MA in Digital Media Technology

Whilst thinking of things to write, I thought I’d mention that Im finishing off an MA in Dig Media Technologies which is run out of DIT Aungier st. All in all a very good course. In terms of content, there’s some core modules that you complete – which are Digital Design Principles (you produce a design spec and  artefacts for a business (logo, identity, Ad campaigns – print & TV, Stationery, Cards etc..), Two Authoring modules which breakdown into – Flash Animation and Flash Action Script (building websites with Action script using different types of media files), and finally a general Technology course, which gives a looks at different technologies, software and hardware, used in digital media and how they work – you produce and present a multi-media pdf with video, audio, stills on a subject which uses digital media in innovative ways .

In terms of elective modules – there are four, which break down into; Audio Tools (using pro Tools, studio set-up (including mic positioning etc..), recording musicians and producing master tracks, use solid state recorders and digital composition; Screen Tools, which is capturing DV (Camera, lighting, mic work), Non-Linear Editing (Premier or Final Cut Pro) and DVD Authoring (DVD Studio Pro or Encore), scriptwriting and storyboarding too; Dynamic Web which breaks down in DHTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL; and finally there’s a module on Motion Graphics using Adobe After Effects, PS.       

There’s also Media Law and Project Management modules (which is the pre-cursor to the major project/thesis)

And then there’s the final project, where you use a combination of the skills learned on other modules. I chose Dynamic Web, Screen Tools and Audio Tools as my electives – all three were great – the emphasis is on project work – so for each module on the course there’s a project to produce (which is basically a digital artefact accompanied by presentation and Report)

My main project is to digitally narrate the urban history of Dublin over the period 1700 to 1850 taking the liffey as the main axis of the city – using a combination of archival material (maps, plans, lithographs, artwork, engravings, sketches, historical writing etc…), video and audio interviews (with experts in the field – urban geographers, art historians, historians, architects, cartogrpahers), animated sequences, user interactivity – and the platform it will be delivered on is a website.

Its been a very interesting course to do, and I have learned a huge amount and thoroughly enjoyed it – give me a shout if you have any Qs on it.

SEO – Again..

I suppose Im like a lot of online businesses in that I get bursts where I review the site from an SEO perspective. I’m in the middle of one of those at the moment. Anyway, I’ve been trawling around looking to get some advice – looking at all sorts of videos and articles – written by various SE/SEM experts.

To start with, I use a tool called IBP which I found good to start with and that helps you start SEO’ing your site. One of the functions that I use, is where you compare your site against the top 10 sites in your competing area. The tool looks at your competitors and then analyses your site with theirs and makes suggestions as to how you shoud modify your content so that your site should get better rated.

One of the things it concentrates on is the meta keywords – and checks the frequency and density of these within the body text of your url. However, listening to a whole load of SEO heads, this apparantely isn’t that relevant now. The feeling being that you can stuff your keyword tag with a load of keywords that just aren’t relevant.

However, what IBP and the experts do have in common is the need for a title tage that accurately describes your business (with keywords). And also a meta descritption tag that is meaningful and acts as a “compelling call” to potential customers. The snippet that is displayed in the search Engine is a very important part of your call card. You need to get it righto to make sure you get the right people clicking through and that it offers them a reason to do so. There’s an interesting video by Matt Cutts on youtube on this topic.

Other important factors are external links to your website – thats one of the things we all know – but don’t do enough to get quality links – the consensus seems to be DO not buy links or use link factories – Google don’t like it – as is evidenced by Matt Cutts and videos that can be found, again, on Youtube.

One of the things that Matt does say is worth doing is to start a blog and get involved in whatever coversation that is of interest to you and (pertains tangentally to your business). Google loves blogs – and he seems to particularly like wordpress. You can get a wordpress blog up and running and integrated to your site easily – and apparently version 2.3 aggregates blog postings - which google likes.

Another SEO expert (whose video I saw on YouTube) says that he doesnt concentrate anymore on fiddling around with keyword densities etc.. that instead he researches the correct keywords that businesses should use (and he seemed to suggest that he spent the majority of his time at this). He also focused on optimising digital PR for SEO using keywords – and pushing it out to thebest wire agencies. And of course quality link building – 1000 poor ones are not as good as 10 excellent ones.

On keywords – it takes time to realise what works well – setting up your googleAdwords account and analysing results is a useful way of getting a feel for what people are searching plus there’s a whole load of tools to use.

Thats all I’ve time for this evening – hope this was of some help.