Week 10
Week 9
For this week’s blog post, I created a picture with a caption on it. (Picture featured above.) To go about doing this, I went onto Flickr’s Creative Commons where I could legally download a photo someone else has taken. I wanted more of an inspirational photo, instead of something too cliché and cheesy. I wanted the same thing for my quote so while I googled “quotes about exploring the world,” I searched for something that, again, was not too cliché. I found the quote “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” (I got this quote off of How to Live a Life of Adventure.) I felt that this quote definitely checked the box of being inspirational and especially worked well with the photo I chose. I placed the quote on the photo by using an online photo editor called BeFunky. This allowed me to choose from a plethora of fonts and colors for my quote. I then downloaded the photo onto my desktop and inserted it into my blog post.
I picked this quote because it involves going out of your comfort zone to seek new adventures. People don’t realize what they’re missing when they don’t take a chance on opportunities. While people are afraid of making mistakes, they don’t even realize that that’s what life experience is all about. By taking a leap of faith, whatever the ending may be, you come out of that experience with more knowledge about life. Life is too short to spend your life stuck inside, worried about what may happen. I truly believe you should take every opportunity life hands you because you may not ever get that opportunity again.
Week 8
The Cool Tool I chose for this week’s assignment is Evernote. I chose this tool because it is a great way to take notes and keep them all in one place. Not only can you easily organize your notes within one application, but you can also access them from just about anywhere. You can access Evernote via any device, including the Internet. It’s a very convenient, very organized application to keep all of your notes in.
My test site, Good Graef, will include a collection of recipes that I particularly enjoy and why. There will also be a page consisting solely of the list of the recipes. I’m excited to see where it will go!
Week 7
I was pleasantly surprised at this week’s prompt. Not that I don’t normally like the other blog prompts, but this one’s was a little more fun because I got to get creative with it. I think building a future resumé is a successful way to put your goals right in front of you as if they are reality. To see something that you want on paper makes it seem even more attainable. This is actually a really awesome way for people to see their goals as being attainable. I am a firm believer in “shoot for the stars” because I truly believe you will regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t go for your goals, no matter how “ridiculous” they may be. This post was a little reminder of where I want to go and how much I want to get there.
Week 6
After learning about copyright laws, I do believe that they are necessary. Copyright laws protect each person’s work, no matter what form it is. By having copyright laws, the owner’s work is protected. Without copyright laws, the owner may be at risk of not being compensated for their work. By not being compensated, owners may be less likely to produce another work since the money they make typically has a part in what they create. It is important to protect yourself and your work. Copyright laws also give the owner the control to make copies of their work and choose where they want copies distributed. Another benefit of copyright laws is that if someone tries to steal your work or copy it, you have the right to file suit against infringement. This can reimburse the owner financially for what they have lost.
For these reasons, I do believe that copyright laws are necessary. They protect each person, as well as their works, and I find this extremely important so that someone else cannot take credit for what the owner has created.
Week 5 Post
This week, I explored a website called Symbaloo as well the website of a professional organization I thoroughly enjoy, Food and Wine. While I wasn’t personally a fan of the look of Symbaloo, as I perused, the idea of being able to organize websites on one page began to grow on me. I find myself staring at the thirty tabs I have open on my web browser constantly and watch it start to completely turn my computer into a turtle. Symbaloo seems like it would be a great way for me to organize all of the tabs I have open into one tab, on one website. While it may be of different use for someone else, organizing tabs is definitely what I would use it for.
Food and Wine, a website I leaf through often to find mouthwatering recipes and learn about cuisine around the world, proved to use a plethora of other social media websites. Food and Wine utilizes Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Snapchat to further reach out to their audience. While it does not seem that they reply to many tweets directed at them on Twitter, they do, however, have an Instagram called FWx that is geared to followers who want to share their love for food. FWx gives Instagrammers the opportunity to have their food photos shared with FWx’s followers by tagging their photos with #fwx. FWx will then feature posts from others (tagged with #fwx) and repost their food photos. This is a great way for Food and Wine to connect with its audience and create an even more personal connection.
While on Food and Wine’s website, I did some social media searching on the Digital Director of Food and Wine Digital, Alexandra Vallis, as well as the Senior Editor of Food and Wine Digital, Lawrence Marcus. I found that both individuals had Twitter accounts but surprisingly did not hold a substantial number of followers. Marcus had just over 400 followers and Vallis had just under 3,000. This completely surprised me what with their high-ranking at Food and Wine. I found that while Marcus does tweet a few culinary-related tweets, most of his tweets are personal-based. Vallis, on the other hand, retweets many tweets put out by Food and Wine’s Twitter account. I wasn’t really smitten with either of the two’s Twitter accounts. None of their tweets were anything too personal so I feel as if I did not get a solid sense of their personalities.
All in all, I found that Food and Wine’s website itself reaches out to many branches of social media thus connecting to even more followers. I would definitely like to accomplish having so many extra branches of social media attached to a blog I may create in the future. It definitely brings a greater publicity to the company and generates a wider audience.
Week 4 Post
This week, I further explored Diigo and learned about Bitly. To be honest, I am not the biggest fan of Diigo. While it is a great way to share information with others in a group, I do not find it the most aesthetically pleasing. Because of this, I find myself dreading going onto Diigo to post something.
Bitly, on the other hand, I think is a beautifully designed website. It piqued my interest as soon as I opened the website and I immediately started perusing. I think my favorite thing about Bitly is that it tracks the users who have opened the link you have shared. It tells you what of your content is popular, the crowd that is viewing it, and even as specific as what operating system they are viewing your link on. I think this would be incredibly helpful in the field I would like to pursue (journalism) because it would give me the ability to see what kind of readers are reading my writing. By seeing these specs, I could even broaden my target audience and in turn, collect an even wider range of readers, thus promoting my work even further. I truly think Bitly could be very helpful, not only to journalists, but to people who produce or advertise their work via social media so that they can gain information about the people viewing their links.
Week 3 Post
This week, I explored different internet tools and websites. Out of everything I tried, I would say that Feedly was the most useful for me. I follow an eclectic cluster of blogs and I found Feedly to be a very efficient way to organize the blogs into categories. Not only were they in categories, but they were all in one place, making perusing from one blog to another much easier.
I am an aspiring journalist and I definitely believe online resources will help me stay in my desired field. Journalism has expanded so much online, particularly with my generation. I personally have in interest in food journalism and am constantly reading blogs, online magazines, and watching recipe how-to’s. Without these online resources, I would definitely not be as educated as I am today in the subject of food journalism. I know that I will be able to further my education and experience with the rapid growth of online journalism.
Week 2 Post
In this week’s assignment, I learned that branding yourself is an important aspect to succeed in the professional world. By using platforms such as Twitter to market yourself, you can become a bigger influence within the professional world. Not only does branding yourself via social media benefit you, but even getting your name out in your local community. People will then start to talk about you, your name will spread, and you will soon be growing your network. If you start small and work for local companies, they will eventually lead you to even bigger and better companies. You can easily work your way to the top, especially by taking advantage of social media. By using social media, such as Twitter, people in the professional world can easily access information about you and see what you are contributing. By seeing the work you are contributing, they may realize that that is something they would want in their company and you would be one step closer to a job.
By creating a professional, online presence, it increases one’s chances of attaining a job that they truly desire.
GOOD GRAEF 