Comm 4220 Project 3: College Blog Exploration

1. Comm 4220 Project 3: College Blog Exploration Joelle Fusaro Tamara Butler Larry Butler Katie Martin Aleta Stamps

2. What is a blog again? What's a blog? A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not. Since Blogger was launched in 1999, blogs have reshaped the web, impacted politics, shaken up journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with others. Some use a blog just to organize their thoughts, while others command influential, worldwide audiences of thousands. Whatever you have to say, Blogger can help you say it.

3. Blogs are social networks

4. About blogs • List of blogging terms from Wikipedia.com: Audioblog : A Blog where the posts consist mainly of voice recordings sent by mobile phone, sometimes with some short text message added for metadata purposes. (cf. podcasting) Blog feed: The XML-based file in which the blog hosting software places a machine-readable version of the blog so that it may be "syndicated" for further distribution on the web. Formats such as RSS and Atom are used to structure the XML file. Blogosphere: All blogs, or the blogging community. Also called blogistan or, more rarely, blogspace. HT :"Hat Tip" An acknowledgment of the source where you found the noteworthy item. PENUS: Potentially Exciting News Under Scrutiny. Use this when you have something big that you can't wait to show to the blogosphere. RSS feed : The file containing a blog’s latest posts. It is read by an RSS aggregator/reader and shows at once when a blog has been updated. It may contain only the title of the post, the title plus the first few lines of a post, or the entire post. Weborexic : Referring to tiny (width-wise) layouts. Coined by Rhiannon Phillips.

5. The beginning: Making our blog • Step 1: Picking a website: Xanga/Blogger • Step 2: Adding members to the site • Step 3: Posting Practice: Admins • Step 4: Topics • Step 5: Design

6. Step 1: Pick a website • Blogger? • Xanga?

7. Step 2: Adding Members • Creating new google accounts • Exploring why the original site creator had more options (admin permissions) • Inviting through email (problems with invite) • User confusion- Does everyone have the same options? How do we contacting each other? Where are the separate user Profiles?

8. Step 3: Posting on the blog • Finding the formatting options/features • Topics- what to write? And to who? • Comments • Pictures: easy to add, but Why so big?

9. Step 4: Topics • Where do we start? • Focus on communication & technology in general, then incorporated more relevant issues • Technology dependence in our lives • Summer plans/Weekend stories • Common blog site: Perez Hilton • Blogger sign language-funny images • Quotes about technology • -Top technology blogs • New technology & mothers day ( Wii fit) • College drug bust story

10. Step 5: Design • Picking a template • Customizing the page elements • Struggles with editing/ moving items • Discovered the ‘next blog’ link & veiwed other random blogs & their designs • Html options?

11. The functions we used! • Blogger • Page elements: Logo, list of favorite sites, link to new sites, ‘the voices’ link to blog members, pictures, newsreel, blog archive • A profile with interests & favorite movies • Link & text formatting in blog posts • Added quotes, pics, video’s, personal stories, news articles

12. What functions we didn’t use • Poll- what to ask? No specific issue.. • HTML formatting- too confusing • Open ID- What is this?

13. blogs as an online publishing tool??

15. Our Blog