I write to express myself is my answer to Putnis & Petelin (1996) question ‘Why write?’ I have been blogging ever since 2005, looking back, I can see that I have grown from an emotional blogger to a blogger that thinks before writing because the issue of publication in Malaysia is that people do not have much freedom in expressing their thoughts. Real threats have been imposed on three prominent blogger last year which leaves and impression on Malaysia as a country controlling the press and with leaders who are worried about insecurity based on offense. (Anoni n.d). While in design, we are not encouraged to use images that are offensive and as well as plain and simple is always better that complicated and hard to read. As much as they love to appreciate the art, content still play an important role while blogging. I believe this applies to everyone in the blogging phenomenon.
Putnis, P and Petelin, R 1996, Writing to communicate, professional communication: principles and application, prentice hall, Sydney, chapter 7, pg 223-263.
The background have over dominated the words.
(source: www.stevewild.co.uk)
The article titled ‘Google kills background images on homepage’ from CNET News.com (Krazit 2010) was about a supposedly 24 hours experiment to enhance Google’s background by applying pictures to the homepage on google.com and apparently they pulled back the idea after only 14 hours due to the massive complaints as well as discovered that ‘remove Google background’ is the seventh and then the second hottest search phrase as of June 10, 2010, according to goggle trends (Carney 2010). The week before, Google wanted to try something new thus announcing that user will be given an option of setting their personal background image behind the homepage. The problem occurs when the night of launching, to highlight the feature, a forced image appeared for all users signed into the Google account. Ever since then, complaints started rising (Krazit 2010).
I think that Google has done a good job in trying to spice up their dull page, to be more adventurous to try out new things. Though, what Google probably should have done is by starting an online survey asking their users what they think about the idea of colorful homepage as well as to observe what are their user’s expectations and habits. Penman stated that a document’s functionality depends highly on the viewer’s expectation, habits and context of use (Penman 1998).
I felt that Google had just assumed that their users will like some background images because the creator is bored with the white wall and Bing seem to be doing very well with the images as background. So, Google says why not? Remember that just because I am sweet tooth, that does not mean you are as well, thus every viewer is different, some structure or element may work well in one place but it may not necessarily work well in another (Penman 1998). Apparently, many Google users miss the famous white background and some stated that the background images are distracting (Samantha 2010). Besides that, the issue with the images as well is that it slows down the process of loading the page and Google fans previously loves Google due to its lighting fast page loads. (Shear 2010).
This is what scares me on the internet, when your users hates what you have produce with good intentions, the word spreads fast and a solutions needs to satisfy their needs. Therefore, Google have brought back the white walls (Krazit 2010).
Privacy anyone? Have the screen all to yourself!
(Image source: google image)
The Australian (15 June 2010) published an article titled “Google search engine ‘not safe’: expert” have exposed Google that they have always been recording the entire search that their users are browsing. Without denying, Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt justifies that users should avoid searching for things that they do not want people to know about because they will still hand over to the Patriot Act if it is requested. Besides that, what Google have about their users could be turn into a marketing data. Comparatively to other search engine like Startpage in Autralia, it allows users to anonymously search the internet across global and local engines including yahoo, Bing, Anzwers and etc (Dearne 2010).
My favorite phrase ‘Don’t know anything, just google it!’ There is no harm as I am not giving out any of my information. That is what I thought, I was wrong! Browsing the internet may seem like a very small deal but browsing the internet actually relays your personal information to websites. You are most likely providing your IP address and information about which website have you visited to the website operators (UCAN 2010).
Fine, I do agree some parts of what Google are doing might seem very much invading our privacy as I, myself am a Google user. I love privacy but I can’t help to think that if everyone gets to anonymously browse through the internet, wouldn’t it causes other problems? Example: The article (Dearne 2010) state that those records are used to trace potential domestic terrorists, what if they are real terrorists and due to the privacy protection there is no way tracing them through supposed to have records? Won’t the country be even more at state of harm? For me, I would rather have Google recording my data all they want than to let a terrorist running about freely. I mean think about it, it does make sense what Eric Schmidt had said ‘if you do not want Google to know what you are searching then do not search’ because it could be probably up to no good.
It all comes back to what are you willing to let go, your privacy (which may not be a problem to some people) or allowing a felony living beside you and risk your family being harmed?
