Week 3: Web 2.0 and Podcasting - where is this heading?

Web 2.0 enables web users to become part of the "Web", that is, it enables everyone to contribute, publish, create, and manage the global area of the Web. Web users can interact with each other, share and build the Web together. For instance, Web forum is a user-oriented web space that users are responsible for the contribution of the contents and forum owners only responsible for the technical backend coding part as well as to maintain the contents flow. The topics of Web forum are vary, from sports, entertainment news, household issues, gardening to any topics that you can think of and of interest to discuss with others.

RealGM.com is one of the popular sport forums on the Web, it provides NBA news, scores, polls to users, as well as a discussion board for users to share their opinions on NBA. It not only provides a social place for NBA lovers to talk with each other virtually on the Web, but also provides opportunities for these Web users to unite as a group to watch real time NBA games together.

As Web 2.0 becoming the trend, users start to concern about the security and privacy problems since Web contents are generated among Web users, the credibility of the contents itself become a question and everyone can say anything, can edit other’s says on the Web, and it is becoming harder to define whether certain contents can or cannot be trusted. For instance, Youtube, the most popular Podcasting website on the Web are facing a problem of verifying the credibility of the contents on the site. There were users Podcasting something like personal video diary on Youtube, and the series of video generate a large number of viewers, but at the end, the video provider reveals the truth that the contents of the videos are fake, she is an actor and trying to act out someone’s life on the Podcast, and the act disappointed thousands of her loyal viewers.

We should pay attention when watching podcast videos or interacting with strangers on the Internet, and should learn how to analyze what we see and to determine if it is trustworthy. Also,we should beware of what we say and not giving important information to anyone who we do not know on the Internet.

Week 3: Podcast

Hi I m Cindy, I m a 4th year VCC major.
I will be graduating in November
and this is my second last semester,
so I will be working really hard on all of my courses.
I like to do graphic design and web design,
I don’t mind to present in front of the class!

I always love to make my own video blog,
I will definitely do it when I have more time!
I have taken courses that make video and animation!

Nice to meet you!!






......

Week 2: Seeking a best of…

Snippets of Life - http://www.karencheng.com.au/

If you love art and design, love fashion, love to eat healthy, love your kids, family and friends, then you will definitely love to read Karen Cheng's blog.

Being a designer, writer, artist and mother of two, Karen Cheng shares her daily life events, art design ideas, fashion senses, even parenting tips with all of her blog readers. I become one of her loyal readers since I discovered her blog.

The blog has a neat and simple layout, simple but not bored. White background color with classic black text makes her colorful banner picture (probably designed by her) ever more attractive and colorful. I like the way how she divided the layout, blog entries on the left, navigation menu in the center (slightly to the right), sponsors or advertisment (that relate to her topics) on the right. It is "reader-friendly", there are links on the top part of her blog that makes readers easier to browse within her site, or contact her.

I especially like the way she put RSS, StumbleUpon, Facebook links below the advertisments - that provides a easier way for readers to subscribe to her blog's RSS, or, add her to your facebook and become one of her friends!

Week 1: What is the biggest issue facing blogging, citizenship and the future of media?

Topics of blogs are varied, ranging from personal diary (text, photo, video), educational blog, informative blog, news blog, even promotional blog, etc. In order to find out more about blog, I try to search for the keyword: “Blog” on Google.com. The result surprises me that there are not only personal blogs but also corporation blogs in the first 30 resutls. Corporation blogs such as Google Blog, Facebook Blog, Flickr Blog are used to provide information, product news and are aimmed to communicate with their users. In my experience of leaving comments on other people’s blogs, or look for comments on my blog, I find it annoying that there are many times that I need to go back to the blog that I have left comment on to check if the writer has replied me or not. Sometimes I find the reply that is dedicated for my comment, but it might be posted after several other people’s comments on the same blog entry. What I am trying to say is, will there be a more convenient way to communicate between blog writers and readers? Therefore, I think the biggest issue facing blogging would be its inadequate interactivity.

In terms of citizenship, when you sign up and create a blog on a particular webblog provider website, you are indeed joining this “virtual community” and become a “virtual citizen” on this community. Once you have created your blog, your blog will be registered on the user list of this website. Users on the website can search for your blog by keywords. Since there is no identity certification needed to create a blog, one can create as many blog as he or she can, and act totally different in each blog, and, to have “multi-citizenships” on this community. This cannot be happened in real life but can happen anywhere on the virtual communities. Therefore, this might be a problem in the future that provides a platform for the Internet crimes.