Kristin's Weblog

Identity and Personal Homepages

kpavlovsky — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 03:54:29 +0000

If I were to construct a personal homepage, I would want want to convey all aspects of my personality. I would want to highlight my eclectic taste in music, movies, hobbies/favorite past times, literature, etc.. I have a rather…..odd sense of humor, so I would probably have some feature to convey this.

Since college, I have become more politically aware and have kept up with elections, watched politcally based shows, read news papers and attended many events on campus that deal with politics. Therefore, I would probably include my political beliefs somewhere on my personal site.

I am absolutely addicted to blogging (I have 4 different blogs, 2 of which I have used in a while, but I’m sure you get the idea that I am addicted…), so somewhere on my site, I would include a personal blog for public view. As a result, viewers of my site will be able to really get a sense of who I am based on my daily blogs. I write pretty much anything in my blog, whether it be me complaining, profound thoughts, exciting things that have happened to me, etc..

Most definitely, I would include many photos (I am the picture taking queen!) and post them on my site because they will also give insight of who I am.

Mainly, I would want to convey the real me in my site and show everyone a different side to me. I would want to document not only my interests, but also my personal experiences, good and bad.

Book Choices

kpavlovsky — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 05:53:39 +0000

I chose two books that focus on women and the internet. Both discuss the ways in which women use the internet as a means of communication, but they go into two different directions from that. While skiming the chapters and reading the introduction of each, I was absolutely fascinated.

“women@internet: creating new cultures in cyberspace” Edited by Wendy Harcourt

This book contains several essays by many different writers discussing various topics concerining women and the internet. Topics ranged from how women communicate via the internet, how women use the internet as a means of expressing their opinions, revealing and breaking taboos of women and technology, and many others. This book also poses questions and analysis examining new cultures being created by women on the internet. Some of the articles focus and analyze if women working on the internet have challenged “male ways” and if women using the internet as a means of communication breaks their silence in the “public sphere.” The book also discusses women’s engagement in technology and the internet as a means of global networking . Mainly, the essays in this book focus how women’s use of the internet and technology has changed culture and has affected women and society.

“Women and Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency and Identity” Edited by Mia Consaluo and Susanna Paasonen.

This book is goes into a different direction than Harcourt’s. Instead of focusing on how women on the internet are affecting society and the way women communitcate, this book focuses on gender and how it is affected by the internet. While in Harcourt’s book, the writers discuss how women communicate via the internet, Consaluo and Paasonen’s book focuses on how gender is defined on the internet. Moreover, it focuses on how the internet affects identity and compares and contrasts the way men and women use the internet–how the way men and women use the internet are gendered and how these ways/uses are “entwined into the structures of everyday life and how women make use of them” (Consualo & Paasonen 5). Mainly, many of the essays in this book focus on how women are defined, marked, represented and understood in relation to the internet.

Assignment for 1/30

kpavlovsky — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:29:54 +0000

The main goals and functions of the social bookmarking site, del.icio.us. is to store and share specific bookmarks on the web instead of the internet browser and/or the hard drive of your computer. As a result of making these bookmarks public, you can share these with your friends, family, co-workers, etc., and also find people with similar interests and also find other people’s links that you are interested in sharing.

RawSugar is also a social bookmarking site and is similar to del.icio.us, but has a few differences. While the purpose of it is to save a variety of bookmarks to the site, unlike del.icio.us., RawSugar allows it’s users to create a personal profile and personalize their collection of bookmarks. Moreover, users are able to collaborate with other users and make a mass collection of bookmarks, something that del.icio.us does not offer.

Both social bookmarking sites can be beneficial to users for different intentions. del.icio.us may be particualrly useful for people who just want a place to store their bookmarks for personal use and something to refer to in the future. In contrast, RawSugar seems beneficial for people who want to (for lack of a better word) socialize and gives the user more flexible options with searching, tagging, and privacy. Overall, del.icio.us would be the ideal site for people who have little or no experience with bookmarking because it has a more basic function and is very narrow in terms of use. On the other hand, RawSugar seems to be the ideal site for people who have more experience with bookmarking and also have the intent of advertising their bookmarks, hence their ability to create a personal profile, etc.

Wiki sites, such as Wikipedia, for example, have a completely different function and goals than both RawSugar and del.icio.us.. Unlike these two sites where you save and share bookmarks to various sites, Wikipedia allows users to write information about various topics and edit other users information. The purpose of Wikipedia and other sites similar to it is to share personal knowledge and collaborate with others to create more acurate information about different topics. Thus, if people want to share information and their personal knowledge instead of bookmarking various sites, Wikipedia would be ideal rather than RawSugar and del.icio-us..