ALJ301

Global Voices is a great network of bloggers. It offers helpful and immediate search selections down the left hand side that enable the user to pick a topic or region to read about.

It’s so well organised it offers most blog entries in at least one other language other than English. Most offer more.

Global Voices says it is run by an ‘international team of volunteer authors, regional blogger-editors and translators are your guides to the global blogosphere.’ (From http://globalvoicesonline.org/about/)

Stephen Quinn recently stated in an interview conducted for another subject (ALJ319) that he believed blogs will eventually die out because they are mainly written voluntarily.

Global Voices is a good example of this. Each piece written is by a volunteer and all the behind-the-scenes work is voluntary.

Yet blogs are a great form of communication, news and general information. For example, rather than calling about a mobile phone issue, most people in the 18-25 age group would probably jump on for the answer. Forums and reviews immediately pop up in a search, and with the advanced search option it makes it even easier.

Global Voices and Orble are great blogging and information sites. Orble even pays up to $100 per blog entry. But is personal satisfaction a big enough motivator to keep people blogging?

The Internet has the amazing ability to lead a reader off-track. There is so much interesting information out there, and new types of media, that it is easy to get side tracked.

Journalism.co.uk has an amazing array of articles about journalism and how-to options for Internet users. The articles are also well researched with a lot of quotes and examples thrown in… hence the ability to get side tracked.

As an example, in this article at http://www.journalism.co.uk/5/articles/532452.php written by Laura Oliver, she made a reference in a link saying ‘such as Fred’. There was no explanation as to who Fred was… and following the link led to a highly amusing vlog. (http://uk.youtube.com/fred) Fred is a good example of a random blogger who has caught the public’s interest.

Links are turning into the new references. Bloggers don’t need to explain their sentences – they can just pop in a link and the user can check it for themselves.

This article at http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/532530.php by Judith Townend quoted Caroline Little. Townend also made use of multimedia and put the whole speech in for people to listen to.

Multimedia also allows people to add credibility to their articles. A lot of information on the Internet is questionable and needs to be verified. But a lot of information is also true – and links and multimedia allow people to add easy credibility to their articles.

BuzzMachine offers an interesting perspective into journalism as it develops on the web.

In an article Jeff Jarvis published on 30 September 2008, he states, ‘I think the new building block of journalism needs to be the topic… I want a page, a site, a thing that is created, curated, edited, and discussed… We have to use the new tools we have at hand to create new structures for covering news and informing each other.’

Blogs seem to be at the center of a new journalistic phenomenon. Jarvis has said in a lot of his articles recently that people need to embrace the future. For example, he mentions using wikis in journalism. With the rising popularity of citizen journalism, this could encourage more people to get involved in and read the news.

A passer-by who sees a car crash could suddenly become a contributing reporter on a wiki page or blog. Forums and blogs already use this kind of discussion tactic in reviews or reports.

For example, a review posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX5eh7eLaVQ on the Nokia N95 produced 304 comments – a lot that were useful in how to use the N95, with some comparisons between the N95 and Iphone.

There are dodgy people out there, but a lot of the best information comes from direct sources or users of a product. Perhaps the best news updates come from bystanders.

New mobile technologies are taking the world by storm. The recent release of the Nokia N95 and Apple Iphone has begun a new trend in accessing the Internet from phones.

The trend has yet to hit Australia. Countries like the UK and the USA have better speeds and deals available for users. The weekly reading mentioned that ‘In the US, the fee for unlimited data is about $70 a month… Australians pay about $67 a month for 250 Mb of data a month, or about 8Mb a day.’

mobile-phone-sms-alert-1

The N95 has an internal storage capacity of 8GB. The average PC 10 years ago had about 1GB. Australian mobile users should be able to use their phones to the full extent. Even a new but average phone like the Nokia 6220 has is sold with a 1GB memory card, and the option to expand.

Australia needs to catch up with the rest of the world. Websites like Youtube.com or myspace.com – that have millions of visitors each day – take extra time and space to download. The amount of video and graphic information people are consuming is only increasing, and networks like Optus or Telstra need to consider this. They could make a lot of extra money through mobile internet.

After checking out this reading the immediate thought was
‘Youtube’. Youtube contains a lot of peoples’ personal videos, seemingly
because they don’t know how to produce blogs/vblogs.

The MediaShift vblogs were very amusing and slightly. For
anyone who didn’t see this on Mobuzz TV, have a peep: http://www.mobuzz.tv/newsroom/eng/how_to_skip_a_class

Mobuzz TV and Rocket Boom were my favourites because they combined news and humour. For example, Rocket Boom mentioned these new sandwich bags that had green spots on them – when you put a sandwich in the bag made it look mouldy. (http://www.rocketboom.com/rb_08_sep_18/)

It makes the amateur videos made for Youtube look… well…
amateur. I suppose this is where the different definitions of video blogs or
vlogs comes in. For example, this video on Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZOUXfhfdgM
– is done quite tastefully. It is more like what you see on MobuzzTV. It has a
beginning, a middle and an end.

Whereas this video on Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeBbaY8SSuk&feature=related,
is just a random film. I would like to pose the question, if the video doesn’t
have a particular point, what does that make it?

To quote the reading, ‘Are they blogs that incorporate
video? Or video accompanied by blogging? Are they video podcasts?’

If the video is a random clip on Youtube, does that make it
‘less’ a video than say Wine Library TV or Ask a Ninja because they are
regular? Maybe this is just the definition between online TV and a vlog.

Media convergence and citizen journalism allows people to connect around the world, on a convenient platform – the web. The reading stated, ‘Much of Stomp’s content represents a grass-roots kind of reporting. Soh said convergence allowed Stomp to report stories that would not see the light of day in the national newspaper.’

Stomp sounds like a massive organisation in Singapore. There are smaller organisations, but similar, in Australia. The concept of ‘grass-roots’ has evolved into it’s own magazine for farmers – or anyone just interested in growing their own produce and do-it-yourself (DIY). This is Grassroots magazine. After googling it, it actually appears Grassroots does not have a website. This goes against the grain of ALJ301, but it’s a good example.

Grassroots supplies most of regional/farming areas in Australia with a communication outlet. This magazine is citizen journalism, but in a printed form and focusing on farmers. The magazine is full of citizen letters and news, and citizen-written features.

It is a black and white magazine, and its ‘poor’ quality compared with today’s glossies. But most of the letters to Grassroots start with, ‘thanks for producing such a great magazine’. To some people in Australia, it’s a lifeline and link to the outside world.

This week’s reading inspired me to have a go at doing this myself. I compared Flickr and Picasa for ease of use. In this day and age, people like easy-to-use programs.

FLICKR (http://www.flickr.com/)

From my computer Flickr was easy to use. I already had a Yahoo account, so I just had to create a profile name on Flickr.

It took a couple of minutes to upload four pictures. Then I named them and ordered them. It was hard to locate how I could organise them, but it was under another program called ‘Organizr’ or the ‘Batch Organiser’ tab on the main screen.

I then opened Slideflickr and in a few easy steps created an online slideshow, with tags, captions etc.

End result:

PICASA

Picasa was harder to use. I downloaded the program and it took me a while to figure out.

It was the little complications that made it hard to use. It started bringing up a weird little toolbar on the lower right side of my screen that would flash through my pictures; disappear and pop up again. It probably had a good reason to do it, but it was disconcerting.

I had to log into my Google user account to upload some pics and turn them into a slide show.

End result:

Trial

Recommendations:

Use Flickr and Slideflickr for a simple and quick slide show. It’s an easy step by step program.

Picasa was too complicated to produce a quick slide show.

Web 2.0 is creating communication opportunities for anyone with a modem. New business prospects are popping up for entrepreneurs all over the web.

The Week 6 reading focuses on these prospects and opportunities, and the authenticity dangers of the web. The dodgy Wikipedia example in the reading is similar to warnings in some Deakin subjects’ unit guides, ‘We will not accept definitions, examples or quotes from Wikipedia’.

The reading stated on niche publishing, ‘One example is pvrblog.com. Its single author, Matt Haughey, makes about $US 40,000 a year. Said Ben Hammersley: “He now owns this subject [personal video recorders, or pvr] on the Internet, and mass media cannot compete on this subject.”’

spinning-a-coin-on-flat-surface_aos01709

That’s an extreme amount of money compared to what users on orble.com and citizen journalists are making (referring to Week 5 reading and response). The ‘blog’ has expanded into a giant communication and money-making method people can use and abuse as they want.

Media use video and podcasts over the net as a major form of communication. The internet is a blessing for some smaller community media organisations. For example, Syn FM (90.7) in Melbourne, has a banner that reads ‘Syn: Radio, TV, Online, Print’. Syn uses the internet to podcast and publish news to a much wider audience than otherwise would have been possible.

Blogging is a trend that has grown in leaps and bounds over the last five years. Citizen journalism and OhmyNews are a new product of the blogging era. People are now considering, how can I make money from the Internet?

One of the obvious answers is blogging. There are a few websites that offer money for blogs that attract a lot of interest. Darren Rowse, from ProBlogger, writes, ‘I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.’ (Taken from http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/12/06/how-bloggers-make-money-from-blogs/)

A blogging site similar to OhmyNews is Orble.com.

According to the About Orble page, a user can ‘earn anything from a few cents to $100 or more per week’. Orble has three levels of blogs. There are ‘regular blogs’, in diary-like format; there are ‘domain blogs’ that have a dedicated domain name (usually written on a particular subject); and there are ‘promoted blogs’ – Orble will support these by providing training and promoting the work. (Information from http://www.orble.com/about/)

Citizen journalism (such as ) differs because it focuses more on traditional journalism. OhmyNews has ethics and guidelines the writers have to follow, whereas Orble is a blogging community – open to almost anything.

The payment methods are similar though. Each site pays according to ‘eyeballs’ – or reader interest. The more clicks the story/page gets, the more money one eventually earns. If a user took Rowse’s advice, one could make a living through up keeping 50 blogs.

Wilson, F. (2008). “Make money around free content” in Wired magazine. Online at http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Make_Money_Around_Free_Content and

Anderson, C. (2008). “Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business” in Wired online at http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free

Companies everywhere use the concept of ‘free’ products. These ‘free’ things are a great way to draw customers and utilise marketing methods. For example, businesses like Bakers Delight and Gloria Jeans offer ‘rewards’ cards, that grant customers a ‘free’ product after a certain number of purchases.

The trick behind the Bakers Delight card is; a customer needs to spend $5 before he/she can get a stamp. If a purchase is only $4.50, the card encourages them to spend more money to receive the stamp.

Another example in one of the readings was companies offering mobile phones free with no upfront charges. But take a closer look…

http://www.crazyjohns.com.au/products/mobilephones/manufacturer/mobilephonedetail.aspx?ID=3994

At Crazy Johns the N95 mobile is $749 upfront.

http://www.crazyjohns.com.au/products/mobilephones/manufacturer/mobilephonedetail.aspx?ID=6236

On a cap plan where the N95 is ‘free’, the customer pays $1176 over a period of 24 months.

Google is a great example of a business that makes a lot of money without appearing too. It has now grown into the biggest search engine in the world. It offers a range of applications including email, news, and pictures/video. Google also uses ‘Adwords’, a program for businesses.

‘When people search on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may appear next to the search results. Now you’re advertising to an audience that’s already interested in you.’ (https://adwords.google.com/select/Login?sourceid=adprog&subid=en-au-et-ap-lm&hl=en_AU)

Every time a searcher clicks on an ad, Google makes money. And that’s only one of the applications Google offers.

Ebay also charges people to advertise what they are selling, and extra charges apply if more than the standard amount of pictures are used.

Newspapers can utilise ideas like this when going online and advertising will remain a sole source of revenue.

An example of an eye-catching advertisement: