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While reading my RSS feed this week, I came across Chez Vivian’s post on the tangled webs we weave. I was extremely curious to see what my “tangled web” looks like, and was a bit disappointed not to see all the colors represented, as well as the uneven distribution of these colors.
What do the colors mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags
(Graph Applet courtesy of Marcel Salathé)
It is therefore obvious that I am not making the connections I should be making. This is probably due to the fact that I tend to avoid the social networking sites, as I like to maintain a “private life”, as well as the fact that my time constraints don’t allow me to be checking Twitter and Facebook as often as I should be.
Yes, everybody wants to be (and should be) connected. As the old saying goes: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. So I guess I’ll have to take that leap, get more connected, and find that fine balance between staying connected, as well as maintaining my privacy – which is going to take some careful juggling on my part.
Hyperlinking to me was more of a “burden” than a tool before starting with COETAIL. I would start reading information on a website, and see all these “colored” words popping up. Yes, I knew they were linking me to more information, but being a bit OCD myself (Chez, you are not alone), just give me one thing to deal with at a time. Clicking on these links would, in my eyes, take me off on various tangents and before long, I would find myself overwhelmed with so much, I would close my browser – or – not click on the links at all.
This, COETAIL has taught me, defeats the whole purpose of the web. If you’re looking for information, and there are hyperlinks embedded in one webpage to connect you to MORE relevant information, it should actually assist, and not burden.
I know I’m stating the obvious here, but thanks to COETAIL, I have again seen the error of my ways, and also found it extremely useful when writing my own Blog posts, and wanting readers to connect to more than just what I’ve written, with one, simple click.
