Benefits of Blogging

Personally, I already have another blog on Tumblr for my own personal use, and to keep up with fandoms. I enjoy the social aspect of blogging and rely on it to keep up with current trends in media, rather than websites like Twitter. In the future, I can see myself making another blog (or blogs) to keep up with my more varied interests, or even a more professional blog for writing in the future.

I follow/visit several blogs in my spare time. A few of them are Kotaku, Rooster Teeth, and Marvel Entertainment.

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Kotaku is a blog in Gawker Media's network of blogging websites, primarily focused on video game news. A majority of Kotaku is reporting on video game news; specifically on upcoming or newly released games and speculation around them, as well as official reports. Occasionally, they may also post pieces on "cool" Easter eggs hidden in games, or other things players may have missed. A few of their posts are also only vaguely video-game related, such as listing the "goofy" computers from popular 80s movies.

Kotaku's website is very simple with its white background and black lettering, with each recent post coming up as you scroll down. Personally, I do not like the simplicity of the layout because it is easy to confuse some of the bigger ads for articles, and its hard to navigate to older posts because you can only scroll down and go to the next page of the blog; there is no page select. The search function and links are also hidden off to the side in a drop down menu.

Overall, Kotaku does keep up with the quickly growing video game media and reports on both indie games and triple A titles. It updates frequently to keep their viewers up to date on all news, as well as having a few posts focused more on being entertaining than informative.

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Rooster Teeth is a productions company that focuses on creating machinima, live action shorts, full animated shows, video game news, Let's Plays and gaming walkthroughs, gamer culture, and most recently, feature films. Their own main website, RoosterTeeth.com is the hub for all of their content, but they keep an official blog on tumblr for fans to follow to keep up with their content.

The Rooster Teeth blog is where they post links to their videos, informative posts from their main site, and important updates. There isn't as much fan interaction on their as with their other social media, where they answer questions and share fanart and other fanmade content. The layout of their tumblr is also a bit hectic; they use a "tiled" look for their blog, so all the posts fill up the entire page rather than simply having one or two per line. The blog itself is very aesthetically pleasing with its simple color choices of various shades of red, black, and white. Unfortunately, their tumblr is not updated very frequently, most often only two or three times a month, with some exceptions.

The RT blog does seem aware that their Tumblr is not the main place fans go for information and interactions. Links are provided to their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and main website, as well as links to some of the employees personal blogs for a more one-on-one  experience.

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Marvel Entertainment is owned by the Walt Disney Company, and encompasses many of the Marvel comics superheroes and their counterparts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The official Marvel blog is hosted on tumblr and features information on both the comics and MCU, rather than just one or the other.

The blog itself looks very nice, with a panel from the comics focusing on some of their popular superheroes at the top of the screen. Above the cover photo are some a few links to easy navigation, including one to their tags to easily find certain posts, and fanart. On  the sidebar, they also have links to other social media sites and recommend any fan correspondence be sent to their Twitter, as it seems they do not take questions on the blog itself. Below this is one of the issues of one of their popular comics and links on where to buy it both physically and digitally. The blog's content consists of trailers for their upcoming movies, popular comics, merchandise and where to buy it, and a "cosplayer spotlight" where they post some of their fan's cosplays and information about the cosplayer as well.

The information on the blog is, however, a bit outdated. The website currently advertises Ant-Man "now in theaters," when it actually came out in June and has been out of theaters for some time. The comic they also feature in their sidebar is from 2013, and while it is still a popular running comic, the space could be used to show newer comics off instead.

Overall, the Marvel blog is very well organized and keeps up with trends in fan's interests very well, despite not being a major outlet for fan interaction.

Balance

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When doing major group projects, interacting with your group members can be a delicate situation. For the proposal group project I did with four other people, none of whom I knew personally, knowing how to interact with many different personalities can be strenuous, especially for someone who prefers to work alone or in pairs.

The trick is to find a balance. You need to be assertive in what needs to be done, but not to the point of being bossy. To make sure everyone is on task, but not be condescending.

I personally tried to be friendly but kept track of everyone's tasks so I could better keep up with the project. While I may have disagreed with some decisions that were ultimately made, I decided to compromise and trust my group member's choices. Most of the decisions really came through and were solid, while a few others could have used a bit more polish.

Overall I stand by how I operated in the group. If I could go back and change a few things I probably would, but I am happy with the outcome regardless.

Prezi Review

I decided to use Prezi for my presentation. I've never been a fan of how simplistic and limiting Power Point is, so I was happy to find more diverse alternatives.

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I tried several presentation programs before settling on Prezi due to how easy it is to customize and the simple interface. However, I do have complaints about a few features. It is difficult to center text on new slides and there is no way to make each slide uniform in its formatting. A lot of trial and error is required to get it the way you want it to look. Text and pictures being a few centimeters off center may seem minor, but it can also be surprisingly noticeable.

Hyperlinks were also a big issue for me with Prezi. I had to look a the Prezi FAQ to see how it was done, but I still couldn't insert a neat hyperlink; instead I had to just post the full URL to my sources pages. This isn't a major issue, but it forced me to sacrifice some of the neatness I wanted to retain.

All in all, however, I believe Prezi's positives outweigh its negatives. The simple interface and many free options make it an excellent alternative to Power Point. With practice, the program is very easy to become familiar with.