Starter For Ten's Net34 Blog

I had been a little confused over the whole idea of Web 2.0. Watching the YouTube video "The Machine is Us/ing us" helped clarify it for me, to some extent.

I think that prior to Web 2, internet users were just that, users, or end users of existing sites. But now we users are become the creators, we participate in creating on the internet rather than just using it. By blogging, we can "publish" our writing, YouTube allows us to "star" in our own videos with a world wide audience. Wikipedia is not just an on-line encylopedia - a user can edit entries rather than just read them!

On a personal level, I can see the difference between Web 1 and 2 when I compare 2 different sites, FriendsReuinted (the "old" site) and Facebook. I joined FriendsReunited back in 2001. It cost something like $20 to join, and you could find school friends by locating your school and then scrolling through lists for different years. Once you "found" a friend, you then sent a message to them through the site, and then waited for a reply. The only way a person could reply to your message was if they were a paid up subscriber too. There was an option to put a photo of yourself on there and a brief description but that was about it. It was essentially an online database.

Fast forward to 2009 and Facebook (a Web 2 application). Facebook allows me to search for acquaintances and then "invite" them to be friends. I can then chat online to them, send them everything from (virtual) flowers to football jerseys, keep everybody updated at the same time on what I am doing by posting on my wall (rather than having to rely on sending individual emails), post whole photo albums onto my site, invite friends to play games & quizzes etc etc, and above all, Facebook is free (well, so is FriendsReunited now, but it wasn't in 2001). There is infinitely more user content and participation involved.

All this has become possible since XML gave us the ability to separate form from content, something that HTML was not able to do. Does this make sense? It does to me (sort of...)!

In comparing the two Net 11 Resource lists, the furl list is much easier to read. I can also see that it is interactive, I have the option of filtering and sorting the topics for example. Underneath each article heading there is a description of the article, plus the url, the date it was saved, how many views it has had etc. There is an option of adding the articles to an RSS Feed. On the downside, the page also features advertisements.

The HTML list is just that, a list of links, with a brief description of the link. There is no date information, and no indication of how many times that particular link has been viewed. On the plus side, there are no ads...

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had never heard of 'furling' before. But now I have, it is something I will definitely use in the future - except that I won't use Furl as its being phased out! I'm currently looking at Delicious. I am looking forward to putting all of my favourite links into one source (rather than being littered all through Favourites, like they are now!)

I just had a thought - what will Web 3.0 bring us?


P.S. I put that last bit in about Web 3.0 as a bit of a joke (I didn't even think there might actually be a web 3 yet). I then googled web 3.0 and found all sorts of entries......

Image credits http://grizzlymedia.wordpress.com clionauta.wordpress.com

Log entry: In your learning log, record your thoughts. Consider various uses for blogs such as citizen journalism and personal blogging. Have you seen in your net travels any interesting uses for blogs? This blog entry is an opportunity to tell us what you really think of blogging!

Well, before I could answer this question I had to find out what Citizen Journalism was. I googled it and found this Wikipedia entry:

Citizen journalism (also known as "public", "participatory" or "democratic") is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information. Authors Bowman and Willis say: "The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires."

I also visited this site: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/09/your-guide-to-citizen-journalism270.html and went on to read that Citizen Journalists can use blogs to record events in their local community, or newsworthy events that haven't been picked up by the mainstream media. Also that the former "users" of the media are now the creators. It is good to think that we can all participate in journalism, but it begs a lot of questions. "Regular" journalism is bounded by laws, ethics, code of conduct etc - but what controls are there over Citizen Journalism? I think this is an area that we will hear a lot more about in the future.

The Blogosphere
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I'm very new to blogging. As this question asked about any interesting blogs we have found in our net travels, I decided to spend some time this morning researching blogs. Well it was interesting to say the least! To think that all this time I've had internet access and didn't realise what interesting blogs existed in the blogosphere! I googled random words with the word blog added to find out what there was (ie dog blog, diet blog, health blog).

Do you want to know the best place to take your dog for a walk (presuming you live in USA that is!), well then http://www.dogparkusa.com is for you!

Perhaps you've eaten too many choccies this Easter and want to lose a few kilos, well then there's www.diet-blog.com for some advice. Want to buy a new car? How about www.autoblog.com?

On a personal level, many years ago I did a creative writing course and used to write short stories. I joined an Isolated Writers Group and we used to mail our stories around from member to member for comment. If only the internet was around then! I could have just joined www.backhandstories.com and submitted my stories instead!

I then visited bloggerschoiceawards.com which was very interesting! I discovered some interesting blogs such as whywomenhatemen.blogspot.com (good for a laugh). There's even a blog written by a pigeon, yes a pigeon called Brian! http://pigeonblog.wordpress.com

The nastiest blog I read was "iwillf*****gtearyouapart.blogspot.com" In the entry I read, the author had published some nasty comments about stay at home mom bloggers.

Actually I did read a stay-at-home mum's blog yesterday. I can't remember the address but I think I found it on "blogs of note" in blogger. The lady was a farmers wife and she had entries describing how she visited the hairdresser that day, or who she had coffee with. One entry made me laugh - she described how her 9 yo daughter had called her father a "turd". It did make me think afterwards though - would her daughter like the fact that this has been published to a world wide audience?

I ended up reading blogs in the following categories: animals, business, celebrity, charity, corporate, education, entertainment, food, foreign language, geek, gossip, health, hobby, humour, marketing, parenting, photography, podcast, political, pop culutre, religion, shopping, sports, travel & video!

It is like there is a whole other world out there that I didn't know existed. An alternate world. I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland at the moment!

I do enjoy blogging, for the purpose of this NET11 unit anyway. I don't know that I would be comfortable with a personal blog though. Maybe an anonymous one, or one with selected information would be ok. It would be a great way to share news with family overseas, but then again there is also Facebook for that. I am excited about the thought of maybe "publishing" short stories this way (when I have the time!). At last I will be able to realise one of my life-long ambitions, that of being a published author! I would never use a blog as a personal diary or journal - I think I would prefer to keep a handwritten journal for my most innermost thoughts! At least pages can be torn out of diaries!

I asked my 22yo son if he blogs, he uses Myspace and Facebook but not any blogging sites. Same with my 17yo daughter. A young relative travelled overseas recently and kept us all up to date with her travels through Facebook, so I suppose Facebook is really a form of blogging.

I asked my husband if he ever read blogs but he said he doesn't for the same reason he doesn't read (fiction) books. This made me reflect on the whole concept of blogs - how do we know what we are reading is true? I suppose it is with like everything else on the net, you need to keep an open mind and be aware of the pitfalls. Now I'm off to ponder Web 2!

...Well, much to my great surprise I was actually able to create a web page! I certainly did feel a sense of achievement. When I first read the task I was dreading it - I knew absolutely nothing at all about HTML so how on earth was I going to create a web page??? It did take me quite a while though - here it is, almost 1.30am, and I started the lesson at 9pm. It took me a while to go through all 26 lessons, and then I decided to have a go and create my own page. I found HTML relatively easy to use, although I wish I had made a note of the various codes when I was doing the lessons - I had to keep going back to the lessons to find out how to centre, or change the font size etc when I was creating my page. It became quite addictive in the end! Once I had started I wanted to keep going until it was done.

What are the differences between HTML and Blogging - well blogging is much easier for a start! I can just type away, make a few changes to the layout or text style and sizes by just clicking with my mouse - with HTML it takes a lot longer, and can be frustrating if you forget to put in a > or a / in the right place! On the positive side though, I can see that there is far greater control with HTML - you are not limited to any particular colour, style or font size as you can be on blogging sites.

As to what I like best? Well at the moment I would have to say blogging, because it is so much easier. But I would like to think that as HTML becomes more familiar (and I have more idea of what I'm doing!) then I will prefer HTML because it will give me greater control over my designs.

What I did find through doing these lessons was that lrfanView is a fantastic site! I had managed to save my screen and then open it in paint, but could not work out how to re-size it. It was so easy to do in lrfanView and I am looking forward to using this program more.

I also have a great book "Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML" and I am looking forward to going through it when I have more time.

Anyway, as its now 1.40am I'm calling it a night!