The first thing I can say about this article is WOW!!! I have to say I was really surprised by the amount of content that this article produced. I can honestly it took me a couple of hours to read this from top to bottom. I printed it off the net and it took up at least fifteen full pages.
From this article I learned a lot of valuable information that I believe will be useful in the future. I have gained a lot of information from the various sources listed within the article (I even managed to see Dr Jerz’s name mentioned as one of the reference sources listed!!!).
This article basically describes the whole history of blogging in extreme detail and what it says is very true in my personal opinion. The authors have an interesting perspective on blogging. She goes onto say how blogs have a social meaning- and quotes things such as ‘Blogs can be both public and intensely personal… they are addressed to everyone and at the same time to no-one.’
I have learned that blogging is a way of communication between different communities with different interests. It states that for centuries people have wanted to learn ‘news values,’ and that without these we probably would have had the scientific development of our time. Even though blogging was first developed in the 90’s the principle of it has been round for a long time. Things can be exposed through a blogging community extremely quickly. Nowadays if people want to find things they look on the internet and within seconds they have their information within seconds. If they want to express their views and opinions they now have the ability to do so through blogging for example.
I think generally what this article is trying to get across is that people rely heavily on ‘information’ to get on with their daily lives which is very true in this respect without information people would not know what is going on within the world. There would be nothing to communicate about, no one would have opinions – the world would be a very dull place.
The article goes onto describe all the benefits blogs can take and how communities can be formed and the benefits that the bloger can gain. It suggests that in general bloggers are authors, and in expressing their opinions they are letting others see what they think.
It goes onto describe that blogging is like a ‘media monitoring service’ which is very true. Everyone, as a blogger wants to be heard in my opinion. They want to express their views and promote their feelings on a particular subject.
From this article I have learned a lot of new things about the significance of blogging- I feel it’s going to get bigger and bigger as time goes on- more people will learn of it and realize it is the new way to communicate electronically and I’m sure it will develop into a much broader area.
For this assignment I chose two weblogs to write about. The first was found at the following URL -
http://www.nyspurs.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=115&PN=1
Within this weblog a set of people from New York have set up a blogging site that allows a variety of supporters to criticise or praise the team for their performances and efforts. obviously since this site is open for mainly tottenham supporters it is all orientated towards the team but supporters of other clubs are free to join the forums and critise spurs. This is good because if there was no rivalry between soccer fans there would be no fun in soccer.
The second weblog I decided to investigate was one that reflected reviews on movies. I am a keen movie watcher and i am aware that people have opposite views about different movies. Obviously some critics have nothing but praise for a movie whereas others can only critisise the small flawswhich make the movie not as appealing.
The URL for this movie can be found at the following address -
href="http://www.tagliners.org/archive/00900.html">http://www.tagliners.org/archive/00900.html
Both of these weblogs differ a great deal from what I learned in the presentations given on friday. These views are not as personal from what i seen before, they are more open to the general public and more open for critisism. There is a good style to what is given out in these sites in that anyone is free to express their view as and how they want regardless of the consequences. I think these two weblogs show a great deal aboutthings that interst me in my life so I am obviously happy to read about them. From the previous panel I learned that weblogs were like a diary, to me the weblogs I have chosen are more orientated to the particular subjects in matter.
I decided to post a comment to the soccer site just basically agreeing with what people said. Everything i seen posted seemed to make sense and most things about the club were positive about the club which is always good, a few people were open for critisism but that definitely is to be expected from a soccer weblog.
Within this weblog the blogroll has a link to many sies and forum, they include things such as NY Spurs and web updates etc.
Generally these blog rolls are to quite a high standard but I feel there could definetely be more to improve the quality of the site in a whole.
Hi there, my name is Simon Andrews. I am a transfer student at Seton Hill University. I am here for one year on a business program. I have been set the task of creating a portfollio of my best entries for this particular class. It is called Writing for the Internet. This class is lectured by a man known as Dr Dennis Jerz, throughtout this course he has given me a lot of knowledge on various matters concerning how things should be done on the Internet. We have been introduced to a concept known as blogging. The simplest way to define this is by forming opinions of things that are written and displayed on the net, that you may agree with or disagree with. But that is the beauty of blogging- no one has the wrong opinion, everyones voice counts for something and through this type of critism i feel the web can become a stronger source for people who want to gain the right information.
For this particular class I am expected to undertake seven student panels. This is basically seven different matters that have a direct relationship to the internet. Those seven panels are as follows-
1 Introduction to Weblogs
2 Introduction to Weblogs 2
3 The History of the World Wide Web
4 Before Web Browsers
5 Current Issues in Cyberspace
6 You cant do that with text
7 Topics in Cyberfiction.
As you can see from above I have choosen five separate panels that I found where most useful, I have reviewed them and given my opinion on the links that are highlighted.
For part of this cousrse there were three different books to read they were-
1 BlogTalks.
2 Writing for the Web.
3 Web Writing That Works.
Click on the above links to view my opinions and understanding and knowledge of what I gained looking at these books.
I feel a good piece of work that I done can be found at the following blog entry. It reflects my thoughts on playing an Interactive fiction game.
Review of an Interactive Fiction Game
Another example of my work is below.
Comparing weblogs
This is my portfollio I hope you are intersted to read my views and opinions mthat I have stated.
Because back home, in Ireland I undertake my major in computing, I found that most of the areas that were discussed I had learnt about previously within my course. All presentations given allowed me to build on this knowledge slightly which is always of benefit.
Dennis Jerz provided a good insight into SPAM and how to get rid of it. I was never sure how it got into your e-mail inbox but now I am fully aware of the tricks that users undertake in order to send you that terrible thing known as 'Junk Mail'.
Leslie Rodriguez kind of scared me when undertaking her presentation - I was literallyshocked to find out implications of file sharing, although everyone does it I did not realise the effect it had on peoples livelyhoods- it is literally stealing- since this I had a severe review of my ethics and from now on I'm going to be a role model and buy album in shops rather than trying to get them at a reduced fee online.
This book is called Hot Text and is written by Jonathon Price. Out of all three books I have talked about this I found to be of the most interest to me. It proves useful in teaching you to get the best from your writing techniques. It gives tips for producing e-newsletters. This book is a definite must read and I would strongly recommend it.
This is a very short book( can be probably be read in half an hour) basically giving the user advice and tips how to get the best out of web logging. It basically breaks down the steps that should be necessary to undertake and design a web log that will be of great use to someone who does not know anything about computers or most importantly web logs.
This was a very interesting panel indeed. The greatest thing I feel I learnt here was that of the matter of Wilkis. Michael Ioro portrayed the subject extremely well in my opinion. He made me realise what exactly a Wilki was used for. I did not realise such a thing existed, it is amazing the face by clicking on word you literally have access to thousands of different references- it is just like an encyclopedia which can constantly be updated and changed by the users themselves, this concept is pretty amazing in that users can write what they want online and it will be referenced.
Moiras interactive fiction presentation was a real learning curve for me. It brought me back to my childhood days were I used to play these types of games. I managed to play a couple of games one being Photopia, this provided such a challenge to me as a 22 yr old. I could not believe its complicity but managed to get it through it eventually!
This was extremely intersting to learn about I did not realise the internet has been around longer than we actually think.Vanessa provided good links to sites about history. They are definetely worth checking out.
This book is written by Crawford Killian. It is a relatively short book that is mainly about being creative online. It was definitely an intersting in that I was able to gain valuable knowledge and tips from the author and different techniques for being creative on the web. He goes into a great deal of detail and lets the readerlearn about different styles of writing on the Internet and provides tips which I think are beneficial to us the writer. He tell it how you go about producing work that appeals to the audience and what measures should be taken in order to achieve this. This is a definite recommened read for all writers who want to get their word across on the net.
A lot goes into making a good weblog. From this panel I was able to gain a lot of knowledge on things such as how a weblog looks. Im sure it is just of natuaral opinion that if your weblog is attractive to the eye it will have good appeal to its target audience. In saying that im not sure sure that I agree with Valeries choice of background color - it is purple at an extreme! From this presentation I learned a lot about personalising your blog. It is definetely of an extreme benefit to do so.
Chris also impressed me by what he had to say. This was an excellent presentation of letting me know the exact importance of weblog and things such as who benefit from them. From these fiirst two panels I think I gained a lot more necessary information in assisting me develop weblogs to a relatively high standard. Before this I generally did not voice my opinion online, but from this I feel I will definetely be a lot more confident in my approach to weblogging in general and hopefully in the future reflect on this knowledge I have gained and use it to my advantage.
For my individual project I have to think of three ideas that would be feasible to undertake from the knowledge I have gained within the web authoring course to date. It is important that I take into consideration a number of factors but the main one is that I should concentrate more on the writing than on the technical aspect in developing the project.
For my first idea I am going to think about is producing a simple interactive fiction game. I would obviously have to look at how these games would be developed i.e. the code used in order to produce them. I have looked at various interactive fiction websites and I was able to come across this particular site - http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~wsr/IF/ which has links to numerous sites on how these games can be developed. I think, if I do decide to undertake this particular suggestion this site will come in extremely useful. It will be a good basis for the beginning of the development of a good idea.
My second idea is to develop a website that will review my favorite soccer team. Within this site I will have links to various pages related to different areas of the club. For example, I will give a review of each of the players - i.e. how they are performing etc. I got this idea from the following website - http://skysports.planetfootball.com/ - this is a good sports site as it reviews stories as they happen - it is up to date and contains very accurate information on hand.
My final idea is to undertake a task that will involve developing a wilkapedia that will create sites to things to do in Ireland, my home town. I would do an extreme amount of research and the advantage of the wilkipedia is that I can constantly update my site to have in it exactly what I want and how I want it.
Taking all these ideas into consideration I think the best one for me to develop would be to develop the website. I feel this would be done best as I have had a bit of experience back home in this field of work. I feel I could undertake this particular task to the highest and the best of my ability.
Simon Andrews