Week 3 – I love this week’s readings

       Even with reluctance, I must say that I liked Jacob Neilson’s piece on blogs.  I personally think that he is an armchair theoretician who does not practice his own medicine.  However, I always liked his way of presenting theories and ideas in classically simple and practical manner.  I especially, liked the way he

• Distinguished conventional Web sites from a blog, the similarities and the differentiations among the two tools.
• The acceptable places to bend the Web publishing rules for blogging and the blogging best practices to be followed
• The pragmatic way of identifying the problems of current blogs

      He has been able to address most of the issues that has been bugging me ever since I started reading blogs. 

 

      The above practical and theoretical aspects covered by Neilson were backed by both Karen Schneider on The Ethical Blogger and Blogging Strategy 101: A Primer, by Scout. 

 

      Further, the Scout article goes on explaining the things to bear in mind depending on the purpose of your blog.  He also emphasized the aspects that a blogger should get him/herself acquainted with before plunging on to being a bloger.  I personally think that the above concept is an important aspect, as in information science credibility is everything. Therefore, if you have messed up your pen-name by publishing junk, nobody would be interested in reading the pieces that you write as a mature writer – that would be a huge disappointment.

Returning – Comments on my post

Firewall on my site – SORRY Well, I too had this problem with some other classmates’ blogs – but as i signed up with Google i was able to post comments.  I am not sure how to remove the firewall – i’ll certainly give it a try……. I wonder whether Amanda could throw me a hint or two 

Comment on your comment

One of the main reasons that I dislike Blogs is the bombardment of hunks of information.  I am in the habit of breezing through text and concentrating only on the parts that I find important or interesting – I guess at some level we all do that- it may be that I am lazier than most of you.  This may be my personal preference but I like

-         white space

-         the bullets

-         the underlines and highlights

I think the above helps a lot in conveying the message the site wants to send across.

And, I also think a structured writing standard would help us to do this. Unfortunately, blogs somehow seamed to have gotten away with weird-techi jargon, haphazard construction and poor presentation. The strange thing is that nobody seems to care…… I wonder why!

Searching for Blogs

 

You might already know about this Google site; but, this was news to me.  Therefore, I thought I’ll post it anyway (even if it makes me look like an idiot). 

This is a specialized Google site that allows you to search for blogs on different topic. http://blogsearch.google.com/

Week 2 – Readings, Cases, and research

Hello All,

 

As I have mentioned before, I was not a big fan of blogging.  However, when I read more about blogs and as I went through the cases for this week,  I realized the benefits offered by blogs.  For an example,  instead of crowding the main Website with tit-bits of information about the institution or the individual, blogs could be used as a cool way of presenting additional information, alerts, news, etc. 

However, as I spent some of my time exploring blogs by individuals and institutions that catered to personal as well as business needs, I have to say that there are many blogs that confuse people.  As individuals’ personal blogs may have different expectations and purposes for their blogs, I decided to comment only on the business blogs.  As I explored the 4 cases assigned for this week, I must say that I liked the ‘ Georgia State University Library – Library News and Subject Blogs’ the best.  Even though, the clolours were somewhat disturbing, it followed a clear organization pattern

• Topics were arranged on subject
• Clear subject headings
• The blog page clearly states that it is a blogs page
• The poage had ‘Alerts’ 

 The Madison-Jefferson County Public Library was also good; and though, Ann Arbor District Library was a little dry, it too was good.  However, I got completely lost in  western springs history.

Though I appreciate the cause of blogs, I still do not understand why blogs do not follow the good practices of Web design; especially when blogs are a Web based tool.  For example, Web friendly fonts and writing styles. 

 

Note: I hope to add a little more to this post after reading more of the assigned literature.

When I was browsing the web I found some good literature on “Tagging.”  Even though “tagging” was not one of our course topics, I thought if there is anyone who wants to know more about tagging or has no idea what tagging is, these few articles would help – because they certainly helped me.  You could find them on del.icio.us.

My First Post

 

I am NOT ashamed to say that this is my FIRST Blog!  Yes, according to my cohort I am supposed to have a blog – well, I did not, but I do now.  Though I am not much of a blogger, I really hope that you would like my blog.   I always wanted to have a blog; but, I did not have a good enough theme to base my blog on – again, glad to say that now I do.

Reasons to take this course……

Because it is a must!  I also like to pretend I know technology.  And, I am NOT following this course because it is a BUZZ word – as I was told by many people.

I do not see a point in being an information science professional without having an awareness of social software; a tool that connects individuals across borders regardless of their physical proximity and geographic distribution.  I am very much interested in learning optimal ways of sharing information and making information and knowledge available to interested individuals with a minimum effort; which is a way of eliminating disparities among people.  There are many tools categorized as social software which delivers almost the same results.  However, when deploying a social software tool for a particular task, similar to any other task there should be norms and standards by which the tool’s potential deliverables should be evaluated against its expected task.  And, I am completely unaware of these norms and available tools.  Therefore, I hope this course would school me in adopting appropriate means of channeling knowledge and information using these e-tools.

That is it for today.  I shall update my blog with more interesting news and with my BRILLIANT thoughts, later. 

For your awareness, I like to pretend that I am very HIP and BRILLIANT (bad habit)