Wednesday, March 04, 2009

E-tivity 1


Exploring the blogoshpere

According to wikipedia the blogoshpere is "...the collective term encompassing all weblogs or blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture."

Sarah

Purpose: To search the Internet for blogs that interest you in order to become aware of how large and varied the blogosphere is. To start analyzing some of the characteristics of blogs as a genre.

Task: Search for blogs that might interest you by going to Technorati and searching for a word, e.g. “rugby”, in blog posts, in tags or in their blog directory (please choose blogs in English). Read some of the blogs. Choose one that interests you. Come back to our course blog and write a comment to this post about one of the blogs you have found. Give us the url and explain what you like about the blog and why you would recommend others visiting it. For example, I put in the tags 'language learning' and came up with a blog called the Linguist, which I found interesting.
Start considering how blogs are written and how links are used in blogs. What kind of language is used (formal, informal, vulgar, elegant)? How do bloggers make use of links in their posts? At the end of your post, write a few sentences about your initial observations of the styles used on the blogoshpere.

N.B. Make sure you sign your post and be concise ;-)

Respond: Read the comments of the other students and go visit at least one of the blogs they have suggested. Be prepared to discuss this in class.

Timeline: Sunday, March 8 (task), Wednesday, March 11(respond).

(photo source)


As always, if you have any doubts or questions, write a comment to this post and I will answer them for all to see. Therefore, check and see if others have written a comment with the same question before writing yours. Blogging is first and foremost about reading, not writing!

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello!
My name is Anna Bertelli. I'm studying Foreign Languages for International Communications at the University of Padua. My matricola number is 583913-LSC. I live in Casale di Scodosia, a small village near Padua. I live there with my parents and every day I catch the train to reach the University. I love listening to rock and blues music, watching horror and thriller movies.During the weekend I usually hang out with some friends and I often go to the cinema. I also like cooking pasta and cakes. I hope this course using blog and Web 2.0 will be useful for my future activities.
On Thursday I would like to attend lessons at 10.30 a.m.

Anna Bertelli

fedyb said...

Hello everybody! My ame is Federica Bonomi (M.N. 589754) and I'm attending the second year in LSC (specialistic degree).
I'm from Brescia and I'm studying English and Spanish in Padua. I love this city!
I think I should enlarge my English vocabulary because I often tend to use the same words...
I'd prefer to attend the 10:30-12:15 lesson on Thursday morning, as I'll have another lesson immediately after that!
bye bye :-)

Anonymous said...

My name is Francesca(584455), I'm a student of "Lingue straniere per la comunicazione internazionale" and I live in Chioggia,a seatown similar to Venice. My interests are nature, art, literature and theatre. I hope to improve the accuracy of my spoken and written English.

Francesca Bullo

Ps.1. To Sarah: during the lessons of "Glottodidattica" I realized that people can learn perfectly foreign languages only until the age of 12..anyway, hold on and keep on trying!:)
Ps.2. I would like to be in the second group, from 10.30 to 12.15 please!

Anonymous said...

Hi everybody!
I give you the url of the blog I chose:http://shuttersisters.com/.And now,let's think about it!I chose it because I love photography and like the idea of immortalizing moments of my life using it,and, obviously,I also like sharing photographs with others.What I like about the blog is the fact it contains a lot of photographs and few but evocative words.I also like the fact it's a blog made by and meant to women,especially mums who perhaps need some rest after an heavy work day-as a mum,as a worker or, even better,as both things..I would recommend others,especially girls,visiting it because in my opinion it's a means to escape from everyday life,relax,think about things we normally don't pay attention to.It could also be a place where to get to know to new friends.Anyway,it's a blog for entertainment and socialisation rather than one for learning something.
As regards the language of blogs,it depends on the topic;but I noticed that the informal register is much more used than the formal or elegant ones.Just think for example of abbreviated forms,normally avoided in academic writings.As regards links, they are used to give more detailed information-information that is already in the Web and,therefore,doesn't need to be written again-about the specific topic they are dealing with,or to give some background to what they are saying,to show images or photographs to others.
The world of blogs is really enormous and takes much time to go through...I can tell you just my initial observations of the styles used on the blogosphere.Blogs are mainly an informal way of communication,similar to oral conversation.People blogging are not concerned with language accuracy,but with communicative purposes.
That's all,
Michela

Anonymous said...

Hallo everyone!
I found a very interesting blog on music, in particular electronic music.
The url is http://music.for-robots.com
I choose this blog because I am very interested on the topic it treats. Electronic music is not very popular, especially here in Italy: you don't find much information about it in newspapers, you never hear about it on tv, and there are not many music shops specialized in it. So the Internet is a good alternative way to find out something more. I also like the title of the blog, I think it's very autoironic!
The blog is clearly made by and addressed to a young audience, and its purpose is to exchange information and opinions. There are disc reviews, comments, thoughts, photos, images, videos. I think it's an easy way to discover music which otherwise you would never get a chance to listen to. There are also links to sites where you can buy music, or just listen to it for free, which is great!
The language used is very informal and simple. The bloggers are all 'on the same level', they are young people who share an interest, and this permits them to be completely relaxed and feel free to write whatever they want. Some comments even contain insults and bad words to express disagreement on someone else's post, but I think it's fine: in informal contexts we all talk like that, so why shouldn't we be ourselves on the blogsphere?
If anyone is interested in electronic music, I hope this blog will be useful!
Valentina

Anonymous said...

Hi guys!
I give the url of the blog I'm going to talk about so you can drop in and take a look if you'd like!
http://cheeserland.com/
I must say,this is not what I was looking for when I sailed the stormy waters of the blogosea.In fact,I was looking for a blog about travels and various suggestions for a good trip 'round the world,when...I was suddenly impressed by the brightly coloured webpage which appeared on the blog list (shocking pink is always striking)! So I told myself,why don't you jump in and then decide if it's what you need?And so I did.
In few words,Cheeserland is the blog of a young girl living somewhere in Malaysia who has a thing about cheese, fashion, pets and travels. She also provides her arguments with lots of funny pictures and links to other websites, as for instance in "cheeseroll" or under the label "couture".
This blog is not directed to a particular audience-you can be both young and old,male or female-since the range of interests is rather wide, but I guess young girls would be more interested in, especially as concerns fashion or beauty remedies. The part regarding travelling is also interesting, you can read about trips to Japan or Korea (I suggest you to go through the vintage cheese area).
One thing that left me quite puzzled and a bit shocked was the language she uses in her blog, which is completely upside-down if compared with the "canon" and the more informal-colloquial language of blogs. An example? The use of "cheese" whenever and wherever she can,the use of abbreviations and foreign words,and maybe some writing mistakes (but they're more likely to be puns!). Anyway, besides being a little weird, I found that her language is very fresh and spontaneous, as well as a blog language should be, since it is created in the very moment it is spoken/written/thought.
I think it's all for now..I hope I have aroused your curiosity and ,if you're interested in visiting this website, you'll be pleased with it!
Let me know what do you think about about it and good blogowatching!
Anna

Anonymous said...

Hi everybody!

The blog I'd like you to take a look at is Ominiglot (from the ancient greek:omni=all, glossa=language). The URL is http://omniglot.com/blog/.
It's a blog (by Simon Ager) on languages and many related issues, such as linguistics, foreign languages, sign language, language learning, etc.
I've found it very interesting not only 'cos it relates to our field of study, but also 'cos it has a funny and cushy way of approaching language related issues.
The author's language is for the most informal (but not colloquial)and it becomes formal (but not too technical) when deepening specialized matters, such as translation or etymology.
You can find out a few pages (called 'about me' and 'my languages') on the blogger's life & studies (he knows 6/7 foreign languages! Amazing!!!). You find also a lot of links to other blogs and websites focused on the same field.
On the right side of the front blog-page there's a long list of all the posted topics, so you can easily find what you need.
What's more, there's plenty of interviews and contributions from specialized professionals of the language field.
Nice and catchy!

P.S. Oh, surfing through Omniglot blog I've found out other two interesting blogs: one is called LanguageGeek and the other one is Slang 'O The Day (on english slang words...really funny!).

As concern blogosphere, I think that using the proper tools (e.g. Technorati) one can find a lot of interesting and authoritative blogs. Many blogs offer technical and reliable informanion through a plain and readable style, which is useful especially for those who are not practised in a certain matter, but want to know about it!

I have to beat feet now (= to leave, in Am.slang!)...Bye :)

Giorgia C.

marioluch said...

Mario Bianchi Chiarani
......................
I surfed the web for a while, visiting different places in the blogosphere. Since I'm the token man (sorry ladies, you have to be content with that :P ) I searched for some male-oriented blog. That means football and other sports, but no one satisfied me enough. So I changed target and I finished up looking for some interesting blogs about music. After a while I recalled a very interesting and funny blog I visited some weeks ago, so I closed the Technorati Search and I went to this url: www.oasisinet.com
It's the official site of Oasis, the British band (I guess you know what I'm talking about... I hope so!). Well, maybe it's better to say that it WAS the official site, since I discovered thet it's no more online. But don't worry, the browser redirects to the Myspace page of the band where you can find Noel Gallagher's blog: "Tales from the middle of nowhere".
It's a sort of diary written by Noel during the tour. I may be biased, since I'm a great fan of the band, but I do think that this blog is very appealing! It is written in a very spontaneous and witty way. There is a huge load of idiomatic expressions and everyday ways of saying. Sometimes the language tends to be a little foul-mouthed, but that's the style of the writer. The comments are mainly written by the fans and they are written in a very spokem style with the add of smileys and other internet stuffs!
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did (and do!).
See you Wednesday!

Anonymous said...

Hellooo!
I was looking at the list of the top 100 blogs that Technorati has published, and I’ve found this blog: http://www.boingboing.net/.
It’s the name of the blog that has captured my attention: “Boing Boing, A directory of wonderful things”. The blog reports in fact some curiosities and funny news from the world, which I think could be interesting. In it, there are many videos, for example from YouTube, and links to other websites, such as links to online newspapers, where you can find further information or more pictures about the topic of each post. In general, the language used in the posts is descriptive; it tends to be formal in the numerous quotations from newspaper articles, and colloquial in the comments to the posts. I think Boing Boing is an example of how a blog doesn’t necessarily have to present a definite style, having the possibility of mixing different kinds of language, levels of formality…
I’d recommend this blog to all those people who like to surf the Net in order to find something amusing to read or watch. Have a look to this post
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/06/obamasnacks-banned-i.html : it’s really funny!

Ilaria.

Anonymous said...

Hi!

Are you interested in Web 2.0? Do you know what Twitter is? If you want to find out what people think of this micro-blogging service then have a look at this url:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/05/its-time-to-start-thinking-of-twitter-as-a-search-engine/
(the first time I had visited this blog the url was just http://techcruch.com, yet I have just realized that something has changed...).
I decided to go through this blog because I do not have much information about social networks, so I looked at it carefully, read most of the posts and I found out that Twitter is a service that helps friends and co-workers to communicate and to share opinions about brands and products.

I found this blog interesting and I suggest you to have a look at it because it may be worth learning something new about this new “phenomenon” on the web. I believe that this is one of the most visited blogs in the blogosphere because, unlike many other blogs, there are plenty of comments posted (more than 220) and people have been keeping writing their own ideas and discussing at great lenght for days. Moreover, new material is added frequently at the top of the page. Beside all this, I also enjoyed exploring the links highlighted in green. Hypertext links are one of the most fundamental structures of the web which enable people to make an “electronic jump” from one web page to another in order to deepen the understanding of a concept or learn more about a particular subject. A negative aspect of this blog is that, unlike the blogs visited by Anna and Michela, it has neither bright colours nor images.

Investigating the linguistic properties of the electronic revolution is quite a difficult task since there is an overlap between written and spoken language. The blogs I looked at were written in a plain style, using contracted forms, abbreviations (such as lol, afaik, asap, cul8r etc...) and emoticons. The latter are very important: since netspeak lacks facial expressions and gesture, smileys can forestall a gross misperception of a speaker’s intent. Generally speaking, I can say that blogs are written in an informal style and the writers do not care about accuracy (for example, most of the people write the first personal pronoun without the capital letter).

I hope you will enjoy reading “It’s time to start thinking of Twitter as a search engine” and I look forward to reading your comments.
See you next week,
have a nice weekend,

Francesca M.

Anonymous said...

Hello everybody!
I found interested the blog on lifestyles, I explored the websites on travel and finally discover the URL: http://greenenvelope.org/
I chose it because I study foreign languages, I love travelling and the title “It’s Where the Heart Is...my home away from home…” and the relaxing image at the top of the page suddenly caught my attention.
This blog is clearly addressed to travellers and lovers of nature and photography and it aims to give useful information, to prepare yourself psychologically and practically when you have to introduce yourself into another place.
It has a simple layout and it’s easy to be explored as it is subdivided into recent posts, comments, it also includes personal impressions, opinions, images and as the majority of the blog the possibility to log in and subscribe to add further thoughts or to receive the latest news.
What strikes me the most about this blog is the introductory message “Secrets of the relationships”, which adds positive suggestions and feelings and I personally enjoyed myself reading it.
As far as the language is concerned, I noticed that the register is informal with the use of abbreviated forms, slang words, so popular in everyday communication. Unlike the majority of blog that are based exclusively on simple language, this site also includes technical words, and goes into details when for example they talk about photos and cameras. This helps us to understand that the all the bloggers share the same interest and knowledge of the topic.
I found out that the blogsphere includes a wide range of sites that can be loose and appealing at the same time. At first it took me a little time to find my way out and to find an appropriate blog that would be of my interest.
I hope you will enjoy this lovely blog.
See you on Wednesday,
Anna B.

Anonymous said...

Hi guys!!!
I've been surfing the web for two or three hours I guess... I've first searched for some interesting blogs about photography, but I've soon realized that Michela has had the same idea in fact she has posted a comment on "the shuttersisters blog", which has been my first choice!!
So now I give you the URL of: www.darkroastedblend.com
In few words: It's a sort of visual online magazine...sooo weird!! It's the name that first captured my attention: "dark roasted blend, all kinds of weird and wonderful things, posted daily". Here you can read articles in many fascinating categories ( art, architecture, food, music, photography etc..) and you can travel around the world just taking a look to the photos posted by people. For example there's a very amusing section on streets signs and labels, so go and take a look. you will surely find something weird to see!!

Searching the net for blogs (It's the really first time for me, I must confess!!), I've seen how large the blogosphere is!! It's a mess guys and I'm just beginning to familiarize with how this world works!! Anyway the kind of language used is "informal", but I think it depends on the topics shared. The links? I think they give more detailed information...

Anonymous said...

I forgot to put my name at the end of the comment about the "darkeroastedblend" blog....I'm Serena!! bye

Anonymous said...

Hello to everyone! Here follows the interesting blog I have found: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment.
It took me long to find an interesting one, because I was looking for a topic that both shared my interest for English language styles analysis and daily entertainment events. Thus, “Vulture” is the New York Magazine’s arts and entertainment blog and it includes witty analysis of movies, TV, music, books etc… I got the inspiration to go and look for such type of blog after having seen “The watchmen” yesterday at the cinema, and personally I didn’t like the movie at all.
However, speaking about language, the blog has both a formal and informal language style, depending on the purpose of the message: quoting, comments, reviews. In the home page there are also some published reviews in which the language often presents abbreviation forms. It would be interesting to analyse if there is any rule in the web's written language of entertainment events reviews.
See you next week!
Arianna C.

Anonymous said...

Hello everyone!
This has been my very first experience with blogs and I must admit that I have found myself a little bit confused. The reason is that there is a huge amount of blogs but only some of them are interesting while some others aren’t at all.
After a while surfing the Net I chose a blog which attracted me because it is written by an only person talking about his life and the experiences he has had over the years. The topics he covers vary in range from triathlons, travel, music, life and social media.
It drew my attention first of all because it is structured in a simple way, secondly because the author’s posts are concise and interesting and thirdly because there are few but nice comments on the different topics.
I recommend others visiting this blog because there are some interesting stories, above all about travels and music in my opinion, which take little time to be read and which are curious and enjoyable.
With regard to this blog, I found that the language used is informal but never vulgar nor elegant. In some comments to the posts there are slang expressions but they are really few. Links are used to join a particular subject of the blog to other subjects of different web sites. In this particular case I found out that this blog mainly uses links to refer to videos published on You Tube.
Finally, talking about my initial observations of the styles used on the blogosphere, I have to say that in the great part of blogs I read the language used is informal. Sometimes I could find some elegant or formal expressions but didn’t run into particular vulgarisms. Blogs are written in a simple way for they want to attract as much readers as possible but also because they reflect the oral interaction between persons.
Chiara Deon
Link: http://www.spencesmith.com/

Anonymous said...

Hi everybody!

I was surfing the net wondering what kind of blog could be both useful for me and interesting for you and I finally found this blog: www.dumblittleman.com. Its complete name is Dumb Little Man-Tips for life and its function is to provide every week ‘a handful of tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or simply keep you sane’. What I like about this blog is that it gives us many interesting suggestions about life in general. It doesn’t focus only on one theme but on a wide range of topics, so that it can be useful for many people with many different interests. Moreover, in this way it avoids us to get bored of it. Another interesting point is the structure of the blog, indeed the different posts are divided in big areas, for instance the most popular posts or those about business, so that it is easier to find out a specific topic. Furthermore, everyone can contribute to this blog not only with comments but also by sending articles to the editor. I think that this type of interaction and participation is really wonderful, because it gives us the possibility to share our stories and our tips!
The links I found in the posts have the aim to develop some themes that the reader couldn’t know and in this way he could deepen them. The link are related both to other web-sites and to other posts of the blog. The language used is informal but never vulgar, and in the comments too, we can find a lot of informal and slang expressions and abbreviations. I noticed that all the blogs I looked at were characterized by an informal language, this is one of the main common features they have.

For all these reasons I suggest you to visit the Dumb Little Man! I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Elisabetta Z.

Anonymous said...

Hallo everybody!!! I advise you to have a look to the following Web Site: http://www.vinography.com/. Once I opened the “top 100 blogs” I happened by chance to this blog about wine. I directed my attention to it, firstly because of its red background that struck my attention and then for this sentence that arouse my curiosity : “Wine and food adventures in San Francisco and around the world.
This blog aims to give wine criticism and commentaries throughout its respectful, specialist and experienced wine lovers. Are you interested about a blog, which gives prominence to wine and sake reviews, restaurant reviews, editorials, book reviews, wine news, and wine event coverage? Here the best blog you can have on the Web. For example if you want to visit Tuscany and you don’t know anything about wine of this country, Vinography offer you all information about wine, restaurants and events related to wine. I was delighted in exploring it, because of the emphasis on the stories, the people, and the passion behind wine, all told from an unquestionably down-to-earth viewpoint. I found also very impressive the ethic this blog is based on. They “don’t accept advertising from wineries, winegrowers, or wine production companies, and as a rule they do not permit commercial plugs for products, services, or other web properties in comments by readers.”
If you are also interested on reading a blog written in a formal style, here a good example of writing, that aims to distinguish itself and also its readers and writers. Indeed, they are all expert in wine and they give cute information and news about wine throughout their life experience all over the world. If you want to gain knowledge and also a technical language here a well-written formal blog.

Elena Migliorini

Anonymous said...

Hello everybody!
How was difficult to search about something!? As I recollected my ideas, I decided to search "Learning-English". A great number of results appeared. The funny thing was to see how every single result had the name of James Smith. I do not know this person, so I decided to visit some of the blogs with higher Authority. Well, James Smith is a native English speaker, who recorded himself (video and audio) in order to publish a course to improve English as a foreign language, for people who cannot attend English lessons at school.
The best result I saw, was a blog about "knowledge". Every field of knowledge is treated there, one is English learning.
So, do you have any question about any topic? You will probably find your answer here: http://www.kelseypub.com/blog/

Language: informal language is used there. The aim is to be as closer as possible to the reader, in order to be understood by any user even if the topic is technical or specific.
Links: There you can find extended links at the end of each post, with the aim of getting the possibility to find out more information about the topic discussed in the post. But you can also find links in the form of underlined and clickable words (they are links to external web pages).

Have a nice blog experience!
Martina C.

Anonymous said...

I was looking in Technocrati for a blog about cooking, but I had never realized how huge is the blogsphere. So I chose a blog with a quite original and interesting heading: "Chocolate and Zucchini"- the culinary adventures of a Parisian girl.
http://chocolateandzucchini.com/

I was immediately impressed by the beautiful pictures of the recipes. I also appreciated that the blog had both a French and an English version, as I study French too. It's nice that the blogger has created a part dedicated to French idiomatic expressions related to food.
When she (the Parisian girl) posts a new recipe, she usually makes a long introduction with personal considerations, writing about her travels, readings, experiences relating to the recipe. I noticed that there are a lot of comments to the posts. There are forums, links and a food glossary.
The linguistic style of the posts is quite formal, even if the use of the first person makes you feel closer to the writer. It is like reading someone else's diary.
The comments are however much more informal and colloquial.
If you are interested in cooking and in all things food-related, than go hand have look to this cute blog! ;-)

Francesca Faggioni

Anonymous said...

Finally, I found this very interesting blog: http://new-art.blogspot.com/
I wasn’t familiar with blogs…I’d never written a post before our last lesson! I spent some time surfing on the Internet and I found many interesting things!
I chose the new-art blog because it immediately captured my attention. I gave a look to many blogs, but I found them pretty boring: some are only in black on white, others contain long writings with no reference to the topic they are about and others are blur.
I think that the blog I chose is graphically well-organized: images and writings are in the centre of the page; labels (topics) are generally on the left of the page; profiles and blog archive are on the right. Every post has its own date and a title in bold font.
I found the blog interesting because it is about different types of art. I found explanations and photos about painting, photograph, sculpture and music; and information about commercial, funny or urban art and others.
I’ve always been interested in art: I love taking photographs, painting and playing music; therefore I also like reading (in this case) different opinions about art.
The language used is pretty simple and rather informal. I did not find particular expressions. I’m not sure, but I think that this is a single-person blog (as all the posts are made by VVOI). It seems that the author writes as if he is writing to a single person, maybe a friend of his, and at the end of his ‘notes’ he asks questions and people answer by posting comments. Each person who comments has its own blog about art, and each one inserts personal videos, photos and paintings!
In this blog there are also many links of Art web sites. Some of them are about artists and other about public art movements. I think that the author of this blog is an artist and knows very well the topic he is writing about. The bloggers who make comments are less qualified, but equally involved in the topic. They use the links to advert to their own blog; while the author uses the links to give more information or post the blogs of his friends.
For those who are interested in arts I think that this blog could be useful because is very complete and pleasant!

Anonymous said...

Hi everybody!
First of all, let me say I'm sorry for doing my homework now, but I work every evening and the whole weekend and my only "day-off" from lessons is Monday.
So, what can I say about my first experience in the blogosphere? To be honest, it was confusing. The fact is, I wasn't able to focus on one topic, there are so many blogs that I was curious to read a little bit of everything! I must admit I've never been interested in reading a blog before, like the most of you,I guess, but discovering new things is always exciting, don't you agree?
Anyway, finally I found an interesting blog about travels. I chose this topic because travelling is one of the things that make me happy. Well, you can find the blog I'm talking about in http://everything-everywhere.com . It's a blog written by Gary Arndt, a guy who sold his house to earn money in order to travel around the world. His experience started in 2007. He has already been to more than 50 countries and he will not stop here.
He put in his blog many pictures of the places he visited and he wrote some explanations about them, both historical (taken from books and internet) and personal.
I think this blog is well-structured. In fact, on the left there's the picture of something he saw and the following explanations, while on the right there's a picture of Gary with some pieces of information about him and then a list of the countries he visited. You can click on them and the picture of the place plus the explanations will appear. Near to this list, there's another list, the one of the comments he received.
Talking about the language of this blog, Gary's personal comments are written in a minimal, clear and informal way. The explanations he writes are not long, and I personally think it's a good choice, because people don't get bored with them. The historical descriptions of the pictures are written in italics, to make people understand he didn't write them himself. The language used in these descriptions is more formal, with no abbreviations.
To sum up, I think this is a nice and interesting blog. As a matter of fact, by reading it you can find out something you didn't know about a place you visited or you can "discover" a place you've never been to and maybe start to think about going there. Gary writes if he liked the place he went, so that this blog can also be a sort of "guide" of travels.
If you have the chance, take a look at this blog and let me know what you think about it.
See you on Wednesday!

Valentina Tolfo

Anonymous said...

Hi! I'm so sorry but..er.. I must admit that I've had some problems with the deadlines... I was sure that the timeline for the task was tomorrow...ops...
Anyway, I started to search for a blog from Technorati and I must say that I was disoriented: the blogosphere is so huge that I had difficulties finding what I was looking for. Then I found this blog
http://hwhills.com/
It is a blog about the latest news about movies and television and it is written by Matt, probably a young American guy.
I like this blog because I think it is well organized, it is full of external links to other blogs or websites and it is possible to watch movie trailers directly from the posts. Moreover, every post has some tags so that you can easily find what you're looking for. It is also possible to subscribe to RSS or to receive updates by Email.
It is written in an informal way and the writer often gives his personal opinion, so that it looks like a sort of 'conversation' between the writer and the reader carried out through the comment function.

Elisa De Polo

Anonymous said...

Hello everybody.
Only after surfing the web for an hour I found out an interesting blog about movies. I like going to the cinema and as a matter of fact, I work as a volunteer in the local cinema in my town every other weekend.
The blog I have chosen is http://www.firstshowing.net/.
In this blog you can find the latest news about the upcoming movies, the release date of the movies in the USA, and the latest trailers. This last part is what I like most about the blog because it shows the trailer of the movies that we will watch in Italy only after several months.
I found very interesting also the part about the review of the movies where the writer also gives a rating (1 to 10).
Speaking about the language, the blog has an informal language style and the writer of the blog often gives his own opinion about the topic he has written about.

See you tomorrow!
Cristina Persegona

Anonymous said...

Hi guys!

I visited many different blogs dealing in arts like painting and photography and the one I would recommend you to visit is PostSecret, a community art project where people can take part actively and creatively by sending a sort of postcard. Its url is http://postsecret.blogspot.com/. I decided to talk about it because I think it is very original and curious.
People can communicate through their images and short phrases, just to share their sensations and little passages of their lives. Therefore the main page contains all the pictures of these contributions.
Many different languages, codes and structures are mingled together, from the parking ticket which contains an ironic and naive love message to a phantom one of a female teacher who is working in a muslim country and makes her consideration using a register which is not properly elegant. Moreover, you can find some links to various sections of this project, like the frequently asked questions and news.
Hope you'll find it interesting!

Francesca B.

Anonymous said...

Hi everybody!
It's really late, I know, but eventually I make it, as usual.... :)
Talking about the blogs.. I tried to understand that strange world called "the blogosphere", which I had never experienced before! It took me some (quite a lot, I must say) time to get used to the logic of blogs, posts and whatever.
Firstly I couldn't find out what I looked for, but then I focused on a quite interesting site about international current issues and problems.This is its URL: http://agonist.org/
Maybe it is a little bit too 'serious'; anyway, I noticed that posts and comments are all well-structured and well-supported. Participants are well-informed people with strong opinions and they are able to maintain their thoughts with quotations and examples. I also found comments somehow funny because they try to mock political characters and situations using a subtle irony.
The language used is informal, even though, in this particular blog, it is much more elegant and appropriate than in other blogs I popped into. I think this depends on the theme the blog is based on: for example, in a blog about music, the language will be much more familiar and vulgar than in a blog about economics.
That's all I can say for the moment,
see you tomorrow then (that is by 5 minutes I guess... :O)

cheers

Sara Marabiso