Good Design for Screen Genre

What does it actually means to have a good design for your presentation? The most important thing to remember is that point of presentation is to present an information, making sure that the audience get the message we are trying to present to them.

A good PowerPoint presentation, like a good argument, shows a unified, coherent structure and uses visual and textual evidence to reinforce its assertions. Because PowerPoint is by nature a multi-media format—incorporating elements of written, oral, and visual communication. Particular emphasis is placed on maintaining visual and grammatical parallelism, optimizing text and image display, organizing information effectively, and animating for optimum effect.


This first screenshot shows our over usage of simplicity. Frankly saying, this ppt page looks boring and filled with so many writings that people may simply just read the title and dozed off.


The second screenshot shows our first use of image in the presentation. This is actually a pretty clear presentation of our idea, although it may be a bit lengthy on the explanation. However, compared to this one:


This third screenshot shows nothing but the picture, which may be highly effective if the picture can already explains itself. Tags and directional leading path must be put into this slide. So does for the title of each slide, we should have been useing a more engaging sets of taglines such as a question. As Lane, King & Russell (2004) stated:" Many Illustrations cannot tell the story alone–they require a headline to complete the communication. So, the headline is extremely important to keep peoples interest"

References:
1. Bear, JH 2010, Before You Create a PowerPoint Presentation viewed on 18 April 2010, at
http://desktoppub.about.com/od/microsoft/bb/powerpointrules.htm
2. Lane, W,Roland,King,W,Karen & Russell,Thomas,J , 2005, Kleppener’s Advertising Procedure,Pearson Prentice Hall, US.
3. Reynold, G 2005, What is good PowerPoint design?, viewed on 18 April 2010, at
http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/whats_good_powe.html

New Forms of Media Publishing

New media has been emerging lately thanks to the rapid development in technology and the widespread of internet usage around the globe. In the sense that public understanding of issues surrounding the Internet and other forms new media communications grows vastly over the last few years, so does the usage of these new media.

Generally, old media is considered one-directional. Although a single source of information broadcast by television or radio has the potential to reach a worldwide audience, the audience typically cannot interact with the source.New media communications includes websites, chat rooms, bulletin board services (BBS), and e-mail list servers. This new format also includes social networking or video-sharing platforms. Here are some classification of new media used for blogging:

• Moblog – mobile blogging,
• Vlog – video blogging,
• Splog – spam blog,
• Linklog – URLs (hyperlinks) blogging,
• Sketchlog – sketch blogging,
• Tumblelog,
• YouTube
• Online newspaper,
• Online magazine,
• Online books,

Youtube, twitter, facebook, and other social media have been multitasking as the sources for news. With their presence, people no longer get information or news solely from newspaper or magazines. Journalists are now expected to be tech-savvy, at least to be able to use these new media for their advantage. This may be a disadvantage for some people, but the growing new media has been proved to be more beneficial than harmful.

US Department of Defense, for one example, changed their previously ad-hoc policy of blocking these media to actually encouraging their components to use the new media as their way to communicate with their social circle. (see DoD official policy)



References:
1. DoD Official Policy on New/Social Media, viewed at 15 April 2010, at
DoD Official Policy on New/Social Media
2. Revell,M, 2009, All About Blogging, History of Blogs, Types of Blogs, viewed at 18 April 2010 at
http://www.webeditorblog.com/
3. What Are the Different Types of New Media Communications?, wisegeek.com, viewed at 14 April 2010 at
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-new-media-communications.htm
4. Wikipedia, viewed at 18 April 2010, at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#cite_note-9

Blogging Community

What is a blogging community?
While Blogosphere is a collective community of all blogs, a community of local blogs are often called bloghood. Blogging communities are bloggers who have similar area of interests and then find a ground to discuss them in one media. Blogs are coonncted into a blogosphere with the help of comments, trackbacks, blogrolls etc. Ways to created a blogging community is by using hyperlinks, forums, tag links, chat space and comment post. This will allow the audience to interact with the blog they are reading and the other readers as well.


How do you create a blogging community?
According to problogger.net, these are the steps to create a blogging community:

- Take the lead and be the community that you want your readers to be
- Ask Questions – the key to more comments and interaction on a blog
- Give readers homework – try it, it works
- Give readers a job to do on your blog – bizarre but it works
- Link to reader’s blogs – it’s amazing what impact this can have
- Answer Reader questions – this has real power
- Invite Readers to Take the lead with guest posts, giving advice to each other etc
- Make Readers Famous – celebrate your readers publicly
- Do projects where readers can participate, submit things and be active. The more you have them DO the more loyal they’ll become.
(source: problogger.net)

The Diagram of Today's Blogg Communities





References:
1. How to build community on your blog, 2008 , viewed on 19 april 2010 at
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/04/26/how-to-build-community-on-your-blog/
2. Revell,M, 2009, All About Blogging, History of Blogs, Types of Blogs, viewed at 18 April 2010 at
http://www.webeditorblog.com/
3. White,N, 2006, blogs and community- launching a new paradigm for online comunity,viewed on 18 april 2010 at
http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

Classification of Blogs

There a lot of different types of blogs in the cyber-world. They can mainly be divided into three different categories: by genre, by the media being used to deliver, and by the device used to post them.


By Genre:
- Personal blog
- Cultural blog: music, arts, theater and other popular culture.
- Topic blog : gadgets, how-to's, softwares, etc.
- Business blog: talks about business developments, stock market, economic changes.
- Science blog: discuss and dissect scientific data
- Collaborative blog: where it is written / managed by two or more authors.
- Eclectic blog: focuses on unusual topic such as
- Educational blog: used by students or tutors for researches, findings, and other educational articles
- Directory blog:
- Forum blog: open blogs for opinions and debates, or commercial usages


By Media:
By the different medias being used to deliver the messages in the blogs, they can be divided into:
vlog - is a blog containing video
linklog - is a blog, containing links
sketchblog - sketches or portfolio
photoblog - photos
tumblogs -Blogs with different types of contents
There may still be more different kinds of media being used, but these are the ones mainly being used currently.

By Devices:
This one is mainly divided into traditional (via PC or laptops) amd MoBlog (via mobile phone, PDAs, Blackberry, or any mobile devices.)



Taxonomy of Blogs
By reading the transcript of Margaret Simons' Taxonomy of blogs,there are 9 different types of blogs according to her, and she tried to name them all:

1. Pamphleteering Blogs. These are the sites where groups of individuals argue a case or push a cause.

2. The Digest Blog. These are the guides and summaries to things you can access elsewhere,sometimes they include commentary as well.

3. The Advocacy Blog. This is a subset of pamphleteering, but being putting under a different category because these blogs are usually run by established advocacy groups or commercial organisations rather than by individuals, and focus only on a single topic, instead of many different issues.

4. The Popular Mechanics Blog. There is now a large and diverse set of often uniquely valuable blogs that offer training and advice in specialist fields.

5. The Exhibition Blog. These are blogs maintained by writers, craftspeople, artists and other kinds of artsy people in which they exhibit their arts to a wider audience.

6. The Gatewatcher Blog. The one's dogwatching other media's contents.

7 The Diary. The many Diary Blogs are intended for the friends and family of individuals. They generally are filled with news, photos and information of a lone's personal life.

8. The Advertisement. Companies pay established bloggers to promote their products, as well as creating their own blogs to do exactly the same thing.

9. The News Blog. These are the blogs completely reserved to bring news from different parts of the world, with their different views and perspective on politics, war, disease, etc.




References:
1. Different Types of Blogs, Geekpoint Forum, viewed 18 April 2010 at
http://www.geekpoint.net/blogging/5019-different-types-blogs.html
2. Revell,M,, 2009, All About Blogging, History of Blogs, Types of Blogs, viewed at 18 April 2010 at
http://www.webeditorblog.com/
3. Simons, M, 2008, A Taxonomy of Blogs, The Media Report, viewed 16 April 2010, at
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript
4. Simons,M, 2008, Towards a taxonomy of blogs, Australian Policy Online, viewed at 16 April 2010 at
http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0

Blogs as Current Phenomenon & Benefits to The Community

Blogosphere
Blogs have been the latest ever-growing trend in the cyber world, and it has gained a more than expected since its debut in August 1998, when Jonathan Dube of The Charlotte Observer published one chronicling Hurricane Bonnie. Blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions - this is what we call the Blogosphere. Even according to tracking site Technorati, as in 2006, more than 54,000 posts per hour in different blogs are posted online.

(source: Technorati)


Trends in Blogging
In Technorati 2009 report, it is found that 28% of all bloggers are professional bloggers, and 72% of them are blogging hobbyists. However, the topics that they are blogging about are generally very diverse, with personal life and lifestyle beeing the main topic.


According to Sabahan.com (2006) In Malaysia 44% of bloggers blog about personal stuff and technology, 16% on politics and another 40% on business and corporate.

Benefits To the Community
Blogging mainly affects Malaysian community positively in a way that the media gives Malaysian an opportunity and medium to express themselves. Many different bloggers from Hasan Skodeng (nose4news) to Jeff Ooi (first political blogger to become member of parliament, people with their own views and creativity are now being heard and seen. The only issue, it seems, is the privacy and sensitivity of some issues such as religion or politic.



Reference List:
1. 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia 2007, sabahan.com, viewed on 18 April 2010, at http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malays
2. Berlin,E, 2009, Richard Jalichandra Keynote: BlogWorld 2009, viewed on 18 April 2010, at http://technorati.com/blogging/article/richard-jalichandra-keynote-blogworld-2009/
3. Microsoft 2006, Blogging Phenomenon Sweeps Asia, viewed on 17 April 2010, at http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/11-28-2
4. Wikipedia, Blogs, viewed on 18 April 2010, at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#cite_note-18