What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

To complete my product I used a Mac computer, and iWeb software. If I had chosen to use a Windows PC I would be unable to use iWeb, as it is software that is only available to Mac. I would have had to find an alternative such as Dream weaver. This was a big advantage of using a Mac computer, as iWeb was very easy to use WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) software, where as alternatives such as Dream weaver would require knowledge of HTML, which is something, I didn’t know about. I have previously used a Mac, for my magazine project for GCSE Media.

Additionally, I used Photoshop, to edit my images and backgrounds. Photoshop is available to both Mac and Windows computers, so there was no benefit from using the Mac computer. However, I did find that from using the Mac with Photoshop and iWeb is that everything worked very intuitively together. For example I could do a lot of drag and drop between programmes, for example the main image on my homepage, I was able to crop in Photoshop then, drag it directly into iWeb, I was also able to do this with my logo and banner which I made in Photoshop.

I used Final Cut to edit my video that I took using a digital camera. This allowed me to crop out bits that I didn’t need, rather than re-recording the entire video. I hadn’t used Final Cut before but I found it very easy to use, and picked it up very quickly. I also used iCal to create a diary so that I could keep track of deadlines, this was similar to the way that I put dates into the diary on my Blackberry so again I picked it up easily. This helped me greatly as I could see what I needed to do and at what time I needed to do it.

Another piece of technology that was a great help to me was the Internet. I used the Internet to research other websites, so that I could get an understanding of what conventions I needed to follow in order for my site to be successful, For example I looked at four different websites and annotated them. I also used the Internet to download brush packs for Photoshop; I downloaded a brush pack called ‘Paint Splats’ which I used to create my background. Another way in which I used the Internet was to upload pieces of my work onto my blog.

I feel that there were little limitations for me with the technology I used, as it was all fairly easy to use, and I could complete all tasks I wanted to do with it. The only problem I encountered was with the built in layouts on iWeb, as they all looked like they had been laid out and caused my website to lack uniqueness, I had to work hard to prevent my website looking like it followed these templates.