Professional Practice Forum

Proposal of A Television Program
----------"Queen"

There is nothing perfect in the world, but we can try our best to make it better. Each woman has a dream to make herself more beautiful and happier. As we’re all holding the opinion that the first image that you show to men is of great importance, why not make up yourself? Helena Rubenstein (Polish born American Philanthropist and cosmetician, 1870-1965) once said: “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.” I do believe that is true. A beautiful look can bring you more confidence when facing the people. You may say that improving your knowledge is more important than the appearance. I agree that as an elegant lady, you’d better speak decent language and behave properly. A beauty from her heart, which is full of knowledge and intelligence, will make your conversation more elegant and therefore add some positive points to you. But how many people bother to look beyond the “not stunningly attractive” to the “perfectly normal and attractive person”? If you do not seize the occasion to attract him at first, how could he change his attention from your exterior to your heart when time goes by? More and more women are now becoming to care about how she looks, this television program will target at the audience's market of women who like to be beautiful, help women look better, and make them healthier and happier.

This "Queen"show is much like an American television series, which were called “Queer Eye for the Straight Guys”. As an one-hour “make-better” series, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” is designed for guys who want to get the girl, the job or just “the look”-more style, more sophistication, more chic. Leveraging the expertise and personalities of “The Fab Five,” the makeover unfolds with a savagely funny deconstruction of the subject’s lifestyle and messy home and evolves into a showcase for the hottest styles and trends. After imparting their invaluable tips, wit and wisdom, the Five ends each hour with the revelation of an empowered, stylishly complete straight man with a “Queer Eye stamp of approval.” Even men could have a “make-better” series, why cannot women?

According to the statistics, women spend much more time on watching television than men. So if we create a television program that only focus on women’s needs, I believe the program will attract the attention of most of the female audience, from young to old, and maybe even a few male audience as well. The program will be showed on the television at about 9 or half past 9 in the evening. At that time, most of our audiences have finished their dinner and done the cleaning; they will lie on the couch, have a cup of coffee or tea, and follow our beauty experts to learn some beauty tips or fashion trends. I shall name this television program "Queen" as every woman wants to be a queen or at least looks like a queen. I believe this program will be very popular and have high rating and I will give further explanations in the following part.

Looking into the television programs throughout history, none of the programs are specially run for female audience’s needs. But female audience is a large market that we should focus on. Presently, the fashion program is mainly concentrating on fashion information, mostly pay close attention to the news conference of the clothing, or analyse fashion trend. I have inquired many of my female friends, and as a woman myself, what woman really need is practical experience, demonstrate and useful guide. There is no such a television program that could combine information about fashion, beauty and health together, giving female audience a professional advice and helping them solve problems in our real lives.

A television program is presided over by an actress now in Taiwan, she has already had a baby and is over 30, but she still keeps fit and looks like in her 20s. The actress talks about her beauty experience and shares her matching skills on dressing in the show, which has actually aroused my inspiration. This program is called , which means beauty in Italian. Only one hostess does not have much persuasiveness and she is neither a beauty nor a fashion expert, we can not totally believe her. But even so, the rating of this television program is nearly up to 1% for a time, more and more audience who do not live in Taiwan download this television program from the Internet. The brand or products mentioned in the program are sold very well no matter in the high street market or on the Internet. From this example, we can get the idea that female audience really needs some professional advice and guidance, and this kind of television program does have a big market among female audience. What I want to do is just to make the program more professional, expand the topic, and attract more audience.

How do I scheme this television program - "Queen"?
First of all, the type of the program shall be orientated as a talk show. It is necessary to invite several experts to join in the show besides the hostess. Our audience needs professional advice! We call these experts vice-host or vice-hostess. Four or five experts are enough, while each should be an expert on cosmetology, make-up, dressing, hairdressing or fitness. These experts do not need to be in the show every time but depends on the topic. If the topic is about how to deal with acne, the expert on cosmetology will join the show, from medical science angle to analyse and solve the various kinds of problems that caused by acne. He or she will recommend the relevant products, or even test the product to see whether it is effective or not in the show. If the topic is about the make-up trend of a new season, the make-up expert will take the responsibility to tell the audience what the fashion colors of the season are, how to put them on your make-up and the differences between similar products. Even though he does not introduce products any more, what he used in the show are enough. If the topic is about the fashion trend of this summer, dressing expert will give examples of mix and match to teach you how to choose accessories and how to hide your weakness on your stature. If the topic is about how to make a suitable hairdressing for a party, the hairdressing expert will give a lesson to the audience step by step. If the topic is about how to dispel the superfluous fat on the arm, fitness expert may show several efficacious yoga exercises or recommend some healthy drinks.

Secondly, not only the host or hostess should be in the show but also a number of guests. I divide the guests into two groups; one would be the impersonator, while the other is a representative from the audience. Impersonators will share their personal experience or beauty tips in the show or work as the experts’ models. Representatives will ask the experts questions according to their own conditions, and the experts’ responsibilities are to solve these problems. The experts will correct their mistakes and give them proper guide.

Thirdly, because of all the brand of the products can not be pointed out in the show, so I decide to create a program’s web log on the internet, in order to list the details of all the products which were used in the show, names, brands, even where to buy. If someone is interested in the product, she can buy and try it herself. There will be an Ask & Answer column on the web log so that the audience can ask further questions or leave their comments on our show. Also, we can even help our experts create their own web logs, in order that every audience has a chance to ask questions to our experts. In this case, the hostess and audiences can get some inter dynamic information from each other.

Fourthly, we can collect the experts’ advices, guidance together, add some other information and then publish a magazine each quarter or half a year, or hold an audience’s meeting regularly, in order to meet the needs of the audience.

Though the commercial admonition that "It’s much easier to make money out of the female" has already been well proved, it does not mean that women can be easily cheated. The consumer is not a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. (Davik Ogilvy, American advertisement manager) The following chart has shown 5 kinds of different consumptions and proportion of modern Chinese women.



The chart shows that 33% of Chinese women are Life Seekers, most of them are single or living alone and having independent economy apart from their husbands. They like to alleviate their pressure through travelling and shopping, and they purchase luxury goods with an impulse while never think much about the future. 26% of Chinese women belong to Privileged Carefree. They were born in the affluence or the well off family, free from all anxieties; they pay close attention to the appearance while hold quite little of their own ideas. 21% of Chinese women are Cosmo Girls, they are mainly office ladies, believing that money is kind of a symbol of success, and they enjoy buying anything if they like. The other two parts are savers; they save up almost all their money. We could get a assumption that the first three kinds of women are the target audiences of our television program, and with the development of economy, the number of these kinds of women will be even bigger.

The most important magic weapon will be the impersonator appearing on the television without any make-up, facing the audience only with simple and unadorned appearance. They will the following the guidance and transformation to represent a totally different style or features. From the point of the audience (mainly female audience), they can not only see the impersonators’ original appearance (find out that impersonators have ordinary features as ordinary people, and thus added their own confidence), but also get to learn that the impersonators’ cosmetology and make-up methods had mistakes as well, and moreover, receive some practical cosmetic and dressing tips.

As we all know that rating is the life of a television program, and all those factors above will be the assurance of high rating. After the rating rose, the price of advertisement in this period will go up too, and as the result of which, the price of advertisement in the magazine and on the web log will be risen. Investment will begin to receive the repayment, which is sure to bring potential incomes.

The “Product Placement” of the relevant cosmetology products will bring a huge advertising profit to the television program indirectly. Product placement (PPL) is a promotional tactic used by marketers in which a real commercial product is used in fictional media, and the presence of the product is a result of an economic exchange. Product placement happens with the inclusion of a brand's logo, or a favourable mention or appearance of a product. This is done without disclosure, and under the premise that it is a natural part of the work. Even though both the experts and the hostess will not tell the brand of each product, through camera lens, audience can still see the logo or the look of the products, thus they go to the high street market or the internet to look for the products which they want.

Specialized experts, special guests, inter dynamic of the audience and the fashionable topics are the assurance of the high rating. The incomes of the advertisements, the markets of the subsidiary products are the guarantee of high profitability. After taking all of the above-mentioned into consideration, I do have the confidence that "Queen" is sure to lead the trend of the cosmetic fashion program. Women's cosmetics are exactly flourishing period in nowadays, and as long as audience have demands the program will exist. Successful program will attract others' imitation. The more it is plagiarized, the more success it will state. If the plagiarizing is lack of originality, it cannot make good either.

Thumb Revolution

Sending a New Year wish through SMS is already becomes a custom during Chinese New Year in China. The quantity of the national SMS of mobile phones is estimated to be about 12 billion in 7 day’s vacation of Spring Festival.

Short Message Service (also known as text messages, messages, or more colloquially SMSes, texts or even txts) has become a fad all over the world. Since 1992, a GSM network in Britain has succeeded in sending the first text message to mobile phone through a computer; SMS is developing at a surprising speed during this decade.


According to the statistics, in 2000, the SMS amount was more than 1 billion in China; it was 18.9 billion in 2001, reached 90 billion in 2002, and during SARS crisis in spring of 2003, the SMS presented the blowout phenomenon. The amount of SMS in mainland China was over 300 billion last year and it reached the half of the world. The media of China calls it as “thumb revolution”; the SMS of mobile phone spreads so rapidly that it already becomes “the 5th media”.

Why is SMS so popular? People send text messages to exchange information, maintain friendship, share their feelings and so on. SMS prevent people from embarrassment because sometimes it is much easier to write than to talk.
The most important reason is that you can “talk” to anyone without disturbing them at that time. Imagine you just heard a funny joke and you want to share with your friends. If you call them one by one, they will not know the joke unless they answer the phone. But if you send them text messages to their mobile phones, no matter what are they doing right now, even if the phone is powered off, they will read the message as soon as they pick up the phone.

Another important reason is a text message costs much cheaper than one minute talk. Especially in China, one minute talk (either calling or receiving) equals six text messages (receiving free), if someone only has a few words or several short sentences to say, he or she will obviously prefer sending a message to making a call.

SMS can not only maintain relationship, transmit blessings, but also can be a commercial tool. So a lot of SMS services appeared. Ringtones, wallpapers, news, games etc, all of these can be downloaded to mobile phones through messages. In the first half of 2005, China Mobile and China Unicom, which are two biggest telecom companies in China, had profited 34.8 million US dollars through their SMS services. The development of the SMS business hastens the birth of full-time or part-time SMS writers. It is reported that Sina which is one of the portal sites in China, has employed at least 50 full-time SMS writers. These writers create jokes, make ringtones, write blessing messages, and draw wallpapers etc. They must be full of imaginations and strong sense of humors, but they get highly paid. Some special websites also provide a platform that any netizen can upload and share their creations, even get paid from it. Any netizen who gets a good messages or pictures etc, can upload the message to the website that anyone can download it, the more people download the more he or she earns. Some netizens take this as a part-time job and some only because of interests. With the increase of SMS business, the mobile phone operators and websites will improve the quality and the assortment of SMS business constantly, so SMS writer has already become a kind of new job and the team will grow bigger and bigger.

SMS business comes from the user’s requires. The characteristics of SMS have already held the movement of the market. Base the point of view of consumer, SMS business has offered the swift, economic services. The characteristic which send and receive at anytime anywhere has conformed to the rhythm of modern business. The cheap price is also a lure to everyone. And, the combination of SMS and the network, has enriched the content of SMS, has lent an impetus to SMS business.

In addition, SMS business also brings Win-Win: the mobile phone customers are satisfied with the swiftly and cheaply services, the operators make a profit in the market. Especially since 2003, the SMS business has saved a lot of portal websites; non-advertising income becomes an important share of the gross income.

With the improvement of the popularity of mobile phones, more and more people get used to using SMS to contact each other. No matter in festival or in peacetime, SMS has already become one of the most popular and swiftest ways of communication.

To Sum Up

Citizen journalism not only changed the pattern of the news media but also changed people’s role. Everybody could be the report person, at the same time everybody is a news consumer too. Either report or receive, you must have a way that can communicate with other people. The most effective way is to create a weblog now. Dave Pollard had analyzed people's communication and the purpose to communicate in his blog.

Creative commons is a brand new way to communicate with others; this kind of collaboration knocks down the walls between reader and author, or listener and composer, between audience and artists, between community and citizen or culture and creator. These kinds of collaboration tools, including weblogs, wikipedia, flock, flikr, creative commons, should be more and more popular on the internet in future. Under creative common licenses, people can share information with each other. They collect information from the internet and present their ideas, knowledge as sources to public at the same time, and let others use these sources. It’s a big revolution which breaking down culture boundaries all over the world.

RSS can help you shorten your time by avoid visiting dozens of Web sites and trying to remember them. As I mentioned before, RSS = push locally, pull globally, using an RSS tool, you can get the latest news which you are interested in and you will be the first to get the necessary information. You will always be ahead of the others.

Citizen journalism, creative commons, RSS, their spirits are all communication and collaboration. If a citizen journalist creates a RSS feed in his blog or allows his creations under creative commons licenses, there will be more people visit his blog than the one who didn’t do so. The more he reports, the more he receives. The same as RSS and creative commons, the more you connected, the more you get, the more you use to created yours.

That becomes direct ratio. I think that is the benefits we get from communication and collaboration.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a new system, built within current copyright law, that allows you to share your creations with others and use music, movies, images, and text online that's been marked with a Creative Commons license.

For example, http://ccmixter.org is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons, where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want. We can see people' s works on the left side of this page and they also show their license to us, on the right side they specify which samples did they use in their works.

As far as I know, a rock singer from Taiwan has already published an Asia first CC authorized disc which called "Jesus of rock".

I found something interesting on the internet, there are two Chinese students re-performed a song from backstreet boys which called 《as long as you love me》. They used this song as their background music, performed it with the overstating mouth type and limbs movement. They did these comical acts in order to make it more humorous. That is what we called a parody.

Does parody exist in Creative Commons? The answer is yes. But you can use some of the license to avoid this. There are six main licenses offered when you choose to publish your work with a cc license. Through making up, there are 11 ways to be suitable for your choosing altogether.

At last, I want to show you a Graphics Interchange Format which was created by myself two years ago. My inspiration was originated from one of my friends, she put several photos together to make a graphics interchange format and posted it on the forum to let other friends to see.



But I thought it was a little bit boring, so I added some words on each of her photo. Because sars is prevailing at that time, so I wrote something about sars. The general idea is if you were in a predicament, like sars, the only way to overcome is to handle affairs calmly.

When I posted my creation on the forum, my friend thought it was more interesting than her work even though I changed her original intention. Last night I asked her what is her opinion about this GIF now, she said: you’d better change the word “sars” into “bird flu” at present.

RSS = push locally, pull globally

Trying to find what's new on the internet, however, used to be a tedious process, which involved visiting dozens of Web sites and trying to remember which stories I'd read and when.

RSS, an acronym that doesn't expand to any one definition, is better described as "push locally, pull globally."

I downloaded one of the RSS news reader tools which is called FeedDemon. FeedDemon and NewzCrawler are the most powerful ones in RSS news off-line reader software at present. Compare these two, the function of NewzCrawler is much stronger than FeedDemon, it can not only read the content of RSS channel but also release Blog. But it is a pity that NewzCrawler can’t support to Chinese localization very well, so I finally chose FeedDemon.

Now I will give you a brief introduction to this software.

This is a basic interface of FeedDemon, it can be divided into 3 parts, from left to right are Channel Bar, Headline Bar and Read Bar.

To subscribe to an RSS feed, you install news aggregation software or create an account at a Web site that manages the process and scans Web sites for updates. Sites that offer RSS feeds usually have a small icon or the words "Syndicate This Site" linked to the feed's Web address.

A user copies the link from that icon or text typically by holding down the mouse or right-clicking and selecting Copy Link, and then pastes it into the news aggregator. The news aggregator verifies that the link is valid, then adds the feed to the list it monitors.

Most aggregators check for updates to a feed on a defined interval: every 30 or 60 minutes at a certain time after the hour. Updates on demand are also possible in many programs and sites.

If the file contains newer items than the last time the software checked, the aggregator software flags the item as new, displaying the latest headline and an abstract.

Every time a new item is found, the aggregator software presents it to you as a new item, much like a new e-mail message. And there will be a little pop-up window at the bottom of your desk-top.

If you're using standalone software, the item shows up in a list that you can then select to read a summary of (if one exists) or double-click to open in a Web browser. You can also receive RSS updates integrated with your e-mail or via a Web site.

Here is another important function we should know about this software. If you want to focus something special in your channel, you can create a new watch to meet your requests. A watch searches incoming news items. When a channel is updated in FeedDemon, this watch will collect news items which contain the keywords you entered before.

For example, I want the watch to help me in my major project, so I titled the watch “major project” and entered the keywords “citizen journalism” and “mobile” then click OK.

You will see there are 7 items now in the channel which contain the keywords.

If a blogger on my list updates his blog which contains these keywords, my watch channel will also update as soon as he did. In other words, all the news that fits, it pulls. That is why we called it “push locally, pull globally.”

RSS also has its disadvantages. Not all the website support RSS, even though there are so many versions that we should care about the compatibility. Sometimes when I added a new website it turned into a corrupted file. But after all, using RSS tool is really a good way to get the latest news on the internet, and I am looking forward to its helpfulness to my major project.

Real-Time Media Theory

Let us remix culture
---Yi Cui (Cathy)

“All Rights Reserved” – as the only way we know to protect our copyright has been so abused that everyone might violate other’s copyright any time, even sometimes unawares. People only know to declare “All Rights Reserved” on all of their works; although some are actually the re-creations from other achievements themselves. As a result, nether the rights of the original creator can be fully respected, nor those outstanding works, no matter an artistic product, a literary work, a personal thought or any other digital works, could be best used or most widely spread.

Nowadays, many countries are giving acquiescence to the rights of the original creators, while more and more people are beginning to realize that there’s no need for them to keep all rights reserved. On the contrary, they prefer to choose “Some Rights Reserved” or even “No Rights Reserved”.

“Creative, Authorize, Share”, just like what this slogan said, Creative Commons is an organization which devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to legally build upon and share.
There are 4 main licenses offered when you choose to publish your work with a creative commons license. Through making them up, there are 11 ways to be suitable for your choosing altogether. These modes of combination give more flexible and convenient choice to the creator of their works.

These kinds of collaboration knock down the walls between reader and author, or listener and composer, between audience and artists, between community and citizen or culture and creator.

For example, Flock is a free, open source web browser which is popular among the netizens lately. In other words, people can collect or publish information with character, pictures, music and so forth by only use one browser: Flock. It can be that easy when you skip the intermediaries. It is easy for everyone to contribute to and participate on the web. Flock makes you easier to blog, publish your photos and share and discover things that are interesting to you which means you are not only a reader but also an author. These kinds of collaboration tools, include weblogs, wikipedia, flock, flikr, creative commons, should be more and more popular on the internet in future.

As long as appearance of weblogs, wikipedia, and flickr on the internet, people enter a new era of collaboration. That means, people can share information with each other. They collect information from the internet and present their ideas, knowledge as sources to public at the same time, and let others use these sources. It’s a big revolution which breaking down culture boundaries all over the world. You can be a co-author with someone you never met. Different culture, different religions, different ages, but under you and your co-author’s collaboration, you may create an outstanding work, even much better than to create it with a person who has the same background with you. To take a bit and make it new, not to copy but to remix culture. That sounds really excited.

But the problem comes at the same time. Different backgrounds different culture, your co-author may misunderstanding your original intention, create a work which you do not like or make your work a parody intentionally.

Look at these pictures below:





















The fat boy in the picture is a famous person who is always used in funny pictures lately in China. He always does the same look as you can see which stands for satire and prank. But now he is making fun of the Statue of Liberty and American President Bush, what do you think if I show these two pictures to a guy who is from America?

















This picture is comparing President Bush’s expression with a chimpanzee, but in the middle of the picture, there is a sentence instead of a face from the chimpanzee: “I apologize for this latest entry. I can’t find a chimp making a face as dumb as this one.” Can I sent this picture to an American people and said that: “Hey, I found some similarities between President Bush and the chimpanzees!”

Is that means the collaboration between people who do not know each other is not as good as we wish?

In my opinion, nothing is prefect in the world, Collaboration has more advantages than disadvantages to all of us, it really takes effect between different culture and different people. What we should do is to avoid these disadvantages and to enhance its advantages in future, and make collaboration more effective to our creations.

Collaboration makes you standing on the shoulders of your peers, it is a free culture created in Real-Time. Let us remix culture, and I think that is what the internet is all about.

Love will find its way

I believe love will find its way...