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The Creative Mind in Retrospect

AS a blogger, I firmly believe that having a well-honed writing skill is vital in producing entries that are not only informative but also attractive enough to capture a reader’s attention. There is always the need to be audience-centric (Putnis & Petelin, 1996) in order to produce relatable information for Shriver (1997) says that by misunderstanding the need of the audience and their frame of reference, a document will risk evoking confusion and angering others.

In Malaysia, it is very important to be culturally sensitive as readers come from different racial and cultural background that will undoubtedly influence their way of reading a certain document (Walsh, 2006).

In regards to document design, I found that less is indeed more. A simple, streamlined and uncluttered blog interface will ensure that readers can read without being distracted. Main points have to be salient (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) to capture reader’s attention and visual aid should be interpreted to aid with reader’s understanding (Shriver, 1997).


References

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, ‘Front page : (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout’ , Approaches to Media Discourse, Blackwell, Oxford.

Putnis, P, & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Publication, New York.

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.

Harry Potter : The Boy Who Survived a Lawsuit

THE Harry Potter saga is undoubtedly a historical event in the world of book publishing. Spanning over seven novels, J.K. Rowling’s chronicle of a boy wizard’s adventure in a magical school is an epic that is nothing less than a modern time equivalent to Homer’s ‘Odyssey’.

One of the Harry Potter book. (Source: Google images)

Nevertheless, Harry Potter is not perfect and had been in the middle of some high profile court cases in regards to copyright infringement over the years. Back in 2000, Rowling was accused of stealing her infamous Potter magic from a writer called Nancy Stouffer, landing her in the hot seat in court. According to CNN.com (2000), Stouffer claims that there are too many similarities between the Potter series and a book she wrote in 1984. She sued Rowling and Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the Potter books, as well as Time Warner, the parent company of CNN.

"The Legend of Rah and the Muggles" by N. Stouffer. The book that Rowling was accused of copying from. (Source: Google images)

Recently, Harry Potter is once against involved in a lawsuit involving copyright infringement. However, this time around the table was turned. It was Rowling who are defending her rights to the idea behind Harry Potter. Rowling sued Steven Vander Ark, the publisher of Harry Potter Lexicon (HPL) as he plan to publish an encyclopedia on Harry Potter and the magical world she had created. HPL began as a web encyclopedia of the magical world that is Harry potter and is known as the ultimate fan guide.

The Harry Potter Lexicon website.

For Vander Ark it was a tragic tale because after toiling for seven years on his guidebook the federal judge had ruled that his book was too close to Rowling’s best selling series. The lawsuit was on the basis that there were too many lexicon texts that had been taken from the Harry Potter novel without proper citation. Rowling was said to have accused Vander Ark’s book as a rearrangement of her own material. Thus, due to the similarities of situational context as mentioned by Paltridge (2000), Rowling’s claim was seen as valid.

The lawsuit ended in September 2008 with Rowling as the victor and in the process invoking the a ban on the publishing of the Harry Potter Lexicon book as a method of protecting the author’s right to defend their original work (BBC news, 2008).

Steven Vander Ark was found guilty under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act (1988). He then tried to repeal the verdict via the ‘fair-use’ principle, which allow for the reproduction of some of the original work to achieve one’s purposes (Stanford, 2007). However, the portion of direct quotations used in the Lexicon book was just too much.


References

BBC News: Rowling Wins Book Copyright Claim 2008, viewed on 10th June 2009, from <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7605142.stm >.

CNN.com 2000, Burden of proof: the Harry Potter book lawsuit, viewed on 9th June 2009, <http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0007/05/bp.00.html>.

Paltridge,B 2000, ‘Genre Analysis’, Making Sense of Discourse Analysis, Antipodean Educational Enterprise, Gold Coast.

Stanford: Copyright &Fair Use 2007, viewed on 10th June 2009, from <fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a.html>.

iObama : Application of the Creative Mind

IT is true to say that technology presents us with a new limitless world where one’s ability is relatively improved with the insurgence of advanced gadgets, machinery and software. Such was the case of the last American presidential election which ended with Barack Obama in the oval office. His is the classic story of how creativity, determination and a dash of technology became the ultimate recipe for success.

Barack Obama uses iPhone in presidential campaign. (Source: Google images)

On the 2nd of October 2008, the then Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign launched an iPhone application that turned the vaunted device into a political recruiting tool. (Cnet.com, 2009). The marriage between Obama and iPhone, Apple’s smartphone that combines an iPod, a tablet PC, digital camera and a cellular phone (Searchmobilecomputing.com, 2009), created the application we came to know as iObama.

The marriagr: Obama + iPhone = iObama. (Source: Leonard & Google Images)

The main functions of iObama range from organizing events, getting the latest news on Obama to browsing images, videos and propaganda from the Obama campaign. Needless to say, the application is a success as its creation took into consideration the audience, purpose and context of the presidential race. In BBC News (2008), Obama was quoted as saying that "This tool is designed to help you become more directly involved in our campaign to change the country."

Setting out in his presidential campaign, Obama had first indentified his target audience, group of people who will most likely vote for him His audience were divided into three groups, namely the young voters, the non-white and also the women in America. He then tailor-made his campaigning after these people for maximum support and he is successful in doing so as Schiffers (2008) states that majority of his targeted audience had voted for him as mentioned by the National Election Pool.

According to Bear (2006) everything has its own function whether it is to sell, to inform, to educate, to impress and to entertain. Hence, the purpose of Obama’s use of the iPhone and its appliocation is to SEL his ideology and political promises as a future president. He also chooses to keep his audience INFORMed by constantly updating them with his campaign status. On top of that, he is EDUCATING his targeted audience or American as a whole about having strategic changes that will benefit the country. The final purpose of the iObama is that it features info-entertainment function such as downloadable wallpaper, video and photos from the campaign.

Situational context as defined by Paltridge (2000) is a combonation of field, tenor and mode. With the use of iObama, Obama is now communicating with his supporters in a less formal tone that aids in fostering good rapport with his voters. The field or subject of the merging of a political campaign and the iPhone happened amidst the backdrop of the 2008 Presidential Campaign whereas the interaction between Obama and his voters is known as the tenor and the mode used in this context is short concise digital updates coupled with audiovisual and multimedia aids in the iPhone.

For progress and change. (Source: Google images)

References

BBC News 2008, Obama uses iPhone to win support, viewed on 9th June 2009, < http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7649753.stm>.

Bear,JH 2006, Your Guide to Desktop Publishing, online, retrieved 10th June 2009. From < http://desktoppub.about.com/mbiopage.htm >.

Cnet.com 2009, Obama releases iPhone recruiting, campaign tool, viewed on 10th June 2009, < http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10056519-38.html>.

Paltridge,B 2000, ‘Genre Analysis’, Making Sense of Discourse Analysis, Antipodean Educational Enterprise, Gold Coast

Searchmobilecomputing.com 2009, What is iPhone?, viewed on 10th June 2009, < http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid40_gci1238379,00.html>.

Schiffers,S 2008, Who Voted for Obama, online, retrieved on 15th June 2009, from < http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7709852.stm >.

Photojournalism : Capturing the Creative Process

SO far in your life, you must have heard of the phrase ‘a picture speaks of a thousand words’. However, in our modern times, this particular phrase has taken up a much more significant role in the process of information dissemination. According to Kress & van Leeuwen (2006), the dominant role of the linguistic mode is now less prevalent as the literate culture is now going through a transformation with the emergence of visual communication.

Shriver (1997) also agrees with this to the extent of listing out the five different ways of incorporating pictures (visual communication) with words (linguistic) while Walsh (2006) states that images offer unique aspects that words alone cannot satisfy.

Photography or more so photojournalism is a pre-existing art form that is now becoming more and more popular, especially in covering world event such as war and disaster. It is a medium for story-telling that combines both images and writing to more thoroughly explore a given subject (Rudolph, 2009). Horton (2000) calls it one of the most glamorous and exciting media professions.

Soldiers at war. (Source: deviantart.com)

Nevertheless, photojournalism is constantly debated upon by those who sometimes argue the ‘authenticity’ of a pictorial narration or as Rudolph (2009) says how ‘true’ to the scene are the photographs in question. One of the main concerns is that what we see is already a filtered out version of what is really happening out there, a product of self-censorship by editors (ABC, 2007). If this is true, then photojournalism is at a very dangerous situation that made it seem much less credible than what it is supposed to be.

Photojournalism is now on a proverbial crossroad, its fate lie with image-making technologies and also public cynicism that might just spell its untimely demise. Therefore, it is vital for photojournalist to produce images of issues and happenings around the world while preserving the ethical code of a good journalist – reporting the truth and nothing but the truth. This is because the heart of photojournalism is essentially to report human experience accurately, honestly and with an overriding sense of social responsibility (2001).

Anti-war movement. (Source: deviantart.com)

References

ABC.net 2007, Media Report, viewed on 9th June 2009, < http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2051819.htm>.

Horton, B 2000, Associated Press guide to photojournalism, McGraw-Hill, US.

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images: the grammar of visual design, Routledge, New York.

Newton, JH 2001, The burden of visual truth, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, US.

Rudolph, EK 2009, What is photojournalism, viewed on 8th June 2009, <http://www.drellenrudolph.com/essay17.html>

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York.

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, p.24-37.

Emoticons and Email Etiquette :-)

WITH the advent of the internet, e-mails or electronic mails have become the chosen mode of communication when it comes to our modern day correspondence. According to Wisegeek.com (2009), e-mail is simply a protocol for receiving, sending and storing electronic messages.

Ray Tomlinson is regarded as the father of the modern version of email when he devised a way to address email to certain users and thus was credited for one of the most important communication inventions in the 20th century (Wisegeek.com, 2009).

Some of the well-known email service providers. (Source: Google images)

Considering the fact that e-mailing is such a prominent communication activity, it is no surprise that some experts are very much concerned with the issue of e-mail etiquette. One cannot deny the importance of educating users about the Dos and the Don’ts of emailing, especially those in the corporate world.

In a show transcript by ABC.net (2007), Funnel (the host of the show) had invited a few experts to discuss about e-mail etiquette and the use of emoticons. Some of the tips provided by them are like checking mistakes so as to not end up triggering the misinterpretation of an e-mail by the receiver. Emailreplies.com (2008) also stresses the importance of checking e-mail for improper spelling, grammar and punctuation give as it is important for conveying the message properly. E-mails with no full stops or commas are difficult to read and can sometimes even change the meaning of the text.

They also mentioned about being clear and to not send vague e-mails that might just turn this convenient way of communicating into an arduous task. Egan (2004) agrees by saying that messages should be concise and straight to the point. On top of that, in some context, e-mail should only be treated as a secondary or supplementary device. For example, when sending out condolences, thank you notes and any other instances when a certain code of conduct or formality is required. This is coherent to Rothman (2005) view on technical writing in document as technical writing serves a specific purpose and any attempt to alter this style of writing will risk the lost vital information.

According to ABC.net (2007), Scott Fahlman invented the emoticons as a visual aid to give electronic document readers emotional cues in ensuring the effectiveness of information dissemination. This trend is now adopted all around the world and emoticons have evolved into more complex symbols than what it used to be.

The evolution of the emoticon. (Source: Leonard Leao)

References

ABC.net 2007, Media Report, viewed on 9th June 2009, < http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2064342.htm>.

Egan, M 2004, Email etiquette, Cool Publications Ltd, UK.

Emailreplies.com 2008, Email etiquette rules for effective email replies, viewed on 9th June 2009, < http://www.emailreplies.com/>.

Rothman, S 2005, What makes good scientific and technical writing?, Associated Content, viewed 24 April 2009, <http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/9447/error>.

Wisegeek.com 2009, What is email?, viewed on 9th June 2009, < http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-email.htm>.