I’m an avid retweeter. I enjoy a good tweet & like to share it with my friends. I’m not as clever as I’d like to think, so if I find a tweet I find clever I’ll share it.
I’ve used both the basic retweet feature and the quote tweet feature before. I use the twitter app on my phone almost every day. I’m a bit of a tweet-a-holic.
My latest retweet was this:
And this was my last quote tweet:
Here’s a picture of my current bio:
And here’s the new One Direction music video that came out today that I posted on twitter. Yes, I’m a massive One Direction fan. It’s embarrassing.
I have had a Twitter for almost three years, so you would think I would know how to retweet by now but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Obviously there is the easy way, to just hit the “Retweet” button, but I couldn’t figure out how to copy a post, how to get it to show up correctly, I wasn’t sure where to put my comment or exactly how and where to put the RT. I finally looked up Different Ways to Retweet Someone to make sure I was doing it correctly, and it wasn’t as difficult as I was trying to make it. I also had a little trouble finding something I wanted to tweet about. I guess that means I need to follow some more people, or just look through old post of the people I started following last week. Anyway, I eventually found two articles that I thought were worthy of a retweet.
Hopefully I did my retweets correctly
My first retweet I did by just pushing the “Retweet” button. That was definitely easier than trying to figure out how to retweet by copying the post. I chose to retweet @HRC because it’s close to my heart and I think everyone should know that people can still get fired for who they choose to love (this is 2014, COME ON!).
My second retweet was the one I had the most trouble with. I wanted to find something that was relevant to #webpub so I thought this post from @UberFacts was perfect. One out of five divorces is linked to Facebook, which is a great example of how Facebook is effecting our society.
Hopefully, with more practice I will be using and enjoying Twitter by the end of this semester!
Ethan Zuckerman’s 6-minute History of the Internet not only sets the record straight as to who the “Father of the Internet is” (not Al Gore), it puts blogging, social media, and wikis into historical context and explains how these were all natural progressions of the advent of the Internet.
In the Nerds 2.0.1 Timeline, I learned more about the development of the internet prior to it becoming commercially available. My family signed up for AOL in 1995, and I remember a time when websites were limited. You had to know the exact address in order to find them or else rely on the “shortcuts” AOL provided you in its interface. The sound of the dial-up will always bring back memories. 🙂
The Internet: A Decade Later helped me realize the impact the internet has had on pop culture. For example, in 2002, the most-searched items were topics that originated offline, such as Spiderman, Shakira, and the Olympics. By 2012, we see online-originated topics becoming more prevalent, such as Rebecca Black, Google+, and Pinterest. Content created online is now popping up offline in the news, entertainment shows like Tosh.0, and in other aspects of pop culture.
The First Website: I never before thought of the web as a cooperative. The “How can I help?” link made that sink in. It says,
There are lots of ways you can help if you are interested in seeing the web grow and be even more useful… The web needs raw data…
In The Evolution of the Web, I was very interested to learn the evolution of the cookie, as well as all the different types of cookies that are now available. I am somewhat familiar with them, having worked at a financial institution and in the marketing department, but I had no idea that there were so many different types.
How Search Engines Work: I had no idea that some search engines only index the page title. That explains why some of our SEO advice at work tells us to drop a bunch of keywords in the page title. I’ve always found that tacky and annoying, but now I see the importance.
From: How Search Engines Work via outofotheblue.net
Get More Out of Google: Holy cow! There are SO MANY different ways to search Google. I had no idea it had its own language, similar to code, that can help you produce the results you want much faster than typing in keywords and combing through articles.
On Twitter, I started following WOCCU, the World Council of Credit Unions, because they sponsored and coordinated the internship I recently participated in. They serve as a connector between all the different credit unions around the world — many of which are “doing it better” than the CUs in the United States.
I also started following the CU Water Cooler because they post content, articles, and event information relevant to CU employees and fans of cooperatives.
Lastly, I chose Filene Research because they post content relevant to consumer finance in general. While I personally align with the cooperative/ credit union movement in the US, Filene posts information and consumer research that will impact both banks and cooperatives.
I’m Taylor, and I’m a senior advertising major here at Texas State University. I just got back from a two-week internship all over southern Brazil that focused on understanding the role that the Brazilian credit union system SICREDI plays in the cooperatives all over southern Brazil. It was life-changing, to say the very least, and I apologize in advance if I talk about it too much.
I am currently working full-time as a Marketing Specialist at Amplify Credit Union in north Austin, which keeps me very busy. In my free time, I crochet and design clothing and accessories. This year, my goal is to brand myself as a designer and have a website that showcases my work.
I have some experience with web developing, but I know this class is going to help fill in some of the gaps in my understanding of how everything fits together. I could really use some help in creating secure forms, and if we can learn how to have them feed into databases, that would be even more super! I am also very interested in data visualization.
My Twitter handle is @taytillaria but I admittedly don’t use it very often. I will do my best to use it for class.
My name is Trevor Smith. I am a 23 year-old Mass Communication student. I’m trying to learn web design in order to manage my own portfolio site, as well as, to find work making other people’s sites.
In my spare time I make films with my buddies. I also do audio production. In the coming years, I would like to do some voice-over work for animation. I’m a big fan of cartoons! I grew up on Looney Tunes, VHS tapes of old Disney cartoons, and The Simpsons. My favorite five animated shows are: Futurama, The Simpsons, Mission Hill, King of the Hill, Dragonball.
I am on twitter, though I don’t use it too consistently. My handle is @tu_pint.
The Internet has always been used for communicating.
1965 – Email is invented.
1969 – The Internet (Arpanet) started.
1978 – First BBS (CBBS)
1979 – MUDs precursor to MMORPG. (Like World of Warcraft.)
1979 – Invention of the emoticon!
1982 – Birth of Instant Messaging.
1990 – World Wide Web. (CERN)
1995 – Geocities and Tripod.
1997 – Weblogs. (Blogs)
1995 – Ward Cunningham creates the Wiki.
2001 – Wikipedia.
2006? – “Today,” 68.6% Americans are connected to the Internet.
According the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, as of September 25, 2013 85 percent of Americans aged 18 and older use the Internet.
In response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, The United States formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense. This timeline describes the events leading up to and following the invention of the ARPANet, the foundation of today’s Internet.
In 2002, high-speed broadband access became available to the public, but most Internet users were still on dialup. Back then, 569 million people (9.1 percent of the world’s population) used the Internet, for an average of 46 minutes per day. There were about 3 million websites online and it took about 16 seconds to load up a typical webpage. Ninety-five percent of users used Internet Explorer. These were the days of Napster and back then, it took 12.5 minutes to download a song on a 56k modem. Friendster, the most popular social network in the world had 3,000,000 users. Tower Records and Borders books were the most popular ways to buy music and literature and Blockbuster was the most popular place to rent movies.
In contrast…
In 2012, 2.27 billion people used the Internet (33 percent of the world’s population) for an average of about 4 hours per day. There were about 555 million websites online and it took about 6 seconds to load up a typical webpage. In 2012, only 39 percent of users used Internet Explorer; 28 percent used Chrome, 25 percent used Firefox and 6 percent used Opera. Napster was long gone, but digital music was as popular as ever; it only took about 18 seconds to download a song. Facebook was the most popular social network, with 900 million users. In 2012, iTunes and Amazon.com were the most popular places to buy music and books online, and Netflix was the most popular way to rent movies. Tower Records, Borders Books and Blockbuster have all gone bankrupt.
This swirly, avant-garde, artsy graphic describes how all the different web technologies are woven together to create the modern World Wide Web. It’s very interesting to play with, but any hard information it may convey is a bit muddled by its presentation.
This animated slideshow describes how a bunch of creepy spiders crawl around on webpages, collecting and storing the data in a search engine’s databases, which index it and serve it back to users based on the keywords they enter, as a webpage full of linked results.
This website very usefully explains how to “program” Google searches to refine the results in a very granular fashion. I’ve bookmarked it for future reference!
My new Twitter Activity
On Twitter, I started following @BradyHaran, because he’s one of my favorite video journalists — the guy behind the Numberphile and Sixty Symbols YouTube Channels. Also, I followed @danharmon because he’s one of my favorite television writers and @stephenfry because he’s just plain amazing.
I found this video very interesting in how the Internet evolved as a means of communication because that is what people used it for. I got a kick out of Zuckerman’s joke that the guys at BBN are the actual inventors of the Internet, not Al Gore. I really enjoy hearing Ethan Zuckerman speak because he is so knowledgeable about the Internet and is a strong advocate for net neutrality.
It is fascinating to me, and not at all shocking, that the Internet as we know it today exists because of technologies developed during the arms race between the United States and the U.S.S.R. Since the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Russians, new advancements in technology appear to be a bi-annual occurrence spearheading in the Internet we use and rely on today.
It seems like a lifetime ago that I was waiting for my dialup modem to connect to AOL so I could AIM (instant message) all my friends on the Internet. I also remember the excitement of downloading any CD my heart desired on Napster without fear of punishment, until Lars Ulrich and Metallica put an end to that. Now we have iTunes Store though and can legitimately purchase all our entertainment needs at the touch of a button. I can’t wait to see what the next decade has in store for the Internet.
Seeing the First Website really shows me how far we have come in a short time from having what is now basic HTML code with simple text and hyperlinks as main features of the website, to now having intricate designs, graphics, and functions on our websites today.
What a fascinating way to deliver a timeline! Stunning visuals, interactive links, and a very simple yet elegant design is a fitting example way to deliver the evolution of the Web in a way that maximizes its current capabilities.
Search engines are incredibly powerful tools to find what we’re looking for in a flash. “Spiders” get sent out all across the internet to pick and choose bits of data that apply to our search topics and then gather them in an orderly fashion so we can narrow down our search from a much more customized list of options instead of spending valuable time aimlessly searching for information on the net.
Google is a truly amazing company in the media/technology world. Arguably the most popular search engine on the web, I’m glad to now know some of the shortcuts and techniques provided by Google to find exactly what I’m looking for. It is also handy in that it can function as a dictionary, calculator, concierge, and much more.
Twitter:
I decided to follow KUTX Austin on Twitter because I hope to land an internship with them this Summer and following them will keep me posted on events I can get involved with at KUTX. I also followed Blizzard Entertainment because they have a headquarters in my hometown of Austin, TX where they produce video games. I am interested in the production side of the video game world and would be interested in working for them after college. Lastly, I followed an Austin company called Set.fm (or DejaSet) which is a really cool startup company that records live music shows in cooperation with local bands around Austin, then mixes them and posts a downloadable digital mp3 of the live show. This allows fans to attend a concert of a band they like, then buy a copy of that exact show 24 hours later to put have on iTunes as a live CD. I am considering applying for an internship with Set.fm as well. Pretty cool stuff.
Hello everyone, I’m Cory Bacon a 22 year old student at Texas State. I’m a Mass Communication and Geography major. I hope that this class helps me improve my ability to use the internet period, since it sometimes takes me multiple hours to do the simplest tasks, like writing an introductory blog post. I don’t really know what I want to do if and when I graduate, and I never really have known. However in my free time, I enjoy writing, as well as watching or playing sports. So I became a journalist thinking maybe I could do sports journalism or something. Also as you can see from my photo here, (if I even uploaded it correctly) I am also Captain America in my free time.
I would describe myself as someone who doesn’t take things too seriously, and if you get to know me well enough you would find I joke around a lot. Sometimes the jokes are good, sometimes they’re terrible. Sometimes I come across as funny, other times I come across as shy and boring. Sometimes I’m sweet, other times I’m an asshole. I work hard sometimes, but only if it’s because I know it will allow me to be extra lazy later. And as Forrest Gump says, that’s all I have to say about that.
I liked this video because it talked about how the internet is used to communicate/to talk to one another. The sole purpose of the creation of the internet was to connect, and I liked how Zuckerman brought that up. The timelines were extremely informative as well.
Honestly, I didn’t know a lot of the details from this timeline. Specifically that there was funding provided by the Air Force given to Paul Baron for block switching network to protect communications during an nuclear war & that the Queen of England sent an e-mail in 1976.
I always find it interesting looking at early internet usage compared to how it is now, and the statistics are always mind blowing. The fact that we use the internet in everyday life now compared to 12 years ago is amazing. I learned specifically that in 2002 9.1% of the population used the internet compared to 33% in 2012. It also took 12.5 minutes to download a song in 2002. Compared to today’s 18 second downloads, where I get anxious after the first 5 seconds thinking something is wrong because it’s taking, “so long” to download. Incredible.
I liked seeing this because it gives perspective on how the internet has grown. It looks a lot like my first ever attempt at HTML coding too, so that’s pretty comforting.
The visuals as a whole were enough of a learning experience for me. It’s incredible that we can create something like this timeline now when it was unheard of 10-10 years ago. I liked seeing that the ‘drag and drop’ feature was created around 2008 and that Safari was released in 2003.
I actually learned about Spiders last semester! I found it fascinating that there’s a way to comb through the internet and find the most visited and most frequently returned-to sites on the internet and be able to compile them into a search engine site.
I had no idea that anything after a dash is excluded from the google search! That’s vital info! I also tend to ask google a lot of questions, and apparently that’s not a sufficient search tactic. Who knew?
On Twitter:
I followed Hunger Magazine because for some reason I wasn’t following them before. I said that I wanted to eventually work for them in my about me post, so it’s a bit strange that I wasn’t following them. I also started following the AP Stylebook because I will always need that in my profession &, once again, I didn’t realize I wasn’t already following them. Since I’m already following Sugarscape, I decided to follow Vogue as a fallback. I follow Vogue UK, but now I’m following Vogue US. I need as many backups as I can!
Hi! My name is Lauren Welch & I’m a journalism major here at Texas State University. I’m 21 years old. I’m a gymnastics coach at gyms in Austin & Buda called Olympia Hills Gymnastics. I actually love my job, which most people can’t say while they’re still in school. I love seeing my students grow & progress in the sport. I teach all ages so I have a ton of different types of classes.
I continually tell myself (& others) that I’m terrible when it comes to all things web design, so by the end of this course I’d like to reassure myself that I’m at least slightly knowledgeable in the subject! I can’t wait to put these skills on my resume for potential jobs after graduation.
Speaking of potential jobs, I plan to get as far away from Texas as I can after graduation. Not that I don’t love this state, I’ve just always enjoyed change. My ultimate goal is to end up in the U.K. somewhere. Once I’ve saved up enough money doing whatever it is I find there, I want to move to a flat in London & hopefully work my way onto the staff at either Hunger magazine or a simple gossip magazine called Sugarscape, eventually working my way up to something bigger. I love copy editing, so I hope to get a job in that field. I’d want to get a taste of column/feature writing as well. As you can tell, I’m a bit all over the place with what I want to do with my life. We’ll just have to see how it all pans out.
In my spare time I watch a lot of films. I love foreign films, indie films, even Disney films. I’m a sucker for a good story. Honestly, the majority of my paychecks go to renting movies at Hastings & buying new music. I’ve wanted to move to the UK since I was 12 years old, so I’m a British pop-culture follower. I think I watch more British TV shows & read more British magazines than I do American. I’m not a traitor I swear!
Hmmm, fun facts: I have an older brother. I’m an intern at Edible San Antonio this semester. I’m an absolute freak when it comes to live music. Honestly, concerts are probably one of my absolute favorite things in the world.
