As the tangible newspaper trade has started to defect to the digital, the subject of journalism vs. blogging, or rather, the old vs. the new, has become topical: recent interesting examples of this debate can be seen here, and here.

There are plain differences between blogging and traditional journalism. Differences, as they often do, create conflict. The main difference can be summarised as open vs. closed. Blogs are free, limitless, and open. The newspaper trade is steeped in convention and tradition, which blogs threaten.

(There is another aspect to this debate, one of high vs. low culture. There was snobbery towards newspapers when they first became mass-market, but how many blogs can be considered ‘high-culture’, or accused of intellectual snobbery? Have blogs democratized writing?)

Here, I’m a one-girl team: I am entirely self-edited, self-directed, and I have the wonderful freedom to write on whatever subjects I desire, in whatever style I want. This is a blessing and a curse: I’m saddled with the responsibility, and paradoxically freed, from deadlines and editorship. When I started writing, my main concern is how personal, how authentic I should be when I post. For once I am not using a pseudonym or username to hide behind. I am writing in propria persona, and my audience could include any of my friends, family, colleagues, and employers. Yikes!

Unlike traditional journalism, I’m not reporting news, and there’s no guarantee if I’m going to write a post tomorrow, or the day after. Maybe I’ll even skip a week, as I’m not on a schedule, and my readers aren’t paying me. Admittedly, my business with my blog is selfish: I’m writing first and foremost because I’m an incorrigible content-maker. I like making and publishing content. I benefit from the process of writing, as writing down my ideas forces me to think them through more clearly and carefully. If I aim to write posts with genuine value, then readers benefit too. All of this motivates me to write.

My basic aims are to:

(1) Be authentic as possible, in the hope that I can, eventually, contribute content of genuine value
(2) To avoid clichéd topics and phrases where possible
(3) To use the ‘open’ medium of blogging to its full potential
(4) To develop a consistent writing style, and
(5) To learn.

Matt Carey tells me that John Morgan of John Morgan studio is looking to hire a junior designer. “A fantastic person to work for, on great projects.”

I’ve just accepted a job offer at Future Platforms, a mobile design company, which I’m very excited about. I first met Tom Hume and Bryan Rieger at a Wired Sussex event when I first moved to Brighton, and I was delighted to be invited to an interview a few weeks ago.

As mobile has started to explore the spectrum of possibility, I have become increasingly interested in it. A mobile phone no longer does just 1 or 2 things. It does not even do 10 things, or 20 things. It does as many things as you can imagine and build. A mobile phone that can access web content and has a flexible and inviting platform for developers is unlimited.

One of the reasons I’ve been interested in mobile design is because it is a restricted format. I like restrictions because they are challenges you have to get around; in a way, restrictions are helpful guides. In the current state of play, anything a designer makes for a mobile device has to fit a small screen with a limited colour resolution. One of my projects in my final year at Reading University involved designing for mobile: specifically, I had to research routes from airports Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, and then condense the route into a sequence of images which would guide a student from the airport to Reading station. You can see part of the project here.

Though new devices are bringing users richer experiences, the nature of the device, which is smaller than our laptop and desktop screens, can’t compare. The content needs to be designed differently. Even the iPhone, which in my opinion gives mobile users the best experience available right now, isn’t perfect: anything which requires tapping and zooming isn’t optimised in the first place. It’ll be very interesting to see the developments in this field in the next few years, and I’m very excited to have an opportunity to work in this field now.

I’ve realised that the internet is largely to blame for my decision to become a graphic designer. Perhaps it was just the age into which I was born, but ever since it was first described to me, before I had even first “logged in” (the phrase held a mysterious lure for me from the beginning!) the idea of the internet has always held a very serious fascination for me.

“You can play a game of chess with someone in Australia”. — Wow!

So, it was the internet that led me to graphic design (specifically web design), and I remember having ambitions to work for Microsoft (c. 1999). If I think about what drew me to the internet, I can narrow it down to one word: communication, the prospect of connecting with people. I think that it is the principle of communication that is at the centre of many of my major interests. I am fascinated by the principle of how people can connect (the word du jour is share) with each other through technology.

Right now I’m interested in “social media” websites that are popping up everywhere. I’m interested to see how these sites develop to fulfill specific needs; and beyond that, I’m interested to see how they aggregate other social media websites, so they become virtual life-streams. Jaiku is one, and they describe their main goal as “to bring people closer together by enabling them to share their activity streams”.

This is a step forward. The next step I want to see is how this technology fits in with the lives of people. Of course we’re only a little way into utilising the possibilities for this kind of technology, and that is another reason that mobile, and especially the mobile web, is so interesting to me. The ‘Holy Grail’ for mobile social networks is, apparently, finding a way to use social networking technology in life. For example, profiles on demand:

Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

People are already adopting a kind of cybernetic approach to organising their lives via mobile and the internet. So if proper privacy settings were implemented, then I would love to see the idea of profile information on demand in practice. While I’d find this socially useful, I would not feel totally comfortable taking part unless I had the option to become anonymous or “go invisible”. I want the option to deny my profile information if it was requested. A danger of having “profiles on demand”, of course, is that they could evolve to become the norm, and even suspicious or unusual not to display your profile.