Marissa Kempton

Professor Cindy Kopp

Writing With Technologies
February 16, 2017
What is a Blog? Open Book Quiz

Note: you will be graded on the thoroughness and thoughtfulness with which you answer each
question. You may answer the questions underneath the questions. Please indent your responses
to make it easier for me to read. When youre done, you will be posting this on your weebly site
as a document on a Standard page called Research. I will give you more detailed instructions
in class.

1) What do HTML & CSS stand for and what do they mean? Offer an example or two.
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and it is the code for writing a web page
that can be displayed in a Web browser. CCS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and its a way of
specifying how the Web browser should style or present pages that are marked up in HTML.
For example,
2) What does RSS stand for? What does it mean/do?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it is a version of a web site encoded in a
way that allows computers to easily manipulate the content.
3) What is Web 2.0? What distinguishes Web 2.0 from the first wave of web developers?
Please offer some examples and explain why/how these are considered Web 2.0.
Web 2.0 is meant to characterize a second generation of Web sites. Web 2.0 develops
services that allow users to share their own content, whereas the first wave of web developers
focused largely on publishing content. Websites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter,
etc. are considered Web 2.0 because these websites allow users to share their own content.
4) Please list and explain the 3 different types of blogs discussed by Rettberg. Explain what the
defining feature of each are and how they are distinct from one another. What category do you
think our niche blog fall into and why?
Personal blogs was the first type of blog that Rettberg discussed and used the example
Dooce.com. Personal blogs can be used as journals or diaries. In many cases, the primary
subject of a personal blog is the writers life, often times only meant as a way of communicating
with close friends.
Filter blogs was the second type of blog that Rettberg discussed and used the example,
Kottke.org. Unlike personal blogs, filter blogs record the writers experiences and finds on the
web as opposed to logging the bloggers offline life. They filter the web from the bloggers own
point of view.
Topic-driven blogs was the third and final type of blog that Rettberg discussed and used
the example, Dailykos.com. Topic-driven blogs about issues that interest the writer. They dont
limit their blogging to a pre-defined topic. These topic-centered blogs share newly discovered
ideas and information with their readers, usually providing links to more information. These
blogs dont always have to be individually owned, but they can be run collaboratively as well.
I think our niche blogs will fall under topic-driven blogs because we have to pick what
our niche blogs are going to be about, therefore basing our blog on a specific topic.
5) From where does the word Blog derive? Why is this significant?
 Blog is a contraction of the words web and log, with the basic definition being a log that
is kept on the web. It originally comes from the practice of measuring speed by throwing a log
attached to a rope overboad and counting how many knots in the rope passed through a sailors
hands in 30 seconds, and these readings would be entered into a logbook. Weblogs have retained
the chronological organization of the ships logbook.
6) Rettberg defines blogging by discussing the phenomenon in terms of genre and medium.
Please explain why she does this and how it helps us understand the genre of blogging and how
blogging functions as a medium.
She talks about this in terms of genre and medium because people oftentimes are unsure
about what to categorize a blog as. She goes into detail about different types of mediums and
genres, but continues to talk about how blogging functions as a medium. Her writing helped me
understand this concept when I realized that there were different genres of blogs out there.