More Articles that I would like to write

Round Two of articles that I would write if I were employed by various websites

Proposed website http://www.kotaku.com.au/
Warfare on Modern Medium

image: infinityward.com

Anybody slightly interested in video games or censorship could not have missed the old media debate about a certain segment of 2009’s biggest game Modern Warfare 2. The level ‘No Russian’ involves playing as a CIA undercover agent infiltrating a terrorist group. The gang of eastern European freelance terrorists decides to go on a shooting rampage in an airport in which scores of civilians are killed. The game places you alongside the terrorists in your undercover role and you are free to mow airline passengers down with a machine gun.

See someone play through the level here. (NSFW)
You are not required to participate in the massacre, and you are given a choice to skip the level entirely. There are no points or ‘achievements’ given if you decide to fire on civilians

The calls to ban Modern Warfare 2 for the ability to kill civilians (in one isolated level, elsewhere in the game you are highly penalized for shooting civilians) highlights the huge inconsistencies in the Office of Film and Literate Classification’s handling of video games ratings. In the famous Grand Theft Auto series you have had the self generated option to kill as many civilians as you care to, including at airports. GTA, GTA London 1969, GTA II, GTA III, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas and GTA IV all have plenty of opportunities to kill civilians. Deus Ex and Fallout 3 provide similar freedoms.

Recent GTA titles and Fallout 3 have had run ins with the OFLC for allowing sex with prostitutes and morphine use respectively. Except for the bizarre fact that the latest GTA not only didn’t cut out the ability for the car to bounce up and down when hooker got in, but treated the player to the sight of the protagonist receiving a pantomime sex act. And you can still kill the woman afterwards, the main issue the government had with the game in the first place. Yet the game seems to have raised no red flags with the OFLC who seven years ago banned the uncensored version of GTA III for ‘sexualised violence’ because it could be seen to encourage murdering prostitutes. In another backflip, this review board document is more concerned with the amount of violence and gore in the game and describes the prostitute killing as an unintended consequence of the game’s open ended structure.

It seems like video game are the new paperback novel, comic book, popular movie, rock and roll, VHS horror tape, death metal or gangster rap depending on which decade you might compare the issue to. Video games are relatively new, the young people are into them and they support their own sub-culture and thus must be responsible for a great deal of society’s ills.

The fact that the politicians and media figures will hold some games will up to harsher scrutiny than others with near identical content suggests that they either don’t understand video games or video gamers. This kind of attention seeking behavior is at least somewhat excusable in crusading attorneys general and lobby groups; the same flippancy is frustrating and disappointing when exercised by the OFLC.

Proposed Website: http://boingboing.net

The Webby Awards top 10 ‘Internet Moments’ of the decade.

image credit Ivan Walsh http://www.ivanwalsh.com/

The international Academy of arts and science’s
Webby awards have decided to commemorate the end of this very web dominated decade by announcing their picks for the top 10 internet moments of the last 10 Years.
The format they have chosen is very synonymous with current internet trends and it’s obsession with top 10 lists of everything (there are websites which literally offer nothing else)

What is an internet moment? Isn’t the appeal of the internet the fact that it can be as individual as the user? It’s not like listing most influential moments on television when millions were watching the same disasters and triumphs at the same time. If the moon landing happened forty years later I doubt everyone’s internet moment would be as uniform or collective as when the first steps were broadcast. Hence, there is only one item on the list which could really be considered a ‘moment’ as in a shared experience. Cutting edge social media vs. aging theocracy in Iran is quite an event but some on the list are a bit puzzling.
The Webbys say that the shutting down of Napster opened the flood gates for legitimate online content distribution. Nobody gets their music illegally nowadays right? (NSFW, and I do not endorse copyright infringement).

They credit the shutdown/legitimation of Napster with helping to create sites like Hulu, the collaboration between different US free to air networks to stream their shows with commercials over the internet. Hulu is not accessible outside the United States. This list is beginning to look a little biased towards America, which is understandable since America has retained de facto control of the internet throughout this decade since it was American institutions which gave birth to the initial network. Interestingly, this situation is set to change a little bit.

No eBay? The site that helped invent a mainstream way to make real money off the internet that is only distantly related to pornography? (Mildly NSFW)

Google takes out three spots thanks to its acquisition of youtube.com and twitter gets one and a half. A little unbalanced considering the Webbys own press release calls Google “the most dominant and influential company of the decade”

Wikipedia’s inclusion is something you really can’t argue with, but for a defining internet moment I would nominate the announcement that Microsoft was pulling out of the reference business and retiring its former market leader Encarta (The Wikipedia page has apparently been taken over by Microsoft Public Relations and is doing its damnedest to promote Bing, Bill Gate’s ‘Google Killer’) . The electronic dictionary was king back in the CD-ROM days and commanded a serious price. The decision by Microsoft to cease publication was widely interpreted as a surrender to Wikipedia, who had been claiming over 97% of North American users searching for online encyclopedias.

AFP’s summary of the entire list

- Craigslist online classified site expands outside San Francisco (2000)
- the launch of Google AdWords (2000)
- the launch of online encyclopedia Wikipedia (2001)
- the shutdown of file-sharing site Napster (2001)
- Google’s initial public offering (2004)
- the online video revolution led by YouTube (2006)
- Facebook opens to non-college students and Twitter launches (2006)
- Apple’s iPhone debuts (2007)
- the use of the Internet in the US presidential campaign (2008)
- the use of Twitter during the Iranian election protests (2009)

The active consumer’s dilemma

I use Mozilla Firefox as my internet browser, an open source, highly customisable alternative to the default Microsoft Internet Explorer or Apple Safari . I also use a third part ‘add-on’ to rid myself of virtually all internet advertising which I have stated my distaste for in an earlier post. The program is called Adblock Plus and it’s also open source and seemingly effective from my last few days of using it. Herein lies the dilemma: By removing the ads that I hate, I am potentially depriving the publishers of works I consume of an income, no matter how teeth-whitening and weight loss based that income may be. I’m not doing anything illegal, I’m just using the power of my computer to analyse and filter images, animations and videos that I find offensive and annoying. I’m sure to have Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy on my side for that one, what with filtering being all the rage right now. Your basic website doesn’t have that much say in how you use its services, It’s like a TV station that blasts out information and hopes you sit through the ads rather than flipping channels. On one hand I feel a bit bad, but then again I haven’t seen pictures of rotten teeth for days now.

I also use programs to download from video sharing websites like blip.tv, bypassing their main ad delivery system whereby a short ad is played to your before every video. I actually don’t have a problem with the ads on Blip.tv as they come from reputable companies and are usually intelligent and engaging (by advertising standards). The case for my defense is that I am an internet user in Australia, which means I have to watch my bandwidth meter like a hawk lest I be throttled to a trickle of internet. If someone is offering a 30 minute video to download, I want to save it in case I have to refresh the page and half the video is loaded again. Also, the ads on Blip.tv are for Americans and I have yet to see a ‘JC Penny’s', ‘Chilli’s’ or certain Tequila brands around where I live. No harm no foul, right?

The ABC lays down the ‘Do nots’ of Social Media

photo: books.google.com.au

ABC managing director Mark Scott, who has been in the news over a somewhat similar topic lately, has again cropped up with his public announcement of rules for all ABC employees governing how they use social media. Interestingly, ABC online defines Youtube as a social media site. I guess you could count posting comments such as “OMG LOL ROFL Great Vid!!!11!!1″ as socialising on some level. Here are the rules quoted from the ABC Online

1. Do not mix the professional and the personal in ways likely to bring the ABC into disrepute.
2. Do not undermine your effectiveness at work.
3. Do not imply ABC endorsement of your personal views.
4. Do not disclose confidential information obtained through work.

Mr Scott sent out his decree to staff via email. Oh how Web 1.0 of you Scotty. How will those damn kids at Hungry Beast get that message? You may as well have used a carrier pigeon.

The list seems fairly standard stuff and mostly common sense. That said, at least the Australian ABC didn’t screw up like the American ABC and tweet out some off-the-record quotes from Barack Obama (even if they were only insults aimed at Kanye West)

So that’s a case in point for why you need rule number 4 on the ABC’s list. For those at the more serious end of the media spectrum it is of course important to maintain at least the illusion of objectivity and dignity, a case not helped by putting up last nights party pics or using twitpics to tell everyone about a funny photoshop of Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnbull. But you have to love rule number 2. I get the distinct impression that Mark Scott is the sort of boss who gets really irritated when someone ‘sneaks on’ to Facebook. Just look at him.

The Last Ten Feet

photo: archrecord.construction.com

The internet has been incredibly successful in crossing huge distances but has had mixed success crossing the smallest yet most important boundary: the last ten feet between the bedroom computer and the loungeroom consumer. The concept of ‘the last ten feet is usually discussed in regards to television, movie and music transactions over the internet. In America, companies such as TiVo and Netflix have had some success in selling media to the couch dwelling consumer. The concept can be expanded to all internet publishing and some other important distances that need to be crossed. The picture at the top of this post is the LG Internet Refrigerator, a commercial failure because of it’s high price and the fact that most people found the concept ridiculous at the time. The underlying principle, that the internet should blend into our lives like any other appliance, is now considered a worthy goal for electronic content providers. The iPhone is one example of internet publishing that not only follows you into the lounge room, but everywhere else you go to. Coupled with an iTunes account the iPhone user can become a mobile money stream by removing the barriers to impulse buying. Run out of music on the train? just purchase and download another album on the go.

Companies like Telstra have set the bar pretty low for basic mobile internet. Common complaints for years have been that mobile phone internet is too slow, expensive, too hard to read, and awkward to use thanks to tiny keypads. The latest touch screen smartphones offer some hope for a faster, smoother mobile internet but there is a price to be paid in battery life and money. In the end you will be doing a lot of searching for power leads and free wifi networks to give your lithium ions and phone bill a rest.

The Amazon Kindle may be the answer to bridging e-books and newspapers from the internet to you (and your money in the opposite direction). There have of course been the usual arguments over copyright and the worry of creating a monopoly on these kind of things. Perhaps it is now only mindsets and not technology which holds the internet down on your desk?

What price a human being? 8.7 cents.

Or more precisely what it will cost you to have a Australian company uSocial (makes me proud to be Australian) get you followers on twitter. They promise to spam people until you get the followers you want with a 20% bonus if they can’t deliver on time. The value of your audience drops to just under 3.5 cents per head if you take out the largest possible order of 100,000 followers. It will take the intrepid spammers at USocial up to a year to find you that many peole to hand on your every 140 characters but you will get a 30% bonus if they don’t. Somehow, I don’t think uSocial will still exist in a years time and I think that may figure into their business plan when they ask you to pay $4,000 up front.

Interestingly, if you follow the curve set out in their pricing plan then in about twenty years time you could have all the current active users on twitter following you for under $80,000. If you wanted to knock Ashton Kutcher off the top of the follower pile it might take you the better part of a century and cost as much as a decent sports car. And that’s without calculating the cost of keeping up with the man’s meteoric rise in followers that seems to average at least 5,000 a day. This is nearly 40 times a higher rate than even uSocial can claim to deliver but if we hypothetically assume that for a 4,000% markup they will deliver that increase that Ashton can manage by simply tweeting his desire for baseball stand hot dogs. You’ll now be paying about $1 a follower which is thousands of dollars a day. Some days will be tough for your budget when you consider that Kutcher gained 24,000 followers in 24 hours on 11th of August 2009.

Phew! gaining an ocean of twitter followers by using a third party instead of fame is tough. Instead of real live teeming masses, why not cultivate an army of machines like Skynet in the Terminator movies? Though many people accused of automated follower accounts have simply fallen victim to autofollow spammers who follow as many people as possible in the hope that they will follow them back and receive their commercial messages.

So how to spot the fakers, spammers and uSocial salesmen lurking in the shadows with trench coats lined with shiny packs of 1000 followers? With more moderation of course which, to their credit, twitter seems to be doing by hiring more people and kicking out those who might usurp a future twitter business plan which sounds a bit similar.

The rotten state of internet advertising

If you are an independent web producer and you want to earn revenue from your internet endeavors then it is mighty tempting to use an advertising service like Google AdSense to help make a bit of money. If you decide to go down this path then it is a good thing to remind yourself that the majority of internet ads are terrible. Most web advertising programs will deface websites with the most base, lowest-common-denominator, puerile, bottom feeding, scare-tactic-using, offensive and back alley ads you could possibly imagine and then some. Even Google like to get into business with these purveyors of snake oil.

The internet banner ad industry is the new late night TV infomercial, only much worse. The worst that could happen with a late night purchase of a ‘Super Chop Chop 2000′ or some such technological marvel is that it wouldn’t work. With the new banner ads I get the distinct feeling that if I engage in business with those offering me techniques to lose weight, kill an attacker with my bare hands or make billions of dollars a day while i sit by the pool that it will end with my credit card/identity/kidneys/all of the above being stolen.

I just can’t see how anyone more than half awake could take them seriously. take a look at this gem I pulled from the Failblog. I hope and pray that the ad was just a joke to fit in with theme of the website.

“Calm down”, you might say, “such things are surely for amateurs only and the main media players must be able to do better.” That’s true, in Australia the big websites have managed to eliminate most of the offensive and replace it with annoying. Case in point are the damn video ads that keep appearing on skynews.com.au and the fairfax network. These pesky buggers sit in the corner of your screen and play videos with the sound on by default. That means you have to look at the damn thing to find the mute button. At least they have the semi decency not to connect a pop up ad to the mute button, but it can only only be a matter of time. Thanks guys for wasting my bandwidth and slowing down my browser. For an added bonus, open multiple tabs at once and enjoy a mix of different ad soundtracks at once. Top tier American websites appear to have discovered pretty fast that audio ads are a turn off for users. They have video ads but audio is off by default and the user can click for sound if they are interested . I am now strongly considering removing skynews from my news feed because of these ads. They are so annoying that they even pop up over other ads.

Did I claim the professionals were lacking in the offensive department? TheAustralian.com.au has proved me wrong.

Doubly offensive when you consider this recent story on the Australian’s own website

.

Good Game: Viewers vs. management in online soap opera

Good Game is the ABC’s video game reviews/culture show and is also one of its most innovative users of streaming video and online forums. The show has its own video delivery system separate to the ABC’s iView . While the quality is not as good as iView it does have every episode from the show’s history available online and the makers of the show have enjoyed a close relationship with the fans via their ABC hosted forum which is the most active of any ABC show.

This special relationship seems to have come to a grinding halt with the surprise sacking (in effect) of the most popular host. Junglist (real name Jeremy Ray) was taken out of his on air role and replaced by a 24-year-old female presenter Hex (real name Stephanie Stephanie Bendixsen). The move was made without much prior notice and in the middle of a season. The new hosting team jokingly put up their ‘fanboy flame shield’ at the end of Hex’s debut episode but I don’t think Hex and Bajo or the ABC’s management were quite ready for how much fanboy (and fangirl) flames were to come.

First there were incredulous posts on their forums and then there was the obligatory Facebook protest group and now a dedicated website with a poster campaign . Fans have been extremely vocal and angry as general consensus has been that Junglist was the one ingredient which brought the whole show together and prevented it from becoming like the few failed attempts at an Australian games show in the past. The noise generated by the fans has helped the story get onto major news websites. The ABC itself has covered the story on ABC News Online and closed comments on the story after 49 comments were posted which were exclusively negative towards the ABC. Rumors have spread wildly in the information vacuum created by the ABC when it enforced confidentiality agreements on everyone in front or behind the Good Game Camera. The situation only got worse once the official silence broke. (for a detailed breakdown of the flow of accusations and counter accusations got to this blog ). The consensus among many fans is that Good Game chose a new host who was younger and female and flew in the face of the nerdy stereotype embodied by Junglist to captitalise on recent high ratings and expand its mass appeal. The very fans who created the initial high ratings now feel betrayed and locked out. Some fans are also angry at the ABC for making a young, recent beginner in the TV industry such an obvious target for the viewer’s rage.

What is to be learned from this internet fueled PR disaster? Maybe its that if you ask for highly involved feedback then you are generally expected to respond to it rather than just look at what’s been said and have executives override the decision (for example the Vegemite iSnack 2.0 fiasco . However this ends, it seems that if you are an internet active television production you can’t just change direction out of the blue and expect your viewers to follow you by the nose, especially if they had once been helping to improve the show.

Here’s two articles I would write if I were writing for these particular websites. This whole post (except for brand names and external links) Copyright Rex Martinich 2009

www.itwire.com
TV recording Set-top vs. desktop

The latest and greatest PVRs (personal video recorders) like iQ2 and TiVo on the market promise ease and convenience in watching and recording TV. They basically consist of a computer, video capture card, hard drive and network card inside a relatively small plastic box. If you are a PC user, chances are that you already have most of those things on that list and are quite capable of doing everything these high end products do without spending $700. However, the DIY solution may not be worth the time and effort for some.

One area the PC trumps PVRs is in price. The biggest initial investment will be about $90 for a quality digital video capture card. If you lack the space for recorded TV shows you can buy a 1 terabyte hard drive for a little over $100 and get 3 times the space on an iQ2 and six times that of TiVo. Combine a DVD burner with blank DVDS bought in bulk and you will never run out of space (except in the DVD cabinet).

Convenience is the big selling point for PVRs and not surprisingly they have the PC beaten hands down. If you don’t have easy access to the TV signal cable from your computer you can either have unsightly cables running around, drill holes to run cables through or buy another computer which will probably cost you more than a PVR. The interface and remote control on a PVR is designed to be intuitive and user friendly. Most remote controls and software provided with TV capture cards are of questionable design and quality. There are of course third party software packages available for free on the internet and they can provide a hassle free experience but require a lot of setting up. Two of the best are GB-PVR and MediaPortal.

The humble PC makes up for its steep learning curve on the flexibility front. Built in ad skipping features are virtually non-existent in Australian PVRs, which is a major downgrade from what they were originally released as in the USA. A computer can easily skip ads or you can edit them out with even the free video authoring tools. Australian PVRs can be highly restrictive about what you do with your recorded TV, and most would prefer they remained in the box. On the other hand, with a little technical knowledge, you can do just about anything with your PC video files. It is possible to transfer them to a video IPod, Burn a DVD or stream them to your lounge room TV.

If you have the time, the willingness to learn a few things and a suitable home configuration then you can have an experience that is better than that offered by PVRs once everything is set up. If you are like the majority of TV viewers who simply look for relaxation and a break from thinking it’s probably worth shelling out the cash and living with the built in limitations.

www.bv.com.au Bicycle Victoria
Problem Areas- Swanston Street

View Larger Map

Swanston Street is one of the busiest shopping precincts in the CBD and is also a popular north/south arterial route for cyclists. Just because car traffic is limited and there are bike lanes does not mean that you can let your guard down.

Obey all laws and street signs as the area is under close inspection by traffic police and getting caught is only a matter of time. Running red lights is an especially bad idea.

There is constant tram activity in the street as it is also a tram network artery. When a tram stops and its doors open you are legally required to stop behind it. This may be inconvenient but it is rude and illegal to try and get past a tram while people are getting on and off.

A young woman was killed on Swanston Street in 2008 when her wheels slipped in tram tracks. Always cross tram tracks at a wide angle, especially if you have narrow tyres on your bike.

Princes Bridge marks the start of the Southern end of Swanston Street and is also one of the trickiest areas. You have a choice between a non-separate bike path which is swamped by pedestrians or a tiny bike path which is often overlapped by cars. Whichever choice you make, exercise caution.

Despite vehicles being prohibited from certain sections of the street and busses being banned altogether after the aforementioned accident, there are many exceptions and even those who flout the law out of ignorance or impatience. Couriers and Taxis are present in force along the street so watch for doors opening and indicators flashing.

Due to the presence of the two biggest train network hubs (Flinders Street and Melbourne Central Station) as well as three shopping malls and numerous tourist attractions there are many pedestrians in Swanston Street. A number of these pedestrians are from out of town, aren’t familiar with the law or are in a hurry and end up crossing outside the designated crossing lights. Always look out and be prepared to give warning and stop suddenly.

It is always a good idea to check the Melbourne weather forecast ahead of time to ensure that you are not caught out by wind and rain conditions which can change quite a bit during the course of the day.

When there are strong winds approach side streets with caution as they can create wind tunnels that can blow you off course.

When it is raining the incidents of jaywalking increase markedly as people try to avoid waiting at the lights in the rain and compound this error by not looking both ways to shield their faces. Rain also increases slipperiness and braking distance, so take extra care when the weather is bad.

Despite the dangers and annoyances Swanston street remains the fastest and most convenient way to traverse the CBD. Being aware of your surroundings and taking extra care should help you to get to your destination safely.

Click here for news and views on cycling in Swanston Street

Evaluating Web Writing

Here is something you might find interesting. its an assignment!

All text copyright Rex Martinich 2009 except where identified as references.

Rex Martinich 258607
Assignment 1: Evaluating Web Writing
Writing and Editing for Digital Media 106-477

The internet and popular culture seem to go hand in hand. If you are an obsessive fan or just somebody looking for a review of the latest movie, there are plenty of websites to choose from. This wide and completive field of web publishing leads to some interesting variations of culture websites. Three culture websites below have been evaluated for how they attempt to make an impact with their readers.

The A.V. Club

http://www.avclub.com/

This website is a compilation of blogs, articles, reviews and feature articles on the subject of American centric pop culture. The name stands for Audiovisual Club, a reference to groups of high school students in North America who would operate, maintain and experiment their school’s projectors, speakers and other electronic devices (AV Club 2009). This choice of name subtly defines their core intended audience as people who attended American high schools in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. The website’s writers cultivate an obsession with movies, book, comics, music and TV shows. The website was launched by the long standing news parody website theonion.com, and borrows some of its lighter tones and humour but with much more grounding in reality. The website’s design philosophy appears to be one of functional minimalism, with most of the main page being taken up by feeds of its content. Titles and categories instruct the user as the content behind links, with content being organised into well defined and recurring genres. These design and content decisions lead to an efficient interface for those already familiar with the type of content AV Club provides, but may prove initially puzzling for newer users as many articles are strongly premise based. The types of articles that are a little more esoteric than “Interview” “Reviews” or “I watched this on purpose” contain a paragraph at the top which succinctly explain what the authors are trying to achieve. For example, All articles of the type “Gateways to Geekery” are prefaced with:

“Pop culture can be as forbidding as it is inviting, particularly in areas that invite geeky obsession: The more devotion a genre or series or subculture inspires, the easier it is for the uninitiated to feel like they’re on the outside looking in. But geeks aren’t born; they’re made. And sometimes it only takes the right starting point to bring newbies into various intimidatingly vast obsessions. Gateways To Geekery is our regular attempt to help those who want to be enthralled, but aren’t sure where to start.” (Phillips 2009b)

This opening paragraph is typical of another tendency of the writing techniques used on the AV Club in that it shows a willingness to use more descriptive language and longer paragraph lengths than some texts on web publishing advise. Lynch and Horton emphasize that copy should be written for someone quickly scanning a low resolution screen for the essence of you writing. They stress that “…even methodical readers will appreciate your efforts to accommodate online reading patterns rather than forcing readers to slow down and pick their way through your pages in order to glean information.” (2008) The AV Club tends to break away from these rules most of the time. Their articles are set out more like a Sunday newspaper magazine and their text can get quite dense. It is worth noting that a lot of the AV Club’s content can be found in print form distributed in certain American cities. A lot of the writing is more suited to an attentive reader with a smooth LCD display rather than a hurried reader scanning a small old Cathode monitor. There are articles that make concessions to this longstanding and widely accepted method of writing for the internet with speed and absolute clarity in mind (Kissane 2008, Morkes & Neilsen 1997, Dube 2001). Any pieces which cover multiple types or genres or culture have the names of artists/writers as well as titles of works highlighted in bold text so that readers can scan through to find what is most relevant to their interests. This technique is similar to Lynch and Horton’s (2008) philosophy of expressing numbers as digits instead of words so they stand out to the reader searching for facts.

Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Triple J multimedia

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/

Triple J was originally the ABC’s youth orientated national radio station and has grown to include a website, magazine and television shows since it was founded. The Triple J website prefers to deliver a lot of information via podcasts and videos. The text that is there is presented strictly within the format encouraged by the web publishing experts mentioned above. There are summaries of articles presented for most links, articles are short, sharp and to the point with the main points of information clearly visible. The audience is clearly defined as being teenagers by their use of minimal text, bright colours and detailed art design as well as offering almost all writing on the site in audio or video format. Most presenters and contributors have a twitter account and links to these are posted prominently. A lot of the text that is there is also outsourced. Movie reviews are clipped from their print publication ‘JMag’ and their video game reviews are taken from the ABC TV show ‘Good Game’. The Triple J website is an example of an entitiy that avoids the use of large bodies of text to deliver information. When information is presented in the form of paragraphs, they are as clear and concise as possible.

One area where TripleJ avoids web writing convention is by its use of external hyperlinks. Morkes and Neilsen’s study into web users habits quotes a subject as saying “The incredible thing that’s available on the Web is the ability to go deeper for more information” and concludes that “hypertext is well liked” (1997). However, the writers on the TripleJ website basically do not use them. This may be a possible consequence of ABC Charter policy. ‘Hack’, the news and current affairs program, will post links in their blog for the more complicated stories, such as the American healthcare debate. For such a multimedia based website, the lack of links to movie trailers or festival websites could be frustrating to users.

ArtsBeat

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/

The ArtsBeat Blog serves to comment and report on news from the world of popular culture and fine arts. This blog has similarities to many other amateur websites that comment on culture but it has the prestige and resources of the New York Times media group. Multiple authors contribute posts for the blog.

The writing on ArtsBeat embodies the technique supported by Dube (2001) in that “…tighter and punchier than print, but more literate and detailed than broadcast writing.” Posts on the blog follow this convention to create articles that mimic a high minded conversation but with tighter structure.
Bowles and Borden believe that for all its technology, a website “…won’t work unless the text is well edited and brief” (2000, 115). ArtsBeat is very clear and efficient with its writing. Posts are written in a very effective manner for the web as most do not require that they be expanded by a ‘read more’ link and manage to get their message across in a few paragraphs. The majority of the posts are one screen in length and are focused on one idea. When there are multiple ideas in one post there are often dot points used. The blog is very well suited to the busy user who scans for information. Dube’s (2001) argument that properly chosen links in a story will enhance both your story and your website is taken to heart by ArtsBeat as it is with most articles on the New York Times website. About two thirds of paragraphs use at least one link blended in seamlessly to the flow of the text. This extensive use of links serves to balance the websites brevity by giving users access to longer and more detailed pages if they desire. A criticism of the blog would be that as it deals with almost every type of culture and art, there should be a system in place where it is easier and quicker to identify that type of culture is being discussed in a blog post. There are options to browse by category but the lack of references in an article to what category it is in leads to these definitions being vague.

What is clear from an analysis of these sites is that to develop a following in a crowded marketplace of culture websites you must identify your audience and cater to their needs. In a world of instant access and incredibly wide choices, creating a niche and establishing a unique identity through content can be seen as crucial to success. The AV Club targets those with a close interest in culture and rewards their patience with detail and flair. Triple J recognizes that teenagers are flighty and need stimulation so its text is very minimal and straightforward. ArtsBeat attracts an older professional user by being concise and easy to read. Devotion to archetypes can turn off potential users or, in the case of the AV Club, begin to resemble undisciplined editing

Bibliography

AV Club (2009) ‘F.A.Q’ in AV Club http://www.avclub.com/about/

Bowles, D.A. & Borden, D.L. (2000) ‘Editing for the Web’. Creative Editing, Belmont: Wadsworth.

Dube, J. (2001) ‘Writing News Online’ http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&aid=41309

Kissane, E. (2008) ‘Writing Content the Works for a Living’

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writingcontentthatworksforaliving

November 4, 2008

Lynch, P.L. & Horton, S. (2008) ‘Web Style Guide Online’ http://www.webstyleguide.com/wsg3/9-editorial-style/index.html

Morkes, J. & Neilsen, J. (1997) ‘Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective:
How to Write for the Web’

http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html

Phillips, K. (2009) ‘Gateways to Geekery: John Waters’ in AV Club http://www.avclub.com/articles/john-waters,32254/ August 27, 2009

BBC News ‘Most popular stories now’ and what it says about us

The internet is full of lists and statistics and one that I find the most consistently interesting is the little box widget on the left hand side of all stories on news.bbc.co.uk.

The top ten viewed stories can be fascinating in that the list is not well populated by stories that are given top billing by the BBC News front page. For example ‘Obama backs interrogation revamp’ was presented by as the main story on the News Front Page but has failed to crack the Top 5 in the above picture. What leads the lists is predictably a story about soccer. Obama shouldn’t be too disappointed. He has been a constant presence in the BBC top ten for nearly a year.

in the past 24 hours a story about the state funeral of former South Korean President spent straight seven hours on the number one position. However, a a joke about a Hedgehog winning the Edinburgh Fringe Festival funniest joke prize spent eight straight hours on top.

Dan Antopolski with his award for the funniest joke of the Fringe

Dan Antopolski – “Hedgehogs – why can’t they just share the hedge?”

I guess comedy does equal tragedy plus time. On an even more anthropological note, the top shared list (formerly most emailed list- Web 2.0 strikes again) can reveal what we both read and email/facebook/digg to our friends. A sensationalist and slightly racist article kept coming back from the dead in the most shared list which is a shame as well as being bit disappointing that it was published in the first place.
To judge the article for yourself click here Warning: Borderline NSFW Not Suitable for Work

The bottom line is that internet media can provide reliable and detailed data on who reads what and where and when they read it. It also provides opportunities for a bit of semi academic voyeurism.