Reflections

I am not new to this blogging world as I have been maintaining my own sub-domain for 4 years now. Looking back at my experiences when working on this website has somehow changed my views on blogging.

As naive as I can be, blogging is just a place where anybody can vent their personal feelings to the public but I guess, from today onwards, it has proved me wrong. I have never come to know that there is so much more to the word 'blogging' and it is not only popular for teenagers and young adults, but also, to the older generation who wants to cast their freedom of speech.

Besides that, I have come to know a more in-depth version of the course I have took up and at the same time, come to know more about the different issues that I have covered on.

Since then, Youtube is not just, www.youtube.com, but it can carry a lot of controversial issues pertaining to the latest media trends we are blessed with today.

On the other hand, it has just hit to me that referencing does come a long way. Based on my experience on working on this last assignment, it is indeed frustrating to find other websites not having proper referencing and no proper hyperlinks to the source used for their support.

Last but not least, I have also learned about the importance of not prying into one's cultural or religious issue.

Facebook eyes Asian advertising dollar

(Source: facebook.com)

Facebook is reaching out to advertisers in the region, and has appointed a Singapore-based company as sales representatives. Facebook will market a range of additional advertising formats to customers that are not available to "walk-in" advertisers in the region. George Foo, ihub COO, said in an interview with ZDNet Asia, the company was in talks with the U.S. social networking giant for eight months, and has already signed a first "regional" client for the platform. Foo also said that Facebook's audience of working professionals is expected to attract a greater proportion of luxury brand advertisers to come online, especially the younger age group. He noted that advertiser adoption of online media in the region "lags" behind that of consumers, where "online users are growing at a faster rate than advertisers". According to comScore statistics, Facebook's overall visitor count grew 153 percent as of June 2008. In the Asia-Pacific region, the growth was 458 percent. Rival social networking site Friendster, however, claims it has the biggest Asian user base.

Facebook Ceo Mark Zuckerberg decribes Facebook as "A lot of companies get grouped as social networking," says Zuckerberg. "Lots are dating sites, or media sites or sites for community. But our mission is helping people understand the world around them." (D. Kirkpatrick 2oo6)

Facebook has become so popular, that even the older generations are signing up for themselves. These are the number of Facebook subscribers from 25th November to 16th March 2008.

Looking at the table above, Malaysia's Facebook subscribers shot up to 106 060 in such a short period. In my personal point of view, even if Facebook decides to target on Asian advertising companies like, Nuffnang or Adverlet, with it's rapid growing pace of hits and users signing up for an account, it is no wonder that Facebook has taken steps this year to expand its functionality by allowing outside developers to create more applications to attract Internet users.

References

Ho, V. 2008, Facebook eyes Asian advertising dollar, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/internet/0,39044908,62048169,00.htm

Bizannes, E. 2008, Facebook users: more and more in just four months, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://liako.biz/tag/facebook/

Grossman, L. 2007, Why Facebook is the Future, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1655722,00.html

The Best 3G Phone Ever?

Apple's iPhone 3G topped the sales charts in the third quarter, according to market research group NPD. Since the original iPhone was launched over a year ago, the industry has been buzzing about its sleek button-less design and advanced Web surfing capabilities. It certainly has lit a fire under many of its competitors, which have been scrambling to come out with cool, touch-screen smart phones of their own. Even though the first iPhone proved popular, it appears that the new version of the phone, which supports 3G netwrok speeds, is even more popular. For its fiscal fourth quarter, Apple reported it has sold 6.9 million iPhones, more than it sold during all previous quarters combined. Despite Apple's rise in the demand of iPhone and iPhone 3G, it would be interesting to see whether this trend will continue if the economy worsens. Executives for the major U.S. wireless operators commented that the consumers would not cancel their contract towards iPhone but they would rather cut back on their monthly household budgets. To prove iPhone's Archilles' heel, Apple can either downgrade their service or wait to upgrade to a more expensive plan.



(Source: kottke.org)

IS THERE A WAY TO UNLOCK 3G?

Gizmodo picked up on a video produced by the iPhone Dev Team demonstrating that it has gained access to the baseband processor used by Apple in the iPhone 3G. The baseband chip is what controls the connection between the phone and the mobile phone network, meaning that a software download that could let you use your iPhone 3G on a carrier network other than the ones officially designated by Apple could be released soon.

In my opinion, since the birth of iPhones, it has overthrown the other mobiles devices that were released since then. But this does not stop other phone companies to design a mobile phone that is similar to the iPhone, but a better version.

References

Reardon M., 2008, iPhone 3G crowned most popular phone in U.S., viewed 13th November 2008.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10092629-94.html?tag=blgs

Krazit T., 2008, Software to unlock for iPhone 3G coming soon?, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://news.cnet.com/software-unlock-for-iphone-3g-coming-soon/?tag=blgs

First Last Supper?

(Source: indonesiamatters.com)

One of Indonesia's top news weeklies has apologized about the cover of its latest issue, which depicts former president Suharto and his children in a composition mimicking Leornado da Vinci's Last Supper. In the cover of Tempo, was a featured sketch of Suharto, who died recently, taking Jesus Chris's central place at the table surrounded by his three daughters and sons instead of apostles, triggering complaints from Christians. When Suharto passed away, he left behind a mixed legacy in Indonesia, bringing economic stability to the sprawling nation but the controversial part is, he was also accused of massive corruption and rights abuses for which he was never brought to justice. Tempo chief editor, Toriq Hadad, said that he had no intention of hurting Christians and he was only inspired by the composition of the Leornado painting, and not in the concept or context of the event told in the Holy Bible.

By analyzing the picture above, there are some factors that we can consider. According to Kress and van Leeuwen, newspapers, magazines, company reports, school textbooks and many other kinds of texts are no longer just written, but 'designed', and multimodally articulated. The salient part of the picture would be clearly the former Indonesian President, Suharto, because he was placed in the middle of the table, taking Jesus Christ's place. Salience can create a hierarchy of importance among the elements, selecting some as more important and more worthy of attention than others. (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006)

I personally think that this cover page for a magazine is quite controversial as it touches on religion. According to Haynes(2007), what exactly is considered blasphemy can vary between religious groups and people.

References

Kress G., van Leeuwen T., 1998, Front Pages: The Critical Analysis of Newspaper Layout, Blackwell, Oxford.

Indonesian weekly apologizes over Last Supper Suharto cover, The Media Report, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/06/2156269.htm

Email is the New Snail Mail. :-)

Everyday, people around the world churn out millions and millions of emails and text messages. In fact, there's never been a period in history that's involved so much correspondences. It's a fact that people have no idea how write or interpret when writing an email.

A simple email with clear instructions can bring a lot of different interpretations. For example, an email that says,

Jane,
I'm sorry to hear about you pet dog. Wished I was there to comfort you. Take care.

Love,
Bob.

This simple message can carry out a lot of interpretations. It can be justified on how the reader chose to read, either in a sarcastically way or a sympathetically. Now it was the inability of some people to accurately interpret emotions or intentions in email that led American, Scott Fahlman to invent 'emoticon'.

The birth of an emoticon was invented on the 19th September 1982 in the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. It started with a smiley face which can be visible by typing a colon, a hyphen and a parenthesis.




The original text that Fahlman has emailed was;

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :)
From: Scott E Fahlman

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes – given current trends. For this, use

:-(

Today, emoticons are being inserted with colour and has many varieties of expressions and sometimes, it can even come out as graphical things with animation and so on. However, a lot of mail still uses the original three characters.



(Source: bizmediascience.com)

Email is a symbol of the way we treat one another. It reflects what kind of person we are in reality. Emails can be determine the relationship between the sender and the receiver. It can also be used to express gratitude or condolences.

With the generation we have today, it is essential for us to know how to email, text message, and instant message. Therefore, we are living in a highly literate generation that knows how to type, spell and use grammar.

Bacn has been described as "email you want but not right now. Bacn differs from spam in that the emails are not unsolicited: the recipient has somehow signed up to receive it. Bacn derives its name from the idea that it is "better than spam, but not as good as a personal email.

In conclusion, emoticons are a great way to add in our emails as the receivers would not misinterpret our intended message. Emails should always be personalized and a practice of a good email etiquette is essential.

When reading emails, we need to understand the social purpose of the particular text and the cultural context, and this understanding will be linked to our own purpose in using the particular text. Whatever the text, we often read to 'fill the gaps' to understand the cultural, social and specific content. (Schriver 1997, p.30)

Personally, emails are a great way to communicate with friends and families that are not physically here. Emoticons do play a large role in determining the seriousness of the email.

References

Emoticons and Email Etiquette, The Media Report, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2064342.htm

Schriver, K.A. 1997, ‘Chapter 6: The Interplay of Words and Pictures’, Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Reader, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.

Advancement of Technology

With the constant rise in the advancement of technology, it is no wonder that new forms of blogging are created. Examples are moblogs, vlogs, photologs, youtube and many more.

Mobile blogging (moblogs) is a new form of blogging where the users are able to publish blog entries to the web from mobile phones that has access to the Internet. It is useful for those bloggers who are always on the move.

(Source: mlogs.com)

(Source: jonathansblog.net)

Video blogging, also known as (vlogs) are also similar to moblogs as they serve the same purpose but with a different approach. In this case, vlogs use a videocam to record themselves. It is an alternate way of blogging.



(Source: lifehacker.com)

According to Walsh (2006, p.24), with writing, words rely on the 'logic of speech involving the time and sequence, whereas the 'logic of the image' involves the presentation of space and simultaneity.

(Source: youtube.com)

Youtube is one of the most popular video sharing website where it enables users to upload, view and at the same time, share video clips. According to Wikepedia, Youtube has accumulated so many hits that in January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users had made over 3 billion views.

With this, even Oprah Winfrey has became a subscriber to Youtube so that the readers can see more of what's going on in Oprah's world and behind the scenes highlights the readers can't get anywhere else.

(Source: youtube.com)

Therefore, according to Walsh (2006), written text is only one part of the message, and no longer the dominant part. Heath (2002) argues that visual texts are impacting on 'neural networks' and changing conceptual schemata.

References

Walsh, M 2006, The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy.

Wikepedia 2008, Mobile Blogging, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moblog

Wikepedia 2008, Video Blogging, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_blogging

Wikepedia 2008, Youtube, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

YouTube, Oprah's Channel, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://www.youtube.com/user/OPRAH?ob=1

Online Designing VS Print Designing

Online designing varies from print designing. This is because for online designing, the designers are able to express their creativity more freely whereas for print designing, it is more factual and there is not much space to alter.

In print, no matter how the print would want to give a new facelift to its papers, it would only be through "... the spatial arrangement of blocks of texts, of pictures and other graphic elements on a page." (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006, p.187)

However, for online designing, advertisements are part of the necessity for sponsorship and at the same time, many visual aids should be present (videos, podcasts, pictures etc).

Picture A (Source: thestar.com.my)

Picture B (Source: symbio.jst.go.jp)

Above, are examples of online designing and print designing. Picture A is the homepage for The Star, one of the mainstream media in Malaysia, and Picture B is a print cover of The Star's daily newspaper.

When a reader enters the online website as shown in Picture A, he will divert his attention straight to the pictures that are shown and at the same time, they can draw their attention to the advertisements present because they are the most prominent in the website.

In Picture B, framing devices are used in the layout of the page. According to Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), framing devices such as framelines or white spaces between elements can simultaneously both disconnect the elements of a layout from each other, signifying that they are to be read as, in some sense, separate and independent.

References

Kress G., van Leeuwen T., 1998, Front Pages: The Critical Analysis of Newspaper Layout, Blackwell, Oxford.

Classification of Blogs

With the emergence of blogging, bloggers have created diverse content for many reasons, such as to increase the uniqueness of their blogs, or to attract more readers. As such, many different types of blogs have emerged.

Accroding to thinkquest.org, blogs are divided into 2 types, namely, text based and other media.

Under "text based", they are further broken down into 5 different categories;

PERSONAL

Bloggers’ personal lives take center stage in many blogs
(Source: blogcatalog.com)

COLLABORATIVE

A collaborative blog is when an administrator sets up a blog account and two or more different users are allowed to publish posts, such as to maximize the amount of content.

CORPORATE

(Source: ester-c.com)

Nowadays, business corporations are also embracing the power of the Internet to promote and advertise their firms.

TOPICAL

(Source: kyspeaks.com)

There are blogs that do not document about their personal lives but rather, review on topics of their interest.

SPAM

Spam blogs, or splogs, are mostly set up automatically by ‘bots’ (computers performing a series of automated functions autonomously), and are intended to promote commercial companies or products. These blogs contain nonsensical or repetitive text, and there is usually mass-linking, or the creation of a great number of unnecessary links.

Under "other media", they are further broken down into podcasts/videocasts and photologs.

Creating and maintaining a blog is totally different from the literature texts and has a different purpose as it is an information genre. It does not work in symbols or metaphors, but in providing factual information in words, graphics and images. its purpose is to give the reader who enters this site a variety of information. (Walsh 2006)

In a media report between Anthony Funnell and media analyst, Margaret Simons, they have talked about the different types of blogs and Margaret Simons has drawn up her list of the different types of online sites that classify as blogs. They are:

• Political Blogs
• Digest Blogs
• Advocacy Blogs
• Popular Mechanics Blogs
• Exhibition Blogs
• Gatewatcher Blogs
• The Diary
• The Advertisement
• News Blogs
• Pampleteering Blogs

In my opinion, there is no correct way for us to categorize everybody's blogs into their types. This is because some may want their blogs to be personal and at the same time, a review, while some would rather password protect their blogs for limited people to view.

BLOGGING COMMUNITIES
Communities, according to dictionary.com, is a social group of size whose members reside in a specific locality, shared government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.

Today, online communities are popular in the Internet. As blogging has gained wider adoption, blog based community shows up in three different patterns with a wide variety of hybrid forms emerging between the three;

• The Single Blogger Centric Community
• The Central Connecting Topic Community
• The Boundaries Community

One of the most popular blogging community would be Nuffnang, with the aim to allow advertisers to serve graphic or video based advertisements onto the thousands of local blogs that are signed up with us.



(Source: nuffnang.com.my)

If I were to create my own blogging community, I would creating a poll system where readers are able to rank my published posts and at the same time, have a comment or forum section.

References

The Media Report, A taxamony of blogs, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript

Blogging- The Phenomenon, Text Based, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01130/typesofblogs_textbased.html

Blogging- The Phenomenon, Other Media, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01130/typesofblogs_othermedia.html

Wikipedia 2008, Blog, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Phenomenon and Benefits

Blogging is the new and future platform for instant publishing, but it is not alien technology. Blogs are fast, simple and streamlined web pages that funnel your thoughts and work to the web as quickly as you can type. What makes a webpage is the format and the frequency of updates. (Stone 2002)

The size of the blogosphere has doubled every five months over the last year and a half, according to blog analysis firm Technorati. Over that time, blogs have gone from being a word that sounded insulting to an online trend embraced even by a sexagenarian Massachusetts senator running for president. Given the frenetic pace of that growth, data charting the blog phenomenon have been vigorously consumed, and in some cases contradictory.

According to David Sifry, Technorati's chief executive, the current number of blogs is not over 8 times bigger than the 500, 000 blogs measured in June 2003. Pew Internet & American Life reports a new weblog is created every 5.8 seconds and that means, up to 15, 000 new blogs are created every single day.

Below is the size of the current blogosphere that was tracked by Technorati:


(Source: technorati.com)


To find some blogs yourself, you can simply do a web search using blogs as the search words. You're likely to run into a lot of stories about blogs and some technically oriented blogs before you find personal and otherwise, blogs. (Smith and Bebak 2006)

As shown in Blogging- The Phenomenon, there are two types of blogs which are text based and other media.

Blogging is extremely common in Malaysia, whether it is a political blog or personal blog.

According to Sabahan.com,

• 28% of the Malaysian Top 50 bloggers write about personal stuff.
• 16% write about politics.
• 16% write about technology.

These are the top 10 blogs that are most visited in Malaysia:

No	Blog Title	Category
1	kennysia.com	Personal
2	SapiensBryan.com	Technology
3	Hemmy.net	Humor
4	JeffOoi.com Screenshot	Politics
5	LiewCF.com	Technology
6	Yasmin The Story Teller	Entertainment
7	Afdlin Shauki	Entertainment
8	PaulTan.Org	Auto
9	Alex Allied	Personal
10	Rocky’s Bru	Politics

(Source: kennysia.com)


(Source: sapiensbryan.com)

Whereas in Europe, blogging is not as popular as compared to Asia & Malaysia. However, the readership of blogs in Europe is catching up with the US, but the most popular blogs are still dominated by Americans, according to new research which compares bloggers of different nationalities. (Mackenzie 2006)

These are the top 10 blogs that are most visited in Europe:

No			Blog name		Country
1			Adverblog		ITALY
2			Adland		SWEDEN
3			I believe in adv		ITALY
4			Niche Marketing		POLAND
5			Adverbox		ITALY
6			Russell Davies		ENGLAND
7			David Airey		SCOTLAND
8			Osocio		HOLLAND
9			Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog		BELGIUM
10			Blogstorm		ENGLAND

References

Smith B.E., Bebak A., 2006, Creating Web Pages for Dummies, For Dummies.

Blog catalog, Personal blogs, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/personal

Mackenzie K., 2006, Europen bloggers find their voice, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://search.ft.com/ftArticle?queryText=European+bloggers+find+their+voice&y=1&aje=true&x=9&id=061010001665&ct=0

Burcher N., 2008, Ad Age Power 150 - ranking of the top European blogs, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://www.nickburcher.com/2008/07/ad-age-power-150-ranking-of-top.html

Gaman, 2007, 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/

McGann R., 2004, The Blogosphere by the Numbers, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3438891

About Us, 2008, Technorati Media, viewed 13th November 2008.
http://technoratimedia.com/about/

An Introduction

About a decade ago, I was introduced to the existence of the Internet by my father. He started creating an email account for me and explained to me the wonders it can do just at our fingertips. Since then, with the emergence of the advancement of technology, I started learning how to make new friends online through chatting and even creating personal blogs as a substitute for a diary.

PURPOSE

My focus for my blog would be basically on teenagers and young adults. This is because these age groups are the fastest in catching up with the advancement of technology and from my personal experience, these age groups are more open up to their life despite the consequences they may or may not encounter.

I would be stressing on some of the current blogging issues that we are encountering like:

• The benefits of blogging to a community.
• Types of blogging communities.
  
• Example of one blogging community.
• Designing for print versus designing for online.
• New forms of media publishing.

At the end of my blog, I would clarify whether blogging has changed the world for the better or for the worse.

REFERENCES

Stone B., 2002, Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content, New Riders Pub.

Wikepedia 2008, Blog, viewed on 11th November 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#Popularity