Peanut Butter + Jelly

The site i choose to research is called tokyopop.. It is an american company that specializes in manga translation/printing. This website of theirs allows fans to post any manga related content in a wide variety of format. You can also purchase online manga to view, or download them into your mobile application.

1) Most people are here because they enjoy manga. Because it provides a platform to post illustrations, manga, blogs, avatars, fan-fiction, music, and videos(which is just a link off of youtube), people aren't limited to what type of medium to participate in. This allows users to post whatever they want. They are also clans that differentiates level of skills or manga style. Some clans specialize in only illustrations, while others focus on action genres.

2) This site has group communication in the form of clans. Most content seem to be completely public, though clans can be private and I think content posted in private clans are viewable within the clan only. Despite this, the participation remains extremely public, completed with shout-out. On a range from 1 to 10 with 1 being private and 10 being public I would call this a 7.

3) Right now there is too much information. The front page is organized into categories such as stars (something like super user), art (which is all about art/content), mobile (content for purchase), life (games, blogs, opinions, reviews), and hot (most popular user created manga). This makes it a bit confusing in the beginning to navigate, because when I look for manga in a bookstore I'm used to searching them by the genres (such as sports, martial arts). How important is star users in the manga world? I think if they eliminate the content not directly related to manga it would be much easier to navigate and easier for manga fans find what interests them.

Posted by ben chao at 12:26 AM | Permalink

This week Clay asked us to go to Flickr, Wikipedia, LiveJournal, Facebook, and/or FanFiction to look for some trends. Here are the ones I found

Community of Practice
Flickr categorizes photos by camera used to take the pictures. However, there seems to be very little discussion as to the techniques involved in taking the pictures. These aren't groups people join and have an active role in, it is just a category flickr created.

For active participation there are several specificgroups.

Yes I have a D50.

Personal
So in facebook you have the option to write wall-to-wall messages or send personal messages. I never really understood what the differences were. Some guy would always write me something on the wall that is directed towards me. A few days ago I got a message from a friend that was clearly directed towards me only but it was posted on my wall. I choose to reply via message cause I didn't want people to see what I wrote.

I think what intrigues me is how to people decide which medium to use when they write personal messages on facebook?

Posted by ben chao at 10:24 AM | Permalink

The cook book I made can be described as a network. Circle shapes represent ingredients, while rectangular ones are dishes. Each ingredient is connected to multiple dishes. I think something like this would be useful on a fridge, cause then you can see what dishes you can make with the ingredients you have. Of course, that would be a pretty big graph, so it would probably only work with simple dishes.

I thought this best represents how I think about food, or at least what goes through my head when I look into my empty fridge and try to decide what I can make.

Posted by ben chao at 01:38 AM | Permalink