Trip to New Mexico

August 28, 2015
Ken and Bobbie headed off from Vista, California to New Mexico Apache Creek for rock hound. As we advance to Arizona, the temperature continue over 110 degree  F. It was so hot we both stay in the camper therefore never stop on the way. We settled at a RV outside Tuscon. It was around 8pm. We got out of the camper......it still 103 f! We quickly setup the air con and everything and hide in the camper for the night.

August 29 , 2015
Sunny in the morning. Continue to New Mexico. temperature lower from 113 f  to upper 80s f and lower 90s f. Finally arrived Apache Creek Campsite around 2.30pm. Nevertheless, weather starts to change from sunny to raining. There was no reception in the whole area. Bobbie has to insist to leave the site and go to an RV park three miles down the road. We met Rober, our team leader. He told us most likely function starts Aug 30 8.am or 8.30am in the morning. We just make sure we be back to the main site on time. As we were leaving, we found Harry walking along the trail. We says hi and than move on to the site.
It stills raining lightly. Hope weather be good tomorrow.


September 1, 2015
We were always surrounded by thunder storm. Therefore we are not only rock prospecting, we also weather watching. We were on on sea level 6000 feet. Weather changed dramatically in any hours.
First day of the hunt on rock was at Turkey Flat where lots of druze quarts. We were warned by the thunder so had to head back to site around 2.30pm.
Next day on the 31st August, 2015 we went to hunt for luna blue. The road was rough and team members amaze how Ken can drive a big camper climbed up and down the windy and pumpy roads.
We got pretty good blue agate. Again have to head back to site when thunder roaming around us a little after 2pm
August 30 2015 to September 2, 2015
We head for the blue Luna at another location. This location was close to a big horse stable. So, is not as remote and rough road as the day before. But the goody were at the top of a ridge and all slopes were surrounded by tall trees. Ken get lost and was not able to find location of our team parking. We have to wait for over one and half hour to assist him back to us by horning the car. Than we moved to a site for gold agate. We were having fun cause the agates are beautiful. Again, the thumder suddenly come and hit us very hard. We rush to our campers and the team was forced to done for the day.
September 2, 2015. This suppose to be the last day. So we went back to the gold agate cause everybody likes the stone. We were again driven away by thunder at noon. Me and Dad head to
look for bytownite at Plubo Campground on our own. It was not very successful. We cannot find it and than the thunder roaming to us. We have to leave and stay at Glenwood RV for the night.

September 3, 2015
We went to Mulch Creek for Apache Tears. We got a handful of that. Some are pretty big in sizes. Than we go to Black Hill for fire agate. I like the agate there. Still have to see if they have fires when those were cleaned.
Officially head back home around 2.30pm. After we got onto highway 10, it started storming and lightning all the way until we check in RV at Casa Grande!.
We also found the roof of the camper is leaking. Water dripping down from both sides of the air-con.
We cannot even get out to shower cause of the rain. Finally it stopped after we have dinner inside the camper.

List of Website for Fortune Duck.

http://www1.macys.com/shop/handbags-accessories/sale-clearance/handbags?id=28275

http://shop67623378.taobao.com/   This is fortune Duck

http://www.gucci.com/us/category/f/handbags


http://www.ebags.com/department/designer-handbags

http://www.coach.com/online/handbags/-handbags-10551-10051-62-en?viewType=viewall

http://www.mcmworldwide.com/ch/brandstory.asp

http://www.guess.com/worldofguess/

http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/handbags-shop?cm_ven=google&cm_cat=handbags&cm_pla=handbags&cm_ite=handbags_b&ef_id=VKBOUfUEuUsAAMpj:20110822061948:s

Discussion about Website Creation Process 's responsibilities Web Builders and Clients

Steps to build an online business

By: Bobbie Lai

What do you need?

A clear concept of business. 
Identify what type of business you going to do:

1. –Servicing
2. –Trading
3. –Suppliers

Content Preparation

1. Identify your customer group. (Age, Mature, Business, Shoppers, etc)
2. Have a logo designed.
3. Source of information about your business
4.  Introduce about your entities.
5.  Classify type of services, product you are offering.
6. Payment Methods, Bankers, currency.
7. Delivery carrier: DHL, UPS etc.
8. Shopping Cart.
9. Inventory grouping and sub-grouping and code indexing.
10. Price setting.
11. List topic your customers would be interested.
12. List of link for convenience of your customers.
13. Contact agents, phone, email, address, phone.
14. Customer Service and Policy.

Database Stores for:

1.  Images
2.   Videos.
3.   Sku- inventory code.
4.   Customer’s information.
5.   Supplier’s information.

How to work with your Web Designer

1. Layout selections
2. Give information about the style, color theme.
3. Give information about product/services.
4. Tell the designer how many pages you need.
5. –Most common pages are : about yourself, contact information, product detail, Customer Services, Shopping card .
6. –Skill set you need for the site. Eg. Email, video, animation, images, light box, immediate integration, auto response.

What will the web designer give to you. 

1. Stage 1

• Draft of design of web layout.
• Structure of navigation.
• Propose interactive methods.
• Stage 2

• Fine tune web draft.

Stage 3

• Upload information provided
• Set up inter-action between your pages and database; banker, carriers.

• Stage 4
• Test run on various size of monitors, browsers, have different user test their experience of browsing inside the web.
•  
• Stage 5
• Notes for maintenance of your content.
•  
• Stage 6
• Future maintenance plan and support from the web designer.

Facility and Cost of online store

1. Annual domain fee.
2. Service Provider fee
3. Software
4. Web Maintenance.
5. Advertisement.
6. Payment Fee
7. Connection to book-keeping.
8. Email accounts
9. Carrier Contract ( depends on the plans)

Discussions

•Pull up good and bad designed web sites for discussions.

•Advertising Plans with Google ( one click plan), Yahoo, Facebook, Twisters and other social sites, craigslist and importantly upload video to YouTube.

•Sample of inter-actives. ( how to response to customer’s click, hover, zooming.

•Sample of database and how it works behind the scene. (speed of connections)

•Lunching site. ( how long it lunch)

Web Site Performance

Get  reports of the site performance
Understand which is your default browser.
Knows popular search engine
Browsers that your visitor mostly used.

–Despite site design, it is important to know what browser and it’s version your customer mostly used. This is how your target customer get to your website. In order to make sure your website is doing the job, you need analysis about who logon to your site, what browser they use, how many visits went to your site, how long they Last. These information are important to tailor made your site to get to your customers.

•test your  website performance ……http://www.gomez.com/google-adwords/instant-test/?gclid=CNOUnYiU8qwCFQhU4godbkJnkA

• www.netmarketshare.com (*This is helpful information listing Mobile and Desktop market shares for use of browsers.

Tips about online marketing

Where to put ad. – refer to “8.Discussion”

How to check access efficiency- refer site analysis in “8.Discussion”

How to pick the style and color of the site.

How to batch your order or email from customers.

How to set navigation structure of your site.

How to make search engine find your site.

How to attract visitors to your site.

How you keep visitors stay at your site, or interested to bookmark your site for re-visit.

How to maintain a good customer services.

The technique of pricing and discount.

The technique of setting sales-and return policy

How to offer more items to customers who is already at your site and browsing your product.

How to allow easy search in your site.   About SEO

–Suggest sites:
www.raidenhttpd.com/manual/seo.html or use search word “search engine optimization”. There are plenty to explain about SEO.

How to keep your customer online while they navigate from your site to a link that you give to them.

Key Words

Search result different with browsers, browser languages, and search engine.

Sample sites for office renting.

http://www.pbcoffices.com/locations/sanjose.html http://www.executivecentre.com/service-office-locations/virtual-office-in-hong-kong-cambridge-sites.html                                     
http://www.azure-bc.html 
http://www.synergybc.com.hk/index_en.htm

http://www.billionoffice.com/

http://www.services-offices.com/

Reference Sites for how to do a good websites.

 See 10 principles for a good sites.

http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/31/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/

How do users think?

Don’t make users think

Don’t squander users’ patience

Manage to focus users’ attention

Strive for feature exposure

Make use of effective writing

Strive for simplicity

Don’t be afraid of the white space

Communicate effectively with a “visible language”

Conventions are our friends

Test early, test often

 Inter-react with your site visitors

 

http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~matt/courses/cs563/talks/smartin/int_design.html

 This site is about how to interface with user. Before put effort into color, picture etc. Think about the layout and use of fonts. This site give good review of this topic 

 

 Rules about legal Issue

Do not copy or use other source's images, logo, design. Take your own pictures , make your own films and logo. There is international intelligent law that prohibit volition.  You may face legal issue, penalty or even court order to take away those items that are invading intelligent right. The result may be very costly.

Web rules are so new. Therefore so far there is not much rules to control ethnic, moral issue in this field. However, it getting attention. The Wcc3 is a group that develop new Web languages. This is international organization which getting more and more powerful about use the web. They will develop language to detach unlawfully activities. For instance, if the owner of  a site and implement a kind of security for preventing images to be stolen. The can track own who are stilling their pictures. A professional organization for all Web Designer that will assist their member to hire lawyers if their right are being invaded. The web violating the rules will be publish and other member will put block to this site therefore it will not reach their Website.

Another Important issue is about keywords. If someone make unreasonable content to get attention of the crawling machine. Once the search Engine like Google, Yahoo etc. They will block all visitors to your site. That is the most serious situation. The site is dead if Search Engine take this action.

Also, if someone report that your site is in dangers of spreading virus. Those search engine will also put a block and a warning message to anyone who would like to visit your site.

Finally,  there are rules to benefit blind people using internet. All sites must have alt text for these group. It is by law (in USA) all government or related trader must provide alt text for the blind. Otherwise they will be charged for violating internet rules. This rules applies to lots of countries.  Because of that, alt text are words that Search Engine will particular look for. Also it become a technique to put your site in higher index ranking.

 

    

Google Search Engine
There are three key processes in delivering search results by Google Search Engine

Crawling

begins with a list of web page URLs. of these websites. It detects links on each page and adds them to its list of pages to crawl.

Google uses an algorithmic process to determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site.

Indexing

each of the pages it crawls, the process compiles a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page. The process information included words in key content tags and attributes, such as Title tags and ALT attributes.

Rubric - self assessment

Rubric

1.       Layout score – 4

2.       Graphic – 4

3.       Color Choice -4

4.       Sounds – 4

5.       Spelling and Grammar – 1

6.       Font – 4

7.       Accessibility -4

8.       Links – I have not link to site yet. But I will link site that talks about nature of rocks with reliable information like eLibrary, ProQuest and Britannica Online.

9.       Navigation – 4

10.   Content – 4

11.   Interest – 4

12.   Compatibility -4

13.   Load Time – 4 (I will do preload of images and video, and cut down the length and quality of the video.)

14.   Content Accuracy - 4

Design Document for Kaba Gem Website

Plan Site for Gem Project

Site builder: Bobbie Lai

                Goal, services and product of the site

The site is designed for two purposes. First is selling rock and gem jewelry with unique character. This is a source for viewer who is rock collector or design jewelers or people looking for unique gift at a reasonable price. Second, it intends to explore the relation of rocks with nature, history and Earth formation. The site also act as an media places for people who want to know about rocks and those who like to share their knowledge about rocks. An article pages “World’s treasure is to discuss rocks. Viewer can submit their articles by filling the forms in the “Contact” page. The article will be published in the “World’s Treasure” page after validated the content is appropriate for intention of the site.

 General requirements

1.       Target audiences are rock and jewelry collectors. Design jeweler looking for their design materials. The age range is from ranged from teen to senior. The site provides information about sources, forms and history of gem stones. This is an ecommerce website. It would use PayPal for payments and sales order tracking.

2.       Require photos of inventory with of thumb nails at (100pixels) and bigger pictures at (200 pixels). The site would have videos to show the inventory.

3.       Research about gem and rock legends.

Webpage design

The layout of the page has 3 tiers. First tier has two columns. Logo is on the left, banner on the right.

The second tier has three columns. Left is the navigation links, middle is video and the third column is short narrative about rocks or gem in inventory list.

The third tiers are information of rock and gem photos.

Colors

The site use one background color:  #6C4900. The greenish implies natural environment. The greenish dark tone color was used to contrast of the gem and rock pictures. As there are lots of pictures and videos, the color combination tends to be simple to avoid the site’s color being too noise.

Logo: The logo uses fossil and leaves for indicate the rock and gems has relation with the geology ages of world and nature. The blur effect represents mystery which induces exploration.

                Fonts

I use font-family "Palatino Linotype", "Book Antiqua", Palatino, serif;. These fonts have scripting look. That helps to deploy elegant of the site. Since these fonts style already gave sense of actions. I would only use one font throughout the site. Hierarchy of the content is demonstrated by font sizes and location of the messages.

                Site Structure:

The design of the site structure tends to be simple. The idea is make the viewer easily sees the inventory. So, it is intentionally not to be too fancy interface actions with the mouse which may distract the viewer from the inventory. A short description of what would be found in the page is briefed under the navigation links. As rock and gem are classified into jewelry, collectible and cabochon, the brief description under the links give idea of which page would have the material the viewer looking for. I do not use the tooltip because I wish the viewer can see the link description without doing anything like hover on the links.

                                The website included following pages:

Home – has brief introduction of the site and general showroom as what would be found in this site.

Jewelry – a page display jewelry inventory. Thumb nails pictures with prices and descriptions.

Collectible – display collectible items like mineral of stone for crafting.

                        Cabochon – a page for selling polished stone ready to be mounted for                                        jewelry.

World’s treasure – discuss the sources, legends and history of special kind of gem or rock.

Contact us – Has a form for customers or viewer to submit their questions, articles and comments.

               

                Search Optimization:

Banner of each page will have couple of paragraphs about the product selling in the page. Select words that included the name of the gem or rock.

Suggest that the jewelries are one of a kind and collectible items are unique. All alt text for images would be labeled for visual handicaps.

Research on similar site

I have visited sites that sell rocks. I found most of them are crowded. They are more emphasis on selling but not too much about the stone itself.  Also, their designs tend to be muscular by using logo like digging tools to represent rock hounding. I like to dispatch an elegant feeling and more educational mode about the treasure would be found on Earth. I tend to use the legend, story, history of rocks as an interesting point to attract viewer to stay in the site. I like to share my rock expedition experience in this site. In order to make the site looks less commercial mode but more of offering unique pieces, the inventory display limited to 18 per page. However, I will continue changing items in the show places.

Short coming of the site:

The site uses videos which may cause longer loading time. The English and grammar is   definitely need   helps.

                The slogan

I would use is “The world’s treasure”.

here is the link to my site. This is still under construction.Kaba Gem Website

Color Scheme of the site

Flow of WebSite

.