So the 8th chapter of Whittaker's Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide is entitled "Writing, ethics, and regulation."  Even though Whittaker states that "the fact remains that the vast majority of content online consists of text" (196), he spends very little time actually discussing the writing aspects of it.  He does, however, briefly mention style, audience, crafting a story, and storytelling techniques.  Maybe I'm being over critical, but when I read "demonstrating programming skills and multimedia proficiency may count for very little if public perception of your pages is based on an inability to spell" (196), it makes me question why he didn't instead say something about how how public perception of your pages is based on incorrect information, or too confusing to understanding.

We preach that content and organization, or higher order concerns, are the things that are really important, yet we worriy that misspelled words will turn our audience against us.  Is that perception true?  If my website offers the solution to world peace, will my audience care if I've misspelled a couple of words or placed a comma where it shouldn't be?  Are our readers that shallow?  Maybe they are, but I would rather think not.

Ok, here is something I have never heard of before.  Whittaker says that "the Sapmhaus Project estimates that up to 80 per cent of spam generated in the US and Europe is generated by around 200 professional spam gangs, mostly based in the Russian Federation . . . (204).  Really, the Russians?  Has anyone else ever heard of such a thing?

Ok, I'm tired, sleepy, and just plain worn out, so I'm done for tonight.

I didn't think I was going to make the deadline tonight, but after 40 pages of Web 2.0 tools, I am finally here to post.

It is probably obvious that I read Whittaker's Producing for Web 2.0: A Student's Guide tonight and completed the chapter entitled "Web 2.0 Tools."  This chapter read quickly, and I enjoyed all of the information it has to offer.  This chapter discusses tools such as RSS and syndication, blogging, mashups, and wikis.  Lots of information about how to incorporate them into your own site and lots of links to sites to download free apps and helpful tools.

So, what I have not had the time yet to experiment with are what Whittaker calls "Walkthrough"s.  These are breakout sections in the chapters that walk you through step-by-step how to do something like "create a mashup in Popfly" or Adding a mashup to Facebook" or even "Adding a Google map to your site."  I really believe that these breakout sections are what many might call the meat and potatoes of this text.  These are the things that will help anyone reading the book understand exactly how to perform some of the technical things Whittaker talks about.  I have skimmed many of these Walkthroughs, and I believe they will be not only educational, but fun to play with. 

This is a text I am sure I will be referring to often as I implement some of these things into my own website and even as I begin to teach Web Authoring to college students.  It might even be a text I consider requiring for the students.

It has been a couple of days since my last blog entry, but I knew there would be times like this when I would miss two or three days in a row.  I just cannot let them happen to often.

So I have continued with Whittaker's Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide with the "Using Media" chapter.  Well, there is really not much to say about this chapter.  It's 31 pages of "blah".  The chapter discusses images, audio, video, and flash.  While it does it good job of this, I guess I knew most of this stuff from simple trial and error.  There are a couple of tips and tricks that I was not aware of, but for the most part, it is all pretty general information, but good for someone just starting out and serious about web authoring. 

Something else that Whittaker does throughout the book thus far which I found extremely helpful is that he supplies information on web pages or other software packages that are much cheaper or even free.  He always starts with talking about something like photoshop for image editing, but he will then give alternatives.

On to chapter 6 for tomorrow.  Yes, I'll be back tomorrow.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!!!! Not that I did anything fun, but hey, it was still a good day.  This post will be short, because frankly, tonight's chapter was a snoozer.  Chapter 4 of Whittaker's Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide entitled "Creating Dynamic Sites" left a little to be desired.  It covered Client-side scripting with JavaScript, Server-side scripting with PHP, and MySQL.  I definitely agree that all of these things are necessary to create dynamic and exciting web pages, but slogging through all of the examples of code was a bit daunting.  And the thing is, I won't remember any of this come tomorrow morning.  Well, I might remember some words and phrases, but I will definitely have to come back to this chapter numerous times to utilize and familiarize myself with this stuff.

But again, I like Whittaker's approach.  He states that even though this chapter "only covers a basic introduction to client- and server-side scripting, it is important to have at least this essential familiarity with them as they drive so many Web 2.0 technologies" (92).  Again, I think Whittaker hits the nail on the head with his pedagogical approach that while most will never need to do raw coding, it is still imperative that one at least understands what one is looking at when one sees this code.

It's late, I'm tired, and I still have work to do.  On that note, good night.

So for tonight's post on Jason Whittakers Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide, I need to tell you a story.  I was one of the last group of people who went through the Navy's electronics training "old school".  What I mean by that, is that we learned it all.  We learned in months what was equivalent to a 4 year college degree in electronics.  It was intense, but I learned the theory behind how it all worked.  I learned what resistors did, capacitors, transistors, and I learned the formulas for figuring out what size of resistor or other components were needed to make things work.  I learned binary theories, what "and" "nand", "or", and "nor" gates did.  That if you put two "1"s in to a certain kind of gate, you got a "1" out.  I learned how to troubleshoot circuits using specialized equipment down to the component level.  I learned the theories behind crypto gear, I learned how to be an electronics technician "old school".  Soon after I went through, they changed the way they approached electronics training, and they made it about board swapping.  It was supposedly a quicker, more efficient way to troubleshoot in the field.  But what did they learn?  They didn't learn any MacGyver style tricks.  If they troubleshot down to the board and then found they didn't have that board on hand, they couldn't take it any further because they did not have the skills in their toolkit necessary to do so.

So what does any of this have to do with Whittaker's text?  Whitthaker is taking both approaches in his presentation or explanation of developing for the web.  Tonight's chapter, chapter 4, on "Designing for the Web" really drove this point home for me.  He discussed principles, text, links, images, color, tables, forms, and layout, and he basically discusses how these things should be handled using CSS, or cascading style sheets.  But before he explains how to do this, he describes how this would be done via HTML coding, or "old school style".  At one point, Whittaker argues that he "would not recommend trying to construct by hand in raw code, although it is important to understand the HTML in order to troubleshoot and be clear what you are trying to achieve" (70).  This is exactly the type of MacGyver tricks that everyone needs up their sleeves to be able to fix problems with confidence and skill.  Sure, it is easier to swap out a board then it is to find the tiny resistor or transistor that needs to be replaced, but if you do not have the board, you are at a loss.  Knowing the logic and reason behind electronics or HTML coding help you to understand the easier way of doing things, while allowing you to do things "old school" if required.

I never seem to make very smart decisions when it comes to doing things.  I get excited about what it is I want to do and I run with it, and that is exactly what I have done here.  While I perhaps should be grading papers (and believe me, I will be getting to that shortly), I am instead reading chapter one of the first text I decided to run with...Producing for the Web 2.0: A Student Guide.  And I gotta tell you, 14 pages into the chapter and I am DEFINITELY feeling like a student!!

Even though I have 14 more pages to go before I complete this post, I decided to take a moment to jot down, as it were, a couple of things I've noticed so far.  First, I believe this is an excellent text for students.  One reason is the smoothness with which Whittaker repeats things that he knows a student needs to really comprehend before moving on.  After about the second time of seeing statements about how computers can't decipher XML without instructions, I started taking note of every time he would mention this in one way or another.  I have a feeling I've not seen the last of this yet.  Second, Whittaker gives plenty of useful examples to get the point across.  For me, the more I see something, the more it begins to make sense. 

Off to continue with the last 14 pages, so I'll just virtually pause this entry until I am done.

Alright, I'm back with 14 more pages read and a slight headache.  The chapter started out just as I suspected: it is, after all, entitled "Pre-Production".  So it started out discussing the planning of a website, talking to the client, storyboarding it so to speak, but that only lasted for about 7 of the 26 pages.  Then began the in-depth conversation about web technologies, online media toolkits, and setting up a server.  That is a LOT of information to digest in one night.  But again, I have to point out that the information was thorough without being TOO daunting.

Will I retain everything that I read about Ajax, PHP, Apache, Flash, Java, MySQL.... you get the picture.... No, I won't, but when someone mentions it, I'll know I've read it, and I'll have a clue as to what the hell they are talking about.  Something that the Whittaker keeps pointing out is that a lot of this stuff you will never really get into deeply, but you need to at least know what it is and have a clue as to how it works.

With all of that said, tomorrow night's reading may possibly be only a half a chapter, as it is longer than tonight's, and I have papers to grade and clothes to wash.

So stay tuned tomorrow for the next installment of Producing for the Web 2.0: A Student Guide entitled "Designing for the Web," or Dianna comes to terms with the web not being magic like she always thought.

This post will begin a series of posts on Jason Whittaker's book entitled Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide.  After reading chapter 1, or the introduction, this morning, I have decided that I would like to finish this book.  It is only 9 chapters, so if I am lucky, the last post will be on the 10th give a couple of days or so.

The introduction does a great job of discussing the history of the web without going into too many boring details or putting one to sleep.  I will admit, however, that I would read a bit, and then something in the text would spark a relevant or completely random thought in my head, which resulted in me have a seriously ADD kind of morning, bouncing back and forth between reading, tweeting, facebooking, googling, playlisting, etc.

The intro also attempts to define some of the differences between what we have come to know as Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.  When I use the word "attempts", it does not mean that he tried but didn't quite get it right.  It means that I appreciate anyone who even enters into that discussion.  One of the biggest issues with the term Web 2.0 (as coined by Dale Dougherty and Craig Cline, or DD and CC as I like to call them), is that no one really knows how to define it in a solid, concrete, set in stone kind of way--you get the picture with all of the hard, rock images going on there.  So for Whittaker to not only define, but then compare Web 2.0 to Web 1.0 is inspiring.  What's more, I walked away actually feeling like I had a better understanding of it myself.

Whittaker takes the time to discuss what many feel would make the perfect web developer recruit.  What it boils down to is that the person who fits all on the wish list would be that superhuman kinda person.  Not many of those around, and Whittaker wants to make sure we know this.  What is important, though, is that web developers be aware of what these items are and maybe even be proficient in two or three of them.  Seems like sound advice to me.

Given my interest in web design and development, and the fact that I will be teaching the Intro to Web Authoring professional writing course this fall, I think this is a good book for me to continue on with.

Here is where I need to leave you with a cliff hanger that ensures you will come back tomorrow for the 2nd installment of Producing for Web 2.0: A Student Guide.  *Scratches head, thinks, ponders* 

Join us tomorrow when Dianna learns the revealing truth of the relationship that exists between Pre-Production Planning and the success of any website.

Dun Dun Dun Dunnnnnnnnn