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This article deals with website design and what to make note of when designing, as most first-time visitors will give you less than five seconds to "wow" them, making the aesthetics a vital part of reeling in customers. The website must be both visually appealing to your targeted demographic as well as communicate important things to know.

This article covers website aesthetics. Clara Teoh advises web designers to design their websites with: the preferences of their target demographic in mind, the right tone  to focus on designing the layout of the website to capture the attention of users by choosing appropriate colours and  correctly sized buttons. She also says to compare your site using other successful websites as benchmarks. She goes on to say that site aesthetics even affect variables like conversion rates and sales for businesses.  

This article discusses and clarifies the ideas of virtual realities. This site also provides a very helpful video on the first page, called "The Internet of Things". The video gives great visuals and examples to help solidify the concepts surrounding virtual realities. Very interesting, hope you like it!

Creative Commons copyright licenses allow anyone from individual creators to large companies/institutions a simple way to grant copyright permissions to their IP. Every license helps the creator retain copyright while still allowing others to copy, distribute and use their work, non-commercially. This ensures that the rightful creator gets all the credit they deserve. There are different scales and levels of licensing available for creators at the bottom of the page.

This is another very interesting article on the surveillance society.  I really enjoyed this article because it includes many lines that are relatable to everyone and that also help in understanding the issue. This article is very easy to understand and gives a bunch of interesting examples on surveillance and society.

Taking advantage of Fair Use protections of copyright law, a problem the publishers are responsible for, not Creative Commons. This article is about a case of Open Access as rights - laundering and how expensive it can be to the owner.

Vancouver artist, Samantha Ravndahl is accusing hip-hop star, Lil' Kim of stealing her photo and using it to promote and profit her new album, Dead Girl Walking. First posted on Ravndahl's personal Instagram account, the stolen image is of Ravndahl wearing an original zombie makeup design. A coincidentally identical image was later found on Lil' Kim's new album cover, with Lil Kim's name and copyright notice on the image. Their dispute on copyright and intellectual property rights has yet to be resolved.

An article contrasting all that we've been studying about intellectual property rights, accusing Hollywood to be encouraging illegal downloading. The article explains how Hollywood has learned to work with the cards they were given; instead fighting our accessibility to download, Hollywood is teaming up with streaming platforms to give us movies without forcing audiences to pay per video. In attempts to make some profit, the price for music has been lowered to $1 (so we'll be less hesitant to buy it), and TV shows have teamed up with streaming sites like Hulu, who makes their money from ads. Even though there may be many who don't want to pay for entertainment anymore, there are ways around it: whether it be the easy way, or the legal way.

No one can own a physical person, so why would that be different for fictional characters? This article argues how fictional characters should belong to the fans, and not the authors.

This short article takes a critical look at the different types of social media platforms. The author has an interesting take on how social media has evolved over the past years saying that: "Within the last seven years, we have been through three waves of social domination: The publishing wave (with blogs), the sharing wave (with Facebook and Twitter), and the curating wave (with Quora, Pinterest and alike)." The author goes on to place further importance on the type of content users post and how that impacts the evolution of social platforms. Towards the end he also touches on the choosing the right social media for different types of business.

Last week Professor McMaster touched on online ecosystems. If you want to know more about it, this Forbes article clearly describes what a social media ecosystem is. The key image depicts the social media landscape in very compact and useful way. It shows all the different ways users interact with their devices.

New technology is evolving, which can further innovation in our society. However, this presents a challenge for creators to protect their ideas and work. Therefore, copyright laws must be updated for continuous innovation in our world.

This article highlights 5 golden rules for effective web design. The article describes how to make typefaces work to your advantage, how to choose colour palettes, the advantages of correctly sized graphics, how to include space and headings, and the importance of consistency in design.