Still As Life

I was doing some research on podcasts yesterday for a website I am working on at the moment.

The site is using Drupal, so there is a podcast module already available, I was just doing some research on how other people are laying out their podcasts, doing their designs and so on. While doing this, I found some interesting tag clouds.

If you have a look at:

• http://www.podcast.net/
• http://www.podcastalley.com/
• http://www.thepodlounge.com.au/categories

Have a look at the tag clouds and the top categories.

On Podcast.net, the 4th biggest category is “Religion and Philosophy.”

On Podcast Alley the 4th biggest category is “Religion and Spirituality.”

On The Pod Lounge, the tied second biggest tag is “Religion and Spirituality.”

At the time of writing this, 3 of the top 10 podcasts on Podcast Alley were religious podcasts, this has since changed though.

I just found it interesting that in a world where religion seems to be quite unpopular, particularly in my generation, not just Christianity, but religion in general, that some of the most popular podcasts and one of the largest genre’s is in fact religious.

I suppose in a way, religion is ideally suited to podcasting, since sermons can easily be recorded, and in many places have been getting recorded for a long time. So it’s just one extra step to upload them as a podcast.

What do you think?

Popularity: 15% [?]

As many would know, I work at a store doing the website and network maintenance and make sure all of the emails get answered and so on.

There was an email come through today that reinforces to me the importance of treating a web store like you would a real store:

In a store, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to find what they are looking for.

Online this is amplified because it takes so little effort to leave and shop elsewhere instead.

If prices aren’t shown up front and easily, it takes much more effort to send an email or ring up to enquire about prices, it would be easier to just go to another online store that has prices available online.

A user isn’t going to quickly come back to a site that they know won’t fulfill their needs, so there are potentially millions of users who would never return to the store website.

We don’t display prices on our website for products unless they are in the sales page. Why? Well, the reason that my boss tells everyone is because prices change regularly and there are a lot of products to keep up to date. Really though, the majority of the products on the website could easily enough have pricing put with them because the main price changes occur when the model changes which means the entire product needs updating anyway. Aside from clothing, the majority of prices are fairly stable, and plenty of other stores manage to do it. I really see no reason why we can’t.

If you are considering re-designing your website or would like some advice on how to make your current website work better for you. Please feel free to contact me at Terramedia for a specialised web design quote or help with your website.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I have been working on a few new things for TerraMedia, including a new website design and a new logo.

The new website is nearing completion, and one of the last things I have to sort out before it goes live is the new logo.

This is what I am currently looking at using for the logo, or at least basing it on. I’m quite liking it, it portrays TerraMedia much better than the previous logo. Terra of course meaning earth, so it makes sense that there be a reference to a planet in the logo. Previously the logo was intended to represent a mountain, though that may not have been plainly obvious.

What are your thoughts on the new logo idea? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Popularity: 41% [?]

If you have been to the Still As Life website of late, you would have noticed that I have started twittering as my Twitter feed is received in the sidebar of my blog. There is also a link to my Twitter site under the “My Other Sites” menu at the top of the page. Since I like to make things easy though, the Twitter logo also links to my Twitter page, and just for purposes of completeness, it is at http://twitter.com/darksbane, awesome!

I’m not quite sure about the formatting of the feed in my sidebar, what do you think about it? Is it a bit confusing to follow?

Popularity: 14% [?]

For one of my subjects for my Bachelor of Creative Industries, KKB210: Computational Arts 1, we are required to setup a blog to use to store our work in a website portfolio. We are allowed to use any system that sends an RSS feed and is able to receive them, similar to the way the RSS widget in WordPress works. WordPress is the recommended system and there is of course space provided on the servers at uni for it. These WordPress based blogs are accessible from off campus, but I figure, since it’s meant to be a portfolio, I may as well set it up somewhere else so that I can continue to use it elsewhere. The other benefit of this is that it doesn’t take up space on my drive at uni which I’m always getting notices about telling me that my drive is full etc.

We are allowed to set it up elsewhere, or even use an old blog if we have one, as long as our KKB210 work can be easily distinguished from everything else. I decided to buy a new domain and host it myself, why not. I’m setting it up on www.matthewbrown.net.au, no reason not to. There isn’t anything of note there yet, just an under development page. WordPress has been installed, but I haven’t finished the template yet, so it is staying invisible for now.

So there you go. This subject so far is proving to be very interesting. I’m liking it a lot.

Popularity: 20% [?]