Production

To create and combine the popular media forms of blogging and surveys I have looked at many examples running focused and otherwise.

Here are links to some of the running blogs that I have drawn inspiration on:

http://www.irunfar.com/

http://www.atrailrunnersblog.com/

http://www.coachjayjohnson.com/

http://run-marc-run.blogspot.com/2011/08/running-questionnaire.html

Here are links to some running websites that have also provided useful:

http://www.runnersworld.com/

I found "A Trail Runners Blog" (http://www.atrailrunnersblog.com/) to be one of the most helpful mainly because it was the most appealing to look at. Within todays popular media what grabs an audience is good presentation and aesthetics. This blog has a great background and a nice picture in the foreground with a brief intro. Going further into the blog various posts are shown with a picture and caption about the content. Through looking at this blog I have tried to make mine appealing to look at and intriguing through captions and pictures. In doing so I hope to capture the audience first through images and an overall good looking blog and secondly through the post content. 

Also, through the Blogger website searching blogs also proved itself to be beneficial by showing the hundreds of ways to compile information, pictures, etc in a variety of formats.

I have also used questions from running surveys to gain further knowledge into the anthropology of running. Some websites that I looked at for this information include the following:
http://www.runningusa.org/node/57812

General survey sites that have provided useful:
http://www.surveyengine.com/resources/howto_run_a_survey.html

http://www.surveymonkey.com/MySurveys.aspx

http://www.boston.com/sports/marathon/running_survey_2011/

I decided that I might find some use and new perspectives from taking a survey myself and therefore decided to take the survey on boston.com. On the website it allows you not only to vote but to see the results of the overall voting results. Through this, I discovered more aspects of running that connect other runners to each other such as race day prep, travel items, acting on injuries, and several more things.


Through producing this blog and a survey I have learned many things about the internet and websites that I had never considered before and have become more proficient in maneuvering through different sites to find specific things that I am searching for.

When having an issue trying to do something one way I used other aspect of technology to work to my advantage. For example, I was having trouble uploading my running video to the blog directly and learned about youtube accounts in the process because I ended up creating a youtube account and uploading the video to my blog through that account.
When creating a background picture I learned about the format of pictures and what is necessary to convert a pdf of a specific size to the specific size required by the blog.
These were fairly easy problems to resolve that came up while I was producing this blog, however, I had not ever encountered these difficulties simply because I had not used this specific type of technology that is an aspect of popular culture today.