Reflections

When I first decided to enroll into this course, I did not expect that I will be taught about what goes behind the publication industry and the theories that made all the advancements possible in only my first semester into the program.

Prior to this subject, I have always been intrigued about how all the reading materials I've been collecting and consuming all these years found its way in our hands and on our computer screens. I was really enlightened after reading the works of Kress and van Leeuwen, Stephen Bernhardt, Maureen Walsh and a few other theoretical readings that I had to go through in this subject.

I was rather delighted when given the task to write a series of blog posts regarding the current issues in publication and design because as tech enthusiast, this assignment gave me an opportunity to work closely with my passion for technology and my interest in modern and contemporary publishing.

What I hope to achieve when I started to work on this assignment was to further expand my knowledge and understanding in publication, and really have a grasp about the issues that surround it with the help of my lecturer, classmates and all the required readings. Ending this assignment on a satisfactory note, I believe I did just that.

E-mail: Doing it right, the right way.

Despite all the rapid technological advancements in the world of computing for the past 40 years or so, e-mails are still as important and relevant as they can be. Having recent emergence of new information and communications devices that still revolves around it underlines this fact. E-mails to this day are still the go-to tool of communication between parties in business, students with their lecturers and families that are geographically apart.

Like any other medium, e-mail does come with its own inherited complications. Even among professionals, writing an e-mail always posed these questions; will the intended recipient get the true meaning and tone of the message? Are the information relayed across sufficient enough for the whole meaning of the message to be comprehended?

According to New York publisher Will Schwalbe (The Media Report, 2007), bad e-mails are not always about the content but more importantly how vague it can be. Vague e-mailing is when it takes several emails to get the real message across when it can be done in one single e-mail.

Also, the problems with e-mails are not only on the shoulders of the senders. Professor Kristin Byron of Syracuse University (The Media Report, 2007) said that people often misjudge the emotions of e-mails because they are overconfident with their perception of a particular e-mail even when there are few communicational cues in it. Byron further adds that training staff in how to effectively use email is simply overlooked by companies and organizations despite the fact that inappropriate, or sloppy email correspondence can have a negative impact on a company's image or cost them dearly financially.

Since e-mails are also regarded as a publication genre thanks to the popularity of e-mail newsletters, this issue also touches the aspects of ethical publishing. In this context, ethical publishing should be considered at all times when writing an e-mail to ensure that there are no distortions in the communication process. What is more important is the choice of language and words used to diplomatically convey the meaning effectively. Proper capitalization and paragraphing helps greatly to add an understanding dynamics in e-mails. Even the use of emoticons are allowed to explicitly suggest the tone and expression of a sentence or a paragraph in an email, according to its inventor Professor Scott Fahlman (The Media Report, 2007). Even then, Fahlman quickly emphasized that with e-mails today, photos can be attached and videos can be embedded along with the message which effectively replaced the use of emoticons if not compliment it. This makes e-mail a medium of multimodality simply because it culminates more than one mode in a text. (Walsh, 2006)

Truth be told, writing an e-mail is fundamentally no different than writing a letter with only its respective medium being the thing that sets both processes apart. In both instances however, properly disciplined writing ethics must be practiced for the sake of effective and efficient communication as it will not only save time and energy, it may save lives as well.

References:

1. The Media Report (2007), Emotions and email etiquette (transcript), online, retrieved 11 June 2010, from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2064342.htm

2. 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, p.24-37. (UNISA electronic library).

Innovation: Using Social Networking Tools To Help Print Publications

The past decade has seen a radical climate change in the publication industry. The emergence of social networking sites, blogs and microblogs have changed the way news and information are disseminated. It gets deeper and greater than that however. People nowadays rely less on publications that offer news and information they require on a daily basis. The introduction of microblogging services like Twitter made it possible for everyone to get news and information directly from the source itself. It did not take long for the publication world to realize the direction this new public reliance on the internet will take them and the whole world into. News corporations and magazine publishers embraced the functionality of social networking tools and this resulted in the presence of these companies and their publications on Facebook and Twitter primarily.

This does not however mean that publishers have taken a drastic move by focusing solely on the information technology platform and completely abandoning the print publishing world. Seeing it as more of a promotional tool rather than a doom spell for print publication, publishers are actively utilizing social networking sites to further push their product to the masses and keeping the whole process fresh and innovative. Julie Hochheiser, the senior web editor for the Hearst Teen Network, which includes Seventeen magzine's online content will gladly testify to the power of social media. The clever use of Twitter has driven 170 paid subscribers to subscribe to Seventeen magazine in just 24 hours. (Sivek, 2010)

Source. PBS.org, 2010

The key in building a good product relies importantly on the audiences feedback. And this is exactly what Sunset magazine is doing with Facebook according to its editor-in-chief, Katie Tamony.

"We have 11,500 fans (on Facebook), so we can come to them not just with content, but also with some marketing ideas."

This small group of generally younger readers and fans posts about 500 "interactions" weekly to Sunset's fan page, and offers real-time feedback to questions and offers presented by the staff (Sivek 2010). Tamony further adds that since Sunset is all about enjoying life and pleasurable things, using social media is like having an event or a party going on all the time.

These are just a couple of examples of how social networking tools can be used to not only promote content, but to also generate real-time feedback from their respective audiences. In the competitive world of publication today, constant innovations from publishers are vital to ensure that they stay on top of their game.

References:

1. Sivek, S. C., (2010), How Magazines Use Social Media to Boost Pass-Along, Build voice, online, retrieved 10 June 2010, from http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/03/how-magazines-use-social-media-to-boost-pass-along-build-voice075.html

2. Seventeen Magazine Twitter Update (2010), online, retrieved 10 June 2010, from http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/17%20tweet%20with%20pic.jpg

iPad: New Media Ecosystem & Multimodality, Audience Expectations

When Walsh (2006) elaborated about how multimodal texts convey meanings of documents through a synchronization of modes, the resulting of these culmination of modes often find its way in a new type of medium or genre as we are familiar with and experience on a day-to-day basis today. In short, Walsh's elaboration was an academic view of the function of computers and a number of other electronic devices today that serves the principles of multimodality.

Source: Everyeye.co.uk, 2010

When Steve Jobs announced Apple's much-anticipated tablet computer, the iPad, the masses believe that the company was merely doing the next logical step; taking mobile computing to another level. With it's size, dimension, great screen display and performance, it presented exciting new avenues to discover for the future of e-books.

iPad came about after the arrival of Amazon's new e-book reader platform, the Kindle series that comprises of Kindle, Kindle 2 and Kindle DX. Up to that point, Kindle was considered to be the main choice amongst all e-readers in the market. However, the monochromatic display of Kindle proves to be a bore and does not garner more interest in people to pick up e-books as their preferred reading material format.

Since the acceptance of e-books as a publication genre and e-book readers as a household technology, all there was to e-books are only the transition of texts from traditional book into the e-reader format which is quite redundantly, only displays text and nothing else apart from Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader which came closest to being what iPad has become. With iPad however, it became possible for the entire content of the book from front to back cover to be transported into a device that offers stunningly rich visual display. The e-book experience does not stop there because with iPad's multitouch screen and multi-axis accelerometer technology that helps determine the landscape or portrait orientation of the device, e-books are able to be as interactive as they can be. Have a look at the video below of an iPad application for Alice In Wonderland and be amaze at the wonder of adding basic laws of physics into multimodality.

Source: Youtube, 2010

One of the most important feature that came along with the announcement of the iPad is rather inevitable. Being known for their well-documented App Store, Apple launched their own store of e-books called iBooks which users can easily download e-books to their iPads with a simple click. iPad is the best attempt at emulating the traditional book experience and pushes it even more. You can change iBooks on iPad to suit the way you read by turning iPad to portrait mode to view a single page or view two pages at once by rotating to landscape mode. (Apple, 2010)

Source: Indesignsecrets, 2010

With iPad and iBooks at the forefront of the e-book revolution, the future looks certainly bright for the publication industry if everyone embrace it and work together for the benefit of our future generation.

References:

1. 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, p.24-37. (UNISA electronic library).

2. Apple iPad (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://www.everyeye.co.uk/wp content/uploads/2010/03/apple_ipad.jpg

3. Ad For The Alice In Wonderland iPad App (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_gniS4d5Pw

4. iBooks: A novel way to buy and read books (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/ibooks.html

5. iBooks (2010), online, retrieved 7 June 2010, from http://indesignsecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ibooks.jpg

E-book: New media Ecosystem, Audience Perception, Genre

Even in the modern world today, books are still considered the primary source of information and knowledge for most people. But it has become increasingly difficult to preserve books in its healthy state and also adding to the fact that the production of books is taking a lot from mother nature despite replantation initiatives. Books also takes up a lot of storage space which will result in consumers spending more of their hard-earned money on storage solution materials. However in 1970's Michael Hart had a thought. A digital copy of the Declaration of Independence was the birth of what is known now as an e-book, the digital equivalent to the traditional printed books (Sedycias, R., 2008).

When e-books first came about, it only attracted a specific group specializing in niche things. The convenience of e-books made it very popular almost instantly amongst avid readers who prefers to have their entire library stored digitally. This is also thanks to Adobe and their PDF format which became the most popular file format for e-books even to this very day. E-books were gaining such prominent momentum that it caused a scare to publishers like how MP3 terrified record labels and recording artistes, and just as terrifying as pirated movies were to film makers. Publishers and authors opposed this idea of a new publication genre for the same reason as any other document that has been digitized over the past decade or two. Digital formats are easily shared amongst consumers that the fear of major reduction in book sales are inevitable. This also directly affect authors and presented them with a dilemma. The property of e-books presents a prospect of world-wide distribution that is fast and efficient but at the same time, authors would not be able to receive the royalty they deserve from the sales of their books as e-book encourages peer-to-peer sharing. This is not to say that the same problem does not occur with traditional books, but the e-book format means that the publishing world has another thing to worry about.

The popularity of e-books paved way of a new technological device known as the e-book reader or e-reader. Bernhardt (1986) said that the physical fact of the text requires visual apprehension. Which means that a text can be seen, must be seen, in a process that is entirely different from the perception of speech. The e-book reader presents just that as it attempts to emulate the tangible feeling of reading a book. The emergence of an array of e-reader manufacturers with their ever-evolving products persuaded a lot of traditional book lovers to adopt the e-book genre.

Source: Orionwell, 2008

The publishing industry eventually embraced the arrival of e-books. Realizing and finding a way that it will benefit them more than it will hurt them, the e-book genre has been rapidly evolving since day one and presenting a wonderful world of possibilities to readers all over the world.

References:

1. Sedycias, R. (2008), The History and Popularity of E-books, online, retrieved 4 June 2010, from http://www.articlesbase.com/ebooks-articles/the-history-and-popularity-of-ebooks-481506.html

2. Bernhardt, S. A. (1986), Seeing the text, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Feb., 1986), pp. 66-78, National Council of Teachers of English

3. E-Books Popularity On The Rise, television program, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney, 18 March 2009.

4. Sony's Latest E-Book Reader, online, retrieved 4 June 2010, from http://orionwell.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/sony-laytest-ebook-reader.jpg

Good design for screen genre

Reep (2006) said that readers do not read only the printed words on a page but they also read the visual presentation of the text. As you can see in the slide below, the use of the red colored fonts against a yellow background are meant to attract the viewer's attention to the tittle of the presentation. The accompanying visuals in the slide serves the Salience theory proposed by Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) which is to grab viewers’ attention by providing aesthetics and meaning.

The second slide above justifies what Bernhardt (1986) mentioned about the physical fact of the text that requires visual apprehension. He said that the process in entirely different from the perception of speech as a text should be seen and must be seen instead of spoken and heard. He also said that the presentation of the text determines the tone of the message.

On the third slide above, despite what has been said by Kress & Van Leeuwen (2006) about how writing does not determine the absolute meaning of text anymore, text are still used to explain the meaning of the visual display to the audience. This slide is embedded with a series of animated texts that explains the visual elements of the mentioned document design.

References:

1. Reep, Diana C. (2006), ‘Chp 4: Principles of Document Design,’ in Technical Writing, 6th ed., Pearson Edu, Inc., New York, p.173-190.

2. Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 2006. Reading Images, Chapter 6: The meaning of composition.

3. Bernhardt, Stephen A. (1986), College Composition and Communication, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Feb., 1986), pp. 66-78, National Council of Teachers of English.

New forms of media publishing

(Source: Cohesion.rice.edu)

It is hard to argue the fact that the newest form of media publishing that is spreading like wildfire is none other than Twitter.

Twitter have popularized the term microblogging, which differs from traditional blogging in terms of content. Twitter entries (known as 'tweets') are purely text-based entries in no more than 140 characters that also enables embeddings of URLs, photos & video links.

Twitter has changed how fast and concise news and information are being disseminated to the mass Internet audience. The recent Haiti earthquake serves as a good example of the Twitter effect. Twitter users received instant updates about the natural disaster way ahead of major news networks thus Public figures have also adopted the Twitter technology in their lives as it offers their followers more current updates in their daily activities giving them an intimate experience with them.

In Malaysia, Twitter has really caught on to a majority of Malaysians. The political climate in Malaysia has changed drastically with the advent of Twitter. A majority of politicians have their own Twitter accounts where they share their views, activities and happenings with the general public as frequent as possible. They are also able to receive instant feedbacks from their followers.

For me personally, following Twitter accounts of several politicians from different parties gives me instant updates about the happenings of the Hulu Selangor by-election that is coming up on 25 April 2010. I am also able to view their personal insights regarding the whole campaign; something that newspapers and TV news are not able to provide me with.

Reference:

1. Naughton, J. (2006), Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, online, retrieved 12 April 2010, from http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf

Types, methods to build and structure of blogging communities

To define what is a blogging community, we must first look at what is an online community. As explained by Nancy White (Blogs and Community - launching a new paradigm for online community? 2006), an online community is a community that relies on online interaction within some bounded set of technologies. During the early mass acceptance of the internet technology, these online communities interacted via bulletin board systems, forums and even as simple as emails. The rapid advent of blogs has instantly caused peo

ple to adopt it as a more personalized vessel to convey their thoughts better than bulletin boards or forums. It is safe to say that the blogging community evolved from the earlier online community.

White (Blogs and Community - launching a new paradigm for online community? 2006) also stated that it is the use of Web 2.0 tools such as RSS, permalink, tagging which allowed bloggers to comment on each others blogs are largely responsible in the creation process of a blogging community. These tools are used as a native communication tool for bloggers amongst one another which allowed community-like interactions.

According to White (Blogs and Community - launching a new paradigm for online community? 2006), there are 3 basic types of blogging communities that can be easily understood by observing the diagrams below. They are:

(Source: Tihane 2006)

1. Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community (Involves not only the blogger but also the community of commentors)

(Source: Tihane 2006)

2. Central Connecting Topic Community (A community that arises between blogs linked by a common passion)

(Source: Tihane 2006)

3. Boundaried Communities (Collection of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform)

If we take a look the structure of Nuffnang, it's interesting that White (Blogs and Community - launching a new paradigm for online community? 2006) mentioned about hybrid types. Nuffnang is Asia's first and leading advertising community that provides a platform that allows advertisers to place their adverts on almost all blogs hosted on an array of platforms. This type of blogging community is very closely linked to that of the Central Connecting Topic Community where everyone is bounded by a common passion.

References:

1. Blogs and Community - launching a new paradigm for online community?, podcast radio programme, September 2006, Australian Flexible Learning Framework, retrieved 11 April 2010, from http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community.

2. 3 blog community paradigms, 24 December 2006, Taming the spaces blog, online, retrieved 11 April 2010, from http://tihane.wordpress.com/2006/12/24/3-blog-community-paradigms/

3. nuffnang - About Us, online, retrieved 11 April 2010, from http://www.nuffnang.com.my/about-us/

Classification of blogs

For this post, I have found a unique blog classification system. Qu et al. (2006) designed an experiment based on natural language processing (NLP). NLP is a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages that converts information from computer databases into readable human language (Wikipedia 2001). Their NLP program is used for categorizing one hundred and twenty blogs into four topic groups: personal diary, politics, news, and sports.

The NLP experiment was carried out by weighing specific linguistic features such as the title of individual blog entries and the anchor text from incoming links will make the classification algorithm even more accurate. They explained further that even if blogs are hardly distinguishable because of the nature of bloggers that blog about whatever they feel like to, they were aiming for the NLP techniques to explore the feasibility of automatic blog classification.

If the NLP approach done by Qu et al. (2006) seemed a bit technical, Simmons (2008) offered a more defined classification of blogs by categorizing them into Pamphleteering blogs, Digest blogs, Advocacy blogs, Popular Mechanics blogs, Exhibition blogs, Gatewatcher blogs, Diary blogs, Advertisement blogs and News blog. The NLP approach takes into consideration of titles of blog entries and the anchor text whereas Simmons' categorization looks into the blog's nature as a whole allowing her to name the categories as such.

In my opinion, the NLP approach might provide us with a more mathematically accurate result in blog classification but to truly justify a blog type one must personally define what the blog is all about by reading through it and understanding the blog's intention.

References:

1. Qu, H., La Pietra, A. & Poon, S (2006), Classifying Blogs Using NLP: Challenges and Pitfalls,University of California at Berkeley, School of Information Management & Systems

2. Wikipedia 2oo1, Natural language processing, online, retrieved 10 April 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing

3. A taxonomy of blogs (2008), online, retrieved 7 April 2010, from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript.

Blog as current phenomenon & benefits to the community

If we are to look at the size of the blogosphere today, we must first look into demographics. Based on Matt Sussman's (2009) article, two-thirds of the majority and 60% of the overall blogging population are between the ages of 18-44.

According to Funnel (2008), the trend in Asia is that a massive majority are below the age of 35. This is a stark contrast to that of Europe and U.S where the majority of their bloggers are over the age of 35.

The current blogging trend in Malaysia as we can see are divided in 2 segmentations. As we can observe on the basis national-importance, more and more blogs are deeply rooted in political matters. This happens prior and after the Malaysia's 12th General Election. Politicians and political analyst alike are making full use of blogs and its tool to spread their cause and are also turning their blogs into a place where they can gain feedback from the general public.

The second blogging trend that has hit Malaysia recently is aptly called blogshopping. This is where a number of individuals who set up blogs to sell stuff. Blog shops are still gaining popularity amongst youths and adults alike. Unlike online shopping, blogshopping is deemed to be much more personal as potential buyers are interacting directly with the business owner online. This online trend also translates well in the real world as these blog shop owners are often seen participating in clothing bazaars every now and then, making the shopping experience online and in the real world to be convenient and intimate at the same time.

References:

1. Sussman, M (2009), Day 1: Who Are The Bloggers? SOTB (2009), online, retrieved 7 April 2010, from http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-1-who-are-the-bloggers1/.

2. A taxonomy of blogs (2008), online, retrieved 7 April 2010, from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript.

3. Blog Shopping Trend (2010), online, retrieved 7 April 2010, from http://blogshop.my/blog-shop/blog-shopping-trend.html

Purpose & Intent

The purpose of blog is to have a documented discussion or argument regarding certain issues in the publication field. Considering my target audience that are made up of my COMM 1043 lecturer and classmates, I find this issue to be very beneficial for our course of study. At the end of this weblog I hope my target audience and myself will be more aware of the impact and future the publication industry