SCS2114 - Some Reading To Do On Your Way Out the Door

Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2010: who bloggers are, how bloggers do it, and how much they make. Don't miss previous years' editions.

"The News About the Internet," the New York Review of Books' definitive look at how—at least as of summer, 2009—media and blogs interact and overlap.

"Cut This Story!" from the usually much wordier Atlantic. "One reason seekers of news are abandoning print newspapers for the Internet has nothing directly to do with technology. It’s that newspaper articles are too long."

"How Blogs are Becoming More Like Newspapers," from Gawker, one of the best blogs out there—and one that's been not undeservedly accused of being one of those parasites that David Simon is quoted slagging in the New York Review of Books article.

"What Exactly Is a Blog?" After an angry, confused email from a retired editor ("I still do not understand [blogs]. Nor do I like them"), The New York Times' public editor solicits The New York Times' managing editor to quickly defend how their paper uses blogs and blogging.

"Clay Shirky: 'Paywall will underperform – the numbers don't add up,'" in The Guardian. One of the best thinkers about the internet thinks about the future of the internet and those in the media trying to take advantage of it.

And if you haven't yet, the Gene Weingarten Washington Post column and Ryerson Review of Journalism article, previously linked to here, are must-reads if you're interested in how the internet affects (or ruins, as it were) writing.

How To Start Making A Custom Google Map

By popular demand—by which I mean Louise suggested I do this, and I remember Matt nodding in agreement—here's a step-by-step look at how to make your own Google Map and add a location to it. (There's a lot more you can do with Google Maps than what I outline here, like making custom shapes and backgrounds and borders around things or along roads, but this should help you get started.)

1. Go to Google Maps, click the "My Maps" link, and then click "Create new map."

2. Give your map a title and set it to "Unlisted"; if your map is Unlisted, you can still embed in and send people links to it.

3. Search for a location as you otherwise would in Google Maps. I'll find College and McCaul, since that's where we have class.

4. When Google Maps finds the location you wanted it to and places the marker on the map, click that marker, which'll bring up a pop-up that looks like this:

5. Click "Save to..." and save it to your new map.

6. A little bit of text with a yellow background will come up on the top of the page confirming the save. If you want to add more locations to your map now, repeat steps 4–5; if you want to start editing those locations' descriptions and icons, click "View map."

7. When you do, you'll be spirited away to the map's individual page—which should have a list of the locations along the left side of the page, with a map alongside it. You should be able to see the location you just added on the map itself. (If you aren't seeing the markers on the map, try refreshing the page, or switch to a different browser; I've always had trouble using Google Maps in Firefox, for some reason, but Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers both work great.) Click the "edit" button.

8. If you click either the links in the sidebar, or the markers on the map, a little pop-up will appear in which you can edit the location's name, description, or icon. Spend some time playing around with what you're able to do here.

9. When you're finished, hit the "Save" button on the left-hand sidebar.

10. Then, click the "Link" link in the top-right corner of the page. That'll bring up the link for your map, if you want to share it with someone or your readers, or—better yet—give you the HTML code you'd need to copy and paste elsewhere to have the map display wherever you want.

11. If you want to see how the map will look when you embed it in a page, click "Customize and preview embedded map." That'll bring up a separate page; if you click the "Custom" button, you can input your own height and width as you want.

...and here's our map, set to 350 pixels wide, and 350 pixels tall:

SCS2114 - Your Blogs

West Annex News (Louise)
The Comm. Officer (Sharlene)
52 Hoods (Matt)
The Year of Chris (Christine)
Little White Duck (Bonnie)
Adventures in Tealand (Rita)
Living the Charmed Life (Mary Jane)
Octagon Ontario (Andrew)

Last updated on Monday, November 22, at 2:11 p.m.

SCS2114 - November 22

For next class, November 22, you should:

• Create your own blog; the instructions for how to get started are here. If you have time, try adding SiteMeter to it, too.
• Write one regular-length post for your blog before the end of Saturday, November 20. As usual, bring nine copies of that post to next class so we can pick it apart mercilessly.
• Email me with a link to your blog, also by the end of the night on November 20—I'll be writing a short post for the class blog that will link to everyone's.
• Check the class blog some time on Sunday or Monday, and follow the links to everyone else's blog; those'll be what you'll want to be reading regularly from now on.

Mary Jane Demo Post - Images

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Photo by wickenden.

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Google Maps - Test

Here's a map:


View Blogging Class - Test Map in a larger map

YouTube Test - Tina Fey

Tina Fey won the Mark Twain Prize for comedy writing yesterday. Here is a video of her answering PBS viewers' questions:



For more on Tina Fey, check out her Wikipedia page.