[bksvol-discuss] Transcription of Blogs Chat Available
- From: "Linda Adams" <ladams@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:20:21 -0600
Hi, everyone. Attached is the summary of the chat meeting about Blogs in a
text and a Word version.
Linda Adams
August 28, 2007
BLOGS
Presented by Monica Willyard
**New Friends of Bookshare Link to the Chat Room
Pat Price told us that sometimes the old chat room address, the
tinyurl.com/2avczp, sometimes is not working well now. She recommends going to
the link on the www.friendsofbookshare.org web site and entering on the
Community Room link.
** Getting In and Out of the Text Area in the Chat Meetings
Helpful links are posted during the chat meetings. If you have entered the
chat room, which is now being called the Community Room, hit F9 to read what is
in the text area. Hit F7 to get back out of the text area. Press F8, type a
message, and hit Enter if you want to contribute to the text area.
** Saving Links in the Text Area During Meetings
Press Alt F for file. Arrow down until you find "save text as." If you hit
Enter on that and give your file a name without an extension, then hit enter,
it will save that file for you as a text file in your My Documents folder by
default. It may let you browse to another place if you don't like it in your
My Documents folder. From there, you can use them and paste them into your
browser and put them in your Favorites. You can make a Blogs subfolder in your
Favorites and put your favorite blog links there.
** How to Make JAWS Read the Text Area Right
Press Insert V for Verbosity. Then hit the letter P for Progress Announcement.
You can turn it off by pressing the spacebar and then tabbing over to close
that. That will turn off the percents.
** Blog Description: Blogs stand for web log. People shortened it to say
"blog" because it's shorter to type. It is like a journal or a diary. Some
people use them as a "to do" list or as rambling thoughts. Blogs can be as
simple as a single web page where people just write down their thoughts to
something very elaborate with multiple pages and different types of layouts.
One thing that is wonderful about Blogs is that they are written by people, not
by publishers or advertising agencies that have something specific that they
want you to see. They are written by people and for other people. It's the
opportunity for anyone of just about any age and any background to publish on
the Web. They can share their thoughts, their ideas, their recipes, and all
kinds of stuff. They can be addicting because once you start reading them, and
then you visit some of the links that are on that blog and you find other
Blogs, it's sort of like following a trail, like Hansel and Gretel when they
put down the bread crumbs. It's sort of like following those to see where we
are going to go and wondering whether we can find the "gingerbread house."
It's fun. It's about people; it's about experiences. Blogs have made the Web
a much better place.
** How to Find a Blog
Go to Google to find out if your favorite author is doing one. In the Google
search box, you can type "blog", then a space, and then whatever content you're
looking for. For example, "blog mystery author" in the box. Hit Enter. It
will pop up several wonderful writers, well-known ones and a couple by authors
who are just getting started, which is kind of cool because they actually put
some of their short stories or their poems on their blog.
** Specific Blogs
Monica discovered that Ed Gorman, an author who has been writing for a long
time and collecting anthologies of short stories, has created a blog where just
about everyone who is anyone in the field of mysteries comes and writes their
ideas and thoughts about what movies they've seen, what they're doing, and
Monica really enjoys that blog because she is getting to know the writers as
people. If any of you read ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE or ALFRED HITCHCOCK
MYSTERY MAGAZINE, you will recognize a lot of the names on that blog. That
blog is easy to navigate. It also has a visually attractive interface, so it
gives you an idea of layouts and what they look like.
** Web Addresses to Blogs:
Monica provided the following web addresses for the blogs that she has found:
I use Paperback
Swap, Amazon, and half.com to locate these books to scan for Bookshare. Happy
reading.
Ed Gorman's blog:
http://edgorman.blogspot.com
Angela Hunt's blog for Christian Fiction:
http://alifeinpages.blogspot.com
Assorted authors' Blogs:
http://www.authorsblogs.com
For everything related to cookbooks:
http://www.101cookbooks.com
Ohio mystery authors' blog:
http://www.thelittleblogofmurder.com
mystery authors and lots of links to explore:
http://firstoffenders.typepad.com
** Reasons Authors Keep Blogs
Some authors have Blogs to promote their books or to encourage other people who
want to become writers. For example, Angela Hunt shares how she comes up with
an opening scene of a book. She also had opening lines from books by some of
her author friends that they are working on and how they're trying to craft
their books. She also shares what it's like getting a novel published and
finding content to write about, which is fascinating.
** The Difference Between a Web Site and a Blog
1. Blogs: Most Blogs have a lot more text on them than an average web site
because people are sharing their ideas, their views, their thoughts, and
dreams. You'll find a lot of personal photos and sometimes some sound files as
well that you can click on. When you go to most Blogs, the front page is a
list of entries that the person has written, and you'll see them there. One of
the things that is very common with a blog is that the most recent entries will
be on top, and so when you're reading through it, chronologically you are
actually reading through it backward because people want to know what is
happening with you right now, so that post shows up on top. As you go down,
you're actually moving earlier and earlier. Some Blogs allow you to change the
sort order if you like to read things from the very beginning. They're
definitely not as formal or as polished. People write from the heart and from
what they're thinking, so the writing and grammar may not be as good. They're
like on-line diaries. Some are almost uncomfortably personal. Some Blogs are
interesting in that they have an interactive element to them so that other
people can actually put entries in the Blogs even though they're not the owner
of the blog. They can respond to the entries that the owner has put out there.
In fact, there are some corporations now who are using Blogs as a tool for
faster and easier interaction between employees who work on a specific project.
They can share information, tips, questions, and get answers through a blog.
One person has a blog on which he is gathering information for a book that he
wants to write. He asks all kinds of personal questions and gets answers. He
is a psychologist. The more personal Blogs can share experiences that might
help other people deal with those same experiences. There are business Blogs
with articles of information on subjects. There are good, mediocre, and bad
Blogs, just like anything else. The trick is to find ones that you like and
that have something to say. Professional people tend to have professional
content on their Blogs; it is not the kind of personal where everything just
hangs out. Sometimes you may not even know you're on a blog. MosenExplosion
is a blog. The Blind Access Journal is a blog. Live Journal can be used as a
blog. There is a Blind People Live Journal that people can visit as well.
Blogs really can be what you make them. They can be attractive, elaborate,
multi-media experiences, or they can be just a very simple web page with just
text all the way down. It just depends on how you end up doing things.
2. Web Sites: Most web sites that are built have short blocks of text with
images and such surrounding them, and they may have a bunch of different links
on them that do various things, but there is no one unifying theme. If you go
to Amazon, you'll notice that most of Amazon's front page is links to their
other departments. It is like the difference between a journal and a book.
Sometimes there is some cross-over. Sometimes an elaborate blog will behave
like a web site.
** The Difference Between a Blog and a Wiki
1. Wiki. A Wiki is public; anybody can come along and write something in it,
and it's just open for everybody. In one sense, it can be good if someone
knows how to do something, but in another sense, there can be misinformation.
A Wiki is a central site, and everybody can come on and write about anything
that they want. You have to take the information on Wikipedia with a grain of
salt. Sometimes it's top-quality information written by professionals who
know. Sometimes, unfortunately, it is written by somebody who is shooting off
his mouth and knows nothing.
2. Blog. A blog is owned usually by one person or one company. Sometimes a
group of people will do it together. If Pat Price, Fred Bertelsen, and Bob
Acosta were to do a Tech Talk blog, only the three of them could post actual
entries on it. You could allow others to make comments about your entries, but
because you own the blog, if someone says something wrong, or if a person calls
someone really mean names, you can remove the comment, and no one will ever see
it, or you can just not let people comment at all.
** Keeping Track of Your Information While Searching Blogs
It is very helpful to keep a window either with Notepad or Microsoft Word open
to copy titles of things that you would like to check out because otherwise, it
is easy to forget them. Later on, you can get the books from Paperback Swap or
Marketplace on Amazon. Blogs generally have RSS feeds, so you can see new
posts that show up. Blogger, Typepad, Blogspot, and Live Journal all support
RSS, XML, and Adam feeds if any of you use those.
** Other Blog Types
There are also blogs for help with technology such as learning how to do things
with your computer. Chris Pirillo has a very nice blog through his Lockernome
service. There is another one called The Big Pink Cookie. It is done by a
person who does technology for a living.
** Friends of Bookshare Blog
Jim Baugh has put together a blog for us there. We were talking about a way to
have people post there if they were planning to scan something so that someone
else doesn't duplicate the effort. Now that the site is working well, I think
people will begin using it.
Other related posts:
