Wow! Austria and Sweden! Go Internet!!
Oct
20
HA! I’m still posting. Actually, this post is more of an experiment to see if I can finally get an Odeo player to properly appear in my blog. I’ve had so much trouble with that before.
Well, here goes…
ARG!!! FOILED AGAIN!!
Oct
12
Wow, I’m finally on the 23rd thing. What a deal!
Okay, on with the reflections:
Favorite Discoveries
My favorite discoveries would have to include the online applications and the wikis. I’m no workaholic, but I do appreciate a useful tool when one comes along. Wikis on the whole are (IMHO) still very experimental, but are probably an early encarnation of a future building block of tomorrow’s Web. For good reading, check out the comments from Tim Berners-Lee (the creator of the World Wide Web) on Web2.0, wikis, ajax, etc. in this article (full of some pretty handy links, I might add) and this podcast transcript.
Unexpected Outcomes
I don’t suppose there were really any unexpected outcomes of this program from my point of view. I think I had a pretty good idea of the things that I’d do and discover. That’s not to say that I’m not glad I did it, however. I’m very glad because I likely would never have taken the time to do this much exploring if there weren’t a real program to participate in.
Improvements On The Program
Well, I suppose anything could be said to “need improvement” on retrospect. So, while this Learning 2.0 program was certainly a huge and greatly successful idea, I do think that it was a lot easier for some folks to get through it than others. I’ve heard grumblings from folks lacking the basic computer skills necessary to participate, and from others lacking the time and managerial support to get through the long list of challenges. But most of the grumblings I heard (and read) seemed to be grumbling for the sake of grumbling, and that’s just annoying.
Would I do it again?
Heck yeah! Like I said earlier, I probably wouldn’t have done all this without a well structured program behind it, but I certainly feel that I’ve gotten a lot out of it. I like the overall process, and I really appreciate opportunities where employees are encouraged to learn on their own and enjoy it at the same time.
Oct
11
Conceptually, I really like NetLibrary’s attempt to take advantage of the existing technology and make all this great material available in new ways. In practice, the whole endeavor could be a bit more refined, IMHO.
However, I really do like audio books, and the ability to download them is really the logical option these days, especially with libraries. The process has had its problems, and there are alternatives to the download method, but there’s plenty of potential for huge use.
Oct
11
I used PodcastAlley for my searching, and found it fairly easy to use (though a tad messy). The category breakdown was easy to navigate through, and the review snippets are pretty useful.
The podcast I discovered there is The Animation Podcast. I was actually looking in the broader Film category, and just had to check it out. Like most, it’s got a weird intro and gets quite nerdy about the subject matter, but I liked the approach, and the layout of the website (which is quite similar to one of my all-time favorite podcasts: Reel Reviews Radio.
I also really liked the built-in player:
[picture]
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Oct
11
I’ve been trying to avoid getting addicted to YouTube, but now that I’ve started this exercise .. no, wait. Now that I’ve discovered the Chad Vader series, I think there’s no use in trying to avoid it any longer.
Click here (or above) to see episode 4. (I’m having trouble with the HTML editor on my blog right now, so I can’t get the embedding to work).
What did I like or dislike about the YouTube site? Well, aside from being a tad on the messy side, it’s quite an entertaining site. I know there can be nice, practical, useful applications for the technology, but I think it’s best used as a way to find just the right kind of entertainment.
For libraries, of course, we can create very simple videos of anything we want the public to see from offsite. Whether it’s a screencast or a library tour, social networking/video sites like YouTube can be quite useful (but always entertaining).
Oct
11
Ahh… autumn.
Anyway, on with the blog post. This exercise has us exploring the different sites on the Seomoz.org Web2.0 page for something interesting/fun to play with and blog about. Unfortunately, nearly everything I click on is either down or not interesting enough for me (I have high standards when it comes to fun web toys). On that note, I’ve really enjoyed my visits to Go2Web20.net (huge list, and good access to reviews/discussions of some of the sites).
There is one, however, that I’m glad to have taken a second look at: ajaxWrite. I know, compared to most others, it’s quite “vanilla,” as they say. I’ve looked at it before when exploring all the web apps out there (Writely, ZohoWriter, ThinkFree, etc.), and didn’t spend much time with it due to its simplicity. However, that is exactly what I found so attractive about it today. While it doesn’t do cool things like post your text directly to your blog, or even some of the things that it claims to (such as inserting images, generating .pdf files, etc.) it does load very quickly, and give you something to edit with in a flash, without even creating a profile on their web page. There are other drawbacks, of course, such as not being able to run in Internet Explorer at all (that’s a great way to alienate exactly the people you’re trying to attract), but if these folks keep with it, the application could really find a niche.
I firmly believe that less=more when it comes to web pages/tools, and I would love to see this one continue to grow in a more useful direction (without, of course, becoming as combersome as its big brothers).
Oct
11
I’ve been using web apps like zoho writer, writely, and others for a fair while now, and they’ve really come in quite handy on several occasions. Incidentally, if you haven’t yet, I’d suggest taking a look at all the other apps out at zoho.com. In addition to the Writer, there’s a spreadsheet program (like Excel), a presentation program (like PowerPoint), a Virtual Office groupware application, a chat utility, a simple poll generater, and lots of other stuff.
Now that I’ve switched from blogspot to wordpress for my learning blog, I’ve run into some glitchy behavior with the blog posting tools in most of those apps, but I don’t really mind the wordpress editor anyway.
As a technerd I’m frequently asked about how to turn this or that document into a .pdf file, and this is the kind of situation where is where these online apps really come in handy for me. Most of the online word processors have the option now of exporting to .pdf now, and often have a handful of other neat tricks as well. I’m sure the next version of Microsoft Juggernaut won’t take too much of a beating from these utilities, but I think the future is a bit murky for high-priced suites like that.
Oct
11
Well, I haven’t had much opportunity or time to do a lot of playing around with wikis lately, though there’s plenty of that coming up for me in the next couple of weeks. So, I was happy to finally mess around with the PLCMCwiki at pbwiki in this exercise.
I’d created a pbwiki account about a month ago, but since it had the word “testing” in it, I decided to create a new one for this round & the process was as easy as nearly all other such things. Well, the confirmation email could have been a bit quicker, but no big deal.
I’d had enough time to forget all about how to enter hyperinks in wikitext, and I’m glad that it’s as easy as it is in a quasi(but not so much)-wysiwyg environment. There are more wikis out there now with a cleaner interface (wiki.com, wetpaint.com, etc.), but pbwiki’s a tad more established, I think.
My contributions were in the restaurant and vacation spots categories, where I got to share two of my favorite places in the world: Crawdaddy’s restaurant in Jacksonville, FL (where the beer cheese soup comes from), and Ocracoke Island at the Outer Banks.
This week and next my department will be testing a wiki for some in-house stuff, and I’m eager to get on with it.
See you in the ether.
-R
