A Heart of Stars: Mapping a Screen Name is a collection of various mappings that represent my internet persona. These mappings both revealed and excluded information about me as “aheartofstars.” In a sense, “aheartofstars” became a character deviation of me. I decided to use these mappings to dissect the character of “aheartofstars” and to represent the growth of this character; thus, I have used the metaphor of a “road trip” to describe the journey of “aheartofstars” throughout various network of practices.

Beginning the Journey
In this section, I have documented the various uses of my online moniker “aheartofstars.” I have included screenshots of the name in use on the sites various Web 2.0 application. These screenshots act as evidence of my participation in one large network of practice—the internet.

Taking the Highway
Throughout the semester I have been actively participating in the Twitter community. It has become a major information ecology in my life. By using Tweetstats.com, I was able to collect graphs that illustrate my participation in the Twittersphere.

Unfolding the Map
During the spring 2009 semester, I blogged about various Information Architecture topics on the IAOC website. In order to illustrate the frequency of certain words in my blog, I used the tag cloud application Wordle to create a tag cloud of my accumulated blogs. In addition, I created a Wordle of my Tweetstats.com tags.

Stopping for Directions
This section contains a sketched memory map and a remediation of the sketched map into a Google MyMaps. It is demonstrative of how an author unintentionally omits details when mapping portions of their lives; thus, it argues that “aheartofstars” is an inaccurate portrayal of me.

Enjoying the Landscape
In this section, I introduced my color palette and font. These mappings portray the character of “aheartofstars.” They are like trees and flowers during a country drive. They are essentially the landscape of “aheartofstars.”

Taking in the Scenery
The community of “aheartofstars” is represented in this section. A Nexus Facebook mapping of “aheartofstars” friend connections is provided. In addition, a LastGraph mapping of the listening history of “aheartofstars” Last.fm is presented. Finally, a TwitFriends.com mapping illustrates the Twitter connections of “aheartofstars.” They are the beautiful depictions, scenery, of my screen name.

Heading Home
The screen name “aheartofstars” leaves more questions about who I am as a person rather than answers.