A blogging reflection

Well I must admit, I am not the biggest fan of blogging, and even though I have 3 different social networking accounts (Myspace, Facebook & Mixi (Japanese)) which all heavily incorporate blogging, I was just not born to blog.

However, this assignment has given me insight on the internet and blogging phenomenon which is so prominent in the world today.

But I must say, that I do enjoy being a passive viewer of other peoples blogs, and I am always on the internet checking what the latest postings from my friends are. Quite often they are just about how drunk they got on the weekends, but once in a while a well opinionated piece of blogging emerges which makes me think about things in a different light.

To me, this is what weblogs should be all about, to inspire and provoke you, much like an editorial section in a newspaper... only the with the added advantage of it being unbiased and unmoderated.

I hope you have enjoyed my blog.

Genre Change

For this assignment we had to translate information presented from Anthony Funnel's ABC Media Report into a different form of media and for an appropriate genre.

The increasing popularity of 3G mobile phone content has led to people creating special TV and movie content specifically for the mobile phone. This content is better know as a ‘mobisode’, which typically lasts for only 1 minute (Jain, 2005). Because of the relatively short length of mobisodes, the content needs to be concise and interesting enough to keep the attention of the viewer.

With this in mind, I created a short 6 frame mobisode titled ‘George & The iPhone’ which was a translation of Antony Funnell’s media report. The mobisode features a story line of myself demonstrating the iPhone to George Bush, and extracting the appropriate material from Funnell’s report to match the story.

I decided to go for a political comedy genre, which the target audience would be people interested in politics, as well as new technology. The mobisode could perhaps be available to download from the ABC’s ‘Chasers War on Everything’ website, which the premise of the show is to look at wider issues of politics and the world in a light-hearted approach. This is supported by Jains (2005) notion of content personalization, where the specific user can decide what content they will receive.

The language in the mobisode is formal, but also plays on America’s way of calling mobile phones, ‘cell phones’. Because George Bush and John Howard are close acquaintances, the mobisode ties in Howard sending an MMS photo of himself to Bush’s phone, and Bush meeting his ‘boyfriend’ organised by mobile phone.

When designing content for mobile phone publication, it is good to keep text to a minimum and design information chunks that fit onto a small screen (Frick 2000). The text is quite large in proportion to the screen size of the mobisode. It features a regular Helvetica font written in big caps with a white background provided by the speech bubbles. The speech bubbles also assist in guiding the users eye around the screen, although this is not as big an issue when the screen size is so small. Helvetica is said to be the leading typeface across a multitude of codes and signals that enliven urban life (Müller, 2005). In this context it gives the mode a ‘comic book’ feel, which is appropriate for a mobisode as it creates movement and excitement when reading.

Overall I was happy with my Mobisode, and believed it faithfully presented the information from the Media Report into an interesting format.



Reference:



Frick, O 2000, WAP – Designing for Small User Interfaces, CHI 2000, The Hague, The Netherlands, viewed 30 August 2007, http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=633395


Jain, R 2005, Media Vision: A true multimedia client, University of California, Irvine, viewed 30 August 2007, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/93/30741/01423942.pdf?tp=&arnumber=1423942&isnumber=30741


Müller, L 2005, Helvetica: Homage to a Typeface, Translated by Catherine Schelbert, Springer, viewed 30 August 2007, http://books.google.com/books?id=6UHOApOVw2EC&dq=typeface+helvetica

Post defies trend away from print

The decline in newspaper sales correlates with the increase in young people embracing online newspaper sites. Less than 50 per cent of American adults read a daily newspaper, a 30 per cent decrease from the 1960s.

• The New York Post recorded a 7.6 per cent increase in weekday newspaper sales.

I was just informed from a few classmates that we didn't have to blog on this article. Thank god because it was extremely boring and absolutely doing my head in trying to decode that statistics and summarise it! The end.

Macbook

Recently I purchased a macbook, and so far I havn't been let down. The reason I purchased it is because Apple have finally attached a 'reasonable' price tag to their lower end product range of notebooks, that and the overall perceived reliability of the Mac OSX.

The 13-inch notebook is fairly lightweight at 2.31kgs, and features a powerful 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. My main use for the laptop is to run Dj audio software running in real-time via USB, which requires a quick processor and plenty of ram (1 gig).

After 3 weeks of using the Macbook, I have not received any USB audio dropouts which I had problems with before when using a windows-based notebook.

The transition from Windows to the Mac operating system has been easier than I first thought, with the only minor critisism being that there is no right-click function. However, simply attach an external mouse and you can right-click.

The Airport wireless device is high-speed and reliable, and I have only been disconnected on one or two seperate occasions.

Macbook have gone crazy with the magnets, featuring a 60W MagSafe power adaptor, and instead of a locking latch when you close the notebook, it is held firmly in place by the power of magnets.

So if your looking to buy a new notebook, I would seriously consider you looking at the new Macbook range from Apple, as the price is competitive and the features are practicle yet powerful.




*Specifications sourced from www.apple.com/macbook

Gooooooooooooooooooooooooogle

Apparently the word Google is a the number '1' with 100 zeros behind it, and after reading the online article, 'The age of permanent net revolution' by John Naughton, I can see why it is an appropriate name for the search engine.

The internet is estimated to contain over 3,000 billion websites, and is growing at a rate of 25,000 webpages per hour!

The process of new technologies taking over old ones known as 'endism', is becoming a reality especially in the case of broadcast TV. Internet Protocol TV (IPtv) is fragmenting the television viewing market, and why wouldn't it be!? Youtube for example, allows users to view the specific content they want to see, free from bias and censorship, witch is laced through commercial TV, and view it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 20 years ago, a successful tv show would attract 20 million viewers, but in another 5 years time a TV broacaster will be considered lucky if they recieve 200,000 ratings.

The lack of censorship on the internet has led to the success of blogging, with a new blog being posted every second. Some blogs are pure vanity, but many are well researched (such as mine haha) and of a high merit.


Personally I cant see 'endism' causing the death of free-to-air TV, just as TV didn't lead to the death of radio when it was produced. Why? Because sometimes it is good being told what to do, and this is what the push-media provides.


From the website: http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1723622,00.html

Myspace

I remember just over a year ago now, my friend hassled me to join the internet social networking giant, Myspace.

After being hassled numerous times, I reluctantly joined but rarely logged on to see god knows which 'friend' had added or messaged me.

But 1 year later, I must admit I am addicted, not because of the fact I can keep in touch with my friends (I would much rather send them an SMS or call them), but it has been a good oportunity to get some of my music production noticed.

However I have a few issues with Myspace. 1. Unreliability, 2. Spam and 3. Hackers.

1. More often than not Myspace is 'experiencing technical difficulties' or 'being repaired'. I realise it is a relatively new service but it is a big pitfall. In my time using Myspace, similar sites such as Facebook and Japans Mixi have never been down.

A major problem with Myspace is that it allows the user to virtually edit the entire page to their liking. They can include any html, java or flash script which is not compatible with all computers and adds to the problem. Facebook offers limited options on content personalisation and Mixi offers none what so ever. Not a down fall in my opinion.

2. & 3. I can join Spam and Hackers together because they are two of the same. Myspace is incredibly easy to hack, with hackers simply posting a link to a phoney Myspace log in page, with the unsuspecting user happily entering their e-mail and password and sending it to the hacker. The hacker can now simply send spam from these accounts, polluting Myspace. But the user simply has to change their password and then the spam will stop.

Here is A video of how hackers go about their business on Myspace.

What is a weblog anyway?

Experts define weblogs as "frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence" (Herring, Scheidt, Bonus & Wright, 2004). Weblogs differentiate themselves from other websites because they are usually updated more regularly, often on a daily basis. Although many websites are also updated on a regular basis, Weblogs are usually solely dedicated for peoples personal opinions, thoughts and general happenings in and around their life.

Many people probably don't even realise that they are 'bloggers', as the rise of social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook has integrated weblog-like features into their sites.


I personally believe that the rise of such social networking sites may lead to the death of Weblog specific sites, and these social sites add further dynamics to what blogging has offered, with more interaction from other users.


Below is a video showing you how to create a blog.










REFERENCE

Herring, S, Scheidt, L.A, Bonus, S & Wright, E 2004, Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs, Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1265271, viewed 17 July 2007.

Free-to-air TV, dissapearing into thin air.

The article titled, 'Young embrace digital entertainment, ditch TV' published on 'The Australian' website, 9 July 07 by Michael Bodey, discusses the recent findings from the market research company GfK Australia on digital entertainment. It is week 2 at SAIBT and we have been asked to research media/publishing issues, which is the reason I chose to summarise this article.

According to a national survey carried out by GfK, younger males and females responded they spend less time watching free-to-air TV, this is a fall of 11 points. This correlates with the rising popularity of browsing the Internet, up by 43 points and sites like MySpace and YouTube were up 22 points.

There were more than $650 million growth in LCD TV sales, and over $175 million in notebooks. However, this digital entertainment trend has not yet made as big a convergence to the family living room as TV networks anticipated, with less than 10 per cent of households having the Internet or a computer connected to their TV.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,22039391-7582,00.html

Introduction

Welcome to Mular's SAIBT DDP Blog!

So who is mulldaddy?

That would be me, I am studying Document Design and Publication at SAIBT. Without getting to personal or specific, I'm a Male in my early 20's, and a dj who likes to spin funk, hip hop, r'n'b, reggae and whatever else sounds hot! In my spare time (outside of Uni), I am either working, playing music or hanging out with some of the coolest cats in Adelaide, my mates.

My other major interest is Japanese language and culture. Last Christmas and New Years I spent in Japan travelling around the island for 6 weeks. Next year I'm interested in studying Public Relations at UniSA, with a sub-major in Japanese or something?

Throughout the next 12 weeks, new blogs will be posted related to DDP; professional commentary on current publishing issues from reputable media sources.

Please sit back, read and enjoy!