Vlogs

Vlogs are video blogs making blogging more interactive than they usually are. These can vary in subject and how long for descriptive they can be, just like a normal blog, but usually can be made much more interesting with easily accessed video clips, music and often easier to convey you own opinion. Just like in a blog, the language must appeal and be convincing like a normal blog just spoken. To keep the Vlog interesting, clips are often cut shorten and the use of voice overs can make the video more informative or just for comedic affect.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khNimZ6uPOI Download this video!)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA6YfnT4738&feature=channel Download this video!)

Vlogs can also be used for serious topics, which helps makes the impact of the situation much more shocking as well as giving good feed back to charities showing that they do work and have a good effect on communities involved.

Micro Blogs

Microblogging
Microblogging is similar to normal bloggin but is on a smaller scale often only consisting of about a sentence and an embedded image or video. The topics, which microblogs often involve are simly "What I'm doing right now" to the thematic, "Sport cars" for example. Although microblogging can be used for advertising organizations, they are often used with normal blogs to help get awareness. Micro bloggs are much simpler to set up with only a name, email and URL address for registration to these websites (Twitter and Tumblr).

Twitter

The general appearence of Twitter

Twitter is used  by many people both famous and not. This is normally shown by the large difference in follows the person has. In some ways, has almost took the level of a social networking services due to talk to friends, follows and finding new people. This service is good, but finding new people can be quite annoying unless you can spell their names correctly. The service is much simpler than services like blogger and tumblr, with a limit on the characters in a post (due to it originally being designed for Mobile Phones), but can still be very affective when used in the right  ways and also in the wrong ways due to the posts being published world wide.

Tumblr

The general appearence of Tumblr

Tumblr has a more professional feel to it, which generally looks alot more similar to Blogger rather than Twitter, another micro blog. Insetad of using links from other websites to post videos, you can upload videos to your blog instead of having to use a daily motion, or Youtube account to post videos. This is a similar case to other media sources like audio and images. However, there is a limit to the amount of videos and audio files that can be uploaded in a single day.

Blogging Tasks

Blog
Full Name - Weblog.
"A journal written on-line and accessible to users of the internet."
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/blog)

How are they different?
Blogs are written by people on particular subjects. These are normally interactive, by the use of comments and sending messgaes via widget. These make blogs stand out from common static websites.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blog)

Why use them?
Blogs can be used to speak your mind in a powerful way to the world. They are very interactive (E.g. Embedded Youtube videos, Image Slideshows, Music, Lots of Gadgets etc.) and can be updated easily without having to worry about programing codes and without having to worry about the design. Blogs can be used for:

• As a way to express personal opinions.
• As a marketing tool.
• As a communication tool.
• A an educational medium.
• As a campaign strategy for presidential candidates.
• Blogging establishes you as an expert in your field.
• Blogging moves your site up in the search engines if you update your site regularly.
• Blogging gives you an easy way to interact with customers and potential customers.
• Blogging is an easy way to give more value to your customers and let them know more about you and your products before they buy.

http://www.webbriefcase.net/2008-01/blogs-what-are-they-why-use-them/

What are the Advantages of Blogs?

1. The consumer of the blog can be more informed than others, which can help with the long term health of our economies and societies.
2. Blogs can help the organization develop stronger relationships and brand loyalty to customers.
3. Blogs, in an Intranet enviroment, can be an excellent way to share infomation within an organization.
4. Blogs, due to the interactive qualities with comments, can give you feed back and help keep your finger on the pulse as readers react to certain pieces and story ideas etc.
5. Blogs can build the profile of the writer, showcasing that the organization has talent and expertise.

http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_08_23_blogging.htm

What are the Disadvantages of Blogs?

1. Most people don't have much interesting things to say, and usually fail to organize their blogs to be compeling and clear mannered.
2. Many people who have alot of free time to write these blogs, often have nothing to say and drown you in trvia. And the people who do have interesting and compeling infomation, often don';t have enought time to blog their ideas, meaing that the expertise of an organization is often hidden.
3. Blogs may be easy to start, they are hard to maintain. Writing coherently is very time consuming aswell as difficult for humans. Blogs are cheap, but very expensive as they eat up time. As a result, many blogs are often left not updated, thus damaging rather than enhancing the reputation of the organization.

http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_08_23_blogging.htm

How Blogs can Affect Lives
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3074658/Charlie-bit-my-finger-boys-get-their-own-hit-blog.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/usa/2204073/Michael-Lohan-Lindsays-dad-stops-writing-his-blog.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3086912/Dr-Karen-Woos-joy-and-fear-in-blogs.html

How are Comments Useful on Blogs?
Comments on blogs add a new dimention of interacive qualites. These often give feed back to the blog askling additional questions or correcting the blogger. These can also be recomendations for future blogs aswell as to help find out what the target audience would like in the blogs from the critical comments.

Blogging 6/9/10

By using blogspot, I added different gadgets such as the Slideshow, showing images of other IT blogs that I have found. More features such as the Blog list are used to show similar blogs to the blog I am currently using and blogs, which I am following.

My Blog List

By clicking on the "Design" tab, the general layout of the blog would appear wear i can "Add a Gadget."  By chosing the "My blog list app," this is how the gadget is added to my page. Then by "add blog," and typing in the url, the link between your blog and the other is complete.

With the use of this app, a connection can be made with the subject, which the blog is about. With this blog, any of the blogs on my list would be other students on the same course and then blogs, whic would be of use on the course giving me ideas how IT is becoming an important part of our lives. When these blogs are updated, i can see they have and read the blog without having to visit their blog, similar to a subscriptiong.

Newsfeed

This gadget shows news from google. These generally just show articles from that day. This shows how people can use the internet to find out about the news of the day, instead of reading it from newspapers or even offical websites. This helps to save time leaving more time for more important things.

BlogThis!
This software means that you can blog websites without having to log on to blogspot. This makes the use blogging simpler, quicker and much easier with just the click of a button instead of lots of clicks.