Wednesday, February 17, 2010

web site

The initial version of my homepage for JASS 405 is now live at:  http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~mphicks/

I'm planning on changing things up quite a bit in the coming weeks as I've had some new ideas, so this is far from what I am expecting my final version to look like.  Consider this a temporary placeholder.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Assignment #1--How do you use the Internet and what about it interests you?

I find the web to be of interest due to the incredible depth of information that can be found online, from newspapers across the globe or specialized blogs, like Cinematical, which is devoted to covering movie news. As a huge movie buff, it's a site I follow daily, along with blu-ray.com. As a Journalism and Screen Studies major, I'm always scouring news sites to keep up to date, and rely on the Internet portals for the Detroit Free Press and New York Times.

The vast majority of my Internet use is news-related, although I do keep a Facebook page, which I use regularly to stay in touch with friends.  I do not have an iPhone, but my iPod Touch has wi-fi capability and I have installed apps from the New York Times, Amazon.com, and Facebook.

Amazon.com has pretty much eliminated my need to shop at stores since it went online back in the 90s, and has turned into my retailer of choice for books and movies, such that I won't really go into a brick-and-mortar Best Buy or Barnes & Nobles unless I have gift cards for them, or am only browsing. If I see something in-store, I will typically just order it online instead because it's quite a bit cheaper.

As a freelance photojournalist, I keep an expansive online portfolio at flickr. Ideally, I'll be able to put together a blog and web page to organize both my photography and written articles and columns a bit more comprehensively, and use them as tools that can help me market myself to potential employers. I would like to create a page that will be easy to navigate and provide a showcase for the best examples of my work, while keeping flickr updated more for archival purposes. The web page, then, would be more focused, with the flickr site providing an option for people to see the broader span of my photographic work.