Document Design

Reflection

2009-11-16T10:20:00.001-08:00

I realize that creating a blog is not easy as i thought. It is because, the target audience are expected to gain knowledge from the blog and the purpose of the blog is something formal as education. When creating a blog it same with creating a good document, which helps readers read efficiently and also enable to reader to point out the most important of the document (Putnis, Peter & Petelyn & Rosyln, 1996)

Since, blog is become more larger in online communities, people can make their own blog and can be access by everyone. As a blogger, have to understand how to write ethically to avoid defamation and copyright infringements, cultural differences, and concept of design as well. It is because not all people can accept it what we have wrote. Different culture and perception social context may contributes to making the meaning of a given of a context. Thus, as blogger creative thinking needed in creating a blog to make blog attractive in readers eyes.

References:

Putnis, Peter & Petelin, Roslyn 1996, ‘Writing to communicate,’ in Professional communication, Prentice Hall, Sydney, pp.223-263

Rise of the mobile video blog

2009-11-16T09:18:00.001-08:00

According to Kress and van Leeuwen (1998), information should be obtained immediate, short and detail in order to cater the fast pace moving society. Nowadays, Mobile devices are inherently social, enabling rich social interaction, and the potential for enhancing group work and communication within educational settings. Learners are constantly connected to their social networks via their wireless mobile devices. Once again, technology development has been changing to provide and convenience in managing their daily routines. And this is included in new genre media published through mobile video blog.

However, mobile video blog nowadays, are able to bring updated news, live broadcasting, watch video and also downloading the videos that people would like to watch on their mobile. And through mobile phone, now you can edit pictures and also edit musics. Faster mobile connections, and all-inclusive data packages, means people do not need a wad of cash to upload from anywhere. And now more handsets include onboard editing, so people can just send the really good bits.

According to Alexander et al. (2004) “mobile devices coupled with wireless networks have been described as ‘disruptive technologies’, and so have the web social software tools that have developed (blogs, wikis,
podcasting, vodcasting, online photo blogging”. (cited in Cochrane, 2007). The examples of mobile phones that supported those services, such as:

Nokia N95

(Source: lestgodigital.org)

Motorola’s New Z10

(source: googleimages.com)

LG viewty phone

(source:cameraphonesplaza.com)

In my opinion, since today’s mobile phones are powerful computers, people are easy to access site, watch, editing, captured, upload and downloading what they wants. As mention in Walsh (2006) people entering this site to will do so to obtain information and to give a variety of information engage not just to learn but to become involved.

References:

BBC news (2008), Rise of The Mobile Video Blog, Viewed 15 November 2009,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7392594.stm

Cochrane, T , 2007, Mobile Blogging: A Guide for Educators, viewed 15 November 2009,

http://ltxserver.unitec.ac.nz/~thom/pdfs/EITpaper2007.pdf

Kress G & van Leeuwen T 1998, “Front Pages: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper Layout”, Blackwell, Oxford.

Walsh M 2006, “The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts”, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.

Indonesian weekly apologises over Last Supper Suharto cover

2009-11-16T07:23:00.001-08:00

A leading Indonesian magazine has apologised to Christians for depicting former President Suharto and his family in an image parodying Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper in the cover of its latest edition.

A protester displays a copy of Indonesian news weekly, Tempo, Suharto’s Last Supper

(Source: afp.google.com)

Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting, Jesus The Last Supper.

(Source: images.google.com)

From the pictures above, no wonder that christian activists visited Tempo's building on Tuesday to protest the cover which they said compared Suharto to Jesus.It is because when the readers see the pictures, actually is same with the Jesus last supper and it is not appropriate to publishing. As a theory from Shriver (1997) of media publishing, stated that readers try to form an immediate representation of the meaning from visual display. It is mean that readers interpretation is come from what they see and use the full textual to make their representation.

However, the pictures above created issues due to cultural differences. This is due to the misunderstanding of links between the composition of Leonardo’s painting.The concepts and context of the event is told in the holy bible. It was not ethical to post such a picture as the cultural differences is not respected, because it will make negatively judged and it was against the christians believes and customs. “A religion is a set of tenets and practices” (BBC, 2008). Christian believes that jesus last supper meal jesus shared with his twelve apostles and disciples before he death.

In my opinion, it was inappropriate of publishing the cover of Suharto’s last supper that could cause issues disliking to the christian believers. And it is also important of media published to understand the ethical publishing, understand of cultural situational context and also publishing regulations. It is because not all people as a reader could accept the material or articles that have been published.

References:

BBC (2008) Religions & Ethics- Christianity, viewed 15 November 2009, http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/christianethics/euthanasia_1.shtml

Indonesian weekly apologies over last Supper Suharto cover’ 2008, ABC.net, viewed 15 November 2009,

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/06/2156269.htm

Schriver KA 1997, “The interplay of words and pictures”, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.

"Harry Potter" Author Wins Copyright Claim

2009-11-16T05:30:00.001-08:00

J.K Rowling, author of Harry Potter

(Source: etonline.com)

The librarian, Steven Jan Vander Ark, who has the face of a schoolboy and resembles Harry Potter, was trying to publish “The Harry Potter Lexicon” but J.K Rowling and Warner Brothers Entertainment, the company that produces the “Harry Potter” movies, sued, citing copyright infringement.(CBS News 2008)

According to US copyright law (2008), the term “copyright” refers to a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States. Anyone may copy ideas contained within a work but not copying the actual works, which original work of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. So, J.K Rowling was right to defends her rights.

Steven Vander ark insisted that he plan to do is not going to violate her copyright act seeing what Vander Ark is trying to do is use the Harry Potter world as a reference to explain about the complicated world of Harry Potter. He said it was decided that the lexicon would include sections from the Lexicon Web site that give descriptions and commentary on individual names, places, spells and creatures from Harry Potter stories.To protect himself, Vander Ark insisted that RDR Books include a clause in his contract that the publisher would defend and pay any damages that might result from claims against him. In my opinion, in order to copyright infringement, it is necessary to divine the purpose and character of the use which the work must be transformative.

However, Reep (2006) pointed out that “it is illegal to violate the creator’s copyright by using these works for your own benefit without getting permission and paying the appropriate fees”. Thus, the outcome of this copyright battle is clearly that Steven Vander Ark did was certainly a copy right violation.

(Source: YouTube.com)

References:

Bitlaw n.d., U.S Copyright Law, viewed 15 November 2009,

http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/fair_use.html

CBS News 8 September 2008, ‘Harry Potter Author Wins Copyright Claim’, viewed 15 November 2009,

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/08/entertainment/main4426302.shtml

Reep, DC 2006, Technicarl witing: principles, strategies, and readings, 6th edn, Pearson Education, Inc., New York.

Facebook makeover leaves some devotees fuming.

2009-11-15T07:06:00.001-08:00

According to correspondent in San Francisco, today’s full launch of the new-look Facebook has left many of the social networking website’s 100 million users fuming. Facebook rolled out the revamped profile pages in May, which networks are expanded to workplaces as well as colleges and high schools. Chamath Palihapitiya as vice president of marketing was commented that the changes of facebook layouts are motivated by feedback from users as well as a trend toward people flooding the internet with videos, pictures, and music they want to instanly share. The changes make pages livelier and better organised while giving people more control software applications they option to install. But, some people are unhappy or concerned about the recent changes to facebook (cited in The Australian, 2008).

Based on Facebook users experiences, some changes in use and perception of Facebook could affect their audiences perception and attitudes. Attitudes toward the Website is an important measure of Web site effectiveness and perception of interaction with either human-based or computer-based messages is influenced by the speed with which messages can be delivered and the speed with which individuals process messages (Nielsen, 2000). Facebook features changes over time, the following includes a timeline of major Facebook interface changes :

•May 2006 – Networks are expanded to workplaces as well as colleges and high schools.

•September 2006 – News Feed and Mini-Feed are added, aggregating profile changes of friends. New privacy settings are made available.

•May 2007 – Facebook launches their “Applications” platform.

•July 2007 – Facebook removes the profile field that allows users to list their courses.

•March 2008 – New privacy controls are added.

Since facebook features changes overtimes, participation in online communities increases, so does the necessity for flexible privacy mechanisms to protect user data. Many privacy mechanisms of online social communities are purposefully weak to facilitate joining the community and sharing information (Lipford, Besmer & Watson, 2008). As stated by, Gross et al (2005) “the relation between privacy and person’s social network is multi-faceted”. For instance, people want their information about themselves to be known by a small circle of their friends but sometimes people willing to reveal their personal information to anonymous strangers. Therefore, in many cases users are unwilling or unable to put forth the effort to modify and manage their privacy settings to protect their personal information. In fact, it is difficult to control the information in the online world and anything that we share is out of our control.

In my opinion, even though changes have been made by Facebook on the privacy setting for the sake of the users, the users take it lightly that they never bother to fully utilize it. And a sudden change of Facebook layout might affect users, but after they get use to it and understand the improvement of new layout, they will accept it.

Old and New Layout of Facebook

(Source: google images.com)

References:

Correspondents in San Fransisco, September 11, 2008, viewed on 10 November 2009,

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24328928-15318,00.html

Gross,R, Acquisti,A & Heinz III,HJ 2005, ‘Information revelation and privacy social networks’ ,Workshop on privacy in the electronic society, pp.71-80, ACM, New York, viewed 10 November 2009,
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1102214&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=40043593&CFTOKEN=94974016&ret=1#Fulltext

Lampe,C, Ellison, B, N & Steinfield, C, 2008, Changes in Use and Perception of Facebook, viewed 10 November 2009,

https://www.msu.edu/~nellison/LampeEllisonSteinfield2008.pdf

Lipford, H,R, Besmer, A, & Watson, J, 2008, Understanding Privacy Settings in Facebook with an Audience View, viewed 10 November 2009,

https://www.usenix.org/events/upsec08/tech/full_papers/lipford/lipford.pdf

New forms of media publishing

2009-11-14T10:14:00.001-08:00

The rise of new media has increased communication between people all over the world and the Internet. It has allowed people to express themselves through blogs, websites, pictures, and other user-generated media. It shows that, today’s people are more interesting with the online information, since they are easy and quick to be obtained. For instance; YouTube, Twitter, Facebook & online newsletter. YouTube is the most popular form of new media that the leader in internet video search serves up 100 million videos a day online. (Reuters 2006)

However, it is also important understanding the newest trends and issues relating new forms of media publishing. As argued by Shriver (1997) better technology does not equal better communication. For example the issues relating new forms is during US Election 2008, the number of social networking such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook & Flickr which are connected with US politics has increased followed by the increase of visits. The US Election 2008 Web Monitor provides two social media applications based on the Facebook Platform: Election Monitor and Sentiment Quiz. These applications invite users to cast votes for their preferred candidates in weekly intervals, and to participate in an interactive real-time quiz in the tradition of games with a purpose.

(Source: google.com)

Besides that, the following chart shows the share of US internet visits to YouTube compared with the share of upstream visits to Politics websites from YouTube. The trend is clearly illustrated by the grey line - showing that YouTube has been accounting for a larger share of US visits to Politics websites since January.

(Source: hitwise.com)

References:

ECOresearch Network, US08 Facebook Application, viewed 10 November 2009,<http://www.ecoresearch.net/election2008/facebook>

Hitwise Intelligence 2006, YouTube the US midterm elections and UK politics, 6 November, viewed 10 November 2009,

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-hopkins/2006/11/youtube_the_us_midterm_electio.html

Reuters 16 July 2006, ‘YouTube serves up 100 million videos a day online’, viewed 10 November 2009,

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-07-16-youtube-views_x.htm?

Shriver, KA 1997, Dynamic in document design: creating text for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York

Designing for print versus designing for online

2009-11-14T10:06:00.001-08:00

Today, life science vendors have an almost endless array of print and online options when it comes to advertising their products and services. According to Raquedan (2009), there are differences of design for a printed piece within from those for an online one such as:

The Web is Dynamic – designing for the web means designing for content that will change based on the reader’s interaction. Printed content and design, obviously, will stay the same for eternity.
Authoring is different – Making web pages can literally be done on notepad for the HTML, CSS, and Javascript stuff. But there are key tools available from image editors (Adobe Photoshop/Fireworks, Mic), editors (Adobe Dreamweaver), and even rich media (Flash) that give the web its interactivity. Print folks have Adobe InDesign, and even Microsoft Word. Then, designing for print operates better in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment.

Furthermore, Nielsen (1999) also pointed out the differences of design for print and design for online which are:

Print design is based on letting the eyes walk over the information, selectively looking at information objects and using spatial juxtaposition to make page elements enhance and explain each other.
Web design functions by letting the hands move the information (by scrolling or clicking); information relationships are expressed temporally as part of an interaction and user movement.

Good examples of the differences of online and print design that are derived from the same source, but published in different genres.

It is clearly seen on the printed page, the typography can be fully integrated with the other elements. In contrast, this is impossible with

the typography on the website.

References:

Nielsen, J 1999, Print vs. web design, 24 January, viewed 10 November 2009

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html

Raquedan, R, 2009, Web Design Vs. Print Design: A Review, Standards Web Standards, viewed 10 November 2009,

<http://webstandards.raquedan.com/?p=585>

Types of blogging communities & methods to build blogging communities

2009-11-14T09:58:00.001-08:00

Today’s, online community has been an important part of the internet. In recent years, the dominance of blogs has introduced a new platform for communities such as Facebook and Twitter and also blog have take on a new dimension (Anthony, 2009). Thus, it will become blogging communities that are located in a number of major cities and regional centre’s. Communities could be public or private and visible only to those who joined. According to Packwood (2005) stated that “online community is present when individual and collective identity begins to be expressed; when we care about who said what, not just the what; when relationship is part of the dynamic and links are no longer the only currency of exchange” (cited in White, 2006).

However, to create a blogging community people usually tag their articles help others filter for specific content with give comments. For example of blog community is the Global Voices community, which collectives’ blogs from developing countries in an effort to get the mainstream media to pay attention to issues in those countries.

Source: Global Voice Community.

In this site, they provides opportunities for feedback and also the members support each other in terms of improving their practice, advocacy when a blogger is threatened and generally learning from each other.

References:

Anthony, 2009, What is a blogging community?, viewed 10 November 2009,<http://www.thetraveltart.com/what-is-a-blogging-community/\>

GlobalVoices, viewed 10 November 2009,

<http://globalvoicesonline.org/>

White, N 2006, ‘Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?’, The knowledge of tree, viewed 10 November 2009,
<http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>

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

2009-11-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

In recent years, weblogs have not only rapidly become popular as a new and easily accessible publishing tool for the masses, but its content is becoming ever more valuable as a window to the world an extensive medium brimming with subjective content that can be mined and analysed to discover what people are talking about and why (Rijke & Elgersma, 2006). As the current phenomenon of blogs has grown significantly, there are wide of variety of topics, ranging from political to personal experiences. The different types of blogs such as:

Subject matter:

1. Politics: dceiver.blogspot.com
2. Fashion : fashionz.co.nz
3. History : thehistoryblog.com
4. Law : sentencing.typepad.com

Device:
Moblog or mobile blogging: Seth Lakeman’s moblog

Media type:
1. Vlog or Video logging : JunkTV
2. Linklog is URLs (hyperlinks) blogging : Tony Finch’s Link log
3. Sketchlog : Jose Villegas sketchlog
4. Tumblelog : A Shot of JD

Status of Publishers:
1. Business blog : entrepreneur.com
2. Corporate blogs : Linkedln Corporate blogs

According to Margaret Simons, is authors and freelance journalist has classified nine different types of blogs. There are includes of pamphleteering blogs, digest blog ,advocacy blogs, popular ,mechanics blog, the exhibition blog, gate watcher blog ,the diary, the advertisement ,news blog (ABC 2008). These all are more appropriate to represent different type of available blogs, because one of the difficulties with the combinations of blog styles is to identify unique types. Most people therefore have a look at the topic, style, and format. While, Wikipedia classified under types of blogs in general, taxonomy of blogs is more toward to classification under specific blogs that are unique such as popular mechanic blogs.

In my opinion, even they are many types of blog and way to write a blog but there is a weaknesses when doing a blog such as, a style and format. But it is also depends from the blogger, what they more comfortable to create their blog.

Reference:

A taxonomy of blogs September 2008, ABC radio national, The media report, viewed 10 November 2009,

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

Rijke, M & Elgersma, E, 2006, Learning to Recognize Blogs: A Preliminary Exploration, University of Amsterdam, viewed 10 November 2009,

<http://www.sics.se/jussi/newtext/working_notes/05_elgersma_derijke.pdf>

Wikipedia 2009, Blog, viewed 10 November 2009,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog>

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits to the community

2009-11-09T11:35:00.001-08:00

The size of Blogosphere (Source: Technorati 2008)

According to Technorati, truly global phenomenon of blogosphere has tracked blogs in 81 languages and blogs have representation in top-10 web site lists across all key categories, and have become integral to the media ecosystem. Overall, bloggers report that they are blogging more in 2009 than in 2008, amongst both the pro blogging and hobbyist groups. Bloggers report they are for the most part blogging more in conjunction with a vast increase in use of Twitter, microblogging, and other social media applications. 73% of bloggers report using Twitter, as compared to 14% for the general population.

Malaysian blogs, Malaysians primarily see blogs as the Social Politic type: example more-or-less overtly political platforms that avoid the restrictions on public debate that are imposed in other spaces/forums. (Ulicny, 2008). In Asia, mostly music blog are more popular than politic. In Europe, personal, lifestyle, and religious topics are less popular (Technorati 2008).

However, there are some benefits of blogging to the community. For instance, in Malaysia professional blogger looks to improve their income, to upgrade their profile and to expand their community. This approach seems beneficial to bloggers who are seeking extra income or seeking jobs online, as they have the chances to upgrade their profile. It also benefits those who wish to expend their community, especially those who wish to find a group of people that share their same viewpoints on certain topics. The blogosphere not only benefits readers by giving them numerous updates online in a wide range of topics (politics, journalism, education, friends, etc), but readers also have the chance to share their own opinions based on a particular blog entry through the comments feature, and they may even create their own blog online (Phoebe, 2007).

References:

Phoebe,TPL, 2007, "An Insight of Blogosphere over the internet", viewed 7 November 2009,

http://sedaya.edu.my/jasa/3/papers/AC8.pdf

Technorati 2008, “State of blogosphere”, viewed 7 November 2009,
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/the-what-and-why-of-blogging/

Ulicny, B, 2008, "Modelling Malaysian Public Opinion by Mining the Malaysian Blogosphere", viewed 7 November 2009,

http://www.springerlink.com/content/k226q2785k5x34r8/

What is a good Document?

2009-09-08T08:05:00.001-07:00

The above slide is the example of the slide that required changes.

Good document acts like guiding lights that lighting the way for your users. People usually think that a document considered good when it is contain all the criteria needed which is the document contains complete information, easy to find, and is attractive. According to Putnis, Peter & Petelyn & Rosyln (1996) stated a good document which helps readers read efficiently and also enable to reader to point out the most important content of the document. However, to make a good document it is also supported by writers who design and write of their document. Unfortunately, many writers do not consider the design and many designers do not consider the verbal content of their documents. As cited in Putnis et.al (1996) that MacKenzie argued writers need to make appropriate and coherently integration between words and graphic in order to create information that is accessible and usable for readers.

Based on the above slide shows that there are two complicated pictures which make the readers difficult to understand what the picture tells about. In order to create a good document, graphics and text within the page must be balance and also balance the negative (white) space with the positive (text, title, and visual space) (Putnis et al, 1996, p.254). A good slide will have a graphics and content that supporting each other. Too much or too little space will upset the balance and the proportion of the page (Reep, 2006) Thus, text and images can be complementary for each other to help reader understand a document better (Shriver, 1997).

Moreover, the image that was given in the slides does not have caption and source citation. Nevertheless, it will help readers to know what the document is about and where the flow is if the slides provide the caption and source citation (Windschuttle, 1998). Citations play a central role in the process of writing a paper and as researchers must justify their paper to make a contribution the knowledge in their discipline (Teufel et al). In addition, the most important a good document is credibility for web users that can be increased by high-quality of graphics, good writing, and use of outbound hypertext links (Nielsen, 1997).

References list:

Nielsen, J 1997, How users read on the web, Alertbox, viewed 4 September 2009,
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

Putnis, Peter & Petelin, Roslyn 1996, ‘Writing to communicate,’ in Professional communication, Prentice Hall, Sydney, pp.223-263

Reep,Diana C 2006, ‘ Principles of document design,’ in Technical Writing , Pearson Edu, Inc, New York ,pp.133-172

Schriver, K.A. 1997, ‘Chapter 6 : Dynamics in document design : creating texts for readers’, pp. 361-441, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.

Teufel,S , Siddharthan,A ,& Tidhar ,D , An annotation scheme for citation function, Natural Language and Infrormation Processing Group, Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University,viewed 4 September 2009,
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as372/sigdial-final.pdf

Windschuttle, K 1988, Report: Writing and Presentation, Writing, Researching and Communicating, Mc-Graw Hill, Sydney, viewed on 5th September 2009 http://catalogue.library.unisa.edu.au/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=2040&recCount=10&recPointer=1&bibId=1037496

Purpose

2009-09-07T07:46:00.000-07:00

Blogs are online journal that can be used in a variety of different ways. A blog which talk about the concept details of information document design. The target audiences of this blog are business and communication students. The purpose of this blog is to provide informative information to its readers, and as a tool for e-learning and knowledge management.