Reflection

Blogging

(Source: http://fan.kaspersky-sea.com/pjchallenge/)

I used to blog last time, but since the technology has improved, I spend more of my time in sharing through Twitter or Facebook. But sometimes it does feel good to blog. I use blog to share my stories or experiences. So, when I was assigned to do the academic blog, it is not a new thing for me. However, I still need to find out some informations, readings or resources that related to the issues I was going to discuss about. Besides, writing personal blog is different with writing the academic blog, so some good blogging skill might be needed.

Blogging is not simply about typing and posting, but to have a good quality of blog, you need to learn how the blog is working. According to Justin Tsan (2007), a good blogger is someone that are willing to learn about the basic of web technologies before they blog. Besides that, we need to understand about the existence of social culture issue and how it affects the way you blog since weblog could be accessed internationally.

Blogging is a new form of communication nowadays where people could share their thoughts, discuss it, and put some comments on the post. However, before creating a weblog, the author need to identify the type of his/ her blog, and its purposes, so the message could send clearly to the reader. Happy blogging!

References:

Tsan, J, 2007, Qualities Of A Good Blogger. Qualities Of A Good Blogger. 8 Nov. 2007. EzineArticles.com. viewed June 16, 2010, http://ezinearticles.com/?Qualities-Of-A-Good-Blogger&id=823015

The Trend of Photo-Manupulation

Photo-Manupulation

(source: http://yahyasheikho786.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/when-alarmists-talk-perfect-sense-about-cyberwar-“imagine-no-lines”-beyond-the-beyond/)

Photo-manupulation has been around us since the technology of creativity improved. The invention of some software has allowed people to manipulate document or pictures (photographs). The impact of visual on a viewer comes directly from the old belief that said, “camera never lies” (Lester 1999). Further, on the chapter, Lester explained that camera has faithfully and unemotionally captured a moment in time. The improved and advanced technology allows them to easily manipulate pictures or photographs. Back in the past, camera might never lies, but today,

pictures might say the untruth. However, manipulating the photographs is prohibited regarding the ethical of photojournalism. Therefore, the Webster University Journal stated some ‘Do’s and Don’ts” guidelines in editing photographs in their article “Policy for the Ethical Use of Photographs”.

DO:

• - Burning and dogging to control tonal range
• - Color correction
• - Brightness/ contrast control
• - Cropping and frame photos to fit layout
• - Touch of dust and stretches

DON’T:

• - Changing color other than to restore the looked of subject
• - Flopping a photography
• - Cropping a frame to alter its meaning
• - Adding/ removing object within frame

Do not assume that expert will not make any mistake. Experts are human too, who makes mistake, unconsciously. Since there are some issues of misinterpretation and misunderstanding the object regarding the photo-manupulation, it has been prohibited to the ethical of publishing. So, it is wise when you take some political ethics before expressing the creativity into photographs. Creativity is not necessarily need to be negative.

References:

Lester, PM 1999, Chapter Six: Picture Manupulation, Photojournalism Ethics, viewed June 16, 2010, http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/chapter6.html

Policy for the Ethical Use of Photograps, Webster University Journal, viewed June 16, 2010, http://www.webster.edu/~barrettb/journal_ethics.htm

Enlighten Your E-mail with Emoticons :) ;D

Smiley Emoticons

(Source: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-4499969-emoticons.php)

Everybody tend to be in a rush. Open their e-mail, read it fast, reply, and click 'send' button. Unconsciously, we might sending the wrong signal to the readers. We could not expect people to read the way we read. People in a good mood might read differently with the people in a bad mood.

Will Schwalbe, a New York Publisher, said that e-mail is not just an e-mail. E-mail is actually a a symbol of how you treat other people. You do not need a formal e-mail or sentences to make people feel good reading your e-mail. Some of them might do not even know how to write a proper e-mail. According to Netwriting (2007), you just need to keep your e-mail brief and to the point. Certain e-mail might looks boring and dull with just text in it. Therefore, in 1982, Scott Falham introduced emoticon that has smiley face (Wikipedia 2010). Picture could say a thousand words, that is why we love emoticons nowadays. An emoticon of cute yellow smiley smiling is better than a word smile. Putnis & Petelin (1996, pp.297) stated that all texts contain explicit or implicit traces of other texts. Certainly, simple emoticons would brighten your simple e-mail. Nobody knows when your smiley emoticon might cheer up someone's bad mood :)

Using Emoticons in Instant Messaging (MSN)

(source: http://www.sherv.net/article106.html)

References:

Davis, A n.d, Emoticons and Email Etiquette, ABC.net.au

Netwriting 2009, The Art of Writing Good Emails, viewed at June 15, 2010, http://www.netwriting.co.uk/2007/05/21/the-art-of-writing-good-emails/

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

Wikipedia 2010, Emoticons, viewed at June 15, 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon

Don't blog your story, Tweet it!

People used to connect to others through mails or Facebook, but here is Twitter, the latest social networking tools that allows the users to share anything, in anywhere and anytime, any second. Twitter means sharing the news. Even the politician like the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, has more than 19,000 followers on his twitter. He also use Twitter to promote his campaign on One Malaysia and his website.

Benefits of Twitter: Networking. (Source: http://www.twitip.com/benefits-twitter/)

Besides it is useful for some research tools, the Twitter subscribers can get update on what they think or feel on particular issue or topics, which we believe that any media like televisions or newspapers cannot do in a short time. Even some magazines or companies start their publishing and advertisement on Twitter, for example: Seventeen Magazine, NY. Twitter does not limit the users in connecting with other users, by just simply clicking the follow button. You can meet other talented, smart and insightful users on Twitter. Seventeen Magazine could easily get their reader latest comments, idea, or critics on the content of the magazine in Twitter (which you will need at least a week by using post-mail).

World's is changing so fast where we can't hardly keep up (sometimes). Keep it up now with the Tweety birds!

Reference:

Rowse, D 2010, 5 Ways I Benefit from Twitter, Twitip, viewed on June 15, 2010, http://www.twitip.com/benefits-twitter/

Zahid, S J 2010, Blogging is so Yesterday, Politicians Turn to Twitter, The Malaysia Insider, February 11, 2010

Trust = The Best Social Networking Policy?

Social networking has become part of our daily life. People used to connect with their friends through it, instead of phones or mails. It is not surprising when Facebook and Twitter hit their user capacity in the recent years. It is obvious that people want to be heard and seen, no matter teenagers, adults, parents, or elder people.

However, the larger the user of the social networking, the larger it gets for others to read their personal information easily. There is when the social networking finds its fall. David Hobson wrote in the Press Distribution that privacy is the major downfalls in the social networking. For instance, in Facebook, the user gets to fill all his/ her personal information from address, age, birthday, until personal interest. This privacy issue has its proved. Couple months back in Indonesia, a high school girl reported missing after she arranged some meeting with a guy she met in Facebook.

Some studies also show that Facebook gets negative feedback recently. Because of that reason, Facebook change their privacy setting last December that will not captured questions about location-based services (Kang, 2010). Ever since then, the privacy gets better and 50 percent of its user pinched their profile settings into more private setting. Instead of losing its user, on the other hand, Facebook increases in its user members.

Since the case of Facebook (and also Google), the FTC become more concern about the social networking privacy and take it into account more aggresively. Even though people loves being heard or seen by other people, but some privacy would be even nicer!

References:

Hobson, D 2010, The Fall of Some Social Networking Sites, Press Distribution, June 11, 2010, viewed on June 15, 2010 http://www.pressdistribution.net/10217/the-fall-of-some-social-networking-sites

Kang, C 2010, is Internet Privacy Dead? No, just some more completed: researchers, Washington Post, March 15, 2010

Designing the Media

"A good design encourages a viewer to want to learn more"

(Alexander Isle)

Alexander Isle quotes on design is true. A good design could encourage and motivate the readers to keep reading the articles. Tool (1998) also agreed that design comes from the ability to be imaginative, consistent, organize information in a creative way. Therefore, designing the online and printed documents are different.

Besides that, Jakob Nielsen (1997) explained that readers tend to read 25 percents slower on the web/ computer compare to reading on the paper. This results that most people do not really read on the computer, they just screen through the page. Jakob Nielsen shares some terms in writing the web page, which are:

• Scanability - author should make headline, sub-headline and emphasize the messages through different style of fonts colors and size.
• Hypertext - in order to split meaning, focus on certain topic, write text in deep content, and structured based on audience analysis.
• Be succinct - since that many readers just screen through the page, it is better to write the article in short text.

Parker (2003) added that single columns are not suggested for the documents on the web. Nielsen (1999) pointed out that online media should be 1- dimensional and N-dimensional with up-and-down scrolling experience, whereas for printed media, authors should pay more attention on the layout and it should be 2-dimensional.

Picture 3.1: The Sun Newspaper - Online

Picture 3.2: The Sun Newspaper - Printed

Based on the examples of the pictures above, the characteristic of print document and online document are different. Print document tend to contains more text compare to the web page.

References

Nielsen, J 1997, Be Succint!, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, March 15,viewed 18 April 2010 (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html)

Nielsen, J 1999, Print vs. web design, 24 January, viewed 18 April 2010 (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html)

Parker, RC 2003, ‘Ch. 14: Designing documents for web distribution’, in Looking good in print, 5th edn, Paraglyph Press, Scottsdale, Arizona.

Toor, ML 1998, Graphic Design on the Desktop: A Guide fo the Non-designer, 2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons, NY.

New Generation of Media Publishing

As technologies has keep improving drastically in the last few years, so as the latest trend of publishing. The new media technologies today are radically challenging the media forms. Moblog (mobile-blogging) has become the latest trend of publishing. Nowadays, people can get connected to around the world by just using any mobile devices on their hand. It is very convenient and less time consuming. Bloggers could post their posting anytime and anywhere through their cellphone.

(Picture 2: Mobile Blogging)

Source: Ra's Mobile Blog

Community Blog: types, method, and its stucture

Blog community is made because of the similar interests, purposes, and passion within members. It is become a place where people with the same interest or passion joined in the blog community and discuss the same issues or topics.

Few example of the community blogs are:

• Wolfenstein
• Coworking
• Seattle Public School

Wolfenstein for example, this community blog is created for those who are interest and passionate about Wolfenstein game. The blog is contains about the most updated news, media, the game, mission, and even the online buying. The member of this blog community could post any comments, messages, or new topic discussion about any current information relating to the game. This blog is very useful for those who are 'addicted' to online game, besides understanding and keep themselves updated about the game, they could also make a circle friends that share same interests.

Classification of Blogs

Since blogging are getting more and more popular, different types of blogs had also being introduced. Besides that, each posters might posting different types of blogs for different reasons. There are several types of blog according to its classification.

According to subject matter:

• Politics (Donklephant)
• Fashion (Fashionising)
• History (Speaking of History)
• Movie (My Movie Blog)
• Law (Sentencing Law & Policy)
• Art (Roberta Fallon & Libby Rosof)

According to device:

• Moblog or mobile blog: Moblog is a blog that published to the internet from a mobile or other mobile devices that normally includes photos or camera phones (Wikipedia.com 2010). Example of moblog is Justin Bieber Fan Page

According to media type:

• Linklog: Linklog is a collection of URL (hyperlink) that the maintainer consider enough to collect (e.g Fashion Blog)
• Vlog: video-based journal that posted online (e.g Eri Peng)
• Sketchlog: blog that contain sketch art work (e.g Lubasa Sketchlog)
• Tumblelog: blog that contain with photos, quotes, video, features links that usually used to share author's creations, discoveries or experiences (e.g Austin Kleon)

According to status of publishers:

• Business blog (Blog Business World)
• Corporate blog (Zappos)

References

Wikipedia.com 2010, Mobile Blogging, viewed 18 April 2010, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_blogging)

Blogging Phenomenom

Picture 1 Blogging since high school

(http://roystonrobertson.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html)

Blog has become familiar in today's society and it is become a popular trends from young generations, adults, or even politicians. Picture 1 from Royston Roberstson's blog shows how high school students are now familiar with blogging. He is agree that blog is the flexible way to talk what he ups to instead of giving any static portfolio site. Blogging has also become one of the strategy on how people get connected to one another, exchanging their ideas or communicate through it, for example on-line shopping in the weblogs are so popular nowadays.

In the Problogger, one of weblog, Darren Rowse (2005) simplified the meaning of blog. A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order where people post their writings. On the other hand, Reep (2006) said that a weblog or a 'blog' is a website structure where one or more people posting messages like on-line diary.

The trend of blogging has now spread all over the world. According to Microsoft.com's report (2006), it showed that young generation has fueled the Asia's blogosphere. Almost 56 percents of the bloggers are the age under 25, 35 percents are the age from 25 to 34 years old, and the rest are bloggers that are older than 35 years old. The report also shows that most of the bloggers are female (55 percents) and the rest are male. However, in Malaysia blogging are only popular among the politicians, especially before the 2008 election, where the blog posted are more specific to the political issue. Unfortunately, it only hits 14 percents interest of the readers reading the blogs (Microsoft, 2006).

The Benefits of Blogging

Since people are keep posting blogs, here are some of the benefits that they get while blogging:

• Bussiness Channel: Blog can be used as a communication tools between you and your customers, where it enables you to interact directly to your customers in more personal ways. It is also a tool of marketing your company/ products (Business Link, 2010). Besides communication, blog also used as promotion to promote your products (e.g on-line shopping). Rowse (2007) said that blogs can be used as a tool for selling at their best when they are conversational, relational, and offer their readers something useful to enchance their life (e.g Emila Yusof).
• Social Networking: Blog could be used a s a tool where people share their experience or ideas for social networking for fun.
• Politic: As mentioned above, blog also used as a media tool where politicians posted their politic issue, for example to get more voices for the election or any information that are not published in mainstream media (e.g Malaysia Kini)

References

• Business Link 2010, Business Benefits of Blogs, viewed 17 April 2010 http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?site=181&r.s=sc&r.l1=1073861197&r.lc=en&r.l2=5000684310&type=RESOURCES&itemId=5000686558
• Microsoft 2006, Blogging Phenomenon Sweeps Asia, media release, 27 November, Microsoft, viewed 18 April 2010, http://advertising.microsoft.com/asia/NewsAndEvents/PressRelease.aspx?Adv_PressReleaseID=296
• Reep, D 2006, Technical Writing :Principles, Strategies and Readings, 6th ed, Pearson Education, United States.
• Rowse, D 2005, What is a Blog? - Problogger, viewed 18 April 2010 http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/02/05/what-is-a-blog/
• Rowse, D 2007, How to sell profuct through your blog- Business Blogging, Problogger,viewed 17 April 2010
  
  

The purpose of 'The Lighters'

The Lighters is an academic weblog that is made to examine the issues in media, publication, and design.

The credibility and the accuracy of this weblog is guaranteed, because there will be detail information about the writer posted in every posting, which are will also be supported with academic certified sources citation and references of trusted authors.

So, who is the audience of The Lighters?

This weblog is presented to everyone who has concern in current issues of publication issues, for example in the communication, journalism, and also people that are involved in blogging activity. this weblog is also targeted for those who are searching for more information about publication, media, and publication. In this weblog, readers could participate in giving comments in certain posting, or giving any open critics, suggestions. i personally hope that this weblog will become one of the source where readers find something new to learn and motivated to keep learning.