Category: BAWS

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A few links at the conference

A few links I came across in various ways the last couple of days before I get on to the conference business of the day, which is a trip to the beach:

  • Mike Rose’s Blog.
  • This article about podcasting turning into publishing. One of the points I think I want to make in my book project (oh yeah, that pesky book project… almost forgot about that…) is that one of the logical transitions/signs of success of a blog is the blog’s author gets some kind of book deal. So this makes sense to me.
  • The design code rap:
  • EveryZing. I haven’t played with this yet, but apparently, it’s an effort at creating a search engine that can look at multimedia for information. I heard about this at a presentation yesterday by Deborah Vess, who talked about…
  • … this, Apple + iPods @ GCSU, which is about a pretty large and interesting Podcasting/videocasting initiative at Georgia College and State University.

I think I would prefer to actually be leaving for the airport today, but when I booked this trip, I didn’t know exactly when the conference presentations were going to happen and I didn’t realize that there’s almost nothing on the program Friday. So as long as I’m here, I think I’ll find out what St. Augustine is like.

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Link/reading pile-up

It’s that time of the semester, and I’m trying to slap together a presentation for the conference I’m going to next week. So here’s a bunch of links that I had meant to write more about earlier but I’m just going to mention now. Some of this might be handy for teaching at some point:

  • “A guide to writing better emails.” Nothing earth-shattering here, but good advice nonetheless.
  • The curious and odd ProfEssays site. I’m not sure how I came across this, but I think it is interesting and odd and strange that this paper mill’s web site has as much information as it has about plagiarism.
  • A review of a book called Proust and the Squid. Sounds like a cool book. Here’s the first paragraph from the review:

    For most people, reading is a taken for granted skill. The purpose of Proust and the Squid is to reveal the magic and mystery of reading and its pathologies. This everyday activity is not natural, and is a recent development from an evolutionary perspective. There is no ‘reading center’ in the brain, but something a lot more enigmatic, an acquired way of using existing structures and connections. New imaging technology shows startling differences between dyslexics and others, differences that illuminate the journey to literacy as never before. It is only 6000 years since humans trained their brains to read, and during that time they have improved on the process to such a staggering degree that the modern child takes 2000 days to achieve a degree of literacy that took 2000 years to develop. The dark cloud on the horizon is another human invention of staggering genius: digitalization. This most economic of information systems was made possible by the very thing it now threatens: the ability to read.

  • “How to start writing quality articles for blogs and article marketing.” This is a little too much in the “get rich quick with your blog writing” category of things for me, but still some interesting advice in this little piece. Might be good for Writing for the WWW.
  • This link and this link go to popular press stories about a study some folks did about why people read blogs. I haven’t had a chance to look at all the details yet, but it looks interesting for all kinds of different reasons, and it looks like what they are arguing is that blog reading is practiced as “a habit,” and that there is a fuzzy line between blog writing and reading. All of which falls in line with my BAWS project. This might also make for good WWWW reading.
  • Finally, WEbook, which I just stumbled across. It looks like a collaborative book writing site. I dunno, maybe that’s one way to get the ol’ scholarly work done, throw it out there on this site and see if other people will do the writing for me.
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Once again, I am overlooked

The UK’s Guardian/Observer has a list I came across via waiterrant (he’s #44) of “The world’s 50 most powerful blogs,” and once again, yours truly is not included. Figures.

Actually, it’s an interesting list and will serve as fodder for blogs to invite to my survey, though I haven’t had a lot of luck in getting “big time” bloggers to participate as of yet. And it’s a list to take with a grain of salt. It’s kind of UK-centric, and it doesn’t include a bunch of different blogs you think it would include– the Daily KOS, for example.

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Blogged.com launches

From the site Webware, this info/review on a new blog directory and review service, Blogged.com. I dunno, this may or may not be useful. I will probably play around with it as a means of coming up with “quasi-random” blogs to solicit for my BAWS survey and I will admit that I don’t think there’s a very good service that does this now. Still, is it necessary?

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Oscar night link shout-outs

While watching the Oscars tonight, I’m sorting through my RSS Feed Reader.

  • CCE gave my The Process of Research Writing a shout-out. I haven’t really had a lot of time to do much with this since I put it up on line last year and it’s not exactly a site that is just burnin’ up the Internets, but I do know that hundreds people have at least looked at this thing, which is hundreds more than would have looked at it had I left it as it was with my previous publisher.
  • Via jill/txt, girls apparently blog more than boys. A potentially interesting link to follow through on for teaching, but since my BAWS project specifically skips the under 18 year old crowd, not so much for my research.
  • Blackboard wins patent case. I have to be honest, I don’t really quite know what this means in terms of what other CMS tools or open source tools or what-have-you, but it sounds like it could be significant. I suppose one option is to just not use Blackboard at all, which I’ve happily managed to do so far.
  • 12 Screencasting Tools for Creating Video Tutorials, which is from a site I think I’m going to subscribe to called mashable.com. Personally, I am very partial to iShowU, but there are a couple of other Mac options that look pretty interesting, too.
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Congrats to the waiter

“The Waiter” at waiterrant.net has a book coming out. waiterrant.net is a very well-written blog that is just that, a waiter ranting (and in other ways discussing) the life of waiting tables at a nice restaurant in NYC. What I’d really like is if this guy would agree to be a case study subject for my BAWS project, but so far, the folks who have signed on for either the survey or the case study haven’t had the level of success of this guy with their blogs. I certainly haven’t been able to talk with anyone yet whose blog writing translated into a book deal.

Anyway, congrats to him, and check out waiterrant if you haven’t done so before.

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Not the greatest blog article ever, but…

… not a bad summary of blogging in general: “Blogs,” by Sarah Boxer in the New York Review of Books. I don’t agree with all of it for all kinds of different reasons, and I think it is an example of the classic mistake that the popular press always seems to make when talking about blogs– that is, they try to define them in some kind of relationship with journalism, and it is usually defined in negative terms. But it would probably be a good introductory reading to assign to get the “what are these blog things, anyway?” conversation going.

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Sabbatical Lite– it ain’t over yet

Loyal readers of my official blog will recall that I was on what I referred to as “Sabbatical Lite” last term, an arrangement in which I was taking one semester sabbatical and splitting it up over two semesters. It had its ups and downs in the winter term, it was beginning to feel like it was slipping away from me this term, and my conclusion was that doing this was basically a bad idea.

But I’m starting to rethink this, at least a bit. It probably wasn’t a good idea, but it might not have been a bad idea, either.

For example, I am starting to get into a routine this term where I am able to devote much more time to research stuff for four or five days of the week (including weekends, of course). Not that I’ve been incredibly productive as of late, but I’m still probably doing more on the BAWS project than I would have been able to do under normal teaching load circumstances.

Example #2: roadtrip.

Since I am teaching but one class online and since the administrative stuff has kind of settled down for the time-being, Will and I are embarking an epic journey to see my parents, who stay this time of year on the gulf coast of Alabama. The way I figure it, I will have pretty robust Internet access the whole time, meaning I can still teach and do most of my administrative duties. And as far as the canceled office hours go: well, that’s part of the release I get for being on sabbatical lite.

Annette, since she is not enjoying the pleasures of sabbatical lite, is staying home. She’ll have to work obviously, but I’m sure she’ll get her own “vacation” of sorts from Will and I.

Expect some photos and videos from the road, btw.