Labtutorials.org

The blog as a next generation book

In Blogging, Cool stuff on March 15, 2011 at 11:33 pm

Blogs are usually flowing, which makes them more like a diary or a newspaper. In this context, their information is difficult to structure. Tags, categories and search buttons can help but to have a really structured information on the blog is really difficult. On the other hand, blogs are extremly powerfull structures, that make possible the content management and combination of various types of information from text to videos. While wiki structure is well known to serve as a master structured content, it is difficult to work with beyond a basic structure.

Books, especially in science, are well structured texts. The author knows from beginning the sinopsis of the book, which migh slightly change during the writing itself, but more importantly, they are not written in the same order as they are placed in the book itself.

If we combine in a blog environment static pages and post pages, we can build a framework that allows us to make a new format of structured content, which is close to the classical book format but allows the combination of various media formats.

This format is A NEW BOOK TYPE that is more powerfull that any previous type of content.

This structure allows the writer to write sections in different time points but still to join them in one flow of information. This is a natural need of any writer who does not write simply a journal.

WordPress has a feature that allows the author to direct the reader to a specific page, e.g. the Contents while preserving the natural flow of individual posts. I suggest to use this combination for all blog authors who plan to build their blogs mainly on original content, and generate high quality resource centers in and around their blogs.

A very important feature of this blog- which is an experimental work- as you can see is that it is structured as a on-line book.  The Contents page servs not only to drive the attention of the reader, but also to FOCUS the author on the pages that are still missing. This platform is combining the flexibility of a blog and the riches given by web2.0 and multimedia tools, with the well know structured frame of a book. From this point of view, this stucture gives the best of both worlds. Information is well structured and rich, links and embeded videos are providing the reader context and real world simulation.

Enjoy!

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