What happened to Comics 2.0 ?

While I am just starting to discover “Why I don’t need a Girl-Friend  ? ” which will be probably my next blog, but before that, I want to quench my lust for really big questions that could change the world.The following question is one among the questions that have been troubling me for the past three weeks.

In the pursuit for Utopian world as promised by the Web 2.0 ….Are we on the Right Track ? Are we missing something really crucial for the next big thing in Web 2.0 ?

I have done an empirical study of the failure of WebComics to really launch itself on the Web.I strongly believe WebComics have not even started on a journey to reach it’s potential zenith.The reasons …..I think there are many.But first let’s see the thought process I have gone through so far.

How did it start ? Ever since I was awestruck by the career changing knowledge sharing session by “long haired” Krish Ashok who happens to be my current boss, I have been thinking,thinking and thinking over many sleepless nights to be part of Web 2.0 which is changing the world and is promising of the elusive “Utopian society”.And me being a person who dreams of a perfect world for humanity and the universe , how can I be away from this revolution.So there started my six month struggle to get release from the project and join forces with the Web 2.0 troops that are marching towards building a “just society” under the hood of boosting profits to hungry DOT COM capitalists.

Independence from the Left’st brain I really do not know if I love my Creative and Artistic Right Hemisphere of my brain , because I never wanted to become an artist.My Left brain always dominated the “very Active” Right brain throughout my life.Now was the time for independence.

Coming to the Real point I am trying to make If you have survived the boredom reading till this point you are definitely eligible to read the rest of the blog.

COMICS 2.0

After digging through the internet for a week my ‘Right’ brain has painted a picture about origin , evolution and future of Comics in the human history.Below is a part of the image in my “Right” brain.I am sure people don’t read but JUST SCAN my lengthy blogs , but do READ THE PICTURE in detail even though they are meant to be just seen.Here is the history of comics in brief

What is so special about the Comics Format

Very Obviously , it is an amazing combination of picture and text , both complimenting each other very well.Picture can only suggest whereas Text has the disadvantage of explaining even the surroundings.In Comics format Picture takes care of the environment and the character descriptions and text can concentrate only of conversations.It becomes easy for the story-teller to balance the load equally on Text and Picture.

A good analogy would be of a Catmaran boat , which easily shares the enormous loads on both the hulls unlike the normal conventional ships which have only one Hull.In case of Comics , huge amount of information can be transferred within few pages with the load of description being equally balanced on TEXT and VISUALS.

MORE PERSISTENT THAN THE FILM and ANIMATION

According to this HumbleComics.com “Film and Animation,

Film and Animation , in contrast to comics , are visual but “time-bound.”Language and Action in film and animation are “fleeting”.The medium rather than the audience,dictates how quickly the viewing progresses.The same is true of a traditional face-to-face lecture;the speaker has primary control over the speed of the lecture.The text medium, on the other hand,shares comics’ “Permanent” component but not it’s “Visual permanence”,then is unique to comics.

Due to Comic’s unique persistent nature , it can be used as a tool for motivating the dull students.Studies have shown that introducing comic books have tremendously increased the understanding of the subject among the students.

Popular

HumbleComics.com goes on to support comics as a good tool for motivating the students and actually connecting with a child’s world.

American children are steeped in popular culture. While some educators simply ignore this reality, many others struggle to address it adequately. Timothy Morrison, Gregory Bryan, and George Chilcoat (2002) suggest that, by incorporating popular culture into the curriculum, teachers can bridge the separation many students feel between their lives in and out of school. Hutchinson (1949) agrees, stating that “there should be harmony between the child’s on-going life activities and his experiences in the school – new learning always is a continuation or expansion of learning already possessed by the learner” (p. 236). In addition, the inclusion of popular media promotes media literacy. It encourages students to “become critical consumers of media messages, having developed the ability through exposure to accurately appraise media content or quality and accuracy” (Morrison, Bryan, & Chilcoat, 2002, p. 758).

Teachers have found that comics motivate students in active participation than discussions about classic novels.Even classic novels can be made to read by the small kids by partially including the Visual Elements into books like Illustrated classics of Moby books.I remember myself addicted to books at the age of ten when I started reading Black Beauty.Since then I devoured many of the Moby’s Illustrated classics.

My All time favourite Time Machine by H.G.Wells(Left) , An example of One sided illustrations (Right)

Even at the age of 15 , after devouring so many illustrated classics , when I started reading “Invisible Man” by H.G.Wells ( Without any pictures) , I never reached the last page of the book. My mind liked pictures and pictures helped me read the text.

Learning made too Easy

For some reasons human history has been very cruel to this form of communication and has never given a place in the Literature.Comics are still viewed as a sleazy books filled with violence and deep cleavaged blondes.Hardly educationist realise that comics can make learning TOO EASY.

One example from my nostalgic childhood days include the Tinkle Comics.Unlike the Nagraj and Super Commando Dhruva comics which were cheap remakes of the American Super-Hero comics, Tinkle had it’s soul within Indian culture and folklore.It had amazing characters in funny short stories that had both moral and fun.The characters include Suppandi,Shikari Shambu,Kalia the Crow,Tantri the Mantri,Kapish and many others.Apart from funny stories it also had science demonstrations and documentaries in the form of continued images.Some of them include:

• Tinkle Tells you why
• Anu Club
• Meet the ***  (Documentaries that showed Indian , World , Nature history in amazingly lucid format)

I even remember keeping a scrapbook in which I used to cut and paste these science documentaries.This picture shows the remains of the scrapbook.

Problems Challenges in Keeping this amazing form of communication alive

With the advent of computer games Comics have definitely faced a near extinction until WebComics came as a ray of Hope.Some of the WebComic sites in the Web 2.0 era are :

• http://www.drunkduck.com/
• http://www.webcomicsnation.com/
• http://www.moderntales.com/

But WebComics also have a set of problems.

All the Webcomic sites whichever is available now are using the same JPEG, GIF or any other valid image formats.Some sites like comiqs.com use Flash formats,due to which I am not able to view the site from my office network.

What is required is a generic format to represent Comic Strips , so that it is easier for the various sites and browsers to consider Comics Strips as DATA rather than BULKY IMAGES.

The recent development on WebComics is going in developing a COMIC BOOK MARK-UP LANGUAGE ( An XML based Comic Strip) . Also read this amazing article on CBML.If you are on INDIA domain also visit this link.

CBML will be the key for a new era in the Comic Art , and gain it’s rightful place in Literature.

Above blog was my interpretation about the History of Comics till now and the next phase of Comics in the History of Mankind.If you feel it to be eccentric enough or agree with my point please drop your valuable comments.Remember each comment counts in the process of changing the world for better.

Pinastro 1.9-A Stone Age man in the Web 2.0 world

Frankly speaking , this is what I am feeling like at the moment now , A man from Stone Age era , after getting released from my ex-project that was literally in the stone ages in terms of tools usage even the communication and collaborative tools were like Neanderthal’s “Hoo Hoo , Ha Ha “.Everything was in terms of word documents and spreadsheets.I am sick of spreadsheets that too in an Agile project.The ‘tasks’ allocated to my team were in a spreadsheet and never could be easily understood. It always took nearly half a day to read the spreadsheets and another two hours at the end of day to discuss the doubts on phone (with my boss at onshore).Gosh !!! then why did he create a spreadsheet if we could discuss it over phone.

Of course , I used to share my knowledge through e-mail (LOTUS NOTES) every week to everyone in the project, about what I discovered in the proprietary tool my project used to boost about.But the problem the probability of reading an “Information” mail is 1 in 100 , and the maximum people in my project was just 80.Nearly 30 mailboxes will always bounce back saying “The receiver’s mail box was full” and 40 of them will never read such mails and only 10 of them who read the mail were Testers who never used the tool. What was required was a Project level “Wiki” (a self correcting, self growing KM platform).We did had a KM platform but it always stinked due to the a huge repository of “Write-Only” and “Unusable” documents.

Why Mails never work ??

I even went on an ambitious plan to eliminate spreadsheets forever but was held back by the project bureaucracy and politics.I had another plan to correct the flaws in appraisal system , not because I have got low ratings in early part of my career but due to my I belief in the possibility of an Utopian era.I must agree though that the steps I took for changing the work place was very crude and primitive.I myself needed to learn a lot which I am doing now.

This blog is definitely not mutterings of a frustrated IT guy like my previous blogs this , this and this one.This blog is about my conquest of AJAX. In fact, it’s a sequel to one of my favorite blogs

So Dumb of me

For the last few days , I have been single mindedly trying to catch the AJAX snitch.The reason I am calling myself as dumb is because this site has made me realise that I have actually caught AJAX nearly a week ago and have implemented some ten small programs with AJAX TECHNIQUE (to be precise) but never realised it.

Yeah ! AJAX is a TECHNIQUE not a Technology.

Done or Still More ??

Unlike it happens in the Quidditch, that Game is over once the Seeker catches the Snitch , the Web 2.0 actually begins after the conquest of AJAX snitch.Javascript is definitely fun but it is very tedious to develop big projects based on AJAX , Javascript , DOM alone.We need frameworks which make Javascripts so easy.Yes I need to learn frameworks now.JQuery ( a lightweight Javascript library) also makes life easier.Again my analogy of AJAX with Quidditch is very amateur.

Technology is about plumbing work and the Customers don’t really care about plumbers

Whenever my colleagues in my last project tell me that “Mainframes is cool yaar.You get billed higher in Mainframes than any other technology guy”.I say “CRAP”.These are some TABOOS in which techy guys live with.The customer wants solutions , and Simple Solutions , not the Complexity which every Development project Programmer aspires to work in.

And Yes !!! I have successfully achieved the target of mission Pinastro 1.9

though it shouldn’t have taken such a long time (two weeks)

Is “Enterprise 2.0″ just a tamed version of “Wild” Web 2.0 ?

The earlier title of this blog was this “Is Enterprise 2.0 all about mimicking the success of Web 2.0 on the Consumer Internet? ” but since it was too long I changed it.I think the current title also doesn’t look short either

Well,this is yet another blog on Enterprise 2.0 , the font size of “Enterprise 2.0″ in Tag-Megham (Tag Cloud) is growing bigger and bigger.

I am currently pursuing a crash course on Javascript,PHP,DOM,XML and the elusive “AJAX snitch”.Though I have already touched it’s wings for a couple of times,it is still refusing to surrender.It could be any one of the reasons:

(a) AJAX is really really really really tough to understand and learn

OR

(b) I am the dumbest of all the “Geeks” who foolhardily jumps out of his comfort zones very often and claims that he has made a CHOICE.

Info:The XML bludger I mentioned in my previous blog was one of the dumbest doubts I have asked anyone.The mistake was in misnaming of the XML file.Phew…

Enterprise 2.0 , if explained from a reductionist’s point of view is something like a “Nursery” to protect the plants from the Harmful polluted atmosphere of the Internet due to the advent of Web 2.0.There’s again two different different schools of though (a) Optimistic Reductionists (b) Pessimistic reductionists

Optimistic Reductionists are those who think the Knowledge , Business and Communication model that has been a big hit in Web 2.0 world should also be utilized to maximise the efficiency of the associates and make more profits.

A Pessimistic Reductionists would think Enterprise 2.0 as an “electronic Employee Satisfaction infrastructure” to keep the ever growing addicts to social networking sites who basically belong to a generation that never has seen a day without being online atleast for one hour a day.

But there’s really more to Enterprise 2.0 , beyond the Reductionist’s views(which are ofcourse true,but only for the starters).

I view Enterprise 2.0 as a separate species specially adapted to environments where Information security plays a key role.Ofcourse, both the species (Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0) have the same origins (i.e. the Internet) still they are going to have a separate history of evolution here onwards.

If we still continue to develop Enterprise 2.0 with a reductionist’s view point, the genepool of Enterprise adaptation of Web 2.0 may suffer a stagnation.

As somebody says web 2.0 is all about “PLAY” and Enterprise 2.0 is about “WORK”.So is true this statement “Enterprise 2.0 is a pet Version of Wild Wild Web 2.0″.Provided we agree to extend our views about Enterprise 2.0 beyond the reductionist’s point of view, we can see amazing things.Almost the same amazement comes when you discover that you too have the CHI power.

Here’s a brief idea about what are the possibilities that open up , if we start thinking beyond from a reductionist’s point of view.Following is just a few of the possibilities that is bugging my beautiful mind and spoiling my sleep cycles:

(A) APPRAISAL 2.0 – A completely new way of Appraisal that promises “A fair , verifiable and possibly an unbiased appraisal system”.For starters think Appraisal 2.0 as “360 degree appraisal system with a Web 2.0, sorry Enterprise 2.0, flavour”.I am stopping here about Appraisal 2.0 as I have to digg a lot about it.

(B) WebComics 2.0 – My Ex-Project Manager was insisting that I should stay in his project as I am a good performer and he didn’t want to loose me.When I asked “What about my career, The Technology ?”.He said , it is only the business expertise that the American and European clients are preferring more than the Technology.I really do not know how far he was correct but One thing is Sure – Developers these days are also expected to be well versed with business.

The problem is Developers who basically are Geeks and never care if Karnataka and Tamilnadu is fighting over the Cauvery issue find it difficult to concentrate on business.The IT managers force the developers to do Business certifications by putting it in their goal sheets.

And everybody knows HOW EASY IT IS TO GET CERTIFIED.In the end , very few developers out of all the business certified ones actually know the business.What is needed is a CHANNEL in which the GEEKS understand better…Yes Comics ……Comics strips to explain the complex business scenarios will have a special niche in the Learning and Development department , even though WebComics didn’t do well in the “wild” Web 2.0 world.

Both Appraisal 2.0 and WebComics 2.0 ,has got a lot of scope in an Enterprise 2.0 world.The former is perhaps does not exist in the Wild version of 2.0, except things like Star Ratings blah blah blah.The latter didn’t do well in Web 2.0 , the reason for which I am still doing a research, but has got a lot of scope in the Enterprise version of 2.0.

NOTE: I promise my next blog will start with the good news about the capture of the AJAX snitch