Final blog

It was easier at the beginning of the semester to find things to blog about, but lately I've been really struggling to think of topics that I wanted to blog about. Similarly, sifting through the existing blogs today, I found quite a few of them were about their last blog. I figured I'd follow suit.

This semester is my last semester at EMU as an undergrad, and I can honestly say, it couldn't end sooner. I learned a lot this semester, especially in this class. While blogging wasn't new to me, I learned that it could be more than just a few sentences, no matter how unlikely that is, at least from me.

My group will be wrapping up our group project in the next few days, and I'm kind of excited to finish it up. It seems like I have to wrap up a big project in every one of my classes this week, on top of that I'm starting a new full time job, so this week will definitely be a crazy one. I'm looking up though, things will definitely be interesting in the few months to follow.

Blog 14

When I started blogging it was easy to come up with topics to discuss. Then towards the end of the semester it got harder to come up with ideas to blog about. Now, I'm finally finished.

Using the class blog has been a very useful way to communicate my progress on projects and discuss different topics. It has also been a useful way to get information from others. There were times that I didn't want to blog but it was a necessary and helpful part of IS449.

So this is it. Blog 14. I just want to say thank you to everyone in class for sharing their information. There was a lot of new things I learned from all of your post.

Blog #14

I started my friendly blog counter a couple of weeks ago. I am proud to say that this is blog number 14 for me. It feels good and encouraging that I was able to accomplish the blog task. The more I thought about the easier blogging became for me.

The best thing about blogging for this class is at gave everyone the opportunity to share what they have learned and struggled with in this class. I also like the idea of keeping last semester blog posts on our blog so we can go back and look at some of the issues in the class before us.
I am very excited with the progress I have learned in this class. With my individual project I worked with Google Maps, fanfeedr and weather api. My group project I worked with the youtube api and really enjoyed the documentation on it. The biggest thing left with our group project is getting one more api and I think we will all be very happy with the progress.

I looked around and tried to get some information on how to make blogging more enjoyable when doing it. At times it can be enjoyable when you have something on your mind and want to share it with others. When you are stuck and don't have anything to write, then it can become a challenge. Here is a link to an article on five essential tools to make blogging fun and easy.

Lil Wayne blogging from Jail??

No one can deny that Lil' Wayne is one of the greatest musicians out right now. Not only did he sell over 1million albums of his last rap album "The Carter 3" but he's so bold that he released a rock album in February which landed him on the cover of Rolling Stones. He is also the president of one of the hottest record labels right now call Young Money.

There are so many other achievements and accolades that I could mention, but the only thing that matters right now is that the famed rapper is currently in prison, serving a year long sentence for weapon possession. But recently a new website http://weezythanxyou.com/ has been launched and if you go to the site right now, you will see its first blog post from Lil Wayne.

In it he describes how much he loves his fan (I've been to many of his concerts and think that he is sincere when he says he does) and reminds them that he will be no where with out them. He states that he will be writing from time to time and will try to reply to as many fans as he can. Well you may be asking yourself how is this possible? Is he getting special "star" treatment in jail? The answer is no. Simply answered, his record label knows how important social media is now a days to be able to draw more fans to their artists. That is why Lil Wayne will actually be writing and receiving messages the old fashion way, through handwritten letters in the mail. Then a team at the label will be converting the messages from Wayne into blogs on the website.

This is really a first to me. And another "feature" of todays world where I couldn't of imagined happening 10years ago. But it is really cool that if your such a huge fan of someone and they are put in jail, you don't have to forget about them for 8-12months while they are away. You can just look forward to the next blog update from them and see how their mood is or what is going on in their new environment. Who knows if this will last or if the jail might come up with a reason of why this type of communication breaks some kind of rule or law.

Via Mashable

History of Blogging

Over the past few years blogging has been added to almost everyone's dictionary, from your classmates to your grandmothers. With this being the case, however, most people still do not know where this phenomenon came from. To answer this question efficiently, one must start from the beginning. Before blogging, the online community communicated through a few different mediums, from Usenet (the original forum service), Bulletin Board System (BBS, the original online community), to today's common day forum. While these forms of communication worked efficiently enough, with the advancements of technology (specifically the invention of HTTP and the Internet), and a new outlook on how these services are to be used (quicker and simpler), new varieties including blogging were developed.

A blog itself isn't a service or software like Usenet or mIRC is. "A blog (a contraction of the term "web log") is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video" ( Wikipedia - Blog ). With this in mind, the actual act of blogging was invented initially from an online diary. The 'original' bloggers were journalists, writers, and everyday people who voluntarily chose to share their opinions with the world. Considered to be one of the earliest bloggers, Justin Hall was just a student of Swarthmore College and in 1994 began eleven years of personal blogging. During the early years, blogging was not known as so, but was typically regular webpage updates of the "News" or "What's New" sections and was indexed on the webserver for future readings. Blogging continued like this until tools were developed specifically to make this process easier, quicker, more proficiently organized, and streamlined.

The term 'weblog' was first coined in December of 1997 by Jorn Barger and the shortened version 'blog' we use today was jokingly added to the sidebar of Peter Merholz's website in April 1999. From here blogging quickly spread from the creations of the first blogging webtools Open Diary and LiveJournal were among the first widely used blogging tools and still exist today. Blogger.com was another one of these original blogging tools and was actually purchased by the mega giant Google in February 2003. Since the days of early blogging many new reasons to blog have become popular, as well as public's overall view of blogging credibility. Now many politicians are using blogs to help campaign, music artists are spreading word of new albums, how-to manuals are being written, and even TV news networks like CNN are posting the latest worldwide news and events. Blogging has even become so mainstream that fine universities like Eastern Michigan University are building their usage into everyday criteria for classes.

A Good Idea

I was recently reading some blogs to make my weekly comments and I came across a blog from someone in our class here. He brings up a very good point. Basically he is asking if our blogs can be a review of the previous week, or maybe each paragraph could be on a slightly different topic even though our rubric for our blogs says to stay on topic.

I think it would be much easier if we could talk about different things in our blog each week instead of having one blog that is three paragraphs long on one topic. Would Dr. Drake be willing to consider allowing us to have 3 separate blogs each week that are each one paragraph long? I think that this would make things much easier for us as students in more than one way. I think it would allow us more freedom to talk about different things each week instead of one topic and I also think that it would give us more variety when we have to go make our 3 comment posts each week. Instead of having only one topic to post on for each student we would have 3 per student to post on.

I know that this isn't our decision to make as a class, but I think it's a really good idea. I'm not bringing this up for just the "let's make things easier" factor, I'm bringing it up because I really think it would make thinks better. We would have more information to read and decide on what we wanted to comment on etc. instead of feeling like we just have to make something up to get our paragraphs done for that week.

Blogging

I have the worst attitude about writing and a lot of times it frustrates me. I admit to everyone that I am a terrible writer and so most of the time I just give up. I have tried a couple of times and I have noticed that my biggest thing is the way I phrase things. I also have learned that I write what I think instead of trying to make something smooth. With blogging in this class, it could be another huge opportunity for me to increase my writing skills.

I want to first start with doing a little research about blogging so I have a complete understanding what is expected. I read the syllabus and then read about blogging online on the emuonline.edu website. Blogging quantity seemed like an important item that should be highlighted and made sure everyone in the class realizes what is expected. We are expected to make at least 1 post a week and make 3 posts comments on other classmates.

With researching about blogs, I found out that there are many different types of blogs. Blogs are different based on the type of content. Also blogs are different in the way that content is delivered or written. I looked up the different types of blogs and this is what I came across:

· Personal Blogs

· Corporate and Organizational Blogs

· By Genre

· By media type

· By device

My goal is to have a positive attitude with blogging and really learn how to improve my writing. Thanks for reading my first blog.

Blogging IS449

This is not my first time blogging for this course. Last semester I took IS449 with professor Drake and we had the same requirement for blogging. At times it seems difficult to come up with ideas to blog about but as the semester progresses it gets easier.

This is a writing intensive course but there are huge benefits from the class blog. This is a great way to share ideas, trouble shoot problems, and find resources. Many of the things I worked on last semester were done with the help of others through blogging.

It only takes a few minutes to write a few paragraphs and share information. Then you have an entire class working together to make that information more useful with feedback. It is very important to keep up with your blogs every week because they are worth a large portion of your grade.

Blogging

Alright so I was sitting here and thinking about what to right in this blog. I have heard of blogs but haven't really seen or have written one before. So I googled search th e meaning of blogging and what i got in return is wikipedia defintinon: and it states " is a blog is a type of website, usally maintained by an individual with regualar entries of commentary, description of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Blog can also be used a verb, meaning to maintain or add a blog. (Wikepdia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogging

This clears up the meaning for me in that I know exaclty what the term of blogging means. And this should be interesting what will be written by people during the course of the semester. As it is open to many things we can write, discuss or comment about. While i was reading about blogs I noticed that there are different kinds of blogs such as personal blogs, corporate and organizational blogs. They can also be grouped together by genre, media type, and by device which I found interesting to read about.

So during the course of the semester we can technically do all these types of blogs. There were some interesting things about blogging history, origins, how it has transformed over the years, and legal and ethical issues that were also mentioned. So in this little research I have done I have learned something I never really knew about.

Open Source Office Suite

As I am trying to figure out what to Blog about, for my final Blog, I realized that I don't have a word processing application on my laptop. I usually do my work on my desktop which has Office 2007 but I just felt like vegetating in front of the Television. So, I decided to go to openoffice.org and download the office suite. This is yet another Free open-source application and it is mostly, from what I found, compatible with Microsoft's Office suite.


“OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. (OpenOffice.org)”




Open Office is included with the Linux Distribution that I use and is also supported on Mac OS X and Windows.

I am seriously considering switching to a Linux desktop, with Open office, after I graduate since I will not need to worry about being compatible with Microsoft after that.

Benefits of Blogging

This course is writing intensive and we are required to blog at the IS449 blog site shown below.

The idea is that knowledge discovery is aided by allowing the largest number of people to participate. Well thought out posts and intelligent comments lead to the greatest growth in knowledge to all involved.

It has been a few weeks now since we started blogging and the growth in knowledge is easy to see. Many of the blog posts have been a very helpful resource when working on our projects. There has been a variety of topics with useful information.

Thank you to all who have worked hard and took the time to share their ideas.

Iteration 2

Well I had lots of hadacke trying to do different things for the personal project and realized it is quite difficult. I am not sure if anyone felt like me but I definatelly had hard time. So after playing with google maps, youtube, and so on, I realized that I really do not understand what is really happening. That is why I took an easier to comprehend approach by following the professor's RSS example. I knew that I can not use a pop up winndow that displays raw XML but rather I had to format it in a way to display it in my html page. So I have decided to find another blog and pull that information. Well again that was not an easy task.

Finding different blogs was easy, but just to make sure that my proxy file works I had to run it. Well in a lot of cases I was getting errors that I do not have permition to read the file, or file is not accessible. I am not sure if there was a mistake into my proxy php file or just those blogs had some restrictions. Well after a while I found out a blog that is in blogspot.com and also talks about APIs. How cool? The guys who participate in the blog are developers, so it was pretty interesting to find out some new cool ideas.

Well after getting my proxy php file working ok, I had to find a way to figure out how to pull the information I wanted and display it. Well this was the place with the most difficulty. I tryed to use button and different actions, but I never got any feed back from the proxy server. That is why I decided to go with what the profosor had. So I did reference on what he did. The next problem I had was in the names that I had put in into the drop box. I read the XML file and pulled just one name so I can see if my page would work. And it did not!!!! After a while I figured out that the name I was pulling was the actual author host blog. The actual name of the outhors of the blogs were different. So that was lots of hadacke for nothing. Anyways this is what I have so far

http://people.emich.edu/idimov/Iterat2/test1.html

Blogging Everywhere!

It seems that more and more businesses and school courses require blogging. Blogging is a great place to learn about new topics and to share information.

I took the course IS247 Introduction to Web Application Development a few semesters ago with professor Bud Gibson. That course was also writing intensive and required blogging. We used the learning remix site to post our blogs. It was the first time I had ever blogged and I found it very useful to discuss the topics of the course.















I think that blogging will continue to grow and become a requirement for most school courses and businesses in the future. Not only is it a great place to share information but it is great way to have class discussions and get multiple opinions and feedback.

Blogging

Blogging?? A term I’ve heard about, but really have no prior experience working with, or carefully scrutinizing. Wikipedia states that it is a “type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.” Blogging is much more dynamic than a traditional website and has become a quick and fascinating way to share information from all sorts of venues. Last night, saddened by hearing the news of the death of Patrick Swayze, I visited the Yahoo website and within minutes, people from all walks of life, and from all over the world, were posting blogs expressing their condolences. Where else would we be able to communicate instantaneously with one another regarding news that had just occurred within minutes?

Blogs are also used frequently by businesses of all sizes as a publishing platform. Blogs can be categorized by many different genres including political, travel or music blogs. Once a company establishes a website, it is extremely important that they continue to develop and promote aggressive public relations with potential customers and/or buyers which will, hopefully, result in increased revenue and market share. Blogs jog your memory to return to websites and continue a conversation, which in turn makes an audience become more knowledgeable based on feedback received. The cost, investment, and obligation on the companies behalf is minimal in comparison to the benefits achieved. When a company decides to use an internal blog, they automatically reduce the amount of effort required to keep their employees current with new information but, also replace the need for constant e-mails being sent, we all know how much we love to get e-mails at work! The company also has the advantage of maintaining a controlled atmosphere by limiting postings to designated staff. All comments and information created in a blog can be stored permanently so that they may be referenced for future use.

In an attempt to further delve into this subject, enhance my experience with blogging, and seek depth of information, I decided to locate and attach a Youtube video to my blog. The following is a Youtube video addressing “What is a blog?”


There are numerous websites outlining several unique features when using blogs. Whether you are technically savvy or technically challenged, changing the output and design of your published pages is apparently a fairly simple process. There are so many helpful websites available online to help users become more proficient in the blogging process and also to take advantage of the many different ways to communicate with your audience.
One thing I am definitely interested in learning more about is publishing XML feeds. I’ve done a little research pertaining to this topic. Feeds create the ultimate flexibility for reaching your audience. Feeds can be read or displayed on many mobile devices such as iPods, PDAs or phones and on a number of consumer electronics devices such as Tivo. Feeds reach a wide array of audiences, wherever they are and with whatever information you choose to share . The following link will provide more information on XML feeds.