The Plans and Goals of Michael Fahrenbruch

I'm Michael Fahrenbruch. I am a Junior Biopsychology major at Hastings College, and I want to be a physical therapist.

I also am working toward a Media Production minor. This blog was started as part of my New Media Fundamentals class.

I will soon start applying to graduate schools to get a Doctorate of Physical Therapy. In preparation for that I did an internship this January. I worked with Matthew Lewis MPT at New West Sports Rehabilitation in Kearney, NE.

I have taken numerous biology and media classes. I am skilled in computers, audio and video recording devices, writing, speaking, and the life sciences.

After I get done with graduate school I would like to work out of a physical therapy clinic that is associated with their own surgeons. (much like New West) If that does not work at first than I would look for a job with a hospital.

The Good, the Bad, and the Source Code

Today I'm looking at two different site. First is the Minden Courier web site.

The Courier is a small weekly newspaper based in Minden, NE.

The URL to their site is http://themindencourier.com/

This is an example of a webpage that I do not find appealing.

Their site is not visually pleasing, and their is a lot of wasted space.

All of the different parts to their site are in a small portion on the top left of the red column, and their are numerous links that are in the same column in the same font, but are separate links from the site.

The middle column is where headlines are, and there is only one. With only one headline the page still goes on for more than two full screens. The middle column is blank, and the right column is ads all the way down the page.

The sites major purpose should be to tell news, but the layout would make it seem as though the purpose is to connect links and numerous ads.

This page could use some serious improvements in the form of more distinct tabs for navigating the site, and more emphasis placed on headlines, and stories.

The other site for today is the adobe homepage.

This site is done brilliantly!

Clearly their goal is to increase interest in their products.

So many things on the page are creative and eye-catching. The big banner near the top shows many of their products, and by moving the mouse over them you can see a description of the product. The products and solutions tabs at the bottom of the screen open up as you move over them. Then there are tabs and a search box along the top to help navigate the site.

Of the two it is safe to say that the adobe site is well worth the money that went into it. For the Minden Courier site it may or may not be worth the money. It is a much smaller business, and less money would have gone into it's development, but I am not pleased with the site, and probably would not have spent much on it.

To see the difference you can look at the source codes for the two sites, and realize that many more lines of code went into developing the adobe site.

Adobe: 756 lines of code

Minden Courier: 431 lines of code

Web Design Review

This is the home page from http://espn.go.com from 5:30 CST 09/13/09.

This is primarily a sports news site aimed at sports fans. It reaches it's audience by having up to the minute updates on scores (top of the page) and headlines (by the photo on the left of the page.)

It is very useful for me, because I can find major stories of the day just by going to the homepage, and I also can find coverage on many specific events by using the sports tabs, and the search function.

While ESPN is first a sports news chanel video is a major proponent to the site, but the homepage doesn't load any videos automatically. Instead it has links to the videos of the day. This makes the homepage load faster, but still allows the visitor to go to any video quickly.

One of the few changes I could recommend to the site is a widescreen homepage. Many monitors are widescreen now, and as can be seen from the screen clipping there is a lot of wasted space on the screen on either side because of the size of the homepage.

I would strongly encourage any sports fan to visit the site.

The World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an organization that works to provide web standards. They make recommendations for web architecture, technology and society, and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The W3C was founded by Tim Berners-Lee in 1994 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science in collaboration with European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The first published recommendation came in October of 1996.

To join organizations or individual members must only be able to sign the membership agreement. It is open to commercial educational and governmental entities as well as for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.

The annual membership fee varies based on country of the member, and annual revenue of an organization. Annual membership fee for a for-profit organization in the United States that made more than 50 million USD starting October 1, 2009 is 68,500 USD. All other organization in the United States have an annual membership fee of 7,900 USD.

One of the many technologies listed on the W3C home is for widgets. There are links to specification for how to package widgets, requirement for developing widgets, and how to allow a widget to have a digital signal.