Reflection

This blog has finally come to an end. Managing this blog is not at all easy as all the posts that I have written must do a lot of research. It is really tough but I am glad that I have gained a lot of new information on this subject.

As a blogger, I have learnt that before I published something, firstly I have to identify my audience, purpose and context in order to communicate effectively. Besides, according to Walsh(2006), readers could choose their own pathway by clicking on the hyperlinks, hence hyperlinks were provided in this page for readers to link to other websites.

Reference :

Walsh, M 2006, 'The 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.

E-books.

E-books are becoming increasingly popular, and it might take up 50% of all books sales in major market a decade later. Many publishers are now desperately releasing books online because like the music and movie industry, they can either go digital or they don't survive. The rise of e-books are greatly due to the recent global release of Amazon's Kindle Book and Apple Ipad. To get an e-books, all you have to do is just to tap on it and the book will be downloaded right onto your bookshelf with these new media ecosystem.

Advantages of e-books:

• save trees as trees are required to manufacture paper
• can certain informatio from the book immediately
• delievered almost instantaneously
• portable
• searchable

(Sasson, n.d.)

The new media ecosystem is a 'social software'. It is an informal networks, conversational media and online diaries. For examples, blogs, wikis, RSS and podcasts. (Hobson, 2005)
The media ecosystem has changed in 8 ways : -

• volume of information grows.
• the variety of information sources increases and the visibility of new creators is enhanced in the age of social media.
• the impact of people's use of time and attention
• the increase in the velocity of information
• the changing nature and availability of information venues
• the compelling vibrance of virtual environments
• the improved relevance of imformation results
• the participatory nature of information exchanges.

The information ecosystem used to be scarce, expensive, institutionally oriented and packaged for consumption. But apparently, it is now abundant, cheap, personally oriented and designed for participation.

(Ipri, 2010)

References:

Ipri, T 2010, Libraries and the new media ecosystem, Libraries and transliteracy, viewed on 10 November 2010, http://librariesandtransliteracy.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/libraries-and-the-new-media-ecosystem/

Hobson, N 2005, The new media ecosystem: Conversations, influence and you, Nevon, viewed on 10 November 2010, http://www.nevillehobson.com/pubfiles/downloads/051020_NewMedia_FEIEA.pdf

Sasson, R n.d, The benefits and advantages of ebooks, Success consciousness, viewed on 10 November 2010, http://successconsciousness.com/ebooks_benefits.htm

Know your privacy rights.

The well-known social networking website - Facebook in privacy breach. Some of its applications have been transmitting identifying information to advertising and internet tracking companies. Nevertheless, facebook says it will introduce new technology to contain the breach as well as disable those applications that violate the terms.

As a facebook user, we should know how to protect our privacy by adjusting the given privacy settings to prevent account from hacking, and to avoid information being accessed by the third party.
Here are the 10 Privacy Settings that facebook users should know: -
#1 remove yourself from facebook search results.
#2 remove yourself from google
#3 avoid the infamous video/photo tag mistake
#4 protect your photo album
#5 prevent stories such as relationship status from showing up in your friend's news feeds
#6 protect against published application stories
#7 make your contact information private
#8 avoid embarassing wall post
#9 keep your friendships private
#10 use your friend lists

(O'Neill, 2009)

In Malaysia, the Malaysian Parliament has recently passed the bill of personal data protection. It is now known as Personal data protection act 2010. However this act is only for personal data such as passport/identity card number, telephone number, photograph, fingerprint, DNA in respect of commercial transaction only. Social media networking such as Facebook and Twitter are not subjecting to the website. (Foong, 2010)


Social network like Facebook is really useful to drive traffic to another website. It's ethical to use social networking websites to spread the message to people who are interested provided you did not spam their page.
Here are some ethics in social network marketing :

• get involved in group that are related to your area, contribute, communicate and make friends that are genuinely interested in your business.
• try to avoid direct marketing platitudes when you begin to publish more content on the website
• don't overdue your titles try to lure clicks from visitors
• never use the contribution in social network websites to unfairly criticise competitors
• be aware of online copyright issues

(Bier, 2010)



References :

O'Neill, N 2009, 10 Privacy setting every facebook user should know, All facebook, viewed on 10 November 2010, http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-privacy-2009-02


Foong, CL 2010, Personal data and the law, The Star online, viewed on 10 November 2010, http://www.thestar.com.my/columnists/story.asp?file=/2010/8/5/columnists/putiklada/6796369&sec=Putik%20Lada


Bier, C 2010, Ethics in social network marketing, Ezinemark.com, viewed on 10 November 2010, http://business.ezinemark.com/ethics-in-social-network-marketing-16c7aef674c.html

Twitter rules !

An article published earlier this year said that politician now has turned to Twitter, instead of blogging because it is already outdated. This is believed to be influenced by the opposite icon Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as he has been actively using twitter to voice out the opinions and thoughts during his Sodomy (ii) trial. One of the subscriber joined Twitter was because of wanting to have live feed on the case.

follow Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim on twitter ;

http://www.twitter.com/anwaribrahim

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you answer the question 'what are you doing?', by sending short text messages 140 characters length, named 'tweets', to your friends or your followers. (What is twitter and why does it keep following me around?, n.d.)

Why is it useful?

Personal use - it is the great way to stay in touch with your friends and also, instantly broadcast your information of your whereabout as well as what you up to.

Business use - allows you to broadcast your company's latest news and blog post, interact with your customers, or to enable easy internal collaboration and group communication.

(What is twitter and why does it keep following me around?, n.d.)

Facts of Twitter (based on a study released on April,2010) :

• has more than 105779710 registered users today
• 300000 new users signing up per day
• 180 million unique visitors every month
• 75% Twitter traffic comes from outside of twitter.com
• gets a total of 3 billion request a day via its API
• an average of 55million tweets a day
• Twitter's search engine receives around 600 million search queries per day
• 37% of the users tweet using phone
• employees of Twitter increased from 25 to 175

(Twitter user statistics revealed, 2010)

Can't deny that twitter is really a useful tool in this modern world.

In my opinion, blogging is now slowly replaced by Twitter mainly is because, twitter is quick, convenient and easy. Unlike blog, twitter doesn't need to come up with so many information to write. And the best thing of twitter is you can tweet via your mobile phone. (Difference between twitter and blogging, n.d.)

References:

What is twitter and why does it keep following me around n.d, Tweeternet, viewed on 11 November 2010, http://www.tweeternet.com/.

Twitter user statistics revealed 2010, The huffington post, viewed on 11 November 2010,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/14/twitter-user-statistics-r_n_537992.html.

Difference between twitter and blogging n.d, Differencebetween.net, viewed on 11 November 2010, http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/internet/difference-between-twitter-and-blogging//

Watch out when you blog.

On 26 of January 2010, a news title "Blogger held over insulting posting" was published. A blogger named Aduka Taruna was arrested due to his blog post that contains insultation about the late sultan of Johor. He was asked to remove the post and make a public apology.

In my opinion, those people who insult others on his/her blog are just trying to gain attention. For example, Aduka Taruna received more than 1000 comments on that blog post. or have you ever heard of perezhilton.com? It is a famous blog that brings you the juicy celebrities rumours in Hollywood. Even the name of the blog itself is already insulting, what more to say about the posts it in? This website is getting 1746031 views per day and USD5240.74 daily, believe it or not. (Perezhilton.com overview, n.d.) It is true that freedom of speech is our constitutional right, but that doesn't mean we could write slander about someone.

Here in Malaysia, there is an act relating to the law of libel and slander and other malicious falsehoods which is the Defamation Act 1957. A person who is guilty for libel or slander can be jailed up to 2 years, or fine, or combination of both jail sentence and fine. (Law, 2008)

There is always a rule for everything, so does blogging. Below are the 4 etiquette of blogging : -

#1 do not write something scandalous unless you're interested in the taste of jail.

#2 do not copy and paste the content/images from another person's blog, be original.

#3 do not aggressively promote your blog when responding to another person's blog, nobody likes attention seeker.

#4 do not stick to the same old content. constantly changing the content of your blog will keep your readers returning back.

(Peterman, n.d.)

According to Aristotle, ethic is the sum of values which enable the pursuit of happiness. Ethic is obviously important for publishing as well. Hence, here are a few ethical principles we should follow.

• the freedom to publish and the struggle against censorship in every form.
• fair agreements with the authors as unbalanced standard agreements that cannot be changed obviously lack fairness is another principle.
• instance respecting cultural and intellectual minorities who deserve their own publishing outlets (Krevelen, 2005)

References:

Peterman, M n.d., Blogging Etiquette, Buzzle.com, viewed on 12 November 2010, http://www.buzzle.com/articles/blogging-etiquette.html.

Law, E 2008, Defamation law in Malaysia, Laweddie.com, viewed on 12 November 2010, http://www.laweddie.com/wordpress/defamation-law-in-malaysia/.

Perezhilton.com overview, Website outlook, viewed on 12 November 2010, http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.perezhilton.com

Krevelen, LV 2005, 'Truth and heresy: The ethics of publishing in the 21st century,' Publishing research quaterly, vol.20, no.4, pp35-40.