Document Design

In this post, I will discuss about the three main considerations of designing for the screen versus the print documents. With the proliferation use of internet, the amount of webpage has increase significantly and this also lead more competition between webpage. For example, one blog versus another blog and both also have discussion on the same field. In order to get attention from the internet users to look at the particular webpage, the web design plays an important role in getting attention. 

In the study of Nielson (1997) suggested that scannable, concise and objective writing styles can increase the usability of the webpage as opposed to promotional writing skills that had much lower scores on all usability measures. It is because each of the suggested writing styles offers a positive difference in Web users’ performance and subjective satisfaction. With the combining of the three suggested writing styles, it recorded a 124% improvement in usability measures (Nielson 1997). This shows that it is important to apply the appropriate writing styles in order to attract more internet users.

For better understanding on how the three writing styles work, I will briefly explain them. Basically, the webpage is needed to be scannable is because people do not often read a blog/webpage from top to bottom. Scannable is basically to encourage scanning, skimming of the text for information of interest. It can be bulleted lists, highlighted keywords and also shorter sections of text. Concise basically means writing the information in a shorter form and cut off the less-important information. The information has to be shortening appropriately to prevent from over-concise. The last writing styles is to write in an objective form. It means the presented information must not exaggerate subjective claims and boasting (Nielson 1997).

Besides the three main consideration of writing styles, designing screen layout is important for the readers to see the important information in the first eye. Normally people will have a specific reading stage in a webpage. Below is an example of conventions of western language readers.

1. Text will read from top left to bottom right
2. Larger items are more significant than smaller items
3. Items higher on the page have more priority than those lower down
4. Signals of continuation (“more to come”) appear at bottom center or bottom right

(Kristof and Satran 90 cited in Hilligoss 2002)

By fulfilling these elements, your blog might be able to catch the attention of internet users more effectively. Try it out.

Reference list

Nielsen, J 1997, How Users Read on the Web, viewed 24th August 2011, 

<www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html>

Hilligoss, S 2002, Visual Communication, A Writer’s Guide, 2nd edn, viewed 24th August 2011,

< www.ablongman.com/mycomplab_content/pdf/long_hilligoss.pdf>

New forms of media publishing

In the previous posts we have discussed about how the technologies changes the way people look for information and knowledge. The technology changes the traditional media such as newspaper and television to new media such as social networking websites, blogging and vlogging. The new media allow the internet user to obtain instant, breaking news from worldwide. The Facebook and Twitter has broken barriers for the worldwide internet users to communicate with their favourite celebrities or even politicians of their country. 

 (source: facebook.com)

(source: http://technmarketing.com/)

Before the invention of these new media, the people were relied on the print media and television to obtain the news from all over the world and it was a one way communication and the people did not get to make any comment or response directly to the issue itself. With the new media, it allows the internet user to make direct responses to the particular issue and most importantly the reader now manage to get instant news from the target that they are following.

The collapsed of the King of Pop Michael Jackson shows the impact of new media to the world. The news rapidly breaking of Facebook and Twitter statuses before it was confirmed by mainstream news media (Munk 2009). In another case, the sacking and arrest of the deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998 had led to many Malaysians to start suspect the reliability, honesty and fairness of the mainstream Malaysia media, both print and electronic (Nadarajah 2000). Because of that, people start to obtain news information from an alternative media and Malaysiakini is one of the alternatives besides mainstream media. 

Reference list 

Munk, S 2009, Michael Jackson death covered first by Twitter, crashes server,Electricpig.co.uk, viewed 24th August 2011, <http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2009/06/26/michael-jackson-death-covered-first-by-twitter-crashes-servers//>.

Nadarajah, M 2000, Malaysiakini: Malaysian Daily on the Dotcom Path to Democracy, Media Forum, viewed 24th August 2011, <http://www.cameco.org/mediaforum_pdf/mf3_4006.pdf>.

Types of blogging communities & methods to build blogging communities.

As what I had shared in the previous posts, the main purpose of blogs were to shared thoughts and views on certain issues, and this will led other people to comment on the issue discussed. The people who commented on certain topic of a blog were the blog communities. To be clear, blog community is the one who has relationship with the blogger either as a reader or blogger and they must be sharing the same interest.

There are various ways to build blog community. The basic requirement that need to be fulfilled is to be active and update the blog with new topic frequently instead of publishing once in awhile. Secondly, try to ask some question to increase the interaction between you as a blogger with others (readers/bloggers). Thirdly, try to answer the question by the other bloggers or readers that commented on your post. By asking question and answering them, it gives the feeling to the community that they are having a 2 way communication instead of just read through and comment with no hope for responses.

Fourthly, visit the reader’s blogs and link to them to increase the exposure. And lastly, think of some projects that allow readers to take part. There will be more people to follow your blog if you have more projects for them. These are basically what a blogger must do to increase the readers, but for sure there are other methods like Facebook and Twitter to act as a tool to get readers, so it is all depend on the bloggers on which methods to use.

              (source: http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community)

As proposed by White (2006), there are three types of blogging communities, named the Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community, the Central Connecting Topic Community and the Boundaried Community. The single blog community can be owned by one owner or organization. This form of blog based community is to emerge readers to begin return to bloggers sites and getting to know the community of commenter. Second, Central Connecting Topic Community arises between blogs linked by a common passion or topic such as food bloggers, automobile bloggers and political bloggers. Lastly, the Boundaried communities are collections of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform.

One of my favourite blog is the Hemmy.net. It is considered as Single blog centric community because he is the only author for the blog and if he takes down the blog, the community would just disband. Now you get the idea on how to build the blogs community, try it out.


Reference list

White, N, 2007, Blogs and Communities Part1-5, viewed 23 August 2011,

http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community>

Classification of blogs & opinion about the most appropriate classification approach.

The weblog is known as one of the alternative media besides the mainstream media such as newspaper, television and so on. Basically, the bloggers can blog about everything based on the personal interest or public interest. Meanwhile, categorizing of blogs can be very subjective.

Chettri (2011) divide blog into five categories, personal, corporate, genre, media types and devise. However, I am not agreeing with part of the ideas in categorizing blogs into genre, media types and devise. The reason is simple, why would a blogger just blog about one specific type of media such as photo without posting any other thought on other issues? It just does not make sense because this type of blogs normally would not attract a good traffic.

In my own opinion, blogs are supposed to be categorized based on the main interest of the blogger. For example, it can be personal blog, political blog, automobile blog, entertainment blog, food blog, technology blog and so on. A personal blog, in detail, it is where the blogger share the thoughts and comments on a current issue that he/she is blogging and the remaining are the non-personal blogs. An example of political blogs as shown below:

(Source: http://anwaribrahimblog.com/)

In my further research on the internet, I had found a better way of categorizing the blog. Margaret Simons (Funnell 2008) suggests that the blog is supposed to be categorized into 9 parts, pamphleteering blogs (a blog that published by different authors on current political issues or broader event), digest blog (summarize of materials from mainstream media and also other blogs), advocacy blog (similar to pamphleteering but it is in a group, either an advocacy group or commercial organization), popular mechanics blog (a How-To-Do blog), exhibition blog (vanity publishing), gatewatcher blog (media observer), diary blog (an online diary), advertisement blog and news blog.

Personally, I would think Simons’ way of categorizing is the most appropriate to categorize the blogs because it is more reasonable. What do you think as internet user?

Reference list,

Chettri, S 2011, ‘What is Blogging? What Are The Different Types of Blogs?’ NetChunks, 5 March, viewed 22^nd August 2011, <http://www.netchunks.com/different-types-of-blogs/>.

Funnel, A 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, The Media Report, ABC Radio National, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

<http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript)>.

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits to the community.

“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog”. Basically the word “weblog” is a combination of “web” and “log”. It was first used by Jorn Barger in 1997 (Branum 2011). The blog users are increasing year by year with a large amount of increment with an amount of approximately 169millions blogs (Blogpulse 2011). This is mainly because of the technological changes in the last few years with the introduction of smartphones, tablets and netbooks.

The introduction of these new devices allows the bloggers to update their blog instantaneously to the worldwide audiences especially when there is crisis is happening and people are trawl the internet for the latest news and information. According to Technorati (2010), 25% of all bloggers are already engage in mobile blogging and 40% of bloggers who report blogging from their smartphone or tablet say that it has changed the way they blog, encouraging shorter and more spontaneous posts.

Besides, a research by Technorati (2010) shows that 40% of the consumers are agree with the bloggers’ view that said more people will be getting their news and entertainment from blogs in the next five years than from the traditional media and the consumers also think that the news from the mainstream media is losing its trustworthiness. In other words, people are starting to believe in the news or information from the blogs than the mainstream media such as newspaper, television news and so on.

There are four different types of bloggers which are Hobbyists, Part-Timers, Corporates and Self-Employeds (Technorati 2010). The Hobbyists remain the biggest group follow by Self-Employed, Part-Timer and Corporate bloggers based on a research that carried out by Technorati in 2010.

      (Source: http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/page-2/

In Malaysia, there are few different categories of blogs such as personal, technology, humor, entertainment, automobile, food and so on and the top ranked blog in Malaysia is kennysia.com (Sabahan 2007).

Blogs that under the politic category are increasing and it is resulted from the restrictions to freedom of speech. The freedom of speech in Malaysia is being restricted because of the laws such as Sedition Law, Defamation Law, Freedom of Assembly and Law for Licensing of Newspaper were being imposed (Wu 2005). Among the few famous political bloggers are JeffOoi.com, Rocky’s Bru, Lim Kit Siang and Anwar Ibrahim (Sabahan 2007). 

(Source: http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/)

Reference List

Blogpulse Stats 2011, Blogpulse, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://blogpulse.com/

Branum 2011, The Blogging Phenomenon: An Overview and Theoretical Consideration, The Blogging phenomenon. An Overview and Theoritical Consideration, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://www.ajy.net/jmb/blogphenomenon.htm

Gaman, 2007, 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/

Sobel J, 2010, State of the Blogosphere 2010, Technorati, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/

Wu T,H 2005, Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom: A Malaysian Case Study on Blogging Towards a Democratic Culture, Viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://www.bileta.ac.uk/Document%20Library/1/Let%20a%20Hundred%20Flowers%20Bloom%20-%20A%20Malaysian%20Case%20Study%20on%20Blogging%20Towards%20a%20Democractic%20Culture.pdf

Purpose of blog

In the 21st century, communication, business, education and so on can be done via internet. There is a huge changes since the world has evolved into a digital age where the people are doing almost anything online via different type of media.

The blog is the best platform to do all the things that mentioned earlier.

(source: http://tutorialnewbie.com/blog/tag/tutorialnewbie-com/)
The purpose of this blog is to educate the readers about the issues that is happening in the media world today. Besides, it also acts as a place to share knowledge and information of the relationship between publication and design with the target audiences which is the mass internet users.