Hayley Harding reveals her favourite online haunts.
1. http://www.google.co.uk/grants/information.html
You know those adverts that pop up on the right-hand side of your screen when you do searches in Google? They are paid adverts through Google Adwords. When someone enters keywords into Google, adverts targeted to those keywords appear alongside the search results. The great news is that charitable organisations in the UK, can apply for free keyword advertising through Google Grants, thus raising awareness of their organisations and driving traffic to their websites.
Pavilion is a visual arts commissioning agency that collaborates with artists and audiences to make new works of art, using photography and digital media. Although it only offers an A to Z listing, the online gallery is packed with gorgeous images, showcasing work from lens-based artists working in Yorkshire and the North East, and offering special edition prints for purchase. Some of the images can be sent as e-cards and there is a useful news section detailing information on opportunities for artists.
Why should grown-ups have all the fun? Club Penguin combines aspects of chat, Second Life, and Facebook, and offers younger children the delights of social networking on the Internet in a heavily moderated, safe environment. For a small monthly fee (around £3), children can create a penguin avatar, earn coins to decorate their igloos and buy items – great for teaching about saving. “Well if you spend all your coins on flip-flops, you’ll never have enough for a pink igloo” is a statement I never thought I’d find myself saying! There are games galore – some more challenging than others, so it makes this website suitable from age 5 to 55.
If you have ever received a long URL in an email, which has then broken requiring you to cut and paste segments into your browser, you’ll know how exasperating it can be to rejoin the two pieces back together. This website enables the shortening of long URLs to something more manageable. It’s a great tool to create shorter URLs that don’t break and never expire. If you paste a long URL into the webtool, it gives you a new ‘tinied’ version, which can be used in any media format, and they don’t snap in emails.
5. http://coxsoft.blogspot.com
There are some fine gems to be found on blogspot, if you look hard enough, and in terms of having its finger on the pulse of the latest arts news, the Coxsoft blog is amongst the best. Although I often don’t agree with the opinions that are expressed, by offering its own view on many of the nationals’ favourite stories, this blog encourages debate in our office about contemporary art, its accessibility and its relevance to life in the UK. Despite being very London-centric (Axis is based in Leeds), I frequently dip into this to come up with conversation starters and an insight into how its contributors view ‘contemporary arts practice’.
Hayley Harding is Opportunities Coordinator for Axis, the online resource for contemporary art.
e: hayley@axisweb.org; w: http://www.axisweb.org