Mindtracks

Susannah Gardner has produced an excellent analysis of many of the weblog platforms which are currently available. For anyone new to blogging Time to check: Are you using the right blogging tool? lays out clearly the advantages and disadvantages of various platforms. The article also commences with a good section on the jargon defining terms. So for anyone trying to figure out the meaning of terms such as trackbacks, pings and skins for instance, this article provides a useful introduction.

A General Review of Social Bookmarking Tools authored by Tony Hammond, Timo Hannay, Ben Lund, and Joanna Scott reviews web based software which has been designed to manage favourite links. These tools publish the bookmarks publicly and have an unstructured approach to user classification, otherwise known as tagging. As Social Software, I will be talking to students about bookmarking tools and their implications so this paper was a bit of a find.

Museum Net is an online resource which assists people looking for Museums in Britain. You can search by both district and keyword.

Creating your own Action and Droplets for repeating tasks is a handy Photoshop skill which I encourage students to do. I am also constantly asked (particularly from my textile students) about how to make a Seamless Background in Photoshop.

Duncan Riley of the Blog Herald has written an excellent piece examining how links function and build traffic in blogs. Understanding links, their value and structure splits links into those that come from search engines, and those that are from other sites. Riley creates a further division based on the type of site a link comes from, such as a search engine, a static site or another blog. Links from blogs fall into ‘primary links’ such as being named and linked to in a post and ’secondary links’ where you are quoted as the source of a piece and finally navigational links such as those that appear in blogrolls.

Under further analysis Duncan Riley grades the value of the incoming links according to the profile and popularity of the blog that is linking to you. After pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of various grades of links Duncan Riley explores points out how links influence blog promotion.

Amanda Etches-Johnson is librarian who keeps Blog without a Library . It covers how libraries are making employing blogs, RSS, and other emerging technologies. For anyone interested in RSS, particularly and blogging generally it is an interesting browse particularly the Bibliography category as there is a huge list of links to articles about the topic collated here.

To celebrate the anniversary of his blog Asterisk launched 3 years ago Keith Robinson has posted a list of Things I’ve Learned From Blogging. I think experienced bloggers will identify with many of the points made.

I guess blogging has taught me that no matter how original, bright, revolutionary or new I think an idea is, that someone else has not only thought of it before me, but has written about it too.

Found via the Blog Herald

StopTextBully.com StopTextBully.com is a resource for both children and parents about online bullying, such as harassing text messages. The site is published by the British children’s charity NCH after it released a report that has found one in five children had experienced some form of bullying via mobile phone or their PC.

This small annimation turned up in my email. Normally these things don’t catch me but this time I splattered coffee all over my screen. I have no idea who created it so I am unable to credit and thank who ever it is for laughter on a Monday morning. It’s doing the rounds of the internet.

It is a real pity the artists name is not associated with it or embedded in the file in some way as small projects such as these which catch the imagination of people - or in this case makes them laugh - is a wonderful way for any artist to promote their creative skills.

If anyone knows who the creator is, please let me know so I can give them due credit.
Reaching for a tissue …

A key area of this course is how to represent yourself, think, write, engage, and work in a responsible manner. By this I mean having an understanding of the social, creative, ideological, legal, and ethical implications of an action you may take in the context of a network and understanding these factors when publishing any material online. Put simply this skill is called Network Literacy. Apart from network literacy we will be looking at developments such as social software, networked creative production and its implications. A key question in the course is how might networks assist visual artists?

Something I would like students to read:

Adrian Miles at RMIT has written a manifesto which defines network literacy.

A quote to think about and discuss:

Manual Castells in The Rise of the Network Society said this:

“Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies, and the diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes and production, experience, power, and culture. While the networking form of social organization has existed in other times and spaces, the new information technology paradigm provides the material basis for its pervasive expansion throughout the entire social structure. Furthermore, I would argue that this networking logic induces a social determination of a higher level than that of the specific social interests expressed through the networks: the power of flows takes precedence over the flows of power.”