Monday, April 19, 2010

Assignment 1: An analysis

For this part, I will be analyzing 3 images from my slides used for assignment 1. The first image is the introduction part of my presentation.


A plain white background was used with texts illustrating the visual examples provided at the bottom of the slide. The slide had a 'Z' composition to it meaning that it has to be read from the upper left to right and followed by the lower left to right. Hence the term 'Z' composition is used. The white background is easy on the eyes and brings more focus to the text which is of a darker color. Reep (2006) states that the color in the document creates an image and assists the reader to transition through the document to find important information. The images are placed with the bad example on the left and the good example on the right which makes it a left to right sequence.

The content of my assignment uses short and relatively simple sentences. According to Reep (2006), words in a document have to be simple, readable and does not contain colloquial language. An image at the bottom right corner guides the reader to the end of the document. The text and images in the slide have to complement each other in order to be effective as stated by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006). To conclude, a good design for screen has to incorporate all the elements stated above.

References

Reep, DC. 2006, ‘Chp 6: Document Design,’ in Technical Writing, 6th ed., Pearson Edu, Inc., New York, p.133-172.

Kress, G, & van Leeuwen, T 2006, ‘Chapter 1: The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication’ in Reading images, pp. 16-44.

Twitter: Media Publishing of Tomorrow



Twitter is the new micro blogging utility that enables its users to post quick notes about anything. These posts are known as tweets. The existence of Twitter is largely due to people wanting to quickly update their friends and family without having to sit down and do it the conventional way which is via blogging. This gives Twitter the technological edge of being able to reach almost anyone within seconds (Walsh 2006). Twitter is now linked with the other new form of media publishing known as Facebook.





Some may say that Twitter is just another form of sensationalized SMS but the truth behind the success of Twitter is because of its capability to reach anyone and everyone who is on Twitter or Facebook. Similar to blogging, it is possible for the audience to 'follow' the tweets of a particular individual. The most followed individual on Twitter is actor Ashton Kutcher with approximately 4.8 million followers (Twitterholic 2010). Twitter has revolutionized the method of keeping in touch with one another that even their greeting question above the status box has been changed from 'What are you doing?' to 'What's happening?' (Financial Times 2010). The question at hand is whether or not it is possible to be too connected to each other and where should we draw the line?

References

Nutall, C. 2009, What’s happening? A lot, says Twitter COO, last accessed 16 April 2010.
http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2009/11/whats-happening-a-lot-says-twitter-coo/

Twitterholic.com, last accessed 16 April 2010,
http://twitterholic.com/

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.

The Blogging Community

Blogging community

A blogging community is one that interacts online and contributes to discussions via their blogs (Vinson 2006). There are 3 main types of blogging communities as defined by Nancy White (2006)

- One blog-centric community – a community is established around the primary blogger.

- Topic-centric community – community occurs between the blogs around a shared interest

- Bounded community – collections of blogs hosted on a single site or known as social networking

Building a blogging community requires 7 steps according to eHow.com (2008). These steps are reading other blogs, commenting on other blogs, replying to comments on our blogs, listing the blog in directories, post often, make the posts interesting and most importantly to market the blog well,

Example: Nuffnang




Nuffnang is a Malaysian blog advertising community that specializes in advertisement placements in blogs that are part of their community. Nuffnang falls under the scope of the bounded community (White 2006). This is because Nuffnang controls the content of the site while blog owners give their feedback on the posts within the website. Nuffnang also includes Innit which is a feedback application which functions similarly to Twitter. Comments can be given to quick updates which is particularly useful to people who are short on time.



References


Nikki, S. 2008, How to build a blogging community. Last accessed 16 April 2010.Nuffnang.com, viewed 16 April 2010,

http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html

Nuffnang.com, viewed 16 April 2010,

http://www.nuffnang.com.my/

Vinson, J 2006, Blogging and Communities, Blog.com, viewed 1 June 2009, http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2006/06/26/blogging_and_communities.html

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?, The Knowledge Tree, viewed 30 May 2009,

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

Sunday, April 18, 2010

How are blogs classified and what do we classfy them as?

What classifications do blogs have?

Blogs are classified into five main classes by Wikipedia.org (2010)according to its type and also the way its content is presented. The classifications are as follows:

- Personal blogs
- Corporate or organizational blogs
- Genre-specific blogs
- Media type-specific blogs
- Device-specific blogs



Genre-specific blogs include main themes or politics, fashion, technology, sports, travel or food while media-specific blogs are made up of video blogs, link blogs, sketch blogs, tumble blogs, photo blogs and the notorious spam blogs. Device-specific blogs usually favor a particular device though not to the extent of being proprietary. An example of this would be Twitter for mobile phone blogging.

Besides Wikipedia's version of blog classifications, there is also Margaret Simons' 'A Taxonomy of Blogs'(2008) whereby she classified blogs based on its purpose. According to Simons, the purpose of blogs include pamphleteering, digests, advocacy, popularity mechanics, exhibition, gatewatching, diary keeping, advertising, and news.

How should blogs be classified?

As mentioned before, blogs should be classified according to its type and the way it is presented. As an example, if a blog has a main theme of specific colors such as red and posts the latest promotions by AirAsia and news in the aviation industry then it would be considered a corporate blog. If it uses a standard or customized background with posts pertaining to a person's life experiences then it falls under a personal blog.

References

ABC.net 2008, A Taxanomy of Blogs, viewed 1 June 2009,
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript

Wikipedia.org 2009, Blogs, viewed 18 April 2010,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Blogging: The Phenomenon and Perks of Blogging Communities

Blogging Phenomenon
Blogging has become a tool for people around the world to connect, share and provide information. Most of the topics shared and discussed on blogs are about the current technology, general issues, political views and so forth (Brown, 2006). Blogs generally fall under the classification of personal, corporate, genre-type and media-type.

Blogs in numbers
Statistics from BlogWorld (2009) show that more than 120,000 blogs are created on a daily basis. Malaysia alone has an estimated 500,000 active bloggers which puts it slightly behind the European Union and neighboring Indonesia. (The Star Online 2008)

The perks of blogging communities
Blogs provides a continuum for the community to voice out and share their thoughts through blogging and also commenting on blogs. A research done in Malaysia showed that 70% of the 2008 general election results were influenced by the reviews and opinions on the blogs (The Star Online 2008). This was largely because of the intense media censorship on political issues deemed to be sensitive such as the more recent HINDRAF and BERSIH rallies.



The future of blogging
It is evident that since 2009, a new blogging trend called micro blogging has emerged. Utilities such as Twitter and Plurk have undoubtedly revolutionized the way for people with no time to publish long posts to blog. This can be seen as 73% of active bloggers also use Twitter. (Technorati 2010)


Number of bloggers who use Twitter
References

BlogWorld 2009, Important Blogging Statistics, viewed 12 April 2010,
http://www.blogworldexpo.com/general-information/important-statistics

Brown, S 2009, Leading Average: Top Blog Trends, Modern life, viewed 15 April 2010, http://modernl.com/article/leading-average-top-blog-trends

Technorati, State of the Blogosphere 2009, viewed 13 April 2010,
http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and/

Thestaronline.com 2008, ‘Blogging in Malaysia ranks among highest in the world’, updated 3 April 2008, viewed 16 April 2010,
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/4/3/nation/20827588&sec=nation