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.