Visual thesaurus
Visual thesaurus
Originally uploaded by nic6.
posted by monkeynic @ 5:57 pm
0 comments
Nicola Owen
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Monday, April 11, 2005
Visual and Spatial Culture Essay
The dot-com bubble
In the late 1990’s many people realised that there was a great amount of money to be made from buying web space, this was the start of the dot-com boom, which lead to many people to become greedy, for that dot-com high flying lifestyle.
The American term. Com (also dotcom and more recently dot-com) referrers to companies, which were set up to use Internet as their prime-trading platform. Technology stocks on NASDAQ rose to high levels during the two years leading up to 2000. During 2000, newspapers and the television were flooded with new dot COM companies, there were thousands of people who were making and losing huge amounts of money. This was due to the fact that many investors saw an opportunity to make vast amounts of money and so jumped on the bandwagon and bought enormous amounts of Internet stocks, this then contributed to the unrealistic share prices of many Internet companies. This optimism became extreme, inflating a stock market bubble. As stocks soared, entrepreneurs and firm managers became more optimistic about the profitability of new business investment and the financial returns.
The majority of the business plans were drawn up with the belief that dot- coms could undercut their bricks and mortar rivals because their overheads were much lower, with less money spent on things like rent for shops/buildings. “It’s a huge misconception that you could create anything big with small over-heads. In fact, given that the whole idea revolves around technology, you often had to spend more,”[1]
But most companies did not realise this fact and took the fact that they had more money to spend as an opportunity to waste it, some companies spent huge amounts of money on insanely expensive parties, or on huge expensive advertising campaigns, which were not needed.
An example of the new dot-com companies over spending is this: “for the 2000 and 2001 Super Bowls. Seventeen dot-com companies paid over $2 million for a 30-second spot during the January 2000 Super Bowl. In January 2001, just three dot-coms bought advertising spots.”[2]
On March the 10 2000 the NASDAQ stock market reached an all time peak, it was nearly double what is was the year before, by 2001 the bubble was deflating fast with many companies disappearing without even making a profit, this was due to the fact that major financial support was being withdrawn from many business’ as confidence was lost in the market. At the time there where many reason as to why people thought the dot-com bubble burst, the main reasons were said to be the increased interest rate in 1999, or over spending to prepare for the y2k.
As the dot com bubble burst, it caused bankruptcy and layoffs for many companies but its not all bad news some companies survived the dot com crash and today are highly sucessfull. Companies such as Amazon, Yahoo, E-Bay and Last Minute.com, survived, the main reason for this seems to be that they basically had a good idea to start with, they also had sensible chief executives and a proper business plan, they spent there money wisely and managed to keep their advertising spends relatively low.
“The original Amazon.com model of distribution without owning inventory was seen as a more efficient way of delivering product, revolutionizing the supply chain. Amazon.com now owns substantial distribution facilities and their business model grows more like that of a traditional retailer each year.”[3]
One of the most published survives of the dot-com crash was LastMinute.com, in the month that the dot-com bubble reached its peak, the founders of LastMinute.com, Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman floated their company. On the first day of trading the company’s shares nearly doubled in price, which made the two co-founders worth over £100m on paper. But then on the second day of trading everything changed and the shares started to fall, the stock had lost 93 per cent since floatation.
“There were a lot of terrible ideas out there, but ours is basically a good one. We do what our name says, and people buy things. I don’t regret the float one bit”[4] Martha Lane Fox has a good point, there were hundreds of casualties of the crash, boo.com, Webvan and e-Toys to name just a few, but LastMinute despite endless rumours of looming insolvency, are great survivors.
The main reason that many companies seemed to fail too survive the dot-com burst seems to be; there lack of business management, few of the companies employed experienced business managers who would have tried to prepare the company for such a crisis and prevented some of the over spending.
Many companies did not invest a lot of money in to the main areas they needed to such as their web site, many of the early dot-com companies failed to have there website checked for errors, often hundreds of errors could be found on one page, which lead to many users simply losing confidence in their site and so choosing not to use it.
“According to statistics, users have very limited patience when it comes to loading a page. If after eight seconds they cannot see the page, they leave,”[5]
So if the companies’ site is not designed to a high standard and contains millions of errors, often the site will not load or will take forever to load, which in turn will cause the user to leave the site. If the user experiences this every time they visit the site chances is they will be put off the site forever, even if they fix the problems.
Many of the companies that failed had poor financial management; companies wasted their money on expensive business property. They then filled these properties with huge amounts of staff, which were not needed, equalling more overspending. If it was not enough that they employed too much staff, many companies employed unsuitable or unqualified staff, which was simply just not suitable for the job. Many articles say that this problem would not of happens if the company had a good human resources management.
In many articles it is said that some companies failed to survive the crash because they spent too little money on adverting, and that a few ads and word of mouth are not enough, but from what I have read elsewhere most companies failed because there spent too much on adverting. Although companies need to advertise, so that they get people to use there site, many people spent huge amounts of there capital and profit to advertise which eventually lead to the companies going bankrupt.
Although the dot-com crisis made may people go out of business there are a few website which seem to making money of the crisis, “playing off the name of the hefty new economy magazine Fast Company,” F***edcompany.com (http://216.156.244.236/) within its first few months drew approx 70,000 people to its dot-com death site; many people who go on the site share a cynical view of the once high-flying companies on the sites message boards. “Players get points when a company they’ve fingered as doomed suffers negative events like layoffs or actually go out of business.”[6] Soon the site started to award prizes to people, prizes that were donated by dot-com companies, which presumably did not want to be part of the list. There are a few other websites such as DotComFailures.com, StartupFailures.com.
Today things are very different in the dot-com world, since the honeymoon period is over, the UK has 35 of the largest dot-com firms, the stock market has began to regain the confidence of the market. No longer are new dot-com companies appearing in the same amounts as in 2000, the simple reason seems to be that investors now realise that dot-com companies need a good business plan to survive, many investor are now checking out what they invest in instead of just investing in any thing.
Since the dot-com crash, many free Internet servers, including; AltaVista, WorldSpy, are no longer providing free Internet access. Also many companies which used to give out lots of free merchandise now don’t have the money to give theses things away, some of the companies who used to give things away if you created an account have stopped doing this simply because they couldn’t afford it.
So has the dot-com crash changed things for the better, more people are now aware of the fact that the dot-com high flying lifestyle can not be achieved by just anyone, you need a good idea first. Many bricks and mortar companies were wary of trying to sell their products online but now “many of these firms are now starting to see how the Internet can actually run their business” more people now also “appreciate the impact and the transformation – potential of the internet”[7]
Many companies lost vast’ amounts of money when the market crashed, but there were the strong ones, with the well thought-out business plans that survived, the crash seemed to have taught many people that they should invest wisely, and not just in a companies that on paper appear to make the most amount of money.
Many of the dot-com companies that are around today will stay in business, because they have learnt from theirs and other peoples mistakes, that they need a good business plan, which makes sense and will make them a profit.
[1] Martha Lane Fox – The Independent on Sunday / 18 November 2001
[2] http://www.bildirgec.org/node/20454 The American term. Com (also dotcom and more recently dot-com) referrers to companies, which were set up to use Internet as their prime-trading platform. Technology stocks on NASDAQ rose to high levels during the two years leading up to 2000. During 2000, newspapers and the television were flooded with new dot COM companies, there were thousands of people who were making and losing huge amounts of money. This was due to the fact that many investors saw an opportunity to make vast amounts of money and so jumped on the bandwagon and bought enormous amounts of Internet stocks, this then contributed to the unrealistic share prices of many Internet companies. This optimism became extreme, inflating a stock market bubble. As stocks soared, entrepreneurs and firm managers became more optimistic about the profitability of new business investment and the financial returns.
The majority of the business plans were drawn up with the belief that dot- coms could undercut their bricks and mortar rivals because their overheads were much lower, with less money spent on things like rent for shops/buildings. “It’s a huge misconception that you could create anything big with small over-heads. In fact, given that the whole idea revolves around technology, you often had to spend more,”[1]
But most companies did not realise this fact and took the fact that they had more money to spend as an opportunity to waste it, some companies spent huge amounts of money on insanely expensive parties, or on huge expensive advertising campaigns, which were not needed.
An example of the new dot-com companies over spending is this: “for the 2000 and 2001 Super Bowls. Seventeen dot-com companies paid over $2 million for a 30-second spot during the January 2000 Super Bowl. In January 2001, just three dot-coms bought advertising spots.”[2]
On March the 10 2000 the NASDAQ stock market reached an all time peak, it was nearly double what is was the year before, by 2001 the bubble was deflating fast with many companies disappearing without even making a profit, this was due to the fact that major financial support was being withdrawn from many business’ as confidence was lost in the market. At the time there where many reason as to why people thought the dot-com bubble burst, the main reasons were said to be the increased interest rate in 1999, or over spending to prepare for the y2k.
As the dot com bubble burst, it caused bankruptcy and layoffs for many companies but its not all bad news some companies survived the dot com crash and today are highly sucessfull. Companies such as Amazon, Yahoo, E-Bay and Last Minute.com, survived, the main reason for this seems to be that they basically had a good idea to start with, they also had sensible chief executives and a proper business plan, they spent there money wisely and managed to keep their advertising spends relatively low.
“The original Amazon.com model of distribution without owning inventory was seen as a more efficient way of delivering product, revolutionizing the supply chain. Amazon.com now owns substantial distribution facilities and their business model grows more like that of a traditional retailer each year.”[3]
One of the most published survives of the dot-com crash was LastMinute.com, in the month that the dot-com bubble reached its peak, the founders of LastMinute.com, Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman floated their company. On the first day of trading the company’s shares nearly doubled in price, which made the two co-founders worth over £100m on paper. But then on the second day of trading everything changed and the shares started to fall, the stock had lost 93 per cent since floatation.
“There were a lot of terrible ideas out there, but ours is basically a good one. We do what our name says, and people buy things. I don’t regret the float one bit”[4] Martha Lane Fox has a good point, there were hundreds of casualties of the crash, boo.com, Webvan and e-Toys to name just a few, but LastMinute despite endless rumours of looming insolvency, are great survivors.
The main reason that many companies seemed to fail too survive the dot-com burst seems to be; there lack of business management, few of the companies employed experienced business managers who would have tried to prepare the company for such a crisis and prevented some of the over spending.
Many companies did not invest a lot of money in to the main areas they needed to such as their web site, many of the early dot-com companies failed to have there website checked for errors, often hundreds of errors could be found on one page, which lead to many users simply losing confidence in their site and so choosing not to use it.
“According to statistics, users have very limited patience when it comes to loading a page. If after eight seconds they cannot see the page, they leave,”[5]
So if the companies’ site is not designed to a high standard and contains millions of errors, often the site will not load or will take forever to load, which in turn will cause the user to leave the site. If the user experiences this every time they visit the site chances is they will be put off the site forever, even if they fix the problems.
Many of the companies that failed had poor financial management; companies wasted their money on expensive business property. They then filled these properties with huge amounts of staff, which were not needed, equalling more overspending. If it was not enough that they employed too much staff, many companies employed unsuitable or unqualified staff, which was simply just not suitable for the job. Many articles say that this problem would not of happens if the company had a good human resources management.
In many articles it is said that some companies failed to survive the crash because they spent too little money on adverting, and that a few ads and word of mouth are not enough, but from what I have read elsewhere most companies failed because there spent too much on adverting. Although companies need to advertise, so that they get people to use there site, many people spent huge amounts of there capital and profit to advertise which eventually lead to the companies going bankrupt.
Although the dot-com crisis made may people go out of business there are a few website which seem to making money of the crisis, “playing off the name of the hefty new economy magazine Fast Company,” F***edcompany.com (http://216.156.244.236/) within its first few months drew approx 70,000 people to its dot-com death site; many people who go on the site share a cynical view of the once high-flying companies on the sites message boards. “Players get points when a company they’ve fingered as doomed suffers negative events like layoffs or actually go out of business.”[6] Soon the site started to award prizes to people, prizes that were donated by dot-com companies, which presumably did not want to be part of the list. There are a few other websites such as DotComFailures.com, StartupFailures.com.
Today things are very different in the dot-com world, since the honeymoon period is over, the UK has 35 of the largest dot-com firms, the stock market has began to regain the confidence of the market. No longer are new dot-com companies appearing in the same amounts as in 2000, the simple reason seems to be that investors now realise that dot-com companies need a good business plan to survive, many investor are now checking out what they invest in instead of just investing in any thing.
Since the dot-com crash, many free Internet servers, including; AltaVista, WorldSpy, are no longer providing free Internet access. Also many companies which used to give out lots of free merchandise now don’t have the money to give theses things away, some of the companies who used to give things away if you created an account have stopped doing this simply because they couldn’t afford it.
So has the dot-com crash changed things for the better, more people are now aware of the fact that the dot-com high flying lifestyle can not be achieved by just anyone, you need a good idea first. Many bricks and mortar companies were wary of trying to sell their products online but now “many of these firms are now starting to see how the Internet can actually run their business” more people now also “appreciate the impact and the transformation – potential of the internet”[7]
Many companies lost vast’ amounts of money when the market crashed, but there were the strong ones, with the well thought-out business plans that survived, the crash seemed to have taught many people that they should invest wisely, and not just in a companies that on paper appear to make the most amount of money.
Many of the dot-com companies that are around today will stay in business, because they have learnt from theirs and other peoples mistakes, that they need a good business plan, which makes sense and will make them a profit.
[1] Martha Lane Fox – The Independent on Sunday / 18 November 2001
[3] http://www.finisar.com/frankscorner/20030510.php
[4] Quote by Martha Lane Fox, Newspaper - The independent on Sunday / 18 November 2001
[5] http://developers.evrsoft.com/article/web-design/content-webmaster-issues/why-dot-coms-fail-a-webmasters-perspective.shtml
[6] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/06/23/MN97039.DTL
[7] http:/www.opportunitywales.co.uk/0-0-1/2-0-0/2-1-0/2-1-4.htm
Bibliography
Websites:
http://www.eretailnews.com/Features/overdotcomd.htm
http://www.bildirgec.org/node/20454
http://www.finisar.com/frankscorner/20030510.php
http://developers.evrsoft.com/article/web-design/content-webmaster-issues/why-dot-coms-fail-a-webmasters-perspective.shtml
http://www.opportunitywales.co.uk/0-0-1/2-0-0/2-1-0/2-1-4.htm
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/facseminars/conferences/strat_conf/pdfs/Lieberman%20InternetFMA.pdf
Newspapers:
The independent on Sunday / 18/11/01
Books:
Web Studies (2nd Edition) by David Gauntlett and Ross Horsley.
posted by monkeynic @ 8:33 pm
0 comments
Saturday, April 09, 2005
text 4 blog
I was looking at differant fonts to use in my game:
text 4 blog
Originally uploaded by nic6.
After looking at all these fonts I decided to use PLUMP MT as it is childlike and fits perfectly with the style of my game.
posted by monkeynic @ 5:10 pm
0 comments
The simpsons hit and run.
“The Simpsons: Hit & Run borrows heavily from the Grand Theft Auto series and, in so doing, it brings the world of the Simpsons to life with proper justice. - Alex Navarro” (http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/driving/simpsonshitandrun/)
Here are a few images:
simpsonshitrun_050603_11_thumb
Originally uploaded by nic6.
simpsonshar_091003_13_thumb
Originally uploaded by nic6.
simpsonshar_091003_10_thumb
Originally uploaded by nic6.
simpsonshar_091003_09_thumb
Originally uploaded by nic6.
I really like this game it is a bit more of a girls game then GTA, I love crashing into things and running over the people (that may sounds a bit scary but it is only a game). The graphics are similar to GTA they are simple, but there are bit more colourful and interesting I think this is because the game is mainly aimed at children. I think this style is what I want for my game, I like the colourful simple manner.
(pictures from: http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/552/552251/imgs_4.html)
posted by monkeynic @ 4:31 pm
0 comments
Grand theft auto
I spent a bit of time researching into different games which are based in towns or cities, to see what kind of style they used. I played on Grand theft auto san andreas, this is the main plot of the game:
“Five years ago Carl Johnson escaped from the pressures of life in Los Santos, San Andreas... a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs and corruption. Where filmstars and millionaires do their best to avoid the dealers and gangbangers. Now, it's the early 90s. Carl's got to go home. His mother has been murdered, his family has fallen apart and his childhood friends are all heading towards disaster. On his return to the neighborhood, a couple of corrupt cops frame him for homicide. CJ is forced on a journey that takes him across the entire state of San Andreas, to save his family and to take control of the streets.” (http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps2/grandtheftautosanandreas/)
The game has a kind of simple style to it, with shops which do not have that much detail, most do not have shop names only the important ones which you can go into have names. The trees in the game are kind of simple and seem to just appear from no where, this game had some really good graphics when it came out but now there are games which have much better graphics. But overall I really like the style of this game and I have taken a few features from this game to use on my own game.
Reviews:
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/gta4/review.html
http://ps2.ign.com/articles/559/559560p1.html?fromint=1
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/914983.asp
posted by monkeynic @ 4:18 pm
0 comments
Huddersfield pictures
Here are some of the pictures I used to create my demo for my game as well as my storyboards; these are just a few pictures. I actually spent about an hour walking around Huddersfield town centre taking thousands of pictures of every little bit of Huddersfield, with loads of people giving me strange looks.
SA400136
Originally uploaded by nic6.
SA400158
Originally uploaded by nic6.
posted by monkeynic @ 3:50 pm
0 comments
style
From looking at these pictures and the other pictures I have seen on the web, I decided to create my demo for my game in a kind of simple style which doesn’t really contain that much detail but you can still recognize which place is it.
Below is one of my storyboard which shows the style my game:
storyboard
Originally uploaded by nic6.
posted by monkeynic @ 3:43 pm
0 comments
fifa-street-screens-20041015000716621
fifa-street-screens-20041015000716621
Originally uploaded by nic6.
posted by monkeynic @ 3:35 pm
0 comments
Previous Posts
- Visual thesaurus
- jodi map
- Visual and Spatial Culture Essay
- text 4 blog
- The simpsons hit and run.
- Grand theft auto
- Huddersfield pictures
- style
- miejski_targ_1
- screen3_Large
Archives
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- October 2004
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- December 2004
- January 2005
- February 2005
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