Good design for screen genre

For this entry, I'm going to critique my own group power point presentation slides on The semiotic landscape Language and Visual communication. By applying theories and design principles from scholarly discussion, hopefully it will lead to improved design presentation in the future.

Slide 12

Reep (2006, pg.134) believed to increase readers interest and successful representation of a document, words and visuals are merged on guiding to their understanding and interpretation. Based on the statement, it can be said that slide 23 is inappropriate as the words have lack of meaning towards the scattered images. Furthermore reader interpret a document by “knowledge driven” that associate with knowledge, experience, feelings, social awareness and culture to their understanding of a content (Shriver K.A.1997, pg. 367) Since majority of the audience have different understanding and interpretation of an image due to cultural & societal background, those confused images above have varieties of definition. Personally in order for the presenter to improve on satisfying the reader's understanding, design principles such as balance, proportion ,sequence & consistency are to be considered into the slides. Take Slides 12 and compare it with Slides 24 & 25 below:-

Slides 24 & 25

In comparison to Slides 12, Slides 24 & 25 can be very well understood for the audience as the images are complements by words explanation.This is supported by Schriver (1997, pg. 366) says that document designers have to understand the semiotic landscape of readers to design prose and graphics. It depends on reader’s spatial abilities, where different people would interpret the document differently. With this organized and balanced slides, the presenter will be able to focus clearly on the content and present it up to the audience's expectation.

References

1)

Reep, D. C. 2006, ‘Document Design’, in Technical Writing, 6th ed., Pearson Edu. Inc, New York, Ch. 6, pp. 134.

2)

Schriver, K. A. 1997, ‘The interplay of words and pictures’, in Dynamics in document design : creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York, Ch. 6, pp. 366-367

New Forms of Media Publishing

Today in this progressing society, new media technologies have changed on how we communicate socially. According to webopedia (2003) new media are defined as a generic term for many different forms of electronic communication that are made possible through the use of computer technology. With new forms of media publishing available to the public at the click of a mouse, it is not surprised that website like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook & alternative online newspapers have changed the roles of journalism & communication. Furthermore in comparison to the old media, new forms of media publishing relies on wide range communication modalities such as text, images, video, & graphics as well as heightened on audience involvement and hypermedia (Pavlik, 2001)

The following are new forms of media publishing websites and its examples :-

1) Device & media types of blogs:

• Moblog – mobile blogging, e.g.Yahoo mobile blog

• Vlog – video blogging, e.g.YouTube

Splog – spam blog, e.g. Casino online

• Linklog – URLs (hyperlinks) blogging, e.g. Jennifer’s link Log

• Sketchlog – sketch blogging, e.g Jose village’s sketch log

• Tumblelog, e.g. Mike Nowak’s tumblr log

2) Online newspaper, e.g.The star online

3) Online magazine, e.g. Men’s health

4) Online books, e.g. Read online

The Latest trends

Originally it used to be that the main purpose of a blog is for an individual to reflect their life and function as an online diary. However with the availability of the internet and wide range of interest from the public, blog have expanded to many different types of genre. What's more, the content is delivered differently from others.

Take YouTube for example. This new forms of media publishing are popular throughout the World Wide Web. The popularity of YouTube can be explained by the conflation of three “revolutions”: relatively inexpensive video cameras and accompanying software; the advent and popularity of virtual communities; and the desire for unfiltered, as opposed to “slick,” information (Grossman, 2006). The freedoms of users when one are able to upload and share their video online for free and viewed by audiences from all over the world are some of the benefits when using the vlog.

To some extent YouTube has been immensely successful, averaging 65,000 daily uploads and being visited by 20% of Internet users every day (Kruitsboch & Nack, 2008) With this phenomena, other video blogging websites such as daily motion, twitter vlog, Google videos, AOL video blog has lead to the emergence of the new media ecosystem.

Source:https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBp2xapFLTARh5CWgNBmhaY1rLO75tmteiRs_cXlmPsQQQg-w-D5zLv1Uvi5qTD1aOF4QeNwx1fRy-w78K-6ve8poglNW5VLn9JprCR68xwhDqTq296vmVa7K4Ws0c50Jdz8bQQq82PZi7/s640/new-youtube-homepage.png

Although YouTube benefits majority of the online users, the video blogging website also has some issue and problems. The copyrighted material for instance is one of the most talked about issue faced by the company. Since majority of the video uploads are free, registered user have this privilege on uploading any kind of video format such as drama, movies, music videos, and documentary. However due to violation of copyright law, most of the videos will be immediately removed by the primary owner.

According to Atwood (2007), 90 percent of the content on the site is copyrighted and used without permission. One of the notable copyright infringement case when media conglomerate giant, Viacom sued You Tube for $1 billion on publishing their programmes intentionally & illegally throughout the site. Such effort the company has taken on combating the issue is a warning to the users when uploading any copyrighted video materials.

Source:http://www.techshout.com/images/youtube-icc.jpg

References

1) Atwood, J 2007, Youtube: The Big Copyright Lie, online, retrieved 18th April 2010 from http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/youtube-the-big-copyright-lie.html

2) Grossman, Lev, 2006. “Best Invention: YouTube.” Time Magazine. November 7.

3) Kruitsboch G. & Nack. F, "Broadcast yourself on you tube-really?", international multimedia conference, pp 7-10, retrieved http://staff.science.uva.nl/~nack/papers/hcc02s-kruitbosch.pdf

4) Pavlik, John V. Journalism and New Media (Columbia University Press, June 2001).

5) New Media, 2003, online, retrieved 19th April 2010, from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/N/new_media.html

Bloggers Community & Structure of a blogging community

Firstly what is a blogging community? According to Rich (1999) blogging community are a group of bloggers who interact online and a frequent contributor to discussions & ideas. What's more, they foster community and conversation by allowing readers to comment on postings, thus becoming an author in turn, or by providing an e-mail address to dialog directly with the blogger. (Gill, 2004) Frankly this will allow the audience to be comfortable on interacting with the blog and enhanced their interpersonal communication within the blogging community. Similar to my previous entry on classification of blogs, blogging community comes in varieties of topics. However the differences are that user have to be registered and participate within their own desire to the destined community. Personally blogging community help increase the number of viewers as majority of the user shares similar interest.

White (2006) stated that there're three types of community blogs. The Followings are the three examples :-

1) Single blogger centric communities

Single blogger centric communities is where a single blog owner has full control of their own blog platform. According to White (2006) The blog owner can set the rules and norms of engagement. There is no expectation of democracy, although when bloggers close or remove comments, cries of 'censorship' still ring out. But there is no obligation on the blogger to either provide the option for comments, nor to allow all comments.

2) Topic centric communities

Topic centric communities focuses on one particular topic and interest.In comparison to single blogger communities, it has no single technological platform, with each blogger selecting their own tool. What links them is hyperlinks, in the form of blogrolls, links to other blogs within blog posts, tagging, aggregated feeds (using RSS), trackbacks and comments. (White, 2006). Notable example of topic centric communities blog is Lee & Satchi levers's the world is not flat blog that centers in the travel blog community.

3) Boundaried communities

Boundaried communities are compilation of blogs and blog readers that linked to a single site. In short members register and 'join' the community and are offered the chance to create a blog. This boundary makes them the closest form to traditional forum based communities. (White 2006). Social networking site especially like Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster and others are prominence examples of boundaried blogging communities.

An example of the structure of a blogging community

In the Malaysian blogging community, Che Det is a blog owned by former Malaysian prime minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. Based on the shown examples above, this blog falls under the category of single blogger centric communities. Generally the purpose of the blog is where he share his opinion and thoughts on wide range of issues and news that is happening around Malaysia. Only those that are registered to his blog are eligible to leave comments in regards of his entry.

Source: http://allmalaysia.info/archives/2008/5/2/ambp/n_16blog.jpg

References

1) Rich, C. 1999, Creating online media: a guide to research, writing and design on the Internet, McGraw Hill, Australia

2) Gill, K.E., 2004, "how can we measure the influence of the blogosphere" journal of communication, retrieved 12th of April 2010, from faculty.washington.edu/kegill/pub/www2004_keg_ppt.pd

3) White, N. 2006, "Blogs and community: Launching a new paradigm for online community?", Going Communal, online, retrieved April 12th, 2010

http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

Classification of Blogs & The most appropriate classification approach

Classification of Blogs

As mentioned on my previous entry, people blog based on their interest and understanding of an issue. Due to this phenomenon, there are varieties of blogs available online on catering to the need to an audience. According to Technorati.com, there are eight categories of subjects such as entertainment, sports, technology, politics, living, business, environment & science. These blogs topics are usually link to the exact audiences who have similar interests and the readers are often considered as an avid follower.

Apart from the eight categories above, blog also comes in form of media . The following are the various types of media blog:-

Vlog:- Video blog is a form of blogging that specializes on video. It consist of video clips that can be upload, share, and view by a user. youtube.com, the net-show.com, & vimeo.com are some of the most notable examples across the world wide web.

Link Blog:- Link blog is a blog that consist of other people's blogs' URL and user are able to link to those blogs. Example of a link blog is Jennifer’s Linklog

Sketch Blog:- For those people that have interest on images, sketch, & drawings. Example of a groovy sketch blog is Kristen’s sketch blog

Tumblelog:- Short and precise blog entry that consist of both visual and text. Example of tumbleblog is Thania Nasiha’s tumble blog

Device:-

Moblog:- With new technologies implement on mobile phones, users now have the ability to post blog entries via mobile blogging through their own device. Example of a mobile phone blogging website is Flickr

The most appropriate classification approach

These day blog comes in varieties of topic,style, format & genre. Obviously with so many combinations to choose from, it is very difficult to differentiate on blog specialization. Generally I believe that personal blog is the most appropriate and suitable for all of the audience as it gets the most attention from the online community. The rise of personal blog lead to an individual on gaining benefit of personal development & growth on writing skills (Benefits of personal blog, 2010). Furthermore the blog is considered user friendly as majority on what the user post are based on their own opinions and interpretations.

References

1) Blog directory 2008, Technorati, online,retrieved on 9th April 2010, from

<http://technorati.com/blogs/directory>

2) Benefits of personal blog 2010, online, retrieved on 9th April 2010, from

<http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/288379-benefits-of-personal-blog>

Blog as current phenomenon & Its Benefits To The Community

Blog as current phenomenon

With the amount of information available to the public at the click of a mouse, the size of current blogosphere is growing rapidly. Nowadays regardless of whether you are a student, lecturer or professionals, all of us have different opinions and understanding based on the environment that we live in.

Thanks to the internet and the invention of weblog, people have access on sharing their view, understanding, & analysis on wide of range of issues that can generate online public attention & interest.

According to Technorati’s 2008 State of Blogosphere Report, Blogging is in fact a global phenomenon collectively creating close to one million posts every day. What’s more Blogs have representation in top ten web site lists across all key categories, and have become essential to the media ecosystem

As blogging has gained popularity among the online user over the past several years, the variety of topics and subjects discussed by bloggers are varied. However universally the most notable and popular topics are personal, lifestyle and technology as shown by the chart below:-

With a weblog created every second, the blogosphere is continuing to grow. It suggests, on average, the number of blogs is doubling every five months. (bbc.co.uk). Furthermore Technorati.com reported that 100,000 new blogs were being created every day, and 1.3 million blog posts were written. And now there is more than 57 million blogs and believes that 55% are active and updates at least every 2 months.

Benefit of blogging to the community

In the Malaysian context, The Malaysian bloggers are recognized globally with topic on politics. This is due to the fact that Malaysian media follows the authoritarians system of press that based on government’s manipulation, propagation and regulation over the mainstream media. Malaysia’s uncharitable climate for the press may have driven people to find ways to express themselves alternatively, in this case weblog, where the government finds it more difficult to pursue.

In relation to the statement above, Blogs is an alternative media that help community to share their view, opinion, ideas, and belief on wide range of issue and news. What's more blog are free and simple to set up as majority of the public nowadays have access to the internet.

From the community point of view, blogs have become vital news sources in their own right. For example, national disasters like Hurricane Katrina, The 2004 South Asian Tsunami, and other major events have lead to in-depth footages & reports when traditional media outlet were inadequate. Overall blogging increase community interest as it is quick and effective way for the public to get updates conveniently.

References

About Us 2008, Technorati.com, online, retrieved 6th April 2010,

<http://technorati.com/about/>

BBC News 2006, "Blogosphere sees healthy grow", online, retrieved 6th April 2010,<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6178611.stm>

Blogging Hits Mainstream, Integral to Media Ecosystem, online, retrieved 6th April 2010,

<http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/blogging-hits-mainstream-integral-to-media-ecosystem-6256/technorati-state-blogosphere-report-blog-topics-diverse-september-2008jpg>