Rulleblader’s Blog

This paper is the semantic analysis of the web page www.sun.com, the official web page. This is a web page made up by different key components tightly fitted together creating a throughout solid web page capable of capturing the readers attention and lust for more knowledge on the key terms displayed on the web page itself. The point of the web page is for Sun Microsystems to market their line of software and hardware solutions. Doing this they employ an array of different technologies including RSS, images, big text and promotions. The web page is built up around the newest and biggest inventions and product lines created and manufactured by Sun Microsystems.

In any media today, the web included, there is always some elements that are true to every piece of visual information bearer. One being that every element, both text and illustrations act as the signified which is the object that is being signified by the signifier(Chandler 2007). That is, the meaning of information can change when ever it is presented with additional information – being signified. This page is full of these elements as we will come to know as we explore the front page of the site and try go in depth deploying semiotic theory.

The first thing one notices upon entering the site is the rather large image and it’s two smaller siblings firmly placed to the right in the content frame, displaying relevant information according to what menu element one has clicked. This content frame holds information on the latest features Sun Microsystems production lines as well as offers, promotions and so on. These different section of the content frame can be accesses easily using the navigation bar positioned above the picutres. At the time of writing this content frame looks like this:

Clearly the main focus here is on the big white item most of us will refer to as a ‘container’, though by reading the text it becomes clear that Sun itself looks upon the item as a sort of ‘box’. A box to most are an item capable of holding some sort of content. The way it is presented here we have a container that clearly has its denotation as something that holds something, into a new meaning using the text as a signifier giving new meaning to the item in a connotation(Chandler 2007). Upon taking the tour one will soon discover how this ‘box’ is actually a regular cargo container fitted to hold an array of servers and a network control unit, all cooled by water and capable of holding the “entire” content of the Internet(www.archive.org). The container now is a sign of the container as a sign vehicle(Chandler 2007). The container now has a whole new meaning, it has move from being a regular cargo holder into something very different – a modular easily deployable computer center. Amazing!

The menu bar is a classic navigation bar placed on top of the site, only topped by minor additional functional elements (Log in, and others). The Sun Microsystems logo is clearly visible as a part of the menu. This is clearly a denotation on something a lot of people have different opinions on, but put together with the elements Sun Microsystems itself puts on the page, most notably in the content frame it gets connotations as the server and software vendor that is creating new and amazing solutions and which holds ownership over some of the biggest standards in the industry, most notable mySQL and Java.

The bar has all the important elements of the site ordered in a logical and standardized way ending in a search bar that signifies the menu which in turn ends up being signified(Chandler 2007).

The page also had a yellow box which can be described as an in house add box for any given Sun Microsystems product. It’s yellow look can be regarded as a signifier, giving meaning to the box as something special(Kress & Van Leeuwen 2001) – which is it seeing as it is one of the few non-blue themed items on the site accompanied only by the download tab.

The page also has a RSS news feed on industry news from Sun Microsystems and a updated area for new trails and offers from their range of products.

At the top and bottom of the page there are a few small white menu items being marked with an arrow showing us whether the menu shown by clicking these links well be dropped up or down. This signals to the user of the page where he or she can expect the menu to appear and such it makes navigating the page more efficient.

The site uses a clean colour scheme consistent in terms of the regular Sun Microsystems colour scheme. An array of blue and white text. Though certain elements stand out, as one use the site it becomes clear that orange is the colour Sun Microsystems has chosen as the colour to point out what’s special – in this case they may be trying to create a warm and fussy sun-like(not the company, the real sun) feeling so that people feel that products from Sun Microsystems are safe. Meaning users of the site might associate it with the sun(Kress & Van Leeuwen 2001).

Most of the product lines manufactured by Sun Microsystems are rather expensive solutions, both software and hardware wise. It may be for that reason blue is chosen even as the background of the page. Colour offers specific sensory appeals in ways of e.g. physiology(Kress & Van Leeuwen 2001) and as such blue is a very appealing and calming colour reminding us of the ocean perhaps calming who ever is about to spend a lot of corporate money enough so that they will actually be able to take the decission and buy.

In conclusion the site does a good job communicating it’s message across to the audience which in this case probably consists mainly of business and ICT professionals. The web site has an overall good “semiotic functionality”, that is every element on the page distributes information in a good fashion to the reader of the site. The site controls the amount of visual and textual information the reader has to process in a tidy and informative matter. There is nothing on the site that does not specifically call to the attention any of the markets that Sun Microsystems are targeting every day and there is no element on the site that has been put there for no apparent reason.

Chandler, Daniel. 2007. Semiotics: The Basics. London New York : Routledge

Kress, Gunter & Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2001. Multimodal discourse – the modes and media of contemporary communication. Great Britain: Hodder Arnold.

Finally! After two nights of constant F5 refreshing like a fucking champ I got the account that thousands of gamers are trying to get their hands on!

The game was lame, but the F5 refreshing was the best ever!

Dear Dag Mr Heradstveit,

Thank you very much for your order.

You just purchased:
Darkfall Client Download for: €42.00

Total: €42.00

Note: Please do not reply to this message,
replies to this message will be rejected.

I am now officially one of the very best F5 clicker out there!

PS! This is how the sales are being processed:

Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English has is in his new book; The Dumbest Generation – How The Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (or, don’t trust anyone under 30), argued that today’s youth of America is on the verge of total illiteracy and stupidity – all thanks to their ever given ability to sit at the computer for hours and weeks studying nothing but their fellow peers. Now, as much as this might or might not be correct in the US, I am fairly sure it is not correct, neither for Norway, nor for the rest of Europe.

Promoting this book or rather trying to push the provocative point a bit further. Bauerlein and his publisher have set up a web site dedicated to this book, Bauerlein and his articles and media coverage the book has received since it were published. It is clear from the very beginning of it, that this web page is intended to provoke the reader of both the web page and the book, and to attract more possible buyers of the book. If the intention were to really make a point of the stated views and opinions of the author it would be reasonable to expect the pages to be open for commenting so that the very teenagers he is challenging might be offered the possibility to prove him either right or wrong.

The first page any user visiting the web site is greeted by is the welcome.html page. The page contains nothing more than a text at the top stating the same message as can be found across all pages of the site and a big picture of the book’s font cover with an added twist in the form of a flashing amount of text at the top of the cover. On every page of the site the first thing appearing at the top is the words “50 Million Minds Diverted, Distracted, Devoured”. In the context of the first page this might bear more of a message than what initially meets the eye. It is possible that the intent of the flashing text is to distract and divert the reader so that his or her mind will be occupied with empty thoughts such as “Why is this text flashing so much I cannot read it?” while instead they should be focusing on the rest of the page. The rather obviously point made here is that this is how the youth of today’s America is being distracted by everything they ever do on-line and so become unable to really get any work done.

Further, instead of the soldiers raising the second flag on Iwo Jima 1945, a pair of robots are rising the flag in the same manner(Wikipedia). This is a possible reference to the article on on-line literacy(The Chronicle Review) where it is stated that while the grown up generation incorporate tools of the information age into class rooms, the students themselves regard a computer and the Internet as a place for fun and play – rather than a platform for serious learning and acquiring of knowledge. It should be remembered that to many, robots are very serious tools both related to production and scientific creativity. It seems fair to assume though, that the author is not trying to question whether or not there are smart people out there, but to point at the fact that there is a growing generation of young Americans that picture technology as nothing but a place to practice their spare time activities.

At the very bottom there is the text in the all too familiar warning symbol of the record industry illustrating something which contain both shocking and disturbing messages. This is incorporated into the illustration by playing on the saying of the 1960′s anti-war movement and their “Don’t trust anyone over 30” as opposed to Bauerlein and his “or, Don’t trust anyone under 30”. This is a message that is likely to be interpreted correctly only by those who are familiar with the history and political movements of the 1960′s. Acting as a sign, this element does indeed follow the principles of Saussure. The idea is that the sign as a whole can be seen as the result of association of the signifier( the idea which we hold in regards to the sign) with the signified( the object we in-fact associate with)(Chandler 2007).

The largest element thought, is the capital letters spelling “DUMBEST GENERATION” which may be taken as a play on what Bauerlein sees as the “greatest generation” – the soldiers who died for their country, but which again makes very little sense as dying for ones country takes very little in terms of knowledge or educational levels. However, the text following below this message“How The Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardize Our Future”, is probably the important part whilst the former is mostly meant to provoke. Here, terms like “digital age”, “young Americans” and “our future” are interesting, as he is obviously trying to point out that this new era is responsible for the issues he argues. In doing so he may very well have forgotten though, that “our future” is also the future of the coming generations and that consequently this is a message that may provoke a lot of people who see as he openly tries to point out, that no matter what the coming generations do, the older generations will still be there ready to take a stand against what ever “young Americans” might do to shape their future.

On every page we also find a menu item, which I found extremely interesting picking pieces trying to find different patterns. It seems to me that the menu may be red as a manifestation of the message Bauerlein is trying to bring across with his book. Firstly, it looks as if he consider his audience as the grown up worried generation and not the youth as his two first menu items, when put together, are forming the phrase “welcome home”. The menu continues passing out terms such as “In the news”, “Reviews”, “Media” and “Articles”. which he suggests are unfamiliar to the youth of today’s America; and all of which seemingly are not subjects that the youth is very likely to get into much or, as he argues in his book; do they even care to get into this at all? This might well just be another way of trying to get his point across, assuming that only a small amount of the young generation will ever read these sections of the page. This assumption may be justified by a research on the reading habits of Americans according to which that the amount of people able to read and that does indeed read, are declining fast(Bauerlein &Jago) and especially fast for the male population(Bauerlein & Stotsky).

Following pages on his introduction to social networking (nitwitting as Bauerlein calls it) the image shown is a messy image with at least three different social networks illustrating how “distracted” one can become and what a mess it really is. He also takes up the aspect of computer games and how they were predicted to create a new and “better” generation. Here is shown a picture of a random selection of different games from different game sites creating a “devoured” generation that in turn ends up getting very diverted as everyone spreads out to whichever different social (or unsocial) arena imaginable.

In conclusion the web page does a good job of raising the general points of the book. Even though it may appear as nothing more than a page mocked up to sell a book it can be both provocative and indeed very informative to anyone willing to open up to both criticism and new ideas on how to “save” a generation that is indeed overpopulated by people living inside Facebook and the likes. These people tend to think of gaining knowledge and experience as something boring and old fashioned, something one can spend time on in later stages of life, but not while being young and about.

Sources:

Bauerlein. M, Jago. C. 2004. Decline of the Literate Culture

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/12/EDG8B8M7EI1.DTL

Bauerlein. M, Stotsky. S. 2005. Why Johhny Won’t Read

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33956-2005Jan24.html

Baurelein, M. 2008. Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i04/04b01001.htm (26th February 2008)

Chandler, Daniel. 2007. Semiotics: The Basics. London New York : Routledge

Wikipedia. 2009. Raising the flag Iwo Jima

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima(27th February 2008)

Vi har valgte å lage denne portal siden for forskjellige guider for universitetet i Bergen, på denne måten fordi at det var disse bygningene som var mest populær i forhold til guiden til UiB 1. I tillegg til dette så er det en ren og oversiktlig design uten forstyrrelser for brukerne.

Ved mer tid ville nok siden sett annerledes ut, vi ville da muligens lagt til noen effekter på siden og slikt. Vi har tidligere laget en del nettsider og har derfor ikke akkurat blitt brukt noen spesifikke sider som inspirasjon for denne siden. Vi har valgt å bruke blått og lys grå som farger fordi at det er to farger som passer godt sammen for en slik portal som dette, i tillegg til en hvit bakgrunn for å gjøre siden “steril”.

Håper denne siden faller i smak =)

Guide-2-UiB

Et markup språk er et språk laget for å konsturere andre språk for et spesifikt formål. XML er f.eks et markup språk laget for å representere data om data (meta data) mens HTML representerer data om innhold.

HTML er egentlig sammensatt av de to selvstendige elementene hypertext og markup language. Hypertext ble introdusert og brukt i 1968 av Ted Nelson. I 1986 ble SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) standardisert. SGML er fremdeles i aktiv bruk av EU, m.f. Det er allsidig nok til bruk i alt fra referater til økonomirapporter. XML (X(HT)ML) har arvet mye fra SGML og det kommer tydelig fram der man sammenligner et SGML og et DTD diagram.

<!DOCTYPE eksempel [

<!ELEMENT eksempel (#PCDATA)>

<!ELEMENT eksempel style (big|small) «big»>

<!ENTITY eks «Eksempel»>

]>

<eksempel style=»small»> &eks; SGML! </eksempel>

I ettertid oppstod det flere markups. HTML ble utviklet av Berners-Lee ved CERN, utviklet i hovedsak for å organisere data fra alle forsøkene i et enkelt globalt hypermedia system. HTML 10.0 ble definert i 1992 for aller første gang. Dette var en ganske grunnleggende og enkel form for markup. Tagger er ment til å representere data og nettleserne står fritt til å tolke disse taggene slik utviklerne selv ønsker. Hovedpoenget er at uansett hvordan det tolkes består informasjonen. Selv uten noe form for design vil <title> (som er en grunnleggende tag) fremdeles inneholde informasjon om hva tittelen på dokumentet er – uavhengig av om siden faktisk tegner taggen som et grafisk element eller utelater den helt. HTML skilte altså klart mellom logisk struktur og utseende på dokumentet noe som gjorde HTML dokumenter til en viktig kilde til samling og presentasjon av data på tvers av plattformer. En annen fordel tidlig HTML hadde (og som HTML forsåvidt fremdels innehar) er den beskjedne størrelsen et fullverdig HTML dokument får satt opp mot tilsvarende dokumenter for presentasjon av tekst og data. Om et MS Word dokument f.eks strekker seg over 40,000 bytes vil ett HTML dokument med tilsvarende mengde informasjon og tekst kunne strekke seg over så lite som 40 bytes. Fordelen er ihvertfall åpenbar tatt i betraktning den sparsommelige datamengden man kunne lagre i 1992.

I 1999 kom HTML 4.01 som inneholdt noen små forbedringer fra HTML 4.0, som inkluderte Cascading Style Sheets(CSS). Året etter lanseres XHTML 1.0, dette er XML versjonen av HTML 4.01 og regnes av mange som framtiden for HTML – det er også verdt å merke seg at XHTML holder en mye høyere standard når det gjelder tagger og hvordan man behandler disse. Det er for eksempel ikke valid XHMLT skulle en tagg ikke være lukket:

Feil XHTML: <br>blabla

Rett XHTML: <br />blabla

Tagger må også åpnes og lukkes i rett rekkefølge:

Feil XHTML: <p><b>blabla</p></b>

Rett XHTML: <p><b>blabla</b></p>

Reason for this is that I am interested in the web. Nothing more nothing less. I find it facinating to such a degree I want to be able to take part in it both in use and creation. Having taken database courses, web programming courses and others I felt this course was the natural way for me to go.

Also having taken two HUIN courses last year I was impressed with how things were done here and I wanted more.

As I was not yet a student taking this course at the time of the hike I will just post a picture of myself doing my favorite sport at a location here in Bergen called “Go’e Gamle”.

I hope this works, if nothing else it used to be one of my favourite places in Bergen, until recent it seems the officials would rather see us spending time elsewhere as they seem to have trashed our home made “park”. I guess we get that for being different.

One of my personal favorites: Mitzu Truespin to Soul meaning I spin 180 and land at a position where my right foot is in front of my left opposite to being behind it on this picture.

I have never (sober) blogged in my entire life. Nor do I read allot of blogs as I feel blogs could be just as easily manipulated as the news and information originating from mainstream media.

I can link some web pages I do visit alot (as I read very few blogposts I have none to show):

• BE-MAG
• Ignition Skateshop
• Ignition Fame
• Our mighty Facebook group: Aggressive Inline
• Facebook [Sporadic visits from time to time]
• Used to visit oink.cd at least ten times a day, but most of us know the story there…

The idea of blogging to me is you get a few good blogs, but at the same time you have to deal with rather alot of rejects who should never have been given the ability to communicate with the world at such a scale as we see today.