Reflection

After a long and windy 3 months of posting up blogs, I have decided that reflect back on the issues and things I encountered in the Issues in Publication and Design subject. I would like to say that it was rather shocking to find out the many theories and principles applied in a document. Document design concepts as proposed by Reep (2006) explained to me how both visuals and text must complement each other in order to produce high salience materials. Besides that, the effectiveness of writing as described by Putnis and Petelin (1996) too gave me lots to think about as I didn't know it was in the document's context and readership.

What's more, the issues mentioned in my blog gave me a different perspective on them. Knowing how to self censor has truly saved me from trouble and embarrassment. Regardless using either social sites or blogs, I still would reconsider words I used. Additionally, I have also learnt how to treat sensitive issues like religion and racism better as this subject has been repeated many times in my course. Lastly, I’m happy that this subject has taught me many things that would assist me in my communication course and in the future when I encounter issues that concern publication and design

Reference

Putnis P & Petelin R 1996, ‘Writing to communicate’, in Professional communication, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

Reep D 2006, ‘Principles of document design’, in Technical writing, 6th edn, Pearson Edu, Inc., New York.

The Next Level: Online Videos to report News

 

Internet Superpowers

YouTube, MetaCafe and Dailymotion, are today's top running media hosting websites and the society are labeling this statement as a hardcore fact. Online videos today can branch out from music to news, and movies to D.I.Y videos, it doesn't matter what you want because they have it all. And this may be the reason why media websites are crawling all over them.

O'Neill's (2011) article that reviews D S Simmon's survey covers the fast growing phenomenon. In the survey, it is said to be a total 85% of online media websites are now using online video content to cover the news, jumping a third from last year (O'Neill 2011). The amount of users mentioned would suggest that the news industry has taken a turn on its toll and is now upon online videos. With the perks online videos give, it wouldn't surprising if it has more viewers than print media. The news online would be faster, more entertaining, creative, up to date, have real time coverage and even have live postings compared to a day to day newspaper. Besides that, the users would prefer an audio-visual experience more rather than words on a paper; it would also benefit the handicapped. Additionally, O'Neill (2011) mentions that consumers these days have shorter and shorter attention spans and watching a short video is often preferable to reading a long news article. What's more, users can interact using the internet to browse through online videos. One can also post a video response or comment on the watched video which will be replied almost immediately by others. For example, a person can watch the news on YouTube and later post up his/her views on the issue. Sad thing is, not many people uses this often, as they prefer commenting on the video as anonymous people.

On the business aspect, advertising online can boost sales as it can be distributed worldwide. According to the DS Simon survey, 80% of the sites are more interesting in monetizing their sites as they consider selling advertising spaces. O'Neill (2011) adds on that 'video is a great channel for monetization..'.

As an audience, I find that online sources are less reliable but there is more variety to them. Apart from that, everything is easy to access and entertaining.




Reference
O'Niell, M 2011, '85% Of Media Websites Now Use Online Video To Cover News', Social Times, viewed 13 November 2011, <http://socialtimes.com/85-of-media-websites-now-use-online-video-to-cover-news_b60505>.

Media Prima Ad Causes Public to Go Wild

Racism has been an issue that has been brought up over and over again ever since people started noticing their differences in color, shape and culture. There is no doubt that racism would be ending in the 50 years or so, but the society has slowly learnt how to treat sensitive issues like these. Our country, Malaysia which has been through lots of racial incidents, recently hit a speed bump during the Ramadan festival.

The accused

During the festive season, Media Prima Bhd launched a controversial ad on 8TV that brought the public to heavy criticism. The three public-service-announcement-based commercials were about a Chinese girl 'eating in public, wearing revealing clothing and being loud and obnoxious during the Muslim fasting month' (Yong 2011). Seeing that Malaysia has many cultural and situational context, for instance a very sensitive country, multi-race, strong Islamic overrules, and one sided, 8TV should have refrained from the act.

Besides that, the reconsideration of the ad should had went through advertising ethics first before it was aired. As explained by Chris Moore (2004), the choices made by people in advertising are never easy, like he said: 'they are never in black and white. They're subtle, shades-of-grey choices, juicy enough for a Philosophy major'. Referring to his theory, all ads should be thought of in many perspectives of the viewers before releasing them to avoid complications. Not forgetting the society's mindset, it is important to take that into account as the ad is for the multi-cultural society, so you can't please all sides.

Malaysia should be all grown up now.

In my view, there's no need for heavy criticism, a diversify country like Malaysia should have already achieve an agreement on issues like this a long time ago. Our country has been through so much, it should act maturely and calm about incidents like these. Advertisements should be creative, funny, and realistic.




Reference
Yong, HC 2011, 'Media Prima pulls out ‘racist’ Ramadan ads', The Malaysian Insider, viewed 13 November 2011, <http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/print/malaysia/media-prima-pulls-out-racist-ramadan-ads/>.

Moore, C 2004, 'Ethics in Advertising', Advertising Educational Foundation, viewed 13 November 2011, <http://www.aef.com/on_campus/classroom/speaker_pres/data/3001>.

Dodging Copyrights

The internet has brought our society an abundance of information. Question is, where does all these information come from? Sure, there are people who publish their original materials online, but there are also people who cheat their way through originality; they steal. Throughout the years, many cases have been brought to court for appeal and have created a bunch complicated matters for the society. All these would bring us to our next issue, copyrights.

Literally the 'copyright logo'

In Pinchon's (2011) article, she discusses about the copyright issues and mentions that the publishers are frustrated with their inability to keep their materials under control. Additionally, the commentators are also doing their best to carefully source materials in order to avoid complications with copyrights and infringements. Incidents where copyrights are at stake usually end up with the author suing the culprit, for instance, specialized copyright litigation company Righthaven once sued medjacksport.com user, Wayne Hoehn for posting an article for his prompt discussion (Pinchon 2011).

Fair usage of materials

This leads us to the principles on ethical publishing where the concerns on etiquette, fraudulent publications, plagiarism, duplicated publications and authorship is crucial (King n.d). As a writer, one must be aware of the mentioned principles to avoid conflict with copyrights. Regardless rather its online or on paper, sourcing correctly and crediting the author is very important. In Judith's site where she lists a few myths on online copyrights, there are a handful of complicated issues that she gave clarification to. One of the myths that involve the ownership of images states that the consent of the owner should be given first before publication. The site furthers explain the different online publishing issues encountered by us daily. For example, a person can only quote a sentence given that it's not tampered with this is because a tampered sentence would change the authors original meaning (Judith 2007).

While issues like these are easily made, we must all be cautious and be fair to the authors as they have put in hard work into their findings, give the credits to them. No one likes to be taken of their rightful materials 




Reference
Pichon, F 2011, 'Copyrighted material: fair and unfair use', Editors Weblog, viewed 12 November 2011, <http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2011/06/copyrighted_material_fair_and_unfair_use.php>.http://www.madjacksports.com/

King, CR n.d, 'Ethical Issues in Writing and Publishing', Oncology Nursing Society, viewed 12 November 2011, <http://www.ons.org/Publications/CJON/AuthorInfo/WritingSupp/Ethics/>.

Judith 2007, '7 Online Copyright Myths', theistudio.com, viewed 12 November 2011, <http://www.theistudio.com/muse/133/7-online-copyright-myths>.

iPad, the 'new' newspaper?

Due to technology, our world has quickly evolved into a computer based only planet. Ever since the creation of Apple's iPad, many task and information can now be accessed through the famous tablet computer. From entertainment to business, the iPad has brought technology into an advancement.With the basis of the iPad, Rupert Murdoch has launched the first ever iPad-only newspaper (Trotter 2011). This event lead to the boost of the iPad's sales which achieved a  whooping 7.26 million devices since its release in April 2010. In addition, papers such as the New York Times and Fox News has decided to  hop in the bandwagon.

Online News on the iPad

Even though, this newly designed application eases our access of information drastically and saves money and time, there are still people who appreciates reading a traditional newspaper. Regardless of its advantage people still prefer the old instead of the new because of the its originality; it just isn't right some say. Considering the fact that a person only has to pay 1 per week or $40 per year which is cheaper than a physical newspaper at $2 per edition for the New York Times or The Washington Post, people still choose traditional newspapers (Trotter 2011).  Whatever the issue, there's always bound to be different expectations by the audience.

Physical Materials

Apart from that, the trending iPad wonder app may also have drawbacks compared to the traditional newspaper. Using the iPad's multi-touch technology which is said to make everything easier and a lot more fun, does not mean its nicer to look at (Apple.com n.d). Readers insist on reading a newspaper as it is physically felt and flip based, instead of touching a screen and scrolling with ones fingers. 


In spite of the so called trend, the media today still has not undergone change. With the radio, television and print materials providing the society with information, the iPad only seems to encourage younger generations to read. The decline in newspaper circulation on the other hand will be continue to decline as news consumption are made online.








Reference
Trotter, C 2011, 'iPad-only newspaper furthers media trend', The Cento, viewed 12 November 2011, <http://www.thecento.com/news/2011/feb/17/ipad-only-newspaper-furthers-media-trend>.

Apple.com n.d, 'iPad', Apple.com, viewed 12 November 2011, <http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/>.

e) Screen vs. Print Document Design

The Star Online

The Star Newspapers

There are many different issues regarding the document designs for the screen (online websites) and print (newspapers). As we can observe from the pictures above, the layout between these two designs can be vastly different. Nielson (1999) states that the dimensionality of print design is '2-dimensional' as it is possible for readers to turn the pages, unfortunately, interaction in print designs are rare. A web page on the other hand is '1-dimensional and N-dimensional', and can only be scrolled among the pages.

Apart from that, screen based-designs can be inferior to the print design, for now, because of its current slow bandwidth; reading the papers can be faster than waiting for a web page to load. On the upside, screen based-designs will eventually outgrow print design in the future as technology will super size the screens until it's newspaper-like. 

Emily (2009) also mentioned in one of her postings, 'Print vs Web', that these two types of design will have their differences. In print designs,  it is important to get 'the audience to sit on a page of a magazine long enough to get the main concept and message across' as it is rather expensive for multiple page advertisements. Therefore, textures, shapes and imagery have to draw the audiences attention. On the contrary, screen design require measurements in pixels instead of inches. With that said, there can be multiple pages, given that consistency of the ad is at hand. Additionally, the design has to look their best on all sorts of monitors and monitor resolutions. Take for instance, the Star Newspaper and the Star Online, one of these two has to draw the audience's attention more, however this issue can be debated for a long time due to the different perspective and mindsets people might have.

Reference

Nielson, J 1999, 'Differences between Print design and Web Design', Useit.com, viewed 28 August 2011, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html>.

Emily 2009, 'Print vs Web', ClickBrand, viewed 28 August 2011, <http://www.clickbrand.com/blog/web-design/print-vs-web/>.

d) New Forms of Media Publishing

A few years ago, the folks in Malaysia would wake up early in the morning just to grab the papers, but since the arrival of new technology, these sightings would slowly disappear and eventually linger our forgotten memories. The usage of old media such as the 'analog radio and TV and printed materials such as books and magazines' have been scrapped off since people these days would mostly rely on new forms of media such as 'CDs, DVDs and, most significantly, over the Internet' (PC Mag 2011). Research shows that we are slowly losing the need for old media as new media overshadows it by providing faster and better coverage. Pew Research Center Publications (2011) reported that '44% of online news users get news at least a few times a week through emails, automatic updates or posts from social networking sites'. 

What's more is that, new media today has changed the roles of traditional journalism and communication with sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Using sites like these, news reports would be more credible as some news on the papers would have been manipulated by the government as a cover up story. WantToKnow, a site that host many top journalists, who whole heatedly supports democracy can be one very good example of freedom of speech.

While addictive popular social-media related sites like Facebook and YouTube extends its empire, 'the world now spends over 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites...which equates to 22 percent of all time online or one in every four and half minutes' (Owyang 2010). Even though new media might give us lots to hope for, it also takes up our valuable time and health. It's no surprise that our society today is turning into zombies due to the the lack of physical interaction and exercise.

Reference

PC Mag 2011, 'Encyclopedia', PC Mag, viewed 25 August 2011, <http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=old+media&i=56879,00.asp>.  

Pew Research Center Publications 2011, 'New Media, Old Media', PewResearch.org, viewed 25 August 2011, <http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1602/new-media-review-differences-from-traditional-press>.

Owyang, J 2010, 'A Collection Of Social Network Stats for 2010', Web Strategist, viewed 25 August 2011, <http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/01/19/a-collection-of-social-network-stats-for-2010/>.

c) Explain briefly about the types of blogging communities & methods to build blogging communities. Then, discuss the structure of one blogging community in brief.

With all the posts regarding the blogging phenomenon and its different genres, we will now journey into the different types of communities blogging has to offer. First up, what is a blogging community? Owyang (2007) closely defines this term with the word 'online community'; 'a group of people with similar goals or interests connect and exchange information using web tools'. In other context, a blogging community is described as people aiming 'to socialize, make friends, and share ideas' (The Travel Tart 2009).

Eventually, questions like 'how does a blogger creates a community?' might arise among your thoughts, but fear not for Holman (2011) will give us a further insight on it. In 'Spice Up Your Blog', she lists down a couple of tips one can use, for instance, a blogger can respond to comments to give people a good impression, have a local blogger meet up to build better relationships, and feature each others links on their blog to promote one another.  

Blog Based Communities (cited in Whites blog)

In Nancy White's blog, she suggest that there are three types of  blogging community: the Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community, the Central Connecting Topic Community and the Boundaried Community. 

Single Blog/Blog Centric Community (cited in White's blog)

This type of blog is usually owned by organizations or solo bloggers, bringing other bloggers together to create a community and also to get to know each other better by commenting on the blog's posts. Addionally, commenters can respond to the blogger but they cannot change his/her blog's topics.

Topic Centered Community (cited in White's blog)

The structure portrait above resembles a network based community that is supported by multiple forms of technology. By using communication technologies such as public or private e-mails and text messages, the blogger does not have to always provide personal information about themselves on their blogs.

Boundaried Communities (cited from White's blog)

In this structure, the community would revolve around readers who subscribe to a particular blog. By saying so, they are to register as members and create an account to enable them to communicate and share ideas on the blog. In addition, these types of communities will have their very own features, like instant messaging, discussion boards and social networking. Sites like MySpace and Yahoo 360 are good examples of this. Apart from that, the downside of this is that RSS feed is not as emphasized due to the built in technology.

Observing blogs like Global Voices, we can see that the blog resembles a lot on the boundaried community. This is because the blog host many bloggers that all submit their posts to a common denominator. Besides that, the writers first have to go through a registration process to be able to post updates.








Reference
Owyang, J 2007, 'Define the term, "online community"', Web Strategy, viewed 24 August 2011, <http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/12/28/defining-the-term-community/>.

The Travel Tart 2009, 'What is a blogging community?', The Travel Tart, viewed 24 August 2011, <http://www.thetraveltart.com/what-is-a-blogging-community/>.

Holman, K 2011, 'How to Create a Blogging Community?', Spice Up Your Blog,  viewed 24 August 2011, <http://www.spiceupyourblog.com/2011/03/how-to-create-blogging-community.html>.

White, N 2006, 'Blogs and Community, launching a new paradigm for online community?', The Knowledge Tree, viewed 24 August 2011, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>.

b) Classification of Blogs & Opinions About the Most Appropriate Classification Approach

Fruits or vegetables, a car or a bike, and sometimes even 'hot' or 'not' - these are the daily classifications we make in our everyday life, but do we ponder on the different types of blogs out there? Do they even get an appropriately fixed classification or are they just any other droplet in the puddle? To ease all your head scratching, the following will provide you some examples of the different types of blogs.

Subject matter
- Politics -e.g Lim Kit Siang's Blog
- Fashion - e.g I Am Fashion
- History - e.g U.S Intellectual History
- Law - e.g The Korean Law Blog

Device
- Mobile blogging (Moblogs) - e.g Ernie the Attorney

Media type
- Video blogging (Vlogs) - e.g RayWilliamJohnson
- Collection of URL blogs (Linklog) - e.g Iamcal
- Collection of sketches in a blog (Sketchlog) - e.g Rob Sheridan
- Collection of variety of links, such as pictures, videos and short posts (Tumblelog) - e.g Georgia Is Your Friend

Status of publishers
- Business blog - Seth Godin
- Corporate blog - Whole Foods Market

While there are countless ways to classify blogs, transcripts from Funnel's (2008) interview with Margaret Simons points out that there are more analytical ways to sort of blogs.  For instance, Simons suggest that they can be grouped into pamphleteering blogs, digest blogs, advocacy blogs, and exhibition blogs just by observing the structure of the piece, whereas, an easier approach can be implemented by just considering the topic, style, and format. Spotting topic-based blogs are easy due to the straight forwardness of the author; I Am Fashion's blog is an obvious example because the pictures and terms all relates back to the main topic, 'fashion'. Style and format classification of blogs on the other hand can be presented through Rob Sheriden and Georgia Is Your Friend  as both of these reflect on the common look of the blogs - all these blogs look alike.








Reference
Funnel, A 2008, 'A taxation of blogs', The Media Report, viewed 23 August 2011, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript)>.

a) Blogs as Current Phenomenon & Benefits of Blogging to the Community

Blogging in this new found era has brought our entire planet into a siege of informational black hole. While father time flashes through our life, the numbers of bloggers worldwide increase vigorously to an extend that internet 'police' struggle to track us down. According to BlogPulse as of 20 March 2011, the number of the current blogosphere is stated to be a whopping 168,493,921.

While the amount of blogs is staggering, they still can all be categorized into different trends. Statistics from Google Trend states that the all time top three blog trending regions are from Asian countries such as Singapore, India and Philippines (refer to picture on the right).

Certain countries have different types of blogs that prevails longer than the others. For instance, Malaysian readers are more inclined towards food and personal blogs which are also result in their extended blogging lifespan. BestBlogsAsia has proved itself by providing readers with new in sights on Malaysia's most influential bloggers, which consist of Kenny Sia, Liew CF and Hotscreensaver. The mentioned bloggers are known for their blogs that are personal, tech savvy, and food related respectively.

As for American blogs, the TIME Online have coughed up a list full of the bests in their country. Raging from health & fitness blogs to community art project blogs, the variety of these jaw dropping phenomenons are just too addictive for the eyes. Zenhabbits, PostSecrets and ClimateProgress are the best three blogs that TIME Online has chosen and all of them have their very own upsides.

Judging by the different types of blogs in the different countries, we can see that the mixture of these blogs covers a whole lot of ground. It's good new for the community as we all can relate and learn from these internet masters. With the help of personal, tech savvy, food, health & fitness, art and political blogs, we'll be able to pick up detailed experiences with only a click on of a button. Thus, making everything less complicated and cheap. This would also help the community to be much more knowledgeable and understanding in every aspect imaginable.

Reference
BlogPulse 2011, 'Blog Pulse Stats', viewed 20 August 2011, <http://www.blogpulse.com/>.

Google Trends 2011, Google Trend, viewed 20 August 2011,<http://www.google.com/trends?q=blog+trends&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0>.

BestBlogsAsia 2009, 'Most Influential Bloggers in Malaysia', BestBlogsAsia, viewed 21 March 2011<http://www.bestblogs.asia/influential-bloggers-malaysia.php>.

TIME 2010, Time Online, viewed 21 August 2011, <http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1999770,00.html>.

Purpose of My Blog

The purpose of this blog is to educate, provide references and encourage research in the field of publication and design. The issues that are going to be mentioned in this blog will give students and publishing companies an alternate view on publishing and designing.