Chapters 44-46

Blogs, previously called weblogs, are way more popular than I would have thought.  It is said that approximately 18 million American adults keep a blog.  When I decided recently that I want to be involved in fashion public relations and started researching about the topic, I began to notice how many people have blogs about not only fashion, but millions of other topics.  Logan describes how blogs are broken down into smaller communities of interest, which is something I noticed right off the bat.  Logan also says that blogs are meant for alternative news sources, although I have never considered looking at a blog for important news stories.  If I were to go into the journalist business, reading this section in chapter 44 has taught me that blogs are an extremely important way to publish stories that are originally not allowed in that country.  Blogs of this sort are more important for military and government personell.  I really enjoyed the quick section of the “Blook” that Logan described in section 44.5.  He put his book on a Website so that friends and whoever wanted to give their opinions could do so, calling it a blook.

            Chapter 46 on Search Engines proved to be extremely interesting.  It is inevitable that most of the people in the world have used, or at least heard of Google.  It has the largest market share of online advertising revenue, standing at 63.5% in 2009.  Google is scored based on several things—frequency and the amount of document change, how often the documented is chosen when it appears in a search list, freshness of the site and its links, how much time visitors spend on the site, and many others.  It is interesting to note that there are many different types of Google internationally, including Googke UK, Google Canada, Google Adsense, Google Germany, Google Spain to name a few.  Like we mentioned in class, Google is not only a search engine.  Some of Google’s other features include Google Mail (gmail), Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Images, Google Blogger (obviously), Google Documents, and MANY more.  An important sentence that Logan mentioned was that “the more traffic it can generate, the more advertising dollars it can earn (advertising revenue brings up percentage).  I do not think I have gone a day without saying, “Just Google it” or “Googling” something if I do not know the answer to something or want to find something out.  It is interesting how Google does not want its name in the dictionary because they do not want it to have different meanings, but like Logan mentioned, it is inevitable that people will do what they want.  One of my favorite Google apps that I read in this chapter was Google Cooking, where you write down all the ingredients that you have in your home and within seconds, hundreds of recipes with those ingredients pop up.  The only part of this chapter that I did not agree was that Google is the seventh language, after speech, writing, math, science, computing, and the Internet.  Although Logan mentions that this is outrageous, I cannot picture this actually becoming something that is taught in schools.

            The last part of the assignment is on Chapter 46, which includes video conferencing and Web-based Collaboration tools.  Video conferencing has become extremely popular throughout the years and it is something I have seen with my own eyes.  “Video conferencing can contribute to collaboration among individuals by overcoming the barrier of distance.”  This chapter also talks about Wiki, a website in which the pages can be changed by anyone with an Internet access.  The only website that pops into mind when reading about this is Wikipedia, a website I go to when finding basic research about a topic, but never a source that is completely reliable.