Engagement Mania!

With the announcement of the 'Royal Engagement' media has been on an overload of all things royal. Most of the media attention is ignoring the Prince and focusing on the Princess-to-be. If you type in 'Prince William and Kate Middleton engagement' into google there is approximately 258,000,000 results. Considering their engagement was announced just over a week ago (November 16, 2010) that is unbelievable! The media attention is so great that Kate Middleton is being given her own security detail before the marriage, due to fears over her safety.

The truth is all forms of media, even formal newspapers, love this story not for its political importance but rather for gossip. News is focusing on the ring, comparisons to Diana, the potential dress, potential wedding dates and locations, the way the Prince proposed and not on the long-term impacts the engagement has to the political realm.

Media has sold out to the tabloid generation.

Website Design: An Example of Excellence

When designing a website there are four key factors to keep in mind:

1. Proximity
2. Alignment

3. Repitition

4. Contrast

The National Gallery of Art's website is designed to an excellent standard, fulfilling the four criteria of website design.

1. Proximity

The homepage has grouped related elements together (i.e. site navigations, header elements, footer elements, images) and all elements are close to one another.

2. Alignment

The text boxes, header, footer and image are aligned along hard vertical edges. Every item has a visual connection with something else, creating unity.

3. Repitition

External links are coloured identically, other text is in the main colour scheme, font is repeated throughout the homepage and connecting pages.

Other pages throughout the site replicate homepage elements: sidebar, font, colour, etc.

4. Contrast

The use of neutral format colouring allows images to be of focus on the page, important as the website is for the National Gallery of Art.

For more tips on good website design click here!

More Media Facts

Released in 2009, this video gives an update on how technology is changing the world. The facts would be more shocking today!

Irish Pub Owner Harnesses Power of Web 2.0

Neil Molloy, owner of the Hop Inn in Athenry, Co. Galway, has created a series of satirical videos to generate publicity for his pub. Molloy spoke at Content is King, a conference in Dublin, on Tuesday and confessed to his own technological inabilities. Joking to the crowd he talked about how until the day before he thought Powerpoint is where you plugged in a kettle. Molloy is a perfect example of how a low-cost viral campaign can help businesses, no matter the size, create value, especially in a recessionary climate. He blew the crowd of technology junkies away! He was definitely my favourite speaker, he perfectly combined a sense of humour with real business results.

Our class with Neil at Content is King!

View some of his videos below

To see more videos visit http://www.youtube.com/user/neileeen34.
Click here to go to the Hop Inn's website!