It's a wonderful world!

Online feature idea

2005-12-16T08:21:00.000-08:00

Recently, I think a lot about online feature idea, but I still haven't decided which I should write.
There are too many things I want to write. The most interesting one is about Chinese Gongfu movie. This kind of movie shows something unique about China, history, myth, complicated relationship and so on.
However, if I decide this topic as my feature idea, how can I write it, I mean, which angle I should choose. I still wander.

Citizen Media

2005-12-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

We had a lecture given by Daniel Meadows about citizen media.
I believe the best stories are based on ordinary people's lives, as there are full of all kinds emotions.
To some extent, digital storytelling project catches everyday life, but showing something different or unusual. I like this idea.
Sometimes, I think pictures can say much more than words. I remember a Korean film - Empty Room. In that film, the actor even never say a single word, but the audiences still feel sad, happy, lost and some more complicated feelings from him. All of these are delivered by pictures.
If I get chance, I will try to use pictures to say some story!

Magazine Design Project

2005-11-25T23:20:00.000-08:00

We have chosen Sight&Sound as our magazine design project.
I will do this project with Shaen Bo, another chinese girl, who wanted to do a fashion magazine at first. However, she changed her mind because there so many people did the same kind magazine.
We just have some ideas about how to do this exercise:
Firstly, we need to find out the style and audiences of Sight&Sound ;
Secondly, we will analyse the home page of Sight&Sound and compare it with other film magazines';
Thirdly, we would design a home page for Sight&Sound in photoshop and use powerpoint to make up the project.
We wish everything will be OK.

Pete Clifford's Lecture

2005-11-24T23:25:00.000-08:00

Today, we had a lecture about “BBC News Interactive”, which was given by Pete Clifford, a head of BBC Interactive.
I was impressed on a group data which showed the fast interaction between audiences and BBC after London bombings on 7 July 2005:
 20,000 emails in less that 24 hours;
 1,000 still images;
 3,000 text message;
 20 pieces of video
To some extent, those users generated intraday news’ content. What is worth mentioned is that Mr Clifford used word “content” instead of “news”.
Yesterday, my friend and I discussed about the role of users and journalists in the era of internet. She believed journalists would be replaced by users sometime, in other words, journalists would be disappear because of the bloggers. I didn’t agree with her, as I thought journalists had their unique value in reporting news. Journalists are always connected with journalism for their professional techniques and neutral attitudes. When writing blog, users are subjective, which is far from the nature of journalism, although they transfer information at the same time.
Today’s lecture proved my opinion by the word—“content”. It is true that users provide various kinds of content to journalists, then the latter filtrate and select useful information to investigate and report. In this case, users are just a special sort of sources.
However, the role of users in the interaction couldn’t be ignored, as their participation accelerates news’ reporting and improves the quality of news.

Public Relations in the wired world

2005-11-17T23:24:00.000-08:00

To some extent, Internet has been changing everything, including Public Relations.
What is Public Relations (PR)?
I didn't have any idea until I came to JOMEC, which has PR course.
However, I'm getting familiar with PR as my teacher always takes PR as an opposition of journalism. In last week's test, he let us discuss "Public Relations is the enemy of good journalism." Unfortunately, I didn't answer the question as I were confused about PR.
Today's lecture gave me the concept of PR:" Public relations is about reputation--the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics."
In the age of the Internet, PR is pushed to communciate with journalists. The base of this sort of communication is trust.
Can journalists trust PR? As journalists should be objective to report truth while PR is subjective to try its best to convience publics of reputation of its representative organization.
They do totally different things.
In my opinion, even in the wired world, commucation between PR and media is limited.

Bless you, Tina!

2005-11-16T22:30:00.000-08:00

Tina found her essay went to a totally opposite direction, after talking with her tutor.

She has been working so hard on this 3000-word essay, which must be handed in on this Friday. How can she deal with it?

Recently, everybody in my house is busying herself about verious kinds of assignments.The Autumn Semester will be finished in one month, so all tasks are given at the same time.

Can we survive pressure and heavy work? I ask myself, sometimes.

Yeah, we could survive. We also should survive. Christmas is coming!

Bless you, Tina!

No pains, no gains!

2005-11-15T23:25:00.000-08:00

I'am worried about the result of my last week's news test.
Actually, I did very bad, as I couldn't answer the majority of questions correctly.
At the moment, I recall a proverb:"No pains, No gains!"
I shold take the responsibility for my poor performance.
I didn't read news as much as possible, sometimes, I was too tired to read English news.
I always took "English is my not my first language" as excuse for not studying hard.
However, no body will care this excuse.
Since I made the decision to study abroad, I should be more diligent.

Kim Hollamby's lecture

2005-11-10T21:35:00.000-08:00

"Magazine and Website: Friend or Foe?"
I never think of that topic until Kim Hollamby, head of Electronic Media IPC, gave us the lecture.In my opinion, all kinds of media are linked to each other naturally, incuding magazine and website. Though these two kinds of media aim different audiences and have differernt characteristics, they could share same resources and face same challenges, which are explained as "Cross-media" by Mr Hollamby.
I strongly impressed on speed of communication between people on Internet, which could never happen to magazine. Near the end of the lecture, Mr Hollamby wrote a note on the board of ybw.com as an example showing how fast the reflection on Internet. Just in 15 minutes, above 30 people browsed the bulletin board and 12 people gave their fantastic responses, which made us laugh and think.

My favorite film!

2005-11-09T21:09:00.000-08:00

The Shawshank Redemption (1995)
That rarest of things----a decent Stephen King adaptation----this prison drama flopped at the box office but slowly became a phenomenon through word-mouth. Never taking the easy route to stir our emotions, Frank Darabont and his wonderful cast work hard to make us truly care about Andy and Red. After taking us through the dark years, with our heros afflicted by the loneliness, brutality and sometime injustice of prison life, the film then pulls one of the finest ending in history out of the bag. "Life-affriming" has become a cliched term; in this case, it's deserved.
(Source: December 2005 EMPIRE)

Broadhaven! Wonderful trip!

2005-11-07T15:43:00.000-08:00

We are together in the sun!

HI, it's a new world!

2005-11-06T17:36:00.000-08:00

It's the first time I use blogger!

It will be a new world for me making friends and enjoying life!

I like movie and food and firends!