#web101

[fareedxvanpokfameuz-blog]

My EXEGESIS (Web Presence Assignment)

I chose Tumblr for the central node of my web presence, which I have never decided to sign up before. It was important for me to engage in new ways of online communication and use platforms such as Tumblr that I had no experience with. There were three contributing nodes that I chose and had a previous experience with, which are Instagram, Twitter and YouTube channel.

These platforms that I have been using for awhile helped me to promote myself as a known dancer and fashion guy to the audience around the world. In creating this web presence, the aim was to expose myself to the people that will assist and encourage me in terms of my professionalism as an Internet communications student and also for my future career.

The title of my blog is Fashioniqua. And the reason I chose the name is because I am into fashion and I added “iqua” into the word to make it quiet unique, which is related to my personality, as I like being stand out from the others when it comes to fashion and dancing. The name of this node is not the same with my other platforms. I used a different nickname so when people search my full name, it would not directly connected to this web presence.

I decided to choose Tumblr as my blogging platform because it is pretty easy to use and also it is very customizable. I can insert some music to the node by just simply copy and paste the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) into the SCM player code. This helps the viewers to enjoy my blog even better and understand my types of music that I listen to. And also to promote couple of my cover songs. I used the Green skin colour for the SCM player to present the positivity of my blog. Regarding the layout of the blog, I just wanted to keep it simple by using the free theme called Povouir published by ThemeCloset. The appearance makes the information easy to view and I also customized the header and background image to make it more individual. As Blood (2000) states that blogging helps people to explore own interests. Therefore, my blog is about my adventure towards future career that I want to achieve by posting my reflection on how this transition influences me.

I used Instagram as my contributing node because I can instantly update my blog by just posting photos from Instagram since it can be linked with one another. Most of my recent photos will automatically featured on the “dashboard” or newsfeed on Tumblr. Thus, by using this way of updating the central node, it will participate two platforms of social sites and together can draw attention to the viewers. 

I linked Twitter as one of the contributing nodes. Twitter has the similarity with other social blogging sites, however due to the maximum of the character for users to tweet or in other word is called as “microblogging”, which Java et al. (2007) explain as “a form of blogging that lets you write brief text updates and then send them to friends and interested observers via text messaging, instant messaging (IM), email or the web”. It is an instant blogging system. The limited character size for posting on Twitter can help reduce the time for users to produce content, which makes its special than blogging (Java et al. 2007). As microblogging can be done as often as the user wants, this is making Twitter much more convenient instead of blogging as most bloggers normally update their blog every few days or less. When I do not have time to publish a blog post on the main node, I used Twitter to keep central node updated with new content.

Another contributing node that I connected through Tumblr was YouTube channel. Users might be wondering where could they watch my dance choreographies since I mentioned I am a dancer on “About” me. Therefore, I chose my YouTube channel since it is easy to share the videos from YouTube to Tumblr. When the audience shares my dance videos together with the outfit that I wore on each video, it helps my art pieces to be appreciated through online communication.

Finally, all these contributing nodes link back to the central node, which is great because I do not need to update all platforms. I can choose which nodes I need to publish and share at, and their updates are automatically included on the central node that can maintain all contents are updated.

Reference list.

Blood, Rebecca. (2000). Weblogs: A History and Perspective. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html

Java, Akshay, Tim Finin, Xiaodan Song, and Belle Tseng. 2007. Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities. Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD 2007, San Jose, California, USA, August 12 – 12, 2007 (pp56-65).  New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery.  http://workshops.socialnetworkanalysis.info/websnakdd2007/papers/submission_21.pdf

[weseefood-blog]

Creamy Scallop & Mushroom Gratin Recipe

[weseefood-blog]

Red Velvet Cupcakes Recipe - How to Make Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

[matthewalanbennett]

The MyScript Calculator for Android and iOS FREE!!!

This is pretty close to a dream app for me, I don't really need to do many complex calculations (and when I say many, I mean ANY). Still, I can handwrite numbers faster than working on a touchpad calculator. The capacity of this app is amazing, and it is still simply impressive to use.

Check it out for fun, you may be surprised! Free!

[matthewalanbennett]

if THIS, then IFTTT

by Matthew A Bennett

IFTTT’s slogan “Put the internet to work for you.” is absolutely true. I have not seen a better way of mashing up all the various sites that I use. It allows you to combine your web applications (channels) into “If This Then That” type of commands (recipes). For instance, let’s say that I wanted all of my starred GMail messages to get saved to my Evernote account. I create a recipe (very easy to do) that says: IF (I star a GMAIL message) THEN (Create a note in Evernote) That does the trick, but more importantly, you don’t need to know any programming. IFTTT walks you through every step and asks you what you are trying to accomplish. Here are some of the ways that I have connected the internet for myself: -starred emails go to evernote (this is for emails that I’ll delete from my account, but want to save only in evernote) -emails that are labelled “Evernote” also get sent to evernote. ) this is for emails that I want to keep in my gmail account -any receipt i get in my email automatically gets sent to Evernote -my Tumblr posts get automatically posted to my Wordpress blog -my Recumbent Journeys blog gets auto posted to Wordpress -my Instagram photos get posted to Wordpress -Wordpress gets posted to Blogger My personal list goes on and on, but there are so many things that you can do with this technology to save time, and to organize your life. If I lose my phone, I can send an email that will make it ring...through IFTTT. There are thousands of recipes that you can look through, and you can either use pre made recipes or create your own. I would recommend browsing through to see what others are doing, because this has been an inspiration to me. I thought of most of my own recipes while browsing through other’s public recipes. We live in exciting times, and there is so much we can do with the online tools at our disposal, but putting them together in a meaningful way isn’t always easy. IFTTT is one of those applications that exists to make other applications work for you. And that is a beautiful thing.

[matthewalanbennett]

Free Everything! No kidding! This is Open Culture...

Matthew A Bennett

One of my favorite sites of all time is Open Culture. With their amazingly large database of free cultural and educational media, they have given internet users simple access to a nearly limitless wealth of information. Free books, audio books, college level courses, language lessons, movies, and many other styles of media are available. 

The website fits perfectly in my agenda of "learning something new everyday", and it's easy to browse topics that seem interesting that day. If you're anything like me, you change daily, your interests vary, and you want to learn a lot about a lot. Open culture is one of the places to go learn. 

I admire the thought behind the entire open source movement, even though I can understand why Bill Gates and others call it communism. I just don't see a problem being part of community like that, and the only problem I have with communism is if the government forces the idea on us. But enough said, about that...

This is definitely a "must-bookmark" kinda site. Worth checking out when you're sitting around bored, or you need some ideas for writing, teaching, researching, or simply learning. Open source is huge and getting bigger, it's a good idea, and we can all make it bigger by using it and eventually adding to the pool of free human knowledge. 

Spread the word.