Adopt-a-blog (I choose…)

Niki Cheong’s blog

Here’s a very brief intro about Niki. He’s a a writer, consultant and speaker on journalism and social media from Malaysia. I used to read his fortnightly column The Bangsar Boy in The Star newspaper a few years back. I was first attracted by this image of the column because it makes me wonder who was the guy behind the written words as he didn’t have a blog back then. Slowly I became a loyal reader as I love how he adds a personal touch to his articles.

So to answer this question ‘what you like about it?‘, it’s very simple, the content of the blog! I find the content of his blog really inspiring because of all the work that he has achieved – editor of The Star youth platform R.AGE, writer of two columns and also giving talks on journalism, blogging and social media. Niki Cheong’s blog has changed over the years and currently there are many different categories on his blog to reflect on all his works. He even have a category on his blog ‘the Bangsar Boy‘ where he would write more of his personal thoughts on the articles that he wrote for the newspaper. So I really like the way he approach his writings and thoughts. Besides that, in terms of content, I like how he has a section where he writes about his personal life which makes the reader (me!) more engaged with the author’s background. I feel like I personally know him already!

Other than that, his blog layout really helps me to navigate my way around. All the latest post on different categories are posted on the main page with small thumbnails to accompany a small section of text from the article. I love the colour and font choice of the whole layout. The basic grey, white and red works for me as simplicity is the best. Besides that, once I’ve clicked on a post, on the left column I could access related entries to the post that I’ve click and I could share the post on Twitter, Facebook or even bookmarked in on Delicious. Then on the right hand column, I could access recent, popular and random post. Oh, and not forgetting, the navigation bar is always on top, I don’t have to click ‘home’ to access the other categories which is great!

Annotated Bibliography #7 – Communal discourse

‘This anchor blogs in the public arena, as part of a communal discourse’ (Mortensen & Walker 2002)

This sentence in the extract has been bothering me because I couldn’t fully understand what it means. So here is my attempt to analyse this sentence from the extract:

My first interpretation of this sentence is that while weblogs are all connected through links (as I previously explained in this post), the links connects us to an online platform or search engines which forms a community. Because no matter what hyperlink we click on, it will transport us to similar information and the linking which connects one weblog to another makes us part of a certain community; A community with similar or common topic of interest.

For example, if you Google the word ‘fashion’, the search engine would find websites that has tags linked to ‘fashion’. From the Google search results, you would find websites or blogs which are related to fashion. Google is the ‘public arena’ because it links to conversations of similar interest, making us part of the community interested in fashion.

Glance, NS, Hurst, M & Tomokiyo, T (2004) states that ‘the cross-linking that takes place between blogs, through blogrolls, explicit linking, trackbacks, and referrals has helped create a strong sense of community in the weblogging world’. Hence, it is the power of links in blogs which makes blogs part of a ‘communal discourse’ where links transport you from one blog to another making you part of a community with a discussion on similar interest.

Hence, in conclusion, everyone belongs to a certain community from the moment we are on the internet. The first tag we search on Google we are already putting ourselves into a certain community of interest, only looking for information of our own interest.

References:

• Glance, NS, Hurst, M & Tomokiyo, T 2004, ‘BlogPulse: Automated trend discovery for weblogs’, Intelliseek Applied Research Center, viewed 21 August 2011, <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.118.2654&rep=rep1&type=pdf>.
• Mortensen, T & Walker, J 2002, ‘Blogging Thoughts: Personal Publication as an Online Research Tool’ in Researching Ict’s in Context. Ed. Andrew Morrison. Oslo: University of Oslo, pp. 249-259.

Annotated Bibliography #6 – Weblogs are all connected!

Mortensen and Walker’s extract states that ‘weblogs are densely interlinked’ (2002, p. 259). This statement is indeed true. Try to find one blog that does not have links in their blog entries. It is almost impossible to find one as Blood (2002, cited in Herring et al. 2005, p. 1) describes that if a person does not link to the primary material when they refer to it, it cannot be defined as a keeping a weblog.

That’s the reason why weblogs are filled with links, to the extent that you could be on three different website in less than a minute. Weblogs would usually have blogroll where bloggers link to their favourite bloggers and in their blog entries, they link to the people or subject they are writing about.

For example, just recently, I found myself reading a blog entry about MTV World Stage concert in Malaysia. The next thing I knew, I was clicking on the links that lead me to the main page of the concert and to the other bloggers who went to the concert as well.

Having said that, we can see how weblogs are closely connected to one another especially weblogs with the same interest or topic. There is always a link that connects you to another blog or related information. Just as how Mortesen and Walker describes that ‘weblogs tend to come together in clusters as they link to each other‘ (p. 271). Links will gradually grow but at the end, all the links are bonded and connected. From one link, it will connect you to another link. It is never-ending.

The picture below illustrates part of the loose cluster. See how the blogs are filled with links and they tend to combine to one another? 

References:

• Herring, SC, Kouper, I, Paolillo, JC, Scheidt, LA, Tyworth, M, Welsch, P, Wright, E & Yu, N 2005, ‘Conversations in the blogosphere: an analysis “from the bottom up”’, in Proceedings of the 38^th Hawaii International Conference, System Sciences, pp. 1-11.
• Mortensen, T & Walker, J 2002, ‘Blogging Thoughts: Personal Publication as an Online Research Tool’ in Researching Ict’s in Context. Ed. Andrew Morrison. Oslo: University of Oslo, pp. 249-259.

Annotated Bibliography #4 – Relation to Networked Media

The reason this extract was chosen is because of how strongly it relates to this course. Firstly, it relates to Networked Media course as part of the assessment is to write blogs where it is being accessed on how we think and write in the public space. The main arguments that I have pointed out shows its relation to this course.

As evidence, part of this course teaches students how to blog, documenting our thoughts and ideas in the blog. Students are encouraged to blog on weekly lectures, activities in lab and also our personal thoughts related to this course. So it could be one sentence we find interesting said during lecture or it could be our thoughts on the lecture. It doesn’t have to be a long post as Mortensen and Walker state that ‘post to a blog can be very short and unpretentious’ (p. 259). The main idea is we, students learn how to express our thoughts through blogs and to reflect how our thoughts are documented when we blog.

 Besides that, students have to maintain 3-4 blog entries per week as a practice of writing in the ‘public arena’. By writing in the public space, it gives students the sense of responsibility to express ourselves and be aware of our audience (communal discourse) because our blogs are being put out in the ‘public arena’ where students can read each other blogs and comment on the blog entries. It also helps students to share and generate idea as our thoughts are put out on the internet for others to read. That is how the ‘conversation grows forth’ as students comment on each other blog’s entries to give feedback.

Reference:

• Mortensen, T & Walker, J 2002, ‘Blogging Thoughts: Personal Publication as an Online Research Tool’ in Researching Ict’s in Context. Ed. Andrew Morrison. Oslo: University of Oslo, pp. 249-259.

The Thing About Blogs

The point I find really interesting about this week’s lecture is the amazing wonders a blog could do. There is a whole list of what blog has done for our lecturer, Seth. Firstly, it has helped to built an online CV where Seth got his job through blogging and from there, it has expanded his social network. Besides that, blogging helps to create a professional profile both online and offline. In this society where social networks is dominating the world, the first thing people would do now is probably go online and google your name or anything related to you. Hence, blogging has been a tool to create people’s identity. Other than that, blogging is a great way to let the ideas flow. It is like a second brain where we could document our thoughts down. By writing our thoughts down in the blog, it also helps to make our thoughts clearer and we are able to sort out the complex ideas we had in our mind. These are the main points that caught my attention about blogs.

I ♥ Youtube

I read about this reading Blogging Thoughts by Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker almost a week ago. It was really an interesting read but I was busy lazy to write and reflect about it. After all, it was still the first week of the semester.

But while I was finding some videos for another assignment, I came across this video which actually sums up everything from the reading. I find it really cute and I thought of sharing it with YOU.

I don’t know who are YOU but I’m sure YOU are definitely one of my coursemates from Networked Media. Enjoy!

Blog evolution thoughts

I used to blog 3 years ago and I went on hiatus early last year. I never return to blogging after that. Come to think of it, I knew why I left the blogging world. For me, I blog because I wanted to keep my friends updated with my daily happenings in life and also have an insight of what I’m going through. But when Facebook became more popular and everyone started using it, it was easier for me to update my friends there. I no longer have to write up short stories and use Photobucket to upload my pictures onto the blog. I could just simply post one line of status update and my friends will be able to follow-up through the comments.

I went through back my blog entries and I’m actually pretty amazed by all the different content I wrote.  Blog posts dating back to 2007, it was basically more on the content and it was more personal. Starting from 2009 onwards, I started to share more pictures and links. I started to broaden my posts on everything else from DIY manicure to world issues.

That was when the evolution of blogging begins. No longer the term ‘blog’ is known as an online diary. Blogs are becoming more mainstream with politicians using them as a tool to reach out to the new generation and people with the same interest linking to each other’s blog. The same goes to the different type of blogs we have these days. There are personal blogs, photoblogs, videoblogs, fashion blogs and many other different genre.  Sometimes I can’t even keep up with the ever-changing development of blogs.

But now that blogging is one of my assessment, I’m actually grateful for it because being on hiatus for a year from blogging I didn’t have a reason for myself to return to blogging but now I do! Hopefully after going through this course, I’ll be able to produce some html codes to edit my own blog in the future.