Jude’s Bookshelf
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This has been a lovely way to become acquainted with new technologies. We are almost constantly using computers and the internet. This project has made me more aware of what’s out there, how it is being used and has certainly increased my tech vocabulary. And it is necessary to keep up as best we can. I can think of no one who would not benefit from the information offered in 23 Things: Web 2.0.
My favorite of the 23 things: Delicious. My online faves. Yum.
My favorite new thing: Google Docs. How handy. A sheet of paper and a spreadsheet at your fingertips. And a place to file them.
There were a few that I didn’t like and most likely will not use, but knowing about them and how they are used is certainly to my advantage.
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” Dr. Seuss
Thank you for the opportunity to read and learn…
Podcasting is…
In short, Podcasting is producing a series of episodes and publishing it on the internet, ready to download. (The term podcast is derived from Apple’s iPod mp3-player, and the term broadcast.) Podcasting is a bit like producing radio shows aimed at listeners through a personal computer or mp3-player. The Podcast-episodes (“radioshows”) are automatically downloaded onto your mp3-player through a subscription.
Podcasting is the ultimate form of audio-on-demand: you can listen to your favorite show whenever, wherever and as much as you want!
Listened to a cut from Collusion an album by a Dallas based
group called 1000 Miles From Home
Vidcasting (VODcasting)
Vidcasting (vidcasting) is the audiovisual version of Podcasting. Vidcasting can best be compared to producing a television show, instead of a radio show. Because of its visual nature, Vidcasting requires a portable player that is capable of playing video file formats (such as Apple’s Video iPod). Most PC’s can already receive both sound and video files.
So what’s in it for you? Well, a LOT! For both Podcast Listeners and Pod- or Vidcasters.
What’s a podcast?
A podcast is a free video or audio series — like a TV or radio show — that you download from iTunes and play on your computer, iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. Visit the iTunes Store to search for podcasts that pique your interest. Once you find one, give it a quick listen, then click a single button to subscribe.
Download thousands for free.
Thousands of podcasts in dozens of categories make for a smorgasbord of entertainment. And it’s all free. Simply find the podcasts you want, click Subscribe, and voilà! You get the most recent episode — and all future episodes — delivered directly to your iTunes library. Or download past episodes by clicking the Get Episode button.
Sounds like a plan, but the system administrator won’t allow me to download itunes store info, so I cannnot see what sort of free podcasts are available. But I do get the concept.
Just searching for a list of the Harlem Globetrotters. One of the possibilities was Stars & Stripes…and it offered the opportunity to follow via podcast. Voila!! It’s become part of library reference.
Watched this short video memorializing the June 2009 opening of the Azle Memorial Library
“This design shows what a 21st century library shoud be: Lots of open space, meeting and study rooms, wifi, coffee area, large veranda, computers, amphitheater, park woodland trails – not just a warehouse for books.” Fairly well done and interesting, at least to me since it’s a local library. Not nearly as fun as some clips I’ve seen on YouTube, ie. commercial advertising like Jack in the Box. hmmm….$$$, I suppose make a difference.
Amazon reaches into customers’ Kindles and remotely deletes already-purchased books. Facebook launches Beacon, an advertising mechanism that collects and publishes information about what you do on external web sites on your Facebook profile (only to apologize and offer opt-out later). Twitter doesn’t offer the ability to export more than 3,200 status updates. Flickr only lets you see the last 200 photos you uploaded if you don’t have a paid Pro account. MySpace and Facebook don’t immediately remove photos from their servers when you delete them.
When you’re living in the cloud, you’re beholden to a third party who can make decisions about your data and platform in ways never seen before in computing.
Server Unavailability and Account Lockout
One of the biggest benefits of storing your data in the cloud is that you don’t have to worry about backing it up anymore. Big companies with hundreds of servers are more reliable than your little external hard drive, right? Yes. But servers do go down, and when you’re dependent on a web application to get your email or access that PowerPoint slideshow for the big presentation, there’s always the risk that your internet connection will go down, or that the webapp’s servers will. Offline technologies like Google Gears, decent export functionality, and a good backup system can ameliorate this particular concern, but not all systems offer those things.
Getting locked out of your webapp account is another possible pitfall. The NY Times reports:
Discussion forums abound with tales of woe from Gmail customers who have found themselves locked out of their account for days or even weeks. They were innocent victims of security measures, which automatically suspend access if someone tries unsuccessfully to log on repeatedly to an account. The customers express frustration that they can’t speak with anyone at Google after filling out the company’s online forms and waiting in vain for Google to restore access to their accounts.
(If you’re worried about getting locked out of your Gmail account in particular, here’s one way to automatically back up your mail to your computer.)
Don’t get me wrong: I personally am right on the cloud bandwagon with all of you. My web browser is the one app I run on my desktop at all times; I’ve entrusted the likes of Google, Apple, Amazon, and Yahoo with my data just like you have. The key is to know what you’re getting into when you make that choice, to ratchet up your personal security mechanisms (like alternate email addresses and password choices) and to lobby for better user protection by hosting providers in the cloud.
What is your biggest concern about living in the cloud?
What risk factor worries you most about relying on webapps and storing your data in the cloud?
Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, is cautiously optimistic about the future of cloud computing.
So why is Stumbleupon a useful web site on the Internet? Wouldn’t Google be more useful?
Well folks, as good as Google is, it is a keyword search tool. Stumbleupon is so much more human and intimate than that. Stumbleupon is the collective recommendations of thousands of hours of searching by web users who share your interests.
Call it a “recommendation engine”. Stumblers add to this engine by providing their personal recommendations on what sites are worth your time. Thousands of people who share your interests and hobbies will point you to the sites that they personally recommend. And guaranteed, you will like many of these recommendations.
The Internet just got smaller in a good way, folks. Stumbling is so much more satisfying than Googling.
Try “stumbling” for yourself. You won’t be disappointed: http://www.stumbleupon.com/
Google Docs is a free, web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and form application offered by Google. It allows us to create and edit documents online. This is another very practical ‘thing’ that lets me keep my docs in the cloud and access them from any computer. I’m not really ready to share right now, but I can see the value.
What is Web 3.0? When Will Web 3.0 Begin? By Daniel Nations
What is Web 3.0? One difficulty in nailing down a definition or metric for evaluating Web 3.0 is the lack of a clear, distinct definition of Web 2.0. Most people agree what Web 2.0 is an interactive and social web facilitating collaboration between people. This is distinct from the early web (Web 1.0) which was a static information dump where people read websites but rarely interacted with them.If we distill the essence of change between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, we can derive an answer. What is Web 3.0? It is the next fundamental change both in how websites are created and, more importantly, how people interact with them.Many people believe that Web 3.0 is just around the corner. But it took over ten years to make the transition from the original web to Web 2.0, and it may take just as long for the next fundamental change to reshape the web. The phrase “Web 2.0″ was coined in 2003 by Dale Dougherty, a vice-president at O’Reilly Media, and the phrase became popular in 2004. If the next fundamental change happened in roughly the same time span, we will be breaking into Web 3.0 sometime around 2015.
What Will Web 3.0 Be Like? Some likely scenarios:
Web 3.0 as a Marketing Term. Sadly, this is probably the most likely way that we’ll be using the term ‘Web 3.0′ in the future. Web 2.0 has already achieved monumental buzz, and ‘2.0′ has already been attached to Office 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Mobile 2.0, Shopping 2.0, etc. As the Web 2.0 buzz declines, we will probably be seeing websites popping up claiming to be ‘Web 3.0′ hoping to create a new buzz.
The Artificially Intelligent Web 3.0. Many people ponder the use of advanced artificial intelligence as the next big breakthrough on the web. One of the chief advantages of social media is that it factors in human intelligence. For example, social bookmarking as a search engine can provide more intelligent results than using Google. You are getting websites that have been voted on by humans, so you have a better chance at hitting a good website. However, because of the human factor, the results can also be manipulated. A group of people could vote for a particular websites or article with the intent of making it more popular. So, if artificial intelligence can learn how to separate the good from the bad, it could produce results similar to social bookmarking and social news sites while eliminating some of the bad elements.
The Web 3.0 Semantic Web. There is already a lot of work going into the idea of a semantic web, which is a web where all information is categorized and stored in such a way that a computer can understand it as well as a human. Many view this as a combination of artificial intelligence and the semantic web. The semantic web will teach the computer what the data means, and this will evolve into artificial intelligence that can utilize that information.
The World Wide Virtual Web 3.0. This is a bit more of a far-fetched idea, but some have speculated that the popularity of virtual worlds and massively online games like World of Warcraft might lead to a web based on a virtual world. Kinset recently created a virtual shopping mall where users can walk into different stores and see the shelves populated with products. It isn’t a far stretch to see this expanded into an idea where users can interact with each other and walk into a wide variety of buildings, some of which might not even sell anything. But, the idea that the entire web would evolve into one single virtual world with buildings, shops, and other areas to explore and people to interact with — while not unbelievable in a technological sense — has more than just technological hurdles to overcome. The virtual web would need to get the major websites on board and agreeing to standards that would allow multiple companies to provide clients which, no doubt, would lead to some clients offering features that other clients don’t offer and fierce competition between clients. It would also increase the time it took to bring a website into the virtual web since the programming and graphical design would be much more complex. This extra expense would probably be too much for smaller companies and websites.This virtual web presents a few too many obstacles, but it should be kept in mind as a possible Web 4.0.
The Ever-Present Web 3.0. Not so much a prediction of what the Web 3.0 future holds so much as the catalyst that will bring it about, the ever-present Web 3.0 has to do with the increasing popularity of mobile Internet devices and the merger of entertainment systems and the Web.The merger of computers as a source for music, movies, and more puts the Internet at the center of both our work and our play. Within a decade, Internet access on our mobile devices (cell phones, smartphones, pocket pcs) will be as popular as text messaging. This will make the Internet always present in our lives: at work, at home, on the road, out to dinner, wherever we go, the Internet will be there. This may very well evolve into some interesting ways in which the Internet will be used in the future.
