The moment has arrived for the end of my journey in dealing with the issues in publication and design. Even though blogging is not a new thing to me as I have done it for years, doing it with proper referencing and discussing real issues took quite some getting used to. It was an enlightening experience to conduct research on the subject matter of publication and design. I daresay that what I have learnt from this would go a long way and would definitely shape the way I blog in future.
Two important things that I have learnt from this weblog assignment is that a sufficient amount of white space has to be devoted for easier readability and providing rhetorical cues on navigating the content (Schriver 1997, p.376). Images are places to provide visual aids and are best flanked by proper hyperlinks to help the readers have a better understanding of the content (Nielson 2000).
Reference list
Nielsen, J 2000, 'Chapter 3: Content design', Designing web usability, New Riders, Indianapolis.
Schriver, KA 1997, 'Chapter 6: The interplay of words and pictures', in Dynamics in document design: Creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York, pp. 361-441.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Is Internet Privacy Dead?
With the emergence of social networking powerhouses Facebook and Twitter, one has to ponder about the safety of the information each user posts about themselves. With 10 billion tweets sent on Twitter and approximately 400 million people registered on Facebook, internet privacy and information security has come into the spotlight as more and more users realize how easily available their personal information is on the internet. One only has to type in their name on a search engine and voila, everything from your employers to marital status to what you had for breakfast is known to the world. In the article entitled ‘Is Internet privacy dead? No, just more complicated: researchers’ published on The Washington Post an insight of how sensitive the balance is between privacy and publicity is shown. Apparently it seems Facebook and Twitter are only the tip of the iceberg with more and more players joining the fray such as Google Buzz and MySpace having a rather large amount of users as well.
Interestingly, much of these privacy issues are caused by the users themselves not doing anything about it. They expect their privacy settings to be automated and hence do not really change the settings available on their social networking pages. According to Kirkpatrick (2010), Facebook adopted these default public settings as they are the norms that are socially acceptable. However, Facebook has since taken the step in reminding its users of the privacy settings available on its website. The reminder pops us immediately when the user logs into the website as seen in the image below. Some problems with privacy previously were related to the photo viewing capabilities of Facebook. Pictures that your friends have tagged you in can be viewed by other people that appear in the picture as well even though it has actually been privatized. This shows that the corresponding author has no approval rights on Facebook to actually disallow other people to view the tagged pictures (Coats 2008).
Facebook has taken the logical first step to ensure the safety and privacy of its users. What remains to be seen is how other social networking sites react to this issue as well because easily obtainable information leads to cybercrime such as identity theft and phishing that is becoming more and more evident these days. Internet privacy is a serious matter and should not be taken lightly.
Reference list
Coats, A, J, S, 2009, 'Ethical authorship and publishing', International Journal of Cardiology, No. 131, pp. 149-150
Kang, C 2009, Is Internet privacy dead? No, just more complicated: researchers, The Washington Post, viewed 10th June 2010
Kirkpatrick, M 2010a, Facebook’s Zuckerberg says the age of privacy is over, ReadWriteWeb, viewed 10th June 2010
Emoticons and Email Etiquettes
Did you know that people around the world send millions of e-mails and text messages to their counterparts on a daily basis? E-mail is apparently the most popular of all internet activities at 88% which puts it ahead of the increasingly popular social networking sites (McKay 2009). As e-mail was largely based on text, one major problem with communication via e-mail was conveying emotions through text. Bernhardt (1986, p. 66) claimed that texts itself convey quite little information, but substantial information would be revealed with the presence of visible cues such as symbols.
Based on the transcript Emoticons and E-mail Etiquettes by ABC Radio National, Professor Scott Fahlman, heralded as the creator of emoticons invented the first smiley face emoticon by typing a colon, followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis. According to Schriver (1997, p. 399), when symbols are placed in dynamic relation to one another, the meanings can be enriched. The smiley emoticon created by Fahlman aids in the intention or emotion setting in e-mails by portraying the sender’s mood or facial expression. The first smiley was intended to portray the happy and pleasant look.
However, it is vital that emoticons be used sparingly as overusing emoticons would make more formal e-mails such as corporate e-mails look too casual. Etiquettes apply even when corresponding through e-mail. Some modern corporations embrace the usage of emoticons while some of them are more foreboding. The following guide from Emailreplies.com (2009) would help to alleviate the sender from misinforming the receiver:
1. Use proper spelling, grammar & punctuation.
2. Not writing in CAPITALS.
3. Use proper structure & layout.
4. Do not copy a message or attachment without permission.
5. Avoid using URGENT and IMPORTANT.
6. Keep your language gender neutral.
7. Don't forward virus hoaxes and chain letters.
Good e-mail etiquette ensures smooth and accurate communication between parties. It is important to draw the line between when or when not to use emoticons in an e-mail and also to know how much is actually too much when emoticons are included. Knowing good e-mail etiquette helps the sender to maintain the professionalism of the company he or she is employed with and also protect it from possible liability.
Reference list
ABC.Net.Au 2007, ‘Emoticon and email etiquette’, updated 18 October 2007, viewed 10 June 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2064342.htm
Bernhardt, SA 1986, ‘Seeing the Text’, College Composition and Communication, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 66-78.
Emailreplies.com 2009, Email etiquettee, viewed 10 June 2010,
http://www.emailreplies.com/
McKay, DR 2009, Email Etiquette: Part 1: Why Is It Important?, Abour.com, viewed 10 June 2010, http://careerplanning.about.com/od/communication/a/email_etiquette.htm
Schriver, KA 1997, ‘Chapter 6: The Interplay of Words and Pictures’, in Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York, pp. 361-441.
Based on the transcript Emoticons and E-mail Etiquettes by ABC Radio National, Professor Scott Fahlman, heralded as the creator of emoticons invented the first smiley face emoticon by typing a colon, followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis. According to Schriver (1997, p. 399), when symbols are placed in dynamic relation to one another, the meanings can be enriched. The smiley emoticon created by Fahlman aids in the intention or emotion setting in e-mails by portraying the sender’s mood or facial expression. The first smiley was intended to portray the happy and pleasant look.
However, it is vital that emoticons be used sparingly as overusing emoticons would make more formal e-mails such as corporate e-mails look too casual. Etiquettes apply even when corresponding through e-mail. Some modern corporations embrace the usage of emoticons while some of them are more foreboding. The following guide from Emailreplies.com (2009) would help to alleviate the sender from misinforming the receiver:
1. Use proper spelling, grammar & punctuation.
2. Not writing in CAPITALS.
3. Use proper structure & layout.
4. Do not copy a message or attachment without permission.
5. Avoid using URGENT and IMPORTANT.
6. Keep your language gender neutral.
7. Don't forward virus hoaxes and chain letters.
Good e-mail etiquette ensures smooth and accurate communication between parties. It is important to draw the line between when or when not to use emoticons in an e-mail and also to know how much is actually too much when emoticons are included. Knowing good e-mail etiquette helps the sender to maintain the professionalism of the company he or she is employed with and also protect it from possible liability.
Reference list
ABC.Net.Au 2007, ‘Emoticon and email etiquette’, updated 18 October 2007, viewed 10 June 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2064342.htm
Bernhardt, SA 1986, ‘Seeing the Text’, College Composition and Communication, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 66-78.
Emailreplies.com 2009, Email etiquettee, viewed 10 June 2010,
http://www.emailreplies.com/
McKay, DR 2009, Email Etiquette: Part 1: Why Is It Important?, Abour.com, viewed 10 June 2010, http://careerplanning.about.com/od/communication/a/email_etiquette.htm
Schriver, KA 1997, ‘Chapter 6: The Interplay of Words and Pictures’, in Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York, pp. 361-441.
Internet overtakes newspapers for ad revenue
In this article by The Australian , a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) states that the internet is set to overtake the newspaper as the preferred advertising medium in the U.S in their 5 year advertising revenue projection from the year 2009 to 2014. In the year 2009, newspaper advertising had revenue of $24.82 billion while the internet received revenue of $24.2 billion. This means that the overtaking of the internet advertising revenue over the newspaper could happen as soon as 2010 which is the present year. This coincides with the previous post which mentioned the survival of journalism on new media platforms. Similarly, this article hints at the transition of advertising media from the once prominent newspaper to the newer and more potential internet. This is because people are becoming more technologically inclined these days. Everything has to be done on the move and multitasking on a single device is no longer a thing of the future. Hence, advertising and also corporations have to be technologically competent as well to keep up with the increasing pace of the audience (Schaefer & Durham 2007).
The change of advertising media preference from newspapers to the internet could potentially revolutionize the industry. This is because with the amount of freedom the internet offers as opposed to newspapers and also the relatively lower cost, creative directors could treat the internet as their new borderless canvas uninhibited by the size of the page or the cost of using a particular colour. Animations are made possible thanks to online flash players. Ultimately, with the internet being online 24 hours a day, a global audience can be reached without concern for the time zone they live in. According to O’Guinn, Allen and Semenik (2006, p.575), there are several ways for advertisers to place advertising messages on the web such as banner ads, sponsorships, email communication, as well as pop-up and pop-under advertisements. Interestingly, blogs are also part of the vessel for internet advertising along with social networking sites, video and image sharing sites and just about any website there is on the internet. What sets the internet apart from the newspaper is that different approaches forms of advertising have to be used based on the site whereby banner ads work best on blogs and animation ads with social networking sites.
Reference list
NewsCore. (2010). Internet overtakes newspapers for ad revenue. Available: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/internet-overtakes-newspapers-for-ad-revenue/story-e6frgakx-1225880141309. Last accessed 10 June 2010.
O’Guinn TC, Allen CT & Semenik RJ 2006, Advertising & integrated brand promotion, 4th edn, Thomson Higher Education, USA.
Schaefer, P. & Durham, M. G. 2007. "On the social implications of invisibility: The iMac G5 and the effacement of the technological object." Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol. 24, Iss.1. pp. 39-56.
The change of advertising media preference from newspapers to the internet could potentially revolutionize the industry. This is because with the amount of freedom the internet offers as opposed to newspapers and also the relatively lower cost, creative directors could treat the internet as their new borderless canvas uninhibited by the size of the page or the cost of using a particular colour. Animations are made possible thanks to online flash players. Ultimately, with the internet being online 24 hours a day, a global audience can be reached without concern for the time zone they live in. According to O’Guinn, Allen and Semenik (2006, p.575), there are several ways for advertisers to place advertising messages on the web such as banner ads, sponsorships, email communication, as well as pop-up and pop-under advertisements. Interestingly, blogs are also part of the vessel for internet advertising along with social networking sites, video and image sharing sites and just about any website there is on the internet. What sets the internet apart from the newspaper is that different approaches forms of advertising have to be used based on the site whereby banner ads work best on blogs and animation ads with social networking sites.
Reference list
NewsCore. (2010). Internet overtakes newspapers for ad revenue. Available: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/internet-overtakes-newspapers-for-ad-revenue/story-e6frgakx-1225880141309. Last accessed 10 June 2010.
O’Guinn TC, Allen CT & Semenik RJ 2006, Advertising & integrated brand promotion, 4th edn, Thomson Higher Education, USA.
Schaefer, P. & Durham, M. G. 2007. "On the social implications of invisibility: The iMac G5 and the effacement of the technological object." Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol. 24, Iss.1. pp. 39-56.
Survival of media platforms for journalism
This article by ABC Radio National discusses the likelihood of survival of modern day journalism as it slowly sees its traditional platform of newspaper publishing being eroded by newer platforms such as the internet. This was not the case some 15 years ago as newspapers were the dominant platform for journalism. Newspapers then had absolute control of the content from what to say to how to say it to the audience. With the emergence of new media platforms, the role of newspapers and the audience have taken a 180 degree turn. The shift from old to new media seems inevitable because it is very much defined by the modern, fast-paced and digitally-oriented contextual lifestyle the audiences lead today (Lessig 2004).
The main contributing factor is the variety in media platforms and content has made the audience much more fragmented than it initially was. This meant that a larger number of audiences have begun to consume more and more types of different media and content but at the same time amount to smaller numbers in each segment. This has made the cost of producing quality content very high. This especially applies to newspapers as newspapers generally have a type of theme in their daily production. Take The Edge Malaysia which is a financial newspaper in Malaysia. Its content covers the goings on in the world of finance and economics even though it is sparsely related to politics as well. This severely limits the type of audience it can potentially cater to.
In spite of this, journalism still thrives on the new media platform called the internet. One of the reasons for this is because the internet could be accessed from any electronic device that could connect to the internet. These range from laptops, personal computers, PDAs, mobile phones and other handheld devices. This has heralded the success of some online news portals that do not have printed editions such as Malaysiakini which has been lauded for its quality news reporting. This shows that journalism could potentially survive on newer media platforms other that the traditional newspaper so long as they fulfil the requirement to be able to continuously manoeuvre communication strategies based on the factors of audience, context and purpose (Bhuiyan 2006). Newspaper companies have to realize that failure to capitalize on these new media platforms could result in a relatively low reach-rate and inefficiency (Livingstone 2004).
Reference List
ABC Radio National. (2009). Survival of media platforms for journalism. Available: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2009/2436717.htm. Last accessed 10 June 2010.
Bhuiyan, S. I. 2006, “Impact of new media technology on society”, The Daily Star, September 5 2006, viewed June 10 2010,
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=52164
Lessig, L. 2004, Free culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity, Penguin Press, New York.
Livingstone, S. 2004, “Media literacy and the challenge of new information and communication technologies”, Communication review, Vol. 1, Iss. 7, pp. 3-14.
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
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.
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.
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