fanfiction and social networking via LiveJournal

A good friend of mine is really into fanfiction. I, being over 40, had of course never heard of it before I met her. Check here for a pretty good definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction

She explained that there's an entire fandom world in cyberspace and that there are many different fandoms, with Harry Potter and Tolkein being among the top for fanfiction authors. Now, what might this have to do with social networking? Well, it turns out that for many budding authors a LiveJournal community is the place to be for socializing with those of like interests, advice with writing, opportunities for critiquing or editing others' fanfic writings, and certainly developing friendships.

From what little I've looked at, it appears that many fanfiction stories are adult themed, but the idea of using virtual communities to assess one's writings and to expose one's works to edits and critiques by many people is a great use of blogs/journals/social networking sites to improve one's writing.

necessities for good web pages

I agree with what others in the class have said about web pages needing to be easy to navigate and easy to read color schemes. I use frequently use company web sites to get part numbers and order equipment, etc. I can't understand why a company that sells to the public or provides product information to consumers doesn't see the need for a search box on their site. Nothing frustrates me more than having to drill down to find stuff when a simple search could have gotten me there much faster.

Anchor Audio probably has one of the worst sites for product information I've been to recently.
http://www.anchoraudio.com/

Another example of techno-complication is MCM Electronics. They recently changed their sales flyers from a PDF format to an interactive format. I think this has made the flyers much harder to read, though the table of contents and search features are nice. The problem is when the network is slow, the electronic turning of pages is excrutiatingly slow. You can get the idea here.
http://mcmelectronics.dirxion.com/sep07/Main.asp

So, in complete agreement with Denise - Keep It Simple - should be at the forefront of good webpage design.

videoconferencing and the network gremlins

Network issues and vtc are driving me nuts this week.