No lecture, Blog 9

24/10/2009
Danielle Boden
elu6d2

E-Publishing
Lecture 8
Blog 8

Hello!

How are we all this week? Well unfortunately we begin today on a bad note, there was no lecture today, but fear not! I have looked over the lecture criteria for this week so here is an over view of what I have learnt, be warned though it is only an overview but I have provided several links for you to follow should you wish to find out more;

This week was going to be about Podcasting and software garden.
Here are definitions of what the two of them are (I hope);

Pod cast = the word Pod cast is made up of the words broadcasting and iPod. It is an application whereby iPod users can download chosen audio or video content over the Internet and stream it to your iPod or computer to listen to or watch. It can be distributed worldwide. It is cheap to create because for an audio all you need is a microphone and Internet connection and can reach those ho wish to share it with you.

For more information visit;

BBC. (2009) What is a Podcast?

Orden, Jason Van. (2005-2008) How to Podcast. (Last accessed 24/11/2009)



Software Garden = Was founded by Dan Bricklin in 1985 and he develops and markets his own software tools providing consulting services in conjunction with his developments primarily performed by him. Bricklin provides new innovations and participates in the software industry directly. He also creates pod casts which would be relevant to the business industry providing information for a niche market who wish to gain knowledge about software licensing and open source providing information at an in depth practical level.

For more information visit;

Cconsulting, speaking and software development site run by Dan Bricklin.

Visicalc. (2009) Dan Bricklin’s Website. (Last accessed 24/11/2009)

Now that you have read this weeks lecture. Why don’t you take a break and visit You Tube, which gives a simple visual overview of what a Pod cast is:


Or, if you’re really eager you can view the Northern Illinois University presentation of ‘What is a Pod cast?’


Thank you for taking the time to read my blog this week.
Blog ya' later!

elephants_are_supercool

Lecture 7, Blog 8

17/11/2009
Danielle Boden
elu6d2

E-Publishing
Lecture 7
Blog 7

Hello again everyone!

How are you? Well today I have received some feedback as to how I am progressing with my blogs. I have come to learn that in my blogs I need to focus on the following:
- Expand on points made in class (explore them).
- Back points up that are made in class by further reading, focus on specific examples.
- Make use of links, this will enhance the ‘blogosphere’ of my individual blog.
- With the longer blogs, look at focusing on specific points and expanding on them, bringing in my own facts, opinions and examples.
- Push the boundaries of what I have learnt and discovered myself offering others the opportunity to disagree.

Okay so to get on with what I have learnt today. I was more involved in today’s lecture as when time has gone by I feel more confident that I am more educated around the subject of e publishing and what blogging is in particular. However, I will get to that later.

Firstly, lets look at programming systems.
Flock is a free social web browsing system that is based around blogging. It is run by fire-fox and enables users to review other people’s blogs on a set of feeds. All of these interactive systems relate to the world of e publishing, however, how does this affect the publishing world?



Within the e-publishing world there are a wide range in which it can be enhanced and contents can be made to be more interesting and interactive with features such as picture, video and discussion forum applications. As a result, this expression creates a ‘blogosphere’ where everybody links to each other’s blogs, forming discussions, debates and enhancing knowledge.

You can look at its process in relation to the publishing system:

Opinion
Links (Resources)
IN
Fact
Comments

Knowledge
Discussion (Comments) OUT
Hobbies

You are the owner of the blog, the actors and therefore the blog begins with your input. It is then as a result of the links to other people’s blogs that create the ‘blogosphere’. Therefore, it can be argued that a blog is not an individual statement but a collaborative discussion.

A blog is one type of content that is syndicated. Flickr is a very communicative blog as it is an image blog whenever people comment on the images it creates a link to your blog.



When participating in a blog, creating the ‘blogosphere’, in relation to e-commerce blogs for businesses, who are the beneficiaries. For example; how would a newspaper benefit form participating in blogs?
A newspaper would benefit from this primarily from the impact of society adding value to the newspaper content.

In contrast to this there are companies who rely principally on CROWDSOURCING. This is where the publisher gains value from the content added for free from the public, Facebook is a classic example of this, gaining value from the publics content and comments people leave for free. In addition to this, in relation to e publishing, it can also be agued that Facebook is a blog, which has impacted the world creating a worldwide phenomenon.

From the discussion today what we have learnt first a foremost is that e publishing changes most things.

Interactive Fiction:

Below are some examples of places online where you can find interactive fictions. The most renowned interactive fiction author is Kate Pullinger who has created interactive fictions including; IInanimate Alice, The Breathing Wall and Flight Path.

Lies

The Breathing Wall Web Tester created by Kate Pullenger Publisher: Babel This interactive fiction is very interesting and groundbreaking. Pullinger has created an interactive fiction whereby it responds to the breaths you take and as a result this will change the story altering the direction you take.



Inanimate Alice. Another interactive digitial fiction created by Kate Pullinger. So far is a 4 out of 5 part series which tells the story of a young girl called Alice growing up in the early part of the 21st century which she experiences and tells her story along side her imaginary digital friend Brad who exists on her phone.

Flight-paths; This is the latest digital fiction created by Kate Pullinger which explores the happenings of peoples lives when they collide unexpectedly.

Kate Pullinger Homepage

So what is the difference between interactive fiction and hyperfiction?

Interactive fiction is when an enlivening software environment for users is used to create text commands whereby users control characters and influence the environment and where a story leads.
Information interpreted from;

Nelson, Graham. (2001) “A Short History of Interactive Fiction”. (Last accessed 17/11/2008)

Whereas Hyperfiction is a form of online literacy which is characterised by its use of hypertext which create new hypertext links as a result providing new context for a non-liner format for a literary piece. So basically, as a user you choose your desired links from one node to another, moving you from one part of the text to another. This then raises new potential stories, which you have carved the path out for. Another aspect of hyper fiction in contrast to interactive fiction is that it is all predetermined. In that you can still interpret the story from whichever oath you wish to choose but if you get it wrong the computer will not understand and you will have to start again or it will re direct you.

Information interpreted from;

Kendell. (n.d) What is Hypertext Literature.

When looking at, using or creating interactive fiction or hypertext fiction what should be considered is how can this be distributed and how can you make money out of it.
What do you think? Can you easily make money out of creating online interactive fictions?

P.S. Just a short apology because I still can’t get my computer to integrate my links into the blog so that you can click on the link and then it will take you directly to the webpage. I know how to do it but my computer doesn’t seem to allow it to follow through… hopefully I can sort them all out before submission! Arghhh!

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog this week.
Blog ya' later!

elephants_are_supercool

Reading Week, Blog 7

Hello everyone!

How are we all?

Well it is the Friday of reading week and I have spent the week working on my dissertation primarily. I am creating a website for a traditional welsh folk dance group that I am apart of and I am getting them completely up-to-date with technology! After doing my research for my dissertation over the summer, compiling the contents of the website such as images, video's, music and information about the group I am finally creating the 'masterpiece'.

So, this week I have created 5 different web pages based around the group... here are the links should anyone wish to visit them;

= Facebook

= Ning

= MySpace

= YouTube

And this is the link to my blog which I am keeping in conjunction with my dissertation to write about my thoughts and feelings and processes of creating the website, Danielle Boden's Dissertation Blog.

However, alongside this I have been reading over what we have learnt so far on this course.
We are over half way through the course now, so, what have we learnt?



Summary;

• John Gutenburg, adapted the screw press for the purpose of manufacturing printed press.

• Conglomerates = Business that merge together that ultimately have nothing to do with one another, such as books and the world wide web, in the hope of producing more revenue.

• Cottage Industry = Industry on a small scale. Companies which create goods for niche markets.

• Coser, Did an in depth study of the American book publishing industry however by today this has very limited value as it is perceived as dated using the idea of the ‘gatekeeper’.

• Andre Schiffrin, Was the managing director of an American trade publishing house called ‘Pantheon’. He believes that books today are only for entertainment value however dies see hope for small independent publishers as he believed books will not be completely extinct.

• Jason Epstein, editorial director at Random House, stipulated,
“a cottage industry within an industrial conglomerate makes no sense”.

• Publishing value chain, publishing fields; the publishing industry can be contextualised by a set of publishing fields.

• Social structure of the publishing field;
- Economic
- Human
= The creation of CAPITAL
- Symbolic
- Intellectual

Within the conclusion of Books in a Digital Age, by John B. Thompson, he summarises what he believes that 21st century has to offer within the media and how it will control the global economy changing the way in which we communicate;
“New technologies linked to digitalization are transforming the ways in which individuals interact with others and are revolutionizing the industries that have traditionally been concerned with the creation and dissemination of symbolic content”.

What we can surmise from this is that what we have learnt so far, in simple terms is that e-publishing is revolutionising the world of publishing and taking it into a new ea of online communication offering itself to a wider audience whereby the audience are not just the readers but the publishers too. As a result of this globalisation of online reading there are several options f e-publishing ranging from blogs, journals and tweets, online books, audio books and book on demand as well the journalism industry taking hold of this new media and we now have online newspapers and all television news can be found online. E-publishing is not just the written article but video’s, people’s thoughts and feelings (blogs and twitter), you could argue that everyone who holds a Facebook page is an e-publisher in their own right.

I hope that this has refreshed your memory about what has been discussed concerning e-publishing and we will see if by the end of this module views have changed or not. I know one thing already though, and that is that I have learnt an awful lot about how to publish a blog and how to address everyone, create links, label post, and generally make my blog more appealing. My only hope is that I am improving and not getting worse!

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog this week.
Blog ya' later!

elephants_are_supercool

Lecture 6, Blog 6

03/10/2009
elu6d2

E-Publishing
Lecture 6
Blog 6

Hello everyone!

I hope that you are all well? In this weeks blog I will be discussing text adventures. However, this week’s blog is rather short because I have added several links for you to follow and actually discover the world of text adventures for yourself.

HHGTG Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy



Electronic Publishing: So far we have been looking at the creative side of things within e-publishing such as hyper-fiction but this week we will be looking at interactive fiction. An interactive fiction is essentially one of the first computer games invented and were hugely popular in the late 80’s and early 90’s. An interactive fiction contains no images just text and you have to navigate your way through a story. You become the main character of a novel or a story and you have to figure out the correct ay through the story.

What is good about this software in the 21st century is that it can be installed and used on mobiles. What must be remembered about these programmes is that it is not that the computer is clever; the computer is only as intelligent as the computer programmer makes it. The coding never changes but you can change the story. The story is already programmed into the text and ha been conjured up to several variations to allow the story to take different paths.

Like I was saying earlier this format is similar to hypertext but it is not hypertext it is a narrative, it is more novelistic. There are strengths from both things but with this format it is constrained in ways in which hypertext is not.

By today there is software whereby you can have what is called a ‘walk through’ or a cheat so that if you don’t know yourself or can’t figure out what to correctly to move forwards you can no heat to get it right!

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog this week.
Blog ya' later!

elephants_are_supercool

E-Publishing Blogs: Idea for Practice led 'artefact'

Please visit the website for the e-publishing page that I am creating about e-publishing page.

http://e-publishing.ning.com/