New forms of media publishing

What are the new forms of media publishing? There are mobile blogging, video bloggings and sketch blogs. Some people might not love reading but they love to watch videos. Youtube is the solution for people that love and want to watch videos. YouTube has been very successful and contributed a lot to the community where people can upload their videos, download the videos and share the videos with one another.

Democrats Debate from YouTube.com

In United States, people upload the video of general elections to show other people and share around with others. The debate of presidential nomination is between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton and the videos are showing at the YouTube where people can view and know more about the general election of United States. Political issues are the trend in the United States and are shared among people. By posting up the videos into your own blog will increase the web presence and audiences’ responses (Stack 2006). Videos on internet are expanding very fast especially with YouTube which is famous and accessible anytime and anywhere.

Reference Lists:

Stack, C. 2006, “Benefits of using videos online”, EzineArticles.com, Viewed at 7th May 2008 at <http://ezinearticles.com/?Benefits-of-Using-Videos-Online&id=391489>

Online Versus Print

Online Versus Print?
Based on The Guardian, Jakob Nielsen mentioned that users that visit a new website spend an average of 30 seconds on homepage and before they even decide to leave the website, they spend less than two minutes on the whole website (Schofield 2007). In addition, even though they decided to stay on a website, they probably spend 4 minutes on average (Schofield 2007). Jakob Nielsen mentioned that websites should be designed based on his guidelines in the future (Ilner 2004). He even mentioned that Flash is 99% bad because it makes the designs looks awful and affect the web’s original interaction style (Nielsen 2000). Based on Nielsen (2008), there is a website has bad designs. Below is the snapshot of the website:

There are no description of the musicians, title of the songs to play of the day, no other links and independent reviews.
Jazz at Lincoln Center from Useit.com


Example of print document

Content of Seventeen Magazine

Example of webpage

Seventeen's website

Based on Nielsen’s research, he stated that 79% of web users scan the websites rather than read (Nielsen 1997). It is 25% slower to read on a webpage compare to reading a paper because it is tiring for the eyes to read on a webpage. It is actually depending on the readers whether they prefer to read on the webpage or paper. Some readers might prefer to read from the webpage and some prefer to read from the paper.

Reference Lists:

Ilner, S. 2004, “Can usability theory by Jakob Nielsen be applied to online entertainment design or do better alternatives exist?” , Viewed on 7th May 2008 at <http://www.refracted.co.uk/StephThesis.pdf>

Nielsen, J. 1997, “Why web users scan instead of read”, Alertbox, Useit.com, Viewed on 7th May 2008 at <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/whyscanning.html>

Nielsen, J. 2000, “Flash: 99% Bad”, Alertbox, Useit.com, Viewed on 6th May 2008 at <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html>

Nielsen, J. 2008, “Four bad designs”, Alertbox, Useit.com, Viewed on 6th May 2008 at <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/bad-design.html>

Schofield, J. 2007, “The web design guru that web designers love to hate”, The Guardian, Viewed at 7th May 2008 at <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/09/guardianweeklytechnologysection.interviews>

Classification of blogs & blogging community

Types of blogs
How many types of blogs out there? I have to say there are many types but I will keep it short and clear here. There are entertainment, fashion, foods, politics and many more.

Examples of types of blogs are below:

Entertainment Blogs:

• The Superficial


• Pink is the new blog
  

Foods Blogs:

• Masak-masak


• Taste with Jason
  

Fashion Blogs:

• SheBop


• Shopaholics Unite
  

Poliltics blogs:

• Jeff Ooi


• Hannah Yeoh

Bloggers use what type of devices?
What types of devices that bloggers use? Mobile blogging as known as Moblogs? Yes. Most of them use moblogs to post their entries up-to-date. According to Business Wire (2007), they have identified 3 celebrities using moblogs and they are YouTube star William Sheld, MySpace icon Christian Dolce and Florida-based band Madelyn. With moblogs, it will be convenient for the bloggers to update everywhere and anytime.

Moblogs from kennysia.com

Kenny Sia, our local Malaysian blogger also use Moblogs to update his blogs and he mentioned that it is very convenient and can be use anytime and anywhere (Sia 2008).

Blogs have combination of styles?
How do you identify the unique style of a blog? Well, it depends on individual. For me, the first thing I will look at images of the blogs. For example, The Bitter Stick Girl, she use images to express her on going obstacles and joyful moments in her life. Pictures illustrate a thousand words.

Image from StickGal.blogspot.com

Blogging Community
What do you understand by blogging community? Friendster and Facebook are blogging community. People use blogging community to interact and share interests among them.

How do you create a blogging community? Linkings are important and one of the important tools to interact and share same interest with one another. According to Wired Pen (2007), hyperlinks give benefits which are build networking, audiences are shared, and clearly and more information (cited in Ackland & Gibson 2006). Chatbox is one of the interactive tools in between bloggers and readers. Include pic*fashion syrupy.

Through comments, people tend to know more and get feedbacks based on their comments. For example, Paul Tan, car bloggers, he replied to the comments that his readers made. According to Hung (2007), he mentioned that create news on other bloggers’ blogs to get back to your own blog.

Comments from Paultan.org

One blogging community trend
Nowadays, celebrities even start to become bloggers so they can share their ideas, interests and personal life with their fans. MySpace is popular for music, blogs, profiles and many more. In MySpace, people can create group, bulletins, news, classifieds and others where the community can get specified information or interests. For example, Paris Hilton writes about her career and personal life by using MySpace.

Reference Lists:

BusinessWire.com 2007, “3 Guppies’ Moblog Popularity Increases”, Viewed on 7th May 2008 at
<http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20071112005316&newsLang=en>

Hung, T. 2007, “How to market your blog in 2007”, ProBlogger, Viewed on 8th May 2008 at <http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/01/11/how-to-market-your-blog-in-2007/>

Sia, K. 2008, “Kennysia.com Goes Mobile”, Viewed on 7th May 2008 at <http://www.kennysia.com/archives/2008/04/kennysiacom_goe.php>

WiredPen.com 2007 “Strategies for analyzing online networks”, Viewed on 7th May 2008 at <http://wiredpen.com/2007/05/23/strategies-for-analyzing-online-networks/>

The current phenomenon of blogs

Size of blogosphere

What is the current size of blogosphere? Well, there are 3 millions blogs are created and tracked down by Technorati and every 5.8 seconds the new blogs are created and there will be up to 1 million bloggers updating their blogs (McGann, 2004).

Blogs & Mainstream Media from Blogpulse.com

Based on the above, the graph shows the average bloggers update their blogs at least 0.75 out of 1.25 of percent of all blog posts. The blogs are the most famous compare to other main streams such as radio and television. People prefer to blog compare to others.

Trends in Europe, Asia & Malaysia

Different countries have their own trends in blogging. In Malaysia, bloggers talk about personal and political issues. In Japan, bloggers tend to talk about social life.According to Technorati (2008), Japan Trend Shop (Killian-Nakamura) collaborates with Cscout Japan Co. Ltd. and created a social blog to blog about gadgets, fashion and lifestyle in Tokyo.

Japan's blogs (Current Trend) from Killian-Nakamura.com

Types of blogs are prevalant in Europe, Asia & Malaysia

According to Sabahan (2007), out of Malaysian Top 50 Bloggers, 28% of bloggers blog about their personal issues, 16% of bloggers write about political issues, 16% of bloggers write about technology and the rest of it are travel, food, entertainment and others. The famous blogger in Malaysia that write about personal is Kenny Sia from Kennysia.com and linked 4,828 from 2,406 blogs. Moreover, Jeff Ooi writes about political issues in Jeffooi.com and he was linked 2,824 from 836 blogs.

Benefits of blogs to my community

According to Microsoft Malaysia (2006), people are able to connect with one another through blogs.

“With today’s generation growing up in a connected world, blogs and social media have become key channels of communication for them”.
Grant Watts, General Manager, Southeast Asia of Online Services Group, Microsoft

Just like Watts mentioned above, blogs has become the key channels of communication to the people and this lead a better relationship among the bloggers and readers.

There are different trends in different countries give different benefits. Currently Malaysia blogs are more focus on personal blogs compare to politics. According to Microsoft Malaysia (2006), they mentioned that currently there are more women bloggers. They showed more feelings and expressions compared to the men. Not only that, they actually communicate better than men bloggers. This shows that women bloggers in Malaysia has increased more every year.


Reference Lists:

McGann, R. 2004, “The Blogosphere by the Numbers”, Clickz.com, Viewed on 7th May 2008 at <http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3438891>

Microsoft Malaysia 2006, “Women Rule in Malaysian Blogosphere” Viewed on 7th May 2008 at <http://www.microsoft.com/malaysia/press/archive2006/linkpage4337.mspx>

Sabahan.com 2007, “50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia” Viewed on 8th May 2008 at <http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/>

Technorati.com 2008, “Trends in Japan” Viewed on 8th May 2008 at <http://www.technorati.cn/blogs/kilian-nakamura.com/blog-english>

What is the purpose of my blog?

Why is my blog created? What is the purpose of my blog?
The purpose of my blog is to discuss the issues in publication and document designs. I have to understand the theories of publication and document designs and able to apply it into my serious weblog. Besides that, images, videos and words are considered documents and provide meaning to people. Furthermore, readings and case studies of publications and document designs give more inspirations and understandable how documents can be important and meaningful. Through blogging, I can inspire and provide more information to other document designers out there to be creative and understand more of publications and document designs.