Seinfeld-ism is a blog about, you guessed it, Seinfeld BUT it has a very intriguing twist. The author of Seinfeld-ism takes memorable and often quoted lines from the iconic sitcom and turns them into little philosophical maxims that help “make life less complicated.”  When I say “turns them into” I don’t mean he changes the actually quote, what he does is explain how to see the quote as something to help you get through the struggles do life.

Dlbj, the author of Seindfeld-ism, uses specific writing and simple vocabulary to carefully craft his insightful blog post.  The great grammatical formatting combined with a stream of conscious feel gives Dlbj a voice that sounds casual yet knowledgable. You feel as though you are being taught the truths of life but someone who has it all figured out but is not pompous or standoffish. It mood he establishes makes the post draw the reader in to a friendly and interesting environment.

Dljb ends his post with a conclusive idea, the complete explanation of the quote and how he believes the reader should use it. But he does not fall into the trap that a lot of bloggers do when ending their post conclusively. The trap is that an ending like that often shuts the reader out, and if done incorrectly can really discourage comments.

Dljb always invites the readers opinion by directly addressing the reader in his concluding sentences and telling the reader to use his advice in their day to day lives. He also makes it a habit to invite the reader back again, contributing to the laid back persona his writing portrays.

Dljb  makes very practical use of his headers and titles by usually making them the quote he will be addressing in the post. Since most of the quotes are very recognizable, or sound quirky out of context, it is a great strategy for attracting readers to the post. Dljb’s writing also clearly addresses the reader.

Overall I feel that Seinfeld-ism is a great example of good blog writing because the author has a clear voice, uses the elements of his blog very well, and the writing reflects the voice I believe the author wants the reader to hear.

Kenneth Goldsmith excerpt on “nude media” highlights a new form of media that has come about since the boom of the internet. He refers to this young form of content as “nude media”. Nude media, as he describes it, is content that has been stripped of all the formatting we are used to and of all the structures that make it look unique and left as just bare or nude text. This has become a much more common practice on the internet because of all the sharing taking place. When you want to share an article you find somewhere on the web, it is much easier, and sometimes more reliable, to send someone the plain text. When you do this you remove the all the formatting that made the article pop on print or online, and you are left with text that can be easily mixed up with any other set of text. Kenneth Goldsmith doesn’t exactly say this is a negative thing in his excerpt but I think that the artist Lauren DiCioccio would definitely feel that way.

DiCioccio is an artist whose paintings are very unique. She takes printed pages, often from magazines or newspapers, and turns them into something more artistic. Well I shouldn’t say “something more artistic” as I’m sure Miss DiCioccio believes they are already very artistic, I will say she turns them into something more obviously artistic. I think that DiCioccio would see the nude media as a bad thing because she can really appreciate the beauty of formatting in printed media.

The Internet was made to help people when they need to share information quickly and now it has evolved to help share across far distances, distances where another form of sharing is just inconvenient. This tiny idea spark has led to the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, this amazing invention had a lot of unexpected consequences, one of them being that people often abuse the sharing power on the Internet. Most people are probably under the assumption “if it’s on the Internet, I can use it how I please” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Once something like music, or art is created it automatically has copyrights associated with it so a lot of the images that people assume are up for grasp actually belong to someone who could potentially sue you for using it.

Creative commons is a place when people can share media via the Internet without fearing serious consequences. When something is made available to the public by Creative Commons, that contributor grants certain permissions to anyone on the Internet. As long as the user respects the contributor’s wishes, they are not violating any copyrights and they have nothing to fear. To an average citizen of the Internet this may not seem like a big deal but a tool like this is infinitely valuable to a blogger. When a blogger finds the content they post on their blog through Creative Commons they can be sure that they won’t be sued. This is important because most bloggers share their identity on their blogs, which would make copyright infringements easy to track.

There are also benefits for a blogger as a contributor. When they decide to share some original work via creative commons they can require that they be credited every time the work is reused which is a great way to generate traffic to their blog.

There are many levels to personal blogging and these levels are often very obvious, even to someone with limited blogging experience. In my few weeks taking this course and my limited experience with blogs previous to this course I have often seen blogs where I can tell someone knows what they are doing and I have seen blogs where it looks like the author has very little technological knowledge. I am not trying to say that someone needs to be a professional programmer or needs to have had previous training in html to have a blog that looks great because that is not true. There are many different aspects of the technical world that can help you design a great blog once you know how to use them to your advantage.

If you have previous html knowledge then you’re really in a great place to start. You can use that know how to easily make your blog match your vision. Either you can start from scratch, if you’re brave, or you can use a platform like wordpress.com and then edit the html they’ve already provided you with. This will allow you to personalized certain details that will give your blog that just above average look.

Not having prior knowledge of html doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. Practically all blog hosting websites have tools for the average user, if they didn’t they’d really be limiting the amount of potential users for their site. So, if you aren’t about to buy a book on html to improve your blog you can just watch the tutorials provided by your platform and frequent the support sites. Once you become a master of your platform you will be able to make a blog just as impressive, if not more, than someone with html experience. I’m sure you’ll even learn how to do basic edits to htmls, you don’t have a full understanding of the technological part to use it.

My blog idea is to create a blog revolving around the sitcom friends. I have a few ideas and direction that I feel I could take the blog that would give it a fresh and interesting feel. My blog theme is very specific so it was hard to find a lot of blogs that are very similar so I had to broaden my search to include blogs that focus on other TV shows as well.

http://fuckyeahfriendscaps.tumblr.com/

This blog is a blog dedicated to Friends. It contains mostly GIFs and pictures with captions and then a lot of post that are questions posed by readers that the author of the blog has answered. Then they’re are also a few text post that the author wrote enticing conversations on random topics and stuff like that. I do like the authors use of pictures and the large amount of feedback and communication he/she has with the audience. I notice that she has a page of her blog that just includes links to other blogs about Friends and it give a reader a sense of community and a place to go to see more of what the author offered. I don’t like the lack of actually text post. The author is really just showing scenes of the show, she’s not writing about it or making this fresh and interesting. On my blog I hope to have a variation of post, some opinions, some features, some photographs.

http://littlefriendsthings.tumblr.com

This blog is dedicated to Friends as well and I found it through the previous blog I discussed. This blog’s theme involves posting simple pictures that just have “a little thing” written on it. “A little Thing” is just some little detail about the show or phrase that brings something about the show to mind. I like the fact that she includes an option to submit your own little thing because it gives the reader a sense of involvement.

http://have-you-met-ted.com

This Blog is dedicated to the TV show How I Met Your mother. I like this blog a lot more than the previous two blogs because it is more like what I imagine my Friends blog to be like. The author of this blog has a lot more variety in his post than the other two blogs.  He post review of episodes and predictions for the seasons. He also writes post on various topics, for example he has one post that is his opinion on music that should be featured in the show because he feels they fit the shows tone and mood.  He also invites a lot of reader feedback like the other two blogs and thats something I hope to do on my blog as well.