document design

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Reflection

Blog image retrieved from Google.com

After spending much time completing this blog, I felt that I had learnt alot as the whole experience has been great to me. This is my first time experiencing what is blogging are all about, as previously I did not attempt to create a blog, even though almost all of my friends has their own personal blog. Furthermore, throughout the research on the current publishing issues, I get to obtained new information and knowledge regarding the latest trend on publishing issues, which has been an awesome learning experience, as I get to exposed to all sort of publishing issues which has given an impact to the society, or the ‘internet world’. Besides that, I truly understand theories from Walsh, whereby having multimodality elements (hyperlink, images, video, music effects) in designing an online material, it will ease users to search for the particular key word or topic easily, and it help readers to interpret the meaning clearly and easily. Besides that, theories from Kress & Van leeuwen also leads me to a better understanding towards cultural context, whereby each culture have their own ideology and belief, in which we have to design documents which do not clashes the values and their belief with the participants in a society.

Blogging is a beneficial activity, whereby we can learn a lot from congregating all the points and facts which we would include in our post, which make the learning process so much more valuable. As long as the blog is served with a purpose, then it is worthwhile to be read, unlike some junk blog which only have nonsense and unrelated information such as splogs.

YouTube- Copyrights & ethical publishing

YouTube, which uses the latest emergence technology that provides video-sharing services to users all around the world, where users are able to upload files to YouTube servers as well as view videos which consists of numerous genre, regardless whether the content is offensive, illegal, and videos can be animations, shows, footage of public events and personal recordings (YouTube 2008). Furthermore, YouTube allows its users to post and tag videos and post comment in a threaded discussion format, in which once the users views a certain video, they are able to leave down comments in the discussion area in an interactive way, so they are able to discuss and exchange ideas regarding a certain topic. According to Walsh (2006, p.30), this form of website varies in the modes they use, as they combine images along with menu bars, hyperlinks, video clips, animation, graphics and music effects, which is multimodal text, as all the elements attributes towards interactive tool.

Criticism of YouTube

Infringement complaints

Violence

Corruption

Animal abuse

Censorship by country

Copyright

Viacoms owns a number of well-known brand (MTV), Source: BBC News

Throughout this year, YouTube has been frequently criticized for failing to ensure that its online content adheres to the law of copyright. Therefore, at the time when users upload video it is shown with a screen which indicates that:

‘Do not upload any TV shows, music videos, music concerts or commercials without permission unless they consist entirely of contents you created yourself’

For example, Viacom, an American Media Conglomerate had demanded $1 billion in damages as they found more than 150,000 unauthorized clips of its material being viewed “an astounding 1.5 billion times” (BBC 2007).

Ethical Issues

YouTube has been alleged for being unethical against posting videos which reflects a negative impact towards the society. They have been criticized for hosting videos of real-life animal cruelty, as in one example of video posted on YouTube in March 2008, showing a US Marine throwing a puppy off cliff and in another example, there was a video showing one animal being fed to another, such as live food given to snakes (Brooke 2007).

Offensive Content

Furthermore, YouTube has been criticized for not enforcing strict rules on the content of videos and comments on videos that may be deemed offensive (Educause 2006). For example, there were people who uploaded the Prophet Muhammad cartoons on YouTube which was created by Germans, has riled the Muslim World, as there were images of Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse, and another portraying him holding a sword, his eyes covered by a black rectangle, which was completely portrayed as a cartoon character, in which it is inappropriate to upload such video which will offense a certain culture, especially regarding religion (Foxnews 2006). As for Malaysia context, there is an example of a Chinese boy by the name of Namawee which uploaded a six-minute rap video on YouTube that has been viewed by more than half a million people, in which the contenst about him criticizing about various races and current happenings in Malaysia which had offended the government and the citizens of Malaysia (Youtube 2008). According to Kress & Van Leeuwen (1997 p.58), due to the differences in cultural context, when there is “difference of power” in a social structure, it will affect individuals decision on whether to accept or refuse the communication.

Beneficial Video

Math teaching video (Source: YouTube)

In YouTube, there is also educational videos which teaches students on a certain subject, an example in the Math Teaching Video which consists of over 500,000 viewers. Where else, students are able to learn maths conveniently when they access to the site.

In my opinion, YouTube should control all the videos uploaded by users, as in they should filter it before hand and then allow people to view the videos, in order to prevent offensive content videos to appear in their site. All in all, YouTube have to seriously look into setting up more barriers which can prevent videos with vulgar or sexual contents, so that YouTube is safe to be viewed by all ages, regardless a small kid or an adult.

Reference List

BBC News 2007, Viacom will sue YouTube for $1bn,viewed at 5th June 2008,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6446193.stm>

Brooke, S 2007, Animal cruelty films on YouTube, viewed 6th June 2008,
<http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article228438%200.ece >

Educause 2006, 7 Things you should know about YouTube, viewed 6th June 2008,
<http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7018.pdf>

Foxnews 2006, French, German Newspaper Run Muhammad Cartoons, viewed at 5th June 2008,
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183464,00.html>

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T. 1997, Page to screen: taking literacy into the electronic era, “Chapter 3: Visual and verbal modes of representation in electronically mediated communication: the potentials new forms of text”, Allen & Unwin, New South Wales, pp.53-79.

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, pp.27-34.

YouTube 2008, Company History, viewed at 5th June 2008,

< http://www.youtube.com/t/about>

E-books revolution is here!

Sony E-books (Source: Google)

Due to the rapid growth rate of technology, there is an alternative way to reads books which is through online, unlike the conventional mode. E-books has quickly becoming a significant alternative to print books, whereby its present is not to replace print books but to provide readers another options to read books as majority of people have access to the internet and using the internet has become a daily routine (Stout 2008). E-books which are known as electronic books, it can be read in personal computer, PDA and e-books related devices or software, whereby it will be a whole new experience for readers, especially those which get used reading in the conventional method. Since the emergence of e-books, many readers are able to get hold of benefit out of it, as many e-book publishers began selling books which readers cannot get in the market or simply old and hard-to-find and also books which were not accepted by the government (Aalbc 2007).

"…more than half of all book titles will be sold electronically within the next 15 years."
Dick Brass, Vice President of Technology Development at Microsoft

Differences between print books and ebooks

E-books, easily downloaded to computer (Source:Google)

Purchased online, able to get instantaneous delivery which able to save time and save money spent on book delivery fee.

Takes up lesser physical space unlike print books which need a bookshelf to place it, due to its size and attribute (Stout 2008).

Portable, may carry as many books without worrying the weight of books.

Provide hypertexts, indexes, relevant links for easy access to more information and related websites, so that readers are able to search the specific text easily.

It gives readers a variety of information by clicking the hypertext and subheading, in which it encourage scanning and skipping to ease readers by giving them more options in reading (Kress & Van Leeuwen, p.187 ).

Print books are designed in a linear form, where readers have to read in sequence by flipping page by page and they will have restricted reading path, as skipping is a form of cheating (Kress & Van Leeuwen, p.189).

E-books is searchable and particular quote or key word can be search within seconds, unlike the conventional way which required readers to turn page after page.

Moreover, e-books can be interactive and contain audio, video and animations, which can enhance the message that the author is trying to convey, as it is consider reading a multimodal texts which is a different process from reading print books.

By having all these interactive tools, readers do not need to imagine the plot and the reading process turns out to be a fun-learning process (Walsh 2006, p.26).

Able to reduce environmental waste, whereby we can save trees and reduce pollution from delivery trunks, as no trees are required to manufacture paper for the books (Educause 2006).

Print books, the conventional way of reading (Source: Google)

Drawbacks of E-books

Screen resolution is still much below compare to print books.

Prices of reading devices and eTexts are expensive which is around US Dollar $299, in which some people cannot afford (Gemstar 2008).

E-book devices require a power source (Drscabanaugh 2008).

Unfamiliar and new, many people reluctant to use as they are comfortable reading in the conventional way.

Romance e-books website, now everyone can purchase books online instanstaneously (Source:Google)

Therefore, several issues regarding e-books need to be look into, especially copyright issue in which it is significant as it is a legal concept, giving the author exclusive rights towards its masterpiece.Despite their lack of popularity, e-books have the potential to radically change, in a positive way, by the way we read, disseminate information, and even define our culture.

Reference List

Aalbc.com 2007, All about E-books, viewed 5th June 2008,
<http://aalbc.com/writers/ebooks/Allaboutebooks.htm#All%20About>

Drscabanaugh, E-books in higher education, viewed 7th June 2008,
<http://drscavanaugh.org/ebooks/ebookhe.htm>

Educause 2006, 7 things you should know about E-Books, viewed 4th June 2008,
<http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7020.pdf>

Gemstar, Prices of E-books, viewed at 6th June 2008,
<http://www.ebook-gemstar.com/>

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 1998. “Front pages: The critical analysis of newspaper layout”, Approaches to media discourse, Ch. 7, pp. 186-219.

Sasson, R 2008, The benefit and advantages of e-books, SuccessConsciousness, viewed 7th June 2008,
<http://www.successconsciousness.com/ebooks_benefits.htm>

Stout, R 2008, What are the benefit of e-books?, Helium, viewed at 5th June 2008,
<http://www.helium.com/items/618215-what-are-the-benefits-of-ebooks>

Spam + Blog = Splogs

Sources: Google

Blogging services can be both used and abused. Currently, there is a new type of blog which is not a legitimate type of blog with the sole purpose of spamming is known as Splogs, unlike typical blogs such as political blog, fashion blog, travel blog and education blog, in which its main purpose is information sharing (Kane 2005). Splogs is an artificially created weblog site in which its main purpose is to promote or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites (Mann 2006). Now, it is one of the newest frontiers which has created much chaos towards the internet traffic and it is the latest threat towards the blogoshpere, as people often felt that Splogs or spam is disturbing and irritating as its purpose is mainly to create attention and to lure people to click on it, as they are able to obtain big bucks out of it

Example of Splogs (Sources: Google)

Splogs- The dark side of blogging?

There is statistical evidence which illustrates that 56 percent of active English language blogs are spam blogs which eventually leads to a threat towards the blogoshpere, as spam blogs are merely fake which have irrelevant, irrational text, along with enormous numbers of links which conquer almost the whole page on the site (Pollit 2005). The splog issue has grown rapidly, before being realised that it has developed into a phenomenon whereby it accounts for 60% of internet traffic, in which it has waste valuable disk space and bandwidth and also polluted the search engines results with unrelated links and creates artificial blogs with attention grabbing heading such as “5 ways to slim within 20 minutes”, as from there they are able to drive traffic to their site (Kane 2005). There are theories which explains spam as a promotional genre, in which it has communicative purpose to persuade or inform potential customers regarding a product or service and then engaged them in immediate interaction with the seller (Barron 2006). Besides that, spam has an important element which ‘captures attention’ moves which comes along with hyperlink and attention grabbing subject line, whereby the function is to arouse potential customer’s interest to view and click the advertisement (Barron 2006).

How does it work?

The top of list causing the splog explosion is “Google”, the ultimate search engine, as they are held responsible for the splog issues, in which splogger earn money from advertising placed in their splog by using the Google’s Adsense service (Pollit 2005). Splogs has a variety of selection, from beauty and health to gambling and dating services. In this case we take dating services as an example, in which on the site of dating related splog, Adsense advertisement plays an important role in linking it to related dating services sites, which appears not only one but hundreds of them (Mann 2006).

Fighting splogs

All in all, splogs is simply a blog which plagiarise other blogger’s idea and put it in the content which makes no sense after all, as the main idea is to hit the search engine rankings in order to drive people to related sites. Therefore, something has to be done to overcome these arising issues as it has a great impact towards the blogosphere as well as the internet traffic. Firstly, when we notice splogs we can report it to grass-root service Splog Reporter, as they can identify splogs and alerting search engines to remove them from their indexes (Pollit 2005). Then, we can voice about splogs to respective bodies which will take action against them by setting up additional barriers in the blog-creation-process (Lee 2005).

Reference List

Barron, A 2006, 'Understanding spam:A macro-textual analysis', Journal of Pragmatics, vol 38 pp.884-889.

Kane, M 2005, Spam, spam, spam and blogs, CnetNews.com, viewed 5th June 2008,
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-5899385-7.html?tag=bl>

Lee, N 2005, How to Fight Those Surging Splogs,Wired, viewed 6th June 2008,
<http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/10/69380>

Mann, C.C 2005, Spam + Blogs = Trouble, Wired, viewed 5th June 2008,
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/splogs.html>

Pollit, M 2005, Cashing in on fake blogs, The Guardian, viewed 6th June 2008,
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/nov/17/newmedia.media>

Monday, June 9, 2008

Wikipedia vs Britannica

Wikipedia, the ultimate search engine (Source: Wikipedia.com)

Wikipedia

In recent times, once a person is in need of information, they are more likely to turn to “Wikipedia”. Therefore, it has become a device which widely used by many online users. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia which attracts 683 million visitors annually, it provides information which covers almost everything that a user search for, and it is also a multilingual information search mechanisms which consists a total of 253 languages, as Wikipedia has become the largest online-based encyclopedia by article and word count (Elliot 2006). Furthermore, articles on Wikipedia are entirely written by volunteers as it has created an information sharing phenomenon (Elliot 2006). That is, anyone who has internet access is able to edit or update the existing article in Wikipedia, and then the article will eventually publish on the site. Hence, someone who have professional background in that certain subject area can write an article, then anyone can just edit it with their opinions regardless whether they are a qualified writer or not.

Britannica website (Source: Britannica.com)

Britannica

Britannica is an encyclopedia which have both online and printed version. Furthermore, its online encyclopedia consists more than 100,000 articles which by a staff of 19 full-time editors and over 4,000 expert contributors, in which it is consider as a source of valid information which set an example of reliable reference (Terdiman 2005). Hence, in order to use Britannica we have to pay unlike Wikipedia which is free in nature.

Wikipedia- To trust or not?

Is Wikipedia reliable? (Source:Google)

The main criticism of Wikipedia is its credibility, as its accuracy has become an issue due to its open policy which allows vandalism, uneven quality, inconsistency and unproven individual opinions occurs (Elliot 2006). That is, any random online users can alter or edit Wikipedia’s articles in which it leads to mistakes and erroneous statement occurs as it is based on their own knowledge, judgement and opinions. Therefore, there is site Furthermore, as a student we are not allowed to use Wikipedia as a source for references as it is consider not reliable for academic purposes. Nevertheless, a study by Nature shows that Wikipedia is as accurate as Britannica whereby the average mistake of the two is 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia (Terdiman 2005). Apart from that, Wikipedia’s site provides hypertexts, links and menu bar, in which users are able to click on any links or the menu bar to navigate to other articles or relevant sites. That is, it sets a non-linear pathway whereby readers are able to access to a variety of information, to choose different pathways depending on their interest and there is no beginning or ending as there is many reading path which is less strictly coded (Walsh 2006, p.30).

In my opinion, Wikipedia is a useful source to refer with, as it is a device which provides almost everything from A-Z. By using Wikipedia, we are able to obtain information which we desired, and also able to gain knowledge and understanding towards a certain topic. But, Wikipedia is lack of accountability, in which it can be easily edited by others, so I felt that it is a useful medium but not reliable to used especially for academic purposes.

Reference List

Elliot. J 2006, What is Wikipedia?, Associated Content, viewed 4th June 2008,

<http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/31957/what_is_wikipedia.html?cat=15>

Terdiman, D 2005, Study:Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica, CnetNew.com, viewed 4th June 2008,

<http://news.cnet.com/Study-Wikipedia-as-accurate-as-Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html?tag=item>

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, pp. 30.

Friday, May 9, 2008

What is the new form of media publishing?

What comes into a person’s mind when we are talking about online video? The answer is Youtube. Youtube is the leader of online video and it is the medium of watching and sharing video worldwide since it started back in year 2005 (Youtube.com 2008). It is an ideal medium for people who love to watch videos and stay updated on current issues which happen not only locally but internationally. I tend to watch America’s television programme using YouTube, as it is convenient and the time for loading is fast compare to downloading the programme entirely, which I have to wait for hours.

There are few examples of video which have millions of people viewed. One of the video which has created a big hit was Marie Digby video cover of ‘Rihanna’ “Umbrella”, with approximately 20,000 viewers per day, and she eventually able to acquire attention from viewers and potential record company by singing with a unique voice and now she is a singer under Hollywood Records (Marie Digby Online 2008).

Marie Digby video in YouTube

However, YouTube had alleged in hosting inappropriate video which insults the Thai King, in which Thai viewers are so mad at the whole situation, as their culture illustrate a high reverence towards their King. Therefore, in order to solve that problem, YouTube has removed all the related videos in order to carry out their ethical responsibilities (Jones 2007).

Therefore, the new form of media such as YouTube, have its benefits and also its drawback, but it will still be the most effective medium to share videos for both entertainment and knowledge purposes. Therefore, YouTube should developed their system towards safety circumstances, where else everybody are able to view videos which suitable for all ages.

Reference list

Jones, A, EContent: Digital Content Strategies & Resources, YouTube’s Legal Issue Grow, viewed at 5th May 2008,
<http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=39887>

Marie Digby Online 2008, Who is Marie Digby, viewed at 5th May 2008,
<http://marie-digby.org/>

YouTube: Broadcast Yourself 2008, Company History, viewed at 4th May 2008,
<http://www.youtube.com/t/about>
=39887>

Online vs Print Document

Online document and printing document are two different genre of document. Printing document is tangible, which we are able to get hold of it and it is uses the conventional method to produce its document. Where else, online document are intangible which only can set eyes on and uses the latest technology and modern features in designing its document.

Print document, Cosmolitan Magazine

Online Documet, Cosmopolitan's Website

“If a website is not easy to use, people simply leave

Jakob Nielsen

Consequently, both medium are dissimilar and has its own advantages. Print document is arranged in a linear form and appear to be more “discipline”, as all text and images are arranged in a proper sequence, so readers have to read according to the way it designed, in which their reading path are restricted. Where else, online document encourage scanning and skipping as there are many reading path, and it is less strictly coded, whereby many subhead, pictures and diagram are available in the website (Kress & Leeuwen 1998). According to Nielsen (1997), 79% of test users scan any new page they came across by just selecting the relevant key points and only 16% of test users reads word by word.

Generally, both medium has its own benefits. Therefore, I would not choose one as of the other. As personally I felt that both medium used to cater different types of audience base, people above 50 years old prefers print document as they are not as tech savvy compare to the younger generation.