Here are some newspaper articles (via Complexity Digest) looking at cyberspace:
Could this be the final chapter in the life of the book? Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times, 07/01/21
Putting a Second Life first David LaGesse, U.S. News and World Report, 07/01/21
Virtual reality spreading in business world CNN, 07/01/17
One point to keep in mind throughout the semester is how the technology we use affects our writing, whether on a static website, blog, or something else. Jon Udell writes about the “unintended consequences of syndication“. He had created a widget on his blog to post his recent del.icio.us bookmarks, and it changed how he bookmarked:
If you do decide to explicitly publish your bookmarks in a sidebar widget on your blog, it may change the way you bookmark. It did for me, anyway. The balance shifted away from purely personal information management and toward the kind of editorial sensibility that governs the blog. It was around this time that private bookmarks became available in del.icio.us, and that’s been helpful. If I’m researching something and I just want to collect a list of resources labeled with some obscure tag meaningful only to me, there’s no need to flow that stuff onto my blog page. Conversely, if I want to draw attention to something in a public way, I can. It sounds great in principle, but in practice I think the friction involved in making that choice on a per-item basis made me less likely to bookmark either publicly or privately.
Have you noticed whether any of the technology we’re using has influenced your writing?
If you keep a website for any length of time, external links often change or die. One free tool for checking your links is the W3C Link Checker. I just checked four pages on my Links pages (it’s been a year since I’ve done this), and found more than 50 links that needed to be deleted or updated.
Sometimes you want to blog about an article in the New York Times. The only problem is that the page you’re linking to will after a week or so becomes archived and inaccessible, unless the reader wants to pay for it. To have a permanent link from your blog to the article, use the NY Times Link Generator (via weblogg-ed).
Of course, it depends on one’s audience, but Darren Rowse (his Problogger blog is ranked in the top 10 of Technorati) recommends writing with a conversational voice in your blogging:
This one is more of a personal preference than anything so take it or leave it - but I attempt to make my writing style as conversational as possible. I try to write in a similar way to the way I speak.
For many readers, a conversational voice is more inviting. In evaluating good and bad websites, the wiki start5696 has such a voice:
1. One of the biggest problems with a bad website is horrible navigation. If a person can’t find the links, how the heck are they supposed to use the site?
Take this site for example: http://shopping.aol.com/
Can you find where the products are to click on to buy? Because I know I sure as heck can’t!2. Another is bad background choices. If your website causes Eplictic seziures, I doubt anyone’s going to want to surf there. Like this link here: http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/
Think you need sunglasses to use that website, wouldn’t you say?
Again, it depends on one’s audience, but the tone adds a nice touch of humor that makes reading his evaluations more interesting.
I just noticed at my wetpaint wiki that it has 4 feeds you can subscribe to: New pages, recently updated pages, most active pages, and recent comments. Just look in the navigation sidebar for the words ” Site Reports & RSS Feeds” and click on the arrow. Wikispaces also has feeds. Just click on the “Notify me” tab, and you’ll see feeds for page edits and discussion. Using these feeds would be helpful in keeping up with and learning from your classmates’ work.
One of the best introductions to maintaining a blog is Mark Bernstein’s “10 Tips on Writing the Living Web,” which are:
A good example of these tips is the blog “Silver Screenings.” Since it is new (only 2 posts), items #4, 5, and 9 are not yet present. However, all the other items are, and quite obviously. “Silver Screenings” has excellent content, but what really struck me even before I started reading the posts was the title, tagline, and design:
Silver Screenings
Essays and Reviews of Black and White Films
The title fits the topic perfectly, and the tagline tells you exactly what this blog is about. And the color scheme accentuates the title and blog’s focus.
Usually, when we set up a blog, we think about it for perhaps a month or two, considering its focus. In a class, we don’t have that luxury. But within a few weeks, you should finetune what you wish to write about. Once you’ve done that, then consider a title (and a tagline) that reflects that interest and write a blurb for the “About” page that tells readers what your blog is about. You’ll also want to build up a blogroll of blogs that write about that interest and create “categories” for your posts.
Librarything is an online site to catalog your personal library and find others who have the same books, and thus the same reading interests, as you do. People with like interests often end up forming groups to discuss their interests. I’ve just accepted an invitation to join the Rhetoric and Composition group. Up to 200 books, it’s free. And over that, it’s only $10 a year, or $25 for life.
It’s not the only one. TechCrunch has a post on a new one called Shelfari, which is supposed to have a better interface than Librarything. And there are others.
For avid readers, belonging to a social book sharing site is a great way to discuss the books you’re passionate about and find leads to new ones.
Problogger is a good source for down-to-earth information on writing and maintaining a blog. This recent post of his is titled “Understanding the rules of great content.” In breaking down blog writing, he gives his 1/9/90 rule, which is:
1% create content
9% enrich content
90% consume content
As he comments, it’s “unrealistic to believe that you’re going to create new stuff out of thin air — all the time.” But it is possible to be in the 9% that enrich content rather frequently, primarily by “providing a critical perspective and commentary to existing content.” And he gives 18 tips on how to do that. It’s worth reading.
