New forms of media publishing

Technologies perpetually develops and new ways in media publishing invented. By the rapidly growth in the number of computer users, internet has taken its role as the alternative information media publishing. More than that, hand phone has become a gadget with more functions than we could ever imagined before.

Mobile blogging is the newest innovation in today’s media publishing which is very popular among people with camera-featured cell phones. It has has gained popularity among people in New York and Japan. When blogging, people post their commentaries or ideas from their computer, whereas with mobile blogging, people use their cell phone to post their ideas, video or picture straightly to their blog. Blogs as new form of media publishing offers a privilege for the creator to be the content creator. In addition, blogs are also a vehicle for identity self-expressing (Sundar, et al., 2007, p. 85).

Not only we can acquire information in text form, but also video, picture, etcetera.
Here are the examples:
Online Video
Eg.: Youtube, Myspace, etcetera >> provides easiness for people to publish video content online

Online Newspaper
Eg.: The Stars, Jakarta Post, Jawapos, etcetera.

Online Magazine

Eg.: ‘O’ by Oprah Winfrey, Seventeen, Women's Health Magazine

Reference:

BBC News UK, Wednesday, 7 November 2007, ‘High-tech ways to stay in touch’, viewed in 30 April 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7082566.stm

Sundar, S S, Edwards H H, Hu Y F, Stavrositu C, 2007, Chapter 5: Blogging for better Health: Putting the “Public” Back in Public Health in Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of the Media, Routledge, New York, pp. 83-102.

Designing for online versus for print

The two images above are good example in showing the difference between designing for printed and online media. It was taken from the same source but published in different genre. In comparison, in printed document, designers fit in text within the allocated space, meanwhile, web document designers have to consider of allocating white or blank space for the readers’ eyes to rest (Repp, 2006, p. 157).

In designing for online sources, designers have to be well-aware of the size of the page, since oversize webpage is difficult to read and cannot fit in some monitors (Toor, 1998, p. 164). Whereas, in creating a printed document, designers should focus on the layout, to attract the readers to keep flipping through the pages.

As Kress and van Leuween says ‘multimodal text’ means a text which contains words and

images which integrate in bringing up the meaning of the document. Printed materials are a form of multimodal text document which meant to be read and carried so the designers have to create a handy document with an appealing layout, whereas for online material readers are suppose to go form link to link (Toor, 1998, p. 163).

Jacob Nielsen, a usability engineer and web-design consultant, says you have to be succinct in designing for web, because readers’ eyes will get tired easily when they read text on screen, furthermore, reading on screen is 25% slower than reading paper. Since skimming is the most common behavior practiced by online readers, the solution is to write no more than 50% of the text for your hardcopy publication. Remember that readers do not like to scroll the page, so keep it brief and concise.

According to eye tracking visualization, readers usually read in F shape pattern (horizontal movement, second horizontal movement, and vertical movement). So that they only skim through some paragraphs to find the information.

Reference:

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘chapter 6: The meaning of composition in Front Pages: Analysis of newspaper layout, in COMM 1033 (UNISA reading library).

Nielsen, J 1997, Be Succint!, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, March 15,viewed 29 April 2008<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html> .

Reep, D C 2006, ‘Chapter 6: Document Design’ in Technical Writing: Principles, Strategies and Readings, 6th edn, Pearson Education.Toor, M L, 1998, Graphic Design on the Desktop: A Guide For the Non-designer, 2nd edn, John Wiley & Sons., Canada.

Blogs as current phenomenon

Blog has emerged as a new form of online self-publishing media. In comparison with newspaper, blogs are on the rise, whilst newspaper’s circulation is on decline. Blogs offer new way for people in coming across with ideas, images, sounds, and comments to other network or link (cited in Cunningham and Turner, 2006, p. 272).

Herring, et al., says that blogs gained an immense popularity because it enables simple and inexpensive self-publication, and functions as more flexible and interactive publication format (cited in Tremayne, 2007, p. 3). Furthermore, it allows the provision of hyperlink to other related information sources and visitors can interact and responds by dropping a comment.

According to David Sifry’s post in April 2007, blogosphere has experienced a significant growth. Technocrati, a blog search engine, tracked 112 million blog users in 2007 which means within a minute, in the last 3 years there are approximately 1,5 new blogs created everyday. We can say that as a current phenomenon, it has possessed a huge number of users.

Whereas, within Malaysian community it has brought an impact within society as it allocates a space for freedom of speech. The result of the last Malaysia General Election refelects the outcome of the Malaysian blogging trend as societies at large are more educated and well-informed than ever before.The majority of the citizen had swung their support to the opposition. Primarily because Malaysia’s government strictly censors and controlls the media publication. There were lots of news and commentaries posted on the blogs which could not be found in the mainstream media (Ooi, 2008).

Briefly, by involving self in blogging community, ones possess their opportunity to open their window of knowledge to know more of what is going on, since we can get more balanced information which are not published in the mainstream medias.


Reference:
Iskold, A 2007, Who is blogging and Why? Is the blogosphere in the digestion phase?, viewed 30 April 2008. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blogging_digestion_phase.php

Ooi, J 2008, Did blogging matter in the general election?, viewed 29 April 2008.
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/blogging/index.html

Herring, S C, Scheidt L A, Kouper I, Wright E (ed), 2007, Chapter 1: Longitudinal Content Analysis of Blogs: 2003-2004 in Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media, Routledge, New York, pp. 1-20.

My blogging purpose

My primary intention in settling this blog is to get involved in the online community, as well as to share information, and encourage an intellectual open debate. Whereas my primary intended audiences are academic people whose interest in technology and multimedia issues. However, I encourage people in general to visit and read my blog to enhance their knowledge.