Opitimizing Your Website with Multimedia

Multimedia has enhanced websites by adding a number of techniques to content, these devices help make websites more interesting and interactive.  Traditional reading in educational books and manuals have applied pictures and graphs for additional imagery to help better understand the text but interactive correspondence was not applicable.  Now most reading is done on mobile devices and websites have come to use visuals to optimize their content and Google rankings.  There are three main cognitive learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. All have been utilized to teach and advertise information in the online environment.

Visuals

 

A common saying in the culinary field is that "the eye eats first."  This means that if we like what we see we'll give it our attention.  With a huge variety of websites to choose from a webmaster must have their website stand-out from the rest to get noticed. Eye-catching visuals helps keep visitors on your webpage and it will make your site more memorable for future visits.  Embedding video's or audio podcast help visitor's grasp the content quickly for an easy user experience.

Audio

Hearing what you need to know works well when using mobile devices.  You can be hands-free and still get the just of what you were looking for without viewing a monitor.  Texting and driving is a nationwide campaign that is gaining momentum so the thought of going to a website and listening to ads and content adds a safety element to the hundred of thousands mobile device users.  This form of multimedia is used more for displaying music but adding your voice to a podcast is relatively easy to produce and distribute.

Kinesthetic

Interactivity is the most used technique for websites.  There are clickable links, pictures and content that prompt the user to take action and communicate through interactive techniques.  Now with touch screens and voice activated technology, interaction between IoT objects and human users is daily.  Multimedia has enhanced communications by using all of the cognitive learning styles.  Each style used properly will create a specific experience and if the experience is enjoyed by the website visitor, they will return. 

Specifying which technique is best would depend on the learning style of the individual website visitor, whatever style of learning works best for them is the form of multimedia they will prefer.  Best practice is to use all 3 techniques within your website.  Most importantly though, create an awesome website.

Best Practices for Serious Blogging -- To Blog or Not To Blog

You can research the12 Steps to Launch a Successful Blog or view The 100 Best, Most Interesting Blogs and Websites of 2014 but the information you find there won't encompass the best practices for writing a blog.  Guidelines, I guess, aren't the first thing you think of when you want to spout-off at the mouth.  OK, not all people create blogs to just spout-off personal opinions but we do have to consider them when analyzing a code of ethics for blogs.  These are the folks who drive the debate although they do not participate in the debate.  Mainly because they are not convicted to hold themselves to any accountability of what they publish.  They insist that blogging is free -- i.e. a free-flow medium and not a journalistic endeavor. (Webb, 2013)

Blogging to many is only thought of as an online diary/journal.  Discussing daily interactions and personal opinions, the new element and main difference from original diary's and journals is that the world is your potential audience.  This new factor of having a mass audience adds on an implicated responsibility of understanding professional writing ethics.  Although not widely accepted or even widely practiced there are blogging code of ethics that have been proposed.  I chose to analyze a blog to see if best practices for writers are being used, observing its form, function and substance.

Whowhatwhy.com was my choice, it is recognized as being one of the best blogs of 2013, it has a number of contributing writers and regularly receives comments from readers.  It has a news platform with a professional appearance, its function is to distribute current event articles and the content is well-written with cited sources.  Best practices are being used which allows this site to be viewed as having integrity and a resourceful and reliable source for news. 

I believe a code of ethics clause should be accepted before allowing a person access to a blog.  No rights are being restricted only codes of conduct being stated.  Therefore no blog can be distributed without a writer taking responsibility for the content on their site.  I do agree with the blogging code of ethics but I believe the traditional SPJ Code of Ethics needs to be merged into the bloggers ethics as well.  There will always be a comment that offends but with best practices in place the offense will be from a disagreement not defamation of character.