Good design for screen genre

In the cyberspace world nowadays became more and more competitive as in people will not easily notice your post or presentation. Simply because there are too many people do likewise. Website document design therefore is a very important element to draw people’s attention to what you going to present. Theoretically by referring to Diane Reep (2006), the audience or readers do not only read your document’s content, but they also look into your visual presentation of the text, which is mostly how the text was arranged and presented to the audience. This is because “in an effective document… the words and visuals support each other.”(Reep, D 2006)

As comparing to the basic design principles stated by Diane Reep, in the Assignment 1 presentation there are a few slides which had a good visual presentation.

For example, slide 3 from our group presentation.

From this slides, it is not only text based but also visual element to attract audience to read. However, the arrangement of the visual perception might have a little messy. The audience might not interested in reading afterall.

Another example,

This is a good example with simple visual aids and easy to understand. According to a survey done by John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen (1997), relationship of humor and personality in a document keeps the readers interested and well entertained, thus it increased your audience attention.

Lastly, an example of a text based slide which the reader hardly dwell into. There might have visual presentation but it is kind of ‘boring’ for the reader.

References:

Bernhardt, A. S 1986, Seeing the Text, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 37, No.1 (Feb., 1986), pp. 66-78.

Morkes, J & Nielsen J 1997, Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web, useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website, viewed 18 April 2010, <http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html>

Reep, D n.d, Document Design, Technical Writing, New York : Pearson/Longman, c2006, Ch. 6, pp. 133-172.

New forms of media publishing

In the olden days, media could works through few medium, either newspaper or TV news. However, due to the technology in the cyberspace nowadays, media industry could seem to be expanded through online. Maybe it is for the convenience purposes, but no one expected the growth would be that rapid.

In the year 2010, the new media trends are no longer BBC news or CNN news, but guess what, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter hits to the top of the world. For example, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February 2009 from 2007 (Armano, D 2009). According to Digital Media Buzz website (Djavit, N & Newnes, P 2009), Facebook, YouTube and Twitter had been the newest trends. The issues pertaining to it is that they replaced personal email. This means that Google Mail, Hotmail, Hoover (In UK) and many other e-mails somehow are degrading. It can be foresees that in the future, they will be no longer exist.

Founded on Naughton, John (2006), an article entitled ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’, had stated that the emergence of new media ecosystem such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and etc had somehow affecting much of the business world nowadays. This include business models, newspaper and even politics (2006).

References:

Armano, D 2009, Six Social Media Trends for 2010, Harvard Business Review, viewed 18 April 2010, <http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/11/six_social_media_trends.html>.

Djavit, N, & Newnes, P 2009, Top Digital Trends For 2010, Digital Media Buzz, viewed 18 April 2010, <http://www.digitalmediabuzz.com/2009/12/top-digital-trends-for-2010/>.

Naughton, J 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, viewed 18 April 2010, <http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>.

Types of blogging communities and methods of building blogging communities

Referring to Anthony, a writer of The Travel Tart website (2009), he defined blogging communities as a community with their own identity and belonging welcoming anyone to join in and find out more (2009). Basically, it means that an online communities who blog about their interest to allow other people to view and commenting one another.

A few ways of creating blogging community through software or reader community; In Webpodge, there is an software called Drupal will need to be installed first. Then activate the Blog Module. Followed by installing TinyMCE WYSISWYG Editor module to enable editor in blog posts. After that, installing Image Attach module to give an option on uploading pictures or images. Lastly, embracing your own creativity by creating community tags, give each user a Blogroll and install buddylist for the bloggers to update on their friends’ blog (Webpodge 2007).

Apart from that, blogging community can be created by building a reader community. This can be done through driving the traffic to your blog. Having a community of your peers who enjoy what your blog has to say and respect you as part of the blogosphere (Nikki S 2008).

According to Nancy White (2006), an e-community specialist, there are three types of blogging community;

a) Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community - Only one blogger (can be owned personally or an organization) with either commentary participants or readers. Usually the owner are someone who is well known, holds the most authority. The readers/ commentors are fully depending on the owner.

b) Topic Centric Community – A network formation and is topic based. Different bloggers may come together with the same common topic. For example, Global Voices community.

c) Boundaries Communities - Collections of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform. The blogs are part of the overall ecosystem. For example, Myspace.

References:

Anthony 2009, What is Blogging Communities?, The Travel Tart, viewed 17 April 2010,<http://www.thetraveltart.com/what-is-a-blogging-community/>.

How to Create a Blog Community Website with Drupal 2007, Webpodge, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://webpodge.com/2007/03/02/how-to-create-a-blog-community-website-with-drupal/>.

NikkiS 2008, How to Build a Blogging Community, eHow, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html>.

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?, The Knowledge Tree, viewed 17 April 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 & opinion about the most appropriate classification approach

As we know there are a few classification of blog.

· Subject matter

o Politics

o Fashion

o Food

o Technology

o History

o Law

o Travel

o Sport

· Device

o Moblog is a mobile blogging application for Windows Mobile (WM) devices. Sending pictures from a cameraphone or mobile device. For example, Flickr. MoBlog currently supports Blogger, WordPress.com and Live Spaces. (WordPress 2009)

· Media type: (Different types of blogging 2008)

o Linkblog - Social bookmarking. For example del.icio.us.

o Podcast – Audio recording, MP3 format and served through RSS feed enclosure. For example, Utterz and Odeo

o Vlog or Video Blog - Video recording video formats like mp4, wmv formats. For example blip.tv, YouTube, and etc.

o Microblog - a short text message which may or may not contain a shortened URL. For instance Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce

o Miniblog / reBlog – Limited amount of content of blog. Usually it is shortened version of normal blog. For example Tumblr, reBlog

o Liveblog - covering some type of live event like a sports event, press conference, tv show, and etc. For example, Scribblelive blog.

· Status of publishers: (Blogging 2006)

o Business blog

o Corporate blog

o Personal blog

o Collaborative blog

o Spam blog

Based on Simmons (The Media Report, 2008), many bloggers nowadays evolved with different kind of blogs especially news blog. Simmons said that eventually they started news by email and few blogs but mostly local one with the intention of providing news for people. Later on, the population of broadcasting news through blogs had grown bigger and bigger in America and United Kingdom. The control of these blogs is needed as suggested by Simmons.

In my opinions, definitely we will look at all kinds of features of a blog, topic, style, format or audience. Topic could attract audience at the first place. People tend to look at the audiences respond or view which indicate how interesting that blog is. Besides that style and format were taking into consideration no matter it is personal life experience or facts. Blog were originally designed to promote your company or yourself to establish yourself as an authority (Wkriski 2005).

References:

Blogging The Phenomenon 2006, ThinkQuest, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01130/typesofblogs_textbased.html>.

Funnell, A & Simmons, M 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, The Media Report, viewed 19 April 2010, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript>.

Sampath's Mindspace 2009, Word Press, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://sampath.wordpress.com/moblog/>.

The 8 different types of blogging in 2008 2008, HMM, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20080124/5040>.

Wkriski 2005, The Real Purpose of a Blog, ToolBox for IT, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/it-career/the-real-purpose-of-a-blog-4214>.

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits to the community

According to BlogCritics (2009), current size of blogosphere is more than 2,900 writers, 94,000 articles and 725,000 comments. Comparing 2008 to 2009, there are 68% increases in the number of blogs (Lijit 2009). The latest trends of blog are politics, business and technology. For example, based on Open Europe Blog (2010), in Europe country, mostly the blogs are about politics and Europeans policy. In Malaysia, mostly people blog for their friends and family.

Referring to Word press website, there are several types of blogs, such as personal blogs, politic blog, private blogs, business blog and etc (2010). However, personal blogs, corporate blog and politic blog are usually prevalent in Europe and Asia.

In the Technorati website, an article written by Matt Sussman, states that among the bloggers population, 54% are Part-Timers, 32% are Self-Employeds and 14% are Corporates. According to the survey done, there are 17% of bloggers blogging for their source of income (2009).

Source: Technorati.com

This means that usually the professional blogger blog about interesting fact to attract people’s attention to ear some extra income. Either they work for their company or it could be personal as well. The benefits of blogging is that they could have extra income and also for prestige purposes. People could be famous once they produced good blog.

References:

BlogCritics 2009, Eric Olsen, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://blogcritics.org/>.

Jalichandra, R 2009, State Of Blogosphere 2009, Technorati, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/richard-jalichandra-keynote-blogworld-2009/>.

Open Europe Blog 2010, London, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://openeuropeblog.blogspot.com/>.

Types Of Blog 2010, Word Press, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://en.wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/>.

Purpose

The purpose of this blog is to discuss about issues in publication and design. The targeted audience are those who are taking COMM1043 subject and lecturer. Through this blog, hopefully that media issues could be discuss and healthy argument in regard of the issues will establish. This can be done through commenting on the post.