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I spent a lot of time this summer thinking through issues with online publishing. I was working for a weekly newspaper (the Idaho Mountain Express) out in Sun Valley, Idaho and when they place content on their website they allow for commenting.
Personally I had an issue (and still do) with the idea of comments for news articles. To me, news isn’t meant to be a conversation! I can understand the addition of comments to editorials or opinion pieces, but when I look around at many large newspapers, as well as the small ones in similar communities (ski resorts and other tourist market towns) it seems to have become the industry standard to allow commenting.
Blogs are a conversational medium, and I think that it allows a very unique interaction for the written word. This is why I think blogs have and need a comment space. Whether our class blog or Jeff’s blog it is used as a place to formulate ideas (sort of an interactive rough draft space), or a place to vent or rant or spread rumors about a certain subject (like a personal blog or an apple rumor blog etc) it seems to be for the most part situated in a conversational space. Where information is shared with the intent of starting a conversation. Heck, whenever I write a blog post (surprisingly even without Jeff threatening failure it does sometimes happen… rarely) I am always sad when I dont get comments and responses.
The reasoning for the commenting at the Express was to compete. It was a direct response to a new news aggregate that was started in the same town called SunValleyOnline. This new news aggregate (a site that pulls news from other sources, not a place with paid reporters etc) popped up and there was a lot of initial draw to the site which allowed commenting on the stories they displayed. To push back the Express turned on commenting on their stories, and for the most part, the readership of SVOnline seemed to drop.
The biggest concern however comes back to the idea of news. News, as I understand it, is meant to be an unbiased presentation of facts. I understand the business decision to allow commenting, since the public seemed to express a demand for it, but it still bugs me, since now the newspaper is responsible to manage and maintain the comments, when these comments only seem to allow reader opinion and bias to enter the discussion on the stories.
Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?
I think we can practice on this, or make a quick comparison with Mæve project.
These three words have different meanings. But they are all describing the beautiful and smart things that appear in our daily life. Some of them are delicate, some of them are useful. However, in the language of phenomenology and structuralism, how do we define and separate these three words?
Art is an expression, is the reflection of people’s lives, is created from human senses and received by audience’s senses. Art creation doesn’t need a clear purpose. It’s like the screaming when a person is under pressure, and it is like the tears when a person feels sad. No matter how people review the arts created by the artists, the reason of creating arts is not for accepting other people’s opinion, but is the self expression. Therefore, art is phenomenology.
However, design itself couldn’t be just an expression. Design always has purpose. And design contains much more than just “art”. I used to talk to Alex about the difference between the rational design from user research and the design without research. That’s a different topic but actually both of them couldn’t escape the connotation of design itself – purposes. No matter which of them it still needs user testing. And they are designing for people to use. And they contain the business value. Therefore, design is more like structuralism.
How about invention? Why I separate the invention and design is because invention in most time comes from sparkle ideas. And it is creating something that doesn’t exist in the world before, when design is more like combining ideas. So invention comes from ideas, in this stage, it is phenomenology. Then the invention needs to be implemented. In this stage the invention requires analysis, knowledge, research and mechanism. And that is structuralism. Therefore, we can say the invention is the combination of phenomenology and structuralism.
Of cause we cannot say firmly that design doesn’t have phenomenology or art doesn’t have structuralism. But in general, that’s my idea of how we can tell differences between these ambiguous words.
Ever wanted to gift your loved ones with something that’s your trademark style and personally designed artifact or memento? Ever wondered if all those creative doodles you made on paper could be transformed into something meaningful and tangible? Ever craved to see your own-stylized pen-paper based designs brought to material reality having a more cherished lifelong memoir value?
Here’s how you can accomplish it.. using Photomake! Ponoko is a start up by a talented bunch of designers and Enterpreneurs from New Zealand and Photomake is one of their featured application.
I like the fact that the artifacts that would be created using Photomake will carry visual cues that carry an essence of the person’s emotions, sentiments and creativity expressed through the handmade counterpart of the artifact. A fun and impressive attempt to blend individual creativity, design and human emotions!
Do check out…looks promising from the first impressions 
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