Angel from the Dark: Activity 1

Question 4.c:

Grand Theft Auto Busy Town Picture Tags:

richard scarry, lowly worm, grand theft auto busy town, grand theft auto parody, animation busy town, rockstar games parody, the busy world of richard

Question 6:

AltaVista, Google, Yahoo: What “work” does each logo perform? Which logo do you like the most? Why? Which do you like the least? Why?

The logos from the three search engines are quite unique in their own way. The Alta Vista logo is quite professional as if it was simply representing a business. It seems as if this logo is meant to show that its reliability and modesty. The icon above the letters doesn’t seem to take on a definite shape and that is definitely tech savvy in a way.

The Yahoo logo is bright red and stimulating. The font appears with serifs and is all capital letters. The logo seems to shout YAHOO at the person using their search engine. It seems vivacious and loud. At first impression it might appear quite comical because of the word yahoo in bubbly letters. Young people may be attracted to this logo because of the design and color.

The Google logo is in a unique font and appears in sans serif. This font appears in four different colors with no repeating pattern. This makes the logo energetic and eye-catching. Both of the G’s are blue and the O’s are different colors. There is no way to affirm how or why the colors were made that way. This logo is the most attractive to the eye and might seem quite cool to people of a younger age. This logo changes to represent certain holidays which is quite flexible.

I like the Alta Vista logo the most. What sets this logo apart is the icon on top of the words. This whole look gives the site a commercial or corporate feel. This gives the search engine visitor something else to notice. The subtle red and blue color is a great color scheme. This logo seems inviting and reliable. Each logo is meant to give the search engine its identity. The better the logo, the more likely a person will visit their site. This Alta Vista logo demonstrates its swiftness and flexibility.

Question 13:

The three pieces of advice I would provide for people conducting research on the web and assessing the validity and credibility of websites in general are as follows:

1) Assess authority by checking the domain name. A government site contains “.gov” and “.mi.” Nonprofit organizations are “.org” such as Wikipedia, a user-generated encyclopedia that is completely unreliable.

Commercial sites have the ending “.com” and “.net” If you are wary of a .com or .org site, type related tags in a search engine and come across other websites. Usually if information is accurate, there will be a repetition amongst other sites.

2) Identify the purpose of the information. Credible sites usually identify who they are and what their purpose is.

3) Does the site contain sources? If the site is credible, chances are they will list their sources or the research done to achieve their information. There will be working links and contact information.

The three pieces of advice I would provide for people trying to assess the validity and credibility of the visual content of web sites are as follows:

1) Credible sites have copyright. They will state if their pictures may or may not be used again. For example, X17 Online captures and posts their own celebrity pictures. They write their logo over every picture. Blogs usually don’t have copyright.

2) Valid sites state their sources. They sometimes state where they image was taken or where it was created.

3) Usually the domain name of a website can be used to tell if the image is valid. Government sites and websites

that site their sources are credible.

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Mini-Glossary

Rhetoric- can refer to persuasive crafted words that can be exaggerated or inflated. This type of talk is similar to what can be heard in political speeches, where one uses words to convince listeners to feel a certain way.

Visual Culture- refers to everything seen by the human eye such as paintings, sculptures, television, furniture and dance. Everything in the 21^st century, including the workplace, is filled with visual culture.