Some weblogs are really just private diaries intended only for a handful of family members and close friends. Usability guidelines generally don’t apply to such sites, because the readers’ prior knowledge and motivation are incomparably greater than those of third-party users. When you want to reach new readers who aren’t your mother, however, usability becomes…
The Internet is now teeming with some 15 million blogs. Although the medium first drew mainstream attention with commentary on high-profile events such as the presidential election, many now use it to chronicle intensely personal experiences, venting confessions in front of millions of strangers who can write back. Nearly half of bloggers consider it a…
While blogging has real intellectual payoffs, it is not conventional academic writing and shouldn’t be an academic’s main focus if he or she wants to get tenure. But to dismiss blogging as a bad idea altogether is to make an enormous mistake. Academic bloggers differ in their goals. Some are blogging to get personal or…
There are some things that become so ubiquitous and familiar to us – so seemingly obvious – that we forget that they actually had to be invented. Here’s a case in point – the weblog post’s permalink. I mean – let’s think about it. The problem was that a weblog’s front page is by far…
I wonder what they call it when you can’t think of what to write in a weblog? Writer’s Blog, weblock? —Anna-Marie —Comfortably Numb (ilex) One of Mike Vitia‘s students coins a term. Students in several of my classes are engaging in drive-by blogging, which is the flurry of entries that one posts just before the blogging…
Leaving a comment on someone‘sweblog is like walking into their living room and joining in on a conversation. As in real life, online there are some people who are a pleasure to converse with, and some who are not. Good blog commenters add to the discussion and are known as knowledgeable, informative, friendly and engaged.…
—BlogSearch (Google) Google’s new blog search engine. Looks like it pays too much attention to splogs (fake websites that look like blogs, but exist only to drive traffic to commercial sites). Nevertheless, I found a few references to SHU blogs that I didn’t see in other search engines. Similar:How We Found Tom Price’s Private JetsGreat behind-the-scenes…
O professor deve deixar claro o que espera. Não traduzi por falta de tempo, mas é uma proposta muito estruturada e, em parte, inspirada pelo fato dos alunos terem uma preocupação maior com o como serão avaliados do que com o que vão aprender. —Refletindo sobre blogs (Projetos Colaborativos) With help from faculty colleagues and Babelfish,…
New media, he said, breaks down the economic model of the business he has worked in all these years. “This is really the first time since William Randolph Hearst that a young journalist can think like an entrepreneur,” Mr. Jarvis said. —Tania Ralli —A Journalist and Blogger Tries Teaching (New York Times) Our academic dean sent…
ALGERNON Do you really keep a diary? I’d give anything to look at it. May I? CECILY Oh no. [Puts her hand over it.] You see, it is simply a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will…
She says one of the most powerful facilities in weblogs is pinging, which involves a person posting a comment about someone else’s work on their own blog. They use the ‘TrackBack’ tool to notify the author when they have published the comment, basically inviting them to discuss it. “It alerts the original author that someone…
I can’t write about my work. Why? Because it is coming out in tomorrow’s edition. I can’t write about my personal life. Why? Because I’ve already given away -way- too much. I can’t give my opinion about current events. Why? Because I’m supposed to be this objective journalist. I’ve reached a point in my blogger…
The statistical tests for uncovering job discrimination assume that men are not innately different from women, blacks from whites, older people from younger people, homosexuals from heterosexuals, Latinos from Anglos, in ways that can legitimately affect employment decisions. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 assumes that women are no different from men in…
Is this a blogger which I see before me? (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) The other day I read a kid’s version of Macbeth to my son (age 7). It’s William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (retold by Bruce Coville / pictures by Gary Kelley). A couple nights later, instead of the science-fiction paperback we’ve been ploughing through for weeks, my…
The Riverwalk may be on fire (shopping mall at the river at end of CBD/Quarter). Everytime we talk to the police, we hear about sniper fire at the fire scenes. I cannot confirm that there is any. This is all hearsay, but it’s coming from the police. The police we talk to, while consistent about…
—Bus-ted! Update (Junkyard Blog) This satellite photo shows some 255 unused buses in a flooded New Orleans lot. (Found via Instapundit.) The photo — found, I presume, via Google Earth, and mailed to a weblog by a reader — depicts an unused escape route for some 15,000 New Orleans citizens. The blog, which defends George Bush…
As my original column made clear (and many amid the outcry reiterated) when it comes to blogging, I just don’t “get it.” That’s right, I don’t. Many in the tenured generation don’t, and they’ll be sitting on hiring committees for years to come. If that’s bad news, I’m sorry. But would it really be better…
It’s September, and I’m unleashing another crop of bloggers on the world. But some have been blogging already for years, and have developed a culture all their own. They’re going to trample a few of my flowers and track a little dirt on my carpet, but that’s okay, because I don’t live in a museum.…
I’m sitting with my Newswriting class in A309, because everybody is getting a blog today! To the newbie bloggers, a blog is like a sofa. You have to get used to it, you have to break it in, and eventually blogging will become comfortable. Sometime I think my fellow students are intimitated by blogs, but…
Private vs. Public Anyone can read this: professors, classmates Don’t write about your love life or last weekend’s activities unless you want your professors (or the academic dean) to read about it Take caution when complaining about classes or classmates Also, watch what you write – don’t link to pictures of you doing anything illegal…