Category: Blogging about blogging

Posted on

Pseduo-anonymous "discourse"

Jill Walker has two interesting blog posts back-to-back, the kind of posts that ask to be cited in the vague and foggy book project on blogging and the “writerly life” I have in a corner of my brain. The first is yet another post on the whole pseduo-anonymous thing. She points out again that one of the (apparent) appeals of the pseduoanonymous blog is the play of it all, the “I’m going to take a picture of my eyes and make vague references to a region of the country; can you guess who I am? Have you seen me at the store or the coffee shop?”

In particular, this bit struck me:

I think what fascinates me about the hide-and-seek of pseudonymous blogging is that that is what we all do when we blog. In psuedonymous blogs the blogger gets to play with that. Real-name bloggers like me – well, we may only blog 1% of our lives, but people still seem to think they’re getting the whole picture – I’ve been asked at many a late party or conference how I can stand that people know me so intimately.

I very much had this experience (relatively) recently in Omaha. I received a ride from the hotel I was staying in to the conference by a Creighton professor who was also attending the conference and who I had not met. We exchanged some pleasantries, and then she explained how it was strange meeting me face to face since she had read both this blog and my unofficial blog and she felt like she knew me already. When of course, she didn’t; or at least she only knew a part of me.

Anyway, the second post on Jill’s blog of interest to me this morning was about a meme on what’s the last word in your dissertation. Kinda cute, I thought, so I pulled my dusty copy off of the shelf and looked:

discourse

I’ve decided to take this as an omen.

Posted on

Something else I didn't know about: wordpress.com

I just stumbled across wordpress.com, which, as far as I can tell, is hosting free WordPress powered blogs. I have no idea how this works (I don’t think I need to sign up for another blog space account right now), but it appears to be yet another way to post a blog space for free with the fine WordPress software.

I do wonder how these people will make any money, though….

Posted on

"MySpace Adds a Security Monitor;" a ploy to not be sued?

According to this NPR “All Things Considered” report from last night, MySpace has hired Hemanshu Nigam, “a former prosecutor from the Justice Department to patrol the site and educate its users.” I thought it was an interesting report for a couple of reasons:

  • The reporters referred to MySpace as a “Social Networking Site” where much of the goal was to be “cool.” I like this because they did not call MySpace a “blog” (which of course it isn’t), and they did describe the primary purpose of MySpace of being cool.
  • MySpace is walking a very delicate line between having a certain level of security to satisfy parents but also not curtailing the “cool factor” by hiring a narc. There might be 69 million users of MySpace right now, but (as the report said) these users are fickle and could just as easily switch to the “next big thing.” After all, a lot of these users used to be on Friendster. Danah Boyd argues there’s a difference between the services, but then again, maybe there isn’t.
  • As the report made clear, it’s fuzzy at best the number of cases of sexual predators and such that happens in relation to MySpace. The Los Angeles Times reporter being interviewed about the story, Chris Gaither, said that in LA county, about 10 cases of pedophiles or other sex crimes are associated with MySpace. Ten or so, and I’ll bet there’s more than a million users in LA county, too.

Anyway, an interesting piece worth checking out.

Posted on

HigherEd BlogCon: check it out….

I’ve been too busy with end of the (school) year business to really pay much attention to the blog-o-sphere lately, but check out the HigherEd BlogCon going on right now. I’m not completely sure who the sponsors of this thing are (I recognize a publisher’s name on the list), and I’m not sure these folks are necessarily in my “branch” of higher education. But it looks like there are just a gazillion different resources here. And I like the concept of the web-based conference/blog-based “carnival” of texts.

I’ll have to go back to this when I get finished shoveling through some more immediate paperwork and grading and such.

Posted on

Welcome to the blogosphere, Linda AK!

My EMU colleague Linda Adler-Kassner has started a blog called browndogsblog. It’s a modest effort so far, but give her some encouragement! Go over there and post! Right now!

All of this reminds me that I need to do some updating/housecleaning around here. Once I get through the mountain of stuff at the end of the term, which is already creeping up, I think I’ll be ready to pay more attention here. But probably not before.

Posted on

Jacobson Symposium, 2006: the prelude and rethinking the CCCCs again

It’s been a fine day before the Jacobson Conference at Creighton University in Omaha, NE. I’ve been trying to be kind of modest about this, but I’m actually the keynote speaker for it this year. I’m honored to do it– I hope I don’t screw up too bad.

I’m going to be talking about blogs– a slightly different definition of what they might be, about how MySpace is kinda dumb, about “blogs gone bad,” and about how blogs can work to teach writing. I’ll post a link to a web site for my spiel soon.

The conference is pretty small– about 50 or so folks– and it’s organized by Bob Whipple, who is a professor here, the Jacobson Chair in Communication, and a long-time computers and writing kinda guy. In the course of talking this afternoon, I think we figured out that we’ve known each other via the computers and writing conference or mailing lists for about 10 or so years now.

Anyway, it’s been a good time so far. Dr. Whipple showed me around campus, introduced me to many fine folks, we figured out how to make the computer stuff work (I was having some weird problem with a lot of the images in my powerpoint presenation, which I had burned to a CD, showing up on a Windoze computer– makes me glad I brought my monitor adapter so I can just hook up my laptop to the lcd projector), and then back to the hotel. After some afternoon reworking my presentation, catching up on school stuff, and doing a little shopping, Bob took me to dinner at Omaha’s legendary Bohemian Cafe, a Czech family restaurant that’s been around since 1924- great food and good campy fun.

One other thing I’ll mention, and this has been on my mind lately since there has been some discussion on the WPA-L mailing list about the CCCCs being so expensive: maybe they ought to have that conference in a town like Omaha.

Okay, okay, Omaha isn’t quite the tourist destination of Chicago or New York or San Francisco, and I don’t really know how easy it is for most people to fly in (it’s a pretty small airport). But I know there’s a big huge convention center here, plenty of hotels downtown, and a pretty neat little tourist-type area called Old Market.

To top it all off, the hotel I’m staying at is pretty sweet. There’s high speed internet access in the room, and even free printing through a service called PrinterOn. And I am quite sure this is quite a bit cheaper than the Palmer House.

I guess I’m suggesting that maybe the CCCCs organizers ought to rethink some of the future locations of the conference, and I think that perhaps they ought to think of some “mid-sized” and slightly out of the way towns like Omaha. I like going to fancy cities and doing fancy things as much as the next guy, but it’s also nice to have conferences in towns where people in the field (and composition and rhetoric folks are not generally blessed with enormous expense accounts) can actually afford to attend.

Just a thought. And I hear they have good steak here, too.

Posted on

A few misc. links on a Sunday morning….

I think I need to revisit my RSS software because I don’t think Safari is doing it for me. Maybe I’ll shift the whole regular reads blogs to bloglines; maybe I should buy some kinda software. But that’s something I’ll do in May or so (along with updating the look of this blog and about 100 “to do” list items). In the meantime, a few links I came across this morning I need to look at more in the near future:

On with what promises to be a very busy Sunday….