3 posts tagged “social”
“Blog” is a combination of the words ‘web’ and ‘log’. People who write blogs are bloggers, and the act of writing is calling blogging. It’s kind of like an online diary or newsletter. What makes a blog different is the ability for the blogger to update their posts easily, and for visitors to comment on the entries. Each blogger has their own ‘voice’ or tone, and the way they view their subject matter. Blogs are usually updated very regularly. What you are reading here is a blog!
RSS feeds (see yesterday’s post for more about RSS feeds) make it easy for users to subscribe to a blog, and then they can read new articles without having to visit the site regularly. The greatest thing about blogs is how specialized they can be. There are blogs available on every conceivable subject, meaning you can find and subscribe to any topic that interests you. You can contribute to the ‘blogosphere’ by creating your own blog, as well. There are many free services you can sign up for and begin blogging today:
Over on the westXdesign site, I posted an introduction to the social uses of the internet. Sometimes I have a hard time explaining what this ‘newness’ of community on the web is all about. I forget that very few people started where I did, and all of this is new and novel and amazing to them. Networks of friends, interacting through comments, chat, sharing files, pictures, videos, information. But that’s what the internet has ALWAYS been about. The only difference is the way in which it is happening. Today, it’s easier, and more interconnected. People don’t have to know anything about computers or programming to take part, and that wasn’t the case when I started.
Well, when DID you start, you ask….
without dating myself *too* much…
My first online community was a dial-up bulletin board which I interacted with using an Atari 800 and an 835 modem. That’s right. I wasn’t part of the Commodore crowd. And never joined the Apple bandwagon. It was Atari for me, and continued to be Atari all the way through until I bought my first Windows based PC in 199-something. I don’t want to say what year I got that first PC because I continued using my Atari ST longer than I care to admit. By this time, I was dialing into a local network, and accessing the web using a text-based browser. That’s back when the web was small.
My first experience with true real-time internet-based networking and socialization was the MUD (Multi User Dimension/Domain/Dungeon whatever). Specifically: TCZ (The Chatting Zone). Which still operates today. It’s through TCZ that I got hooked on the social aspects of the internet. I had friends from all over the world there, and no matter what time of day I logged in, there they were. I still have fond memories of many conversations and shenanigans involving Predator. I was Pegasus in case any of you reading care to know….
I built on my BASIC programming skills, and just naturally migrated to CGI and HTML. It was all fun and games, I loved the challenge and the friendships. By 1996, I was fully immersed in the online world, and have grown and changed as much as it has. So the social circles we have today with MySpace, Virb, Jaiku, Twitter, Flickr, RSS feeds…it’s all natural. This is where we’ve been heading all along. It’s where I’VE been heading all along…
The web has always been a place for people to share ideas and post their views and comments, but it hasn’t always been easy. Today, the web has become much friendlier, with the popularity of such sites as MySpace and Wikipedia. The software behind these types of sites makes contributing, and taking part, in the online community easy and more personal for users. Even novices are finding their way into the social community of the new web.
Socialization on the web takes place through the many ways users can build communities if friends and family who share the same interests or views: sharing of pictures and videos, conversations through comments, and online ‘presence’ streams through such sites as Jaiku or Twitter.
Over the next few days, I’m going to cover some of the sites and tools that I find fun, useful, or just plain interesting. But before we get too far, an important tool to understand is content syndication or RSS Feeds, and a general defining of the term “Web 2.0″
Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many
Web 1.0 Web 2.0 Britannica Online Wikipedia personal websites blogging publishing participation directories tagging stickiness syndication
It means distributing your resources onto the internet network. Think of it as the Internet Operating System. Almost everything you use your computer for now will done online, without software installed on your computer. And many tasks you don’t use your computer for can be done more efficiently online.
Web 2.0 Meme map from “What is Web 2.0” by O’Reilly
In the 1.0 model, you bookmarked a web site you found interesting, and maybe you remembered later to return to it and check for new content. Today, syndication is major part of almost all regularly updated sites. Syndication is accomplished through RSS Feeds.
The technical acronym for RSS is “Really Simple Syndication”, it was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content on the web. A great (simple) explanation of RSS can be found at “How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way”
So, to make RSS much easier to understand, we’ll say RSS stands for: I’m “Ready for Some Stories”. It is a way online for you to get a quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite sites all in one place.
Suppose you have 50 sites that you like to visit regularly. Going to visit each site everyday could take you hours. With RSS, you can “subscribe” to a the site, and get “fed” all the new headlines from all of these 50 sites in one list, and see what’s going on in minutes instead of hours.That one place where your RSS list is created is called an RSS Reader, and it gathers all the headlines from all the sites you have subscribed to.
To “subscribe” to a site’s RSS feed simply means that you are telling that site, “Yes please. Send me your story headlines.” It’s like subscribing to a magazine or newsletter. Instead of getting a magazine or email, you will just get a list of headlines sent to your RSS reader. If the headline looks interesting to you, all you have to do is click on the headline and you’ll be sent to the whole story.
In order to subscribe to a site’s RSS, all you have to do is click on an RSS symbol like one of those shown in the diagram above, or a text link of the words “Subscribe to our RSS feed”.
If you’d like your RSS list to be accessible from any computer or mobile device you may have like a PDA, laptop, or cell phone, some popular RSS readers include
MyYahoo
MyMSN
MyAOL
Google Reader
Bloglines
NetVibesAnd many popular email programs have the ability the add RSS feeds, as well. Then, when you check your email, you’ll get your subscription feeds as well.
Another use of RSS feeds is for you to consolidate all of your own online presence streams, comments, and networks into one, such as importing all of your blog posts, Jaiku postings, photos, videos, music, and friends onto one consolidated site such Virb, Zude, or PageFlakes. (we’ll cover these later in the week…)
Feel free to add to the conversation with your comments or questions. And if you have a favorite social or aggregate site we don’t mention, please share it with us!
