Celine C.

Looking back at the 6 criteria that I’ve set earlier back in the semester. I’m actually quite happy with my progress in Networked Media so far (well, apart from the inconsistent number of blogs in the past weeks). But I’ve definitely varied the content of my blog post, incorporating images, internal and external links increase the ‘bloginess’. I’ve also been frequently doing manual codes where applicable as it is good practice and fun.

It’s probably not the my first watching Ski yoghurt’s advertisement on TV but I’ve just realized how brilliant it was.

The usage of multiple non-linear shots of ‘cling’ sounds as a result from spoons coming in contact with plates, teeth and even table tops, are edited in such a way that it produces a rhythm in the audio. The marketing phrase ‘can’t get enough’ is cleverly presented in a way that each word is spoken by a different person i.e. multiple shots of different people saying a different word but brought together to produce a sentence that made sense. The result is a fast-edited advertisement with a catchy tune that is eye-catching.

This TV advertisement reminds me of the Miles’ idea of the Hypertext as I’ve blogged about in ‘Online Lecture’. Referring to links and distances, he said that links that might not relate to each other are brought together in a Hypertext to form a connection between them.

This is to illustrate how much I love baking.

Photo: chamomile Title: cha143.jpg
http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/66584
This image is under a morgueFile Free License

Facebook has got to be my favourite social media tool.

It helps me keep in touch with friends regardless of where I am in the world. It’s so easy because this media tool allow us to drop a message on their profile ‘walls’ which appear very casual and spontaneous. It is definitely a way to reconnect with friends whom we are not very close back in earlier days.

In addition to that, we can be updated with our friend’s lives by browsing through their photo albums or even be notified of the Facebook games that they are playing. There is also a live chat service that allows us to communicate in real time.

There have been massive debates on the privacy issue in Facebook as users are increasingly putting their lives on the internet. I strongly believe that there is a fine line between private and public on what we put on our Facebook profiles.

Do take a look at my recent blog post on Online Hypertext Lecture to get a better idea of what I’m learning in Networked Media. In this post, I jot down notes from a video recording of a lecture that has been posted online. I also bring in my own example to better illustrate what I’ve understand from the lecture.

A few problems that I’ve encountered when blogging:
Some of my blog posts are not ‘bloggy’ enough in a sense that they either do not contain enough links, images or other medias. For example, ‘Blogging by Jill Walker’, this is a post where I jot down notes from a book reference for the previous individual essay.
On the other hand, some blogs have very little or no relation to course materials. For example, ‘Pawpaws’, in this post I wrote about my love for this Aussie tropical fruit which is not available in my home country.

Hello! My name is Celine and I’m a second-year Professional Communication student at RMIT University.

This blog is a space for me to jot down notes from lectures and labs as well as to bring in ideas from external sources.

This blog also serves as a platform for me to practice HTML and read blog posts of others.

It is interesting how this week’s lecture is conducted online in the form of a downloadable video recording. This only reinforces the video’s title – Online Hypertext Lecture, as we would most commonly relate Hypertext to the World Wide Web. Hence, watching a video on the Internet that discusses about Internet is most reasonable. The video was made available as a link on Seth’s blog, which takes us to the actual video upload on the rmit networked media webpage.

I now make an effort to provide a link to a topic that I’m discussing on to further enhance my blogging experience, which makes blog posts more informative for my readers and my own future reference. Providing a link to Seth’s blog as above, I’m trackbacking his blog and he will receive a pingback as a notification that his blog has been linked to.

In the online video, the lecturer, Miles talks about:
Dialogue – We engage and understand medias as they are, for example, we watch a horror films and categorize it as a horror film because we are being informed of what defines a horror film through a ‘dialogue’ with previous horror films that we have seen before.
Multiplicity of voices – Miles emphasize that we don’t only have one voice. We all have different way of speaking when we converse with different people in our lives, for example, friends, teachers and parents. He states that in blogs, we can use a variety of voices as we blog about different topics. For example, a more academic post will be written more formal manner.
Hypertext – Miles: “It’s digital; so it’s computer and computational, multi-linear reading and writing system.” He says that Hypertext in some way or other be related to online media. He says an author cannot write about Hypertext and publish it as a book. In comparison with printed media, Miles states that “there is no page 2 in a Hypertext” as there are multiple ideas engaged with one topic at one time.
Links and Distance- An edit in a film or song is like a link in Hypertext. Two shots in one film as compared to two links in a hypertext is equally far apart from each other that is brought together to make sense.
Moments of Risk – When we click on a link, we don’t know where we will be brought to. Therefore, there is a set of rules has been set, a web homepage has to be titled ‘Home’ so we know where will are going.
Repetition – It is vital to restate a point made in a hypertext to explore the other possible choices – links, that readers can be taken to. This helps to present the reader with multiple viewpoints and be given the opportunity to choice their decide on the best choice based on the different interpretation of each individual.

Explore these questions: What happens if there is no beginning, middle or end? How will links change the way you structure your essay?

If a print essay does not have any one of the following beginning, middle or end, it would most likely make very little sense to the reader. But if we were to place links within the essay, it will not only bring up new ideas within the topic that is discussed but also make the essay more comprehensible. As Miles state that there is no last page on the internet, the number of links to a hypertext is infinite. One idea can be linked to another idea and so forth. Links will allow us to structure an essay with less emphasis on the arrangement of information. When readers browse through the variety of ideas presented, they will be able to bring all the ideas together and make sense out of it. We can add images in the hypertext essay to further reinforce our statements and keep the readers. Links can take an essay to any direction.

I’m going to use a Volkwagon advertisement to illustrate how a film edit is like a link in a hypertext that helps make a media comprehensible.

“Best Volkwagen Commercial – VW “Robbie Williams” Classics, YouTube.

In the video, we see girls screaming and running frantically after a Volkswagen car but we have no idea why. We are shown a small portion of the driver’s appearance but still have no idea what’s going on. However, we finally make sense when towards the end of the advertisement, the film cuts to a billboard advertisement with Robbie Williams endorsing Volkswagen, photographed next to a car that looks exactly like the one we see in the previous shots. We finally gather that the girls are running after the car because they thought they saw Robbie Williams.

As I have stated above, links in hypertext essays will help readers better comprehend the ideas that we are presenting as it serves as a link between ideas.

Photo: Schick
Title: Singapore_Skyline.jpg
This image is under a morgueFile Free License

I’ve heard about Xia Xue. But I’ve never read her blog until today. Even Seth mentioned about her blog in class. All the way in Australia, my tutor is talking about a Singapore blogger. She’s got to be somebody.

I was actually redirected to her blog via her profile when her name popped up in the ‘Who To Follow’ column in Twitter profile. (There you go, external links!) An external link in Twitter that led me to Xia Xue’s blog, which prompt me to write a blog post about it, and here I am, providing you an external link back to her twitter profile. The internet is a wonderful thing.

Whatever the reason, it is great to know that even Asians can be influential bloggers. What more, she is even married to a Caucasian. Did Xia Xue meet her husband with the help of her blog? Well, according to Wikipedia, she did meet her husband online. If that’s the case, her blog is some sort of transnational tool! According to Wikipedia also, she hosts Xia Xue’s Guide to Life. What’s surprising is that she looks different on TV as compared to the photos on her blog (the video was posted recently). I don’t mean to offend, but may I say that she doesn’t look as skinny as she looks on TV as compared to photos posted on her blogs. Particularly the large header photo that greets you (literally) on her blog. My friend reckons its all photoshop work.

This makes me think of what I’ve learnt about blogs that is no longer relevant if taking Xia Xue’s blog as an example. Blogs are suppose to be a space for you to voice out your thought as they are, without much emphasis on the structure. (I’m probably already breaking this rule at the moment.) Well, if Xia Xue’s photos on her blog are all photoshop manipulated, it is as if blogging is becoming more and more like print publishing, where everything must be perfect.

Something to think about.. is blogging taking over print publishing?

This is an exercise to the blog review that we are to submit in Week 12. We are to choose 12 posts and it may not necessary include the 6 blogs that are picked below.

My 6 choices:

‘A little about Web 2.0′
This is one of my earliest post. It contains only text with no images or links.

‘Blogging’
This blog post, I wrote about how people should limit how public and personal their blog should be, and that this goes the same for social networking sites like facebook.

‘Food Journalism, possible?’
In this post, I wrote of a possible career that I can pursue as it has something to do with one of my passions – Food!

‘Linking Blogs’
I wrote about having a go at the Mortensen and Walker reading and then realized that I rarely included links in my blogs, adding that Mortensen and Walker mentioned that one of the primary uses of blogs is a diary of links. I then linked to a blog of my friend, Jing, to illustrate one of the points that Mortensen and Walker mentioned – “A paragraph is enough and there is no more needed”.

‘Song Covers’
This is one of my favorite posts as I managed to include an image, put an external link and practice my html. I’ve since started to manually code to insert links and images into my posts. and oh, Seth just commented that this is a good post as I have made a correlation between blogging and song covers.

‘Blogging by Jill Walker’
This isn’t one of the best post but I’ve made use of the blog as a ‘notebook’ or ‘journal’ to jot down the notes that I’ve gathered from the first chapter from Jill Walker’s Blogging. I read Blogging as part of research for my individual essay on links. I’ve also visited the blogs that Jill mentions in her book and have included external links to them in this post.

Apart from the ‘Song Covers’ blog post, I realized that I’ve not done sufficient relation back to course materials. In addition to that, I’ve not been updating my blogs due to constraints of assignment. Will definitely write more relevant blogs from now on! But despite that, I definitely see a progression in my blogs in a way that they are more informative and jammed with links as time go by.

In the Networked Media lab today, we are told that internal and external links are required to be incorporated in the upcoming blog skills test.

an example of an internal link:

In ‘Song Cover’, I included a link to youtube video of a cover of my favourite Bruno Mars’ song.

an example of an external link:

In Wikipedia, song covers are defined as “a new performance of a previously recorded song”.

We are also required to tag and categorize all the blogs that we have written so far in order to archive the blog posts. We are encouraged to add more new categories.

This is all because we will need to include a tag and category widget to our blogs.

We are also required to include network badges to make our blogs more ‘bloggy’ or more connected to the network. One of the ways to do this is to link it to our facebook account, delicious, etc. To do this, go to widgets, add a ‘text’ widget and drop the javascript there. It functions to ‘feed’ the blog.

Also, we are to add link categories. Prior to this, we are to add new categories (not categories for blogs post), and we are able to add people’s blog into these categories.