Plastics

Let me start out by saying that I never thought I would have to use XHTML code after ITE 103 again in my life. That being said, chapter 1 was boring. Chapter 1 also made me glad that I was too lazy to sell back my ITE 103 textbook. It will come undoubtedly come in handy in my future.

Chapter 2 started with a great quote from USA TODAY travel blogger, Ben Mutzabaugh.

“Readers are our friends. In print it is easy to feel like you are at odds with readers because people will find one little thing wrong. So, as a journalist you get defensive. The readers of a blog chime in and help you to get the story right. Readers help make the blog stronger than any single author could make it alone.”

I don’t think of myself as a perfectionist by any means, but don’t we all prefer constructive criticism over being told how wrong we are? The blogosphere seems friendly!

I’m new to WordPress, so I plan on taking advantage of the part in chapter 2 explaining how to customize your blog and add widgets and whatnot. I hadn’t really tried to figure it out further than the tutorial done in class, but I’m sure this’ll help.

It’s not like I was anti-link or anything before reading chapter 3, but I guess I just never fully understood the full value of inserting links into stories or posts. Briggs talks about people being skeptical to direct readers elsewhere thinking that they won’t come back again. I understand this. Then I read this Google quote on page 82: “All Google does is send people away from itself and all people do is come back.” Brilliant.