Visit one of the recommended blogs in Alex Reid’s “Why Blog?” pg.305 – 307, and discuss what aspects of the blog you want to adopt or avoid when designing your personal blog.
Visit one of the recommended blogs in Alex Reid’s “Why Blog?” pg.305 – 307, and discuss what aspects of the blog you want to adopt or avoid when designing your personal blog.
eonjoopark
UB English 101: Spring 2015 
The blog I visited was Gizmodo, a blog focused on technology and some other interesting geeky matters. This blog had it’s major articles that were viewed the most on the left side of the webpage, slightly bigger than the others, attracting more attention. And on the right, it had it’s daily articles starting from top to bottom. Articles on both sides contained brief summary of what it’s about and a photo. I found summaries and photos nice to have on a blog because you will be able to read and figure out what the article is about without spending time reading the whole article one after another. And some of the photos were actually short clips of gif file which is like a short video, and it was eye-catching. Overall, I really like the layout they use and want to use it or have it slightly modified for my blog. Most of the contents on the blog were casually addressed and most of them were very witty, which made them very pleasant to read.
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Out of the many blogs listed, I visited the blog “Mashable” which is focused on social media and technology news. The first thing I noticed while scrolling through this blog was how well it was organized. I liked the way that the articles were arranged, starting from “What’s New” then “What’s Popular” followed by “What’s Hot” categories. I think it’s nice to see what articles are currently trending and what’s something that is new when one’s reading a blog.The blog layout also attracted me and I think it would be nice if I could implement this style and organize/categorize different blog posts this way. Additionally, the picture’s included were also very pleasing to the eyes and might be an appealing feature to the readers thus I will keep that in my mind while designing my own blog.
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Engadget features a lot of content that aren’t plain text. It uses big images at the top of the home page to indicate popular feature stories. At the very top is a bar which organizes content by categories, such as “Reviews”, “Features”, and “Videos”. There is also a search box. These organizational elements make the blog more readable. Someone can see new trending stories, and they can search for articles that match their current interest. Before clicking to read full articles, people can check how many people have commented thus far. For people with limited time to read articles, they can use the number of comments to estimate how interesting each article is. I would adopt theses features for a blog with many posts. But for a simple blog with few posts, which has a small reader base and is updated infrequently, I may prefer a more minimalist design. Little clutter makes the page relaxing to look at. And lack of bold visuals gives the reader a calm sense that they aren’t being manipulated by attention-seeking elements.
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I visited the Onion which focused mainly on delivering currents news in a fun comedic way. This blog allowed for multiple issues to be talked about: politics, sports, celebrities etc. I like this aspect of the blog because it allows a broader focus of you information and you don’t just have to stick to one topic. Also, you can reach a larger audience because there are topics on you blog for almost everyone. I would adopt this feature of having multiple topics on my blog with one main theme. The disadvantage to this is trying to stay current on multiple things and trying to make sure the information is correct. Another feature of this blog that is intriguing is the abundance of images with interesting titles. This would be something I would like to incorporate into my blog.
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I visited a couple blogs that Alex Reid recommended, and the one that captured me the most was “TMZ.com”. TMZ is a celebrity news website, which contains gossips or funny stories of those famous people. I like how their titles are nice and big, so it’s easy to understand the post. Also, each post is short and contains a picture or a video, which is a good way to catch audience’s attention and it entertains people. On the top of the website, there are varieties of gossip topics, which is convenient for the audience to search the category that they want. The only thing that I don’t like about this blog is the advertisement on the sides, it makes the blog look messy and it’s unnecessary. Overall, I think it is really important to make your design eye-catching, that way it’s easy to attract audience.
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I visited a number of blogs and for me, Gizmodo was the best at catching my attention. The style of Gizmodo is very simple and not overly informative. Other blogs seemed to put as much information as possible on one page and I could not decide where to start reading from. However, Gizmodo was very relaxing for my eyes – comfortable to look at which I believe is the most important ingredient for an easy-read article. The blog vertically lays out its postings one at a time. So that the readers would have to scroll down to read the other postings and since there is one posting per line, it helps in focusing on one item. I believe bloggers post in order to spread or deliver their messages to others. But if the attention is dispersed, the reader could move to another posting before the message is delivered – making the posting unsuccessful in delivering the message. I believe this is an important aspect and adopting such style will definitely help in delivering the messages on my blog.
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Among the listed blog, I chose boing Boing which talk about A blog of “cultural curiosities and interesting technologies.” which different blog posted in different opinion and view about culture in the universe and also technology. People share their own perspectives of nature in the term of culture and technology. The website of the blog i chose contains pictures and explanation of what the context will talk about. It just giving the reader or the audience a brief summary and ideas of what is in the text. The blog is very important because it helps us to improve our writing and also it is a way to express ourselves of what we think and developing our ideas. It will be a good idea to include picture in my blog because it will attract the reader. Therefore, the blog of the Boing Boing is very easy way to use it because he presented his blog in order to understand the topic.
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Out of all the blogs shown, I visited quite a few of them. I became interested in ReadWriteWeb which talks about technology news. I Immediately noticed that the page was very organized. Each topic was labeled with a title with a picture. Once you click on the picture, it would bring you to more information on the topic you’ve chosen. In addition to the title and picture, each topic had a small category box on the picture to tell viewers what the topic was about. For example, some pictures had the label “Mobile” or “web” or “work” on them. This is really helpful for people to identify what topic they would want to read about. I would definitely want to include this type of style on my vlog to keep it more organized. Some of the other blogs i visited weren’t very attractive in terms of style so I didn’t bother looking at it and moved on until I visited Readwriteweb. I would want to avoid having my blog not be attractive to keep people interested in it.
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I visited a couple blogs from the list and i liked “TMZ.com” more than other blogs. TMZ is a blog that talks about celeberity. It has a many headlines on front page so that i could find what i interested in and it categorized posts by number of viewers so i could understand what is hot issues today. Personally, When i read book or anything that written on paper, if there’s no any pictures or table I easily lose interest and stop reading or don’t remember what i just read. However in “TMZ.com”, I remember better what i read due to pictures in article.
The most thing i liked is non complete sentence under the each celeberity’s picture. noncomplete sentence makes me want to know what will be next and make me click the article.
I believe that most important thing is makes readers wants to read your writing, it will be a good way to makes readers wants to read my blog.
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The site i reviewed was Kotaku, a blog that is writes about current and upcoming topics on gaming.I like the simplicity of the weblog that uses just a white background and simple black fonts. It’s layout is also very simple, which includes a toolbar at the top and a sidebar which display popular topic that is being viewed or discussed. The blog is chronologically arrange, with the newest post appearing on the top front page and older post going down. The way they catches the readers interests is by using a striking headlines, short but compelling and informative preview and an ‘enticing’ picture of games, cosplays and more games. Not to mention the blogs allow readers and fans to reply on specific pictures, videos and paragraph of the article. The sites allows discussion on the topic in which most of the time being replied by the writer themselves. The sites also post a lot of links to the articles, picture, videos and sites of the topics or games their writing. I think these attributes make Kotaku a really pleasant, interactive and addicting blog to visit.
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I visited The Onion out of the blogs listed by Alex Reid. I had heard of it previously but never visited the blog so I thought I’d give it a try. Immediately I enjoyed this blog for its humor. It caught my attention right away with its headlines and as I clicked on the titles and read the stories I found it genuinely funny. I want to capture my readers’ attention in a similar way, maybe not with humor but not in conventional informative ways more commonly seen. I would take the fun aspect from this blog and use it in mine. However instead of purely humorous material I’d like to showcase other things that attract readers to my page.
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The blog that I visited engadget is a blog about the technological advancements and trends that are currently out in the world of new and upcoming technology. This blog had a very reader frieldy website. The top articles of the day are displayed on the home screen in big boxes with interesting titles that reall grab the readers attention. I read a article on a new trend of wearable technology and was extremely interesting. The information in the blog seemed very accurate and informational so I found this as a good resource for keeping up to date on new technological advancements.
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I visited Gizmodo blog, As I read through this, I found lots of things that are common for me and this blog, such as the technology stuff, science, and even some fun logic math problems are posted in this blog. Also this blog is showing does not confuse me to find topic that this blog’s poster wanted people to read it more. It is not hard to find the post that he wanted to empathize, because he put the post that he liked or wanted to share better are bigger section, and minor things that he posted are smaller than others. It is definitely something i would do. However some posts are good titled to be attract the reader’s attention. For instance, He posted ‘How to Leave All Your Accounts to Someone Else When You Die;’, This post kind of drives me want to read this post, but the another posts are not something I want to read so much. I would only read this posts because I am interested in them. So if I make a blog I would love to put the title more effectively to attract the reader’s attention.
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I visited Gizmodo, which is a blog centered around a latest technology news. Gizmodo has many features that I like to benchmark. Many blogs today are focused on having a fancy web design and photos instead of telling you a story. However, it isn’t like that; its front page provides its coverage on things very concisely. Also, I like the fact that this site provides sources for every article it has with hyperlinks, which let you see the source by just clicking them; it helps me if I need to look into the sources. Its comment feature is my favorite too. You can mention a writer in a comment so that the writer can be notified about the comment.
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the blog I visited was “the onion”. I thoroughly enjoyed the website for a variety of reasons many of which I would like to emulate in my blog. what I liked about this blog was the range of news they reported on. it provided a place for anyone looking for a fun read. If I am able to semi reflect this in my blog I think that it would be nice because it would allow me to please a broader audience. although what I enjoyed the most about this blog that I would like to emulate is there constant satirical manner in which they write. this manner of writing style allows for you to laugh while you read but also still gets across the point of the writing. this is helpful for many who aren’t exactly avid readers. it allows them to get a relaxed read in but at the same time get there news and viewpoints on different things. I really enjoyed this blog and may be visiting it even after I finish this course.
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The blog I visited was Gizmodo. I really liked this blog and how simple it is to use. I like that it isnt flashy with all kids of things and links all over the page, it isnt clustered with pictures all of the screen. I would like to adopt this for my blog. I like the simplicity of the page. I also like how you can scroll down and just find a topic that interested you and you can click on it and it will take you to the article. The page is not very colorful which I dont mind but I know some people would like a background of some sort not just a white page. I really enjoy the simplicity of the page and I will adopt that to my blog. Simple yet very functional.
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The Blog that caught my attention the most was Gizmodo. I like this blog because the style that the blogger used was very simple with all the information and the sources given to you at the end of each article. Most of the information posted on the blog is related to the latest technology currently in the states, which is what catches most individual’s attention when looking through blogs.
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The blog I chose was Engadget, since I am a regular reader of it already. It is a site dedicated to technology reviews and posts. The layout is visually appealing, offering an abundance of information with just a glance, without being overwhelming. They have a RSS Feed of the most popular and new posts, which is good when you simply want to see what is new and interesting. The also have drop down menus organizing the content into categories, which is helpful when you only want to see content of a certain variety. What I would like to incorporate the clean, simple but in depth interface. The ability of having both variety and niche interests all in one page is a powerful tool for gaining and keeping the interest of readers.
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I visited the blog, Gizmodo. While using i had really come to enjoy it. What i liked about Gizmodo was that it took a very simple approach to giving users information. There was just a steady stream of “stories” mostly relating to hot topics in technology or science, but also covering other topics. These posts came with accompanying photos and summaries of whatever they have to say. There This is an approach that i would want to adopt for my personal blog. I feel that it is the most attractive way to present information to users. One thing that I may want to do differently is perhaps have some kind of background color or small design on the blog.
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I visited The Daily Dish By Andrew Sullivan. I like how his blog is very simplistic. It was not over whelming to look at since he had not uploaded too many things. Unlike some of the other blogs I visited like the pop culture one, I also liked how The Daily Dish didn’t seem disorganized or have advertisements everywhere. It also had a brief info for new comers. Sullivan’s blog further convinces me to keep my blog simple. One thing I might consider for my blog is have more interesting titles, cause I like how in his posts, each title drew the attention of the reader.
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I chose to visit Gizmodo, which originally was for technology posts, but is more generalized now. It is a more simple blog and easy to maneuver. It has a plain white background with just a drop box on the corner and a search box. I would like to make my blog similar to the style of this because I prefer simplicity. It doesn’t have any advertisements and lists all the posts on the main page. Each post would have a picture and a brief introduction and you can click on the post to read more.
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