Personalized Pageflakes

My Pageflakes is organized into three columns to be functional to my needs. The first column contains my most favorite sites, the second is the technical and more career/field related sites and the third column is my resource and academic column. It also includes my personal flakes such as horoscopes, weather, etc. because I plan on using this site after the end of this class.

My RSS Feeds

Overall, I have twelve RSS Feeds on my Pageflakes and they are organized on my left and center column. On the Left is: Notcot, Coolhunting, It’s Nice That, and GorillavsBear to have a variety of artistic sites (Graphic Design, Music, Product Design, etc.) In my Center Column is KitsuneNoir, Joshspear.com, MocoLoco, I Believe in Advertising and a Fashion section.

The reason why I placed Notcot and KitsuneNoir on top of each column are because they are my favorite sites and one of the few RSS feeds that could show multiple thumbnails. I’m a very visual person so thumbnails and some text are my ideal browsing methods. It is easy for me to track back what I clicked on by the thumbnails I see.

The next best site I check is Coolhunting. I formatted this with the same technique as Notcot because I find both the sites similar and complimentary to each other. Both of these sites are the core of my blog clickings because of the vast amount of relevant links they have on their page. My practices of checking this flake is similar to Notcot’s.

With all my other feeds, I have the simple default image for the most recent updated article included with the text for the feeds because they do not post as much as Coolhunting or Notcot. I find it more convenient and tidy if I visually set these flakes to a minimal. However, for the Sartorialist and other fashion blogs I visually displayed them as a 4×3 grid for me to easily scroll and click through their posts. I took advantage of this Pageflake feature since these blogs rarely have any text written. It’s also aesthetically pleasing to see and easy to grab considering their positions as last in the Center column. These fashion sites also do not update as frequently as my most prized sites because they are centralized on one topic and/or they only have one other, whereas sites like Coolhunting have various writers.

My Active Searches

My active searches are located in the third column where it is labeled “Resource Tools”. They are both Universal searches for Blog and News. I have no problem finding information and blogs for my topics and it is very convenient for me to find material to work with. After several attempts with different keywords, I settled with “Art Design” as my Universal Search words. At times I switch it to “Creative Design” or “Art Advertising”. I see results of a lot of similar brand names like Ksubi or blogs about design. I have not found the Universal News flake personally useful, but it still yields similar results like my Universal Blog keywords.

My Zotero bibliography

This bibliography located on the third column took awhile to search because my topic is fairly new. My focus depends on highly recent material and usually do not become published in books and articles due to its fast pace. It is difficult to publish books about culture or commerce because of the massive amounts of releases and turn-over times. I was lucky to find Maria Luisa’s “Frisa” book to reference, but even that is about five years old. I also found “Dali & Film” and “Architecture & Arts”, Dali being the most recently published book. Articles are just as difficult for me to reference because I have a stronger trust in published books.

My Diigo bookmarks

This section is located on the Resource Tools column also and is set to show all the bookmarks I’ve saved on Diigo. The only difficult thing is that the bookmarks are mixed with my other academic links therefore its hard to single out the one’s I use for this class.

My Social Bookmarking Soulmate

My social bookmarking soulmate can be a little boring sometimes but she is able to frequently add sites that I can browse through. I put this section last because of the rate of updates it receives. I find this section the last resource after my Universal searches and Diigo links.

Having my pagecast set up this way makes me see that architecture design and product design are very popular amongst blogs. The topics in the past were focused on Fashion and name brands but it is nice to see this shift on more monumental and solid design. This is a greater step to appreciation for our surrounding rather than engulf our lives with overpriced material clothing. But I have to admit, as much as this ’special edition’ trend is overpriced, the culture of fashion, art and commerce is addicting and in a sense great to explore, (maybe not purchase).