Site Reviews - Week 9

http://www.flashvista.com/
With news, tutorials and an almost overabundance of Flash websites, FlashVista provides a plethora of resources for the adventurous Flash developer. The design of that website itself is a little overwhelming- lots of text on a white background without a lot of direction for the eyes. It looks more like an advertising page that most web surfers avoid than a resource site, especially for design.

http://www.lukamaras.com/tutorials/cool-design/hitech-floating-menu.html
No surprises site about Flash tutorials. Great detail and lots of information. Unimaginative but extremely functional and easy to navigate design.

http://www.sitepal.com/
This was an UNBELIEVABLE concept! This site helps you construct an avatar and connects voice messages with it for web sites, blogs, email and more. They will take your own picture and construct an avatar that looks like you, and you can even record your own voice for the message. I went to http://www.americantesol.com/ to check out some in action, and it was really cool to see how they used the avatars on their site and as part of their educational program.

http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/
Premier vehicle for creating interactive content. Flash incoporates imports from Photoshop and Illustrator to power up the graphics side of the program. Expensive, but worth the money for anyone serious about design with a long-term goal in mind.

http://www.swishzone.com/index.php
Site for interactive content creation software. News, some tutorials, and ideas are all sections of the site as well. One of the most interesting features of this site was the 8 languages provided for browsers, selected by country flag in the top right of the screen.

http://www.hotscripts.com/
Huge resource site with lots of scripts, links, helps and ideas. Really busy visual site, a little bit offputting to my eye. I would only use this site if I found it with a web search for something specific.

http://www.soundstageav.com/mastersonaudio/20050201.htm
Great explanation of the MP3 format. Decent site design- I liked that the background was cream and not bright white.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
AWESOME sound editor. I just recently used Audacity in a tech teacher workshop I attended. The possibilities for recording and editing audio are endless with this software, especially in conjunction with royalty free music or a free digital music composer.

http://www.pandora.com/
What a FANTASTIC site! You type in your favorite artist, song or genre, and it personalizes your radio station. Just for fun, I typed in "Love Shack" by the B52s, and it played "Lovefool" by The Cardigans, "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" by Spin Doctors, "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits, and "Simply Irresistible" by Robert Palmer.

http://www.trellian.com/webpage/
Trellian is an absolutely free web page editor, with some of the same features as FrontPage and DreamWeaver. It also supports some Photoshop plug-ins for image editing. The website provides tips, a user manual, free downloads, and a useful FAQ page.

http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
SeaMonkey is an all-in-one internet app suite. Including and email and newsgroup client, IRC chat, and HTML made simpler. It uses a lot of the same source code as other Mozilla programs. The site itself is nice, soothing colors, and easy to use. Mozilla is my favorite web company!