Riding the surf trail
Bloggers leave a trail. A map of where they have been, and clues to where they are going. An online adventure, a pathway with multiple choices, that each person can view and play along with, creating their own path as they go.
The links within individual sites become heavily imbedded the more people jump on the wave, and the blog increases in its density, thickening and widening, spreading like the plague.
Anders Fagerjord aptly named this communications practice as a surftrail. (For interests sake and some amusement, Anders actually posted a very interesting post on his blog tue 24 Jan 2005, on ‘why are links blue?’
I find this fascinating, and am glad myself and my classmates are not the only ones pondering this question:)
Back to the topic, I agree with Evan Williams of Blogger fame, in regards to his three part blog concept: Frequency, Brevity and Personality. These three things make the surftrail come to life, and entice others to join in.
A blog contains a variety of regular posts that are relevant to the topic, that retain personality, and reflect a journal style of thought collecting, allowing other people to engage within the blog, and hold their interest. They encourage feedback and shared thoughts- for this is the real basis of 2.0, and the surftrail begins.
Links are blue because that is the default colour. If you want to change the colour of the link, put the following your “href” tag:
style=”color: #800080″
(where #800080 is the number of the colour you want to use)
for example:
<a style=”color: #800080″ href=”links.htm”>
The colour can be changed using any HTML colour code (see a list of codes at http://songweaver.com/html/colorchart.html). Hope that helps! Enjoy your blogging.
Hi Terri and Shari, so links are blue because that is the colour that was originally chosen as the default colour… hmmmm… they could have picked pink!
Okay this is my third attempt to upload this comment. So I will give it another crack.
I am interested in blogs from an academic perspective. I see blogs as a research tool for creative writers. As I am a poet studying creative writing, it is interesting to me that the print media has lost out to the web as far as poetry is concerned. No longer do aspiring poets need to wade throug the red-tape of publishers, publishing houses, agents and editors with all the inherent pitfalls of rejection and dejection before they are finally published (if ever!). They can start a blog!
Then they become instant published poets.
In my mind, blogs are the new “stage” for the modern balladeer or storyteller. He can “sing” or “recite” his poetry to a captured live audience that is far vaster than anyone could have previously envisaged. The world has truly become his stage. Anyone who is remotely interested in poetry can access a vast array of poetry on the web, and many poets have their own blogs or websites, where they publish frequently.
From an academic standpoint, anyone who is interested in studying who is writing poetry and what kind of poetr is being written in this globalised and fast-moving world can spend as little or as long as he wishes researching the poetry that exists in cyberspace. He can compare and contrast the style and content of as many or few poets as he desires. He can look at Feminist poetry, Post-modernist poetry, Haiku, traditionally metred, rhyming poetry, Lyrinc poetry, or can listen to performance poetry. The list is endless.
Tomorrow night I will post some links to blogs that I found interesting. Blog on!