Podcast UHA

My Podcast idea is to speak with two-three University of Hartford students and get their feelings about the construction of the new freshman dorm. Do these students feel uninformed, left out, or misinformed. I plan to get varios opinions and responses then try to shed some light on the situation with a review.

i think i want to do my podcast about something to do with the benefits the body recieves from drinking the recommended amount of water per day or about the clean water project in west hartford. the reason i am considering these two topics is because i have recently written reports on them and i discovered a few interesting facts.

i think it will be easy to incoporate other people's voices into a podcast about either of these topics by allowing someone to state their opinion.

Podcast: A whole new world.

For my podcast, I will be reviewing a few new Web 2.0 services that have been talked about recently in technology news. I will be speaking about these products and services, also giving examples of how it has a positive effect on media consumption and productivity.

Podcast ideas?

I am still a little unsure about what to do my podcast on. I am hoping to go with something a little more fun than "serious." There is a possibility that I may do one on new and upcoming music artists - i have a few friends that are in the process of working their way up in the music industry, and it might be fun to talk about the new bands.
Or, in light of the holiday season, it might be fun to do an interview with a guy and a girl about shopping for each other - that can sometimes be a really funny conversation. We all know how many difficulties and anxieties come about when all this comes around.
OR, if I lean towards "serious" I may discuss women's rights and the political issues that have recently been on the rise.

Dynamis United F.C. Podcast

For my podcast I will be focusing on introducing Dynamis United F.C. to all of you. Dynamis United F.C. is a premier soccer club that operates in the Boston area. Our home office is in Somerville, Massachusetts, approximately 2-3 miles outside Boston. Our home field and indoor training facilities run out of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. For the podcast, I will introduce Dynamis and give a history of our organization as well as a reason for the organization birth. This 2006-2007 calendar year will mark Dynamis' second full year as a premier multi-team organization, however its roots are traced back a decade. I am affiliated with Dynamis United and sit on the board of Directors and I am also a coach. We were previously known as Boston Lightning, later changed to Boston Blast, and now we are Dynamis United, a club that promotes sportsmanship, personal character, excellence in athletics and academics, and the shaping of the individual and not only the athlete. I will touch upon our mission, our goals, our beliefs, and our successes and accomplishments in this podcast. My voice will be the primary voice. The secondary voice will either be in interviewing George Saropoulos the founder and Director of coaching at Dynamis, interviews with current players, or past players that have been involved with Dynamis throughout its transition from one club to the next. I basically want to share our philosophy with you and get you to understand the importance of our organization on a level that doesn't simply focus on soccer.

jazzy mcjazzersons

I'll be doing my podcast on jazz since 1960, and how the changes in jazz have influenced mainstream groups such as The Bad Plus and Medeski, Martin, and Wood. I already have a decent outline that includes an explanation of what jazz was in the 60's, how it started to transform into free jazz and fusion, and the return to a more grounded art form all before 1980. I still need to do a little more research regarding the 80's till today, but that's when I anticipate my special guest will come in- I've asked a few of my friends in the jazz department if they'd be interested in helping me out, but I haven't gotten a definite yet. But that's where I'm at in the podcasting world.

My very own Podcast

For my podcast, I am planning to do something about Ireland. My honors thesis is about the relationship between langauge and identity in Ireland, so I am going to reuse a lot of this information. It will be interesting though to put what is now a 17-page research paper into such a different, and brief, format.

In part of my thesis, I am comparing Irish literature from different times over the past century. I think that in my podcast, I will try to similarly compare traditional and modern music. Just like the language is changing rapidly, I think the music scene probably is too.

The bulk of my podcast will probably be historical, even though the thesis is mainly philosophy, because I feel that many people don't know very much about the history. But I'll try not to make it a history lecture. I think I will also include a few minutes of some background information in the philosophy of language. I wish I could get an interview with an Irish person, but I will probably just fill the interview requirement with another student's opinion.

My podcast

For my podcast I am pretending that I am making the podcast for Amazon.com and having an interview with the "internet marketing director"- my suitemate. In this podcast we are going to discuss the imaginary falling online sales that are happening while hits to the site are steady and even increasing in some months. The interview will discuss how Amazon.com plans to research the falling online sales, how they are finding out what exactly is happening and then how to fix the issues.

I decided to do this topic because I am very interested in marketing research and plus this was an issue I had to research for my marketing research class in the form of an essay test. I thought this would be a great topic to write a podcast about since I have some background iformation to start on and it is a topic that interests me greatly.

Podcast examples

I searched for podcasts on podcast.net and I wasn't very successful at first. The site provided many topics such as sports, fashion, politics, etc. some podcasts are good to listen to but others are totally bogus. I think, as with Youtube.com, that some content is worth listening to/watching, and others are completely hiasterical only because they have no relevance whatsoever. One podcast I fould was called Lipstick Aliens and was just rediculous, but I think that when you just search sports for example, you can come up with alot of good podcasts that keep you posted on latest scored and results of your favorite teams. When I searched sports I found a podcast that boradcasted the World Cup final in Germany. I thought that was pretty interesting.

The Frusration Edition

internet explorer crashde about 47 times so i didnt actually get to listen to much...
but im leaning towards something music based that incorporates some kind of history or chronicle of devleopment of a certain genre

i would have the most luck with a newer form of music, electronica, since it is still developing in ways and the creation of that music is congruent with teh processes of creating a podcast....

podcasting

One of the palces I found podcasts was www.podcastalley.com. This site lists organizes podcasts under different genres which is helpful. On the right sidebar is a list of popular podcasts such as top 10 podcasts, 5 featured podcasts along with new podcasts.

Podscasts and blogs in buisness

When I first started searching for podcasts to listen to I didnt have so much luck at first. The first site I went to was podcast.net and wasnt too thrilled. It has a huge variety of podcasts and it was very easy to find any different topic I was interested in. In this way, of searching for podcasts, it was a great resource...for a first step. After searching a few of the them I found that most of the podcasts that this site links to is from the average joe speaking about anything they want to just to have fun. For certain issues, this is fine but I was looking for some more professional type podcasts. Alright, not so helpful. Moving on then.
Once again, Yahoo.com comes to my rescue (since I didnt find much on google.com search) with their specific podcast search. (Yahoo is quickly becoming a wonderful resource for this class that I think I shall continue to use in the future.) So, I used the podcast search and searched for marketing, something I am passionate about. Alright so marking podcasts. Not surprisingly, I found a huge amount of podcasts about this subject and one that jumped out at me was a series called "Marketing Edge" about anything and everything about all types of marketing. It is described as "Short, crisp, insightful advice on marketing, business processes, and societal change. From brand creation to lead generation, public relations to podcasting, all with a twist of humor and dollop of common sense. Hosted by a former television anchor and press secretary of the Republican National Committee, Albert Maruggi." So I tried it and I found that the most recent episode is about "The great Blog debate" where the main person and another were debating if blogs are appropriate in the work place and should buisnesses have them- which is what we just discussed in class and read. It was a great podcast that debated both sides with evidence and without yelling. I really enjoyed this podcast and I have a feeling that I will continue to listen even if it is not a topic about blogs and just about marketing in general.

http://podcasts.yahoo.com/series?s=89d0bbc5b3ab5086dc53f369146aa715

pods that happen to cast...

I've never really dealt with podcasts before, only once when my friend told me to listen to one he made. This form of media is 100% new to me, and in listening to samples of different podcasts, I find LOTS of variety, which is probably why this assignment is so open-ended.

Anyway, I went to the podcast.net website and looked under the catagory of soliloquies, and I found one that seemed to have an interesting premis- the episode of the Quirky Nomads podcast, "The story of a family that said, "If the Republicans get any worse, we're moving to Canada." And then? They really did" entitled "Juice" posted November 7th started out with an answering machine supposedly donated to a thrift store.. it was funny at the beginning, but I became bored with it. The link is http://www.podcast.net/show/457.

Another one i listened to was more of a radio show put on by a guy in Texas entitled Terrapin Radio-http://www.podcast.net/show/71705 I listened to this for a while, mostly because it was music I've not heard before, and honestly, I'd rather listen to music than to people talk.
We'll see where this goes....

Free Talk Live: Libertarian Podcast

This is a pretty interesting podcast. This is a full production libertarian radio show that isn't syndicated in many places, so they use podcasting as a method of getting their content out to the masses. This works really well if you have very limited budget to work with.

Free Talk Live
- RSS
- iTunes

PodcastAlley is a great podcast directory. Free Talk Live was voted 2nd best for the month of November.

Enjoy!

Podcasting

I found a website called podcast.net, this site has an assortment of different subjects that involve podcasting. One postcast in particular teaches you how to speak different languages such as spanish.

Link- http://www.podcast.net/cat/49

Podcasts

It seems that podcasts are a really easy way to get a wide variety of information, especially on topics that aren't usually covered in the mainstream media. Here are a few I found through Podcast.net:

This is really dorky: Theories about the TV show Lost. http://www.podcast.net/show/88580

A podcast of a local magazine, OnMilwaukee: http://www.podcast.net/show/20836

Radio show from NPR: http://www.podcast.net/show/64081

All unsigned new music: http://www.podcast.net/show/65817

Independent UK politics: http://www.podcast.net/show/21320

Podcast from a website, www.FoodPhilosophy.com, about food: http://www.podcast.net/show/64959

Podcasting Resources

I've posted a few links below that will allow you to podcast.

Audacity (Direct download link to the Windows version of Audacity)
VLC Media Player (Direct download link to Windows version - this plays anything)
Lame Encoder (Direct download link to the encoder - used when you export MP3 from Audacity)

If anyone has any questions, IM (suddenfalter) or email me (caffrey[at]hartford[dot]edu).

Blog Analysis

One of the blog analysis topics I am going to speak about is its emphasis. Throughout the three blogs I researched I looked at what they emphasize on and what is important to them. Do corporations really take away freedom of speech as it says in the book or it doesn't? When CEOs blog what they talk about and why? These are some of the important concepts that will be answered in the emphasis section of my blog analysis.

Open for Discussion

From reading these posts and looking at some of the blogs, one thing that strikes me is commenting. The Google blog does not allow comments. The McDonald's blog does. How are you all responding to that? Does that make people seem more open, and do you like that? Or do you understand why someone would pull back and not open themselves up too much?

Just a thought you might use in your analysis.

Design and Credibility: Symbiosis

I believe that consistency in design and information structure is very important for corporate blogs to maintain. When putting together a corporate portfolio, whether it is online or hard copy, it is necessary to keep the same design.

Credibility online has been questioned in the recent future. One way that people get into trouble with credibility is with design. Take for example, if Google’s blog was black and gloomy with dark colors, and dark links and images, it would give off a completely different persona. Even if the content of the blog postings were exactly the same, it would lack credibility.

One think to think about when creating a corporate blog for the first time is what type of graphics, logos, or themes do you currently have? If your website is laid out a certain way, try to mimic that type of layout on your blog.

Advertising in Blogs

One category I would like to analyze in corporate blogging is advertising. Some blogs like google's discuss new additions and features to the comapny that customers might be interested in. This is a highly effective form of advertising because blogging is extremly cheap and makes the customer feel as if they are on the "inside". Instead of hearing about new company features from TV, radio or magazines that are full of gimmicks the customer can learn about them from the source in a straight forward manner. Although the blog can be acessed by anyone I think it gives the customer a sense that they are reading exclusive information not available to the general public because information in a blog isn't just thrown at us like advertisments in other media are. The customer has to make the first move to look up the company website and the blog so the comapny knows any information contained in the blog is probably going to be read by an audience that has some interest in the company already.

Blogs are more than just text

One of the categories of analysis that I will be talking about in my memo will include the design of the blogs and comparing them. Since I will discuss the blogs of internet browsers (Yahoo.com, Google.com and Ask.com) I had previously expected that the blogs would all be somewhat different, maybe have a dorky internet nerd type of look to them and instead I have found that it is not true. Especially for Google.com more so than the others.
The official Google.com blog is straight text, white background and the only color or picture is the Google logo on the left hand corner and another version of the google logo in one of the entries. Besides these small pictures there is nothing else
Due to the boring design of this blog I almost feel like I dont even want to read it. Reading straight text without anything to liven the experience makes it dull. The least they can do is add a color background! Even the way the text is placed makes the blog entries look as if its one long, huge essay by one person. Yes there are bold headings and lines between each entry but they are all the same thing with no difference between them.
In comparison Ask.com has pictures, stories, and lively stories that are much more interesting. Yes, Ask.com only has a boring white background also but there are at least other items to catch your eye besides lines and lines and lines of pure text. They even have pictures of dogs in customes and make fun of the people who would torture their animals in this way (there is no reason to put an angel costume on a dog.) Also, the text on Ask.com's blog has some other justification besides just left and they even use bold text in posts and not just in the title.

Links:
http://blog.ask.com/
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

One category for my blog analysis

As I mentioned in my previous blog I will be conducting some research on the social networking site known as Myspace.com. I will analyze three bands to view the similarities and differences of their sites. In one of the categories of my memo I will focus on the difference in postings and the number of times each of their songs are/were played compared to the number of times their page has been viewed. Myspace offers a number of times each page has been viewed, whether it be a musician's page, a band's page, or an individual's page, as one of the main options. I think the number of times a song has been played and the number of comments a band or musician has on his/her/their page will vary depending on the life of the page (how long this person or group has had a Myspace account) as well as how many times the page has been viewed in total.

Voice Matters

One of the categories that I would like to have in my analysis is "voice." Voice matters - a lot. It may sound cheesy, but it is important to "emotionally attach" your readers to assure that they read on. The voice that the blog is written in is very important in terms of how it comes off to the reader. "Does it feel like I'm reading an advertisement?" "Is it talking down to me?" "Do I feel as if I know the writer?" This will lead into the readers' impression of the company after reading the blog and whether or not they feel any sort of connection to the company, or if they feel as though they want to distance themselves (or feel as though they are being distanced by them).
One of the blogs that I am analyzing is "The Communications Insider" by Sprint. This blog is written by David Spark and is very "human." I feel as though I am listening to him talk to me, not reading something he wrote. Although some of it does sound like a sales pitch, he also has topics such as "cell phone etiquette" that make a bit of a difference.

Analysis Filters

I was thinking of looking at what aspects the blog seems to focus on the most and what relationship those aspects have towards the company.

For the sake of example, the McDonalds CEO blog concentrates on issues that are external to the company, issues or associated organizations, things like sustainability, obesity, the blog isnt used to generate buzz about the new spicy fried ranch chicken cutlet cheese mchoagie, infact it abstains from using the word hamburger...so it becomes obvious that Mcdonalds uses the blog to talk about things that are not really important enough to put forward in mainstream advertising, or atleast advertising that costs money.

On the other hand the Whole Foods CEO blog is focused more on internal company issues, executive pay, responses to letters from employees and the occaisional customer. The blog is really tailored to people who function within the company or those who have some kind of interest in what the company is doing. Therefore Whole Foods would see the function ofhte blog as a communication tool to people already aware of everything that the company is doing.

Investigating content reveals the intent of the blog and thus the companies attitude towards blogging and how they see it as a useful tool for interacting with an internet saavy marketplace.
I'm going to include more statistical approaches, like comment levels and numbers of posts, but that's all pretty obvious and doesnt require any meaningful understanding of the blog, or explanation.

The need for wit

I have found one thing that most corporate blogs have in common-- they are boring. It might just be me, but I bet it's not all just me. As we've discussed in class, corporate blogs have a very different purpose than individual blogs. They have to sell you something, and they have to be professional. But blogs, originally, were very informal. Blogging is a promising new medium for advertising and communication, but it won't work if it's not done correctly.

The best blogs have a feeling of spontaneity, personality, and entertainment. They are typically witty, or punchy. Blogs are not very long, but they have to convince you to keep revisiting the site. I plan to really look at the way the companies are writing, and try to figure out why it's not working. Is it just becuase I am not the itnended audience? Or have they not really figured out how to "talk like people" yet? I think it's perfectly possible to talk about the boring day-to-day of your organization and still make it readable. A blog is suppsoed to be something that a reader can easily connect to, and many companies are just using it to post press releases and segments of an annual report. I don't think a blog does much good if you read it and then just close the browser. A blog should keep you engaged and encourage you to keep clicking on other stuff, so better blogs will have links, etc, and will make the company's business seem user-friendly and accessible. (Discusing the setup of the page will go in another section, but you are less likely to do this if you don't feel like the company is talking to you, but is rather just posting neutral information.)

Blog catagory

I think I want to focus one of my catagories on the motive for the blogs I'm hoping to analyze. I wonder why the blogs I'm thinking of using (search engine blogs, such as Ask.com, Yahoo.com, and Google.com) exist, because part of me feels that they're not just keeping their consumers up to date on their company. I want to find out who exactly the blogs represent (which will probably be the easy part), and why they have chosen the blog field to convey what they want.

From seeing what I have in my research so far, I get the impression that those blogs are more advertisement-driven than anything else, especially in Ask.com's case, as seen in my last post. Even though these blogs are (by definition) in fact blogs, I'm really starting to wonder if there's another realm of blogs solely to advertise. This thought ties in with another one of my possible catagories, focusing on the audience, seeing as how most blogs are directed to a group of people. How does the audience react to these blogs? Do they see any ulterior motives in the blogs, specifically from the advertising point of view? Or am I just being cynical? Either way, the motives of these blogs will be one of my main points of discussion, whether it turns out that I right or wrong.

Google Blog: An Analysis

The Official Google Blog is a corporate weblog with a variety of different posters. The posters, or bloggers range from the founder Sergey Brin all the way to founders of companies that Google has acquired over its reign of the internet.

Google Blog is not hosted on its own site with a url such as: blog.google.com. However it is hosted at the blogging service that they acquired, Blogspot. Not only is this an advertisement for their own service, it seems to almost lead other corporate blogs into the Blogspot blogoshpere saying, “It’s OK to have an OFFICIAL blog hosted on Blogspot.”

Google’s simplistic and minimalist theme and style has been carried through to the Official Google Blog. The design is pleasing on the eye with a white background, standard black text and royal blue links. The content is arranged in a familiar way with a search bar for ease of use, recent posts and links to other blogs.

Google will always be blazing a path in the internet industry. Every internet trend, starts and ends with Google.

IBM Blogging

The author of this blog did a good job explaining HTML options with in rich text. Castledine uses bold headings to help underline each important section of HTML. The bold headings are standard rich text, allowing HTML within rich text, using a HTML block, formatting HTML blocks and combining pure HTML with the rich text. Although this blog is short Castledine efficiently breaks down the difficult computer language into a way people can understand.

Among the most interesting things about the blog is his use of pictures as captions. For someone who doesn’t quite understand the language the captions could be used as help for non-computer experts to understand. In addition to the pictures Castledine makes what would usually be a bland subject to noncomputer into an interesting how to blog.

After reading this blog I have booked marked it as one of my favorites. I have looked at some of the other things that he has written that I suggest people who want to understand computers read into. Some of the interesting topic blogs he has written is Domino blog template, converting domino blog v3 to IBM lotus notes as well as learning lotus. Here is a link to the blog written by Steven Castledine--http://www.stevecastledine.com/sc.nsf/dx/Domino-Blog-Template--HTML-options-within-Rich-Text.htm

Network for Good

I looked for blogs of non-profit companies for a while. I initially had a little trouble finding some, but then I stumbled on the blog for Network for Good. The Heading says that is it the largest nonprofit charitable site online. It’s hosted by Blogger, at http://networkforgood.blogspot.com. It contains a lot of useful information. The first entry, “Who is Giving Online?” has a lot of statistics that show how popular online donations have become. They also have a few stories written by people who have volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in the Hurricane Katrina efforts. Basically, this is a very simple, straight-forward blog. It obviously keeps people informed of the organizations main efforts, but they have done virtually nothing to spice up the page. I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. On one hand, they are non-profit, so they have to keep their costs down. They aren’t going to hire a fancy graphic designer, or really invest a lot of time in designing the blog. The blog serves a purpose. But on the other hand, putting a little time into a design might persuade people to donate more. They do have links at the top of the sidebar to donate and read testimonials, which makes it really easy to navigate the most important part of the organization-- fundraising.

The Hartford Stage!

I was looking up "things to do" in Hartford yesterday and ran into The Hartford Stage http://www.hartfordstage.org/blog/index.php. While I was on their website, I noticed that they have a Blog and got really excited. I figured, hey! This should be really dramatic and really fun to read! Much to my disappointment, it was like reading the minutes from their last meeting. It was filled with promotion and I didn't really pick up much "personality," which is something we discussed in class as being very important. The voice that was used was as standard as the one used for the movie premiers in the theaters. The good part about the blog was that it was very informative. It let me know what was coming up and what I had to look forward to. It also included a small blurb about how I can help out "a good cause," but the problem with that was it didn't let me know what that cause was. What I found very interesting about their blog - and pretty cool - was that they have five different categories. I would think that would work towards people's advantage as the blog search does on search engines.

Something else that I liked was the appearance of the blog. The colors looked great and I love how they incorporated photo's of a production on the border. It looked very nice.

Overall, the blog was really nice. It was put together well, wasn't too long or too short in text, and it's appearance was clean. However, I felt as though I was stuck inside an ongoing advertisement which was a bit of a turn-off.

ask.com's corporate blog

Ask.com has a corporate blog that I found through simply blogsearching "google corporate blog." I thought I'd start at the source of this vast blog world by analyzing Google's own blog, but that was too simple.

http://blog.ask.com/ , at first, seems like it's just one huge advertisment for itself, and it is. The posts are filled with recent additions of search tools, such as maps, mobile searching for cell phones, and general searching stratagies. I think I was expecting more of a "this is how our day was" kind of blog, but again, that's what I'm used to. Ask.com's blog is perhaps what I should be expecting out of a corporate blog, because corporations have bigger things to talk about than daily shenanigans. They know their readers want to have the newest and the best products, so they cater to that, advertising the afformentioned improved searches, map searches, and mobile adaptations of thier search features. Ask.com is trying to get ahead of the competition by doing all they can for the consumer.

The layout of Ask.com's blog is also very advertisment-esque, being filled with screenshots of thier searches and numerous links to Ask.com. I find this almost anoying, because at the top, there's a giant search bar boasting a blog search as well as a web search. I think that's enough of an advertisment for their search engine, and they really don't need to link themselves to Ask.com in nearly every post.

I found it particularly interesting, however, that I stumbled upon this blog through Google's, a key competitor with Ask.com. Google's blog is hosted on Blogger.com, and we have seen in class, there's a list of other blogs that are read on the side of the blogger page entitled "what we're reading." Also on that list is Yahoo's search blog and MSN's search blog, which make me think it's they're own way of keeping up with the Jones'... all their information is there to see (except for trade secrests, of course), so they're all essentially doing the same thing. In terms of competition and who gets more business, because of these blogs, one would think that they're pretty much equal...

Analysis of social networking (Myspace.com)

My analysis will be a little bit different than the rest of the class'. I have chosen to analyze Myspace.com as a social networking tool. For this assignment, I will review the Myspace website (this can only be done if you have a Myspace account) and go through it to find "corporate" pages. From my experience, businesses do not typically create Myspace pages on this site, however some grassroot odd jobs can be found on Myspace. For example, I have come across numerous DJs that create pages with links to listen to some of their sample spinning. I have also seen some small Tshirt making companies and other odd jobs. What stands out the most as I browse Myspace, however, is the huge amount of musical bands that have created accounts.

It seems like everyone has Myspace these days, whether they are individuals who want to use social networking to meet new people, or bands who want to use this same tool to promote their band and boost their ratings. I have been asked to befriend a number of bands on Myspace. Some I accept, others I do not, but I typically do not listen to their music or post comments about how great or terrible their music is. However, as I browse the different pages of Myspace and come across some band pages, I notice that they include a lot of great things that would allow them to get ahead in the music world (to sound cliche).

Some typical things you can find on a band's Myspace page include:
1. A brief description of the band including their birth and accomplishments
2. Samples of the band's music, with links to hear this music (you can see home many times a particular song has been heard on almost every song)
3. A list of comments that the band representative filter's (I'm sure)
4. Upcoming events and/or concerts
5. The number of times a page has been viewed
6. Etc.

"Garage bands," as I like to call them, or bands that are in their early stage of existence, I feel, can boost the awareness of their band as well as boost their ratings. In my analysis I will work to prove that social networking has given bands higher ratings than if they were just to promote by word of mouth or without networking of any kind. I will compare bands to "regular" people and compare whether or not bands get more recognition than the "average Joe." I think I will find that bands have many more comments made and more visits to their pages. I think the only exception to this may be the people that post extremely revealing or nearly naked pictures on their pages, making them look like porn stars. That's an entirely different story.

Oregon State Univeristy Admissions Blog

The blog that I have decided to talk about is the blog of an admission officer(s) at Oregon State University. I found this site randomly by doing a Google search for “non-profit corporate blog” and was shocked to see a university come up. This blog is definitely aimed towards prospective students who are considering applying to Oregon State. To get to this blog, a person must look under the future students tab of the main home page. The information included in the blog is also relevant for a future student and they might be interested in it. Some of the topics include a post about meeting prospective students and Alumni in Asia, an awarded granted to the school, the school’s football standings and some other things.
I think this blog has some very positive aspects and then some aspects that are not so positive. I think a blog like this would be great resource for a prospective student to read. It gives information about the school, positive awards it has received and different things that students at the school like to do. The posts include some great pictures of students, the football games and the other topics the different posts speak about. It gives some great perspectives into the school and makes the school look very involved culturally, educationally and interested in extra-curricular activities.
Some negatives about this blog is that there is nothing about the person/people who write(s) it or any information about them. It would be nice to know who the person or people who write it are, what exactly they do in the admissions office and how long they have been working at the college. It would also be nice if the link was a little easier to find for current students who might be interested in this blog.

Link: http://oregonstate.edu/admissions/blog/