What are some of the main categories of web tools? …and where does a Wiki fit in?

First of all, everyone is familiar with the basic Web 2.0 tools such as Youtube (Upload & share video), Facebook (Student communities), and Digg (Social bookmarking). I think Wikis are definitely an important and well-integrated part of Web 2.0. In the past, people had to go to libraries and scramble through various books to get information on a subject, but now-a-days with the introduction of “Web 2.0”, a lot of that information (e.g. “How to Properly Cut Your Fingernails” or “Movies Nicholas Cage has Been In“) is located directly on the internet via these things called “Wikis” and can be accessed from your personal computer.

Secondly, Wikis are incredibly useful for quick access to a wide variety information, seeing that anyone can sign up and add information to a Wiki. Now, you might be thinking that the information on a wiki isn’t reliable, or that it isn’t always from a credible source, so to speak. However, the majority of information contributed by users is surprisingly very accurate. In fact, most wiki’s are well maintained by a moderator or administrator of the website.

Written by: Dan Zajac

 

Second Web 2.0 Tool — TubeRadio.fm!

TubeRadio.FM is definitely one of the most dazzling Web 2.0 tools I’ve ran across so far. I can see myself using tuberadio.fm a lot — in fact, it’s already got a special spot in my favorites. Right on my Bookmarks Toolbar (the toolbar above the browser tabs in Firefox web browser).

For those of you who have a loose handle on what tuberadio.fm actually is, let me fill you in.

They describe themselves as “The internet video jukebox powered by the largest online music catalog, Youtube. Free music video streaming, lyrics, and artist biographies.”  So, basically it looks like a modified “iTunes”, but every song you search for is directly taken from youtube.com and played within the website’s frame.

What’s really spectacular about tuberadio is that you can search for a specific artist, i.e. “Jack Johnson”, and it will proceed to give you a whole discography of his CD’s and his album art — which as you have probably concluded by now, is available to “+Add” to a created playlist that is all customizable by you.  It’s very easy to use and the best part is it’s free.

TubeRadio.fm’s “Player” has one of the best catagorization of youtube music I’ve seen so far, and it’s great for listening to music while working on homework.  It has all the basic features you would expect — shuffle, mute, repeat, etc… A Web 2.0 tool worth checking out in my opinion.

Link to TubeRadio.fm Here

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My Tool – Google Reader

One of the Web tools I chose was Google Reader. This is definitely one of my favorite tools. I love the style and the ease of use that it has. Google Reader is a simple RSS reader that I use to read tweets from famous writers or celebrities that I like. In addition, there’s a very useful feature that Google Reader has that not a lot of other RSS readers can do…and that’s being able to input a blog’s address and get output from Google Reader in the form of an RSS feed. It’s very interesting and I didn’t even know they had tools like this, so I’m very glad I discovered this Web tool.

Right now I happen to be following 5 students blogs from my Web tools online class, as well as three or four twitter accounts online. Google Reader takes all the data from every blog and twitter account and puts it all on one page for me to read. It’s user interface is very simple and easy to use (which isn’t surprising, because most of Google’s programs and websites are known for being fast and efficient, I.e. The browser “Google Chrome” and the search engine “Google.com”.

Link Here: Google Reader
(You’ll have to log-in with your Gmail account.)

 

ePortfolio Update

Update! (Saturday, April 10th, 2010)

What’s going on everyone?  After playing around with ePortfolio.org and building my website I was able to come up with a simple design that looks clean and isn’t too cluttered.  Feel free to check it out if you wish to do so.

Link Here:

http://danielzajac.v2efoliomn.mnscu.edu/Home

– Dan

 

eFolioMinnesota

Hello all…  In this blog post I’m doing a bit of writing for school on ePortfolio’s.  It’s required for my Web Tools 2.0 course.

• Which E Portfolio did you choose? How easy was it to use?

I chose to use the first option for an E Portfolio that is given under the “Content” section on D2L, which coincidentally was eFolioMinnesota.com.  I had guessed the learning curve to be about 15-30 minutes, but after messing around with the various utilities, tools, and options, I actually found the website’s User Interface to be rather un-inviting and quizzically off-balance.

In addition, I thought the mini “tutorial”, or as they call it…your “to-do” was rather Junior–so to speak, and didn’t give much freedom as to how you include things in your portfolio.   In conclusion, I would much rather use a program such as “Dreamweaver” or a simple HTML/CSS editor to create a website of my own that consists of everything a portfolio has in it, rather than going through eFolio’s simple step-by-step features to add things to my portfolio.

• Check out any available examples in the E Portfolio you choose. How have people been using E Portfolio’s?

E Portfolios are useful in order to showcase people’s academic achievements as well as blog about personal life.

• What might you use an online portfolio for? Do you think you could use it professionally or personally?

You might use an E Portfolio professionally to display your academic goals or achievements, and include contact information and details about your business.  However, you may also use an E Portfolio personally to blog about home & family life or anything across the board, such as hobbies.

• What do you want your E Portfolio to say about you?

First of all, I’d like to learn it’s features and see what it can do for me up front, and then decide whether or not it would be a useful website for me to use in the future.

• One other thing you learned.

The website had a very easy sign-up and register process, which I liked a lot.