A Take On Media

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

How far we've come...

This is the first blog I have ever created, and I never knew blogging would be such an interesting thing to do, even though this is a 'serious' blog.

Thanks to services like Blogger.com, a new way of publication has hit the internet.

Looking for issues to blog and researching theories really opened up my eyes to a whole new world of publishing. But creating a blog is no simple task; I had to look for ways to make it as interesting as possible to the readers.

Applying theories to what I have written was an interesting thing to do too.

The way people read printed text is very different from the way they read on the web. The web is an active medium, users are engaged and want to go to places and get things done (Nielsen, 2008). Therefore I used links in my postings to get readers to pages with further information.

In writing, I had to keep my content short and simple.

I used multimodal texts - text whose meanings are realized through more than one semiotic code (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006) – in postings to make it interesting and to engage the reader (Walsh, 2006), for example videos and pictures.

While I was writing on issues such as piracy, I had to make sure there are no offensive sentences to any parties, and that I got my facts through a credible source.

Overall, blogging has been nothing like I have ‘written’ before, and I believe it is an interesting form of publishing, but keep in mind that this is open for almost everyone to view, so watch your ‘digital mouth’.

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Reference

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, 'Chapter 6: The meaning of composition', Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.

Nielsen, J 2008, Writing Style for Print vs. Web, Useit.com, viewed 12 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/print-vs-online-content.html>.

Walsh, M 2006, ‘Textual shift: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', Australian journal of language and literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.

The Pirate Bay - Friend or Foe?

Going back to the topic of piracy, have been on the news a lot lately.

The internet has brought about a new paradigm for publishing and sharing. This has sparked new life for piracy and copyrights, in this case, illegal distribution of copyrighted material.

Controversy surrounds Swedish big-time torrent tracker site The Pirate Bay (TPB), that indexes and tracks torrents – small files into which huge files such as movies and music have been broken up into for easier sharing over the internet (Timbuong, 2008).

In most countries, this is piracy and illegal.

TPB is known as a thorn for media distributors because it utilizes the power of the Internet to dissolve the old methods of distribution (TheStar, 2008), so called the ‘legal’ way. Something similar to Shawn Fanning's music sharing service, Napster.

The Pirate Bay has been the target of legal suits from property rights advocates and industry groups. But Peter Sunde, Co-founder of The Pirate Bay, who was at the recent HiTBSecConf 2008 hacker conference in Kuala Lumpur, believes that piracy is a catalyst for knowledge sharing.

According to Sunde (Timbuong, 2008), record companies have been in control of traditional distribution channels (they run the show and take the money), until the internet came and changed that. Companies chose to stick to the same business model when dealing with the internet.

This way of doing business cannot work on the World Wide Web. Sunde said that “the internet is an open and neutral platform where users should be allowed to share content, knowledge and anything else; anyway they want (Timbuong, 2008).”

Nielsen (1997) says, the web is user controlled. Ernesto (2008) said that even if The Pirate Bay team were to go to jail, the site would remain online, no matter what.

Asay (2007) from CNET News says that piracy is a leading indicator of sales, that broadcasters are informally giving copies of shows to anonymous and unaffiliated people to make torrents.

Sunde said that record companies also promoted the belief that success comes from clinching a record deal. In a very pro-piracy way, he said that record and movie companies react badly to new technology because they are afraid of losing control over their business (Timbuong, 2008).

Even EMI Music is taking a step towards a new leaf by releasing DRM-free music downloads (EMI Group, 2007).

The internet seems to be on the side of TPB, and they are looking towards the freedom of publishing. But record companies are hot on their heels. Piracy or Freedom? You decide.

“We are not after anarchy – just openness,” Peter Sunde, Co-Founder of The Pirate Bay.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

TV to Mobile

Have you ever gone through the trouble of rushing back home to catch your favorite television show? I have. How you wish that you could bring your television around with you, a feat impossible awhile ago, is now reality.

Mobile TV is a television service delivered to subscribers via mobile telecommunications networks to mobile devices like your mobile phone (Wikipedia.org).

The first glimpse of mobile TV was announced in Korea by electronics giants Samsung in 2003 when they announced their TV phone (Hesseldahl, 2003).

But what would the content on mobile TV be like? According to MobiTV COO Paul Scanlan, it would be a combination of both premium content from studios and television service providers, and user generated contents, just like it is today (Forbes.com).

Mobile TV has sparked a new trend for entertainment and also as a source for revenue for telecommunication and electronic companies. According to Annikki Schaeferdiek (2008), vice-president of marketing and strategy for Ericsson's multimedia division, Mobile TV will be the biggest revenue stream by 2011 (Sinclair, 2008).

The ideal time limit for mobile content would be 15 to 30 mins because most people would be using it while commuting or during down-time, but some may also watch it at home. A difference between mobile tv and old television is the context the user is in. Schaeferdiek says that mobile TV would be a more personalized experience (Sinclair, 2008).

IMS research forecasted that by the end of 2011, about half a billion people would be watching television on their mobile phones worldwide. Juniper research said that revenues would grow tenfold to exceed US$6.6 billion per year by 2012 (Forbes.com).

Mobile TV provider MobiTV now has over 4 million subscribers and this growth looks steady (Frommer, 2008).

Now, there are multiple formats of Mobile TV to choose from (Wikipedia.org):

GPRS
3G
DVB-H/SH
S-DMB (Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcast) - South Korea, Japan
CMMB (China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting) - China
MediaFLO - launched in US, trialed in UK and Germany
ISDB-T (Integrated Service Digital Broadcasting) - Japan and Brazil
1seg (One Segment) - Mobile TV system on ISDB-T
T-DMB (Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcast) - South Korea, Germany
DAB-IP (Digital Audio Broadcast) - UK

The European Union chose DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds) over other versions of the technology as a single standard because it is the most widely used mobile-TV format in Europe and is supported by many handset makers (Australian IT).

Mobile TV is on the rise, humans are developing and we would be sure to watch out for more news on mobile TV in the near future. New content are already in development for mobile TV such as mobisodes.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Spore-ing Piracy

Spore™ by Electronic Arts (EA), was one of the most anticipated games of the year 2008. Even two years before its release, it has been given 5 star (out of 5) ratings on gaming websites.

Two years later, the game is getting 1 star ratings from users on Amazon.com and eBay for buying the product. Why you ask? This is because of their malicious anti-piracy DRM (Digital Rights Management) software which is a term for restrictions placed on digital content to prevent users from making copies (Wikipedia.org).

(Source: Amazon.com)

Spore is a real-time strategy / life simulation game (something like TheSims) where you take control of a particular Cell in the beginning and evolve stage by stage to Creature, Tribal, Civilization and finally Space (Wikipedia.org).

See More Spore Screenshot at IGN.com

In an attempt to ‘reduce piracy’, EA decided to restrict how many times the game can be installed.

Upon purchasing the game, users are given an activation code. This code is required to activate the game over the internet during installation, and it is limited to a total of 3 activations per code. In a scenario given by a user on Amazon.com: “If you're an XP user, you'll probably install the game. Then you'll upgrade to Vista. That'll be another install. Two down one to go.”

Another user said that “this basically means that you are actually RENTING the game, instead of owning it”.

Additional installations would require you to buy a new copy or call EA for a new activation code. The company also restricted how many people could play each copy.

This has made Spore one of the most pirated games ever. According to Ernesto (2008) from TorrentFreak, Spore has already been downloaded more than 500,000 over BitTorrent sites, and this number is increasing rapidly. Spore is in the Top 100 most downloaded list on ThePirateBay.org.

This will be hard to stop, as Dawson (2007) says, copyright holders may request hosts to cease distributing them, but it won’t stop piracy because it will still circulate via peer-to-peer file sharing.

Instead of hitting lawsuits to pirates for piracy of their products, EA is instead being hit with a lawsuit for their anti-piracy software: ‘Spore ‘spying’ evolves into lawsuit - Adelaidenew.com.au. How ironic.

Hate videos are also posted on YouTube on this issue.

It would be hard to rid this world of piracy, especially on the internet, where content is controlled by its user. Even EA’s attempts to reduce piracy backfired on them.

The fact that I installed this game from my generous cousin’s copy never affected me that much, but now I feel that this has made it very unfair to him. But not to take anything away from Electronic Arts, I would rate the game play a 5 out of 5 because it is absolutely unique, and I love the concept of colonizing the universe.

Related articles (not referred):
EA Downplays Spore's DRM Triggered Piracy Record - TorrentFreak.com
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References

Dawson, M 2007, Little Players, Big Shows: Format, Narration, and Style on Television's New Smaller Screens, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Sage Publications, Vol.13(3), pp. 231-250.

Ernesto, 2008, Spore: Most Pirated Game Ever Thanks to DRM, TorrentFreak, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://torrentfreak.com/spore-most-pirated-game-ever-thanks-to-drm-080913>.

Digital rights management, Wikipedia.org, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management>.

Ramadge, A 2008, ‘Spore anti-piracy measures spawn backlash’, News.com.au, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,,24354314-5014239,00.html>.

Spore™, Customer Reviews, Amazon.com, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://www.amazon.com/Spore-Mac/dp/B000FKBCX4/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1221532773&sr=8-1>.

Spore (2008 video game), Wikipedia.org, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(2008_video_game)>.

Barack Obama on Youtube, Myspace and Facebook

The 2008 United States presidential elections were a big highlight worldwide in the year 2008, with Senator Barack Obama securing a big win to be elected as the new President of the United States.

Social media sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Facebook were unknown in the previous election, played an important part in this year’s presidential elections. Barack Obama used these social networking sites to reach out to different demographic groups (AustralianIT, 2008).

Video Link: Social Media's Big Win - Australian IT, 2008

“These websites help politicians connect more directly with their voters,” – Google CEO Eric Schmidt (McCullagh, 2008 - CNET News)

After the end of the campaign, Barack Obama now has over 850,000 friends on MySpace. People were able to view videos, post comments, and have discussions. Here is a link to Barack Obama’s MySpace profile.

Barack Obama - MySpace Profile

On Facebook, users posted their voting status for the campaign, whether they were in or out to vote for a candidate. Supporters used sites to influence their peers, creating a peer pressure situation (AustralianIT, 2008). Many groups, applications and networks were created by supporters for Obama. Obama’s Facebook friend count is over 1 million.

The public now have the power to control the message they want to see, especially on the web. According to Nielsen (1997), the internet is about interaction and maximizing user initiative and empowerment.

Barack Obama on Facebook

YouTube is video networking service where users are able to post videos of their choice. Barack Obama made good use of this service, posting video after video, amounting to over 1800 videos, and over 19 million channel views (YouTube.com, 2008). Obama’s director of field video production Arun Chaudhary said that his organization took video seriously from the start (Learmonth, 2008 – Silicon Alley Insider).

Barack Obama - YouTube channel

If it were not for the internet, Barack Obama might not be president, or a nominee from the democrats. Through this, future candidates would be sure not to ignore the use of the internet for their campaigns.

A possible reason to why McCain lost: McCain Advisor: We Don’t Need Facebook, They’re Not Our Voters

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References

Learmonth, M 2008, ‘Obama’s Video Guru Speaks: How We Owned The YouTube Primary’, Silicon Alley Insider, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/obama-s-video-guru-speaks-how-we-owned-the-youtube-primary>.

Leberecht, T 2008, ‘Obama video: a new way for new media’, CNET News, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://news.cnet.com/8301-13641_3-10000365-44.html?tag=mncol>.

Needleman, R 2008, ‘The Obama presidency: ‘It’s the network, stupid’’, CNET News, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10086354-2.html?tag=mncol>.

Nielsen, J 1997, TV Meets the Web, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, Useit.com, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9702b.html>.

McCullagh, D 2008, ‘Google CEO: Internet spurred Obama’s nomination’, CNET News, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10028349-38.html?tag=mncol>.

The Australian IT, Social Media’s Big Win 2008, video recording, viewed 10 November 2008, <http://player.video.news.com.au/australianit/#rd5lzrO6AdGzPmb_vfyTigTZ_Z7molgl>.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Opportunity for new forms of Media Publishing

The internet is growing. People are finding ways to create new ways of publishing by changing the how they use semiotic codes. Multimodality is combining text, image and other graphic elements, be it on paper, television or computers (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006).

As stated in a Classification of blogs (8 November 2008), there are many different forms of blogs like vlogs and photoblogs, which creates a new trend for blogging.

Video sharing websites such a YouTube have been constantly criticized for their copyright infringement. In 2007, Viacom sued Google-owned YouTube over their clips.

YouTube also have a copyright policy, but it is difficult to control and track their user’s actions, so issues are still going on for YouTube.

While forms of media publishing are continuously changing, there are still limitations in the ‘what’ that can be published online, because if one is not careful, a lawsuit might follow just as Google experienced.

But there are some who are taking advantage of the so called ‘new media’, such as PressMart, which is a digital publishing service for newspapers, magazines and any print publication to a digital device (mobile phone, iPod, etc.) for a certain fee. People can now read their newspapers online or on their iPod.

PressMart - link to Youtube video

Nielsen said in 1998 that media formats will die and replaced with an integrated Web medium in 5 to 10 years, which is about now in the year 2008 (Nielsen, 1998). This is beginning to come true, and we are moving into a new era of media publishing.

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Reference

Broache, A & Sandoval, G 2007, Viacom sues Google over YouTube clips, CNET News, viewed 9 November 2008, <http://news.cnet.com/Viacom-sues-Google-over-YouTube-clips/2100-1030_3-6166668.html?tag=mncol;txt>

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Chapter 6: The meaning of composition, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.

Nielsen, J 1998, The End of Legacy Media, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, Useit.com, viewed 9 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980823.html>.

Youtube, Copyright Infringement Notification, viewed 9 November 2008, <http://www.youtube.com/t/dmca_policy>

Online vs. Print Design

When it comes to designing, print and web (online) designs have very different interfaces, people read them differently.

In print, the reading pattern is from left to right and from top to bottom, line by line, because they have been designed to be read this ‘linear’ way (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006).

In web pages, users read in an F-Shaped pattern, where the page is read in a horizontal movement and then move down the page a little bit and reads in a second horizontal movement that covers a shorter area than the previous movement. Finally users scan the contents on the left in a vertical movement (Nielsen, 2006).

Jakob Nielsen (2006) – F Shaped Reading Pattern

Take for example GameAxis’ magazine and website layout:

GameAxis - Magazine Pages

GameAxis - Web page

According to Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), readers of magazines may flick through magazines, stopping now and again to look at a picture or read a heading, and perhaps later return to some articles, while websites are specifically designed to allow multiple reading paths.

“Anything that is a great print design is likely to be a lousy web design” – Jakob Nielsen, 1999.

Therefore when writing on a blog, it must not be in a story telling form like in print. Web users read slower than in print and want actionable content, it must be brief and to the point (Nielsen, 1997 & 2008).

In brief (Nielsen, 1997):

Print design is based on letting the eyes walk over the information, selectively looking at information objects and using spatial juxtaposition to make page elements enhance and explain each other
Web design functions by letting the hands move the information (by scrolling or clicking); information relationships are expressed temporally as part of an interaction and user movement.

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References

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Chapter 6: The meaning of composition, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.

Nielsen, J 1997, Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web), Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, Useit.com, viewed 9 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html>.

Nielsen, J 1999, Differences Between Print Design and Web Design, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, Useit.com, viewed 9 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html>.

Nielsen, J 2006, F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, Useit.com, viewed 9 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html>.

Nielsen, J 2008, Writing Style for Print vs. Web, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, Useit.com, viewed 9 November 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/print-vs-online-content.html>.

A Take On Media

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

How far we've come...

The Pirate Bay - Friend or Foe?

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

TV to Mobile

Monday, November 10, 2008

Spore-ing Piracy

Barack Obama on Youtube, Myspace and Facebook

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Opportunity for new forms of Media Publishing

Online vs. Print Design

Purpose Driven

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