After a rather prolonged absence from the blogosphere, I've decided to make a New Year's Resolution (it's not to late to do so, is it?) and try to write *something* in my blog every day. Why?
1) After attending (well, hosting actually: cf. Writers LIVE! 2011) a very inspiring talk by author Michael Koryta, I decided one of his writing tips would be very helpful in keeping me motivated to write. My fellow librarian, Mimi Curtis, who is an aspiring Young Adult author, also attended his talk and agreed that his writing tip would be useful. What was his tip: "Write 1500 words a day." Don't set time limits, he said, but try to write a designated number of words as your daily goal. Okay. So maybe 1500 words for a blog post might be a stretch, but at least I can try for a bit more than my few 140-character-Tweets that I've been tweeting.
2) I came across some interesting and unique blogs recently in my quest to expand my online community and share ideas with fellow Sci-Fi fans. Ones that are not affiliated with a major website like syfy.com or bbcamerica.com, and the like.
These are cool:
The Last Wordslinger
Allyn Gibson
And while I'm at it, I should mention my fave amateur sci-fi blogger: GameCouch (Full disclosure: GameCouch is a buddy and fellow co-worker, but I know good writing when I see it)
I'm counting on my followers (all three of you!) to help me stick to this resolution. (Tweet me @literarylattes).
Thanks!
Namaste.
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
New Friends fromThe Twitterverse
I am meeting some really nice people on Twitter. People who care about literature, current events, culture--about the world around them. These are some of my favorites who blog as well as tweet:
The Novel World
Read her interesting blog about books and libraries, wish her a happy birthday, and participate in her fun book give-away:
http://thenovelworld.com/2009/09/01/its-my-birthday-book-giveaway/
Fellowette
Enjoy her insightful blog focusing on literary criticism called The Egalitarian Bookworm (Chick?)
Namaste.
The Novel World
Read her interesting blog about books and libraries, wish her a happy birthday, and participate in her fun book give-away:
http://thenovelworld.com/2009/09/01/its-my-birthday-book-giveaway/
Fellowette
Enjoy her insightful blog focusing on literary criticism called The Egalitarian Bookworm (Chick?)
Namaste.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Tweeting from My Blog
Keith Olbermann said last night that those who "tweet" are too lazy to "blog." Yet, is it that the writers are too lazy or that the readers are?
Namaste.
Namaste.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Playing Ping Pong with the Technorati
Remember when we were kids and we had a Secret Diary? We carefully recorded our thoughts and dreams, and then hid the diary where our parents, sibling and friends couldn't find it. We might even have had a lock and key!
Now with the world of blogs -- these digital diaries of sorts -- you are sharing your thoughts with the World Wide Web. If you are a blogger, you obviously want others to read your thoughts and ideas. Maybe even market your blog. So one of the first things you can do to get your blog noticed by others is to tag it or have it with blog search tools such as Technorati. You can also make sure people find your most updated posts by pinging them to search engines.
For our library's web 2.0 exploration project, we took a look at Technorati and learned how to tag our blog posts with the site's tags. For this excersie, we searched the tag field to see what blogs we could find about the concept of web 2.0. I found this type of search to be a bit cumbersome. First, I got 35, 289 hits. Second, I noticed in the "related tags" list that there are other tags that were variant spellings of "web 2.o" ("web 2-0" and "web2.o"). Third, not all the "hits" dealt with web 2.0. The first blog I looked at was just an advertisement and not someone's ideas or thoughts about web 2.0.
Overall, as a librarian, I didn't find the use of tags in techorati or del.icio.us or other sites to be useful in finding relevant information. I can't imagine how to find information without using formal knowledge classification systems (Dewey Decimal System, Library of Congress). Even with minor flaws, these systems are more useful to me in that they are based up a standard -- an agreed upon designation -- for any given subject or body of knowledge. It would be like driving without a road map. You might get to your destination, but you might wind up going in circles before you arrive.
However, as an informal method of sharing information, tags and such can be a fun way to drive around the blogosphere, seeing sites and things along the way that you might not have discovered if you had that road map.
Namaste.
Now with the world of blogs -- these digital diaries of sorts -- you are sharing your thoughts with the World Wide Web. If you are a blogger, you obviously want others to read your thoughts and ideas. Maybe even market your blog. So one of the first things you can do to get your blog noticed by others is to tag it or have it with blog search tools such as Technorati. You can also make sure people find your most updated posts by pinging them to search engines.
For our library's web 2.0 exploration project, we took a look at Technorati and learned how to tag our blog posts with the site's tags. For this excersie, we searched the tag field to see what blogs we could find about the concept of web 2.0. I found this type of search to be a bit cumbersome. First, I got 35, 289 hits. Second, I noticed in the "related tags" list that there are other tags that were variant spellings of "web 2.o" ("web 2-0" and "web2.o"). Third, not all the "hits" dealt with web 2.0. The first blog I looked at was just an advertisement and not someone's ideas or thoughts about web 2.0.
Overall, as a librarian, I didn't find the use of tags in techorati or del.icio.us or other sites to be useful in finding relevant information. I can't imagine how to find information without using formal knowledge classification systems (Dewey Decimal System, Library of Congress). Even with minor flaws, these systems are more useful to me in that they are based up a standard -- an agreed upon designation -- for any given subject or body of knowledge. It would be like driving without a road map. You might get to your destination, but you might wind up going in circles before you arrive.
However, as an informal method of sharing information, tags and such can be a fun way to drive around the blogosphere, seeing sites and things along the way that you might not have discovered if you had that road map.
Namaste.
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