Our first assignment for the course was to contribute to a blog, which I thought would simply act as a new medium for us to post our reading responses. Sure, I had read blogs before, heck, I’d even kept a blog before, but I did not realize how interactive blogs were in comparison to written newspapers, magazines or books. Not only did I become fascinated with how blogs serve as a resource by linking to other Web sites and embedding photos or videos into my posts, but I became enthralled with the conversation that my classmates and I carried over the class blog. The blog allowed me to gain a further understanding of actually following my peers, beyond my standard practice of stalking my friends and their social lives on Facebook. Blogging allowed me to view my peers’ ideas, thoughts and understanding of the Web by reading their personal posts or reading the comments and feedback they offered in response to my posts.

*Below I have included all of my reading response blogs from this semester. 

On to Wiki

My favorite section of Bolter’s writings on remediation discussed the feature that I most adore when it comes to writing for the Web. What is this feature that I have grown so fond of? I love how writing for the Web gives us the ability to link from one article to another article, page, reference or source.

I treasure the ability to do this because oftentimes when I am reading plain, printed text I will have a dictionary beside me to use as a reference for words that I do not know or may be unfamiliar with. Linking takes out the extra work on my part of having to locate the answer I am unsure of.

Linking makes the medium have another dimension that I feel causes it to be more effective than any previous medium we as a society have used, with the addition of providing extra information. However, on the other side of the spectrum, this “redirection” that linking provides causes the search and the viewer’s understanding to be narrowed, since the content’s author is determining where the reader should be redirected. This can possibly lead to viewers not being able to formulate their own opinion and knowledge or even be mislead by writers pushing forward their own agenda.

Therefore, while I enjoy the ease of answers links provide to me as a viewer, I read everything with an open mind, ask questions, and advise other readers to be wary of the content they are redirected to and why they are being redirected to the specific content.

This semester I was first exposed to the idea of “fair use” in my Graphic Communication course.  As the reading on fair use states, one of the four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair, “the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.”

I know from my Graphics course that students are allowed to use materials and content from the work of other companies in projects, but what happens if the student continues to use the material for something other than school.  When does one cross the line from being a student and using the materials as a student to being an “adult” and no longer able to use the materials?  Or if the materials were used by a person when they were a student are they able to continue using what the produce after graduation since they were a student when the materials were created.  

A couple of examples of questions that I have include:

For my graphics course I will be making a newsletter–designing how it will be laid out, choosing the colors and graphics to use, etc.  But for this class we are allowed to use any body copy provided by the organization for our project.  If I were to include this brochure as a writing sample on my Writing for the Web professional portfolio, would I be able to use it as a sample of my work for potential employers to view once I have graduated?
Also, if I were to use photographs that I did not take and include them on my Web site, would I be able to leave the photos on my site following graduation if I were distributing the site’s address to future employers?  Or do I have to remove the photos and replace them with new photos that I took and have the rights to?
Finally, I understand that work can not be used in a commercial nature, but can it be used for simply a nonprofit purpose or simply an educational purpose?  Does the purpose have to be BOTH nonprofit and educational?  This is important information for me to know since I am considering working in the nonprofit sector for a living.
I’m glad that the fair use clause exists, but I do want to make sure that I am following all of the need-to-be-met guidelines!

While I am currently overcome with excitement about creating my own place on the Web, I am also experiencing the frustrations that accompany the first time you do something new.  Dreamweaver is an awesome program that I am simply ready to know the ins and outs of like I do  Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

That said, I wanted to be the first to inform you guys that Adobe is coming out with the newest addition of its Creative Suite, Creative Suite 4.  Set to be released for sales in stores sometime in October, the suites will include a larger variety of additional programs in comparison to previous versions.  For more information, you can visit http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/?promoid=DNOWM.

Until I have “mastered” my Dreamweaver skills, I will be slow to frustrate, patient to learn to the best of my ability, and eager to observe and learn from others more proficient in the program.  Others who may be new to the program, let’s HUNKER DOWN together to BLACKOUT the confusion.  

So for now, best of luck to all men (and women) and fingers crossed for a quick learning curve!

I have no experience in writing for the Web, so I am very excited about the opportunity to experiment  with my personal Web site project for this class. In reading the HTML Basics and Dreamweaver 8 Basics, I am thankful that Dreamweaver exists because I do not think I would fare well solely with HTML Basics. I am hopeful that this project will help me to design and produce a professional portfolio that I can show or provide to future employers for them to see my work via samples of my writing, media hits that my writing and event planning have produced, etc.

Dr. Davis had mentioned that this blog post did not have to be in response to our reading, but rather we could post about anything related to this class. I have a twitter account and with this account, I have learned that we can “follow” MarsPhoenix, while he is on Mars.  You all need to check this out!

https://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

I think this is such a cool way to receive updates not from another computer located in Athens, or in the United States even, but all the way from Mars!  The 140-character limit also challenges the writer to narrow posts down to the basic, most important information.

Like many other people have commented, I feel so horrible for the way that Michael Henderson’s family was treating following the seventh grader taking his own life. I would be devastated to have lost someone that I cared about and then had strangers who learned of the tragedy over the Web mocking my situation.

Like Kristen, I had never heard of the term “trolls” before reading the New York Times article.  It kills me to think of how much time people waste doing mean and hurtful things, like “intentionally disrupt[ing] online communities.”  I will never be able to use the phrase acronym “LOL” (what I considered to be a funny joke or comment shared between friends) again without thinking of the pride trolls take in their evil “Lulz” success/scores.

All I could think about was the motherly reminder, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”  Would Jason Fortuny want other people “pushing [his] buttons”?  I just don’t understand how others can stand to have their feeligns hurt or hurt the feelings of other.

I also think its interesting that Sherrod DeGrippo wanted to get rid of bloggers since they are “filth” and a “bunch of reatards.”  In my opinion, I think it’s the other way around and the trolls are the filth, the retards.

I found Kara Jesella’s article, “Blogging’s Glass Ceiling,” to be a very interesting read. My interest was first sparked at the mention of BlogHer. Last semester in my News Writing and Reporting class, we had a blogher editor and contributing writer come to speak to our class. I was blown away by her experience with blogging.

I agree with Chris Anthony’s view that one of the main reasons women bloggers are lagging behind other male bloggers is because of the content and material women bloggers are choosing to write about.  Yes, women and men are writing about an equal number of blogs, but the content produced by women that pertains to family life, raising children, and shopping deals is not going to catch the eye of male readers.  However, that is not the only thing these female bloggers are writing about. I agree that women need to be more aggressive when making deals with corporations that will increase the amount of money they receive. BlogHer is also used as an advertising network to help women generate revenue for the site, but when does it reach the point that the companies’ advertisments owe the BlogHer site for the publicity they have received?

To combat the lower number of females blogging, I think it needs to be more widely taught, and I think conferences and seminars should be offered to spread the awareness of blogging and jus thow easy it is to blog. Perhaps women bloggers thoughts and ideas on politics will begin to be valued more with the possibility of a female president in Sarah Palin and the technologocial strides of campaigning made by Michelle Obama, who had just written her first blog post when this article was written. Maybe it will just take time for women bloggers to receive the recognition and money for their blogging work and abilities, just like it has taken time for blogging, in general, to transition from a hobby to a business career.

I also think it’s important to note that the women bloggers consider BlogHer to be a “community” for writers. This way of thinking is somewhat similiar to the thoughts women have about their relationships with friends and family, in that the atmosphere they are working in has some layer of care to it. This may be another reason why female bloggers are not being taken as seriously as male bloggers.

I found the most interesting part of Zhao et al.’s research to be the types of identity claims users make on facebook in comparison to chat rooms.

I can remember when chat rooms were all the rage with the famous first question, “a/s/l?” Sometimes chats would progress to the most famous second question, “gotta a pic?” These two questions immediately opened the door to lies and misleading information. Since chatting only allowed people to see the words that others typed to them, it was easy for people to send others a picture that was not truly of them, but instead a picture of some supermodel they found online.

When I first read Zhao et al.’s claim that facebook would allow users to portray the “hoped-for possible selves,” I thought that there was no way for facebook to possibly allow this more than chat rooms did. facebook allows viewers to “see” more of a person and learn more about them then the basic “a/s/l,” before the viewer even says one word to the person. To chat with someone, it is not required that you see their picture and if you do see a picture you can never be sure if it is truly a picture of the person you are speaking to. Yet, on facebook you can view a person’s picture just by pulling up a person’s profile (depending on their privacy settings) and you could know the person’s a/s/l, religious beliefs, political views, relationship status and more about a person with just one click.  I assumed that people would not put a picture of someone else up or inaccurate information since their “friends” on facebook would know that the information was incorrect and call them out on it. Besides, why would anyone spend all that time creating a “fake” profile about themselves?

However, as I read Zhao et al.’s claim further, I realized that their argument included so much more. They argued that the users of facebook portray their “hoped-for possible selves” as it pertained to their supposed interests, hobbies, and number of friends. This information is intriguing to me. If facebook is to be a successful social networking site for people to make friends and contacts, why would anyone want to put down false information about themselves that will ultimately lead to them meeting people who genuinely have those same interests that are not true for the person in the first place. It’s one thing if people really are “well-rounded,” but it really is okay for people to be “nerds,” too. This research that people try to promote well-roundedness in their “Interests” and “About Me” sections on facebook, lead me to inspecting my own facebook informational enteries. Am I trying to make myself come across as more intelligent or more thoughtful with my inclusion of the poem “Invictus?” Are we subconsciously trying to promote ourselves in a different light on these profiles? Is anyone ever really truthful on their profile? Why not?

I also found Zhao et al.’s point about profile pictures to be interesting. I cannot remember the last time that my profile picture only included me in the frame. On other online networks, like my twitter account and my blog, my profile picture contains just me, but instead on facebook my profile pictures have included pictures of me with groups of friends or me with my boyfriend. Shots of me with a group of my girl friends could confuse a viewer that is visiting my page as to which girl I am. Why do I choose the pictures that I do, of me with other people, to be my profile picture, the one picture that anyone surfing the Web can see? Do I also do this subconsciously to make it appear as though I have lots of friends? Or do I do this to hide my identity, by burying my face in the faces of four of my girl friends?

Reading this article also made me think of a song by Brad Paisley. I included the video below. I think the song’s lyrics fit the topic of false identity claims.

Hyperlinks appear everywhere on the Web.  Our attention is drawn to hyperlinks immediately because we see a word or words in a different color type or underlined or both.

I agree with Tapia that viewers weigh Web sites with hypertext links as having more credibility, the good.  As I read online, I am constantly clicking on the hypertext links for additional information on any given topic.  My opinion of authors using hyperlinks is that they have researched their topic so much that they want to bring my attention to additional information that led to their opinions being formed.

Another Good is that hypertext links provide a convenient way to quickly and easily redirect readers by encouraging them to investigate a link for more information or details, similar to footnotes in books like Tapia compared them to.  If I am reading an article online that references a person that I am unfamiliar with or a historical event that I do not know about and the item is not hyperlinked, I would have to leave the site and search for the item I was unaware of.  This is not good on behalf of a Web site as it is, in a sense, directing traffic away from the page, the bad.  Hyperlinking the information that everyone may not have knowledge of provides an easy way for the reader to obtain that information and with a quick return click go back to the initial page they were reading from.

I think it would be interesting to experiment with the reading of hyperlinks by reading them alone and not the original site.  Would the reader get the same message, or something close, with the additional understanding provided in the hyperlinks (since that is what they would actually be reading)?

Finally, I also thought Tapia’s discussion of nonlinear reading processes, or multidirectional processes, was very interesting.  I personally like having the ability to jump around, which hyperlinks provide for me.  This is another reason that I think our minds’ capabilities are altered by the Web, making it more enjoyable for us to read online instead of trudging through a unidirectional, linear book.  The only problem with multidirectional reading is that you can easily end up very far away from your starting point if you click a hyperlink on page 1, and then on the next page, and the next page, and so on, making an intricate web, the ugly.  This makes it hard for a reader to get back to where they initially started.

A nice, good hyperlink feature to make the reader aware of the links they have already visited is when the color changes slightly, most commonly from blue to purple, when a site has been visited.

The entire time that I was reading this chapter, “Interactivity and the Writer,” from Garrand’s book, my mind keep coming back to one particular Web site.  Since I see the variables that define multimedia so well as part of this particular site, this post will be written in the format that I am identifying those features as they pertain to the site.  Recently I have become intimately exposed to WebMD as a tool used to explore what might been causing back pain, checking up on the average recooperaton period for my grandma’s knee replacement surgery, and so much more.

To me, this Web site is the perfect example of Garrand’s definition of “multimedia.”  WebMD incorporates real, still photographs of what the poison ivy rash looks like, detailed drawings of how surgeries take place, text in the Q&A format about certain sicknesses, symptoms, treatment, and other modes of expression.  The site also encourages interaction between the users and the material by allowing people to ask questions or post comments about things they found to sooth their pain or make their cough go away faster.  WebMD also has a tool that allows the users to alter media they come in contact with by inputting their sex, age, location, and symptoms to try to help them determine what is wrong with them.  This tool is very specific and detailed down to what color spots appear on the back of your sore throat.  Similar to “Choose Your Own Adventure Books,” if the person selects that the spots are white or yellow, the site redirects them to certain possible ailments; whereas, if the person selects that the spots are red, the site redirects them to other ailments.  Finally, this site links to various other articles, health blogs, and health care information sites that are beneficial to the user.

Web sites that include all of these forms of multimedia are seen in a more favorable light with their audience.  If I person uses this Web site, finds the information to be easy to access, great in abundance, and accurate, the client is bound to return to the Web site the next time they are sick and further recommend the site to friends and family.

Overall, I think WebMD does a fantastic job executing Garrand’s principles and playing the role of the “Interactive Doctor.”