Entries Tagged as 'Bloggers'

Educators, researchers and blogging

Blogging is largely associated with non-professionals. Should teachers and academics blog, then? It depends on your aim. A number of classes have included blogging as part of their coursework to encourage students to collaborate at to open up their work to feedback. Some universities allow their faculty and staff to blog using their university websites. Other students and researchers have project blogs to update others about their progress. Because of publishing online is instant, new work comes out more quickly than books and journals, which can take months and years to come out, by which time the findings could be obsolete. Overall, blogging opens up knowledge and learning beyond the classroom setting, and provides a fresh alternative to traditional publishing.

Be Aware. Downloading Screensavers is not always safe.


Image source:www.moonflare.com

News: Controversial Vigilante Screensaver Shut Down; Trojan Warning.
Just days after they released their controversial anti-spam screensaver, Lycos Europe has shut down the campaign. The new program, “Make Love Not Spam”, was designed to actively handcuff spam servers by choking their bandwidth connection. Now, Lycos Europe has shut the campaign down for reasons still unclear.

To further compound this juicy controversy, a new Trojan horse virus has popped up, masquerading as the Make Love Not Spam screensaver. Be warned: this Trojan is NOT the MLNS program!

Moms and jobseekers as bloggers

How would blogging benefit jobseekers? Showing up on searches of your name is a tricky process of links and popularity, but done correctly, a high-ranking blog could show potential employers a more complete and impressive picture of you than any CV can. With a well designed blog, you could put your best foot forward online.

Both stay-at-home moms and mothers working full-time will be able to make full use of blogs because there are many moms blogging about domestic and parenting issues online. Blogs are great venues for meeting moms, exchanging tips and giving advice on various topics. Whether your kids are infants or all grown up, you’ll still be able to pick up some hints from supportive moms. And it won’t cost you much time–a few posts a month will only take a few minutes to write, unless you want to put in much more work into them.

Everybody blogs!

There are people for whom blogging seems natural: techies, gamers and all those guys in Silicon Valley. What this generalization fails to consider is that active Internet use is rising among the young and not just among males. Women have embraced the web and created content of every kind. Even the elderly have embraced blogging, though to a much lesser extent. Travelers everywhere have found blogs excellent venues for telling stories and giving recommendations. In every case, one find an audience of readers and supporters. Depending on what you talk about and how, there could also be detractors and “haters”, and this is something you have to be prepared for. The cloak of anonymity can lead some people to do nasty things they wouldn’t do if they were identified, and there are privacy issues at every corner. But as bloggers can be anonymous as well, it is really up to you what you want to reveal.

Tips for group bloggers

To keep a group blog running smoothly, ground rules should be set from the beginning to make it clear who is responsible for what material and when they are expected to act. Here are a few guidelines for group blogging.

Designate. One or more admins and editors work best when they know what they are in charge of, or else they will keep guessing whose turn it is.
Clarify scope. Enumerate what topics are allowed and what are best avoided. Remember your target audience.
Specify frequency. Agree on a target number of posts per group member and deadlines for submission. For example, bi-monthly or every second weekend of the month.

The group can make up more rules as you go and as you see fit the blog and its audience.

Why you should start a group blog

One blog is usually enough for anyone to maintain. But starting a group blog can be a good way to keep in touch with people have the same interests as yourself or have a shared history. These can be family members, former schoolmates and friends with common hobbies. Here are two reasons for group blogging:
Shared responsibility. Posting can sometimes feel like a chore when you cannot think of anything to write. Having other blog authors in the group allows you to post less frequently and alternate so that there is less pressure.
Likemindedness. The ties that bind the group together provide subjects to write about. Family and friends can update each other and reminisce through the group blog. Hobbyists could write about their projects. A group of knitters, for example, can post photos of their projects and how-tos.

In the next post, we will look at tips for group blogging.