Reflection

‘Cheryl’s page’ is my first attempt in blogging. cheryl’s page is my first serious weblog which I have created, and it appears to be one of the most challenging assignments which I have done. This serious weblog is meant to focus on the issues in publication and design in this contemporary world.

In the process of writing this serious weblog, sufficient information is needed to support my viewpoint and argument. This is to avoid plagiarism which is a very serious copyright infringement offense. However, searching for suitable and reliable sources are also another difficulties while creating this weblog. This is to ensure the sources taken are trustworthy and readers will get the correct information on certain issues.

In conclusion, the process of creating a weblog is very interesting and fascinating which allows me to speak out my opinion in a certain issues and is also knowledgeable. I strongly believe that there will be another personal weblog in future waiting for me to create.

Finally, grateful thanks for those who have read ‘cheryl’s page’ and your opinions.


References

Blogs image, viewed on 13 June 2008, from http://www.innosight.com/blog/uploads/blogshakespearecomic.bmp

Facebook and Privacy Issue (2)

The Society for Technical Communication in the USA regularly runs an ethics column in the national newsletter. A typical situation from the workplace is described and readers are invited to choose which of several proposed solutions they would follow readers can propose a different solution. The responses will be published in a later issue.

One thing that clearly emerges from these columns, and from newspaper articles and discussions with scientific and technical communicators, is the dichotomy between knowing what’s ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and applying that in situations in occupation, or possibly in a person’s life, could be placed in risk while doing the ‘right’ thing. The ‘whistle-blowers’ which have heard frequently are demoted, sacked, and harassed for making public some information that someone in power did not want known.

According to Jean Hollis Webber, ethical questions boil down, at some point, to accepting personal responsibility for one’s own actions, not hiding behind ‘I was only following orders’ or ‘that’s not my job’ or some variation on that theme (Webber 1995).

Thus, the privacy of facebook is actually a very vital issue, as what has mentioned by Jean Hollis Webber, the ‘whistle-blowers’ are harassed for making public information that someone did not want known.

References

Webber, J.H. 1995, 'Ethics in scientific and technical communication', viewed on 13 June 2008, from http://www.jeanweber.com/newsite/?page_id=22

Facebook image, viewed on 13 June 2008, from http://www.weblogcartoons.com/cartoons/facebook.gif

E-books

E-books are books which are available in digital format. However, the inventions of e-books are not meant to replace paper books. Instead, e-books provide an alternate reading choice for technology lovers.

E-books provide a new dimension to the written word, allowing books to be distributed and enjoyed so much easily. E-books are ordered online and delivered electronically to the user’s computer.


E-books have many features which traditional paper books may be missing:
· Users can search through the text for a specific word or phrase.
· Users can carry the e-books with PDA or smartphone device.
· Users can enlarge or shrink the text size.
· Users can add digital bookmarks.
· Users can get instant delivery.
· E-books help the environment by not using paper or requiring packaging (eBookMall 2008)


The leading edge of the e-books market is exemplified by companies such as Gemstar, Adobe Systems and Microsoft. However, few people are willing to spend significant money for a device that just displays only books and the value of consuming e-books are too expensive for the average consume (ZDNet Asia 2001).


References

eBookMall, viewed on 13 June 2008, from http://www.ebookmall.com/aboutebooks.htm

E-book image, viewed on 13 June 2008, from http://freeebook.info/images/ebooks/ebooks_250x251.jpg

Commentary: E-books remain niche reads, viewed on 13 June 2008, from http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/business/0,39044229,13032564,00.htm

Facebook and Privacy Issues

Facebook, the second largest social network on the Web with around 60 million members, is one of the fastest-growing and best-known sites on the Internet today.

The company, founded in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg, began life catering first to Harvard students and then to all high school and college students. It has since evolved into a broadly popular online destination used by both teenagers and adults of all ages.

Like other social networks, the site allows its users to create a profile page and forge online links with friends and acquaintances. It has distinguished itself from rivals like the larger MySpace, owned by the News Corporation, partly by imposing a spartan design ethos and limiting how users can change the appearance of their profile pages. That has cut down on visual clutter and threats like spam, which plague rival social networks (The New York Times 2008).

References

Facebook viewed on 12 June 2008, from http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/facebook_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org

E-Magazines

E-Magazines are similar to E-books but are in the electronic form of traditional magazines. A lot of todays magazines are published in digital form. The coolest part about emagazines is the convenience of having them arrive straight to your computer as soon as new issues become available, versus arriving in snail mail like the paper version magazine's which we get monthly. The ability to just open your digital magazine and begin reading as soon as they arrive is a true pleasure.Digital Magazine subscriptions work exactly the same as the paper form with the exception of how they are produced. Digital versions are much more cost effective to reproduce and to deliver electronically. Of course, the savings is then passed on to the consumer (ebookfanatic 2008).

References

Welcome to our emagazine section, viewed on 12 June 2008, from http://www.ebookfanatic.com/emagazines.html

Designing for Online vs. Print (2)

Designing for Online vs. Print (2)

Priciples help designer determine the relationship between the parts or design elements involved and serve as rules that a designer can follow when combining these elements in a design (Evans, P. 2006). A designer have to understand the goal, audience and context in order to attract readers. Goals are very important to a print document designer because they need to be ubliseaware of what type of information are they going to published to the readers and the purpose of an article. Then, they need to know what type of the audience are for the specific print document. The context have to be suitable to the target audience. There are some design principles that a print document designer have to be aware of, which is hierarchy, balance, proximity, scale, unity, variety and texture. Unlike designing for an online document, a print document have their own design elements, such as shape, line, colour, type and imagery. For a print document, a designer main consideration is to understand that design is an effective communication, words, shapes and images are language. A design should be invisible which is complementary to the text (Cookman, B. 1993)


References:

Nielson J., http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html

Schriver, K.A. 1997, Chapter 6 in Dynamics in document design.

Evans, Poppy 2006, ‘Chapter 2 and 5’ in Publication Design, Thomson-Delmar, New York.

Cookman, Brian 1993, ‘Dekstop design: getting the professional look’ in Design basics, Blueprint, London.

Designing for Online vs. Print

Designing for Online vs. Print

According to Jakob Nielson, if a website is not easy to use, people simply leave and ignore the page (Jakob Nielson 2006). Thus, a webpage designer need to be aware of the tecniques to design a webpage in order to attract people. Document designers need to resist 'romancing the screen' and focus on how readers interact with the document. A better does not equals to a better communication necessarily (Schriver 1997). According to Nielson's research findings, 79% of the users always scan information on the computer screen, whereas only 16% of users will only read it word-by-word. Besides that, Nielson also pointed out that reading from a computer screen is 25% slower than reading from papers. He also pointed out that a web content should be 50% of the paper equivalent (Jakob Nielson 2006). In Nielson's findings, he found that users' main reading behaviour was fairly consistent across many different states and tasks. This dominant reading pattern looks like an F-shaped pattern.

Users first read in a horizontal movement, across the top part of the content area. This initial element forms the F's top bar. Next, users will move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement . This element forms the F's lower bar. Finally, users will scan the content's left side in a vertical movement. This last element forms the F's stem.

The F pattern's implications for the web design are clear and show the importance of following the guidelines for writing for the web. Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. The first two paragraphs must state the most important information and start subheads, paragraphs and bullet points with information-carrying words.

The three main guidelines for writing for the web are to be succinct, which is write not more than 50% of the text you would have used in a hardcopy publication. Then, write for scannability, don't require users to read long continuos sentence of the text. Try to use hypertext to split up long information into multiple pages.