I used to do a lot of this blogging sort of thing on DeviantArt, before I developed my current online aliases (Blueorb, Omnipotence, and Daaku). [Link removed] has much of my old work from when I was 18 years and younger, if you're interested.

[10-22-17 EDIT: The DeviantArt link was removed for multiple reasons. One being embarrassment, and another being that it's kind of a part of my life I don't want people revisiting. Also, I'm no longer single. Someone snatched me up. Sorry-not-sorry.]