A couple of things you should think about for next week’s blogging. We’ll be talking about podcasts, so do a podcast review like your blog review – choose a podcast that interests you, and discuss how it works, how it differs from or parallels other media, and what types of participation and environment it encourages. Also, be sure to post your reactions to the first half of Shirky’s book.

As promised, here’s You Suck at Photoshop – as far as I know, it’s the world’s only serialized parody of technical training vids layered with the story of a man’s crumbling marriage. Enjoy!

First for the Twitter newbies, check out this site and this video for some useful tips and overviews.

For Monday, here are two specific blog prompts:

Blog review: find a blog out there in the internets that interests you (it could be new to you, or something you already read). Analyze how it functions as a site, thinking about the issues we discussed in class like its grammar/form, how it builds on the blog environment, what elements seem to be shaped by the cultural vs. institutional practices, how it allows participation, how it impacts social relationships, how it might be different in another medium, etc. (You don’t have to hit all these points, but use our class content as a guide to analysis.)

Reading response: Scott McCloud’s book serves as an extended “meta-media object,” using the tools of the comic to explore the medium itself. What aspects of comics, both as a medium of analysis and medium of expression, did you find particularly interesting? How might McCloud’s ideas extend to other media, or how might someone be able to express such concepts in other media? And how might his work resonate with the medium theory of Walter Ong, McLuhan, or Meyrowitz?