group E: urbanimarty

photo by Pedro mg

On the basis of what I read about blogosphere on wikipedia, I would like to analyse and to suggest you three interesting blogs. I found them particularly interesting not only for their contents but also for their different style and structure. While exploring the web, we can come across different kind of blogs which have specific purposes. They can pursue just an expressive aim, or even an informative or didactic aim.

• Contents: While searching for an interesting blog I tried to put in the tags different words such as ‘movies’, ‘celebrities’, ‘language learning’, ‘mythology’, ‘news’ and so on. I read through some pages and I discover that according to the matter you are looking for, the style and the register can vary considerably.

• Register and style: In this blog about news on foreign policy the language is very formal and the style is a typical journalistic style. The blog tries to give a broad but also concise overview of the main events in the world. It is frequently updated and it addresses a kind of audience who wants to be informed about facts.
  An interesting blog I found about language learning is written I order to present some materials about language, culture, linguistic. In addition, the blogger give us some suggestion on how to choose the right language to learn.
  The last blog deals with legends, mythology and stories. Actually, the only interesting story is that of Love and Psyche. Neverthless, I find this blog effective because of the language and the large amount of links you can find there.

• Authority: I think an authoritative blog is made up of good sources! I had a look at the bottom of the pages and I found out that the blog on news is written by a authoritative source, you can find the address, the telephone and the fax number of the people who published the blog. On the contrary, the blogs about language learning and mythology are written by bloggers whose name are Tracy Lewis and Brian Pagano; we know that Brian Pagano lives in NewYork- US but we don’t know anything else about Tracy except the name.

• What I found really interesting: I suggest you to have a look to these blogs because they clearly highlight the importance of being aware of what you read! I hope you will visit them and I’m looking forward to reading your observations!
  

Martina Urbani

E-tivity Two

Hi everybody!

For my e-tivity two I started surfing on the net looking for blogs!

It wasn't so easy at the beginnig, and I also decided not to look for blogs about travels, because I've seen that travels have been the most looked for topic in other posts!

Moreover, I did wanted to change a bit, because you already know that I love travelling, but I also want to show you something else about me!

So...here's a couple of blogs I like!

The fist blog I'd like you to have a look at is about Jane Austen, my favourite writer!

I love Jane's novels...they were written so many years ago...and they look like if they've been written yesterday!

Everything is so real...everything is so true!

I love Jane Austen also because she speaks about love...and love is a neverending topic, which is always so important in our lives...so that, for me, Jane Austen's novels are neverending as love is. As long as we'll love...we'll read Jane and love her!

I choose this blog among many others about Jane Austen because it looks very familiar...when I got into it I thought it was very friendly and I immediatly imagined myself sitting in the sofa reading one of Jane Austen's novel.

The language and style used in this blog is very friendly and I'd say also lovely.

The second blog I'd like to suggest you is a blog of a young girl who loves Sophie Kinsella as I do...and she loves Jane Austen too!

Sophie Kinsella is "my favourite contemporary writer"!

I'm joking, but I love her books, I read the all serie of "Shopaholic" and I'm now reading "Can you keep a secret?".

There is a link between Jane Austen and Sophie Kinsella's novels, because Jane Austen can be considered as the "mother" of this literaure dedicated to women. There is no doubt that Jane Austen's novels are at the highest level ever achieved in this genre, but I thnk that as well as we all look for our Mr. Darcy, there's also a bit of Becky in all of us!

The language and style of this blog are very friendly, but the blogger loves reading and so in her blog you can find even quotations from great books like "Persuasion".

That's why I decided to link this two blogs...

I love both Jane and Sophie...obviously for different reasons and at different levels, but they both wrote great novels, which are part of my life!

I hope you enjoyed having a look at this blogs!

Camilla

Group E: Elena e-tivity 2

Hi! How are you, guys? Perhaps, lost in technorati like me?! But, in the end, after hours and hours spent searching for blogs, I decided to suggest you these three wonderful blogs! I hope you enjoy reading them!

The Thinking Blog is a very, very curious and weird blog, really worthy of a look. It definitely stands out: its main feature is that it is written by many people, and anyone can add a post to start a new discussion; moreover, it can be seen as a “stream of consciousness” , a “cornucopia of eclectic topics from exciting ideas to cultural curiosities”. Its aim is , as the title suggests, to make people think, reflect not only about hilarious and funny episodes occurring in our world but also about sad and tragic events. To see an example of what this blog is, click here. Isn’t it astonishing? What I also appreciate is the motto ‘Curiosity is the key to all wisdom’ put at the top of the page near a symbolic black cat’s head with white eyes; this blog, in my view, should be read precisely with this thought in mind in order to enjoy it…
Style and structure: I have to admit that this blog is mainly made up of videos taken from youtube or of photos, but whereas the language used in the posts is quite neutral, the comments are often more informal; they are written as if they were spoken (abbreviated forms, no use of punctuation, nor of capital letters after full stops or for the first person ‘I’, short sentences and a lot of exclamations). The structure of this blog is quite good: on the left side you find a black column with the archives, links to the most recent thoughts and to tags that allow you to reach quickly all the posts with a given tag.

London-underground is such an original blog! It is written by a woman who daily takes the London underground and, in her blog, she posts all the strangest things that happen on the Tube: funny sketches or pictures about commuters and their fashion, etiquette on the Tube, violence and crime, derailments, strikes and other cases of inefficiency regarding this means of transport…Perhaps, I chose this blog because I have never taken the subway in my life and I wanted to know more about it and also because, for a tourist, it is part of London history! What I particularly enjoyed is that I have realized that Tube commuters have, more or less, the same problems that we experience almost everyday in Italy with Trenitalia! Consoling, isn’t it?! Also ‘the well-mannered Brits’ use public transports as a dressing room or as a private bathroom to make up or cut their nails; they also listen to music loudly or put their feet on seats to have a snooze…
Style and structure: This blog is written in an informal way (contracted forms; sometimes the subjects are not repeated) and is structured clearly with a section on the right where you can find links to other web sites or blogs talking about the London underground.


4 the love of animals is a blog that anyone who loves animals must visit! According to the author of this blog its purpose is to promote animal rescue, conservation, and animal welfare; as a matter of fact, there you can find a number of news regarding organizations who rescue homeless animals, stories of pets – above all dogs – who have been saved and, moreover, you can watch amazing videos or look at funny pictures about our sweet friends!
Style and structure: This blog is very simple and written in a clear, quite formal way, with short posts and eye-catching images and colours. Above all, I appreciate the name “4 the love of animals’ and the fact that green, the colour symbolizing nature, is widely used, especially in the right part where there are some links, for example, to pictures of animals taken from Flickr, to tags used in the posts, or to other web sites and blogs dealing with animal protection.

Comment: The majority of blogs, in my opinion, are written in a register that goes from neutral to informal; maybe, blogs that regard the private life of a person are written in a more colloquial, informal ways, whereas blogs that deal with topics that interest the public opinion (current affairs, politics, religion, education, climate change,…) are written in a more formal language. As regards the use of links, I have noticed that bloggers usually make a wide use of links and create hyperlinks, rather than putting the full URL.

Let me know what you think about my blogs!

Bye,

Elena V.