Woohoo! Anyway, I’ve decided to leave my webcam going over spring break. Now you can have a wonderful view of a parking lot on the University of Maine campus, refreshing every 30 seconds. And if you’re missing out on all the fun by not having the cam module on the page, go to the cam page or change your modules. I’m out for now!
Below are the links from the presentation I made in NMD 207 about blogging.
Original quotes (taken from February 26, 2003 blog entries):
“I need to get my groove on” (Wil Wheaton)
“I know my daughter’s going to want it, but personally, I think it’s the work of the devil.” (Léo Laporte)
“For those of you just joining us, we’re having a baby (something we’ve been working on for about 9 months).” (Quinn Norton)
NCSA Mosaic What’s New, June 1993: what is considered by many to be the first weblog, outlining links on the ‘new’ WWW
Slashdot.org: one of the more popular blogs, using user-submitted stories to post about technological headlines
Segway News: a blog outlining the latest news on everyone’s favorite Human Transporter
Lessig Blog: blog of Stanford law professor / Eldred v. Ashcroft guy Lawrence Lessig
Boing Boing: a news/link aggregator run by Cory Doctorow, Mark Frauenfelder, Xeni Jardin, and David Pescovitz
Moving Target: example of an international (German) blog
MovableType: free, feature-rich CGI blog publishing system
Blogger: free, web-based, easy-to-use blog publishing system (blogs are hosted at blog*spot)
UMaine Blog: my in-class blogging adventures
Domesticat.net: examples of using skinning on a site to make it more customizable (great tutorial, too; I used it for this site)
NetNewsWire: one of my favorite OS X applications; free RSS news reader (great for blogs… if you get it, subscribe to my site by entering in my RSS feed)
Blog.org: David Brake’s blog, an example of how categories can be used to filter out information
Blogdex: the MIT Media Lab’s solution to finding what the most popular topics being blogged about are, or as Jon said, like being at every cocktail party around the world at once
Metafilter: a community weblog with news, links, and opinions
My basic message of the whole thing was that blogging allows more voices to be heard. It’s an efficient decentralization of media, and it lets people see views (ie, Lessig) that they wouldn’t be able to see in other ways. Of course, I’ve always believed blogging is a good way to improve writing skills if done well (think about if every schoolchild had a blog… interesting). It’s easy, it’s free, it’s addicting, and it won’t hurt, much. So what’s to lose?
Other valuable sources:
The History of Weblogs (Weblogs.com)
An Incomplete Annotated History of Weblogs (Chymes.org)
CSS Tutorial (W3Schools)
XML Tutorial (W3Schools)
Understanding Weblogs (O’Reilly)
Perseus Publishing. We’ve Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing our Culture. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002. (awesome book, by the way)
Hackos, JoAnn T. Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery. New York: Wiley Computer Publishing, 2002.
That’ll keep you busy.
I never apologized for slacking off on my blog. I’ve been busy and quite a few things have been going on in a lot of different parts of my life: I’m working on the New Media Society a lot, getting projects done for school, and working my a$$ off for TJU-UM, which is now fully operational. Hopefully.
Sooooo…. I think I’m back.
I slept until 10:30 this morning for the first time in a long, long time (except when I’m really sick). It was nice.
The New York Times recently ran an article about how the laptop program is working in Maine. It’s a surprisingly positive view (good to see). And before everyone starts to complain about how it’s still $34 million (everyone from my state representative to some friends I know here), I’m admit (again) that it probably wasn’t the best use of laptops to give them to every student… but still, I’m glad it happened.
Over spring break I’ll be going to Reeds Brook and taking some pictures for a photo essay for NMD 362 (if all goes well). I want to see how it’s actually working; I’m excited about it. From how the NYT puts it, it sounds like it could be a very promising trip.
2010, Justin Russell. All content (unless otherwise specified) licensed under CC BY-NC.