PORTALS AND SERACH ENGINES

In Portals you can do search itself whereas website is a combination of web pages which provide information. Eg- If Madonna makes a website about herself, she will add about her likes and dislikes and other personal things. But if i make a website of Madona then i would not add whatever is present in her website rather i will add something different about Madona and i will provide a link to her website so that anyone can easily access through my website.

When you open yahoo.com your first thing comes to your mind is email. Yahoo is a portal whichprovide various links. Yahoo started as email service and Google started as search engine.

Yahoo search engine is secondary thing and Google mail is secondary. Now Gmail has got many other features in it like news, orkut, group etc. On google.com you will only find search engine. On yahoo.com you will find many features. i Google provide you the feature of customization. Yahoo is offering also offering the page and Google is also offering you the page but the priority of google remains the search. We come to Google .com for search only. But Yahoo.com provide number of features like games news etc. Another website get open in within yahoo.

In portal many websites are parked. Yahoo Games is a portal but Miniclips.com is a website. If someone comes to yahoo.com then he/she should not get out of yahoo for anything. Yahoo provides evrything the user wants. This is called WALL GARDEN. Anything of indiviual interest can be found in a portal. Any website caters to the single interst. For eg miniclip.com is focused only on games. Portal caters multiple interest for multiple people. Portal is a place where no. of websites stay.

SUKET KUMAR SINGH

September 4

The most important thing to be kept in mind while writing on web is-

• Need
• Necessity
• Interest
• Relevance
• Target Audience

Search Engines search on keywords and most viewed articles. When one randomly see a link/photo (which plays an important role in searching), one clicks on it and read articles. Therefore the heading/title of the article should be small. Along with this the heading and first two paragraphs of the article should contain the major keywords so that it becomes easy to access. Therefore one should repetitively use the name of the keyword to make it accessible. For example, if one is writing about an actor, he/she should write his name, event, location ad anything important instead of he or it. Whereas that is not the case with newspapers as the newsperson has the liberty to write a headline of his choice alongwith constraint of space.

Views are based on access and importance. If suppose two websites same to the point information, then navigation and accessibility makes it important. Therefore the web writers have to face various challenge-

• Online visitors are impatient and do not have much time to spare. The website's content should be precise and to the point. It is lso required to make a balance between making a point quickly and making it impressively.
• The content of the webpage should be broken into small, easily readable paragraphs.
• Make it user friendly.
• It can have hyperlinks attached to it for further information on a topic of interest instead of writing same information again.
• Use language that is easy to understand and simple.
• Avoid writing a content without a clear focus or aim.
• Write genuine, unique and impressive content for website visitors.
• Validification and verification is very important for any webpage. It is necessary to generate flexibiltiy and gain credibilty.

Broadly there are five ways of writing-

• Quality
• Usefulness
• Relevance
• Audience
• Presentation

Shikha Garg

28th August 2008

3 things that a web journalist must know:
1. Usability and applications
2. Web writing
3. Know your audience

Primary and secondary objectives:

News channels like NDTV, CNN IBN and newspapers like TOI etc have news websites (online editions) but those are secondary objectives. Therefore one can say that Rediff, which has an independent news website, has better news as the sole focus of rediff is on web news.

Similarly e-bulletins of NDTV etc are Part B (secondary) objectives and not Part A (primary).

(E bulletins – anything given in the form of videos (online). E.g youtube has e bulletins.)

Online editions of TV news channels are extensions of the existing channels (same for newspapers).
e.g If TOI is going to print an exclusive for the next days printing. It will not put it up on its website for fear of it being leaked.

Challenges for web contributors:
1. Should have the ability to search through millions of material published online.
2. Find such ‘ingredients’ that are of interest to everyone. Ex In TOI – Delhi times for youngsters and other sections like political news, business, cartoon strips, crosswords rtc that cater to almost every need.
( SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. The 1st 10 links that come up while searching are on the basis of usability.)
3. ‘Online’ is focused. A large no. of users are either youth or professionals. People search because of an ‘element of knowledge’ i.e. to know more and to be more knowledgeable.
General Nature of using the web (Those people use the net who want to :)
1. Know more
2. For job opportunities
3. Pursue interest ( hobbies)
Usability: two way communication or interactivity.
When we create something we should keep in mind the fact that it may not have automatic readership. If the message is clear cut then readership will be automatic.
Ex: A message saying ‘free movie tickets’ will NOT be clicked on by a majority of people as most people see it as a gimmick.

The kind of people who use the net:
1. know computers
2. Are proficient in English
3. Educated class
4. Have a background where there is an urge to know more or connect more.

Difference between :-
1. need and a necessity:
Need: doing MMM
Necessity: informing the teacher about not coming a particular day.
Need: Changing old tv to new
Necessity: Giving TV

To know more and provide more is ‘engagement’. One can’t be engaged without knowing more and providing more.
The net gives Constant interactivity – constant engagement. One person uses the others information and vice versa. Therefore these people belong to what is known as the ‘virtual community’. They are ‘engaged’ with each other.
2. Usefulness and relevance
Information is either ‘useful ‘or ‘relevant’. Useful information can be relevant but not vice versa. Eg: Knowing where UK is, is relevant. Its useful if you ever go there.
Relevant Information gives you an edge- gives knowledge to an audience you don’t know. Therefore for this audience, info should be useful and relevant.

One can write for either one – need or necessity.
Link all these while writing: 1. Need and Necessity, 2. Usefulness and relevance
While writing, provide knowledge about the material first and then add some useful information or relevant info which can be used later.
There is an ‘order of preference’. Apply it on yourself. How would you like to get information- what order etc .
The substance that one writes has to be ‘eye-catching’. The substance has to have meaning and should be out of the ordinary to catch attention. Write to catch attention. Catchy writing with no substance tends to be skipped over. Therefore only if it’s relevant and useful will it catch your attention.

Maasoom Dhillon

August 21

A quick wrap up!

Media cannot be seen through antiquated pair of glasses, rather it needs a unique frame and more mature approach. The different standpoint is of course, given by the booming online media in boots with exciting mobile communication.

The Web medium offers you the enormous choice to read edit and post your comments. It means one will have the ultimate power to control the information flow. Forget editors and publishing houses since readers are the latest owners of information. “They are the Media”. They may not constitute the Media Elite, but they are editors and journalists in their own sense. The wide space offers us all to write, share and comment on articles and posts.

We no longer need a particular media house to serve us the information. We can widely access it through Internet, pump our opinion to it and therefore churn out a good piece of information. Unlike the bulleted information, which formed our knowledge base for a long time, today’s world hinges on the two-way communication. Instant feedback and prompt comments give us a better way to connect with the outside world.

The competition is on ever time high, media houses are vying for breaking news, amidst all what reaches consumers in the quickest time is e-news, where the deadline is next minute.

Internet is the buzzword these days. It is a jungle where horde of content is posted every minute. So, how will we emerge as a winner? Why will people read us? For making a different impression on the fleeting minds of people, writer/blogger should make sure his articles are interesting and captivating. And at the same time it should be credible enough to rely on.

Hence, good writing should have a sense of authenticity sprinkled with a flavour of wittiness so that whosoever reads it, falls in love with your article. The impression of your post should not wear off; people should keep in their mind for long.


Shruti Kakkar

August 14

website writing skills
how to write on the web? This is the question that we often come across.
Since we all know that the pages or the display space on the net is very limited so ideally we need to be very precise, to the point, direct, crisp and attention grabber as a writer. Important stories should be displayed on the page 1 and then the successive less important stories can be displayed in the inside pages, in a way the funda of displaying matter on the web is same as that on the print. We needs to PRIORITIZE our understanding to the knowledge of NEWS and INFORMATION. The principle behind the website writing and the print writing is same. As we all see in the newspaper that regional, political, national and metro and many other are the sub sections of the newspaper same is the case with the website .

The logic behind writing the newspaper is that it is created on the basis of the priority of the information importance, which will turn out to be the item called as news. Collective information should be the aim of the websites and the newspapers with which the information priority is decided.
Another important aspect that we are observing, now a days is that newspapers size has grown considerably.The appetite for the news has grown but the newspapers are not able to cope with the niche up interests of the growing users. Therefore the websites are created and as the usability of the information is of the 24*7 and the control now lies in the operators hand. Unlike earlier , the newspaper editor or the publisher had the liberty to publish news which he thouggh was important .but today that is not the criterion. The information seeker is also the information maker and infact information gainer.
Website is a jungle but not as mess.On a website one can find loads of information but in a supervised manner. There is a typical behavior of the user that we need to understand.

The Internet user access the information with 2 aspects in his mind-I know
I Don’t Know.
Depending on the Interests which also can be of 2 types: Self generating interest
Somebody creates an interest in you
Our concern is with the priority of the news .we should not neglect the fact that a person can change his habit on the advice of another person. for example , if a person X has the habit of regularly visiting site abcd.com but on the advice of his friend person Y , he also visits the site efgh.com which he find great and starts visiting it regularly.This shows that it is really hard to get onhold of your audience for long time in this age od computers.

Every piece of news is information but every piece of information cannot be news. Because of the interest of the general masses. The news item presented must excite a large amount of people.

Further in the class we studied the difference between the website and the portal. Since large user base has started interacting then the websites have become portal ,accessed by million of people- people of various multiple interest.

Continous change in the presentation style of the news is taking place. Today the Present information style is in the form of writing, this is one aspect of the website journalism but another aspect of the website journalism which is taking on is of – audio and video.

In the class we studied about the Bindra’s achievement as a case study. we took 3 website where this news of Bindra coming back home was published –IBNLive, NDTV, REDIFF. Of all the worst written news item was by NDTV and the best-displayed news item was by Rediff. But again their news presentation parameters were different. What I mean to say is that –NDTV already has a news channel so it is expected that the coverage of this particular news item must have been telecasted live but the news item displayed should have been crisp and short and factually right .Also with the correct usage of the words. For example: arrives home is not correct usage instead it should have been reaches home. The story on the NDTV was dry and it did not made the presence feel that the item is going live. Another aspect that needs to be kept in the mind is that news written on the net is in present form, what one will write will be displayed and published then and there. No vague terminology and no exaggerated coloring to the news item should be done. It should create an excitement and should taste well since its very competitive and only to be written there.

In the other cases of the news like on the IBNlive – the story was supported with the pictures. One clear aspect that was shown was that –navigation and the homepage should be displayed properly. Here the picture should not have displayed on the 1st click of the story page.

In the study of the rediffmail- simple writing and then the pic was uploaded. Each picture has a story. They build the story with the pictures with the corresponding texts.

In the end the writer on the web should know that for whom am I writing for!!!!!!!

Priyanka Mittal