Will I continue to blog

Although this has been a fun experience, especially compared to most assignments, I wont be blogging anymore after this class is over. If I find something interesting enough to tell my friends about I will usually just tell them right then with an instant messaging client or even over the phone. This was definitely more fun than most assignments though. This assignment taught me a lot about blogging, as I had never blogged before this class and wasnt really even very familiar with blogging at all. Before this class and this blog site I had a generalization in my mind about what all blogs looked like. Im talking about the terrible looking websites with a yellow background, thin column of text as the blog, and the rest of the page filled with ads. This class has, at least, allowed me to gain some respect for blogs.

Online Communities

So, a few weeks ago we were asked to make a blog post about three online communities that we're involved in. It took me a little while to think of them, since I dont actively participate in myspace or most websites like that. The three communities I thought of were online gaming communities, a forum I post on with my friends, and blogger.

The online gaming section is huge. Ive played video games online ever since I had a computer. Ive played and participated in their online communities in everything from World of Warcraft, to Counter Strike, to Halo. Each one of these had its own special community. In games like World of Warcraft you would have communities that would expand outside the game to websites and forums. In Halo you would have a close group of friends that you would play with everytime you were on.

The second online community Im a part of is a forum I post on with my real life friends. It originally started as a website where we would talk to each other and our friends we only knew online. Over time its because just a place where me and my friends talk about our lives and interesting things we see, sorta like Blogger. The most talked about thing right now is just us communicating with one of our friends that is currently in Iraq, that website is pretty much the only way he can communicate with us almost everyday.

The third community I mentioned was Blogger. This is the weakest :( of the three communities. I post here about the class and people read what I have to say, and sometimes even respond. Ill even read my friends posts and respond to them sometimes.

Travel Planning Online

I, personally, am not a huge fan of traveling. I like where I live and usually hang out around here. So, I have never planned any trips online or even looked for interesting places to travel to. I have helped my parents do it though. My parents are both very stupid when it comes to computers, so, when they were planning a cruise to the Carribean I was largely in charge of all the reservations and payments that were handled over the internet. Id also like to say that the Carribean is an awesome place to go on a cruise to, much better than a cruise to Alaska. This summer I'm likely going to Hawaii with my family, in which case Ill be in charge of handling all the online portions of the trip. I really do like handling travel purchases online though, it saves you all the trouble of having to go to a Travel Agency and have them do the same thing for you. I actually remember going to a travel agency and looking at a wall full of brochures when I was a kid.

Dot.com to Dot.Bomb

While watching the presentation in class on dot.com to dot.bomb I got a call on my cell phone from my mom. That isnt too common, so I had to go outside the room to make sure it wasnt an emergency. When I came back into the room, maybe 2 minutes later, the entire presentation had changed. All of the dinosaurs, that were representing the success of businesses, had completely changed position. I was surprised to see that some of the companies that were around back then are still around today, but I was even more surprised that I had never heard of almost any of those companies. Its like as soon as they went under everyone just forgot they ever existed.

Scavenger Hunt

This scavenger hunt has been pretty easy, only a couple questions were hard. A hard one was the financial information on Oracle. The search engine one and the cookie one were really easy, except having to go print the cookie. You should update these papers, since they say 2004 on them, in question 12. Anyway, click here for a really cool website. Ya, I dont see how we are supposed to reach 3 paragraphs just on this topic. Emailing you now! Oh ya, Lukas is my partner for the scavenger hunt.Amazon shopping cart and Camcorder in another shopping cart.

Burn Rate

My topic for my presentation is a book entitled "Burn Rate", by Michael Wolff. Burn Rate is Michael Wolff's story of how he handled the internet boom. The book sounds like it could be interesting, but honestly, I don't expect it to be. I chose it because it was readily available and Prof. Fry recommended it. Thanks for letting me borrow it by the way. I plan to start reading it within the next couple days, because it seems like it might take a long time to read. Anyway, I'm just going to hope it will be able to hold my attention for most of the book.

Community Needs

Most communities, like the one at Exit133, are based upon a common interest of all its members. That is the key component to almost any community. Some communities though, like your family and relatives, you are born into. But for most communities, the most important thing is a shared interest. Another important factor for many communities is leadership, this may be by someone who runs a website (Like Derek and Exit 133), or by a group of people that help to organize what the group does. Overall though, communities vary greatly and so do their needs.