Reflections

The art of writing on paper was in the language, the style of writing, the handwriting itself and the way it is laid. When we moved to writing for print the focus changed to the usage of fonts, typeface, layout and style of writing. As now we write for the web, the considerations opened up to the usage of flash, videos, pictures, audio, hyperlinks and a world of different design concerns. While I wouldn’t complain that these contributed to my ugly handwriting but given the vast power to include almost anything in web document, the tendency to use it – and over-use it is an issue to be concerned of.

I realized that by having too much web features in a web document sometimes ruin it rather than enhance it as hyperlinks pulls the reader away from the main topic, videos sometimes take too long to load and even the poor layout of links and documents design can cause irritation. Which in the case of this weblog I have decided to stick to minimum use of such feature.

In time to come the ability to personalize blogs and more features will be available as it matures over the years and more people will adopt blogging as a way of life. Blogging after all, is just another diary of a person that is recording his/her life story. Someone has mentioned this to me before

You can understand a blogger very well by reading their posts and entries, but he or she is a stranger that you may never meet or know in your whole life.

Breaking the media Eco-system (for Video Games)

OnLive unveiled the latest technology in video gaming at the Games Developer Conference 2009 with much hype. The system removes the need for high cost hardware needed to play the current front end video games as these requirements will be handled by the service providers themselves. The full report on how it works can be found here.

If this will be the future of video games, it will be the end of gaming consoles such as Sony’s PS3, Microsoft’s Xbox series, Nintendo’s Wii and the PC. For the consumer end we are no longer required to buy expensive hardware to play these games and gaming becomes extremely mobile being able to play these games as long as there is an internet connection. For the producer end this spells a bigger issue; consoles become obsolete, the business model has to change and high end hardware will turn redundant. Piracy will also be beaten as software no longer requires distribution.

While this is the first foray for gaming, videos are already available for streaming via video sites like Youtube and music are available for purchase via iTunes Store. Already the society is gradually moving towards owning of intellectual property through digital means and eventually, even a shop is not required to purchase merchandise. A small breakthrough in technology can cause a chain reaction to upset the entire eco-system to the media industry and as new technology moves up, old technology will have to give way one day. Cassettes have given way to CDs, TVs to LCDs, film to digital, LD to DVDs, pagers to mobile phones, horses to cars and now distribution through internet. One fine day 15 years from now, a PS3 would be what we call a ‘retro’ gaming machine.

Reference

OnLive 2009, OnLive: The Future of Video Games, viewed 27th March 2009,

<http://www.onlive.com/index.html>

Terdiman, D 2009, OnLive could threaten Xbox, PS3, and Wii, CNET News, viewed 27th March 2009,

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10202688-235.html>

Kane, YI 2009, Games Without the Hardware , The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, viewed 27th March 2009,

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123787473566622741.html>

Snider, M 2009, OnLive promises video games without all the hardware, USAToday.com, viewed 27th March 2009,

<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2009-03-24-onlive_N.htm>

Grossman, L 2009, Is OnLive the New Fourth Game Console? Actually, Maybe, TIME.com, viewed 27th March 2009,

<http://nerdworld.blogs.time.com/2009/03/24/is-onlive-the-new-fourth-game-console-actually-maybe/>

Image source: OnLive

The BIG Social Web/Network

Whether for the better or not, internet social networking is one of the biggest internet commodities now. Facebook alone have more than 175 millions active users and the numbers of social networking sites like FaceBook out there are astonishing. FaceBook was not new, there were others like Friendster, MySpace, Tagged.com and Twitter etc. The advantage is that we now can easily make friends no matter where you are in the world and share information and communicate, the disadvantage is that you do not really know who you might be talking to. A person’s virtual identity can be really different from whom he really be as these sites allows one to input his/her personal information without true verification. While the case of Julie Doe was a true example of a sexual assault caused indirectly by such a social networking site, there are other ways where privacy can be violated as in the case of Gary Ng by using such mediums.

Such social networking sites are but just a machine to perform other functions. If used properly it helps to tighten a community and pulls relationships closer, if not it harms people and violates privacy rights. You may think that you know someone very well through these networks, but thinking again – you make not really know him or her after all.

Here are some of the popular social networking sites

FaceBook
Friendster
Habbo
Hi5
LiveJournal
MySpace
Tagged.com
Twitter

Reference

Facebook 2009, statistics FaceBook, viewed 24th March 2009

<http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics>

Samson, M 2008, Jane Doe, Individually and as Next Friend of Julie Doe, a minor v. Myspace, Inc. and News Corporation, Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions, viewed 24th March 2009

<http://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case513.cfm>

Hanqing, L 2009, I secretly film women in bed when they don't give consent, The Electric New Paper, viewed 24th March 2009

<http://tnp.sg/news/story/0,4136,196601,00.html>

Designing Print Vs. Designing Online

Deb (2008) mentioned in her article that print and web are not the same and will never be the same. Reep (2006, pp. 134-135) stated the purpose of design feature in print as guiding the readers through text; increasing interest in the document; creating a document that reflects the image desired. Lemke’s studies as mentioned (Walsh, M 2006, p. 110) demonstrated that there is a complex and ‘multiplicative effect’ in the way language and modes of image, text and sound are combined in websites and linked to layers of interconnections within and between sites. Both medium eventually bogs down to a single motive in their functions – to engage the readers in the intended information by means other than the content itself.

Many reports have discussed and concluded that the approach to designing prints cannot be applied to designing websites. Mainly because of the requirements as discussed by Deb Ng in her article Print Vs Web (Why The Two Will Never Be The Same). Even though the two teams working on the same content may not see eye to eye with each other on their design criteria, it is important to note that both are actually working together to compliment each other. While websites are able to incorporate videos, audio and endless hyperlinks to related materials, a great print design can capture the undivided attention of an audience. That’s why they call an internet surfer a surfer – he/she surfs from one site to another site and the attention span on a single article is comparative lesser to one who is going through a printed document.

Hyperlinks are distractive.

Rather than comparing the differences, making good use of the positive elements of each medium can facilitate a powerful presentation to attract readers, which is the ultimate motive of design.


Reference

Deb, N 2008, Print vs Web: Why the Two Will Never Be the Same (and why you shouldn’t expect them to be), Freelance Writing Jobs, viewed 20th March 2009
<http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/2008/04/print-vs-web-why-the-two-will-never-be-the-same-and-why-you-shouldnt-expect-them-to-be/>

Reep, DC 2006, Technical writing: principles, strategies and reading, 6th edn, Pearlson/Longman, New York

Walsh, M 2006, ‘The "textual shift": examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian journal of language and literacy, vol. 29. No. 1

Wikipedia, 2009, Hyperlinks, viewed 20th March 2009
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink>

Phenomenonal Blogging

I had kept a written diary for 4 years from 1997 to 2000 writing diligently and almost daily. Those diaries contains ticket stubs for shows, photographs, letters and stuffs stuck in between the pages where they are relevant and it contains entries written in English, Chinese as well as occasional doodling. In the year 2001 I switched to the first online diary called the Open Diary which was opened in 1998. The site allows users to choose to keep their entries private as well as able to view by other users and eventually, leaving comments.

Today blogs has become more than just a private affair. Bloggers are able to share daily experience; express their feelings and opinions; comment on others; share pictures, videos and audio etc. While the sharing of positive and constructive information is generally healthy and encouraged, it is when the sharing of negative opinions that is creating controversial in the community. Day (2008) said that opinions are simply one person’s point of view, a position arrived in one’s mind, not necessary built or even influenced by a fact of two. What was once a private affair has in this era of blogging community became a public media. Suddenly blogging is now a medium for gaining awareness and attention. Bloggers used an interesting register approach to writing their entries and readers flock to their blogs to read their regular posts. On top of that, advertisers are boosting and exploiting these media through social media marketing by paying for their posts or sponsoring their blogs. Face it gossip news sells and the onslaught of such blog entries are attracting readers like ants to the sugar jar. The existence of blogs as a social networking community together with FaceBook and forums are slowly becoming a part of our lives.

When reading blogs is getting to be better and more interesting than watching Days of our Lives, it is not surprising to know that bloggers are being paid to blog already.

PS. Till today I still keep the 4 years of diary I had and traditional journal writing is still an indescribable nostalgic feeling as those moments of my life are written in pen and ink.

Reference

Day, M 2008, 'Blogged down in a swamp of other people's opinions' The Australian, March 08

<http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21342645-12280,00.html>

Wikipedia, 2009 social media marketing, last view 17th March 2009

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_marketing>

Gupta, 2005, Microsoft Recruiting Paid Bloggers, MediaPost Publications, viewed 17th March 2009,

<http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=31467>

Media Discovery Discovered

Magazines or newspapers 10 years ago used to be just magazines or newspapers. That meaning that it can be a regular daily, weekly or month publication of even a longer period depending on the type of information it contains. This is to say that the content are consolidated over a period of time, complied and then released to the public. Today, that form of dissemination has changed. News over the internet and websites are instantaneously updated faster than the printer could print and the new digital medium is able to stream videos and audio. With this emergence of the digital publication, what is then, the future of traditional publications?

As Day noted (2005) in his article that readers are concurrently reading websites online as well as publications, it is noteworthy to know that the present trend is the co-existence of both mediums. Examples of such are the Straits Times daily newspaper and the Straits Times Online; Discovery Channel Magazine and the Discovery website and PlayWorks with PlayWorks Online. I took the opportunity to leisurely read through the March 2009 issue of the Discovery Channel Magazine and by the time I finished it I had gone through most of the articles within and am impressed by the content and photos. I realized that through the systematic page by page reading, my concentration span on the magazine rate far better that reading those articles online – accounting to surfing with multiple windows of other stuffs opened at the same time, spreading attention over several things. Websites also suffered from occasional poor loading or missing data links with dampens the over experience.

This instance of experiment shows that the magazine holds a better spell on the reader which in this case is me. Self-navigation through the website and an overwhelming choice of information may in the end constitute a weak attention spread over all of them, where the mouse clicks faster than the eyes could read.

It is still too early to be sure that digital media will kill off the traditional media, but as of present, publications will still be around yet.

Reference

Day, M 2005, 'Web users aren't about to forsake the printed page' The Australian, April 14, p.22

Image source : Discovery Channel Magazine