Blog Reflections

I'm happy to report that I enjoyed blogging much more than I thought I would. At first I was a little intimidated because I wasn’t confident that my writing was good enough to put out there publicly, or that I had something interesting to say, especially on technology-related topics. Throughout the process I really felt like I found my voice and had some fun along the way. I stayed away from getting overly technical, since that isn't my strength. I tried to keep an open-mind and approach the blog as an explorer, although my hesitance and skepticism clearly came out at times.

My initial intent was to review new technology and tools to see how I can integrate them into my work and life. While I did stay somewhat true to that mission, I also brought in some relevant news items and a couple of funny, odd little discoveries to comment upon. I realized that it was too time-consuming, and quite challenging to review a new piece of technology or tool for every blog post (especially when I would've had to blog about 45 times in 7 weeks to get A on the project).

My goals for this blog were not overly ambitious. My hope was that the few people that read the blog would find it enjoyable and informative. A month ago I was nowhere to be found in the search results, now I am the second search result if you Google “worth my while” or “worth my while or not”. On Bing, I am the third search result for “worth my while” and the first search result for “worth my while or not”. Sweet!

I wish I could report detailed analytics for the life span of my blog; however, I made a mistake when setting up the analytics and didn't correct it until it couple of weeks ago. In about 12 days, I had a total of 113 visits, 245 page views, 41 unique visitors, 2.17 pages per visit, with an average of 3.09 minutes per visit.

Through looking at the Google Analytics map overlay feature to track the origin of my web traffic, I know that my sister in Washington only reviewed my blog twice (I am going to bust her for that), 15 visits came from California (thanks mom), and 90 from New York. I did have one visitor in Miami and one in Connecticut, which could be strangers since I don't think that I know people in these states, unless my friends are accessing my blog while on vacation.

Most of my blog traffic was from referring sites (all of my classmates linked to my blog from their blogs), which goes to show the power of “link love”, and also the power of Facebook. Posting links to my blog on my Facebook status updates definitely worked to drive traffic to my site.

If I had to do it all over again, I would've chosen a different name for my blog to make it more unique and search engine friendly, but I definitely would stick with the Blogger platform because I found it to be quite user-friendly and I like that it was integrated with my other Google accounts.

I struggled over whether or not I wanted to reveal my full identity on the blog because I didn't know whether I wanted it tied to me professionally. In retrospect, although I am proud of my work, I do feel that it is more personal musings, versus my professional opinion as a communicator, so I feel that I made the right decision to keep it anonymous (although clearly it's not anonymous to my friends and followers).

Overall, using this blog as a platform to further explore digital communications, both through first-hand experiences and following developments in the news and blogosphere, helped me to shape and express my opinions about this changing world of technology. If it weren't for this class, or for this project, I would not have challenged myself to explore this topic on my own, which I think is critical and relevant for communicators in all fields.

Although I have enjoyed blogging, I don't think I will keep this up, at least not in the short-term, because I have so many competing demands for my time (and I need some rest and relaxation, hello summer!). Now that I am more interested in keeping up with the world of digital communications, I am sure that as I stumble across new tools or articles I will immediately think “this would be a great blog post!” Maybe at that time, after a bit of a rest, I will feel compelled to pick it up again.

Hopefully my blog was worth someone’s while, but if not, at least I personally got a lot out of doing it. Enjoy the rest of the summer; I know that I will!

The Ultimate Mind Blower

I sit here writing (or rather dictating to my still quite annoying Dragon software) with a mixture of excitement and relief, and oddly, a bit of sadness. My digital communications course has come to an end, now I am just trying to eek out a few more blog posts to solidly get a B on the assignment. I walked out of class on Monday telling my professor that my last blog posts were going to blow his mind, then left thinking... "oh crap, I was only joking, what am I going to write about to wrap this thing up?"

So I decided to give you a list of a lot of cool things (online tools, websites, apps) that I learned from my classmates during our weekly knowledge share. I wanted to review many of these for blog posts, but didn't quite get to it. I can't vouch for whether these are worthwhile, because I've not tried them myself, but my classmates are pretty knowledgeable and trustworthy. There is a little something here for everyone, enjoy!

For the do-gooder:

If you still like to print paper, but feel guilty about it, GreenPrint allows you to print only the parts you want from any kind of document.

FirstGiving allows you to select a particular charity and fundraise on behalf of someone, without having to be linked to a particular event.

For the social media buff:

Tired of logging and different sites and see what your friends are up to? Meebo.com allows you to sign into all of your accounts at once and have the streams appear in one dashboard view.

For those Twitter lovers, Twiangulate compiles Twitter lists and lets the user triangulate the data which helps them to find and revise the list of people that they follow.

For the creative types:

Issuu is a digital platform for individuals, businesses, and publishers to create content with traditional print design features (i.e. turns pages like a magazine) but with greater interactivity.

Customink allows users to create their own designs on all sorts of merchandise: t-shirts, mugs, hats etc.

For the effective project manager:

LessProjects is a free application for managing collaborative projects.

Remember the Milk, is a free, Web-based to-do list manager (with a poor name) that allows for offline use so you don't always need to be connected to the Internet.

For the data nerds:

Many Eyes is a cool online data visualization tool that allows users to create interactive visualizations of their data (sounds kind of like Wordle, but more extensive).

Lynda.com is an extensive library of tutorials for software such as Flashbuilder, Excel, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Avid Media Composer, Encore, Illustrator, etc.

Social Petworking

For our weekly "knowledge share" in my digital communications class, my dear classmate and fellow blogger Helena told the class about two new social networks, Dogster and Catster. I'm still processing my feelings about this-- a mixture of amazement, joy, fright, and confusion. Might this be a sign that social networks have gone a little too far? Or maybe it's about time that we involve our faithful pets in the joys of social networking (a.k.a. petworking).

Fun With Word Clouds

Everyone loves word clouds, even if they don't know it. A couple of semesters ago my professor showed the class a cool tool, Wordle, to convert text into a visual, a.k.a. - a word cloud. All you have to do is copy text into the box, and poof, out comes this little picture that you can customize with various, fonts, colors, and shapes. To ilustrate, I copied my resume text to create the Worldle image in this post.

Wordle gives more prominence to words that are mentioned more frequently, so can help to illustrate trends. This little trick has proven useful for several projects. I created a Wordle using open-ended survey responses to visually display the results in a presentation. I also made a Valentine for my boyfriend and used our first few months of email corresponce, cut it into a heart shape, and pasted it onto red construction paper.

The possibilities are endless. Thumbs up for Wordle!

The Evil Dictator

It is not natural or healthy to be sitting at a desk in front of a computer day in and day out. Working full time and going to school has taken a toll on my body, and has caused a repetitive stress injury in my arms. To remedy this situation I have made some lifestyle changes, one of those being using Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 speech recognition software. This is my first blog post through voice dictation, and I can tell you there is a steep learning curve.

To illustrate the challenges of using the software I thought it would be funny to leave all the errors on the blog post, but I didn't want to fail my course for poor writing skills. If the software is working properly, I should be able to do everything with voice commands that I normally do with a mouse. Unfortunately, I have not yet mastered these commands and am struggling with a hybrid method of typing whenever the software fails to recognize my commands, but of course it somehow understands all of the expletives I've spewed at it trying to get it to complete simple tasks like highlighting a word. I've read that smoother roads lie ahead, the more you work with it the better it gets to know you and your speech patterns but I might need an anger management course by then.

I've been feeling sorry for myself having to use this software, but feel even more sorry for my colleague who has to sit next to me and listen to my dictation at work on Monday (ha!) Wish me luck...

Worth my while-time, money, and energy? I sincerely hope so!

In the Cloud

Being a full-time employee and a student is a serious juggling act. I essentially pack a suitcase everyday before I leave the house, constantly toting dirty Tupperware and gym clothes around with me everywhere I go. This busy lifestyle requires a lot of planning and preparation, paired with a little heartiness and a good sense of humor.

Up until recently, I emailed my school assignments from my personal and work email accounts so that I could have access to them anytime. A classmate noticed the antiquated process I was using and recommended a life changing tool called Dropbox. Dropbox is a free service (although you can upgrade and pay for more space) that allows you to store, sync, and share your files online. This sure beats relying on email and dealing with version control.

I have heard a lot about cloud computing and didn't really understand what it meant, then it dawned on me the other day that I am in the cloud already with Dropbox, and the view from here is pretty sweet. Nothing to fear, or at least nothing that I know of yet, and definitely worth my while. Hello future.