brewers blog site

The Brewers blogging website brewcrewball.com is an example of the given and new template, as it provides the main navigation structure along the left hand side of the page for the host site, sbnation.com The top of the site, with links to get to different pages within Brew Crew Ball, is an example of the Ideal and Real. In the center of the page, the newest blog content appears, full of pictures, other links, polls, and other sports goodies.

The site is boxy and linear, but it makes it easy to follow, as there are a good deal of links around the page that will take to you very different places in the SB Nation host site if you couldn't follow accordingly. The random ads are annoying, but hey, the site is trying to make money. For a site with probably not a lot of money, it's a pretty slick and well developed site.

Woot Woot for Non-linear Formats

An interesting website that features multiple non-linear formats is woot.com. Woot is an online store and community that sells "cool stuff cheap." It has multiple spin-off pages, such as kidswoot or winewoot, but woot.com is the original page to snag what is often electronics and other nerdy, but ultimately cool items.

The given and the new is a format featured on the woot site, although the information is horizontal rather than vertical, featuring the informative links(given) above the new "woot of the day." Underneath the item the old and the new format reappears. The new information is on the right half of the page; details about the product. The given information is on the left side; links to the other woot pages and links to blogs and community boards.

Also with the given and the new format is the ideal and real format. The item of the day is the ideal. The information underneath starts at the ideal, usually witty commentary about the item, then ends with the real, the specifics of the item and what is actually in the box.

The woot site is an interesting site to focus on. There are other instances of the non-linear formats on the site. The item of the day could be seen also as a star for example, as it is the most important piece of information on the page itself.

SafetySuit Design

Several simple non-linear design models can be found on the official website of the Rock/Pop band SafetySuit (http://www.safetysuitmusic.com/music.aspx). The first simple non-linear model at play is that of the Ideal and Real in which the information is divided into halves (top/bottom) based on contrast. The top of the page offers general or abstract information, while the rest of the page expands on that information. The band’s name, as well as a photo of them, spans the upper portion of the page. The rest of the page then details information about their music, such as the track listing for their latest album. The Ideal and Real model can also be seen at work in each individual section of the Music page. Take, for example, the Discography section. Pictures of their two albums are shown above the titles of those albums. Finally, the taskbars are also affected by the Ideal and Real model. The upper taskbar contains links to more general information about the band, while the lower taskbar is specified to the Music section itself. It could be argued that the Tree model is also at use in the upper taskbar, since each button provides links to different information relating to the band.

The most obvious simple non-linear model being used is the Given and New. Like the Ideal and Real model, the Given and New model divides the page into halves based on contrast. However, in the Given and New model the information is divided (left/right) according to what is assumed to be known information and then new information. The SafetySuit website puts this model to use by giving a listing of the tracks offered on the latest album on the left and then the lyrics to a song you select on the right. You may know the name of the song you like (given), but not necessarily the lyrics (new). Although, the opposite may be true in some cases; you may know the lyrics to a song without knowing the title.

Layout of GameFAQs

A website I frequent quite often is www.gamefaqs.com. This website has a lot to offer a person who is interested in anything video game related - especially the opportunity to help and be helped. I choose to look at the layout of this website because I know it is complex and I am familiar with it. I found myself far from disappointed.

The first thing I noticed with the website was the Ideal-Real layout, with the large logo at the top left of the screen, followed by a set of text including important announcements from the websites administrators. It trickles down to off-site information, and finally, contact information, which could be related to the Given-New layout. This website also displays the Network layout very well, as well as a few trees and tables. I feel this website is slightly too cluttered, however for the content of the website, I assume people will be able to easily find the information they are seeking.

Writing Through Mediums

It's interesting to compare the difference in writing styles when using a variety of mediums. For example, when we, the college students, are told to write a paper, we immediately think to use Microsoft Word and question how long the paper should be. We immediately know that we need to write in paragraph form, with multiple sentences per paragraph that relate to the topic sentence, and that the paper needs to be professionally written and appear scholarly. Let's compare that to this writing now. This style is more free form. If I chose to not use capital letters, it could be acceptable, as blogging is considered less of a formal way of conveying messages and ideas.

Then there is a comparison to that of less formal writing styles. An example commonly used today is PowerPoint. People are encouraged to use short phrases that make a point. It is usually assumed that following the creation of a PowerPoint, that people will be able to present with it and elaborate on the points increasing clarity. And finally, probably the least formal would be the sites widely used for social networking - especially Facebook and Twitter. These mediums are so relaxed and so specific to simplicity, especially in Twitter's case, in which writing is limited to 140 characters.

These writing styles have just become acceptable - but it poses a question, what if a Paper was written as if it was a PowerPoint slide - what would the response be?

Two Ends of the Spectrum: Blogs and Tweets

Twitter response to article by Jason Swarts:

PDA's organize txts, mediate day2day activities. Txts stable, PDA mobile. Meet immediate/temporary needs. Everything you need in your pocket

In our educations, college students have been taught to use 8 sentence paragraphs in 5 paragraph essays, been forced to abide by word counts and page limits, often on topics assigned by teachers. New technology presents opportunities to throw those restrictions out the window. The two ends of the spectrum would be blogs, such as this one, and Twitter, which is a micro-blogging site.

It seems like these two ends of the spectrum are the only ones that hold any merit in today's internet/blogosphere. People want to be able to write as much as they want about whatever they want on a blog, whereas they only want to read 140 characters in a Twitter post, and they'll only read that if it captures their attention right away.

Online news sites are figuring this out. Most newspapers are on Twitter, and media outlets such as CNN are micro-blogging as well. Many of their posts feature a link to their main website, which is an effective way to get viewers to the website. Once the viewers are at the website, that is when the companies can actually be effective. Much more content is available, with stories, pictures, videos, and, thats right, blogs! Many writers are blogging in addition to regular stories, The goal is for viewers/readers to bookmark the sites, and then continue to come back to read content (and so the sites can make money of advertisements!)

The Right to Write Me Off

Part I.
Twitter-esque summary of “Walking with Texts: Using PDAs to Manage Textual Information” by Jason Swarts

Need 2 build a txt? Use a PDA. Decide wat info you need n reassemble it in2 a new txt. Do it wherevr n whenevr. Go ahead, defy time n space.

Part II.
The Right to Write Me Off

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but there is a time and a place for expressing those opinions. We gear everything we write toward a specific audience. For each audience we address, our manner of speaking changes. Concerned with impressing a teacher or fellow classmates, students prove that they are capable of using proper grammar. Removed from the academic setting, however, proper grammar is thrown out the window and, in a sense, language is set free. When texting someone, the texter is free to be more expressive – to be themself. Despite changes in writing style, one thing remains constant regarding any work that is produced: it will be judged.
Wendy Warren Austin, author of “Text Messaging: Rhetoric in a New Keypad,” asserts that “we are entering a new stage in writing,” one in which the informality of everyday language overlaps with academic formality (106). For some, this may be true. However, for me personally it is not. Even when given an informal assignment, I write it as I would any formal assignment. Why? Simply because I know a teacher will judge my writing. It is important to write well because you cannot afford to have a teacher write off your work, especially in classes where writing a paper replaces taking a midterm or final exam. Faced with the pressure of impressing a teacher, the idea of writing can be overwhelming. Therefore, blogs are especially difficult for me because not only are they judged by my teacher but possibly by my classmates as well. The same holds true for producing a PowerPoint. In “Absolute PowerPoint,” Ian Parker states that when you create a PowerPoint “you are judged by it – you insist on being judged by it” (353). Focus no longer rests solely on one’s writing ability, but on their ability to design and present as well. In instances in which one’s work is judged by an authoritative figure, there will always be pressure to impress.
Through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, language is freed: “Our creativity surges when opportunities for maintaining human contact present themselves” (Austin 104). Although postings made to these sites are still being judged, the need to impress is gone because the audience does not consist of authority figures but rather friends. Furthermore, as Paul Boutin, author of “Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004,” argues, the character limits that are set in most of these mediums “puts everyone back on equal footing.” There is simply not enough space for the quality of one’s writing to truly be evaluated. One is free to express themselves without the fear of being written off.

Works Cited
Austin, Wendy Warren. Notes. “Text Messaging: Rhetoric in a New Keypad.” Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools. Ed. Byron Hawk, David M. Rieder, and Ollie Oviedo. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. 104-06.
Boutin, Paul. “Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004.” Wired Magazine. 16.11:20 Oct. 2008. 10 Oct. 2009 < http://www.wired.com/entertainment/
theweb/magazine/16-11/st_essay>.
Parker, Ian. “Absolute PowerPoint.” The New Yorker. 28 May 2001: 352-58.

James' Tweet on PDA's

James Bushman PDA's offer the unique ability to take any and all texts with you as you stroll, and through applications, combine thoughts into one.

It's All Elemental My Dear Wiki; A Look at Different Elements and Mediums of a Technological Era

The archetypical essay is comprised of key elements: an introduction, a body, a conclusion. But do these elements make the argument more effective? Does the reader's comprehension rest in the assurance that these elements will appear in a written work? When reading a text from a handout, or even in a pdf file, the text is contained in a certain space. The pdf file can be closed and opened, and yes the text can be copied, but usually no altercations to the text itself can be made. Mark Amerika's "Hypertextual Consciousness" on the hand was not a succinct piece of text. The text took place in a different medium, which is on the Internet as a succession of hypertexts that linked to different pages with different ideas. This text was not a stereotypical essay, but it did convey meaning just as a printed form would.
I have found that text, in my opinion, is most valuable to me in a medium where it is stable. An essay is easiest to comprehend when it is in a non-changeable format. Professors usually desire a hard copy to an emailed copy and the value of turning in actual paper seems more profound than turning it in through D2L or email.
The Internet to me always has seemed more informal. Writing a blog does not elicit as much effort as a paper, and a tweet certainly contains little to no effort or skill on an author's part. I am sure that there are those who would disagree with me fully, proclaiming tweets to be the new wave of literature or some other cyber-nonsense, but those people are naive and pop-culture junkies.
PowerPoint's are always an interesting topic to me. They seem somewhat outdated and high school-ish. Creating a PowerPoint presentation is almost the same as creating a tweet. A slide contains attention grabbing information and in a flash it is replaced by another thought. PowerPoint is required by a lot of professors and teachers alike. They seem to believe it to be an essential tool for college students. In some classes more points were awarded for having a PowerPoint than a poster. Essentially they usually do the same thing: distract students from listening to the actual presentation.
Not to say though that one can not pull off a rockin' PowerPoint that highlights potentially confusing information or key aspects, but seriously more focus is spent on flashy effects in most PowerPoint presentations.
My view may be jilted because after all, I am still in school. PowerPoints, blogs, and tweets can be more mature and relevant in the quote-unquote real world that adults talk about so warningly. Twitter is used widely in marketing and advertising now, just as many businesses have a facebook or a myspace page, or both. Famous people mention twitter to get more people to follow them, and I have seen businesses that want you to obtain a certain amount of followers before you can apply to work at their company (the name of the company that did that eludes me, but it was a "you need to be well known enough to work for us" kind of thing).
After writing a paper, making a fake tweet, writing a blog, and creating a powerpoint I prefer the old fashioned type essay kind of medium. But even as those words spill onto the keyboard I remember how hypocritical that sentence is. I am writing a text on a computer, which I will copy and paste onto a blog, which a multitude of people can access all over the world. The advances in technology make life certainly easier. I can choose many more mediums of writing than people ever could before, and though the elements are different, the message can still be understood.

Tweet

PDAs enable texts to break free from stability and make them flexible; texts are more accessible and can be assimilated in many new ways.

Pollock, Van Gough, and the Photographic Negative

In our society the value of an original work of art has gotten outrageous. Paintings done by Van Gough and Pollock are worth millions of dollars, and yet the reproductions of those pieces become cheap, affordable, and can be tailored to fit your needs. There are iPhone skins and backgrouds of "Starry Night" that cost mere dollars to own.

In Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", he states that "even the most perfect reproduction . . . is lacking one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be" (3).

In terms of paintings, such as the Pollock, one can test the authenticity of the artwork through chemical analysis. But besides knowing what type of paint was used why exactly does the original rake in so much revenue? It is perhaps the element Benjamin discusses, for those paintings were in Pollock's possession. His sweat and tears likely hit the canvas, but are those things worth the over 140 million dollars?

"The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition" (5). Works of art throughout history have been idolized and Benjamin proclaims that reproduction of art can free the art itself from the rituals and idolization. I on the other hand disagree with the idea, as reproduction of art makes the original that much more ideal. Although the art becomes reachable to the entire civilized world due to technology, there will always be individuals whose lives revolve around the creation and collection of original art works.

Benjamin touches on art that is made solely for reproducibility. The example of the "photographic negative" completely negates the idolization of authentic, original art (6). The negative itself is the original, however, it would be nonsensical to "ask for the 'authentic' print" (6). The more technical art becomes the less idolized it will be. As long as there is an artist creating art without the aid of technology, there will be ritual and tradition.

works cited:

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. London.: Fontana., 1992. 96-102. Print.

An Essary Concerning Human Understanding

“Lockeing” in an idea

In the 17^th Century, many humans on this planet believed thoughts and ideas to be a God given gift, especially those ideas of the kings and monarchs. John Locke, an English philosopher challenged this belief in his “Essay on Human Understanding,” citing five major reasons and beliefs as to the commonality of ideas coming from a person and their own experiences in life. The five major points brought up include “idea is the object of thinking,” “all ideas come from sensation or reflection,” the objects of sensation one source of ideas,” the operations of our minds the other source of them,” and all our ideas are of the one or the other of these” (Locke, 1995, pg 185-187)

The main point of Locke’s essay is the idea that ideas stem from a person’s experiences in life. One way a person can have an experience is through sensations. Sensations are simply incidents that involve the five senses of touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight. “The great source of most of the ideas we have,” according the Locke, “and derived by them to the understanding,” is sensation (Locke, 186). The other method in which an idea is created, is entitled reflection. A reflection comes from a person thinking about their own experiences and operations they have had throughout their lives. Without these sources, ideas would never come to fruition, as an idea is not simply a thought placed into a person’s head.

Locke’s thoughts can easily be applied to any scholar who is considering working on the production of a publication or similar medium. The application can all start with the conception of the publication. A person is not going to be able to create the idea out of the blue; a person needs to have a desire to create something. Going with the desire, a person needs to have some form of experience with the subject, be it a sensation or a reflective notion to create the idea, and to continue with the information shared in the publication.

Works Cited

Locke, John. “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.” The Portable Enlightenment Reader. Ed. Issac Kramnick. New York: Penguin Books, 1995. 185-187