Notes from June 20

You can now access my notes from last night online.

Who Said That?

Last night, we briefly touched on the benefits and dangers of anonymity. Today, this article crossed my transom. Any comments?

Guest from June 13: David Krell

We were joined by two guests this evening. One, Mary Lou, was a friend of Carrie's, who came by to check out the class. The other, David Krell, was our featured speaker.

David is a practicing attorney who focuses on intellectual property. He received his LLM in intellectual property from Cardozo Law School in New York City in 2005. He also earned a J.D. from Villanova Law School in Villanova, Pennsylvania.

Having worked with Broadway Video and Classic Media to research the history of entertainment properties in order to strengthen their protection, David works with clients who are beginning their first venture into business and intellectual property. Current clients include a fashion designer and the founder of a nonprofit.

Interestingly, David is also a television historian. An avid TV fan, he is a frequent commentator on Talkin' Television on KSAV.

Over the course of his remarks, David mentioned the blog Likelihood of Confusion.

Pop Culture References to Blogs

When I got home from class tonight, I turned on the TV, and on Comedy Central, they were airing a rerun of the South Park episode "The Snuke." The best parts of the episode touch on one of tonight's topics -- the tracks and paths we leave online by participating in blogging and other user-generated media activities.

I've embedded a YouTube video of portions of the episode below. True to form, portions of this South Park episode are of questionable taste. If you are easily offended by references to racial stereotypes, female anatomy, flatulence, and other themes, don't watch the whole thing. But if you fast forward to about 3:20, you can get a sense of what I'm talking about. The next segment most worthy of your attention begins around 5:03.



This post is also an exercise of another topic from tonight's class: copyright infringement. While I did not edit nor upload the YouTube segment, and while I do not in general condone copyright infringement, I believe that this falls under fair use. I am including the segment here for teaching purposes, as well as research, scholarship, criticism, and comment. The use is also important for the discussions in class, and I've highlighted a specific, small amount to meet that educational purpose.

Notes from June 13

My notes are now available.

Another Book About Blogging

In today's mail, I received a book I learned about after class started -- but which is still worth our consideration. In late May, Cory Doctorow recommended that I check out Suzanne Stefanac's Dispatches from Blogistan: A Travel Guide for the Modern Blogger.

Now that I have the book in front of me, it appears to be a blogger's book about blogging -- and not in the sense of what tools to use and how... but how to think about and approach the practice of blogging. I plan to dip into it soon, but in general, it seems worth recommending. If you want to know why people blog, as well as about the different ways people do so, this text could be right up your alley.

Worth a look!

Notes from June 6

My notes from last week are now available online.

Writing for the Web

USC Annenberg's Online Journalism Review offers some good guidelines for writing blog entries and other online items. You might find them useful as you begin your individual blogs.

The Only HTML You Need to Know

I was being a bit flippant in class, but if all you know how to do is code Web links in HTML, you'll be a fine blogger. There are tons of HTML primers available -- this is a good place to start -- but, really, all you need how to do is two things.

One, make a link. The code to make a link is a staple -- and should be the first thing you learn. If you were to take out the spaces, a link to this article -- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/science/06cat.html?ex=1180756800&en=36e1735cc84caa80&ei=5070 -- would look like this:

< a h r e f = " http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/science/06cat.html?ex=1180756800&en=36e1735cc84caa80&ei=5070 " > This is the text you want linked. < / a >

That would show up as:

This is the text you want linked.

I can show you a shortcut in Blogger in class.

The second thing you want to know how to do is how to set aside quotes or excerpted text. That's called a block quote, and that's the code: again, with spaces,

< b l o c k q u o t e >The text you want indented.< / b l o c k q u o t e >

Why do I put in the spaces? To trick Blogger into thinking I'm not really inserting code so you can see the text. There might be a better way. I'll try to find one.

Questions? Email me. I'll do my best to answer quickly.

But seriously, those two things are all you really need to know. Also, don't be shy to experiment. You can't really break the Web, and you can always clean up your blog.

Notes from May 30

The notes from last night's class are now available. They're not as well organized as previous weeks, partly because Google changed how formatting Google Docs works -- and partly because my upload was a rush job. If they're less than useful, let me know!