Just because an application, widget, tool, web device, web 2.0 implement – whatever you want to call it – is available, doesn’t mean that it is necessarily useful. Yesterday, I started my re-familiarisation of what is ‘now’ on the ‘net. Here are some first thoughts in response to that…
Blogging
Working on a
previous project, we’d established that
www.blogger.com was a simple, solid site to use, and easy to access using my Google log-in. Wikipedia explains what a ‘
blog‘ is.
FeedBlitz and
Feedburner are free services which allow your content to be seen by more users through sending them updates (using RSS or Atom Feeds, as generally used by blogs). Feedblitz converts them into regular (‘regular’ can be defined’) emails to be sent to subscribers.
RSS Feeds add automatically updated content onto a website, naturally keeping the site fresh. Choose content carefully to be relevant to your website/blog.
Virtual Worlds
I tried Second Life, but discovered I wasn’t that interested in getting the hang of it. There’s enough going on in the real world to keep me busy, without inventing a second life! Social networking is different as it’s keeping in contact with people I have met in the real world.
Social Networking
Facebook is my social networking site of choice. Facebook has been a great tool whilst I have been travelling, and I have many ‘Friends’ on there from a variety of different walks of life, but particularly from my time as an
Oak Hall Tour Leader. Others recommend ‘spring-cleaning’ Facebook, but if I want to find someone, it’s easy enough, no need to go removing people… always interesting to have a chat with someone from your random past!
I still have
MySpace and
Friends Reunited accounts. I find Facebook more useful than MySpace, but am currently tinkering with the new features in Friends Reunited (now it’s free!). I have recently signed up to
Twitter (famously used by Barack Obama) and
Tagged to experiment with their capabilities.
There are also more specialist social networks which I have experimented with, including
MyChurch and
OKCupid (which gives access to a number of personality tests).
I have deleted my
Orkut account as it is largely aimed at the South American market. I’ve not used
Bebo as it seems to be aimed at the younger market.
A couple of useful Wikipedia articles:
As Aung San Suu Kyi approaches her 64th birthday (June 19th 2009), and around 13 years of imprisonment, this site was created to collect hundreds of messages of support before that birthday. Created in only 6 days by Rechord, and launched only a couple of hours ago, the site already has a buzz going on Twitter, largely thanks to @SarahBrown10 (Gordon Brown’s wife, he’s also posted an entry, but it keeps disappearing thanks to the volume of Tweets!) and @JimmyCarr, and now @eddieizzard! You can read more about ASSK, and her fight against illegal imprisonment.
