This process of creating and maintaining a blog has been enlightening in the sense that I was able to be exposed to issues and challenges in writing and designing for an online audience. As a blogger I have discovered various skills in editing and designing and also planning out a suitable layout for a blog that will be most effective in attracting readers to my blog.
Important design factors such as integrating form and function to produce an effective piece as proposed by Bear (2006) that form needs to work with function to achieve the goal of the document. The theory of multimodality by Walsh (2006, p.24) has also been applied to the blog, as a various mix of images, text and video can be used to enhance the message being sent.
I also learnt that as a blogger and part of the web community, there are certain stances I must take. For example, the posting of content of pornographic and inappropriate nature is strictly prohibited. Using correct grammar and refraining from using internet jargon and shorthand is also important to send out the right message about the purpose of this blog.
References
Bear J.H, 2006, Form and Function in Design and Publishing, About.com, viewed 12 October 2008, http://desktoppub.about.com/od/graphicdesign/a/formfunction.htm
Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.
Google, a name synonymous with searching for information on the internet has recently embarked on an ambitious project to go one step further in its quest of being the largest information database on the internet. The company which gave us the widely popular Google search engine is on its way to amassing a gargantuan collection of books on the internet by scanning entire books and storing them on their database. This involves mainly books that are under public domain; books that not copyrighted or has no one owning the intellectual properties(IP) to them.
The library already has an impressive collection of books available for download and viewing on and on The Official Google Blog, one can find a taste of what is there in the Google Library, which boasts work by Shakespere and Dante amongst others.
Maureen Walsh (2006) states that reading from an internet site or hypertext is different from material in print form. She goes on to say material on the internet “vary in the modes they use, but they have the potential to combine words and images in complex structures”. She also suggests that readers can choose different pathways depending on their interest, in which the way a reader progresses through an article is in a non linear form.
Thus the Google Library Project may have the potential to revolutionize the way we treat classic literature. By having books online, one can integrate new forms of immersion (Reading Gets Wired, 2007) such as having the ability to search for particular bits of information in a book at any time. In addition to that, since books are scanned online, the methods of presentation must be suitable for view on a computer screen and elements such as layout and accessibility must be taken into account.
In my opinion, the Google Library Project is an excellent step by Google to easily make available classic literature to a generation that has grown up on cyberspace, away from print based materials. This will open up a whole new world to those that are uncomfortable with reading a book on paper, but don’t mind reading it on a computer screen.
References
Download The Classics, Official Google Blog, viewed 10th November 2008 http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/download-classics.html
Google Library Open For Business, Wired Magazine, viewed 10th November 2008 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2005/11/69473
Reading Gets Wired, Time Magazine, viewed 10th November 2008 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1612700,00.html
Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.
E-mails or electronic mail have become part and parcel of many of our lives. The easiest, quickest and most affordable way of sending messages across cyberspace to friends and loved ones located all over the world. E-mail has also become an indispensible tool for companies to communicate with hundreds of employees at a time, all in a few simple clicks.
In a similar way that E-mail evolved the way we communicate with one another, it has also altered the way language is used in the context of e-mails and instant messaging in the form of emoticons. Short for emotional icons, emoticons are basically used to denote how a person is feeling in text based messages. Rather than fully articulate one’s feelings, one could just put a smiley in a message to send out a positive message to the reader. Proposed by Scott Fahlman in 1982 on an computer message board to label topics which were deemed funny, the smiley has quickly assimilated itself into an essential part of messages sent online.
Schirato and Yell’s (1996) take on social semiotics is that people assign meaning based on who and where they are, socially and culturally. This is echoed by Halliday & Hasan (1985) when they state that semiotics give meaning to different modes. For example, the typical smiley is made up of a colon, hyphen and a closed bracket which when put together in succession, becomes a :-) . To a person with a traditional background in writing, these symbols mean absolutely nothing other than being punctuation marks, but due to current social and cultural implications, this symbol can be read as a smiling face(upon looking at it sideways).
In my opinion, emoticons are an excellent addition to language as it is an easy to use and universally understood means of communicating emotion on the internet. Michael Krantz (1997) explains that emoticons were invented, because even if people chat online till their fingers become raw, they would not be able to convey emotion as effectively as a face to face conversation.
:-)
References
Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen (1996): Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge
Halliday, MAK & Hasan, R 1985, Language, context and text: aspects of language in a social semiotic perspective, Deakin University Press, Victoria.
Schirato, T & Yell, S 1996, Communication and cultural literacy: an introduction, Allen & Unwin, NSW, pp. 90-117.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/smiley/
Krantz, M, 1997, Say it with a :), Time Magazine, viewed 10th November 2008
Viral Marketing is a radical form of marketing and publicizing a brand or product through unorthodox means of publicity. This new form of marketing has taken the internet by storm especially through the usage of social-networks. The term viral marketing stems from the way viruses multiply and replicate exponentially. The way messages are spread from one person to another is also alike a person infected with a virus, who then becomes contagious and infects others. Viral marketing methods can be extremely effective in generating a lot of attention and hype on internet communities without needing huge budgets according to Newsweek’s Jared Sandberg (1999).
One example of effective viral marketing is through the publicizing of the movie Cloverfield. The marketing team chose an approach that embodied the theory of multimodality in which several forms of media were used to generate hype in several communities. For example, movie trailers that did not mention the movie title and only a release date were posted on video-hosting sites such as YouTube. Various profiles of characters in the film were also made on social-networking site, MySpace. In addition to those, pictures of photographs of the decimated view of Manhattan where the film is based was also released to further fuel speculation and discussion of the movie. Source: Wikipedia.org
The trailer for the movie Cloverfield.
Walsh (2006, p. 24) states that multimodal texts are “those texts that have more than one ‘mode’, so that meaning is communicated through a synchronisation of modes”. Viral marketing methods apply this theory to their operations by weaving together marketing schemes to create a unified but subtle and unassuming marketing push through the internet. Blogs and profiles on social-networking sites use mainly text, video-hosting sites utilize audio and video and images are spread through photo-sharing sites. With the proliferation of the web, these forms can also come together in a single site sometimes.
In my opinion, viral marketing represents the future of marketing on the internet. In an age where users are connected through colossal social networks where active exchange of information is present, what more cost effective way is there to gain publicity than having millions of people on these social networks do it for you? Tim Padgett of Time Magazine calls it advertising’s future and I have to agree and eagerly anticipate being involved in a new product’s marketing campaign.
References
Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.
Padgett, T, 2004, What’s Next After That Odd Chicken?, Time Magazine, viewed 12th November 2008 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,995343,00.html
Sandberg, J, 1999, The Friendly Virus, Newsweek, viewed 12th November 2008 http://www.newsweek.com/id/88021>
Stern, L, 2005, Is It Buzz or Merely The Noise of a Pest?, Newsweek, viewed 12th November 2008 http://www.newsweek.com/id/49644
Cloverfield Entry, Wikipedia, viewed 12th November 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloverfield
The Australian Labor Party which is the current governing part of Australia, recently elected into power in elections in 2007 is pressing on with its policy on internet censorship despite widespread opposition against it. Kevin Rudd's government has decided to put into place a system in which offensive and illegal content will be blocked from users of Australian Internet Service Providers (ISPs). This move which is viewed as widely similar to China's censoring of the internet, which gained international media prominence during the Beijing Olympics as reported on CNN has been questioned by various parties, especially on its effectiveness.
Although put into place to prevent access to illegal content such as child pornography and extremely violent content, various parties have voiced concern over what will be deemed as offensive content. The context that these content has been has not been clearly defined and many are fearing that sites that do not contain hardcore pornography will be blocked by ISPs.
Schirato and Yell (1996) state that literate members of a culture employ knowledge of other texts to make sense of what they see, read & hear. Material needs to be properly labeled and categorized to be classified under context of offensive content. For example, some images online containing nude photography or art might be deemed as pornographic in nature and be banned, but since these objects are artistic, it clearly goes against the intention of blocking offensive content. Will erotic art and illustrations be illegal as well? Schirato and Yell (1996) also mention that the ways in which we make sense of types of texts are culturally defined and expected combinations of field, tenor and mode. Unless the context of types of content online be clearly defined it will be extremely difficult to filter online content without a backlash from internet users.
In my opinion, any form of internet censorship is useless as people will be able to find a way round filters and blockades online. Case in point is when a teenage boy in Melbourne managed to circumvent an AU$84 million pornography filter in 30 minutes according to ZDnet. The internet should remain a free space to properly realize the vision of a fully globalized network.
References
China censoring Internet Access at Olympics, CNN.com http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/30/olympics.internet.ap/
Australia Joins China In Censoring The Internet, TechCrunch http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/30/australia-joins-china-in-censoring-the-internet/
Teen cracks AU$ 84 million porn filter in 30 minutes, ZDnet http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Teen-cracks-AU-84-million-porn-filter-in-30-minutes/0,130061744,339281500,00.htm
Schirato, T. & Yell, S. 1996, ‘Chapter 5: Framing contexts’, Communication and Cultural Literacy: An Introduction, Allen and Unwin, St. Leonards, N.S.W, pp. 90-117.
There are several differences in designing for content online, in blogs and in print form. I will be comparing two different mediums, a newspaper, The Star and Kotaku.com, an online news blog about video games.
Screenshot of Kotaku, an established news site on the gaming industry.
For print design, much information has to omitted from the content as space is limited on a newspaper and also much more costly than hosting it online. Walsh (2006, p.25) states that readers use information that is already in their memories to fill in gaps in texts. In order to attract the reader’s attention, a newspaper can add images and photographs but that is only as far is can go, and other forms of media such as audio and visual cannot be added to complement the message.
On a website or blog, multi-modal texts are more effective as more modes of communicating a message can exist. Walsh (2006, p.24) says that these modes are synchronized to create a more engaging and effective message for the reader. In the website Kotaku, apart from images and text, multimedia such as videos and audio clips can be added to offer a richer and more comprehensive experience to the reader.
The web has also become a place for new forms of media to take form. An example would be the boom of the sharing of user-created content. Websites such as YouTube have put powerful tools of video sharing into the hands of many users online and this has created a robust community in which a healthy exchange of videos can occur.
This new form of media is radically different from past offerings. Before, if you wanted entertainment you would have to switch on the TV and receive offerings from large production companies like NBC. Now, alternative media has emerged and you can easily find amateur videos on YouTube who’s quality and entertainment value may rival Hollywood companies.
References
Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.
Blogs or weblogs are not new to the internet. This phenomenon which has taken the internet by storm is steadily growing at an increasing rate every day. Technorati.com (2008), an online tracking website specializing in blogs has indexed 133 million blogs since 2002. To give a further illustration of the scope of the blogosphere, almost a million blog posts are made in a day and more than 175 000 blogs are created each day. That’s a lot of numbers right there.
It is a global phenomenon, with bloggers located at every corner of the world. A survey by Technorati.com spanning 66 different countries found that bloggers were scattered all over the world. Here’s a break down of bloggers by continent.
Blogging can greatly enrich a community. In Malaysia for instance, burgeoning music acts and up and coming bands can network with those that share a similar interest for music and also win over new fans through a Music-Discussion Blogging Community. Ideas and thoughts can be exchanged between musicians and their fans without the need for an expensive platform.
Here is a brief guide to the types of blogs you might come across on the web.
Pamphleteering Blogs –used to spread awareness on current issues, mostly political and to encourage intellectual discussion on these topics.
Digest Blogs – blogs that serve as a collection of information from various sources on a particular topic. New information is rarely found here as material is collected mainly from the mainstream media.
Advocacy Blog – Similar to pamphleteering blogs, but on a more intensive scale especially in pushing an idea or movement out to the masses. Advocacy Blogs are known to push a particular point of view on subjects.
Popular Mechanics – Blogs that contain information on how to do stuff. These blogs contain lots of useful information on how things work and covers practically any topic under the sun, from computer modifications to knitting.
Gatewatcher Blogs – Blogs like these keep an eye on the media in order to ensure they do their job properly. Expect scrutiny on media policies and issues such as press freedom and transparency to be topics covered by these blogs.
The Diary – the most popular type of blog, these basically serve as online journals, detailing events, thoughts and serve as a platform to update their friends and family on happenings.
The advertisement – used for primarily commercial purposes, blogs such as these are used to publicize and generate interest in various products.
News Blogs – bloggers act as citizen journalists and cover issues that are currently happening.
An example of a blogging community is Nuffnang which is a Malaysian advertising blogging community. This community provides a platform for bloggers who are interested to earn money through their blogs to easily network with one another. Nuffnang provides tools to bloggers who want to spruce up their blogs and make them more attractive to score more visitors which in turn translate to higher revenue earned. Fellow bloggers can also host discussions with one another on various topics.
References
State of the Blogosphere, Technorati, viewed 1st November 2008
Its been quite a journey on the blogosphere
