Sunday, June 13, 2010

Reflections

Upon completing this subject, heaps of research has been done in order to apply the theories based on readings to support my analysis of media and publishing issues. First of all, proper citation and sourcing on all information which are garnered from credibility and accuracy information is vital to avoid issues like copyright infringement and defamation.

Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) states the importance of having images relating to verbal text which helps to convey meanings and messages easier, therefore, text and pictures can be seen in this blog to create a better understanding of an audience. Last but not least, having hyperlinks connecting to other websites helps to strengthen the messages intended to be conveyed among the audiences (Walsh 2006).

References:
Schriver, KA 1997, 'Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Text For Readers', Wiley Computer Publisher, New York

Lannon, JM 2006, 'Technical Communication', 10th Edition, Pearson Education, USA

Walsh, M 2006, 'Textual Shifts: Examining The Reading Process With Print, Visual and Multimodal Text', Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, p. 24-37

Emoticons and email etiquette

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Conveying message via business email is fast and straight to the point which is why email etiquette is important to avoid miscommunication from the receiver. Normally the common mistakes by the writer would be assuming that the receiver would understand what would the subject line of the email would be. Basically, a subject line helps to summarise the message conveniently such as providing more detailed information rather than the subject itself. Keeping the message concise to the point is vital to avoid lengthy message as it would be irritating to scroll down through pages of text in order to arrive at the message they want to read (Tuffley 2009).

When it comes to fonts and colours, it would be best to not to use capital letters in email which it represents anger and threaten. Besides, it would be advisable for one not to compose an email while they are angry because this would end up misinterpreted from the receiver. On top of that, layout of the email is important for readability such as using spaces, commas and paragraphs to break long and lengthy sentences to make it easier for the reader (Tuffley 2009).

Source: Cartoon Stock


Emoticons are misuse in business emails where misinterpretation comes in from another business partner. Basically, an emoticon of a smiley face would be used if an employer is trying to congratulate someone who is getting promoted or achieving an award and so forth. However, misuse of emoticons in serious business emails may lead to sarcasm which it is interpreted wrongly by the receiver. An emoticon can be put into a good used such as removing criticism from an email while coaching an employee so it would sound friendlier rather than a tense up email as this soften the tone in the message conveyed. Another would be inserting an emoticon in emails as thanking the buyers for purchasing the product so they would know that the seller is pleased dealing business with them (Judith 2008).

Last but not least, it is vital for the write to know when to use an emoticon in business email to soften the tone or to tell others that the writer is pleased. However, when it comes to email writing, email etiquette is important to convey the message properly to avoid any miscommunication with the receiver.

References:
Tuffley, D 2009, Email Etiquette, Griffith University, viewed 14 June 2010, http://www.cit.griffith.edu.au/~davidt/email_etiquette.htm.

Judith 2008, Emoticons in Business E-mail, Business E-mail Etiquette, viewed 14 June 2010, http://www.businessemailetiquette.com/emoticons-in-business-e-mail/.

Johnson, D 2009, What you need to know about emoticons in e-mail, bnet.com, viewed 14 June 2010, http://blogs.bnet.com/businesstips/?p=5725.

E-books popularity on the rise

The rise of e-book became popular due to flexibility, convenient and user friendly. An e-book is basically a gadget with relevant tools for easy search and able to store a large number of books into it. E-books are accessible with most gadgets such as computers, smart phones and other reading devices allowing these gadgets to be searched using keywords within the content of the book. This kind of e-book is popular among researches and students who have the ease of access to wanted information for their work purpose with their laptops or computers.

Amazon is an online website bookstore which sells a great number of e-books for the convenient of readers. Purchasing via online is available which it is inexpensive and user friendly to search for the wanted e-books without going through a number of book stores.


Source: Future Perfect Publishing


Source: Engadget

However there are issues of using e-books such as creating discomfort to the reader’s eyes due to the flickering screens of the gadget and backlit hand-held devices (Pelle 2009). Besides that, the invention of Apple’s iPad, this encourages the users to download e-books via the application for the device which increases the number of pirated e-books to rise (Spence 2010). Therefore, the writers and publishers tend to suffer losses in their book sales.

E-books for children do not attract them as much as the adults even though the phenomenon is getting popular in this era. According to Asaff (2009), there was drawback on e-book marketing for children which it is lack of colour illustration, lift the flap, touch and feel of elements of a paper book. Unlike a paper book, it can be kept easily which it is convenient for children who stuff them roughly in a bag or left untouched on the table which it can be used again anytime. However, an e-book device needs to be maintained and protected from rough handling, drops and spills.
Thus, it is vital for to protect pirated e-books to avoid writers and publishers to suffer lost which result in less people would tend to write anymore. Paper books is more comfortable to read and easier to understand with illustration of coloured pictures for young children.

References:
Asaff, S 2009, Ebooks for Children, suite101.com,viewed 14 June 2010, http://mobiletechnology.suite101.com/article.cfm/ebooks_for_children.

Pelle, A 2009, The slow rise of e-books, Research Information, viewed 14 June 2010, http://www.researchinformation.info/features/feature.php?feature_id=235.

Spence, N 2010, Report: iPad popularity blamed for rise in eBook piracy, Network World, viewed 14 June 2010, http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/051910-report-ipad-popularity-blamed-for.html.

How the Shift to an Online, On-Demand World of Content Could Impact Political Discourse

Political news is used to be obtainable from television, newspaper and other medias. However, the internet is able to do more than providing news to the audience and indeed political decisions can be discussed at any place and time. Therefore, the shift of paradigm towards new media is unavoidable in line with the fast paced, modern and digitally oriented contextual lifestyle in this era (Lessig 2004).


Source: Pew Research Center

As such, public forums allows the people to point out their views in the political conversation conveniently via any gadgets which allows internet access such as mobile phones, laptops or smart phones. Political discussion online is important where information and persuasion are they key factor to greater deliberativeness in discussions. According to Lapadat (2002), such communication leads to more detailed and deliberative discussion as the interaction are slower and more thoughtful. As such, more information can be obtained from the public’s opinion rather than the politicians themselves where these would help to improve the community too.

Another source of political disclosure would be obtaining from networking source such as Facebook and Tweeter. News travel faster than ever before with such convenient tools and gadgets where one can pass on the political news before it is release on television, radio or newspaper via social networking online. As agreed by Walsh (2006), the affordance of new internet media provides the technological edge of being capable of reaching a wide range of audience within seconds. On top of that, blog is able to provide political news, the blogger’s opinion of the content and comments from the public’s view of the news. Therefore, such the availability of such tools, the public is also able to decide, point out their views and arguments in days of political election where people would be then influence of such news as well as their voting. Besides that, different viewpoints in political discussion where some impoliteness from opposing discussants, tougher issues could be brought up which increases democratic potential of such discussion (Ng & Detenber 2005).

As such, people tend to use more of the internet tools to garner news in political discourse where the sites are more interactive and user friendly.

References:

Lessig, L 2004, Free culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity, Penguin Press, New York.

Lapadat, JC 2002, Written interaction: A key component in online learning, Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, 7 (4), viewed 14 June 2010, http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol7/issue4/lapadat.html.

Walsh, M 2006, “‘Textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts,” Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37.

Ng, EWJ & Detenber, B 2005, The impact of synchronicity and civility in online political discussions on perceptions and intentions to participate, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(3), article 4, http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue3/ng.html.

Is Internet privacy dead? No, just more complicated: researchers

Social networking online is a growing phenomenon in the technology era as a communication tool for community building and social change. However, such progress in the online phenomenon leads to the invasion of online privacy of users. By far, Facebook is one of the most popular social networking site with numbers of applications, games and so forth which appeals to the youths who are not aware of the personal details been exploited.

Source: Facebook

As such, personal information is being obtained by few ways such as adjusting the privacy settings to the strongest leads to exposure of the information more widely compared to others who have set it lower privacy settings (Shiels 2008). Another issue would be allowing attractive application such as games, news and others offered by Facebook leads to ease of access by the application developer to the personal’s information. On the other hand, Facebook promotes itself as a communication tool to connect people but it did not informed people that Facebook is involved in commercial activities such as targeted advertising (Venezia 2010). Such crucial information is not being informed to users before they signed up for an account. Facebook uses a new ad system which helps to target relevant advertisement with the user’s personal information. Therefore, user’s action in using the Facebook service are monitored such as a user does not want to publish the information for the friend to view but Facebook still obtains it (Malik 2007). Thus, Facebook is able to place more focused advertisements to individuals depending on the likes and dislikes.

However, to curb such issues in privacy information, Silicon Valley introduced a new tool where users have stronger control over their privacy which this provides assurances of their information will not be leaked (Shiels 2008). Unfortunately, users who used Facebook personal information will still be leak out even though with any new privacy protection is provided. It is most important that the Facebook developer should respect users’ privacy and distributing their information to their advertising partners for money.


References:

Venezia P, 2010, How I learned to stop worrying about privacy and love Facebook, viewed 14 June 2010, http://www.infoworld.com/t/privacy/how-i-learned-stop-worrying-about-privacy-and-love-facebook-079?page=0,1.

Malik O, 2007, Is Facebook Beacon a Privacy Nightmare?, viewed 14 June 2010, http://gigaom.com/2007/11/06/facebook-beacon-privacy-issues/.

Sheils M, 2008, Facebook ‘violates privacy laws’, viewed 14 June 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7428833.stm.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Good design for screen genre

Creating a document alone requires more than just adding words to it and pictures. It is more than that. Schriver (1997) mentioned that a good document design is best to go with pictures and text to make it grasp the audience attention and also to make it easier to understand. Starting off with the text style where audience prefer summary reading and inverted pyramid style. According to Morkes and Nielsen (1997), audience would like to know of what is the document about whether it would be a waste of time or not. Brief text in a website helps audience to download it faster and also navigate the site easier. Based on the three principles of a good document would be scan able, concise and objective writing styles.

The slide uses a soft tone for the background to reinforce the messages in the slides making it more relaxing tone for readers. Then boldface is used for the headings to create attention of what is title of the discussion is about.



Lastly, bullet points are used to guide readers the flow of discussion (Reep 2006). Another importance would be the distribution of the information of the slides. The layout of text is best to be equilibrium such as the slides flows horizontally from left to right (Berhandt 2009).



From my opinion, the audience are more engaged to the picture slide rather than the other slides.



It shows that the interest of text and visual creates a better view of understand among the audience. Therefore, it is best to refrain from using symbolic icons to confuse the readers. Thus, writing of text should be direct and concise without any information loss.

References:

Bernhardt, SA 2009, ‘Seeing the text’, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 66-78

Reep,DC 2006, 'Document Design', Pearson/Longman, New York.

Nielsen,J & Morkes, J 1997,'Concise,Scannable and Objective:How to Write for the Web',Useit.com,viewed 7th April 2010,.

Schriver K.A 1997, 'Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers', Wiley Computer Pub., New York.

New forms of media publishing

Most people get their latest news or information from a television, websites, radio and so forth. The new ecosystem where we all grow up in a new media environment and it is definitely in a process of changing. The internet media environment is more interactive than a print media where convenience, fast searching of news, beautiful attractive background, hyperlinks and more. Blogging for instance, new blogs are created every 2 seconds and they are mainly trust source of information as they are expert in their fields. From my opinion, the trend is changing to a more flexible with more interaction in a quicker way than before. Also, it is always updated frequently with latest news on the internet media which is faster than print media. Therefore, anyone can use a search button to find the specific topic they want based on the keywords typed.


(Source: http://www.jayceooi.com/2007/09/27/wwf-malaysia-has-a-new-website-layout/)

Compare with print media, it is very lenghty and inconvenient.


(Source : http://sites.google.com/site/accsdbze/whats-new)

For example, with the latest technology gadgets such as laptops or even smart phones and an internet access, anyone could post up the latest news or information they know within few seconds. Unlike print medias, it takes much longer time for the news to reach the audience.

In Italy, Nichi Vendola, the left-leaning governor of Puglia was re-elected via the use of internet media such as Facebook, Tweeter and YouTube (Naughton 2006). Imagine the power of internet media in political campaigns and how people gain access to more information than the print media.

However, internet media does have less information and it is more to straight to the point where else print media is crowded with words and also looks less attractive. Thus, document designers ought to look at these flaws to create a better piece and effective design.

References;

Naughton, J 2006,‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’,viewed 7th April 2010,.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Blogging Communities

Basically, blogging community is a group of people with shared common of interest and their passion of blogging. Blogging alone does not just occur via internet. Meeting up or even have social events with one of another bloggers. So the point is, blogging community is not just about sharing their information or passion but it is more to having a great time together and making new friends with the same common interest (The Travel Tart 2009).

Lately, with such networking websites like Facebook and Tweeter, the number of people who used to visit personal blogs tends to decline. Creating a blogging community and to keep blogs alive is by understanding the importance of personal connection with the bloggers. Those who takes their time to leave a comment, it would be best to keep in touch with them or reply on the comment or via e-mail. Therefore, Comment E-mail Responder plugin for Wordpress allows to do both which makes it more convenient (Mueller 2009).

One blog centric community may have multiple authors in a single blog sharing their personal experience or information. Therefore, it is different than a traditional online community where this brings people closer. There would be rules and regulation for the members (White 2006).



Topic centric community arises between the blogs around with shared common interest such as entertainment and they have links from one blog to another via hyperlinks(White 2006).



Boundaried community is where members join this community and are given the opportunity to create blogs. Normally they have discussion board to voice out their opinions or even chat in their column(White 2006).



Global Voices community is topic centric blogging community where bloggers share their experiences from developing countries. This is the part where they also voice out their views of the topic (White 2006). However,acquiring more information among the links from one to another about a topic is not enough because the ideas are just circulating and agreeing among members of the community.



References:

Mueller, E 2009,'How to Create Community on Your Blog (For Wordpress Users)',Blissfully Domestic,viewed 7th April 2010,.

The Travel Tart 2009, 'What is a Blogging Community?',viewed 7th April 2010,.

White, N 2006, 'Blogs and Community- Launching a New Paradigm for Online Community?', The Knowledge Tree,viewed 7th April 2010,.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Classification of blogs and opinion about the most appropriate classification approach

Technically blogging alone does not mean only to express a writer’s thoughts for the day or describing their own personal matters. Blogs comes in many classifications such as subject matter (entertainment, fashion, politics etc) and media type (linklog, sketchlog, tumblelogs etc). According to Cismaru (2010), personal blog is an ongoing diary or a journal bout their personal life experiences. In Malaysia, the most popular and influence personal blogs would be nonetheless Kenny Sia ( Sabahan.com 2007).

While searching for blogs, normally I would seek for the one with a same background interest as me. For instance, my personal blog is about entertainment. I would definitely search for bloggers who blogs on the favourite artist of mine. When I view a blog, I would be more concern of the topic as it provides relevant information of the same interest. The style of it is also important for the readers to be able to read the information clearly. Definitely a beautiful design would be a plus point to the blog but if it is lack of relevant information, it would turn the readers off.

Comparing from one of the type of blogs would be Diary blog with Personal blog which they are similar in terms of contents such as personal lives stories and so forth (Funnel 2008). It is just the name given to that genre where one is diary while other is personal. It used to be very popular back then till other networking sites such as Facebook and Tweeter emerges. From my opinion, blogging on personal stuff will not be as convenient as the networking sites which are more users friendly and a variety of applications to choose from.

References:

Cismaru, DM 2010,'Types of Blogs: Blog Communication in Contemporary Society',viewed 7th April 2010,.

Funnel,A 2008,'A Taxanomy of Blogs:The Media Report',viewed 7th April 2010,.

Sabahan.com 2007, '50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia',viewed 7th April 2010,http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Blogs as current phenomenon and benefits of blogging to the community

More bloggers nowadays tend to make extra income from blogs and majority of them are part-timers. Bloggers earns extra incomes from entrepreneurs as they advertise their brands from their own website on one’s blog (Sussman 2009).



Indeed, blogging became a big hit among politicians especially. Years much later, based on the graph, blogging would just be more on politicians around the world discussing on elections, government issues and so forth.



White (2009) mentioned ever since advertising became a hit on blogs, bloggers in different region have garnered higher average annual revenue more than $6,000.

Comparing bloggers in Europeans and Asia with both having advertising on their blogs tend to make more revenue than the United States bloggers. Surprisingly, three quarters of these successful bloggers are in fact males who they are more likely to be professionals or corporate bloggers.

Basically political blogs is more dominant especially in United States during the election of the new president as well as it plays a part of a deciding factor (Sussman 2009)

Indeed blogging is beneficial to the public in terms of making profit. Advertisers definitely take the opportunity to promote and create awareness in blogs. Thus, bloggers will earn profit from advertisers. Political issues are popular in any countries especially nearing election time. Iran banned journalists from around the state and blocked popular websites. People turned to blogs to know more of the on-going situation in Iran.

References:

Sussman,M 2009,'Day 4: Blogging Revenues, Brands and Blogs: SOTB 2009',Technorati,viewed 4th April 2010, .

Sussman, M 2009,'Day 5: Twitter, Global Impact and the Future Of Blogging - SOTB 2009',Technorati,viewed 4th April 2010,.

White,D 2009,'Day 5: Brands Enter The Blogosphere',Technorati,viewed 4th April 2010,.

Purpose of my blog

The aim of this blog is to analyze and review the issues in publication and design. This blog would be focusing on issues of blogging, media publishing and web-based media. Thus, students and professionals who are related communication field will find this blog beneficial for their future references.