1981 broadcast on KRON San Francisco…reading newspapers online (with the exception of pictures, ads, and comics?

“it takes over 2 hours to receive the entire text of the newspaper over the phone and with an hourly use charge of $5 the new tele-paper won’t be much competition to the .20 cent street edition”

Networking and the internet (a network of computers) has been around a long time, but it wasn’t until around 1990 when Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web (yeah, notice it does not say Al Gore?). This guy could have been a ka-bajillionaire but instead insisted on non-proprietary and free. That’s how the web began, open source and available to all. Now with ads and special costly software, etc…the web isn’t so free…but everything is cyclical. People like to collaborate and share, opensource is awesome and what the web was meant to be. You can see the big push for open and free has always been there in the background, buzzing, even while people became millionaires with crappy browsers and software. Wordpress is an excellent example of the open and free web that Tim had a mind.
His idea started with his own lack of memory and too many notes.

he devised a piece of software that could, as he put it, keep “track of all the random associations one comes across in real life and brains are supposed to be so good at remembering but sometimes mine wouldn’t.” -TIME

Wow, from there to creating HTML, URLs, and the rules of http…don’t forget the first browser and server! Way to go Tim! From 1990 to 2009, in less than 19 years we’ve come a long way. I have students who were born after 1990, and have only known the world with the internet in it. Information at their fingertips is all they have known… I think Tim Berners-Lee is my web hero. Right next to the person who created bejeweled (j/k).
It’s interesting to see how far we have come. “Random associations”, that’s so interesting to me. In grad school I studied learning theory and there are so many ideas about how people learn. Ideas of the brain as a black box was big for a while. Information goes in and we don’t really know what happens then, hence a black box. Some say we build schemas, while we may not know everything, we have a these scaffolds that we build upon as our experience grows. Also, there is the idea of a rhizome. Knowledge is intertwined with everything you do, see and here in your life. Like a root, creeping and intertwining with anything in it’s path, sometimes you can’t even separate two plants because their roots are so intertwined. This rhizome idea brings me back to “random associations”. The “world wide web” lingo was used to show connections, like a spider web (or how properly networked of computers can look), but I see fault in that language. A spider web usually stands alone, lots of interconnections of course, but on it’s own. A rhizome on the other hand is interconnected with everything. Think of the root system of a large tree, interconnected and almost inseparable from the plants, grasses, and other trees around it.
Okay so the world wide rhizome (wwr?) doesn’t quite have the same ring to it but I like it. I’ll have to ponder this more later when I have more time…

Do you think you’re a problogger? Check out this site: Problogger.net
It’s a site created by Darren Rowse which is:

…dedicated to helping other bloggers learn the skills of blogging, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium.”

But what I find really interesting, besides the great blogging tips, is the sites job section. Here you can find a job as a blog writer!

Like this one: NatureMade Sam-e Blogger! The value for 6 months of blogging? $5000 a month and a free laptop!
Or this one: Non-fiction Article Writers for Suite101.com. Looks like you could write about…well, anything!

Looking at several of these jobs, the pay ranges from $3.50 an article to, well $5000. You can make some nice spending cash or supplement your income pretty well.

A colleague and I were recently talking about English majors and wondering how the blogging (web) world has changed things. While I don’t think English as a major is going away, it is interesting to see that anyone who can write pretty well, and has some personal experience on a subject, can be a “writer” or “bwriter?”. Of course, writing a book and writing a blog are two different things, but I have seen some pretty savvy bloggers making a heck of a lot of money for not having a degree in Literature, English, or even in the field they are writing about. What it comes down to is that people want to know more about a subject and want to read about it in layman’s terms. The down and dirty, rather than the historical relevance and proper terminology (although blogging sites range from the bullet point methods, to videos, to everything you wanted to know about a subject). Think of it this way, the last time you wanted to know more about something, did you check out a book or did you do a quick google search and find the answer in 5 seconds?
Go, blog, share your experiences and knowledge, and hopefully, make some money!!

Come on LJ, just connect already! UGH…

EDIT: Ah, finally, I have cross-bred (?) my LJ and my new blog! It was so easy, yet I made it so hard. ha

Now I need to edit the appearance of my blog…hm…

Oh for you LJ folks, I am still going to be looking at LJ, I just wanted something that I could post off of my personal website, yet still comment on your stuff!

If you’d prefer to add me to your reader, do it at my blog site.

This is only a test…just testing to see if I am able to link my old blog to this one. I downloaded the crossposter, let’s see what happens.

Ugh, of course I downloaded the plugin and put it in the right folder (I’m pretty sure) but now there is no place to put in my login/password. Hm, I wonder if I do that on the other blog area? Ugh, annoying, have to figure it out later, time for dinner. Danny made ravioli (not from scratch) and sauce (from scratch).

So I am eagerly looking through free Wordpress themes that I can use for my blog.

• Do I go with a cute vector art grunge style theme?
• Should I find something that matches my website? Which I need to update, like 2 years ago.
• Should I pick a theme with dark colors to show how deep I am, or light and bright to show my fun and witty side?
• Is there a way to download a theme and then edit the parts you want? I don’t know since I can’t decide on one!
• I’m sure I could make my own, but how…do I have to do it in the next few minutes before I go to bed?

Oh Wordpress, how much time I will waste on you!

More questions I am asking myself:

• Exactly what will I put on this blog? Work and web design related information?
• Since everyone can read this site, how much personal information (like photos) should I allow?
• Will I have anything interesting to write about?
• More than that, will I keep up with this blog?

Hm, questions to ponder in dreamland.

So I have created my first WordPress blog. Now I just have to make it work and keep writing in it. I wonder if I can connect this one to update my old blog. Hmmm…this will take some time, but I’ll try and figure it out.