Scams Awareness Month – Staying safe online

Get Safe Online are currently working with the Office of Fair Trading to promote Scams Awareness Month.

With the credit crunch biting they are seeing a rise in the number of internet scams as fraudsters attempt to prey on people’s money worries.

What can you do to stay safe online?

These are some simple tips to follow including:

• If you’re shopping online look for clear signs that you are buying from a reputable company (secure website, privacy and return policies, do they have a real-world presence?)
• On auction sites make sure you understand the auction process, rules and safety advice, check seller feedback and pay in a safe way through PayPal or credit card
• Never disclose private information, shred documents before throwing them out and ensure your computer is protected against viruses and spyware

Further information on all of these and more is available on the Get Safe Online blog.

Google Moon

After looking at some good examples of how people have used Google Maps to display information, I came across Google’s ‘reconstruction’ of the moon landing. I’d never seen this before, or heard anyone ever mention it, despite it being done in 2005.

Aptly called ‘Google Moon‘ it uses imagery to represent the surface of the moon and provides a set of placemarks that show the key stages in the moon landing.

Whether you believe man ever landed on the moon, well that’s a different matter. Anyway, Google Moon is good fun.

Keeping websites simple creates brand success

The Internet Advertising Bureau has advised that keeping websites simple can make a brand successful – so it is no surprise that Google was recently named top brand in the UK. Broadband Finder website report that a business should:

stick to a core message, so that others fully understand what they and their business actually do.

It reminds me of the KISS acronym (Keep it simple, stupid!) that I’ve had drummed into me since GCSE Graphics. It’s certainly important for news organisations and anyone else with design input into a website to constantly consider – simplicity is key to making a site attractive to users.

Digital storytelling

I’m a few weeks into planning an assignment on digital storytelling and I’m focusing on telling the story of when the World Cup was stolen in 1966 while on display at a stamp exhibition in London.

My audio and video elements are sorted but I am hoping to come up with an imaginative way of describing certain events in the story using just text and images. I’m leaning towards using this form to sum up the events after the Cup was recovered as a way conclude the story.

I’ve found some examples, particularly on American news websites, where digital storytelling has been done well – there are quite a lot of videos that are for educational use. The BBC has a good breakdown of digital storytelling and the American Center for Digital Storytelling has some good examples that are particularly good at portraying emotional life stories.

We were also advised to look at ‘Yolanda’s Crossing’ story on the Dallas Morning News website. A particularly emotive story, it has been produced delicately while offering the user some interaction through the section thumbnails. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can produce something half as good!

MyFootballClub members elect board representatives

Only 6,412 members used their vote to choose their seven board members who will respresent all MyFootballClub members on the board of Ebbsfleet United. The elected include six local to Ebbsfleet and one from the Midlands.

I don’t want to post too much information about the elected candidates without their permission, but it’s fair to say that the majority are Ebbsfleet supporters.

Most importantly I suppose was the large number of members (18,112) that voted in the poll about whether we’d like to proceed with purchasing a 75% stake in the club. It’s disappointing to see though that many members are not using their votes for what may be smaller decisions, but are still our duty as MyFootballClub members.

Many of the comments being left on the MyFootballClub website criticise the handling of the vote commenting the window for votes to be cast was too short, there were too many candidates and perhaps a two-tier process should have been introduced. Perhaps these comments are something for the newly elected board members to think about and address next year?