Category: Sharing Online

Linkblogging = Pointing at Awesome

Post author By Justin
Post date January 31, 2011
1 Comment on Linkblogging = Pointing at Awesome

So you’ve found something awesome on the internet. Maybe it’s a comic or a LOLcat or an article that completely supports your side of a recent argument about the economic foundations of Prussia. Great. How are you going to tell people about it?

You’ve got a lot of options in the current digital environment. You could email your friends, you can put it on your Facebook (under sharing Links, it’s on the lefthand side of the page), or you can make a linkblog and share it with the world.

Linkblogs are a bit different than regular blogs. While a blog can be a platform for you to write and express yourself, a linkblog is more like a pointer to cool stuff you didn’t make. The benefits of this kind of thing should be easy to see: it isn’t as hard to point people at something cool as it is to create something cool yourself. Remember our post about RSS readers, and how we called them news aggregators? Well, a linkblog is kind of like an attention aggregator. You’re pointing out things you think someone else should pay attention to. The more people who do it, the more will be infected with whichever your favourite meme is.

Sharing Online

Wikis: Fast, free, and simple!

Post author By Naomi Schemm
Post date January 28, 2011
1 Comment on Wikis: Fast, free, and simple!

What exactly is a wiki?

Wikis are basically simple websites that do the coding for you and allow multiple editors. The word “wiki” is a Hawaiian word for “fast,” and they are indeed that! Since wikis use a simplified coding language, you don’t have to be a webmaster to create an online site – anyone can create a wiki, just as with blogs.

Probably the most famous use of a wiki tool is Wikipedia. It was created as a free, online, collaborative encyclopedia. Any user can quickly and easily contribute to update the site content. That’s right… you could update a Wikipedia article.

But unless you are an expert on Karmichael Hunt or the events of November 21, you are more likely to use wikis to collaborate on smaller-scale projects. Because they’re available online and editable by anyone who has the right permissions, they’re perfect for

group projects
taking class notes – easy way to get the notes from last week when you were, um, indisposed.
sharing thoughts
organizing events – everybody sign up for what you’re bringing to the party next weekend!
using all the great features of a website – hypertext linking, media sharing, easy page organization – without having to know any HTML coding.

There are lots of free wiki sites out there, and most are pretty easy to use. There are occasional issues with cutting and pasting from (or into) a program like MS Word, and sometimes the “back end” – where the magic takes place – does formatting things you don’t want it to do. If you’re using wikis simply for group collaboration and then will hand in a final project or paper in another format, you can copy and paste information from the wiki over to some other program, but sometimes the formatting will require a little correction. But for publishing your information online, 99% of the time, wikis are the fastest, cheapest and simplest way.

Tags collaboration, publishing online, wikis

Sharing Online

What’s Your Digital Tattoo?

Post author By Justin
Post date January 17, 2011
3 Comments on What’s Your Digital Tattoo?

Everyone’s life changes, which is why it’s probably not a great idea to get a tattoo of your boy/girlfriend’s name on your arm (or face on your chest) in the first week of dating. Kind of awkward after the breakup, and might provoke some tricky questions when you find someone new. It’s common sense.

So why don’t we think about those pictures of us and our friends blotto on Granville Street last night the same way? They might not be the best images to represent us tomorrow, and could provoke some tricky questions from prospective employers, grad-school admissions boards or, of course, our families. (You know your mom’s on Facebook, right?)

What exactly is a digital tattoo?

We often think of the internet as ephemeral, like everything we say’ll disappear tomorrow under the flood of new stuff showing up in your Facebook feed. The problem is that’s not entirely true. The stuff you say, post, or share online, including images, videos, and personal data is (or can be) public and forever. So while it might seems harmless to post videos of you being hilariously drunk now, it’s kind of like getting a tattoo when you’re hilariously drunk. Neither ink on flesh nor videos on YouTube will magically disappear forever just before your potential employers start Googling you (which they will). You have to be mindful when you do things (or at least do your best to clean up after yourself later) because the Internet is public and forever, like a tattoo on your face.

Tags career, digital tattoo, drunk, facebook, friends, google, identity theft, permanence, personal, photos, privacy, security, social networks, ubc, youtube