E-Publishing - Week 12

Dearest readers, today is a very sad day. It is the last E-Publishing lecture and therefore my last E-Publishing blog. Sad times. But on a much happier note.....it is 11 days til Christmas!!!!! Oh and of course I know you're wondering, it was a robin in my advent calender today.

Today's lecture was literally TERRIFYING! The Internet is dangerous, evil and unsafe was the theme of the lecture, and as I am typing I am wary as to not type by accident any "trigger" words that could trace me back to being involved in something evil (in fact could evil be considered a trigger word? oh dear....) Did you know, for example, that people now entering Iran are asked to show their facebook accounts? Scary huh! Apparently it is possible to tell now if someone is gay or straight by the contents of their news feed and their conversations with friends. Probably not such a big deal over here in the Western countries but places such as Uganda are campaigning for the death penalty for those found guilty of homosexuality. (Seriously! Click here to read more)

And as for protesting over the Internet...that's definitely out. No matter how hard you try you can never hide yourself on the web. Every computer has it's own unique IP address which can be traced straight back to you, and believe me, those groups that you join on Facebook filled with innocence and good feeling, that's being traced as well. China of course took it one step further and banned the use of Twitter!

There is definitely a vast amount of information on the Internet, but it is very easy to control what people see and read. We may see the Internet as a way of expressing ouselves, spreading awareness and giving us a voice but it is clearly not as utopian as we'd like to believe.

But let us briefly move on to a rather less scary topic, which is podcasting. It is built on the development of RSS feeds and was invented by Apple for use on the Ipod. Podcasts are mainly used for audio, to catch up on your favourite radio shows and can be easily downloaded from places such as Itunes. The BBC IPlayer is an example is a video podcast. And the good news is is that it is incredibly easy for you to create your very own podcast!! Check out Clickcaster to start podcasting now!

So that is it! E-Publishing is officially over. Well actually no its not as I still have that final project to do (you know the one I've been moidering on about for the last few entries). But as far as the lectures go, this was the last one and therefore its time for me to retire from the world of E-Publishing blogs.

So all that is left for me to say is:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year !!!!

Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!!!

E-Publishing - Week 11

Ooooh so it's week eleven, also known as December 7th, also known as 18 days to Christmas and also known as the day that I got a chocolate snowflake in my advent calender. And that's right it's time for an E-Publishing overview!!!

So let's have a re-cap of what we've learnt over the weeks.

We've looked at blogging, publishing books using Lulu, interactive fiction, online news and visual novels and where everything started, what exactly is e-publishing.

So what is E-Publishing? After three....one, two, three....... E-Publishing is short for Electronic Publishing and refers to the publishing of works online, on compact disk, emailed or on an electronic reader. Simple yes? And of course E-Publishing refers to blogging, publishing books through, interactive fiction, online news and visual novels...ties in nicely. They all need a variety of technologies such as xml, sgml, html, pdf, PostScript, Internet, World Wide Web, etc etc and of course are all connected through E-Commerce....remember the publishing value chain? (and incase you've forgotten e-commerce is the buying and selling of products and services on the web or electronically). Oh and while we're hovering near the subject, now is the time when I should also bring up the term Print on Demand or P.O.D. It is a printing technology that in which new copies of a book are not printed an order has been received, obviously this technology did not come about until digital printing began as it was not considered economical before then. Smaller companies and also academic publishers rely solely on P.O.D whereas bigger companies tend to only use it in special circumstances.

P.O.D of course brings us back to Lulu. Lulu the online software that anyone can use to print their own copy of an out of copyright work. This is definitely a good example of a P.O.D company.

Basically. All forms of E-Publishing are linked by their base technology. All rely on the internet, and also formats such as .pdf and .html to make them work. Blogs also rely on RSS feed to show regular updates and to inform your followers of your latest posts, also they rely on the convention of hyperlinks (obviously as I've already used them in this blog entry alone). Anyway it is safe to say that fundamentally as their basic level all forms of E-Publishing can be linked by their reliance on technology. Whether it be in the form of the Internet and the World Wide Web or by RSS feeds and P.O.D, E-Publishing would simply not exist without today's technologies.

E-Publishing - Week 10

Visual Novels

In the lecture today we looked at graphic interactive fiction. Which basically speaking is the interactive fiction that we have been looking at over the last few weeks with added pictures and graphics. Most visual novels are programmed and are often split between passive and interactive.

The most well known example of a visual novel or a graphic interactive fiction is Inanimate Alice. Inanimate Alice follows the story of Alice, a young girl growing up in the early 21st century. There are so far, four episodes of Inanimate Alice available, although 6 more are said to be 'coming soon'. You read each story through the point of view of Alice along with her PDA and her interactive friend Brad. Through each contained episode you also have the opportunity to complete mini interactive tasks.

'Ren'Py' is a software used for creating graphic interactive fiction and visual novels. According to Ren'Py, visual novels are "computer-based stories presented using words, pictures, sounds and music." Ren'Py allows you to create visual novels easily and efficiently. Ren'Py can also be used to create Simulation Games.

In the second half of the class this week we were asked to download the Ren'Py software for free and have a go and creating a visual novel using the test images that come with the software.

The simplest way to go about starting to create a visual is to:

1. Create a background
2. Create a character
3. Create what the character can do

Example of how to imput instructions into Ren'Py

#background images

image bg 'beach' = "beach.jpg"
image bg 'cliff' = "cliff.jpg"
image bg 'park' = "park.jpg"

#declare characters

$ c = character ('cain', colour = 001100)
$ s = character ('stephen', colour = 110000)


etc.


After practicing with the software in the lecture I discovered that it was a lot easier to use and more rewarding than creating an interactive fiction. I got better results and have decided that a visual novel or graphic interactive fiction might be a better idea for my final project than the interactive fiction. So since the lecture I have downloaded the Ren'Py software onto my laptop and have started looking into ideas for my final project. I have also done a few tests on the software in order to familiarise myself with the technology. I'm happy with my choice now for the final project, I think that a visual fiction is definitely the best idea for me. It will also be interesting for the essay part into looking into the development of visual novels, how to publish them and how to market them. It seems that everything that I have learnt in the E-Publishing lectures will be coming together for the final project regardless of which route I will take.

E-Publishing - Week 9

So the lecture was cancelled this week but instead we had some individual meetings set up for later on in the week. The meetings were to discuss what we were thinking of doing for our final projects. I can't help but thinking that there is definitely an easy route through the final project in the form of publishing a book through Lulu, I'm thinking that that is a 10 minute job and then it's pretty much done. However, my interests lie in new media and gaming so I'm planning on making life a lot harder for myself and concentrating my final project on interactive fiction. (Note: I am probably going to regret this at a later stage).

For the final project we have to create the project itself (in my case the interactive fiction) and also a critical piece to go with it, examining the area and how we could market the product. My tutor suggested maybe using an existing film such as Casablanca and maybe turning that into interactive fiction. I think that it is definitely a good idea to use an environment that people are already familiar with rather than creating one from scratch. I wonder if Joss Whedon would mind if I created "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Interactive Fiction Game".....hmmmmm.

I have used some of my free time by having another go at Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, trying to familiarise myself with the language used. Yep, I still managed to blow myself up!

E-Publishing - Week 8

Disaster!! I had an accident in reading week resulting in me tearing ligaments in my ankle. Ouch! Unfortunately this meant that I was unable to attend lecture 8 of E-Publishing. But nevermind I have found the lecture outline on Moodle and have decided to have a go at teaching myself this week.

So on the lecture plan it says that we will be looking more indepthly at interactive fiction, carrying on from Week 6. Starting with a man called Dennis G. Jerz. But who is Dennis G. Jerz? Jerz is a well known writer and scholar of interactive fiction, he is currently a professor of English and New Media Journalism at Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania. He is mostly interested in blogs, interactive fiction, web design, creating games and lecturing on games.

http://tlrg.bangor.ac.uk/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=1381

The link above shows the script of a talk that he did on interactive fiction. In the talk he explains about interactive fiction and his views on the subject. He feels that it is very complex and it is a technology to be 'mastered' not to just come into lightly, and feels that many experience a love/hate relationship with interactive fiction for its' complexities and it taxing the gamer's brain. I feel that it is important for anyone who is interested in gaming and interactive fiction to look more into Dennis Jerz as he has some fascinating views on the subject.

I have had a look at "The Breathing Wall" which is an interactive fiction similar to Inanimate Alice. There is a taster demo online for The Breathing Wall but you will need to order the CD in order to interact with the narrative. Stories such as these only really come to life when the reader is interacting with them, when the reader is controlling them, that is what makes them stand out as interactive fiction rather than merely fiction novels.

I'm hoping that next week's blog will have more detail than this one! This is the best I could do I'm afraid!

E-Publishing - Week 7

Week seven is the Univeristy's reading week so there was no E-Publishing lecture this week. The lack of lecture gave me some time to think about what I might want to do for my final project. After learning about Interactive Fiction last week I think that that is the route that I would like to go down for my final project as it ties in with other modules I've taken in University including ones to do with games and virtual environments and also new media. I found the lecture on Interactive Fiction last week very interesting and informative and definitely something that I would like to try doing myself.

So I decided to look more into Interactive Fiction. Interactive Fiction being a form of software, where there is typically a simulated environment and characters that are controlled by simple text commands such as "look around" or "pick up....". The whole 'game' or 'narrative' is entirely text based and is usually in the form of an adventure story. Interactive fiction was most popular during the late 1970s to the mid 1980s and is known as being the oldest form of computer gaming.

Using the software that we were shown in lecture six I decided to have another go at trying to create a virtual JP Hall (the Creative Studies building). Again the process was extremely slow and very frustrating. I can only imagine how long it must take to create an entire game. I seem to have been working on this for hours and all I've managed to do is get my character to look at a vending machine. It is fairly safe to say that if I will be creating an interactive fiction based final project I shall have to start studying the tutorial manual for the software over the next few weeks in an attempt to familiarise myself with the commands.

Ooh it's going to be a busy christmas!!!

E-Publishing - Week Six

Programmed Writing

Practical lecture in which we looked at interactive fiction and in particular 'The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy' which is a text-based game/'story' produced by Infocom.

In the first half of the lecture, we were split into pairs and were set the task of using the Hitchhiker's Guide software in order to progress in the game as far as the pub. The game itself, I found to be very interesting, and also unusual to be playing a game without pictures. As a pair we found it quite difficult to progress using text controls and commands in order to do the most simple of tasks, I also think that it would help to know the story behind the game.

In the second half of the lecture we were introduced to software called 'Inform' (free download to any computer) which would allow us to create our own text-based game. After talking us through how to use the basic controls we were set the task of creating a virtual building similar to the Creative Studies building. The process for creating a text-based game is very slow and sometimes infuriating but when you get it right it can be very rewarding.

If we want to, we can use this software to create our own text-based game for the final assignment. I feel that if I was to do this I would need a great deal of practice on the software and I would have to do a lot of reading into how to create various details. However I do feel that is a preferable project for me and I am considering doing this for my final project.

E-Publishing - Week Five

Online Stories and Journals

To start the lecture we looked at an online news article on the BBC webpage. Online news is a new version of news which includes; reports, main story, links to other articles, comments, pictures, videos, background information, hyperlinks (related internet links to other pages on the internet) also the ability to share the news story (email, Facebook etc) or to print the story.

Online news brought a change in reading habits and also brought up the question of breadth over depth. It also allowed for advertising and for people to leave comments. Could people's comments have an effect on the story? (especially negative comments).

Brought a demand for 24 hour news.

'Gatekeeper' - controls what we read (to an extent - comments)

Also looked at the website 'Archipelago' which is a journal of poetry, creative writing etc. an outlet for people to get their work out on the internet, also in a format that readers can also download.


C - CLIENTS
A - ACTORS
T - TRANSFORMATION
W - WORLD VIEW
O - OWNER
E - ENVIRONMENT



WRITERS + EDITORS + REVIEWERS

POEMS/STORIES -------->
QUALITY CHECK --------> BLACK BOX ----------------------> JOURNAL
GRAPHIC DESIGN ------->
WEB ---------------------->




POEMS/STORIES --------> JOURNAL --------> WEB LITERATE LITERARY INTEREST



ILLUSTRATOR + PRODUCER + WRITERS + EDITOR


PAPER/INK ------------------------->
CONTENT --------------------------->
DESIGN -----------------------------> BOOK -------------------> READERS/INTEREST
TECHNOLOGY ---------------------->
QUALITY CHECKS ------------------>


- What does it enhance? (lulu)
- Does it improve anything? (availability of christmas presents etc)
- Sharing information in communities
- Enhance value of the book
- Increase volume of things being published
- Extend life of out-of-print books
- Design options
- Quality
- Encourage people to write
- Enhances postal service?

-What does it replace? (no longer needed/sustainable?)
- Publishing agencies
- Big corporations
- Printers
- Removing choice of company
- Replaces a book store
- Replaces warehouses
- Replaces trucks
- Reduces carbon emmissions
- More postmen delivering individual copies

- What would it revive?
- Bring back postal service
- Creative writing courses
- Out of print texts
- Specialist books
- Publishing for the love of books
- Small publishing houses

-What would be the long term effects?
- One big company
- libraries disappear/change
- Sales go down
- Channels change

E-Publishing - Week Four

Blogging and Blog Fiction

Lecture Four - we looked at blogs and blog fiction.

Blogs

We looked at tips for writing a blog, and why people write blogs. How to make blogs stand out and how to make them original.

"Technically a blog is a series of posts arranged in chronological order. Most agree, however, that they are an important form of expression. Though many modern blogs are personal observancies updated on a regular basis, the earliest blogs weren't rants or observancies. They were lists of links maintained by a handful of tech savvy individuals. It wasn't until the late 1990s that blogging evolved into what we see today." (Moodle)

Blogging is an easy way of publishing your thoughts to the web so that other people can view them and also make comments on them.

Blog Fiction

We also looked at blog fiction. Blog fiction is a form of fiction writing that uses blogs to reach its readership. It is a small-scale fringe activity in the world of blogging and although it has generated some literary critical interes, it remains isolated. It is presented in many forms, from a pretend diary or posted novel or a serial blog.

We looked at some examples of blog fictions including 'the professional pet' and 'wilf's world'.

Blogs of course mean different things to different people. Blogs allow people to write whatever they want to write for other people to read. Of course the blog could be extremely accurate or full of lies and is generally from the opinion of the author so in most cases can be incredibily biased. Blogs are a useful way of expressing your thoughts and feelings and getting your views out on the web, anyone can read them, follow them and comment on them unlike the olde version of a diary when is generally meant to be kept private. Blogs have undergone a lot of criticism recently due to less than factual content and the usual anonimity of their authors. Countries such as China, Iran and Italy are starting to clamp down on blogging and also websites such as Twitter to try and curb the population's freedom of speech. Recently, however, blogging has experienced a win against the super injuction when bloggers exposed information the media was trying to keep quiet from us over a super injuction on the dumping of toxic waste by oil company Trafigura. It does make you wonder what else has been hidden from us in the past!!

Keep blogging and tweeting everyone!!!

E-Publishing - Week Three

The Book vs The E-Book

"e-publishing requires us to rethink what we mean by 'the book', that standard of complex communication for over 5 centuries which was pretty much unknown for the millenium before Gutenberg" (quote from Moodle)

Focusing on the 'Gutenberg Project' or 'Project Gutenberg' collects texts that are out of copyright (author died, copyright not been renewed etc) allows more people to have access to knowledge.

Orality and Literacy

- printing had a profound effect (these days e-publishing is probably going through the same thing)
- greater accessibility
- quite expensive technology (not everyone could afford a printing press)
- reformation (religion) could now read the Bible
- messenger (things could change) could not trust the written word, spoken word trusted much more - eyes could be easily deceived
-*lists*

Technology in the Hidden Revolution

- workflow
- typesetting - getting the type set out properly
- standardisation system
- postscript - translates what is going on, how things should look
- pdf - portable document format
- sgml - simplified general mark-up language
- html - hyper text mark-up language

In the second half of the lecture we looked at lulu.com which is an online publisher. Using Project Gutenberg we chose a novel and imported it into lulu.com and practiced putting together our own book. The website was surprisingly simple to use and talked the user through step by step how to put the book together.

For the final project, there is the possibility to publish a book using lulu.com. I think that if I was to do this for my assignment then I would have to learn how to use the website to its full advantage and conduct various research into online publishing, Project Gutenberg and into lulu.com.

E-Publishing - Week Two

The Publishing Industry and Disruptive Technology

In the lecture we recapped what we went over in the first lecture, which included looking at the 'publishing value chain' which is the process that happens between from the author creating the work and to the actual consumers reading the work.

http://tlrg.bangor.ac.uk/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=1392

We also had a discussion over our own views on what e-publishing is and our views on the differences between the printed word and words on a screen including the advantages and the disadvantages and the fact that some people dislike reading on a screen and prefer the printed word.

Got shown some software called 'XMind' which is obtainable as a free download. The software is useful as a mind-mapping device for taking notes. Using the software we created a spider diagram for what we as a group wanted to go over in the lecture, including;

e-publishing
the blogs
how technology will change things
author/reader relationship
how to keep it running
how much has happened
disruptive technology? - changes things for the better?
different experiences

Blogs

With the blogs, we are to write down what we learn in the lectures and also our own thoughts and opinions.
Where possible if we could also make references and links.

Thompson reading

Publishing Industry - acquiring symbolic content (ideas expressed in words and pictures), acquiring rights to the content, processing this content, locating financial capital to convert content, convert content into books, distribute and sell converted content (backlist)

Copyright - protects publishers investment

Publisher - made of editorial (desk editing, production, marketing departments, content acquisition, list building, financial investment, content development, quality control, management and co-ordination, sales and marketing)

Publishing Capital - economic capital, human capital, intellectual capital, symbolic capital (backlist)

Publishing Field - type of content, type of market, linguistic field, territorial field, technological field

How to keep it running:

backlist
long-tail model
freemium model
other models

- no longer aware of what we own (rights)

Rattle of Pebbles

- cottage industry
- corporate changed the atmosphere (multimedia industry)
- relationship has changed

Week One - E-Publishing

I decided to change my module to E-Publishing. E-Publishing will be able help me gain an understanding of the nature of electronic publishing and electronically published materials, looking at the range, type and style of e-published materials.
As I missed the first lecture, I arranged a meeting with the module tutor who explained to me what the module involved and what sorts of things we will be looking at, including; websites, blogs, podcasts, streamed video and audio and e-books.
My tutor advised me to sign up to Moodle, which is an application on the university website. Moodle allows communication with the module tutor and with others on the course, it also shows a list of readings and what we shall be studying each week. He also advised me of the first assignment which is to create a blog and write an entry after every lecture.
After looking on Moodle it gave me an outline of what was gone over in the first lecture, which was an introduction to the course and what the assignments would be. It also asked us to think about the question 'what is e-publishing?' E-publishing is short for electronic publishing which is the publishing of works online, in a file format or on a CD but not in printed form.
Also started reading the core text, 'Books in the Digital Age'