Monday, April 19, 2010

Good design for screen genre

A good design for screen genre is basically involving words and images to catch the audience’s attention. It’s important to have a good design for screen genre so that the information can be effectively delivered. There are some comparison between the power slides of group presentation 1 and the individual power point slides to illustrate the example of good design for screen genre.


Simple and readable word

Firstly, when designing a document, word that had been using has to be simple, readable and avoid using the long and complex word (Reep 2006, p.148). It proved that the group presentation slide was poorly presented with long and complex word as Reep mentioned in his article. It might not catch the audience’s attention.


Example of group presentation slide with long and complex word



The slide below was an example of good design for screen genre. The individual presentation slide was presented with short and simple words instead of long and complex words. Besides that, it’s easier for audience to read it when the important key words have also been highlighted.


Example of individual presentation slide with highlighted short and simple words



Combination of text and images

The second comparison is the combination of text and images provide understandable information for the audience. As an example in the group presentation power point slide, the picture was shown without the clarification of text. Thus, audience might not understand the information that the image was trying to explain. According to Kress and van Leeuwen (2006, p.16), words and visuals support each other to provide information those users need. This can be show in the individual presentation power point. It’s more understandable compare to the group presentation slide.


Example of group presentation slide without further explanation for the image



Example of individual presentation slide with the support of texts



Objective of the title

Lastly, the group presentation has been poorly presented as title was not included in the slide. The audience might not understand the information that the writer trying to present in the slide. The examples are shown below:


Example of group presentation slide without title




Example of individual presentation slide with title



Reference List

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

Reep, DC 2006, ‘Chp 6: Document Design,’ in Technical Writing, 6th ed., Pearson Edu, Inc., New York, p.134.

New forms of media publishing

In the 20th century, technology advancement has altered the forms of media publishing and brings to the new media ecosystem. Internet is one of the major developments for communication. Thus people can get advantages through the emergence of new media as it enables the media to reach a wide range of audience within seconds (Walsh 2006).


YouTube for Political campaign
There are few examples of new forms of media publishing such as Moblog, Vlog and etc. YouTube is one of the most popular new forms of media using by public and even politicians. Here is the example of politician using YouTube to promote the political campaign:

(Source: YouTube 2010)


Early Voting Starts in Iraqi


Early Voting Stars in Iraqi is an video clip regarding political campaign through YouTube. Politicians can also take advantage to interact the discussion from community through one of the hottest new media, Facebook. Since the video clip has been posted on Facebook, members of Facebook will be alert on it and it offering for more audience to comment and discuss on the video.


Early Voting Starts in Iraqi Elections in Facebook (circled with arrow)


However, there is an issue regarding to YouTube which is the copyright issues. Users were advising not to upload those unauthorized video but the users seems like do not care about it. On the other hand, there are some video has been banned in several countries due to the offensive video has been posted. Thus, YouTube has to remove it when it’s required.


All in all, new media has increased the effectiveness of viewing information compared to old media and it is also instantly available all around the world from computer.



Reference List

Walsh, M 2006, ‘’Textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.2, p.24-37.


Bibliography

Facebook
www.facebook.com


YouTube
www.youtube.com



Blogging communities and methods to build blogging communities

Blogging Community

Blogging community refers to a group of people who interacted online within some bounded set or technologies (White 2006). Blogging community can be created by using tools such as permalink on the blog. Furthermore, blogger can also discuss and comments on the blogs. Tagging is also enabling bloggers to get the latest postings that have been updated. The blogging communities will enhance the interaction between bloggers.

According to White (2006), the main three types of blogging communities are:

  • Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community – community that grow around primary bloggers

  • Central Connecting Topic Community – community that occur between blogs linked by a common passion or topic



  • Boundaried Community – community arises when members register and join the community



An example of the structure of a blogging community

Global Voices community is a blog falls under the category of central connecting topic community (White 2006). According to Globalvoiceonline.org (2010), Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online – shinning light on places and people other media often ignore. It works to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard. It’s also providing training, online tutorials, and free open-source tools for people around the world to use.


Topics to discuss through Global Voices



In addition, Global Voices community can discuss among each other by leaving comment as an example circled below.


The comments section that created for discussion



Reference List

Globalvoicesonline.org 2010, Global Voices, viewed 15 April 2010, http://globalvoicesonline.org/


White, N 2006, Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?, The Knowledge Tree, viewed 15 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

Technology innovation has changed almost everything about how we communicate. Blogging is one of the ways to satisfy human needs. There are few segregate parts of blogs which are by subject matter, device, media type and status of publishers.


During an interview of A taxonomy of Blogs (2008), a media analyst Margaret Simons has defining the different types of blogs that currently exist such as

  • Pamphleteering blog
  • Digest blog
  • Advocacy blog
  • Popular mechanics blog
  • Exhibition blog
  • Gatewatcher blog
  • The Diary blog
  • The Advertisement blog
  • News bog

Subject Matters:

  • Politics
  • Fashion
  • History
  • Law
  • Technology
  • Sport
  • Travel
  • Food


Media types:


Vlog


Linklog


Sketchlog


Tumblelog


Device:


Moblog


Status of Publishers:

  • Corporate and business blogs

In my opinion, although there are classifications of blog but it seems that there are overlapping between one another. For example, Simmons (2008) stated that advocacy blog is like pamphleteering blog. Occasionally, there is a tricky way for people to distinguish which taxonomy the blogs is belonging.


Reference List

Abc.net 2008, The media report: A taxonomy of blogs, 25 September 2008, viewed 15 April 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript


Makeyougohmm.com 2008, The 8 differet types of blogging, 24 January 2008, viewed in 15 April 2010, http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20080124/5040/


Blogs as current phenomenon and benefits to the community

Blogging Phenomenon
A blog (short for web log) is an area set aside people to write articles that can easily be accessed with a special program called a real simple syndication reader (Veleudos 2010).

The size and trend of current blogosphere

Techonorati (2009) recently reported that the level of blogosphere remain similar to 2008 which is 133 million of blogs record indexed by Techonorati since 2002. The numbers goes up dramatically with 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging.


Size of the Blogosphere




Weblogs cumulative (2003-2007)



On average, how much time do you spend blogging each week?


Nowadays, people are always expressing their view of political issues through blogs. It has a significant impact on the mainstream media compared to earlier period. Previously, people only tend to share their personal experiences and inspiration to the public but not the political issues. According to Ariani (2008), personal blogs and corporate blogs seem prevalent in Europe, Aisa and Malaysia. Besides, an important trend in 2009 is that 72% of the respondents blog as a hobby (Techonorati 2009).


Which best describes your involvement with blogging?


What are the benefits of blogging?

Blogging are enhancing the communication way by leaving comments and it’s also helping pro and self-employed bloggers to generate revenue from their blog. A seller can advertise a product in order to promote to the bloggers through their blogs without paying any fees to gain revenue. In addition, blogging is also a very good channel for politician to express their political views. For example, one of the blog spots for politician in Malaysia to share their feelings with each other is through mymalaysianpolitics.blogspot.com.


Reference List

Ariani, G 2008, Global village: Blogs as current phenomenon and effects on community, viewed 13 April 2010,

http://geeta-ariani.blogspot.com/2008/04/blogs-as-current-phenomenon-effects-on.html

Technorati 2009, Technorati: State of blogosphere 2009, viewed 13 April 2010,

http://technorati.com/blogging/feature/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009/

Veleudos, S 2010, Internet based moms: Blogging & RSS resources, viewed 13 April 2010,

http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/blogging-rss/blog-definition.html


Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Purpose

The purpose of creating this blog is to discuss about the issues on publication and document design among each other so that people can understand it better. My target audiences are my fellow classmates, friends from other university and people who are interested on it. Hope that people can gain some extra knowledge by discussing the issues about document design in this blog.