Friday 2 May 2008

New Forms of Media Publishing

Moblog (mobile-blogging) becomes the latest trend of publishing. Nowadays people want everything convenient and simple. Bloggers can post their posting through cellphone. BBC News.com (2007) argues moblogging, as its name implies, takes this mobile. Meaning a blog post or entry is written and sent from a laptop via wi-fi hotspot in a café or from a capable mobile phone. As long as it is done on the hoof, it qualifies.
Reference

Print vs. Online

"Good design is not dependent upon budget. It comes from
the ability to be imaginative, to be consistent, to organise information, in a creative way, and to make the pieces of it."

(Toor, ML 1998)


According to Jakob Nielsen (1997) reading from computer is about 25% slower than reading from paper and as a result people don’t want to read a lot of text from computer screen : so that the writer should write 50% less text from the original text.
Jakob Nielsen also adds the term of writing web page such as:

  • Be succinct (short text) because from the survey mostly people don’t like scrolling their mouse.
  • Scanability in term that the writer should make headline, subhead and emphasise the message for instances through different size and colour of fonts.
  • Hypertext to split meaning, write a text which has deep content, focus on certain topic and also structured based on audience analysis.
Diana Reep (2006, p.177) also argues that writing effectively is really needed when designing for Web such as:
  • Keep the paragraph short
  • Use standard language, avoid jargon
  • Use numbered or bulleted lists

Arguments by Reep and Nielsen are really true because compare to print document which contain much more text than web page, because the characteristic of print documents itself is different from online document. Print design is portable so that people can easily bring and read to read again whenever and wherever.

Figure 4.1 Article in Magazine
(sourced by : own collection)


Figure 4.2 Same article as previous but in using the term of webpage

(sourced from: http://www.seventeen.com.my/3love.asp)

References

  • Nielsen, J 1997, Be Succint!, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, March 15,viewed 29 April 2008
    <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html> .
  • Reep, D 2006, Technical Writing :Principles, Strategies and Readings, 6th ed, Pearson Education, United States.
  • Toor, ML 1998, Graphic Design on the Desktop: A Guide fo the Non-designer, 2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons, NY.

Classification of Blogs

Nowadays too many types of blog to be mentioned because from time to time the changing of contain and type of blog is getting more variable. In this section the writer tries to examine and devide the type of blog according to classification.

According to subject matter

According to device

  • Moblog

According to Nowwearetalking.com (2008) A moblog is a blog published to the internet from a phone or other mobile device. Moblogs postings usually include photos, and therefore are usually used in conjunction with camera phones. (e.g Jamie Oliver: Diary)

According to media type

  • Vlog : video-based journals posted online (e.g Howard Rheingold’s Vlog)
  • Linklog : a collection of URL (hyperlinks) that the maintainer considers interesting enough to collect. (e.g Fashion Blogs)
  • Sketchlog : blog which contains with sketch art work. (e.g Daily Sketchlog)
  • Tumblelog : is a variation of blogs which contains with photo, quotes, feature links, video. Usually, it is used for sharing author’s creations, discoveries or experiences. (e.g Anarchaia)

According to status of publisher

References

The Blogging Phenomenon

Fig 1.1 Addicted to blog

A Weblog or a ‘blog’ is a website structured like an
on-line diary, with one or more people posting messages.

(Reep, D 2006)

Blog becomes a very familiar issue in society, the existence of blog nowadays become such a trend in every level of public, from students until politicians now swift their strategy to make a good relationship with people through this tool.

According to Johnson (2007) from his article titled Blog Mark the First 10 years, the hobby of blogging started from the invention of Blogger.com website and became more popular after the September 11 attacks. There are about 120,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day, meaning around 1.4 blogs created every second.


The trend of blogging has spread out to every place in the world. According to Microsoft.com (2006) The report also showed that Asia’s blogosphere is fueled by youth with almost half of all bloggers (56%) under 25, while 35% are 25 to 34 years old, and 9% are 35 years old and over. When broken down by gender, 55% of bloggers in Asia were found to be female and 45% male. Trend of Malaysian bloggers nowadays is a bit specific to political issue especially before the 2008 election. Politicians fared poorly across the region with only 14% interested in reading their blogs except in Malaysia where they were quite popular with 20% listing this type of blog as being of interest (Microsoft, 2006).

Benefit of Using Blog

  • Politic : as media to get more voice in election and to update a scoop which is not covered in mainstream media (e.g Malaysia Kini and Screenshots)
  • Social Networking: blog can be used as a social networking place where people can share their personal experience without any serious purposes (e.g * by Cyndy T.M)
  • Business Channel: using blog as media to promote their product and achieve wider marketing network. While blogs can be used as a tool for selling they are at their best when they are relational, conversational and offer their readers something useful that will enhance their lives in some way (Rowse 2007).(e.g Emila Yusof and A Lovely Gift Shop )
References