Document Design

A good document design is concerned with creating text that combine words and pictures, which enables the reader to use the text in ways that meet their interests and needs (Schriver, 1997). An effective design is very important, which enables and help the readers to understand the content and remember the information more effectively.

Slide 28

Slide 19

This can be seen in the examples of my group’s presentation slides which is shown above. After my observation during the presentation, most of the audiences prefer slide number 28 compared to slide number 19. Slide 28 is a combination of text and visual, as for slide 19, it only contains text and words. The audience will tend to feel bored which causes them to be unable to concentrate on slide 19. Therefore, using the combination of words and pictures is more effectively as the combination works together to provide complete information about the actions to take. The effective way of presentation should be explained in a simple, interesting and concise manner. Bernhardt (1986) suggested that the five laws of design, should include the law of visual identity; the law of equilibrium; the law of closure; the law of good continuation; and the law of similarity. Besides that, it should also content good writing, which uses correct words and sentences should also be clear, emphatic and concise.

References:

Bernhardt, S.A., 1986, Seeing the text, College Composition and Communication, vol.37, no.1, pp.66-78.

Schriver, K,A., 1997, Chapter 6: Dynamics in document design: Creating texts for readers, New York, pp.361-44.

New Forms of Media Publishing

In the modern society, the internet plays a big role as one of the newest forms of media publishing. A reader can enter the sites to obtain all kinds of information, with a variety of linked activities. According to Walsh (2006) stated that it works effectively on the multimodal of information in words, graphics and images, comparing with just print-based text. For example, YouTube have interaction with Facebook and Twitter, which can be displayed on the facebook wall.


Youtube is an online public communication site, and has become one of the most popular web portals in the world. YouTube allows its users to upload and share movie clips and music videos in Facebook, Twitter and etc. Besides that, it also enables video upload which can be placed in the blogs. Some people use YouTube to advertise their new products or services to the public. Due to the connection between YouTube and Facebook, anything uploaded on either sites, will be available on the other media. Hence, YouTube is the best example as it is a true global community, with numerous user groups to encourage user to create their own video, reachable through the “community” button on any page (Rankin, 2007).

YouTube

YouTube on Facebook

References:

Rankin, B., 2007, “What is YouTube?”, viewed on 18 April 2010.
http://askbobrankin.com/what_is_youtube.html

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

Blogging Community

Blogging community also known as “blogosphere” which are interconnected and socially networked. There are several groups of people who create friends list, give comments, share photos, videos, tags and links. Thus, it also provides chat rooms for them to interact with each other and meet new people. For example a blogging community also known as Blogster, is a social networking system with easy-to- use setting options that enables interaction within an online community (Wikipedia, 2009). Therefore, it is very easy to create a blogging community as long as correct methods are taken into precaution when creating a blog using own theme through tools such as tags, permalink, and comments which link to other blog.

A blogging community, Blogster

According to White (2006) stated that as blogging has gained wider adoptions in three main patterns with a wide variety of hybrid forms emerging between the three, such as the single blog/blogger centric community, the centre connecting topic community, and the boundaried community. The single blog/blogger centric community is the first form of blog based community to emerge as reader begin returning to early bloggers’ sites. The centre connecting topic community blog community is a network formation, for example, Global Voices Community, which create an experience of a shared community. Lastly, boundaried communities are collections of blog and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform.

References:

White, N., 2006, “Blogs and Community- launching a new paradigm for online community?”, viewed on 17 April 2010.
http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

Wikipedia, 2009, Blogster, viewed on 17 April 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogster

Classification of blogs & Blogging Communities

There are many types of blogs, which focuses on different type of content, opinions, discussions and different target audiences. These examples are classified in different type of blogs as shown below:

Classification of blogs:

Subject matter:
1. Politics : thecaucus
2. fashion : sassybella
3. History : ushistorysite
4. Law : abovethelaw
5. travel : statravel

Device:
1. moblog : moblog

Media Types:
1. Vlog : youtube
2. Linklog : torrancepubliclibrary
3. Sketchlog : lubasa
4. Tumblelogs : tumblr

Status of Publishers:
1. Business blogs : iblogbusiness
2. Corporate blogs : kodak

According to Funnell and Davies (2008) stated that, author and media analyst Margaret Simons has defined 9 different types of blogs that currently exist. This includes:

1. Pamphleteering blog
2. Digest blog
3. Advocacy blog
4. Popular Mechanics blog
5. Exhibition blog
6. Gatewatcher blog
7. Diary
8. Advertisement
9. News blog

Therefore, many blogs are combination of styles, which make identifying unique types difficult, as there are specifications on different topics, styles, format, and audience. For example, You Tube, people can classify it as media type of Vlog format, which is the video blog. Hence, many people create weblogs with plenty of options and interest for writing weblogs in their own community blogs. Therefore, this allows viewers to have more choices to pick or choose their favorite categories in the weblog.


References:

Funnell, A., & Davies, A., 2008, A Toxanomy of Blogs, The media report, viewed on 17 April 2010.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript

The Blogging Phenomenon and Benefit

Nowadays, weblogs are so popular and brings many benefits to the community, because it provides updated information about particular topics, and also provides a reflection on the continuous change within blogosphere. Technorati is an internet search engine aimed for the searching of blogs, which analyzes the trend and growth in the blogosphere since year 2004. The size of the current blogosphere is expanding double in its original size in the timeframe of every 6 months, and currently has more that 75,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day ever since year 2006.

The current blogging trends impact on Europe, Asia & Malaysia has risen rapidly with different type of blogs such as personal blogs, business and corporate blogs, politics blogs, sport blogs, and entertainment blogs, with tropical interest. Besides that, it seems that personal blogs, business and corporate blogs and news blogs are prevalent in Europe, Asia and Malaysia. In Malaysia, the most influential blogs comes from personal bloggers such as, KennySia.com who has 14,000 visitors per day, and the famous political blogger, Jeff Ooi who's blogs focuses on the latest and interesting political news (Sabahan.com 2007), that benefits the community and also enables others to voice out issues and promote discussion or ideas as we know that Malaysia is a country that is restricted by rules and controlled by government. Therefore, blogging enables the Malaysian publics to have some source of free expression and speech.

References:
Burns, E., 2006, ClickZ: Blogosphere Doubles Every Six Months, viewed on 17 April 2010.
http://www.clickz.com/3599826

Sabahan.com 2007, 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia, viewed on 17 April 2010.
http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/

Technorati 2009, State of blogosphere 2009, viewed on 16 April 2010.
http://technorati.com/blogging/feature/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009/