Group items tagged

Argument (with some decent solutions/suggestions) for making the transition from paper to electronic publications.

In our last class (I think it was last class), Sandy mentioned the Electronic Book Review. This is the search results for "Electronic Literature Collection" on the website. As he mentioned, not all works deal with electronic literature; however, a huge majority of the essays engage in discussions that are highly relevant to the discussions we are having in class. I'll also bookmark a couple of key essays and give a short blurb as to why I think you all might want to check them out.

While sites like Facebook and Google seem to be taking over the world, it would be nice to be able to eliminate some of the sites we all are constantly having to check or update or interact on or remember logins and passwords for! Just think: no more Blackboard, you're already on Facebook all the time-why not post for class while you're there? :-)

This is the article I referenced in class regarding exercise....

Nature Valley has definitely put a spin on what it means to explore the great outdoors. We've had a few conversations in class about the difference between reality and virtual reality. While I strongly argue that Watching a video or seeing pictures does not come close to first hand experience, sites like this are good for exploring places you might like to go or to remind you of favorite places you've been. It also makes me wonder if there's anything that Google doesn't dabble in.

I know I talked a little in class about how facebook has had an affect on dating and people's perceptions of flirtation, so I thought I'd share this short article that discusses some of the potentially negative affects of dating through facebook. I'm not propagating that idea (my finance and I just looked through our very first facebook messages yesterday and it was heart warming) but it's interesting to see how others view the potential friendships and heartbreaks of this particular digital social sphere.

Of the different online accounts I have, Tumblr is one account I don't have and after reading O'Reilly and looking at the site I have to admit I'm a little fascinated by it. It seem like in many ways it's taken the parts of Myspace, facebook, and twitter that work and pasted them all together at once. In some senses this seems overwhelming, but just from the sample pages, what I see doesn't look entirely unlike what I'm creating for this class. I intentionally linked to the about page since I think there is a great deal of interesting info that feels like it came almost came straight out of O'Reilly's book especially in regard to building communities and allowing for participation, customization, and interaction. The home page also has some useful pieces worth exploring I think.

I talked about this in class and I've posted on this before, but when I first posted this the idea was still in the inchoate stages of development. Now you can click on different chapters of the story and there will be a menu on the right hand side that shows animated versions of people added to the story. By clicking on this drawing, the story will advance to the period where this person makes a guest appearance and will show the real photo used for the drawing which is sometimes a facebook profile picture. Why I think this is especially interesting is that it has elements of IF that are in use in electronic literature, but it also creates a participatory community based around a specific exigency which is buying products from AXE.

Lovink's latest book is all about social media. It addresses a number of the critiques we offered in class - which is not to say it answers or does away with them - but also reinforces that he offers less a theory than a report or journalistic take. (One example is the way he looks at the uneven use of blogging world wide, so that blogging becomes much less monolithic in this account.)

After class I was looking to find some background information on Julian Assange, mainly because I know very little about his negative reputation. Here is an interesting blog emphasizing the impact of reputational crisis, which is really interesting, especially considering that this information is even available from this university to the public.

Most of the articles I'm bookmarking for now I don't really have a lot of response or reaction to or deep meaningful thought about because I'd never even heard of HTML5 until our class last week (2.15). So, now, I'm just trying to educate myself and get caught up on what all is being said out there about HTML5. This article addresses some of that in ways I can understand.

This probably seems ridiculous that I'm sharing this, but this directly relates to a paper I wrote last semester about the rhetoric employed by AXE and now I think they're making a move that applies to this class. Here we have some combination of McLuhan's idea of media being an extension of man and we see elements of IF as people actively contribute the making of a graphic novel and then are characterized by the creators for their input all the while fusing their digital selves to some sort of global and digital AXE alliance. Imagine how difficult it would be to by a different product once you become part of their story and your digital self participates (to channel the ideas of Barry Brummett) in this particular reality.

Interesting in terms of McLuhan and discussions last class.

An interesting article about an author who was recently caught up in a plagiarism scandal that dated back over (nearly) his whole writing career. The article deals with intentionality and references/interviews Jonathan Lethem who we discussed in class (and I think Sandy bookmarked).

The changing privacy policy for Google came up in last class (I think Dibs mentioned it), and I thought this was an interesting article that talks about how difficult it is to navigate around the changes.

I was taught web design based on a set of pretty intense basic rules (like use the color blue as I mentioned last class), but here is an awesome site that not only tells you the rules, but how and why to break them. The text and tables concepts especially apply here.

We talked about "digital badges" in class a few weeks ago. This article explains how a competition, "Badges for Lifelong Learning," could allow digital badges to become legitimate evidence of non-traditional, "DIY" learners' skills and knowledge. Digital badges come into the picture because these individuals won't have a degree to show for their work.

Lawmakers are finally putting a stop to this practice. Since we broached the topic of rhetorical strategies in making arguments in class, the argument one law expert makes is interesting: ""It lays down boundaries on what you can and can't do. It takes a gray area and makes a bright line ... The bill is a win for employees who want to protect their data security and their personal content passwords. But it's also a win for employers. ... Employers don't want to have access to this content. With access comes responsibility."

Some thoughts and examples of web design, in case we'd like to revamp our sites after the class has finished.

I know there are some coffee lovers in the class, so this is double apt. Like Four Barrel Coffee, The Daily Grind also chooses not to offer wifi to its customers. An interesting twist to the notion that the Internet is considered a hindrance to our social lives, even over coffee.