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Information Architecture: How To Help Users Find Relevant Content - Part 2

Can information architecture principles be easily put to good use when trying to help your readers find relevant content on your site? When your web site is so full of content that a simple search box won\'t do the trick anymore, what can you do to structure and make all of your content more easily accessible? Photo credit: Ndul By employing sound information architecture principles you can develop a content organization and navigation strategy that allows your readers to easily locate what they are looking for while having a rich and enjoyable user-experience. For example visual site maps and visually grouped search results are much better approaches to help a user find what he is looking for than traditional linear text-based search engine result pages. The information provided is exactly the same, but it\'s the way the information itself is presented, organized and connected to your navigation system which provides two very different user experiences. And these type of challenges were the ones encountered by Stefano De Caro, Nicoletta Di Blas and Luigi Spagnolo a team of content and information architects, when asked to design an interface and content navigation system capable of handling a huge amount of data belonging to the Italian cultural heritage archives. Following their successful work, the team decided to prepare an in-depth report where they explain and illustrate their fascinating research and content design journey. Their goal is to help more people understand how information architecture principles can be effectively utilized to structure the content of a web site and how these same principles can help you repurpose information in ways that make it more easily discoverable and visually-intriguing for your readers. While Part 1 of this report dealt more with the theory and the challenges behind the design of a large cultural web site, Part 2 explains what are the actual steps you need to take to organize and present information in simple and engaging ways without overwhelming your final readers. Here is Part 2 - Information Architecture: How To Help Users Find Relevant Content (Part 1) ...

Wed, 1 Sep 2010 14:10:00 GMT

Royalty-Free Music: Where To Find Free Music Tracks For Your Video Clips

Where can you find royalty free music? As you probably know, it is illegal to use copyrighted commercial music when publishing video clips online. For example, YouTube has developed a copyright-protection system that immediately detects unlicensed uses of copyrighted music tracks inside videos published online and silences them or blocks them from public viewing. So, how can you get a nice background music to place on your videos without infringing the law? The MasterNewMeda research team comes to the rescue with this guide listing all of the best services on the web to get or download open and unrestricted royalty free music. Photo credit: enot-poloskun Royalty free music means that you either download music tracks for free or you pay a one-time fee to gain access to music. Then, you can do everything the original artist allows you to make with it and for as many times as you want. When music is royalty-free, the rights on the music tracks you download / purchase are generally regulated by Creative Commons licenses, which specify exactly what you can and cannot do with that music. For example, there might be some restrictions regarding commercial use, adaptation or redistribution placed by the original author. Therefore, video producers are strongly encouraged to read carefully the licenses associated with each track. To go straight to the point, there are two main reasons why royalty-free music can be very useful for professional web publishers: License-free: You can forget all about music industry-related hassles like mechanical rights, public performance royalties, synchronization and transcription rights, publishing rights, neighboring rights and master use rights. Publish-friendly: You can publish video clips which utilize royalty free music and avoid having to worry about breaking copyrights, doing illegal things or having your video taken down and silenced. But where can you find such free music tracks for your video clips? Major music distributors like Amazon, Apple or Microsoft are definitely not your best choice, as these big companies focus mostly on big mainstream performers who distribute only copyrighted music tracks. Independent, or indie musicians are instead the best direction to look into. These are the guys who often release their music under a CC license, as they find that making tracks available for free or for a small fee is a much better way to earn a reputation and a strong following of fans. Luckily there is a growing number of royalty free music services on the web that will help you find the music you need, no matter which kind of artist, genre, duration time or quality you need to match your video production needs. To help you rapidly identify your ideal music track licensing service, the MasterNewMedia research team has searched, identified and collected all of the best resources available online in this space. We have also prepared a mindmap showcasing all of the free music services presently in this space, as well as a comparative table illustrating the strength and weakness of each one of these offerings. Here are the specific criteria that MasterNewMedia has identified to test and compare these royalty free music services: Free / paid music tracks Music tracks format Commercial use Registration-free Pro price and extra features Here is the guide with full details: ...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:30:00 GMT