Blogging about blogging – Page 4

December 19, 2010

Yet another collection of miscellaneous links

With all the news about delicious going belly-up (or not?), it seems more important than ever for me to park some links here that I want to keep track of:

From Mashable, a cool map showing Facebook relationships.
Social media mashups in higher education. I think this is just a bit beyond my technical expertise for Writing for the World Wide Web, but it is something I need to figure out how to do.
From Lifehacker, the most popular free Apple/Mac software to download of the year. I’ll sort through this at the beginning of 2011.
Google Labs Books Ngram. This is a pretty remarkable tool for tracing the history of terms for sure. I haven’t had a lot of time to monkey with this yet, but I can imagine this as pretty darn useful.
The TOC and a sample chapter from The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. I dunno; I might get it for the kindle so no one can tell what I’m reading….
From ReadWriteWeb, “How Online Reading Habits Have Changed Over 2010.” It’s interesting, and maybe even something I’ll include for English 444 for the winter. They mention things like flipboard and some other iPad readers, but the biggest change for me this year in my reading habits has been using iAnnotate on my iPad for the readings I assign. Really, it’s been a game-changer and if my iPad did little more than this, it’d still be worth it.
“Turning Blog Posts into a Book Draft,” “pedaboligical” Traci Gardner. I’ve been thinking a lot in the last couple weeks about scholarly projects– or really, the lack thereof, especially as it relates to my long stalled (and possibly abandoned) “Blogs as Writerly Spaces” research.
Speaking of which: “99 Excuses for NOT Making Ideas Happen,” which really ends after 15. But are still good excuses to, well, get over.
“How to Export your Delicious Bookmarks and Import Them into your Favorite Browser,” from Lifehaker. I’m not nearly as devoted to delicious as some of my colleagues, but I do use it a lot. Since I also now have mobile me, what I should be able to do is transfer my bookmarks to Safari and then synch that across my various devices. We’ll see.
“Google Demo Slam,” which is a YouTube video of animations made only with Google Docs. Very cool.
“App-etizing: Cookbooks and Recipes Go Mobile,” which was part of a series of NPR stories last week about apps and books. Really interesting, and to me, it is clear that publishing is going to some exciting places in the next couple years. Speaking of which:
“Start Developing iPad Apps” from Apple and “Beginning iPad Development for iPhone Developers: Mastering the iPad SDK,” which is one of many books on this. I really would like to teach myself/learn how to do some of this sort of programming, but I have two basic problems. First, I don’t do any programming. Second, I get the impression that first it’s best to learn how to program/develop for the iPhone, which I guess I could do but that doesn’t interest me quite as much. We’ll see.
HootSuite. I’ve just started playing around with this, but it looks like it might be a good option for handling various social networking accounts, which is something I ought to pass along to my English 444 students.
“Google Maps & Label Readability,” from 41 Latitude, which looks to be a blog mostly about maps. I haven’t taught a visual rhetoric class (yet), but one thing I think I would do if I were to teach such a class is to frame the whole thing around maps, which I have always found to be quite fascinating. Anyway, this is an interesting (albeit geeky) analysis as to why Google Maps are the bomb.
Two Jakob Nielsen Alertbox posts that might be useful for the directions I’m taking in English 444 this winter: “College Students on the Web,” and “Writing for Social Media.”

November 26, 2010

Misc. Browser Links

I’ll post sooner than later (yet this weekend, certainly) about Thanksgiving at home this year, but in the meantime, it’s time once again to post a ton of links to stuff open in my browser that I want to and/or need to come back to sooner than later. In no particular order here:

“The Nookcolor and the Future of Textbooks,” and “The Evolution of the Digital Coursepack,” both blog entries on Inside Higher Ed from Joshua Kim. I agree with the point he’s trying to make here and to me, digital textbooks/coursepacks in the form of things like Nooks, Kindles, iPads, etc. are a no-brainer. But whenever I bring this up with my students– first year students and grad students– they give me feedback that suggests that the teachers are a lot more ready for this stuff than the students, I guess because students are thinking about the costs, about how they will be able to highlight and/or otherwise take notes, and how much they’ll get for selling it back.
“38 Ways to Write about Writing,” from way back in mid-October from Traci Gardner. A nice list of stuff. Speaking of which, there’s “Five Ways to Write Magnificent Copy.”
From guardian.co.uk, “Class blogs: A better way to teach?” Why, yes, yes they are. This is actually more about elementary/middle school settings, so kind of cool.
“A Model for Open Textbook Sustainability,” which is about just that. I’m quoted in here, so I guess that makes it something worth linking to…..
From Lifehacker, “AppMakr Helps You Create Your Own iPhone App for Free, No Coding Necessary.” Learning how to do some coding for the iPhone/iPad is one of those “maybe someday” sort of things for me, so I want to keep track of this.
From guardian.co.uk “A renaissance rooted in technology: the literary magazine returns,” which is about how there’s a whole new series of literary periodicals emerging online. Maybe useful for Writing for the World Wide Web.
DEVONthink is apparently the organizational software that Steve Johnson favors. I dunno, but I think what I need is a motivational/stay disciplined software and/or medication.
“How Handwriting Trains the Brain” from WSJ.com. I actually bought a book/notebook on practicing handwriting, thinking it is something Will and I could do together. I still haven’t gotten around to it though, and now I’m not sure where that book/notebook is.
“Smarthistory: a multimedia web-book about art and art history” is a super-cool web site/”textbook” of the sort you’d use in a gen-ed art history course or something. Lots of neat stuff here, and an interesting model for folks in other disciplines (writing, perhaps?) to imitate.
Monster Tire Video, Detroit, MI. I didn’t realize this that that big tire was a Ferris wheel at the World’s Fair.
“Change Up Your Digital Writing.” Karl Stoley has had a couple of great blog posts/links to things lately; here’s one of them, something I will almost certainly include in 444 this winter. And here’s another post about HTML 5 from Karl.
“Copying Right and Copying Wrong with Web 2.0 Tools in the Teacher Education and Communication Classrooms.” I haven’t read this yet, but it looks potentially useful for 444 and 516, not to mention some of the courses taught by my colleagues in English Education.
“Facebook Comprises Nearly 25% of Page Views in the US,” at least that was what was reported here on Read Write Web. I find that to be a somewhat disturbing statistic, actually.
“iBendXL– The Thinnest Stand for the iPad” from PadGadget. I dunno, but this looks like something you could make yourself with a piece of posterboard. Maybe a project for later.

November 14, 2010November 14, 2010

A mini CFP for a roundtable at C&W: Blogs are Dead: Yes, No, Maybe, Other

Proposals for the Computers and Writing conference are due tomorrow, and I don’t have a proposal together yet and I’m undecided as to whether or not I should propose something. Oh, I’ll be going to the conference, of course; but because it is so local– just across town, really– it isn’t going to cost me anything more than registration. I’m sorta/kinda already involved in the planning, and I’m also sorta/kinda involved in the “unconference” discussions that have been going on about an alternative to the online conference. And I need another conference presentation on my CV like I need another hole in my head. So it might be interesting to go to the conference just to, you know, go.

So I’m on the fence here.

But while I was contemplating what to propose (or not propose), I decided that it might be interesting to throw out there something on the end of blogging. The title I have in my head right now is “Blogs are Dead: Yes, No, Maybe, Other,” or maybe just “Blogs are Dead: Yes, No, Other.” I have some sense of what I would say about that in a 15 or so minute presentation, and it might actually motivate me to do something with my mostly abandoned “Blogs as Writerly Spaces” project.

And then I thought that maybe this would be a fine roundtable sort of presentation that was more of a debate and made up of as many current and former bloggers interested in C&W that I could muster. I’m imagining something like a 75 minute panel where each participant would have as much time as possible to talk given the need to leave at least 20-30 minutes for discussion. In other words, if it’s three participants, everyone gets 15 minutes; if it’s 10, everyone gets four and a half minutes; it it’s some number in between 1 and 10, then the time will be somewhere between 15 and four and a half.

So, I emailed a half dozen or so people who have blogs I read occasionally. I got back some answers rather quickly, though most of these folks are already committed in one fashion or another. So then I thought “hey, why not throw up a blog post that tries to drum up some interest quickly?”

And so I wrote this post. Which, I should point out, I’m also sharing with the world via the tech-rhet mailing list, Twitter, and Facebook, which I suppose speaks to why I personally think the answer to the question about the death of blogging is both complicated and interesting.

In any event, if you are reading this now, if you do (or you used to) keep a blog, and if you were thinking about going to C&W this year, then it seems to me there’s a chance that you too might be interested in participating in this. If so, add a comment and/or send me an email, skrause at emich dot edu. We need to get this together very soon though!

September 26, 2010

And in more link catching up news

Again, in no particular order– just things I want to keep track of that I have left open in my browser for a while now:

“Reading in a Whole New Way,” which is a very readable/accessible piece about how technology has altered the sense of “book,” from Smithsonian.com. And this is a link to the article itself, where there is worry about the iPad.
Speaking of which: “Revisualizing Composition: Mapping the Writing Lives of First-Year College Students” is a WIDE whitepaper/study about the way that students use writing technologies to write in different aspects of their lives. There’s a lot here, but I was struck by the idea that students write as often for “personal fulfillment” (with Facebook, texting, etc.) than for school.
“Nine Important Trends in the Evolution of Digital Textbooks and E-learning Content,” from something called “xplana.” I think these trends are debatable at best, but I like things that speculate about the future of publishing, especially when they are horribly wrong.
I really liked this cbd post “Taking Notes,” and I wanted to keep a link– a note?– of it for future reference. Lots of good stuff here.
To be honest, I don’t know if this is worth passing on, but I will anyway: From Inside Higher Ed, “An Adjunct’s Novel,” which in some ways seems amusing but in many ways seems rather predictable to me.
Here’s a link to an iPhone app I might try out later, something called the Sleep Cycle alarm clock. Though the whole thing seems a bit problematic to me. First off, I set an alarm for a particular time not because it is the “best time” for me to necessarily wake up, but because it is the time that I logistically need to wake up to go on with my day. Second, I don’t get how this app could possibly work, and I guess what bothers me most is that the reviews suggest that it does indeed work.
I might get this book called The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business because it does sound pretty interesting. But to be honest, between stuff I’m reading for school and for fun right now, this is going to have to go down the list a bit. Still, for the Kindle (iPad, of course) edition, it might be worth it for the next time I’m on a plane.
What’s the point of an iPad? How might it be used in the “real world?” Here’s a link from Apple to tell us. I’ve pulled my iPad out a couple of times in my first year composition class and what I think is interesting is that my students in that class seem pretty dismissive of its usefulness. So much for “digital natives” understanding this stuff so much better.
Speaking (again and again!) of the iPad: I recently won an iShine give-away from PadGadget by being early enough on Twitter to retreat an article from the site PadGadget. Here’s a review of the iShine, which I mostly agree with. I prefer to have my iPad in its Apple case because it’s easier to prop it up and such, but the iShine bag is handy and easy too.
Finally, this is something I really ought to do with my laptop: from Lifehacker comes “Starting from Scratch: A Step-by-Step Guide to Reinstalling Your OS.”

August 19, 2010

The “ground zero mosque” and maybe why blogs (and their “writerly spaces”) still do matter

Earlier today– I can’t remember if it while I was on my bike ride, grading/wrapping up stuff for the summer term, reading my Google Reader feed, or what– I had this feeling that my long suffering and delayed project, Blogs as Writerly Spaces, had kind of run its course. I mean, I haven’t done anything with it in months and months (I have poked at it more recently than my link above might suggest, but still), and I kind of have a bit of a “milked dry” feeling about the whole thing. I’ve worked my survey data (such as it is) and other research into at least five different presentations over the years, and it has been feeling a little wrung out to me. Besides, blogging is kind of “been there, done that” nowadays, right? How do I write a book-length project (or hell, even a decent article-length essay) about this phenomenon that has either become irrelevant in the shadow of Facebook, Twitter, and whatever is next? Who cares about a medium that has either faded away or has been subsumed/consumed by MSM to the point where even freakin’ Stanley Fish has a “blog” as part of the New York Times?

Anyway, this was all in the back of my mind while listening to the radio on the way to Costco and I was listening to “Here and Now” and they had a story (mp3) about this story in Salon by Justin Elliott, “How the ‘ground zero mosque’ fear mongering began,” and I had a tiny twinge of second thoughts on my project. Maybe there’s something there there after all. Elliott has a time-line how this mosque/community center/whatever it is controversy got so out of hand, and how a right-wing conspiracy theorist blogger named Pamela Geller (her blog is called “Altas Shrugs”) started and fueled this whole thing. Elliott has a time-line and corresponding links to Geller’s blog to make a pretty compelling argument how her blog made this into a story. Granted, Geller is more “connected” than most bloggers (her bio points to appearances on various news outlets, and she was apparently on Hannity’s radio show, etc.), but I think Elliott makes a pretty compelling argument that this non-story turned into a story in part because of Geller’s persistence and blogging. Take a look at Atlas Shrugs now and it’s clear that she’s still using this story, or it’s still using her.

The politics here are interesting in a way, but the dynamics of the rhetorical situation are much more interesting to me. And maybe I ought to not completely close up that book project yet.

April 21, 2010

Enough of the wigs…

Time to change the header to a picture from Sleeping Bear Dunes from last summer. Alas, I am beginning to wonder about the chances of my Traverse City class making….

April 19, 2010

I too like this alot

Via boing-boing, The Alot is Better Than You at Everything, from a very funny blog called hyperbole and a half.

March 13, 2010

“Internet Explorer, I’m looking in your direction”

Before I get down to some biz-ness, I decided to take a look at Daring Fireball, one of my (new though it’s not a new blog) regular reads. In the “colophon” section, we learn a little more about the site’s author and such, and this little bit about web standards:

Web standards are important, and Daring Fireball adheres to them. Specifically, Daring Fireball’s HTML markup should validate as either HTML 5 or XHTML 4.01 Transitional, its layout is constructed using valid CSS, and its syndicated feed is valid Atom.

If Daring Fireball looks goofy in your browser, you’re likely using a shitty browser that doesn’t support web standards. Internet Explorer, I’m looking in your direction. If you complain about this, I will laugh at you, because I do not care. If, however, you are using a modern, standards-compliant browser and have trouble viewing or reading Daring Fireball, please do let me know.

Heh. Perhaps I’ll come back to this in 444.

November 30, 2009

Where have all the blogs gone?

This is something I’ve been meaning to post about for a while now and that has come up in a couple of different places recently: is blogging, well, “over?”

No, but I do think it’s different than it was.

Continue reading “Where have all the blogs gone?”