Monday, March 19, 2007

Becoming Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a buzzword you'll be hearing a lot over the next few days, and might have heard before. Charlene wrote a great post about Harnessing Web 2.0, and some of the concepts and theories.

I thought it would be appropriate to share some of the things that you can do to become more web 2.0 enabled. This is just a short list of some of the things I do (and know about), so please feel free to contribute your experiences and tips. Here are some to get started with:
  • Get a Flickr account to upload your photos to. Tag them, share them with groups, and network with your contacts. See my photos here.
  • Share your videos with Vimeo, YouTube, or Google Videos
  • Bring all your blogs together with an aggregator, like Bloglines, that can collect all the new posts from your subscribed blogs. Most aggregators can also collect RSS feeds from your favourite news web sites, and any other syndicated web site, to show you only new unread content. Just look for the orange icon, or any mention of words like RSS, feeds, or syndication. See what I read here.
  • Share your bookmarks with Del.icio.us, or Digg, instead of bookmarking a web site in your browser, bookmark them online. You'll be able to access your bookmarks from any web site, and also see how many other people have bookmarked the same sites, and find other popular sites similar to your tags. See my bookmarks here.
  • Set up a personalized homepage on Netvibes, that can save tons of personalized, dynamic content, and you can access it from any computer
  • Do your research on WikiPedia, where the content is created, edited, and censored by the users. Heavy use of cross-referencing and linking strengthens the network and provides virtual references.
  • Establish your personal online entity on MySpace or FaceBook.
  • Find, post, and sign up for local and interesting upcoming events on Upcoming.org
  • If you're interested in sharing your work, progress, and day-to-day musings, set up a blog for free with services like Blogger or Wordpress.
Like I said, these are just some of the things you can do to be more web 2.0 embedded. If you have other great sites you use, tips, or questions, leave your comments on this post. Check out some of these sites, and then you'll be ready to contribute to our discussions on Intellectual Property, and user-created content web sites and web2.0 Thursday afternoon from 4:30-5:30 and 5:30-6:00pm respectively.

6 comments:

Delicious Wolf said...

heh... I may have to take you to task with that Wiki one...it's not always the best place for research... just look at the entry for elephants if you don't believe me.

I would recommend the DMOZ search engine as well

John J Housser said...

This entry?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant

I didn't read it in detail, but from a quick scroll through, looks to be pretty comprehensive...

Anonymous said...

Charlene recommended the DMOZ search engine. So I looked at the DMOZ search engine (actually, it calls itself an "open directory") and it seems to me to be lacking in important ways. For example, in its main index page there is no mention of "technology", a strange omission. And there is no mention of "history". Those two are my main interests.

Ryakuga said...

The DMOZ search engine is a user created search engine... The whole point is that if you see something lacking you can help make it better by contributing links.

Delicious Wolf said...

RE Wiki... check out this link

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wikiality

Kimberly Smith said...

All that said about Wikipedia, I still am inspired by the progress in open source software and media.

Hardware is another issue. The infrastructure for all modern electronic communications relies on hardware. So no matter how well open source media can create the illusion of democratic participation, hard ware is not democratically controlled. Just remember that someone -or something can always shut the whole system down by turning off the electricity.

Nothing will ever be healthier for human beings than face to face conversations. One could argue that human beings who develop new capacities of sensitivity and communication will thrive more than those who don't. Higher capacities like these are only developed through a deeper sensual interaction with and attention to all forms of LIFE. Reliance on Machines - even good machines - tends to atrophy our subtler capacities.