The Culture of Communication

The class I used this blog for is though, so you won't be finding anymore entries on here... at least for now.

Keep on checking my regular blog to keep up with me.

Cheers!

posted by Chrysanthemum @ 5:59 PM 1 comments

Bridezilla Community

Next June I will be getting married. It has been a challenge to balance work and wedding planning. Luckily, there are a number of online community resources that have greatly helped me along on this journey.

The Knot has been a great resource for me. It has discussion boards where people exchange advice and support, checklists to keep everything on track, inside scoop of online sales, and even a wedding website builder. It has offered me a lot valuable information and tools to help me along.

eBay has been a great resource for me to get wedding supplies cheap. I bought my veil and tiara through the service. I got each at about 1/10 of the retail price, and my veil is even being custom made to my specifications. It's amazing!

flickr had been very helpful in helping me communicate with my wedding party. One of the girls lives remotely, so flickr has been a great tool to help me share ideas and collect their comments. I actually set up a pool that allows all of us upload pictures and discuss ideas. It's nice to have everything centralized.

I just discovered IndieBride. This site contains great articles and discussions with others in the same situation. It's entertaining as well as enlighening.

My personal blog has even served to be an unexpected tool. Another bride did a search on the location of my wedding and happened upon my site. She commented on my blog with a questions and we have been emailing back and forth sharing stories and advice ever since. It's been a good experience that would not happen if I did not have my blog.

Let us not forget our online wedding registries, which allow our guests to be able to shop online for gifts. You can just have the gifts direct shipped to us. ;)

posted by Chrysanthemum @ 9:51 AM 1 comments

Using Social Networks to Build Professional Networks?

That's the talk on the street!

posted by Chrysanthemum @ 12:36 PM 0 comments

Blogging for Education

I stumbled upon this article which talks about many high school and middle school teachers who are incorporating blogs into their curriculum.

It's nice to see that many teachers are keeping up with the times and are not relying on their students to teach them about new developments in technology.

posted by Chrysanthemum @ 10:28 AM 0 comments

Community Within a Community

Earlier this semester, I added my blog to the Connecticut Weblogs site. It is an interesting community within a community. It pulls the RSS feeds off of subscribers' sites and updates hourly.

It's interesting because the site itself is a community of bloggers putting themselves out there for all to see. From there, a user can drill down into the individual communities of other bloggers. It was a very clever idea, and has led to a marked increase traffic to my site.

posted by Chrysanthemum @ 7:41 AM 0 comments

A Trip Down Gaming Memory Lane

In this week's class, we have been talking about gaming and different games we used to play. I was excited to find that the companion CD for our text had emulators for Apple II's Kareteka and Adventure. I had found them and played for hours before the course even started.

Our discussion board has been full of games that I haven't thought about in ages. Someone posted a great link of the history of Pong and other video games. That site was a lot of fun to check out.

On there, I found links to games that I forgot long ago. My brothers had a lot of these games, and we used to play them all the time when I was a kid. Some of the ones that jump out the most? Coleco Combat, which predated the very advanced Atari version.


Mattel Electronics Handheld Sports Games are fabulous. I wasted so much time on these:



I tracked down the football game on ebay a few years ago. My brother still owns the baseball and the basketball, I think. I even found a guy with a Flickr set of handheld games.

I didn't expect our discussion to bring me back to this place, but I'm kind of glad it did. I love me some low tech sometimes!

posted by Chrysanthemum @ 12:40 PM 3 comments

I May Just Move Back....

It seems that Google is looking to get a little deeper into the ISP business. This article talks about Google's part in the RFP process to provide free, yes free WiFi access in the city of San Francisco.

Wow!!

Just think of the implications... This free access provides with a virtually unlimited client base of users coming in and out of the city. Google bases it's revenues on advertising. Hello? Free access with ads anyone?

At this point, Google is only looking at making this happen in San Francisco. But other large cities such as New York and Chicago are also looking into such a service. World domination may not be that far off!

posted by Chrysanthemum @ 1:36 PM 0 comments

Can I Drive Traffic?

I'm in the midst of an experiment with my two blogs. I am registering with as many blog registration engines that I can. Through the stats that I run on my site, I have noticed a marked increase in traffic since I registered with Connecticut Weblogs. I have also claimed my two site urls on Technorati, as well as registered on Globe of Blogs.

Suggestions that anyone may have to increase my online exposure would be greatly appreciated. I'm curious to see what, if anything, changes with this.

Maybe I should start out all grassroots-like or something... TELL YOUR FRIENDS!!

posted by Chrysanthemum @ 10:45 AM 1 comments