Entertainment is a guilty pleasure of mine, specifically television and movies. For the Web Presence assignment, I wanted to play towards my interests. I’m not a baker or environmentalist, so entertainment it was. I have always had thoughts and opinions about the characters and relationships I see on television, in movies and even in books. Sometimes I agree with the majority, other times I think I see or feel things differently. For many years I have considered putting my opinions into words, but I never thought that I would have an audience. This assessment has given me a reason to have a go and share my addiction.
The central node is the key feature of my web presence and I wanted it to have meaning. I considered a website, but it felt more like an empty directory instead of something that holds valuable content. I looked towards a weblog for my purposes.
I was a teenager during the birth of the Weblog and the subsequent boom of 1999. During my free time I would surf the web and look at what others had to say. These link driven sites allowed me and many others to access a world of interesting information that had already been ‘pre-surfed’. I wanted to join this blogging community, but I never thought I would have an audience, a topic or a voice that was strong enough to support it. Rebecca Blood (2000) explained that writing her own blog, ‘Rebecca’s Pocket’, helped her discover more about who she was and what her interests were. “In composing my link text every day I carefully considered my own opinions and ideas, and I began to feel that my perspective was unique and important.” With Rebecca in mind, I started my blog and found that I enjoyed putting my thoughts on paper, getting them out there was almost therapeutic. My topic isn’t political or world changing, but it is what I am interested in and what I use to get away from the pressure, stress and responsibilities that are attached to the real world.
Another of my stress relief techniques relies on the content sharing capabilities of YouTube and the talented people who share their masterpieces. Some use it to post stunt videos and funny home movies. Others, like those from commoncraft, use it as a teaching tool or an educational resource. Companies are using it to promote and launch their products and Politicians are even using YouTube as a campaigning tool. YouTube also enables the world to express themselves as well as showing off their creative side. These are the videos that I enjoy the most. The original songs that people post or the covers, but especially the Television and Movie based fanvids. Some have the ability to make you laugh, cry or even take your breath away.
The creativity of others also led me to look into the use of Flickr, a site dedicated to sharing pictures and photos. My aim was to showcase the artworks others. Yet, after further investigation I found that Flickr was only for sharing your own work and unlike YouTube, you couldn’t create a ‘channel’ dedicated to others. For this reason, Delicious came to mind, a social bookmarking site that would enable me to bookmark the fan made art that I enjoy. I wanted to avoid Delicious as I knew, because it was mentioned in course work, many others would use it. So I searched and during my searches, I came across Diigo. Like Delicious, it is a social bookmarking site, but it is also so much more. You can highlight content within a page, make comments, communicate with other users viewing the page and even preview bookmarked pages within Diigo without having to leave the site. Another great feature of Diigo is that if there is a fault with the bookmarked site and you cannot access it, you can still access the information through Diigo (Pierce. D., 2008). As well as linking to some fan made art, I used Diigo to link to articles about certain couples and wikis that were created in honour and support of shows and there characters.
A Wiki was another application that I considered, but I had concerns. Like with a blog, I was concerned about having an audience, the right voice and enough knowledge. Unlike a blog, a wiki is a collaborative tool that relies on the assistance and input of others. I didn’t believe that I could successfully put together a wiki that would do these characters justice in the timeframe required. It might be something I would consider in the future when I have no due dates, work commitments or family constraints.
Twitter! I have been fighting the Twitter craze for some time, but for this assignment it was perfect. Twitter was created to answer “What are you doing?”, but it is used in many more ways. ‘The short format of the tweet is a defining characteristic of the service, allowing informal collaboration and quick information sharing…’ (Tweeternet, n.d.). In a speech, a movie and even television, the writing can help make or break a show. You can have good actors who have chemistry, but without the writing they cannot create the full effect to make a show great. I wanted to highlight some of my favourite quotes from, and about, some great characters. The ‘tweet’ length restrictions of Twitter has prevented me quoting some of the longer dialogue, but there are some lines that I couldn’t do without, so I got inventive.
With all the nodes confirmed I needed to assess the design. I wanted all nodes to carry the simplistic black with a splash of colour, unfortunately colours in Diigo cannot be edited, so I elected to create a logo as well, something to connect all 4 nodes together with a very basic symbol.
I hope you enjoy what I have put together.
References
(2007). Social Networking in Plain English. Retrieved June 4th, 2009, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7gWEgHeXcA.
Blood, R. (2000, September 7). weblogs: a history and perspective [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html
Flickr. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/
Nagourney, Adam. (2009). The ’08 Campaign: Sea Change for Politics as We Know It. New York Times. 2009-01-19. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/us/politics/04memo.html
Pierce, D. (2008). 7 Reasons Diigo Tastes Better Than Delicious. Retrieved from http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-reasons-diigo-tastes-better-than-delicious/
Stephens, M. (2006). Blogs. Library Technology Reports, 42(4), 15-35. Retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/pqdlink?Ver=1&Exp=05-17-2016&FMT=7&DID=1222869061&RQT=309
Tweeternet. (n.d.). What is Twitter and why does it keep following me around? Retrieved from http://tweeternet.com/
Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.twitter.com/
YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/
