Cool Images

Meagan and I are at the stage in creating our website where we are adding in an image gallery, so I thought I'd look to google to find some interesting sites with cool galleries. I came across this site http://weburbanist.com/galleries/, it has some really cool galleries and all images are laid out simply like our site. It even has a galery for banksy. The one that most caught my eye was a gallery for 3D graffiti. The images were interesting and drew me into the site, this made me think that the images we select for our site have to be some of Banksy's best work, we don't want the viewer to be bored looking at the images, we want to make the viewer interested. I was thinking the possition of our images are kind of boring just side by side but after looking at this site I realised that it's the pictures themselves and not the possition of them thats appealing. I am much happier now with our gallery after looking at this one.

Another website I looked at was the clothing site www.asos.com, this site uses zoomify on its images to let the customer view the piece of clothing closer. You point the mouse on to the image and that section of the image is zoomed in on. I think this could be interesting for our gallery because Banksys artwork is really cool when looked at upclose and in detail so me and Meagan might try to add that effect to our image gallery.

More Graffiti

Because our website is all about the graffiti artist Banksy I decided to stick to looking at sites to do with graffiti. I came across this one http://www.fulltimeartists.com/graff/rase/rase11.htm. Although it's not as simple as we want our website to be it's still a really cool website. The background for each page is the same and it's not that simple, it's really colourful and appealing to the eye, the vivid colouring is much more appealing to the eye at first and it made me want to change the background to our website a bit, maybe add another colour to go with the black and blue of our website. The buttons on the page are all the same size and colour with an outer glow effect which makes them stand out from the page, they are just a simple rectangular shape. At first I thought our buttons looked too plain but after looking at this website I realised that simple is best as to make the site easy to navigate around. After looking at this site I have decided to try to jazz up our background with a little more colour to make it more visually appealing and to leave the buttons just as they are!

Official Banksy website

For our CA myself and Meagan decided to create a websie about the graffiti artist Banksy. So I decided to check out his official website. When you go onto the site it's just a white screen with quotes on it, I thought this was interesting because there is nothing to catch your eye visually and take away from the writing so I read the quotes straight off. Then the home page of the website is Banksy writen in a graffiti spray affect again on a white background. After looking at the site we decided to keep our own site simple, nothing too in your face. Even the menu bar is simple, each button leading to a page with a simple background, one is like a wall and the others are simply white. After viewing this website and its pages we decided that simple is better, so for our own website we are going to stick with the colours blue and black and the same for the linking pages.

Christmas Pudding And Exploitation..

My sister is a BIG Christmas fan and had been telling me for weeks that her decorations would be goin up on the 30th of November and I had to help her, I knew she would be making her Christmas pudding the same day so I wasn't going to complain.After a long day of pretending to help we were finally finished and were sitting in front of the fire eating pudding and watching a Christmas movie when the phone rang.

Catherine got off the phone with her jaw tipping the floor, one of our cousins had rang to see if we were watching Prime Time because one of our other cousins was on it for exploiting one of her workers! She was named and shamed, they even have her on tape. Gossip in our family is always something to talk about and relish in because it has happened to someone else not us. I had to say though, after ringing another relation (I have a big family... 44 first cousins) I have to say I felt a bit guilty for gossiping about her misfortunes, after all she is family, It got me wondering if something like this happened to me would my family, who should be your support net, gossip about me and take it lightly?

Then I got thinking... she wasn't paying one of her workers, what goes around comes around. It was only right she was found out. It's hard for me to understand why she would do that, I would feel guilty for telling someone a white lie. How could she not pay someone for their hard work? There are two sides to every story and hers better be a good one if she is to come out innocent.

If your curious click here to see the Prime Time episode.

What I Learned About Digital Marketing..

Our most recent topic in Online P.R has been Digital Marketing. By using digital marketing, a company is increasing the number of people they reach, and now days the internet takes up 12% of UK consumers time so it's definately worth the companies while. The big thing for digital marketing is appearing number one on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. I found learning about search engine marketing strategies very interesting. Companies are competing with each other every day to appear better than the other and the internet is an extremely useful way of getting your companies name heard.

You can appear first on search engine lists by simply paying for your link to appear first, but even then it's not guaranteed people will click on the link, sponsered links have a 20% chance of being clicked. You can also appear number one by optimising your site. This method is a lot cheaper than paying for your link.

Search engine optimization is all about getting links to your site and identifying the key words and phrases in your site, you have to ask yourself what would people type into the search engine. You then include the key phrase into the title of the page and as many times as possible into the regular text. This increases your chances of appearing first on search engines. It's also impoartant to get as many links to your site as possible, and not just links to your home page but links to other pages on your website.

With more and more people shopping online and doing their business online I feel it's important for companies to take advantage of that by making their site as reachable as possible.

Here's An Example Of A News Release..

News Release
For Immediate Release

Julie Lyons,
Lyons P.R,
Dundalk,
Co. Louth.
085 1234567

Date: 19th November 2008

Ray Dartly Launches Positive Age Week

Irish Radio DJ Ray Dartly helped launch Positive Age Week, for Age Action Ireland, at a tea party in the Merrion Hotel yesterday(18.11.08)

The DJ was joined by pensioners Maeve Reilly, John Murphy and Mary O' Keffe for a cup of tea to toast the new initiative.

The aim of Positive Age Week , launched by Age Action Ireland, is to dispel the negative perceptions that surround ageing and to transform attitudes. It's also and opportunity to raise much needed funds for the charity.

During Positive Age Week people are encouraged to organise parties to celebrate the elderly. A fund raiser at each party will accept donations.

Lorraine Dorgan, deputy chief executive of the organisation said, "We need to celebrate that we are living longer, that ageing is not a burden but an opportunity."

Age Action Ireland is the national organisation for ageing and older people. They aim to improve the quality of life of older people by enabling them to live independently.

Positive Age Week will run from the 8th-15th December.

To register as a fundraiser phone 012345678 or visit http://www.ageaction.ie/

Contact: Julie Lyons,
085 1234567.

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My Attempt At Going Veggie!

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love my food, meat especially! You name it I love it, sausage rolls, sausage sandwiches, turkey, beef, cheese burgers, chicken, rashers, The list goes on. Basically I would eat meat in any shape or form, That was until last week. I was at home bored and just browsing the web when I came across a video of animals in slaughter houses being tortured just before they were slaughtered. These people were just hurting these defenceless animals for no good reason other than their own amusement. They were doing stuff like jumping up and down on small pigs, throwing them against concrete walls and even putting them into boiling water. This video really effected me. It got me thinking what kind of people could do that to a living thing without feeling guilt?

After that I couldn't look at meat, I decided just to give it up. Now this was a BIG thing for me. I thought no way can I do this no matter how sick the video made me feel, But every time I had to eat I just couldn't look at the meat never mind eat it. It's now been a full week and I haven't eaten anything resembling meat. It has been a week filed with cheese pizzas and french toast(with maple syrup... nicest thing ever!) I know what you're thinking, One week... big deal, But for me it is!! There is nothing that makes me as angry as animal cruelty. Sure I don't know that every piece of meat that is put in front of me was from an animal that was unnecessarily hurt before been killed for its meat but I don't know that it wasn't a victim of cruelty either, If that makes sense.

Here is a link to the video I watched (If you want to continue eating meat I really suggest you don't watch it!) Slaughter House.