Mandurro

Another article, this one from CNN.com, on bloggers' impact on the news

    Cnn.com has this article  that talks about how bloggers posting exit polls on Novmebr 2nd were frowned upon for potentially "Affecting results.  It also talks about how bloggers are making news organizations' jobs harder, and urges bloggers to have some ethical standards. 
    Bloggers' impact is definitely being recognized everywhere now,  and the impact will only increase.  It'll be very interesting to see how news organizations and other entities significantly affected by the emergence of bloggers react in the future, because at this rate they're going to have to do something eventually.  On the other hand, when blogging fully latches on to kids, what's going to happen when they have a new avenue to easily communicate in large groups, anonymous to outsiders...what I'm referring to, is what are the implications going to be for high schools (which operate much differently from colleges, there are many more rules and stuff...)?  Hmmm...

Problem caused by class software?

Ever since I installed the Java (from the link provided on the BIT page) on my laptop my IE has been freezing up a lot in the midst of loading pages, where the only way to un-freeze it is the ctrl-alt-del...IE stinks and I'm definitely making the swtich the Mozilla soon, but this is still really annoying and I'm wondering if it's just a coincidence or if something with the Java is causing this problem, because it has definitely been a noticeable increase in IE problems for me since around the time I installed that Java...

Search Usefulness

I was unaware that there was a search functionality in the blogosphere that we could use until it was mentioned today. I was very glad becuase I find it to be INMENSELY useful. I have been hoping for something like this since we started blogging, because whenever I thought of asking a specific question about class or posting a comment I wondered if someone else had already posted that and I'd just be repeating it, but had no way to find out except gonig through all posts one by one. Also, I think the search functionality is ESPECIALLY money now that the midterm is coming up because it allows us to search the blogosphere for answeres to specific issues we might have (say, a certain exercise) that has already been blogged about! So all in all I think having the search functionality is a huge boost to the usefulness of the blogosphere for our class.

Jason

How to get my own blog?

OK so doing this blogging stuff has really whet my appetite to keep my own blog where I can rant about stuff that bothers me, curse, talk sports, etc, stuff that I can't do on our class blog. My friends always like reading my online journals and stuff but for my tastes and style blogging would seem to be much more efficient. Which begs the question: Does anyone know where I could sign up to have my own blog,without TypePad's undesirable feature (Read: A FREE blog...hehe yes I'm very cheap)? I didn't know much about blogging before this class so I wouldn't know where to start looking but I figure maybe someone here already has their own blog that they're very satisfied with and is FREE.

Jason

Blogs on AIM Profiles?

A lot of people who use AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) have heard of and use the popular site IMChaos.com, a site that provides *special* features for AIM (No, it's not hacking or anything illegal). The primary one is a service that records and allows you to view the screennames of everyone that clicks on links in your profile (IMChaos' servers host these services), which is only the best feature EVER, because it basically lets you have an idea of who is reading your away messages all the time. Sneaky and lots of fun. Anyway, this site is now beta testing a new service that would allow you to host blogs in your AIM profile!
Specifically, the site says: "Profile Blog: Host a blog directly in your AIM profile! Now buddies can read your blog (short for web log) while they read your away message. Best of all, you can secretly track who checks your blog out or posts comments!" While the feature is in beta testing and not open to public use yet, the concept of being able to introduce your blog into your AIM is very intriguing. I'm not exactly programming-savvy or anything like that so I don't know if this would be simpler than it looks, but if and when this service, as described, becomes open to everyone, I think it will be very interesting to see how they pull it off. Also, with blogging possibly being introduced into such a mainstream entity as is AIM, the implications would be big. Most of my friends have no idea what a blog is, but if they see these things popping up on AIM profiles, well, you get the idea. I'm gonna keep an eye on it and I'll post about this again if and when IM Chaos makes this available to all of us.

Jason

Packer Fan

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