LEARNING ABOUT TAGS and TAG CLOUD WIDGETS
Compose a short commentary and post in on our group blog about tags and the widget called a TAG CLOUD.
Go to http://anthropology1001.blogspot.com/
Visit and review 6 tags from our group blog’s TAG CLOUD.
- SKIM THE ENTIRE LIST OF THE TAG CLOUD. Explain how you think it is organized. Share how many total items are in the cloud at the time you viewed it.
- Choose and read 3 of the most popular posts in the Tag Cloud (how do you know it's the most popular--can you figure it out intuitively?)
- Then choose and read 3 additional posts of your choice from the TAG CLOUD. That's 6 posts to choose and read total.
- What makes Tag Clouds work for the user, for the creator? Is there a difference? What expectations does it meet for the user, for the creator, if different?
- Write up a response that is no more than 250 – 400 words. Type up a draft in MS Word. Use WORD COUNT to meet word limit (Highlight the entire text, select WORD COUNT under TOOLS menu). Then cut-n-paste your 250 – 400 word post into a comment on the group blog. The title of the post will be LEARNING ABOUT TAG CLOUDS This is perfect practice for writing succinctly and clearly. You may have to contract or re-word your ideas.
Posts
72 comments:
Jeremy Flores
Tag clouds are a good way to find blogs that are interesting to the user. The find command (control + f) can aid in the speed at which a person searches for a specific tag. The size and underlining/boldface of certain tags also aid in searching, since the bigger, bolder, and underlined tags catch the eye quicker than the other, plain tags.
Tag clouds can generate more viewers of a blog, and in my opinion, this works to the blog creators advantage. General tags will attract more people, even if your blog is based on a specific thing. For example, within this specific tag cloud, I clicked on Dominican Republic, and the first story was about racism within the Dominican republic. I normally wouldn’t have thought that this was going to be the most popular article under this tag (I honestly thought it would have been about something related to the country’s international relations!). Also, for the reader, it sort of broadens one’s horizons because normally I wouldn’t have been interested in reading that article. But since I found it after clicking on a tag that I was interested in, I was able to read it without any bias.
I am relatively new to tagging and tag clouds, but this seems like a very important and useful part of web 2.0 culture. This allows for greater searching capabilities, categorizing, and accessibility for both blog creators and blog readers everywhere.
The Tag Clouds seem to be arranged in alphabetical order. The tags that are bolded are the ones that have the most posts in them and sound more interesting. I read the posts in STEREOTYPES, I felt the most powerful one was the video with the two girls, they really and truly are saying everything that is in the mind of individuals that are stereotyped everyday, yellow power. I also read the posts in RACE RELATIONS, agree to be offended is very motivating, I believe that in today’s society if don’t agree to be offended, there is no alternative because in everyday life we are offended. The posts on GENDER with the post of Ciara’s song “Like a Boy” was eye opening for me because that song is one of my favorites and when I do listen to it, I just wish I could step into the shoes of a guy and actually experience why they do certain things. In STUDENTS TODAY, the post about the iphone was very interesting, I would never believe a student at NYU would give up voting rights to get an iphone, it just didn’t make any sense, but I guess it doesn’t matter what kind of school you go to, students today think and feel like that. I clicked on the Tag that said DESI because I am from Bangladesh and I thought I would click on it to see what it was, but I read it and didn’t find it as interesting as I thought it would be, maybe because it didn’t have a lot of posts under it. The post on LANGUAGE was interesting because I had no idea that languages were on the verge of becoming extinct, it was something new that I learned.
This blogging this was a bit confusing to me at first, I didn’t know what I was doing until I got the hang of it after a while. There were a lot of tags on the blog, it was interesting to read some of the posts under each cloud. The video that I viewed with the Asian girls stood out the most to me. While going through each blog, I got a better understanding and perspective of how other people think.
The Tag Clouds seem to be arranged in alphabetical order. The tags that are bolded are the ones that have the most posts in them and sound more interesting. I read the posts in STEREOTYPES, I felt the most powerful one was the video with the two girls, they really and truly are saying everything that is in the mind of individuals that are stereotyped everyday, yellow power. I also read the posts in RACE RELATIONS, agree to be offended is very motivating, I believe that in today’s society if don’t agree to be offended, there is no alternative because in everyday life we are offended. The posts on GENDER with the post of Ciara’s song “Like a Boy” was eye opening for me because that song is one of my favorites and when I do listen to it, I just wish I could step into the shoes of a guy and actually experience why they do certain things. In STUDENTS TODAY, the post about the iphone was very interesting, I would never believe a student at NYU would give up voting rights to get an iphone, it just didn’t make any sense, but I guess it doesn’t matter what kind of school you go to, students today think and feel like that. I clicked on the Tag that said DESI because I am from Bangladesh and I thought I would click on it to see what it was, but I read it and didn’t find it as interesting as I thought it would be, maybe because it didn’t have a lot of posts under it. The post on LANGUAGE was interesting because I had no idea that languages were on the verge of becoming extinct, it was something new that I learned.
This blogging this was a bit confusing to me at first, I didn’t know what I was doing until I got the hang of it after a while. There were a lot of tags on the blog, it was interesting to read some of the posts under each cloud. The video that I viewed with the Asian girls stood out the most to me. While going through each blog, I got a better understanding and perspective of how other people think.
~Nusrath Hussain~
While looking at the “TAG CLOUD” page, I couldn’t help to notice how the black background makes the different colored letters stand out so much appearing as if the tags come to life. I noticed that the words were written in alphabetical order. The first tag that I immediately clicked on was the one labeled “Dominican Republic.” Two of the main reasons that this tag caught my attention were that it was big; but also is my native land. My eyes tend to notice very quickly things that are about my country. When I clicked on this tag, I was able to read the various comments that appeared on the page, which with some of them I disagreed.
On the other hand, other tags that were of my interests were: “YouTube,” “race relations,” “music,” “marriage” and “stereotypes.” I looked at these tags because I was curious to see what people posted about them. While many of the topics left it up to the reader’s imagination, the YouTube page “spelled” it out. It mainly consisted of YouTube videos depicting various life topics. However, the tag of more interest for me besides the D.R. one was the “stereotype” tag. This page really amazed me because the message was delivered by using serious ideas as well as humorous videos. Due to this, the message was even more impacting.
Overall, I think that the blog page is a very interesting way of communicating ideas about different topics from the author’s mind to the reader’s screen.
Dereck Persaud
The tag cloud seems very popular with 985 hits (the last time I checked). The cloud seems very bold because of the white letters on black back ground. The tag cloud seems to be arranged in alphabetical order. It also looks like the BOLD links are the most popular. There are one hundred and twelve blogs on our cloud. The top three links seem to be YOU TUBE, KOTTAK and RACE RELATIONS. In you tube I watched some of the videos I liked all of them, but Students in Kansas stuck with me. The video put all my college fears into perspective. In Kottak I read most on the blogs but the one about the quiz got my attention, just because every time I see that I want to cry. In race relations I watched the video Front line: A class divided (not available on tag cloud, but you can find another copy on you tube) I was surprised how easy it was for all the kids to just turn on each other just because of there eye color. I also went in to comedy just because I like to laugh (as kids in my class should know). I watched the move about eating disorder and it was actually a little funny. I then went in to culture and saw Group 5's poem it was pretty good and I also like soup(yum). Lastly I went in to stereotypes Chapter 9, video Gender was actually very funny but not true in most cases and are just, well, stereotypes. Overall the tag cloud is very insightful and actually truly looking forward to visiting it once a week.
When skimming through the “Tag Cloud” I realized that my eyes hit the tags that were in bold and underlined rather than the other ones. Since they are the center of attention, I naturally assumed that they were most popular. There are definitely well over 100 tags in the cloud and they all seem to be organized in alphabetical order.
The first tag I looked at was “YouTube”; it was the first thing that caught my eye. Perhaps the most interesting video there was the scene from Big Love, in which a man spoke about polygamy and how it should be legal. I also looked at the tag named “marriage.” I read a story of how a man revisited his family years later with wife and child. When the family found out his wife was part of a lower caste of Hindus so the family tormented her and shaved her head and the child’s head. That was unbelievable to read. In the “race relations” tag, I viewed the “Agree to be Offended” clip, which was inspiring and interesting.
In the “stereotype” tag, I watched a couple of videos but the most interesting one was “Yellow Rage.” It really caught my attention. The girls make sense because it’s the worst feeling when people stereotype. Like for me, I am from Serbia so people always mention the Balkan Wars and if I like Albanians. I didn’t start the war and I didn’t fight in it. At those moments, I could really scream and curse likes those girls. In “Students Today” I was shocked to find out that NYU students would trade the right to vote for a year in exchange for an I-pod touch. But then again, technology has brainwashed our minds. After those tags, I started browsing through the smaller ones because I thought there would be something interesting there. I looked at the “Web 2.0” tag, where I watched the “Le Grande Content” video. This was strange, yet very interesting.
I was a little confused about blogging at first but as I looked around, I started to understand it. It’s interesting because you see and read a lot of things that you might not even had thought of looking at before.
After skimming through the Tag Cloud I noticed that there were a ton of topics. These topics ranged from ancient forms of agriculture such as “Slash and Burn” to modern day Technological advances like “YouTube”. I also noticed that the blog was organized in alphabetical order. When I checked the tag cloud there were 208 total items. Three of the most popular posts I read from Tag Cloud were Dominican Republic, Politics, and Students Today. The other three posts that I read from the Tag Cloud were Crucifixion, Making A Living, and Forbes 400. Tag Cloud is useful to both its users and creators. A user of Tag Cloud is the student who clicks on a current topic while a creator makes up their own blogging topic. Tag Cloud is beneficial to its users because they can simply blog about a topic that they are already interested in. This may lead to productive discussion and debate among bloggers. For example, I was able to view a blog about my parent’s native country, the Dominican Republic. By reading this post I noticed that racism is not exclusive to one area but exists throughout the globe. I also learned from reading the Forbes 400 blog section that some off the world’s richest people pay fewer taxes than their secretaries! That was a shock to me .Tag Clouds are also very useful for the creator as they can use their imagination to make up any topic they wish to give their opinion about. This way Tag Clouds meet the expectations of both its user and the creators of blogging topics.
As i read though the tag cloud I instantly realized several things. First off I realized that the terms that are in bold and underlined stood out much more then the ones that weren't. I also noticed the huge amount of posts, which is easily over 100. Also, i realized that the posts seemed to have been in alphabetical order, and that it seemed to be very popular with almost 1000 hits. The first tag i looked at was from youtube, the one about the students from Kansas. I decided to pick this one because of the discussion in class, and it seemed interesting. It definetly put into perspective things i already knew, just didnt have the exact information/right way to word it. This spoke of college students from the perspective of the normal everyday student, not what is normally expected of an individual in school. I also watched Big Love which i found to be pretty funny. although polygamy is spoken about, it seemed to have made a somewhat relevant point to me, im just not sure how. I read the Families, Kinship, and Marriage tag to it, and liked it because it gave me a perspective of family life in another country. It made me question the way things in our own country are today. Russians in the story seem to know the right way to be a family, and certainly cherish it more then we do.
I also watched the video on sterotypical theories of our world today. I found it somewhat humourous, however mainly annoying. This is obviously not the way things are today, and furthermore stereotypes annoy me in general so watching this irriated me.
Also i watched the Shift Happens 2.0. This dealt with really interesting facts of how our country is not even close to where we should be now, and how other countries are surpassing us. I also read the Political systems tag to this video, and found it very interesting how different cultures social statures our compared to ours. They dont base consider their most valuable people the rich like most countries, yet the ones who do things for others, the holy people, priests. God comes first for them.
Im still a little confused about blogging, and am wondering how im going to understand it enough to post the response that were supposed to post in the blog, being that i never posted a blog in my life. However it was interesting to see these videos and read the tags, i came across alot of things i probobly never would have.
It seems to me that Tag Clouds are arranged in alphabetical order and their popularity determines their font size. When I viewed the Tag Cloud, there were about 176 listed.
Tag Clouds work for the user in the sense that it gives them access to more than what they were looking for. Some times when you are doing a project it is really hard to look outside of your own ideas, forgetting that there are other point-of-views and experiences we are excluding. Tag Clouds open the doors to new ideas, view points and ways of thinking that you would have never imagined. This is mainly accomplished when a tag is used for something or someone you would’ve never made the association with.
Tag Clouds work for the creator in that they define how people will access your story by tagging it with something you find most appropriate, not necessarily what other people will expect to find it under. However, I don’t think there is a huge difference between the user and creator of Tag Clouds. On both ends you can learn and inform equally.
I clicked on the “same sex marriages” tag and was blown away with one of the stories. I realized after reading it that the blogs had absolutely nothing to do with same sex marriages. They dealt with family, social structure and assimilation. I was a little shocked to find a story so personal that it was difficult to believe it was actually true.
Kisbel Fernandez
This isn’t the first time I’ve come across tag clouds. The first time I saw them was when I downloaded Veoh TV, and I didn’t pay much attention to them. What I did notice was that they’re usually in alphabetical order, and the popular blogs are typed in a big print to put emphasis on them. The first tag I clicked on youtube because I am most familiar with it, and it was in the biggest letters. I watched a couple of videos, but my favorite was the one about the ex-Mormon support group. I also looked at Kottak and race relationships, because they seemed to be the second and third most popular ones.
The less popular tags that interested me where: animation, student’s today, and iPod. I chose animation because it makes me think of cartoons like Family Guy. I watched the video about the stereotypical differences between gender, and was shocked to find that a lot of those stereotypes exist in my family. Some of them were a little offensive. I chose the student’s today and iPod tags because they both directly relate to me since I’m a student and I have an iPod. When I read about how students would give up their right to vote for money or an iPod, I wondered what I would do if I was given that type of choice. I was slightly confused about the student’s today tag because we hadn’t done the exercise in class yet, but I look forward to it.
I came across about 500 tags in the cloud when I entered the blog and can clearly see that in general the tags are organized in alphabetical order. The tags that are more bigger than others, seem to have the most blogs. I think most likely each blog has a certain topic and from the creator or users perspective it is classified or labeled into a tag, which allows the blog to fall under more than one tag.
For the user or creator, I don't think there's much difference in how a Tag Cloud can work for one or the other. It gives both freedom, option, and knowledge. Creators can post a blog about almost everything and anything, whether it is about factual information or just opinion. These blogs allows them to share their knowledge or view to the world under a simple tag cloud. Users can use the tag clouds and easily locate what ever they're looking for through the simple tags and read the blogs that are attached to them and may be inspired to tag a blog of their own. This is what is great about a tag cloud, the user can become a creator and the creator can become the user.
When it comes to expectations of a tag cloud for the user or creator, I do feel there is a bit of a difference. On a creators note I think they're expectations of a tag cloud are satisfied because there is really no restriction to what they can and can not post or tag. Being able to see all the tags gives the creator more consistency when tagging, leading to better organization. As for users, I feel that the only down side is that they might not find what they're looking for in a tag cloud, but on a good note searching can lead to discovering new ideas.
Either way a tag cloud is very useful and can be viewed and created by practically anyone who can use a computer.
+Jessika Hoang+
When I first looked over the Label Cloud I was immediately drawn to the large bolded words. Youtube and Kottak seemed to stand out the most to me since they are in darker blue than the rest of the words. It was also easy to find certain topics that I knew I would be interested in because they were listed alphabetically.
The first tag I looked at was of course the Youtube tag where there were a bunch of different posts with videos from Youtube. I watched the Big Love video because I was interested in polygamy and also because I’ve watched a couple episodes of the show. I then clicked on race relations because I was interested in the discussion we had in class about how classifications of race first began. I was intrigued over the census excerpts and how we have progressed over time to include different ethnicities into the original 3 categories of White, Black, Mulatto, Chinese or Indian.
The next tag I was drawn to was Did You Know. It was this really interesting video of facts about our world today. Like for instance did you that China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world? I didn’t that’s for sure. After watching that video, I decided to check out the UN statistics. It was a video that discussed poverty, life expectancy, and population growth around the world. As an American it’s just so hard to fathom that there is a completely different world outside of our borders.
I was a little confused about how the blog worked at first since I’ve never really been into reading blogs, but after I got the hang of it I found this blog to be really insightful. I was able to learn a lot by looking through the different blogs that I never would have otherwise.
When I first looked over the Label Cloud I was immediately drawn to the large bolded words. Youtube and Kottak seemed to stand out the most to me since they are in darker blue than the rest of the words. It was also easy to find certain topics that I knew I would be interested in because they were listed alphabetically.
The first tag I looked at was of course the Youtube tag where there were a bunch of different posts with videos from Youtube. I watched the Big Love video because I was interested in polygamy and also because I’ve watched a couple episodes of the show. I then clicked on race relations because I was interested in the discussion we had in class about how classifications of race first began. I was intrigued over the census excerpts and how we have progressed over time to include different ethnicities into the original 3 categories of White, Black, Mulatto, Chinese or Indian.
The next tag I was drawn to was Did You Know. It was this really interesting video of facts about our world today. Like for instance did you that China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world? I didn’t that’s for sure. After watching that video, I decided to check out the UN statistics. It was a video that discussed poverty, life expectancy, and population growth around the world. As an American it’s just so hard to fathom that there is a completely different world outside of our borders.
I was a little confused about how the blog worked at first since I’ve never really been into reading blogs, but after I got the hang of it I found this blog to be really insightful. I was able to learn a lot by looking through the different blogs that I never would have otherwise.
While examining the Blog and its Tag Cloud I found the tag cloud to contain many interesting topics to choose from. At the time I viewed the Tag clouds there were five hundred and fifteen items. However, I chose to view the tags on Comedy, Stereotype, Race relation, YouTube, Family, and Culture because these topics are very interesting and popular. The tags on the Blog were very easy to use because it was well organized in alphabetical order making it easy to find a subject to read about. Also, depending on how popular the topic was the topic was bolded and highlighted; making it easy to distinguish it from other topics.
For the user; the Tag Clouds works because it helps them get to a subject they want to quicker and its more convenient for them then searching the whole blog for a certain topic. Tag Clouds work for the creator because it’s an easy way for them to link back to their blog-post and it’s a faster way for them to find feedback from other users. For the users and creators of the blog-post, both expect to express themselves about the topic they write about clearly. Also, they expect to get feedback and unbiased opinions of other users on the topic; so they can get a better understanding of the topic. In the link “Stereotypes” I found it very interesting video on how people use stereotypes to classify Asians in the movie industries. Being Chinese I found that video very funny and true.
Blogging is a new experience for me as a student and as a person. I found it somewhat confusing but easy to understand and use after a while. I have seen blogs before, but I have never engaged in responding or replying to posts. Blogs are easy to use and are well organized for users to use because of its Tags or tag clouds. Now I have a better understanding of why people blog and a better understanding of how to use one. This has also given me a better perspective of how others think about certain issues or topics. I had disagreed and agreed with some topics I read about and I think blogs are an easy way to express our opinions with others.
I think that this tag cloud is organized in alphabetical order. They vary from color and size. I think that the white tags are least visited because it has the smallest font. Then purple, because it has a medium size font, and lastly blue, because it has the biggest size font. So far, there are two hundred and four items in the cloud, and they have been visited nine hundred ninety nine times all together. So far, YouTube, Race Relations, and Kottak have been visited the most (from my expiation of how I think it’s organized).
The YouTube tag has a lot of videos, and I found that the “did you know” video has a lot of facts that I didn’t know. Race Relations has blogs on racial issues, and I’m not surprised on how many blogs there are. Kottak is someone I never heard of, and I’m glad I did, because now, I know that he’s the writer of our textbook.
Three tags that I chose were IPod, earth, and wiki. Honestly, I choose these three because of how surprised I was to actually see these topics in an anthropology class. It’s amazing that there are THAT many students that would trade in their right to vote for something like an Ipod, or for one million dollars.
The tag cloud works for both the user and the crater because it helps organizes ideas from the blog. It also helps the crater know what is popular and what isn’t, because of the color and font size of the hotlinks. It helps both user and crater in the same way, so there isn’t a difference on how it assists the user and crater.
The tag cloud is 311 tags long as of the moment that I viewed it. The cloud seems to be organized alphabetically A-Z. In addition to the alphabetical organization; some tags also appear larger, bolder , and blue to stand out like the tags on the Dominican Republic and Race. These tags correspond to a posts that have been viewed more then the others, and therefore may be of more interest to the reader then those posts linked to less popular tags.
This system makes browsing a large blog a simple task for readers. Where as with no method of organization the reader would literally have to go over hundreds of posts to find the topic they wish to view; the tag cloud allows for quick access to a post on whichever subject the reader desires; in my case I looked up ethnography to see exactly what it meant. It also shows readers who may not be searching for a specific subject which posts are most popular; this allows the undecided readers to have a valid starting point when exploring the numerous posts.
As for the authors the tags also serve as a message of reader’s response to their posts. The tags; which can be attributed to a post by readers, shows the author of the post the ideas that stuck out most in the mind of the readers. It also clearly shows the kind of posts that are most popular; so if an author is looking to attract a large group of readers they can write more posts on popular subjects.
The tag cloud actually works for the author much the same way it works for the reader. Just as it serves as a guideline to the reader on where to find topics, or what topics they may want to find; it shows the author which topics people are most interested in. One thing that the author can get out of a tag cloud; other than just what the people reading the blog like, is a kind of user generated criticism of the post. When a reader tags a post they are letting the author know what words the post brings to mind. By knowing this, if an author is unhappy with the tags given to a post, they can adjust their writing so that the readers can more accurately understand their purpose behind writing the post.
Joe Carrano
The tag cloud is arranged in alphabetical order and uses different colors to emphasize the most popular tags. The least popular are written in white and a smaller font is used while the most popular tags are written in a bright blue color and are larger. There are currently two hundred and two items in the cloud. The way that the page is set up makes it very easy for users who are not as experienced with blogging. I am inexperienced in blogging but found it very easy to find my way around the site. This is a positive factor for the creator of the site because it gives people who have never blogged before or has never been exposed to tagging encouragement to check out the site. If the site were hard to follow, a lot of people would give up on trying to explore.
The most interesting tag to me the stereotypes tag. The animated clip about general stereotypes of men and women was so right. It showed it is believed that all women cry through romantic movies and men always fall asleep and also that women can not stay true to their diets. They always end up overeating. My personal favorite however was the scene where the male character is talking and he speaks in a plain and straight forward way, while the female characters words are jumbled and confusing. It’s crazy to think that most people actually believe most of these stereotypes. I think that tagging is a great thing because it puts information out there that people are not necessarily aware of or might not be thinking about. It makes us more aware.
The Tag Cloud seems interesting and popular. The tag clouds seem to be arranged in alphabetical order and there are almost 180 tags. It also looks like the bold tags or a different color tags are the most popular, such as Kottak, Race relation and Culture etc.
For me, the most interesting tags were Kottak, marriage, U.S, language, NYC, Seattle. The first tag I looked at was ‘Kottak’ because it was the biggest tags and I wanted to get some information about our textbook and him. The second tag was ‘Marriage’. Nowadays, I read essay about marriage and wedding so the tag ‘marriage’ just caught my eyes. The third tag was ‘U.S’ and fourth tags was NYC. The fifth tag was ‘Language’.I read a post and it was quite interesting to read chapter.5. And last tag was ‘Seattle’. I choose it because my one of the best friend lives there so I wanted to look at it. I watched a video and it was good.
I thinking each tag has useful sources and Youtube video. And it was nice to see them.
The first thing that I noticed when I opened this link was how big and bold the text “Youtube” was. Automatically, I thought that this must be the most popular, and it turns out I was right. The most popular texts are the biggest and boldest. Other than that, the tags are all in alphabetical order and evenly spaced out. I find it very easy to navigate around if you were looking for a topic in particular. The colors are all contrasting as well, which makes it even more user friendly.
I found the “youtube” blog to be quite interesting. Youtube has always been a great source of entertainment in many different areas. You can hear music, laugh, catch up on movies, become informed, etc. One of the more informative texts on the “Youtube” post was a conversation with the “King Corn” filmmaker. It opened my eyes to a documentary that I know want to fully watch about health and nutritious facts about the food we consume. Another interesting post was the Dominican Republic. One post explained how race is a huge part of social class even in a country where everyone is the same ethnicity. Another very popular post was the “culture” post. One of the interesting posts in “culture” was the “Shaker” religion, and what they were about and what they believed. The men and women doing everything separately in the household, and how one of their major beliefs, which is celibacy, is leading to their extinction as a group.
As far as blogs go, they are pretty much just way for people to communicate with others that they don’t necessarily know, and aren’t able to communicate with in the street. I always enjoyed scrolling through blogs on other forums and websites that revolved around topics that were related a little more to me, such as sneakers, clothing, video games, rap music, etc. I would always find some kind of entertaining information that I probably wouldn’t have known otherwise. People have showed me things that I would never have known otherwise. What is the possibility of me bumping into that person, starting a conversation, and hearing in person the same message that they posted? People get to express themselves to everyone else, without being judged. The tag clouds make it easier for the creators, as well as the users to navigate and communicate about the different topics that they please.
Melissa Chen
By looking at the tag clouds, I’ve realized that they are alphabetically organized. I agree that You-tube has the most hits on the Internet, also because it is bolded and enlarged. I’ve watched a video on ShiftHappens, at first I believed that the U.S offered one of the highest standards of education but Great Britain actually takes cake. What I found interesting was that China and India will have the highest amount of English-speaking college graduates. On one of the videos featured on you-tube, the college students in Kansas made me question myself. Comments made on videos, or blogs often influence my opinion, especially on the Kansas video. After reading other comments made by other students, Ipod actually caught my attention immediately. If I was an NYU student, I might give up my voting right for one election just to have my tuition paid. It is my opinion because I am not ready to vote. Tag clouds are great ways to communicate because it shows us different ways people see different problems.
At the first glance of the Tag Cloud, you’re able to see certain links stand out from the rest. Upon fully analyzing the cloud, one can see that the tags are in alphabetical order and that as the number of post increases for a particular tag so does its font size. The three most popular tags, which are easy to pick out due to their ability to stand out, are Kottak, You Tube, and Race Relations.
The Tag Cloud makes it work for the user. Different aspects of a particular subject may interest the user and might involve them more in blogging. The structure helps them because they see what everyone else seems to be interested in. This works for the creator because more people get involved and comment on their view of a specific subject. The results are equivalent on both sides.
The post under Kottack about Gender caught my attention. After watching the video, you could see the roles of genders in society. It’s amazing to see that even after so many years this view still exists, but in present-day America, this perception is diminishing. Frontline: A class divided, shows the conventions of discrimination and it’s influence upon children. This video has a strong impact because adults get a chance to see how childish discriminatory actions are. The Race Relations post of Racism in the DR was interesting because I understand the concept behind it. I have witnessed actions like this in another Hispanic country, Colombia.
The post about ipods shocked me. The fight for minorities (based on gender, class and race) of society to get a chance to vote seemed to be endless, and now people would give it up for materialistic gain. It shows a lot about how society has changed. One of the posts about music, about Ciara’s song Like A Boy was interesting. I’ve always liked the message behind the lyrics, which is how you would perceive a woman if she took upon the actions of a man. Conforming to White America post under stereotypes shows the stereotypes for Asians. It’s a way to show how comedy is used to portray stereotypes and how they are accepted within a community.
Viewing the posts has led me to think about certain things more and I’m sure it does the same for everyone else.
Melissa Chen
I've also read a blog on racism as a whole. There are different ways to define Race and I have never thought of it in that sense. People often judge by the color of skin tones. For example in an article, a woman argued against racism in the DR. People still judge by skin color rather than judging it like a soup. The soup is a recipe that explains how things change and unify. I enjoyed reading that poem because soups are different but together, the ingredients combine into one.
Destiny Liebscher
Anthropology
9/3/08
The way I see the tag cloud is composed in first in alphabetical order with the tags on the top and then closer to bottom of the page there are the assignments. I like the font and the black background .Overall I like it and think that its pretty organized . The way I think tag cloud works for the creator is that it allows that person to show their point of view on a subject and share their thoughts with others . I especially liked the video on yellow rage . The way that I think it works for the user is in much the same way that it works for the creator . It allows the user to view and read peoples different points of views on different subjects and possibly learn something that they did not know before . For example I didn’t know that the WTO was effecting the world in such a negative way before. And maybe it would inspire the user to post a blog of their own or at the very least post a comment . However I think that some of the videos could have gone a little slower just so that I could appreciate them more . Such as the Agree to be offended video I had to replay the video a few times in order to get everything that it had to offer, which was a lot and I feel that if the videos pace was slower I would have picked up more information in one viewing rather than having to see it multiple times .
This tag cloud contains specific and abstract ideas from innumerable sources. Besides being arranged alphabetically, these 207 items share no particular type of arrangement. The three most popular posts in the tag cloud must be “Culture”, “Race Relations”, and “You Tube”, because these tags share the darkest blue and bold font; bold usually indicating a degree of importance. Less popular tags have a lighter font.
One post I enjoyed was a post under the tag called “Culture”, in which there was video showing a particular Afro-Dominican traditional dance recently performed by a user and her Russian friends. Another post under the tag called “Gender” had me laughing because it demonstrated funny, though strikingly realistic gender stereotypes through colorful animation.
This tag cloud is beneficial for both the user and the creator. The creator gets to vent frustrations, express creativity, and exchange or share information; maybe even post some type of combination of these. The posting format makes it very easy to post thoughts. Tag clouds are beneficial for the user because the user gets to learn new ideas, opinions, and facts about a topic that either always or sometimes piqued their interest, or a topic that they would have never given the time of day. Perhaps users and creators think similarly. Perhaps they disagree completely. What’s best about the tag clouds is that they create a cycle in which the creator influences the user, the user becomes a creator, new users become new creators, and a wide variety of information can be exchanged rapidly. In short, the titles of user and creator are interchangeable.
Tags clouds are a quick and easy way to have access to information on topics that you may have in common with others. This particular tag cloud seemed to be pretty big & I can estimate that there were about 207 tags when I was looking. The tag cloud also seemed to be pretty organized in alphabetical order and with the different font textures. I soon came to realize that the different font textures stood for something. The larger, bolder, & darker the text the more views it had.
One of the more popular tags I took a look at was “wealth” and found one post very interesting. The post regarding the NYU students trading the right to vote for material things seemed insane to me. Its weird how young people today would trade one of the most important rights we have for material things that mean nothing. I mean don’t get me wrong I would love to have an ipod or full tuition but I would prefer to choose who is the leader to ensure that the many rights I have today are not taken away. It bugs me to know that after learning all the history of the right to vote that it would still be taken for granted.
One of the least popular ones I looked at was “Puerto Rico” and I found that not many post were there. The only one I did find there didn’t really have much to do with Puerto Rico until the end and even that I do not find was enough. I am half Puerto Rican and have never been to Puerto Rico and I was hoping to find more information for reference and was a little disappointed.
I think the tag cloud serves similar yet different purposes for the user and creator. Both the user and creator are looking to gain information but the user may not contribute to the tag cloud. The creator may contribute more because it is something they are showing as one of their interests and the creator is trying to provide information for others to gain interest. The user may be only looking to access information or find new interests.
This is not the first time I used the Tag Cloud. One of my friends had created a blog using this kind of style. I was helping him to upload some new tags to the blog, and I used to use the Chinese version one. This is the first time I look at the English version blog. It’s a little bit difficult for to me to understand how to use the Tag Could. Luckily, the instruction “HOW TO WEB 2.0” on the right hand side of the blog is very understandable. It had told me clearly how to access it.
The Tag Cloud provides to the users the ability to compose a tag with picture and video at the same time by using the You Tube. It helps the users to easily express the thesis they want to share with the other people. In another hand, the tag cloud on the top of the website has been arranged alphabetically. This makes me to find out the things I want more easily and conveniently. I don’t need to search the things I want to read by clicking on pages and pages. I like the style of such blog. Truly, the tag cloud is really helpful for people to access different resource.
I think the most three popular tag is the “You Tube”, Dominican Republic” and “Race Relations”. Because at the first when I entered the website, these words are bolded and colored in the dark blue. I saw these words immediately. I also think that people always enlarge the most popular links or words to attract the reader to click on it.
When I am reading the 6 tags, I found that almost each of them has the You Tube to explain different things. This is the most useful function in the tag cloud. I don’t need to click the link to the You Tube, and then come back to website to compose a comment. It’s really waste time to do that. In the blog, I can view the movie just a click away. It’s very useful for me to understand the contents of the tags. This is a really helpful tools to view many different resource.
The Tag cloud is really simple. Not a lot is going on with it. The color black sets a dark mood. The tags that have the larger font have the most posts. The 3 most popular posts seem to be Kottak, YouTube and Race Relations.The other 3 posts i looked at was NYU, Students Today & Music. In "Music" i like the post about Kanye West. I dont think he is the only one who has a lot of religious references in his songs. Even when an artist wins an award the first person most of them thank is God. In "students today" i like the post titled "shift happens." A lot of information was in it. It made me think about life in general and what the futures holds for us. The last post i looked at was NYU. Since it is considered i smart school i figured it would be something educational and wanted to see what they had to say. Put the post about giving up their vote is interesting and funny. Funny that they said for an iPod and interesting that they said for tuition. I would probably do the same because that school is a lot of money. Tag Clouds is very useful for the creator. A lot of information that one could be educated on is post, not just stuff about a celebrity. There is a little difference in expectations. The creator is writing what they want to write without being edited by someone. For the user, everyones different so some blogs may not catch their attention.
What are all those blue and white words above this blog? What happens when I click on them? Oh I see, the bigger the words the more blog entries there are. I get it, these tag clouds help me, the viewer cipher through what this blog really is! If I don’t want to read through all the entries on let’s say the Dominican Republic then I can look at these tags and click on what really interests me! This is a great way to read and know what you are reading! When you first open this blog, and the tag cloud was not there you would have to read a bit first to get a glimpse as to what this blog is about. The tag cloud is the first thing that you see when you open the site, allowing the reader to view what is most talked about and whether or not they will further continue to read the blog, text, story whatever! In this blog in particular, “YouTube” is the biggest and boldest tag, when you click on it all talk about YouTube and videos from YouTube come up! The Dominican Republic is another big bolded tag on this blog, but lets say that I have no interest in the Dominican Republic at all, the tag cloud allows me the option to click on the subject in which I am interested so I don’t need to waste my time reading an entry on the Dominican Republic, rather on something like gender that does interest me. These tag clouds are used to make it easier for the viewers to view what they want to a view, an interactive way to use the internet and web 2.0.
-Meredith Levine
Prof. Gaunt's Anthropology blog! I like how this blog is cleverly name “Blogthropology” obviously coming from our favorite subject anthropology! Anyways, the tag cloud used on this blog is composed of a wide range of different words. The words range from anthropology related subjects to the plain silly. (Hence the stuff and the Easter bunny which I found extremely out of place.) The tag cloud is arranged in an alphabetical order and some tags are in a larger font in blue. The larger font in blue may be the more popular tags or they may have been placed there specifically by Prof. Gaunt to show their importance or they may have been placed there because they are topics that she finds interesting. The amount of tags is relatively larger than many other blogs which don’t have any tags at all.
After close examination, I conclude that I was wrong when I sad that Prof. Gaunt may have placed the larger blue links there due their importance or their ability to entertain. As you hover over the links you in fact see that the bigger and bluer the font is the more popular the tags are due to the amount of posts they have. From that conclusion, Kottak, Youtube, and race relations are the most popular topics in this tag cloud. The posts consists of videos and text of how the human relations. There are also references to chapters in our textbook. The Russell Peters tag intrigued me, forcing me to click it. To my surprise, the blog had nothing to do with Russell Peters at all! It led to the Peters map. (This is an anthropology blog, what was I suppose to expect?) I also decided to go to two other links of my interest; Music and urban legends. The music page actually led to music that pertains to topics of anthropology. The urban legends tag led to an article written by a past student on the difference between a myth and a legend which I found quite interesting.
The tag cloud actually works pretty well amongst us the users and the creator. A simple click on a tag will bring up all posts that may relate to that tag in some way. This allows easy access for the users and allows the creator to place tags in the tag cloud that may come of a certain importance.
Caroline Camilo
Ant 1001 TV 24A
Assignment #2
Learning about Tag Clouds
This is the first time I see a Tag Cloud. I never even knew what it was until now. I never heard of it or even read about one. Until this moment I’ve been indifferent about them, but I’m glad this is the first one to me because right of the back the way the page is formatted caught my attention.
Obviously this Tag Cloud is organized in alphabetical order. The items are displayed in different colors and different sizes to distinguish each one’s most commented on. At the time I viewed it, the tag cloud contained 222 items. The background of the page is black, and I’m guessing it’s that way so that the items can stand out more. The items that caught my attention as soon as I saw the cloud were Dominican Republic and Magic. The item that said Dominican Republic caught my attention as soon as I looked at the cloud not only because it was in tall, dark blue letters, but also because I wanted to see what was being said about the native country of my parents. I was intrigued by what was written, because some parts of the reading it’s not true for all Dominicans but as I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that unfortunally parts of it was for most Dominicans, but not all.
For the users, Tag Clouds can be very informative and persuasive if you look at it from my perspective. The same idea goes for the creators, simply because even though they are the ones that posted the information up and are trying to send a message through to it’s audience, the audience (meaning the users), once they begin to comment on what they’ve just read or seen, they can also inform and persuade the creators about their outlook on the reading or happening.
Tag Clouds, I see are a great way to find out new matters. It is actually an entertaining technique to learn about different issues. It can grab someone’s attention easily, simply by the way it’s formatted. I’m looking forward to seeing more of these not only in our class’ blog, but also in the different websites I visit.
Monique Salmon
Tag Cloud is organized in alphabetical order. At the time that I viewed Tag Cloud there were about 177 items posted. The most popular postings at Tag Cloud were Youtube, Kottak, and Race Relations. The reason why I knew these postings were most popular was because, I used my mouse to click on a post and it showed the number of postings each category consisted of. If I were to figure out which posting was popular intuitively, I would say the postings with the biggest font and darkest color blue was the most popular. Tag Cloud works best for the users because it helps them to connect with people from different parts of the world and it also helps them to spread their opinions about a certain topic of interest. For example, the posting of GENDER, Ciara’s song “Like a Boy” was posted to relate people with common ideas and thoughts about gender. I believe that I can connect with this song, because I like to dress like a boy whenever I don’t like dressing like a girl and it is more comfortable.
Every time Tag Cloud users post their thoughts on the site it becomes even more popular. The creators expect users to blogs, to invite theirs friends and to share their opinions about any or everything. When thousands of people start to blog a creator’s site, his/her expectations are met. Even though I am fairly new to blogging I can see that it is very easy to use. I understand now, how important Web 2.0 is for our culture. Blogging is created to enhance the spread of opinions and to broadcast knowledge that wasn’t known to its users.
The tag cloud seems to be a very interesting place and very popular as well with 1017 hits. While looking around I have noticed the tag cloud is arranged in alphabetical order which is very helpful I think. There are many blogs in the tag cloud however YouTube, culture, race relations and kottak seem to be the most popular since they’re in big bold letters. I first clicked on kottak and the first thing I notice is the QUIZ which ruins the day. So I went on and checked out the YouTube section. While looking through the videos I liked the digital ethnography from ant students In Kansas. Moving on to race relations I would have to say the frontline a class divided – 1 of 5 was a great experiment.
After looking at some of the most popular tags I moved on to the comedy section since I like to laugh. Well there was only one video which was funny the eating disorder. I went to magic afterwards which was pretty cool. I watched the video of David Blaine he is really good. After looking at the tags I finally ended up in the racism section and watched the video agree to be offended about race and racism. Overall the tag cloud is very helpful and gives you a lot of information. At first I wasn’t too sure about blogging but the site itself helps you and gives you all the information you will need. I would consider visiting the site at least once a week to see new posts.
As I sat here to count how many tags there are in the Tag Cloud, I noticed there are 204 tags in alphabetical order. The most popular posts would be the ones that have larger print or are a brighter blue, at least I hope that’s how it works. I chose to use the tags; teacher, participant observation, culture, social construct, education and emic/etic. These are to me six things I’ve learned, most about in the reading I’ve done, have a lot to do with anthropology.
In the last two classes we’ve learned about perception and how when researchers are collecting data it’s important to participant in some of the social constructs which that researcher may find to be weird (alien). This helps the researcher learn why it’s a social construct and why it’s important to the culture or society associated with. We also learned the difference between emic and etic, emic deals with the ’insider’s’ point of view, while etic is the ’outsider’ point of view. When researchers participant in social constructs it gives him or her a more emic look at rituals, customs, or just everyday life then if they were to sit back and continue to just observe from a distance.
Every society or culture have teachers, whether they’re referred to as teachers or not. Think about it, you’re raised by your parents, to you they’re just mom and dad but really they’re teaching you the basics of life. How to walk, talk, know what might hurt, how to use the potty, all things they teach you. Without teachers in life social constructs wouldn’t exist. It has to start somewhere for it to become a norm, and enough people have to agree with it for it to be followed.
Education ties in with the teacher thought, previously mentioned. It also usually determines how you look at the world. I learned that with education everyone should have an open mind, consider how others view the world and instead of just saying, “Well this is what I was taught so it must be right,” try thinking to yourself that every question may have more than one correct answer!
This is my first time using “Tag Cloud” which I thought would be something difficult but as I was skimming through , I found it very simple and easy to access. The bright color of the tags and the font made it more prominent. One would easily understand that the tags with larger and bolder font has the most posts in . It is also well organized as it goes in an alphabetical order. There are three posts which are the most popular ones; You tube, Kottak, and Race Relations.
I personally liked the tags on “Family.” One of the reason I read this tag was because I miss my family a lot as they are back in my country. Therefore, this word “Family” dragged me to skim through it. I read more than two of the posts and the one which amazed me was “ Could This Be a Nightmare?” This topic was very eye-catching for which I took some interest reading it and as I read the conclusion I was shocked. I always thought family means a strong bonding among all the members, happiness, caring and being together. But this content had a total different story..
There was this other tag that seemed interesting to me was “students today,” so I looked through it. It was interesting to know that schools like NYU and their student makes not much difference. In this generation everyone would think alike, there is so such exception just being in NYU-one of the best schools.
Lastly, I watched the videos in You Tube. Among so many videos , I have watched the one “Gender” which shows the typical stereotypes. It was funny, though all of them were not exact but some where. Overall, these tags would help one to chose what they want to view.
I am creating a practice borrowed from Twitter.com. When writing or posting a comment, you can speak directly at another user in this way (and this is a real comment):
@angelgr89 and @joeknows718: EXCELLENT posts for this assignment. Check out this exemplar models of posts for our first assignment on blogging.
PS. Then you can go back and search your name to find out who responded directly to your post.
There are roughly 200 labels in the tag cloud. The cloud is arranged in alphabetical order with the more popular labels in larger and bolder font. At first I was a little confused about how “Kottak” and “WTO” were both used as labels for the same blog and yet “Kottak” had more comments and was more popular than “WTO”. I later realized that the comment count only went under the label that the user clicked on (or so I think it works that way). So even though “Kottak” and “WTO” are both labels for the same blog, if I clicked on “Kottak” to find that blog, then “Kottak” gains an additional comment and is now a more popular label.
Tag clouds have different functions, depending on the user. If I am someone who is interested in reading blogs that are popular amongst my peers, the tag cloud gives me immediate visual cues to let me know which labels are most popular. On the other hand, I may be a user who knows exactly what genre of information I am looking for and having the tag cloud in alphabetical order helps me find that information immediately. Labels assist the user in finding relevant information. Sometimes the label isn’t even a word used in the blog. It just assists the user in finding information that falls under that domain.
For the creator, tag clouds can help to draw more users to their blogs. It also helps the creator further express themselves. The labels they pick for their blogs say a lot about who they are and what kind of message they’re trying to relay. It also, in a sense, helps the creator hand pick their readers. For example, if someone writes a blog about clothing and uses “couture” as their label, then users like me (who will wear anything, from anywhere, that looks nice, and is 100% cotton) are not going to be interested in clicking on that label.
Stacey Auguste
When I first saw the tag cloud I thought it was advertisement. It was the first time I saw a tag cloud so it was pretty interesting. After examining it for a few seconds, I noticed that the tag clouds are arranged in alphabetical order for easy finding of the topic you want to read about. What makes the tag cloud interesting is that the most popular topics are in large font, blue color and bolder text to make them stand out and really grab your attention. The colors go from white to light shades of blue and finally to a bright bold blue. The colors along with the font size are indicators of the topic popularity. I counted a total of 204 topics on the tag cloud. I posts I chose to read about were YouTube, culture, Kottak, ethnography, gender and language. The tag clouds help users to easily identify the topics they want to read about or the topics that are most popular. It also helps blog creators to generate traffic to their blogs. I believe it benefits both parties but slightly more towards the creator because then they are able to express their ideas to a larger audience and they may even get hits from viewers that would not normally read about that topic. For example, I clicked on the Ethnography label and it brought me to several blogs concerning the meaning of it and different uses of it. I would not have clicked on that label if I did not know what it meant. I learned that word in class and wanted to explore more on it. Overall, Web 2.0 is a creative blogging system that allows people to engage in discussion on the internet.
When going thought the posts I realized that the most important ones were also the boldest ones. Which were Kottack, Culture, and Youtube. But there were many other post that weren't as bold but equally important. From those I chose immigrants, ipod, and politics. The first post I open up was Youtube which had videos regarding to other posts like Family, immigration, and etc. This demonstrates how powerful youtube really is. It a way of spreading ideas in this society and get your point across. This is possible because of the exposure youtube gets and that why it is one of the more popular posts. The next post I opened was culture which is really important in this section because this is Cultural Anthropology. That post had different articles and videos about different cultures in todays society the one that stood out to me was United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing who have existed since 1772. And there are still 4 surviving members that live in Maine even thought they believe in celibacy. The following post I looked after that was Kottek who is the author to the book we are using Mirror for Humanity. So it almost self explainable why this post get a lot of hits because it prepares us for the exams and has lots of great information. The 3 not so populars posts that I chose were really interesting. Immigration one was about the struggles immigrants had to go through when they came to America. Ipod one was about how 20% percent of NYU students would give up their vote for ipod which is really sad. And politics which is a really important topic right now because we gonna have the election in less than 60 days. So it only right that it had a video of Barack Obama acceptance speech on it which is also a historic speech because he is the first African American to get a major party nomination.
At first glance the site seemed a little cluttered, with words popping out almost everywhere. After about 10 minutes (ok exaggerated) you actually begin to distinguish all the different blog topics (all 181+). I like that you can tell which blog has more posts by the way the titles have different font sizes and types. I accessed the Youtube blog and liked the videos that were embedded on the page, especially the videos on Stereotypes and the “Le Grand Content”. In the culture blog, for some reason the post on culture and rape caught my eye, possibly because rape is such an intense word. I was surprised to see that the political systems blog had nothing to do with American politics really, but of world politics, although not rare it just seemed weird to me. Other blogs I clicked on included urban legends, sexual orientation, and immigrants. I clicked on the urban legends because coming from a Hispanic family where there are so many superstitions such as when you drop the spoon, it means you can expect company. I know that it’s a stereotype but I could not help but to click on the immigrant blog. I guess old habits die hard, and when you hear certain stereotypes constantly, you can’t help but sort of identify yourself with them. The tag cloud is useful to whoever uses because there are so many topics, and more pending.
Tag clouds aren’t much of a new concept to me but actually blogging myself is. I generally skim through and over view certain blogs, but I have never myself actually blogged. I was always interested in what others had to say on a particular topic and loved to learn how they felt or thought on the given topic, but I never gave much consideration of stating my own opinions and ideas of that subject.
The organizations of the blogs are a given, which is alphabetically. Although, I am still giving thought on it, but I believe that the size of the font of the link connecting you to a label, determines how popular or how many comments have been posted on that topic. Also, the color of the link also has a pattern, in my belief; it has to also do with either popularity (amount viewed) or the amount of comments posted. Currently, there are roughly over 200 items in the cloud, plus 1026 hits and still rising.
Based on my observations, intuitively thinking, I would have to say that the most popular posts would have to be “Kottak”, “Youtube” and “race relations”. Judging by the color and the size of their fonts, they would have to be the “standing-out” labels, which would make them the most popular. Followed by “magic”, “research” and “CNN Heroes”, were the other three that I was most interested in, even though the text didn’t stand out for any of them but their names seemed almost “out-of-place”.
Tag Clouds work for both the user and creator in the same ways. The expectations met, are as well, the same in have basic routine that is followed and then applied in all cases. In summation, my thoughts on blogging is that it is another “art”, of I believe to be communication, interaction, perspective and the overall concepts of languages at work.
Never having blogged before, I don't have any other source to compare the blog to. However I do like the idea of a website where topics can be discussed and people are allowed to make the comments they want; well, as long as they're appropriate, that is. The most popular topics, I believe, are Culture, Dominican Republic, Kottack, and YouTube. The reason I think these specific topics are the most popular is due to the different coloring and sizing of these tags compared to all the other tags in the tag cloud. The 6 tags I read and reviewed were YouTube, Culture, Kottack, Race Relations, Politics and Comedy. I really like that within the different categories people post videos, articles, pictures and clips of things that catch their interests, and also caught mine. Although I haven't contributed to the discussions I favored, I find myself more interested in finding videos and articles I would also like to share with the blog community. I believe that without people contributing different material, a blog would cease to be active, since the whole point of a blog is to discuss topics that people are interested in and to find people who share similar interests. A specific post that caught my interest was in the tag “race relations”. The video focused mainly on how people deal with racism, and other strategies to help people effectively deal with the racism that offends them. This video caught my interest because racism is everywhere and although everyone gets offended when racism is directed towards them, the important thing is how they decide to deal with it. All in all, tag clouds and tags, or blogging in general seems like a very important way to communicate our ideas and opinions with other people who think similarly to us, but we might not have a chance to find out otherwise about. Although it was a little confusing at first, if you simply explore the site you'll get the hang of things quite quickly, at least for me that was the case.
Blogthropology 2.0 is the official name of the cultural anthropology group blog for ANT/BLS 3085. This group blog consists of tags which are placed in the tag cloud. The tag cloud is organized by blogs of different subject matter that are in alphabetical order. The total number of items that were in the cloud at the time that I viewed it was 208. Three of the most popular posts in the Tag Cloud were race relations, Kottak, and You Tube. On the basis of popularity, I assumed the subjects were identified from a range of least to most popular by showing different depths of the color blue or lack thereof, the typeset (such as bold), and fonts of the letters. In order to determine if my intuition was correct I looked at smaller fonts, with little depth of color, and no boldness, to anything that was the opposite of such things, and whatever was in between. Through this if found that I was correct; the tabs in the tab cloud with the most popularity had the strong characteristics from the ones that I mentioned previously (such as boldness), and the least popular subjects had the opposite characteristics.
Three additional tags I chose to read were communication, power, and religion; because I believe they affect us all within our daily lives. Communication helps us function with others in our daily lives whether that may be through a simple glance or conversation. Power determines how we function in our daily lives; all of us are governed by someone, whether that may be the government, our professors, ect. These authoritative figures set rules, and standards, and in order to remain civil we follow these rules. Religion or lack thereof affects us, because it determines the moral decisions we make throughout the day.
Tag Clouds work for the user and creator in the same ways, because these two positions relate directly, due to the fact that the user is the creator. The user is the one that posts the subject matter which creates the content in the blogs. Tag clouds help give order; they show the content in an easy and managed manner, which can only be a benefit to the user/creator. This is accomplished through alphabetical order, and distinct differences in letter forms that let the users/ creators know the least and most popular posts. With Tag Clouds the only thing users/creators should expect is content that’s orderly; having an organized systems helps post, read, and find specific information and subject matter more easily.
-Yasmin Foster
The tag cloud or label cloud - however one desires to relate to it – is for me, a pretty clever idea. Immediately upon arrival to our blog one is faced with the option of viewing topics of their choice via links or to scroll down and view the homepage. If the user were to decide that they wanted to utilize the tag cloud – as I did - they are faced with a pretty straight forward system of organization in regards to how the tags are placed within the group. The entire groups of tags are servants to the Alphabetically Ordered king, that is, they are placed in alphabetical order, irrespective of importance, popularity, or severity…etc. Popular links are denoted using a different method of organization; it is a hierarchy within a hierarchy. The method of denoting popular links was what first caught my eye. The difference in color and size of the links provoked me to probe deeper into the organization and I began resting my mouse cursor over the links until a small box appeared and it stated the amount of posts each topic contained. Those with 1 post are white and the font size is 9.0, those that have 2 posts are 10.5 in font size and a slight, but noticeable shade of blue, those links that have 3 posts are 11 in font size and are apparently darker than those links with a post count of 1, but not that much darker than those with a post count of 2. As the amount of posts increase per link, as does the size and darkness of the color blue. My discontent arose when viewing specific links and I found that the general tag cloud did not incorporate the number of comments that users left per topic, as a means of calculating popularity and interest. For example, a topic with many posts may have very little comments per post, yet still qualify as a more popular link then one that may have lesser posts but very many comments in total. It works for the user to begin a journey, but in my opinion fails to provide the user with a complete experience due to the lack of incorporation in regards to comments per post. It works for the creator because it provides a user generated content based site map, but may become bothersome for those looking for a site with a cleaner, streamlined look as the tag cloud can get bulky.
The tag cloud seems to be arranged in alphabetical order. For some reason all the topics to me seemed pretty lame, but I actually really liked a few and thought they were interesting. One of the bug ones I like was “IPod.” It clicked on it and it made me laugh because it was based on a poll taken in NYU. 20 percent of the students said they would not vote in the next election in exchange for an IPod, and two- thirds said they would renounce their vote in exchange for full tuition. Also half of the students would give up their right to vote in exchange for a million dollars. It’s stunning to see these students think that way because they are coming from one of the best universities in the world.
Another big one I liked was the white museum. It was interesting to see how racist that blog can be but in reality, it wasn’t racist. I think it was showing the social construct of how minorities were showed to be inferior to whites. Colored people can’t drink in the same fountains and whites. The Indians can’t buy the same beer as the whites. But it was also pretty funny to see the stuff white people like. They like sushi, who knew?! My favorite blog was the Crucifixion. I liked looking at the common superstition. Growing up I believed a few as well. One of the minor ones I liked was the blog henna tattoo. I think its pretty cool in a society like this, we can have cultural shops that bring back the fashion from back east. This shows how diverse NYC really is.
I am fairly new to tagging and was unaware about tag clouds on websites at all. However, after actually participating in this and using the tag cloud, I find it very useful. I like that the different topics are ordered alphabetically and that the topics with the most posts or most popular are bolder and larger. It was easy for me to spot the topics with the most information and the most popular ones. As of right now there are 1039 hits, which is a large number, way more than the hits on my blog. The three most popular posts are You tube, Kottak, and Race Relations. It is very easy to spot these three, because they are the words with the largest and boldest font. I also read three additional posts, which were Students Today, Barack Obama, and Slavery. I found all 6 posts interesting and I don’t find the more popular posts or the posts with more information any more interesting than the others. In my opinion, because the tag cloud makes the most popular topics and topics with the most posts larger and bolder, a reader may believe that these are the most important and interesting. However, that is not the case. I really liked the slavery post, but because it is not as big as some of the other topics students may overlook it. This is the only negative about tag clouds. However, I especially like that various topics are available in one concise paragraph and can be accessed easily with just one click.
I think that the tag clouds are organized in a way that is easy to understand. The list at the moment is somewhere between two hundred and three hundred. I believe that someone who is unfamiliar with “tag clouds” can understand it. Appearance of words can be seen as the how “popular” a topic is. The bigger and more in color the word is, the more frequent the topic is check out. YouTube, Culture, and Dominican Republic were the three most popular posts in the Tag Cloud. I knew that these were among the popular posts because these three stood out.
Tag Clouds work for the user because it is so user friendly and easy to use. It can be an easy source of information and or opinions on whatever the user needs. This is also true for the creator. The only difference is that the creator already knows that their topic is out there where as the user has to hope and search in order to find there information. The difference is quite minor as a matter of fact. For users, Tag Clouds meet the expectation of the user and creator by giving the both a means as to communication on just about any topic they desire.
As I look at the Tag Cloud, I think of it as a way of communication. It looks to me as a listing of chat rooms based on many different topics. Everyone and anyone are invited to join in and comment on any topic.
A Tag Cloud is good way to look at a collection of topic. It is easy to skim through the cloud because it is in alphabetical order which makes it easy to find what labels you are interested in. I came across a few topics which I have no knowledge but I was able to read or view a video to gain some understanding. I did not take the time to count the total number of topic but I would say that there are about 300 - 500 labels.
I choose to look under Race Relation, Political Systems and Stereotypes which seem to be popular post. What I found very interesting under Political Systems was the blog on the Indian Caste System. I had no idea of how critical of a situation the lower class citizens of India are conform to. They have a greater gap between rich and poor then the United States. Looking at Indian Caste System makes me glad to be an American. I also took a look at Comedy, Barack Obama and Wealth. I was happy to see under the Barack Obama tag, Barack Obama’s A More Perfect Union speech. I am probably the last person in America to see the speech but better late than never. It was great speech on race relation in America.
Tag clouds a great for both the user and the creator. It is a great way so share information and get feed back about deferent topics. You can see what type of audience the creator is trying to generate by the topic in the tag cloud.
The tag cloud is organized in such away in which it allows people to read & freely speak there mind on any topic that may interest them. It’s easier to skim through it and just choose rather than every topic being jumbled together. It allows us, the students to create new ideas that can be tagged into new categories. It’s user friendly. It allows everyone to freely choose the topics that spark self interest.
The 3 most popular posts I chose were: race relations, Youtube and kottak. Those topics seemed interesting to me. It’s not surprising that Youtube is one of the most popular. Youtube is an important part of web 2.0 and is highly popular with my generation. Pretty much everyone uses it these days especially with the built in Youtube features with cell phones ( I-phone, Blackberrys etc) . It was obvious they were the most popular because they were in bold and the font was bigger than the less than popular post.
Tag clouds work for the user and the creator. It benefits everyone and builds communications between the user and the creator. The creator gets a chance to see which of his or her topics are getting the most attention. It gives the creator a chance to talk more about a topic or an idea that the audience finds to be more appealing. If the user sees more of what they like then they are guaranteed to ask more questions, post ideas and visit the blog more often.
The first evident thing is that the Tags Clouds follow an alphabet order. Those that are bolded are in my point of view the most important. The blog is constructed such as anyone from any part of the world could find itself. I picked YOU TUBE, STEREOTYPES, AGRICULTURE as my popular tags and family, immigrant and marriage as the tags of my interest. The videos about stereotypes were really interesting especially the difference of everyday life between men and women. I also proudly chose agriculture because it is the premium wealthy source of my country. From traditional to mechanized agriculture we can see a lot of positives changes. Another important label cloud for me was family. Every one of us, even this is a father, mother, uncle, cousin considers that person as his “mentor” or the “one I want to be in the future”. They mean everything to us .another good point is, how amazing YOU TUBE allow us to share our ideas, creations, thoughts and reflex ions no matter ambiguous or easy they are. In my state of immigrant, I could not ignore this phenomenon. Videos show how some people would do everything to leave their country for some others places that would offer better life condition.
It took me a little while, but finally I got more familiarized with the terms.blogthropoly2.0 is something really new for me because it is different from the education system of my country. But, I think I am ready for the challenge to have fun and get some new experiences at the same time.
xiang Wang
ant1001 XZ24C 4:10 class
The tag clouds are being organized in an alphabetical order the most popular topics are being emboldened. Therefore students or viewers could choose the hot topics quickly. I did not like some of the categories because they are very vague and imprecise. Sometimes some themes of the post are interrelated. In the other hand, some of the categories are very precise to the current events and allows the students or viewers to “surf” precisely in the blogs.
I’ve choose agriculture, Music, Stereotype as my 3 popular clouds. Firstly they are all emboldened that shows that the author wants people to bring their attention to those topics. And overall all of those three categories are very popular. In agriculture I like the video concerning the American diet disorder. In the video they are showing the practice of the MSU farm which are shared by people who are member of the farms and they will get the seasonal local products. In the Music cloud I was surprised to find Kanye West reference to religion in his music. In the stereotype cloud the Asian comedian is totally amazing and he tells the truth about the American stereotype concerning the Asians.
In general, the Tag clouds are working for both the viewers and the posters. It expend the communication between students and others concerning subjects that are fascinating. Some of the posts amazed me because I have never thought of those subjects or things. After seeing some of the post of the blog, viewers could be inspired to post further videos or stories concerning the viewed cloud.
The tag cloud seems to target today’s most controversial issues. The cloud is organized in alphabetical order, with the most popular choices bolded. There are about 160-200 items in the tag clod. The tag cloud works for both, users and creators because the creator has the opportunity to speak on various aspects of a certain issue, while the user has the chance to open their world and become knowledgeable in a subject they might be too afraid to confront. As I skimmed the tag cloud, I was immediately attracted to the largest word available, “race relations.” I found it interesting and extremely compelling that the article directly compared race relations to the campaign and the constitution, rather than just deal with the everyday arguments surrounding it. The blog entitled “stereotypes” also greatly interested me, since there is much to be said about every race. While some argue that a few stereotypes are based on facts, it still represents the ignorance and intolerance of today’s society. Some may argue that stereotypes are linked with culture, which was another one of the more popular blogs. As I was reading the “culture” blog, I came across an extremely controversial article that labeled women as sex objects, whether they like it or not. Rapists were said to just be following their natural instincts over women who are “teasing” them. The blog entitled “immigration” directly related to me, since I am not a natural born citizen of this country. Many times, immigrants are seen as leeches that feed off the American economy and overcrowd the country. This judgment has been following immigrants for centuries. The blog however, exposes the child labor and outsourcing problems that immigration has sprung. I was also interested in the blog “white museum” because it touched on reverse racism, and I realized upon clicking the link that it could be an offensive blog to some. The blog on superstitions was intriguing because I don’t necessarily believe in commercial magic (David Blane, Sylvia Brown), but I do believe in the witch doctors of many third world countries.
I believe that the clouds are organized in order by the alphabet. It seems to me that the most popular tag clouds are the bolded and huge font significations. The first blog I took a look at was about family. I can strongly agree that families do come a long way from when I parents first met until they decided to have us and complete a family with love and care. I also took a look at the blog about race. I can say from this blog that race is truly expressed well enough in the United States. Although today you can signify race sometimes by what people are wearing. Some people also signify race by a person’s attitude or how they go through a conversation. The blog that I like the most is ESPN. I am portrait of sport. I eat and sleep sports. I agree with the blog that ALI is the greatest fighter and that there will no one like him. He has a lot of importance for being the greatest and an African American. There cannot be anyone like him because he has something that many people cannot have and that would intelligence, determination and expertise in what he does. He broke the spirit of the greatest boxers in his time and I do not think that anyone today would be able to beat him if he were still boxing. To me the closet person that would come to greatness next to ALI would be Floyd Mayweather.
The blogging experience to me is great and if I were to own a computer I would actually post everyday because I love the thrill to know what people think and how these aspects can change culture and society all around the world. The creators of the blog know exactly what they had in mind. The thrill to not only tell people what is going on in life as a whole but the thrill to actually read about what someone is thinking.
The Tag Clouds are organized alphabetically. Those that are more popular can range from blogs that are in bold or color letters. They are organized by a subject that has more information about it. There are approximately 200 blogs. The posts that I chose were the Dominican Republic, Stereotypes and language. I chose these posts because they seem appealing and caught my attention once I went into the website. These posts were really interesting and I read the comments that other people thought of the blog. I also posted a comment leaving my opinion of the blog.
I think that what makes Tag Clouds work is that the creator felt as if by posting the blog he or she will make a difference, or make people realize something obvious but that they did not want to accept, or maybe learn something completely new. The users go to blogs because either it caught their eye or they were curious about the blog. There is a different for those who create the tag clouds and those who use it. The difference can be that the creator realized something that is not obvious to human beings or that he/she felt that the information they know is important for other people to know. I think the creators want to see the opinion and reactions of society meaning the users. Users participate in these blogs because they have an interest in it or they feel as if they have something to contribute to it.
Crystal Peart
September 4, 2008
ANT1001 – TV24A
Prof. Gaunt
ASSIGNMENT#2
When I first came on this site, I almost didn’t know what to do first. It was so many different things for me to click on that I had to pace myself. In all, I counted 204 items in the Tag Cloud. The thing that first intrigued me about the page is that the layout is black. Many websites either have a standard white background so the fact that this was the total opposite interested me. I also liked the fact that every item in the label cloud has a different size and color. As far as organization goes, I’m guessing that the ones that are colored are the ones that are more common to everyone. Perhaps they are the most visited. The posts that stood out to me the most were Youtube and Kottak.
I noticed youtube first of course because that is a site that I visit quite often. Not to mention it was one of the biggest items in the cloud. I realized that they had a clip for a show titled "Big Love" that I watched once on tv. I didn't care for it much though. Kottak also stood out to me because that is the author of the book in which we are reading titled “Mirror for Humanity.”
The thing that I believe makes Tag Clouds work for users is that it is an outlet for finding out information. Some of the posts aren't as informative as others but you still gain some sort of knowledge. Not only is that a reason but you can also express and share your ideas and viewpoints with others.
I think the 3 of the most popular posts in the tag cloud are Kottak, race relations, and youtube, because these are being emboldened. And I chose anthropology, language, and family as the tag of my interest. The tag clouds are being organized in an alphabetical order. I think there are 150-200 items in the cloud. In the each tag cloud there are posts in other blogs and linked with animation, pictures and youtube. For example in the Kottak tag, there are chapter quiz in Kottak book and opinions about Kottak book likes how to use this text book for studying anthropology. in addition on a language tag, there are story connected with Kottak text book; Language and communication and article of the new york times; Languages die, but not their last words. The tag can help for both users and creators because users can read and watch interesting and educational information connected with the thesis of the tag and comment about that article, and also creators can get a help form the comments which have opinions from readers. The tag and comments can make communicate between creators and readers. In these points, this blog is very helpful to study because it combined with article, opinions and videos. Some specific concepts are difficult to understand only by book but in this blog we can learn also by visual, auditory tools.
The purpose for a tag cloud is to serve as a navigational tool for bloggers. It’s like a file cabinet for different kinds of documents and information. So it makes sense that these tags in this particular tag cloud are sorted by alphabetical order. For choosing the first most popular tag, I choose “Dominican Republic” because I was curious about why it was bolded, for my intuitive tells me that all the bold tags are either important issues or popular ones. The reading that struck me the most was under a un-bolded tag in the title “NYU Student Would Trade the right to Vote for an Ipod Touch or Full Tuition”. I think this is a very interesting survey that may reflect the true attitude college students have for voting – that it is not important. I’m especially startled to see the contrasting value between one-year right to vote in exchange for an ipod, and life-long right to vote in exchange for one year’s tuition. An ipod is worth about $300, and one year’s tuition in NYU is about $30,000. I think college students are an essential group of people who ought to vote since we will be entering the society governed by the people we choose. I am not a U.S. citizen, but I wonder suppose this survey was taken from my home country Taiwan, which has relatively higher voting rate than the U.S, how would my college student fellows respond?
I think a tag cloud works for both the user and creator. As a frequent blog reader myself, I prefer those that has sorted topics so I can target the information I want. Tag clouds works to the advantage of creators because he/she can visually suggest reader which topics to focus on.
Jocelyn Barlan
Anthropology 3085
September 6, 2008 (September 4, 2008)
Learning About Tag Clouds:
Tag clouds are index words that assist publisher and visitor finding articles or blog entry they would like to view or read. It is usually located on center top so user can skim through the list and click on the index that only interest them. It is an efficient and effective way for both creator and user because not only it saved time locating information but also it assists other blog users in linking one blog article to their blog site which assists in creating an online community.
The blogthropology 2.0 currently has two hundred seven tags and it is listed alphabetically. The popular tags were highlighted in blue or purple, in bold font and the text size is bigger. The three most popular tags are youtube, politics and kottak. Each tag at least have 30 or more post and you will notice that some of the post have comments on them which meant that people read the article or view the video and leave their insights.
At first I was kind in shock trying to figure out about blogthropology because of the all new information. Moreover I just could not pass that little intelligence test “sign in”. :-) Once when i passed it, i started exploring label clouds. The first post I went for, was Barack Obama. When you live with a very strong supporter of Barack under the same roof, you cannot not to think about him, not even for a minute. :-) After checking out the first three posts, I went to explore the ones I have never heard about, such as Kara Walker, David Blaine's Magic and Desi. I really like the fact that you have so many information on one place, and more you explore, wider range of information is offered to you. Because of the alphabetical order, it is very easy to find topic you are looking for.
When I read the syllabus of this class, I was like, o no, not something like Facebook because i dislike it so much. What i like about blogthropology is that you can still interact with people and share thoughts, but the main focus in not on you, but on the topic itself. I was on Facebook for about five days and I hated it VERY much. I am usually not person who likes to blog. The only blogging I've ever done was posting comments on my country's newspaper. The reason I felt that I need to say something was because I could read about topics that supposed to happened in Manhattan or in US, but there will be no new in US news.
Also when blogging, I recognized that people are so free when writing blogs, especially if the are anonymous. however, there is a dark side of blogging too. On occasions, you find a blog with such a disturbing content. You can see the really nature of people and how do they think. One of the example is my country. Sometimes, I am so ashamed seeing that people with whom I share the country are so narrow minded.
In the end, does the black background of Blogthropology has to do anything with the Energy-saving Google Black screen version – Blackle?
Eileen Burton
ANT 1001
Section XZ24C
Professor Gaunt
Tag Clouds
From what I have seen tag clouds seem to be organized in alphabetical order, in different fonts and colors depending I guess on popularity. I see some topics that stand out in big fonts in a royal blue color, other topics vary in size and other colors like white, and different shades of blue. A tag cloud is a random bunch of words grouped together, each word represents a topic. If you point your mouse on a topic, it tells you how many posts it has. Then when you click on the topic, you can read some information about it and you can post your comments, issues, concerns and opinions about that topic like a blog. I have found that there are about 200 topics in the tag cloud. The three most popular ones on the tag cloud were: Race Relations, Stereotypes and Kottak. The other three I chose were: Wealth, IPod, and Aborigines. I found them to be interesting topics as I scanned through the tag cloud. The first topic I chose under wealth spoke about Warren Buffet being the richest man in the United States and donating his money to charity. The second topic I found interesting was the topic on IPods. I was amazed to find out that some students would trade their right to vote for a year in order to get a free IPod Touch or free college tuition, there were even some who would give up their voting rights completely for 1 million dollars. The third topic I chose was on Aborigines and it was about the extinction of some languages. There are many other topics I found interesting as I was scanning the tag cloud and read some of the comments students wrote on some topics. Before this I was aware or blogging, but I did not get the gist of what it really was. To me at first it was confusing and still is, but as time goes on I will get used to it and express some of my thoughts on certain topics I find interesting.
Yuliya Sauchyk
Sep 3, 2008 (Due: Sep 4)
Ant 3085/ Gaunt
2nd year (minor)
I have never known about blogs before. When I looked at the page I realized that there are many different clouds which alphabetically organized. Currently there are more then two hundred tags in the cloud. The side is easy to use because, by looking at the tag, user can predict what kind of information you can find. In my opinion, the most popular and important tags are big and bright.
For me Tag Cloud looks like newspaper where in front page you see list of articles. Hundreds of people post everything what they want say about particular topic. User can post a comment to any blog he likes. Creator has more freedom because he has a power directly to participate in “bloging world”. I am as a user can only post a comment on any topic which already exists. Probably, I don’t know a lot about blogging, but I thing it will be good experience for me. After reading the blogs I fingered out that Tag clouds are very useful because people can share all kind of different information with others. Tag clouds are the way to search for blogs that are interesting for user. I read six posts from the Tag Cloud: You Tube, Kottak, Ethnography, Family, Immigrants, and Marriage.
In conclusion, I want to say thank you to people who came out with idea of Tag Clouds. It is a very useful resource for studying.
Tag Clouds confounding? Somehow. Interesting? YES. Surprising? Very much so. In general, when we are first introduced to something new there is a fifty-fifty chance to weather like it or the opposite, dislike it. At first glance tag clouds seem to give a nice mixed feeling of some confusion, nervousness, perplexity but on the other hand, once you concentrate you realize to be more confident in browsing around. Strange but it actually becomes one of the few cases when the assignment says to ‘skim through’ and you actually ‘look more in depth’. It instinctively convinces you to like it, spend more time reading and thanks to technology, watching also. The direct relation between the terms of the tag cloud, professor’s posts, videos and comments makes it easier for the truth to come out. The truth is a relative concept, as mostly everything else, so I would like to specify that by that I mean the exchange of our opinions and ideas can pass the boundaries of a strict assignment-grade relationship.
Of course it is expected for someone to check the bolded words first. Having the advantage, by which I actually mean disadvantage, of writing after almost everyone else, I should be correct to state that the bolded words, with a bigger font and dark blue colored, are the ones that users looked up more frequently. No wonder my eye caught YOU TUBE first. Under it there is a video posted “Global Family” which I found not only informative but funny and appealing as well. As a result of it, afterwards I looked up ‘family’ and a video with two sequences from HBO’s Big Love came up. Between the two I loved “Global Family” but ‘Big Love” ,or better say the message it reflects, polygamy, is not my favorite. Finding what I like or what I am against of, and having it as easy as one click away to express my ideas about it, made me appreciate Blogthropology. Getting back to the fifty-fifty, I could definitely admit chances for students to like it increased considerably.
In addition to the below, just for the purpose of mentioning everything asked, i would like to add that there are around two hundred to two hundred and six labels in the tag cloud listed alphabetically. Being so makes it comfortable for the user to recognize a word s/he might be currently interested in.
The tag clouds are arranged in alphabetical order starting with a. It can also be bolded, bigger, have a more prominent standout color, and can be underlined. I thought peter's map was a good addition to the cloud tags because i find it interesting. I've never actually thought of the map as upside down. The next one would be racism and how it still goes on today, and we probably dont have to look outside our doors to find.
The tag cloud seems to be organized by size and color. As soon as the page loaded up, it seemed as though the larger, bolder, deeply shaded tags were the ones that had more comments posted in them. By highlighting the tags, I proved myself right, as a note showing the number of comments posted appeared. The size of the words and shades of blue did indeed determine the number of posts the topic received, with small white topics had few to none, while large blue ones had several. I used this method to choose the most popular posts.
Race relations and the Dominican Republic were two of the three most popular tags, containing 13 and 14 posts respectively. So not surprisingly, I found some of the most interesting and entertaining posts within these tags. 1 of the posts came from professor G herself, speaking about Barack Obama and a situation in which his words were taken out of context and misconstrued (http://anthropology1001.blogspot.com/search/label/race%20relations). Another favorite of mine is a post in which someone youtubed a clip of the popular television show "scrubs", shedding light on the issue of cultural background (http://anthropology1001.blogspot.com/search/label/Dominican%20Republic).
This cloud style of organization is perfect for readers, who can easily find information or a good read simply by clicking on a topic, but also locate specific posts by looking at the different shaded topics in the cloud. Its intuitive and extremely easy to figure out, which always allows for new users to come in and join effortlessly.
--sfortilus
This is Eugene Khefets from your Social Anthropology Sect. XZ24C. This is the same post just to let you know it's me talking.
The tag clouds are arranged in alphabetical order starting with a. It can also be bolded, bigger, have a more prominent standout color, and can be underlined. I thought peter's map was a good addition to the cloud tags because i find it interesting. I've never actually thought of the map as upside down. The next one would be racism and how it still goes on today, and we probably dont have to look outside our doors to find.
I have never posted in a blog before or used tags or tag clouds, but it definitely seems like a helpful tool for this course and for the future, as technology is on the rise. The tag cloud seems to be listed in alphabetical order and there is about 301 tags, at the time of my viewing. The most popular tags are the ones that are the biggest, the boldest, and in the darkest font, such as YouTube, race relations, and kottak. The less popular tags are smaller and in white font. This includes tags such as AAA, Alan Jackson, and Aborigines.
Tag clouds are a good idea because this way, you can find whatever you want to look at, rather easily. It shows you quickly which sections might be of interest to you so you know which ones you'd like to view. I think one downfall is if the tag is too general. Sometimes, you can be fooled and think that you are going to get one thing, but instead you end up with something else. For instance, the tag, "Irish," could be misleading. It is such a broad topic so you could expect something, but not have your expectations met. However, I think it is definitely better to have a tag cloud then not. With a tag cloud, you can atleast understand the general topic that you will be viewing.
Also, I never even though to use the find command (control + f) until someone had mentioned it on here and in class. I use it all the time and it just never occurred to me to use it to find the tag I wanted.
Finally, one of the tags that I clicked on was "Jon Stewart," and it was him talking about Sara Palin, who seems to be the topic of many debates. I was suprised that this tag was not that popular because you think with everything that is going on, everyone would want to hear about her. However, with a tag such as "Jon Stewart," if you don't know who he is, why would you click on it? I only clicked on it because I knew of him and his show and know that he is generally funny. I didn't know that it would be exclusively on the election and people's views of Palin.
-Lorin Clarke
I have never posted in a blog before or used tags or tag clouds, but it definitely seems like a helpful tool for this course and for the future, as technology is on the rise. The tag cloud seems to be listed in alphabetical order and there is about 301 tags, at the time of my viewing. The most popular tags are the ones that are the biggest, the boldest, and in the darkest font, such as YouTube, race relations, and kottak. The less popular tags are smaller and in white font. This includes tags such as AAA, Alan Jackson, and Aborigines.
Tag clouds are a good idea because this way, you can find whatever you want to look at, rather easily. It shows you quickly which sections might be of interest to you so you know which ones you'd like to view. I think one downfall is if the tag is too general. Sometimes, you can be fooled and think that you are going to get one thing, but instead you end up with something else. For instance, the tag, "Irish," could be misleading. It is such a broad topic so you could expect something, but not have your expectations met. However, I think it is definitely better to have a tag cloud then not. With a tag cloud, you can atleast understand the general topic that you will be viewing.
Also, I never even though to use the find command (control + f) until someone had mentioned it on here and in class. I use it all the time and it just never occurred to me to use it to find the tag I wanted.
Finally, one of the tags that I clicked on was "Jon Stewart," and it was him talking about Sara Palin, who seems to be the topic of many debates. I was suprised that this tag was not that popular because you think with everything that is going on, everyone would want to hear about her. However, with a tag such as "Jon Stewart," if you don't know who he is, why would you click on it? I only clicked on it because I knew of him and his show and know that he is generally funny. I didn't know that it would be exclusively on the election and people's views of Palin.
-Lorin Clarke
When I saw Tag Cloud’s page, first of all I skimmed through those items that are bolded. Some of them have also capital letters. These items (for example, Kottak and YouTube) are supposed to be most popular. Besides, all topics in Tag Cloud are arranged in alphabetical order. So, it is not hard to find out topic that is more interested to reader. I looked through Dominican Republic, ethnography, stereotypes, youtube and few others. Most of the topics contain interesting information and supporting video materials.
I knew that I was supposed to write a comment. So I spent some time to find out the link where I could leave a comment. The last thing I had to guess is how to write a comment. I realized then that I had to register prior to leave a comment. Every blogger could use his/her real name or nickname. Both choices have obvious advantages and disadvantages. I decided to use my nickname.
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