http://www.met.police.uk/

Looking at the layout this web site is really useful if you need information of a particular subject that regard the Police department in your local area. When I was mugged a few months ago I needed some information of recovery and future help from the police. The centralisation of the text as well as the most relevant topics displayed on the front page it makes it very easily accessible. The fact that the site is not clotted and have been kept simple is reasuring for someone in distress. It is easy and very good for the general public who have questions about less serious things in their dayly lives.
An example of a bad web site is the hackney gazette website. http://www.hackneygazete.co.uk/ is ugly and unappealing. As a customer I want to be inspired to view the site again and again to see what is going on in my local community, but the layout just does not do it for me. To me the site is a confusing mix of news and adverts set up in a way that you can not be sure of what is what. To me I would like to have a simpler and straight forward style to the web site. Maybe with a clear divition of important news and adverts. I would like to enlarge the design to fill out th whole screen to make more room for relevant local news decorated witht the neccessarry ads away from articles.

In this weeks class the group was introduced to online identity. I think we all were a bit apprehensive as to what extend this meant that nothing we have ever done so far online is, or have been private. It is frightening to learn that people who use the internet daily is not aware of the lack of privacy they have when using the internet. Logging onto a web page of own interest is recorded to others benefit to send adverts to your email account as spam and even if we are not extremely careful identity fraud. Personally I have had a Myspace account as well as a Facebook account, but after I began this course I have deleted my Myspace account as I got frightened that other people would use my writings and personal information. However, as explained in the course even that does not equal that external users/hackers misuse the information I put on the site in the first place. So what is private?? Have we lost our privacy by the evolvement of the technological revolution? Can we trust anyone we meet online? Well the truth is that we can’t and as we are still learning about the internet and how to protect ourselves working online is a rocky road with lots of things to be aware of. This World Wide Web which I thought was so familiar is now a completely new world for me. A world I am keen to explore and get to know. Bring it on!!

Reflecting on my previous blog posting I realised that my ambitions will have to be put down in a box locked with a huge padlock and hidden away till I have finished my degree in June. I like online journalsm and really want to be a part of that world...sometime. I understand that I now have to consentrate on mondays lecture whilst writing these lines. My future is the next eight weeks. So...reflection...is a thought that continues working in your mind reminding you about what you have learned throughout your day/week or year. Reflection can be a dream that wakes you up at night, a worry that have been enlarged and lures in your mind till you sort your them out. Reflection is you and what you have learned througout life, the stones that build you. The story you tell your grandchildren and the thoughts that follows. Reflection is your history and what you tell back to yourself and your surroundings. Relfection is how you see the world, from an outsiders point of view. History re-told. Reflection is why I am writing this and where my thoughts are coming from. Reflection is reflecting on life it self and sharing this with others.

I have always been a keen writer. However as I do not enjoy writing essays I have longed for something more creative. Finally after nearly three years at University I get the chance to do an intensive course on on-line journalism and blogging. Learning about contemporary new media has become an interest for me, developed over the last few years. As new media and online journalism has become a more obvious way of getting news across the wide borders of the world we have been bombarded with instant news, of what ( unfortunately) is most often published, horrors of the world around us. This I want to be a part of and I am therefore very glad to be a part of this course. I am hoping to get the tools to understand about the many ways we can use new media and in this case blogging. I am looking forward to proceed on this journey learning about how to influence the media today.