http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Web-Design/Blogging A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Web Design and Blogging in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Web-Design/Blogging http://tc.eserver.org/35469.html http://tc.eserver.org/35469.html One appealing aspect of blogs over print media is the ability to comment and respond to comments. It’s the appeal of a conversation instead a lecture. http://tc.eserver.org/35384.html http://tc.eserver.org/35384.html How can you enable readers to naturally find the content in your archives? How can you make the hundreds of posts you write more visible and prominent, especially if readers are looking for it? This is partly what the field of findability is all about. You can implement several easy aggregation techniques to increase the findability of your content. You can add tags and categories to your posts, and readers can navigate your content this way. http://tc.eserver.org/35372.html http://tc.eserver.org/35372.html Concepts, principals, and parts of User Experience Design can often times be difficult to approach—and this tends to create barriers with new bloggers. This begs the question: Do ordinary bloggers have to worry about UX Design? http://tc.eserver.org/34623.html http://tc.eserver.org/34623.html The question is, what happens when your blog stops working? When your car quits, you take it to the junk yard. When your horse quits, you shoot it out of mercy. What are you supposed to do when your blog stops spreading your ideas? Simple. You do what thousands of bloggers do every day: You quit. http://tc.eserver.org/33926.html http://tc.eserver.org/33926.html Don't waste your money on a business blog (unless search engine marketing is an important piece of your overall marketing efforts and you're going to invest the time and effort into making it work). http://tc.eserver.org/33930.html http://tc.eserver.org/33930.html Forget about rivalries with MySpace and LinkedIn. Facebook's real competition is coming from upstart microblogging site Twitter. http://tc.eserver.org/33711.html http://tc.eserver.org/33711.html Yesterday a Twitter post (a tweet) by Mashable’s Pete Cashmore became so popular that traffic from Twitter crashed a blog. This sounds very similar to a common social media phenomenon originally known as the Slashdot effect (and later also the Digg effect), where a post on a popular social media site pushes more traffic than the target site can handle. An interesting thing here is the mechanics of Twitter, which is fundamentally different from Digg and Slashdot. It’s not a social news site, with a front page that all visitors go to. http://tc.eserver.org/33316.html http://tc.eserver.org/33316.html Twitter, often referred to as the water cooler of the Internet, teaches us the art of brevity by limiting communication to 140 characters or less. But unless you can compress instructional content in ingenious ways, you’ll find Twitter limiting as a method for delivering documentation. Instead, Twitter is better used for the following: eavesdropping on customer conversations; putting a personal face on your company; and increasing the reach of your announcements. http://tc.eserver.org/32912.html http://tc.eserver.org/32912.html So you have a blog, and you're worried that it might not be accessible to people with disabilities? Don't worry! A few simple changes can increase your blog's potential readership. http://tc.eserver.org/32827.html http://tc.eserver.org/32827.html "Self-Googling" -- searching for your own name on the popular Google search engine -- may seem like an innocuous act of vanity, but a University at Buffalo communications professor recommends it as a shrewd form of "personal brand management" in the digital age. http://tc.eserver.org/31412.html http://tc.eserver.org/31412.html According to the report "State of the News Media 2005" from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, "more than a third of Americans, some 36 percent, are regular consumers of four or more different kinds of news outlets—network news, local TV, newspapers, cable, radio, the Internet and magazines." http://tc.eserver.org/31394.html http://tc.eserver.org/31394.html If you're a professional communicator, chances are good you've already asked yourself whether it's time to start your own blog. But there's another tech question that you probably have not yet asked yourself, and perhaps you should: Is it time to start your own wiki? http://tc.eserver.org/31392.html http://tc.eserver.org/31392.html New technologies are changing the ways we can achieve excellence in communication. Three new web-based communication tools have caught the imagination of innovators and early adopters. Blogs and wikis are proliferating all over the Internet, and podcasts look like they will soon be commonplace. http://tc.eserver.org/31399.html http://tc.eserver.org/31399.html When news reports announced that Apple Computer was suing unnamed individuals (presumed to be employees) who had allegedly leaked information about a prototype Apple product to several blog news sites, it raised a number of questions. What does the lawsuit mean for freedom of expression and the role of journalists who serve an information-hungry audience? How will the courts balance the fundamental right of freedom of expression against a company's claims that trade secrets have been violated on a blog? http://tc.eserver.org/31393.html http://tc.eserver.org/31393.html If ever there were a perfect tool for the corporate communication expert, blogging is it. Think of a blog as the 3D version of your capabilities, one in which you provide context and meaning to your work experience and expertise. So let's talk about how to blog well. http://tc.eserver.org/31233.html http://tc.eserver.org/31233.html Despite blogs’ potential for creating valuable online communities, many communicators are still uneasy with the blog format. Communicators worry about the possibility of readers posting negative comments and feedback on the company blog. Angry customers leaving stories of poor experiences for all to see or employees submitting bitter public complaints are nightmare scenarios for most communicators. So how should we respond to negative feedback on corporate blogs? The process begins with shifting our perspective to see the risks as opportunities. http://tc.eserver.org/29253.html http://tc.eserver.org/29253.html A response to Jakob Nielsen's 2007 "Write Articles, Not Blog Postings." Nielsen's article is also chock-full of bad information. Why bad? Because most of it is made up. The length of the article requires you to really read it. You can't scan it. The problem is, most people scan online. http://tc.eserver.org/26630.html http://tc.eserver.org/26630.html Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author. http://tc.eserver.org/25641.html http://tc.eserver.org/25641.html This paper first situates adolescent diary weblogs and their implied audiences and then applies a typology of audiences for personal narrative performance to a sample of diary weblog posts to ascertain if the typology fits the implied audiences present in the weblog text. http://tc.eserver.org/25590.html http://tc.eserver.org/25590.html While the weblog tends toward esoterically personal content (as evidence in the examples above) and often delivers some contextual account of the author’s life and activities, the obvious exceptions to this rule preclude understanding the form simply as an online diary. Likewise, the structural and technical definitions many in the weblogging community focus on fall equally short of describing what is a complex, earnest, and distinct literary form. In other words, it is insufficient to explore the weblog exclusively at the level of content, and equally insufficient to focus wholly on the technical delivery of that content. Accounting for the diversity of weblogs and webloggers—yet still maintaining some larger sense of what they have in common—requires instead a careful look both at what weblogs do, and how they do it for both writers and readers. http://tc.eserver.org/25587.html http://tc.eserver.org/25587.html With little exaggeration it might be claimed that the primary emotion associated with popular thinking about blogging is anxiety. The number of bloggers and blogs is unwieldy and amorphous: to my mind a sublimity that is often associated with the innumerable swamps journalistic and other commentators who believe that one must, perforce, make some generalization about blogs, all blogs, every blog. Is there something that could be said about every blog? Where would one start? http://tc.eserver.org/25584.html http://tc.eserver.org/25584.html Weblogs and knowledge-logs, or 'blogs' and 'klogs,' have emerged into the post-dot.com bubble online world as a notable (and often non-commercial) social phenomenon. While some hear echoes of Web homepage voices from the mid-1990s, the blogging phenomenon during the Iraq war may have taken Web cybercultures in new directions. http://tc.eserver.org/25583.html http://tc.eserver.org/25583.html Native to the Internet and personal in approach, weblogs deliver bite-sized portions of information on a daily basis to an ever expanding audience. Weblogs are the conjunctions of the Internet: the ands, the buts the ors – they add to online conversations, refute them, or provide new perspectives altogether. http://tc.eserver.org/25582.html http://tc.eserver.org/25582.html Looking at blogs as rhetorical artifacts allows scholars to examine the ways in which they contribute to changing what it means to communicate online. To this end, the articles presented here view the blog through the lens of their social, cultural, and rhetorical features and functions. Through study of the language, discourse, and communicative practices of bloggers, the authors provide insight into weblogs as a means of representing and expressing the self, forming identity, facilitating student-centered learning, building community, and disseminating information. http://tc.eserver.org/25589.html http://tc.eserver.org/25589.html As yet there has been little empirical examination of the claim that blogs are 'democratic,' or that blog authors represent diverse demographic groups. http://tc.eserver.org/25561.html http://tc.eserver.org/25561.html Theoretically, you can annotate your bookmarks, entering free-form reminders to yourself so that you can remember why you bookmarked this page or that one. I don't know about you, but I never actually got around to doing this. Until I started blogging. http://tc.eserver.org/25575.html http://tc.eserver.org/25575.html Notwithstanding the fact that lexicographers have come up with definitions for blog, if you asked a few dozen bloggers what makes a blog a blog, you would probably get a few dozen answers. http://tc.eserver.org/25560.html http://tc.eserver.org/25560.html Every day it seems another article about weblogs appears in the press. At first, most of these stories seemed content to cover the personal nature of blogging. But more and more I'm seeing articles that attempt to examine the journalistic and punditry aspects of weblogs prominent in many of the so-called 'warblogs,' or sites that began in response to the events of September 11th http://tc.eserver.org/25558.html http://tc.eserver.org/25558.html While a few educators have already started using blogs in the classroom, more have focused on the potential of blogging in teaching and learning. http://tc.eserver.org/25553.html http://tc.eserver.org/25553.html Weblogs are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore for those of us who spend much time reading the Web. Also known by the inscrutable nickname 'blogs', weblogs are something of a hard nut to crack. Compounding the difficulty is the fact that a great deal of weblog content today is about weblogs and weblog technology. What are weblogs? What's the big deal? Why should we pay attention? We attempt to answer these questions in the essay that follows. http://tc.eserver.org/25554.html http://tc.eserver.org/25554.html Weblogs are often-updated sites that point to articles elsewhere on the web, often with comments, and to on-site articles. http://tc.eserver.org/25556.html http://tc.eserver.org/25556.html It's been shown that the distribution of links on the web scales according to a power law, so it comes as no surprise that the distribution of links to weblogs does as well. http://tc.eserver.org/25555.html http://tc.eserver.org/25555.html A lot of people in the weblog world are asking 'How can we make money doing this?' The answer is that most of us can't. Weblogs are not a new kind of publishing that requires a new system of financial reward. Instead, weblogs mark a radical break. http://tc.eserver.org/25551.html http://tc.eserver.org/25551.html Rebecca Blood, an early blogger, describes the rise of blogging. http://tc.eserver.org/25552.html http://tc.eserver.org/25552.html There are, I'm sure, as many reasons to keep weblogs as there are weblogs authors, however, some common threads surely exist between them. What could motivate someone to keep a public journal of their innermost thoughts? What possible reasons would someone have? http://tc.eserver.org/25496.html http://tc.eserver.org/25496.html W znaczeniu społecznym blog jest czymś więcej niż tylko narzędziem: jest wirtualnym miejscem skupiającym ludzi, gdzie można przebywać i realizować się społecznie, nawiązując relacje z innymi ludźmi. Blog jest tzw. Trzecim Miejscem zgodnie z teorią Oldenburga, który uznaje, że dopiero w trzecim najważniejszym miejscu (po Domu i Pracy/Szkole), człowiek może tworzyć "prawdziwe" relacje społeczne, które nie są zbudowane na hierarchii emocjonalnej lub strukturalnej (jak w przypadku rodziny i firmy) lecz powstają dzięki posiadanym cechom charakteru, zainteresowaniom czy stylowi życia w grupie. http://tc.eserver.org/25484.html http://tc.eserver.org/25484.html 'Blogging' is a Web-based form of communication that is rapidly becoming mainstream. In this paper, we report the results of an ethnographic study of blogging, focusing on blogs written by individuals or small groups, with limited audiences. We discuss motivations for blogging, the quality of social interactivity that characterized the blogs we studied, and relationships to the blogger¡¯s audience. We consider the way bloggers related to the known audience of their personal social networks as well as the wider 'blogosphere' of unknown readers. We then make design recommendations for blogging software based on these findings. http://tc.eserver.org/25491.html http://tc.eserver.org/25491.html Despite the timeliness of the issues, many bloggers are wondering whether their craft can be taught in journalism school. http://tc.eserver.org/25493.html http://tc.eserver.org/25493.html Weblogs (blogs)--frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence--are the latest genre of Internet communication to attain widespread popularity, yet their characteristics have not been systematically described. This paper presents the results of a content analysis of 203 randomly-selected weblogs, comparing the empirically observable features of the corpus with popular claims about the nature of weblogs, and finding them to differ in a number of respects. Notably, blog authors, journalists and scholars alike exaggerate the extent to which blogs are interlinked, interactive, and oriented towards external events, and under-estimate the importance of blogs as individualistic, intimate forms of self-expression. Based on the profile generated by the empirical analysis, we consider the likely antecedents of the blog genre, situate it with respect to the dominant forms of digital communication on the Internet today, and advance predictions about its long-term impacts. http://tc.eserver.org/25492.html http://tc.eserver.org/25492.html The 'blogosphere' has been claimed to be a densely interconnected conversation, with bloggers linking to other bloggers, referring to them in their entries, and postingcomments on each other's blogs. Most such characterizations have privileged a subset of popular blogs, known asthe 'A-list.' This study empirically investigates the extent to which, and in what patterns, blogs are interconnected, taking as its point of departure randomly-selected blogs. Quantitative social network analysis, visualization of linkpatterns, and qualitative analysis of references and comments in pairs of reciprocally-linked blogs show thatA-list blogs are overrepresented and central in the network, although other groupings of blogs are moredensely interconnected. At the same time, a majority of blogs link sparsely or not at all to other blogs in the sam-ple, suggesting that the blogosphere is partially interconnected and sporadically conversational. http://tc.eserver.org/25490.html http://tc.eserver.org/25490.html Authenticity is something which must be constructed rather than simply accruing to verbal content, and visual and other design features are an inherent, but often overlooked, factor in this construction. http://tc.eserver.org/25489.html http://tc.eserver.org/25489.html Explores the notion of the blogosphere by using recent studies to soberly refocus the actual size of the blogosphere and the extent of the blogging phenomenon. http://tc.eserver.org/25438.html http://tc.eserver.org/25438.html Innovations build on existing perceptions and structures - at least until the new ideas are fully manifested. Then, the innovation discards the shackles of the old model and stands on its own merits and strengths. The development of video is often used to support this phenomenon. Video was initially used only to tape existing live stage performances - a new concept built on the perceptional structure of the existing. True innovation in this medium did not occur until someone recognized the uniqueness of video, and the limitations of live stage shows. http://tc.eserver.org/25439.html http://tc.eserver.org/25439.html The best way to learn to blog is to blog. Fortunately, getting started is fairly simple. Three main options exist: hosted, remote server, and desktop. http://tc.eserver.org/25435.html http://tc.eserver.org/25435.html Like all media forms, the blog is not transparent. The technological code of the software contains affordances that filter and, in part, determine the constitution of the private/public Self represented in any weblog. And so, what kind of Self (or Selves) are made possible or enabled by typical blogging practice? http://tc.eserver.org/25440.html http://tc.eserver.org/25440.html My new theory on blogging is that whenever I can't find a particular piece of information on Google I should just create it myself. What's the point of all this easy-to-use publishing technology if you don't publish stuff, right? http://tc.eserver.org/25441.html http://tc.eserver.org/25441.html The content management capabilities of blog software and the search options from Daypop provide incentives for information professionals to be aware, at least, of blogging. But for every blogger out there, there are probably a dozen or more others who prefer reading to writing. http://tc.eserver.org/25447.html http://tc.eserver.org/25447.html Reports the findings from an online survey conducted between January 14th and January 21st, 2004. During that time, 486 respondents answered questions about their blogging practices and their expectations of privacy and accountability for the entries they publish online. http://tc.eserver.org/25436.html http://tc.eserver.org/25436.html Weblogs (blogs) have been heralded as a new space for collaborative creativity, a medium for breaking free of the constraints of previous forms and allowing authors greater access to flexible publishing methods. This generalization seems extreme: genre studies done by Crowston and Williams (2000) and Shepherd and Watters (1998) lend credence to the notion that weblogs are evolutionary descendents of other visual media, such as newspapers and pamphlets. In this study, we apply content-analytic methods (Bauer, 2000) to a random sample of weblogs as a means of exploring current visual trends within the blogosphere. http://tc.eserver.org/25450.html http://tc.eserver.org/25450.html Assuming a Wiki is a weblog-like system that allows anyone to edit anything (I know some don't) then a Wiki represents an interesting amalgam of many voices, not the unedited voice of a single person. http://tc.eserver.org/25449.html http://tc.eserver.org/25449.html While blogs (short for 'weblogs') have been around since at least 1993, something in the stars and planets has just now come into alignment, making blogs rise above the horizon of notice. http://tc.eserver.org/25430.html http://tc.eserver.org/25430.html In some sense, weblogs sum up what's so great about the Internet. Like fanzine editors before them, weblog editors embrace a topic or theme and run with it. Weblogs are a great indicator of what's happening on the Internet and within the web community. http://tc.eserver.org/25387.html http://tc.eserver.org/25387.html A new buzzword you should know about is 'blog' or 'web log', meaning web log, digital journal, or online diary. Blogs are the Next Big Thing to hit the Internet, after conventional Web Sites. http://tc.eserver.org/25384.html http://tc.eserver.org/25384.html When it comes to the usability of the presidential candidates' blogs, they all need some work from a usability standpoint. Applying good usability practices would make better use of campaign funds, attract young voters, and give candidates a better idea of what is important to the electorate. http://tc.eserver.org/25245.html http://tc.eserver.org/25245.html Behind the scenes, in the limelight, ahead of the curve...'blogphets' have plenty to say to us mere mortals on what makes a blog 'tick.' http://tc.eserver.org/25056.html http://tc.eserver.org/25056.html Blogs are about to give way to a new development. Wikis are web sites within which any user can quickly and easily edit much of the content, without HTML. This idea regarding user-generated online content goes beyond the comment posting of a standard blog. Blikis are blogs that have wiki support, so that users can edit the comments posted. http://tc.eserver.org/24589.html http://tc.eserver.org/24589.html Freedom of expression is not ruling the blogosphere, because insecure bloggers will block your attempt to post comments, or even read their blog, should they decide you are "too controversial" or "too different from me". Opinionated blogs are the worst culprits of cowardly post blocking. http://tc.eserver.org/24579.html http://tc.eserver.org/24579.html With over 4 million distinct blog voices in the blogosphere, how can you differentiate yourself? By being an interesting voice. Interesting voices are made, not born, and now you can learn some ways to become more interesting and influential in blogdom. CAUTION: not for boring blah blah blah bloggers who are smug and self-satisfied. http://tc.eserver.org/22738.html http://tc.eserver.org/22738.html Although blogs are generally linked with business, personal, and entertainment sites, Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, thinks that blogs are evolving into a major academic tool for universities. Members of the academic community have discovered that blogs offer the classroom a cheap, sociable, and fast way for everyone in the class to actively participate in discussion. http://tc.eserver.org/22384.html http://tc.eserver.org/22384.html Weblogs give users information from multiple sources in one page. http://tc.eserver.org/21801.html http://tc.eserver.org/21801.html Blogger's primary advantage is its simplicity--if you accept the default settings and host on BlogSpot, you can be up and running within five minutes. Once you have your blog, you'll find it's just as easy to customize it. http://tc.eserver.org/20260.html http://tc.eserver.org/20260.html When did weblogs stop filtering the web and begin cluttering it instead? Rich Robinson on digital glut and creative solutions. http://tc.eserver.org/20223.html http://tc.eserver.org/20223.html Great writing can’t be taught, but bad writing can be avoided. Mahoney shares tips that may enhance the writing on your personal site. http://tc.eserver.org/19665.html http://tc.eserver.org/19665.html 'Blogs,' or Web logs, are the newest form of one-way and interactive online communication to hit the Internet. Most people would agree that a 'blog' is a regularly updated set of Web pages with a chronological set of thoughts and links. Starting around 1999, the blog movement has gained so much momentum that hundreds of thousands of Web logs and many different styles of blog now exist.