Blogging Shmogging

Today is Tuesday

I have to keep reminding myself what day of the week it is because it helps me plan for class.  I’m looking forward to our continued discussion about Facebook and our introduction to the topic of Twitter.

I’m wondering if any of our class members have posted to our blog

Confusion about Tumblr

Top Five Things That Confuse Us About Tumblr

1. Doesn’t make sense.
2. No different than a word processor.
3. Processor is spelled with two o’s.

Facebook and Beyond

Gosh, this is the class that everyone will be talking about for awhile

But before we demonstrate facebook, we need to answer that important question:

WHY

What is the purpose of Facebook and what can you do with it.

Strap yourself in.

Defining a Meme

Since we talked about Memes and didn’t quite have the time to really delve into the topic, here is a website that spends all of it’s time talking about Memes.

Hope you Enjoyed Class

Let us Know what you thought of class.  Too fast, Too slow, Just right.  Feedback is good.  Keep us informed and we will continue to make the class meet your needs.

Thanks for being there.  Kenn and Josh

Where can you find blogs of interest?

This is a good post from a few years ago listing search engines for blogs.  I’d also recommend you search at www.tumblr.com,  www.blogger.com, andwww.wordpress.com because these are 3 of the biggest blog services and offer a lot of blogs and an great search engines.

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With more than 10 million blogs online and their importance growing every day, the race is on to create the best blog search engine. In the past month, both Google and Yahoo! have unveiled long-awaited blog searches. Here’s a look at some of the best tools for searching blogs.

Google Blog Search

http://blogsearch.google.com

Google released its first blog search engine earlier this month to great fanfare. It has quickly won converts, though some deride it for not returning as many search results as its main competitor, Technorati. But that’s not where Google Blog Search shines. Google Blog Search is the fastest of any of the blog searches, and it generally does the best job of returning posts that are right on topic. If you want to find blogs about a specific subject, Google Blog Search should be your first choice: at the top of the search results, it lists a generally on-topic list of “related blogs.”

It’s worth noting that Google Blog Search’s focus is on relevance; if you want the most recent posts on a subject, you’ll have to toggle the results order to “by date” by clicking the link on the top right of the results page. Google Blog Search lets you subscribe to your search via RSS, so you can keep track of new postings on your subjects of interest.

Technorati

http://www.Technorati.com

Technorati is the most established and popular blog search engine. The site will almost always return more total results on any search you do than the other blog search engines — but more isn’t always better. The results list the most recent postings first, and are often cluttered with unrelated and unreadable postings. Technorati can also be slow.

The site offers the most features of any blog search engine as well, with the ability to search blogs by “tag” (subject keywords), set up personal blog “watchlists” and generate lists of the most popular blogs and the most popular searches. Like Google, Technorati also lets you subscribe to your search via RSS, so you can keep track of new postings on subjects of interest.

Yahoo! Blog Search

http://news.search.yahoo.com

Yahoo!’s Blog Search was much-anticipated, but appears to have fallen short of the others, so far. It doesn’t return nearly as many results as Technorati, nor find what you’re likely looking for as well as Google Blog Search. But what Yahoo! does is integrate its blog search with its news search, which is a handy feature if you’re looking for information, but don’t care whether it is on a news site or a weblog. When you search, the results on news sites are shown in the left column, and the results found on weblogs are listed in the right column.

Here are some of the other best blog search engines:

BlogPulse: This is an excellent blog search engine, but it’s most valuable for its extra tools. BlogPulse’s Trend Search allows you to create your own graphs, plotting blog buzz for search terms, and BlogPulse’s Conversation Tracker will gather related posts from across the blogosphere into threaded conversations you can follow.

IceRocket: A relative newcomer, it’s improving and offers a nice advanced search page that lets you search by specific date and blog post author.

Depending on what you’re searching for, you might find one of these is more useful to you than another. Which of these do you find the best? Which do you recommend for specific types of searches? Post your comments here.

Posted by Jonathan Dube at 5:19 PM on Oct. 27, 2005

What are we going to learn tonight?

What do we hope to learn over the course of the course?

The purpose of the class is to expose class participants to 4 of the cornerstones of the digital communication world: Blogging, Twitter, Skype, and Facebook. We will look at each of these 4 tools and answer the questions of:

Why, What, and How

Whenever you have a question, stop at a convenient time and say: Hey, I don’t get this, could you stop with the jargon and explain it so I understand.

Homework: Yes, absolutely, very important: Each week you will have the responsibility of utilizing the tools that are discussed on the previous Thursday.  Your homework for this coming week will be to create your own Blog through the use of Tumblr.  We will show you how to do it and then you will create your own account and your own blog.  You should email the instructor at klheller@ucla.edu when you set up your first blog.

Contacting the Instructor:  Kenn Heller can be reached by cell at 818-624-1454 and by email at klheller@ucla.edu.

Grading: Oh, come on. Stars for the best blog posts, tweets, and facebook postings

Outcomes:  By the time we are done with our class in 3 weeks, you will have created your own blog, setup your own Twitter Account and learned to tweet and follow at least 5 people, entities, or carpet companies, and created your own facebook account, sent at least 3 friend requests, and added at least one application (don’t worry.. you’ll understand every one of these terms by the time we are done.

Glossary: We will maintain an ongoing glossary here so you’ll be able to keep track of the terms and concepts that we cover in class.  Again, if we gloss over something that you think needs clarification, let us know and we’ll make sure that it get’s covered on line and reviewed in class.

Testing: None, other than patience.

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Topics for Tonight

Why should I have any interest in Blogging?

What is a Blog - What is a Web Log - What is the Difference

A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. …
www.apollo-media.com/glossary.aspx

What is the difference between a blog and a web site?

Blogging as a Form of Journalism

What does a Blog look like?

http://lifehacker.com/

http://boingboing.net/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/

http://www.hellerscorner.com

http://www.kennheller.blogspot.com

How could I create my very own blog?

That’s what the rest of tonight’s class will be focused on.

All atwitter about class

This is so exciting because today…. oops I mean tonight by the time we read this, will be the first blogging shmogging class and there’s so much to cover and there’s only 4 weeks and I’m just so excited.  I could go on and on.  I wonder what I will have decided to wear.