Assignment 1:

Choose two different websites that you visit regularly. How does each of these websites establish itself as a place (a "site") to visit? Compare and contrast the ways each site uses the conventions of the web, the computer, and the material world to create its space. Which approaches are more or less successful? Why or why not?

1. IGN.com - A premiere entertainment information site. Hosts videos, pictures, and reviews of videogames, movies, peripherals, cds, and many other entertainment related subjects. Extremely proficient and generally accurate in their reviews, making them a trustworthy site to their visitors. They are also very known in the videogame industry, often offering exclusive behind the scenes content before magazines and other competing sites.

2. Xanga.com - A popular online journal site. Innovative design allows users to express themselves and their thoughts through entrys and through customizing the "look & feel" of their journal. Also, has given many Xanga users the freedom to design css based layouts and templates that other users can implement on their own Xangas, allowing infinite customizability. Also, allows users to comment on other Xangas, creating an online community.

3. Comparing and Contrasting - While both sites use general web conventions, such as flashy, yet easy to navigate designs and providing immense amounts of information for those who are seeking that specific type of information, both sites approach their users very differently. For instance, Xanga allows users to create anything from their imagination, and then the user can use that to express emotions to a community. While IGN indeed has forums or message boards, these boards in no way allow users the customizability or expressive abilities of xanga. IGN, however, takes a less interactive approach, and acts more like a professional online magazine, which works very well. An advantage of IGN is that information can be found fairly easily and efficiently with their searches, where xanga, while maintaining a search feature, often times leads the user through journal after journal in order to find who or what the user is actually looking for. Overall, IGN sticks to the tried and true formula of providing information in a magazine-like format that is accessible to everyone and fairly easy to use. Xanga maintains a connection with the past by encouraging users to keep a journal, but it merges with new media by allowing immense customizability and online community interaction. Both sites accomplish their set goals expertly, yet each could take lessons from the other, for example IGN could use Xanga as a template for improving their message boards, and Xanga could use IGN as a template to help people find more interesting Xangas, or to find specific Xangas of their friends or family.