Twitter [CPL 2.0]

Twitter. I have heard of many celebrities "tweeting" and such. I never knew what this actually meant. When I first saw was Twitter was about, all I could think was that this was Facebook, but less. I had a Twitter account, made almost a year ago, but I had never used it. On Facebook I can interact with people more and openly. On Twitter you can "follow" people and every time they "tweet" you get it in your feed. I prefer Facebook, but this is what I have learned...

Armed with a bit of knowledge about what Twitter is all about, share your thoughts on this fast growing online phenomenon.

I went back to my old account to see if anything had changed. The verdict: not really. Compared to Facebook, I believe that most people enjoy to use Facebook. Facebook has status updates while on Twitter you can "Tweet" something. Twitter has only 140 characters for you to express what ever is on your mind. Facebook has 420 characters for you to use! Twitter has following people, or whoever follows you, which is original compared to Facebook friends. But Twitter is about expressing what's on your mind, nothing more. On Facebook you have more application to use such as games, quizzes, and horoscopes. On Twitter you just check your friends' updates, which you can easily do on Facebook with specific friend groups. Facebook also has more specific privacy settings compraed to Twitter, which is only protecting the only thing you can do on Twitter esides follow people, Tweets. I never thought that Twitter would actually be that big. It never occurred to me that so many people would use this website. I don't find much you can do on Twitter, that you cannot do on Facebook, this is my one and only disadvantage. But I'm sure pretty soon Twitter will come up with something to add to only this, and will rule the micro-blogging world.

I'm still not going to use my old twitter account, as I find no use for it. Many people create a Twitter account to be able to see what their favourite celebrities are up to. Some to stay connected with friends, but not get so obsessed. I strongly believe that if you are going to interact with people, use Facebook or Myspace. I do not believe that Twitter is a very useful website for interacting and getting to know people. Though many people enjoy to use it, it is not my preference.

LibraryThing (CPL 2.0)

Library Thing. Perfect for somebody who loves to read, share their opinions abouts books, and somebody who works in a library! What is Library Thing? Well here are some things for you to do: Keep a list of books you: own, read, have an interest in reading in, a wish list, and any favorites. You can also recommend books, and write reviews on your opinion of books. And as we can interact with people at the library, we can interact with book lovers on Library Thing, as well. You can add people as friends and talk in forums, too! Any book lover would love this website!

Do you see any practical applications for Library Thing either at home or at work? Will you start using this site?

For any book lover or person who loves to record what they read, Library Thing is perfect! I don't think I will use it very much at home, but I did enjoy a couple of things. First of all I saw two recommendation buttons. There was "Members Recommend" and "Automatic Recommendations". By just scanning over this, I saw some books I had read in the past and added them to my list. I remember how good those books were and I am going to reread them now! I also read some other opinions (in reviews) on books people had read. On the books I have read I have seen some very interesting reviews and that got me thinking critically. I have never noticed those little things about those books. It was amazing. From tags I added some other books I had read some interesting and favorable things. I clicked on them and got searching! I found some interesting books I will definitely read now, and some books that I have already read! One more advantage I found to this website is that it takes no time to load the books to your list! I was able to find many books easily! For work this would be a very good suggestion. If I had read a book that I really liked and saved it to my list, and a customer wanted to read that book, too, I could easily find it or recommend it. (I usually do not remember book titles!)

In the end, I do not think I would use Library Thing at home, but using it for work would help me recommend books or suggest a good read to a customer. This site is good for book lovers, but only good for work for me.

Online Productivity Tools (CPL 2.0)

Do you see yourself using these tools or will you stick to more traditional methods? If you were to use one of these tools regularly, which would it be and why?


Calendars. I write everything on them: work times, doctor or dentist appointments, and celebrations and festivals. I, preferably, will stick to more traditional methods. By that I mean, a calendar on my fridge which tells me everything I need to know. I am on the internet daily and also check my email, but using a calendar on the internet will be the exact same for me to have one on my fridge. I do not use the internet for a very long time, but to check my calendar everyday is not something I want to do on my schedule. It would be easy to look at a Yahoo! Calendar, because that is from my email, but I still prefer my old-fashioned pen-and-paper calendar.

If I were to use any of these tools, I would use the Yahoo! Calendar. I could put all of my events on the calendar and could check it wherever I went, work or home. I could easily access it when checking my email, as well. This tool would also send me an email a week before each event occured. This would be a lot of advantages and easily accessible for me, but I still prefer a calendar on my fridge. I pass my fridge many times and by rereading every event over and over again, I remember everything I need to. It's easy to add anything I need to without having to login onto my email, when I just need to get a pen and write it out on my calendar. Overall, I believe that using a calendar on my fridge is definitely easier than using one on my email.

Flickr Photo: Dollar

$Dollar$




This is the original picture. To see the edited one on Flickr, go to this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/50228832@N05/4613725444

Youtube & Flickr [[CPL 2.0]]

Comment on the quality, entertainment value, or usefulness of the content on these sites.

YOUTUBE

I believe that all these three things are very good on YouTube. I have used this website a lot, and so has my family. My son watches old wrestling matches, while my daughter watches her favourite TV shows and how-to videos.

On different videos there are different functions you can attempt. On every video you can view it in full screen or just normal size. You can also view videos in just double the size of a normal sized view. You can also choose whether to view most videos in High-Definition, or just normal quality. There is also a button that says (the highest I have seen before) 360p - 480p - 720p - 1080p, which is also in HD. This really just increases the video quality and clearness. On some videos, the creator can put on links to websites, and dialogue bubbles of whatever they want to say. To turn these off there is a small box in the right hand bottom corner that says: "Turn off Annotations" and "Turn off Captions". You can also turn off any advertisements (like for Pizza 73) with a small oval button above. There is also a new button that has the next video on a link. Right after the video is finished, you can click that button to see the next video that has similar themes. For example, if you are watching a video of a song with a specific band or singer, the next video could be another song by the singer(s) or the same song in a different version.

The entertainment value is very good, as well. You can go onto YouTube to watch music videos, or television shows. You can watch sports games, or replays, really anything somebody can get their hands on.

The usefulness of this content is also very good. My daughter wanted to see how to properly straighten her hair without burning her skin and many people put demo's of how to safely straighten their hair on YouTube. It can show you things you missed on TV, as well. YouTube is a very useful website for everybody to use for many different purposes. Now moving on to Flickr...
FLICKR

Flickr is a new website to me. I have heard about it, but have never used it. So this is the virtual tour: 1. Upload your memorable pictures from your computer, email, FlickrUpLoader, and more. 2. Edit your pictures. This part seems a lot like Photoshop.com to me. Get rid of red- eyes, change everything to black and white, and add your own text or little captions or stamps. 3. Organize your pictures into albums or collections. Collections are a grouping of Sets (or other Collections) so you can organize around grander themes such as special events or by year. 4. Share your pictures around the world. Just like on Facebook, you can create groups many people can relate around. Groups are a way for people to come together around a common interest such as dogs, or vacations at a particular place. You can join a group, or make one! , that will be public, public (invite only), or completely private. You can make friends this way by bonding over a certain group, that cannot be done on Photoshop.com. Also, when you post pictures onto Facebook you can whether to let an album be private or public, so everybody, even people who are not your friends, can see it. You can also do this on Flickr. 5. Next is Maps. This means you can drag-and-drop your photos and videos onto a map (using the Organizr) to show where you took them, or browse a world map to see where other people have been and what they saw. Basically, this means you can insert your photos onto a map to show where the pictures you took (in Vancouver, for example) have been taken (on Vancouver on the map). 6. Using a new product, Snapfish, you can turn your photos into: prints, posters, cards, photo books, calendars, collages, and canvases.

So now I created my own account, using my email, and uploaded a picture of my brother's pet dog, Dollar. Now I am editing it, and it seems very easy. But you need to use a different mode, Picnik mode. Auto-fix changed the lighting to become a bit lighter. I sharpened the view of the picture, and I have also changed the color to be a bit more blue. I have also fixed Dollar's red eyes in the picture. Flickr has an option of a human's eyes, or a pets'! Perfect! After editing, I am now 'creating'. To add text, there is a variety of fonts! I'm estimating over 100! Unless you order Picnik (which costs money) or create another account, so I just skipped that. I also changed the border to have rounded edges.

The quality is very much better than I had expected, actually. It is much easier to use than Photoshop.com, and the content is much more and easier to use. It was very entertaining, and if I ever need to edit photos, I will use Flickr. To see my edited photo of Dollar, it will be in the following blog.

Really Simple Syndication (CPL 2.0)

Were you able to successfully set up your RSS feed? If not, where did you run into problems? If you were successful, does this make information-gathering more convenient for you?

RSS: Real Simple Syndication. What is it? On facebook, everytime you log on, there will be the newest feeds by your friends. Same with RSS, they will show the newest feed from all of your marked websties. I go to many websites everyday, including my email and the library's website, and using the RSS feed makes it much easier.

Setting up my RSS feed was not that hard, but not many websites I go to everyday were able to have feed through this. My email was not able to go through, but Google News was. I was also able to get BBC News. Mainly news was able to get through to my feeds.

In the end, RSS isn't my most favourite thing. It could be perfect for my husband who only read the news, so he could probably make one. It was fun experimenting with this tool, though.

I prefer Google Reader compared to Bloglines. Since Blogger is a Google product, it shows all of the new blogs posted by everybody I folllow. It also shows notes I have created, and my trends: what I read, starred, shared, and emailed to friends. I can add any feeds to this and I can discover or find any feeds easier by browsing. I can also explore new feeds and see new things like featured quotes.

Using RSS was fun, but I prefer Google Reader more. Google products are very productive, and I believe they will be the most popular compared to other websites offering the same product.

Google Products [CPL 2.0]

Google. I have used this to search for information, images, videos, translations, maps, {of course} Blogger, and more. But I haven't really used Google for much more. While looking through the products I found Google Chrome. What is Google Chrome? Well I'm using it to blog this as I write. Google Chrome is a faster and easier thing to use compared to the internet. Yes, it is an internet browser, but works many times faster than any other search engine I have used.

What do you like about the Google product? What do you dislike? Would you recommend the product to friends and colleagues?

This Google product is a faster alternative to Internet Explorer 8, or any other internet browser. Google Chrome launches in a snap, loads web pages quickly, and Google Chrome’s address box doubles as a search box.Google Chrome is also very simple. You can arrange tabs however you wish, quickly and easily. I have also read that it is very safe to use with: built-in malware and phishing protection, autoupdates to make sure the browser is up-to-date with the latest security updates, and more. I also personalized it to have a cool theme that I liked. It was very easy and had a variety of themes, such as: Dolce and Gabbana, Porshce, and nice designs like: Anna Sui, Tibi, and Ocean Pacific.

It's not very easy to dislike something from Google Chrome if you ask me. It might get some getting used to in the beggining, but once you understand how everything works, it's very simplistic. One thing I dislike would be that it only shos your history of searching from day-to-day. It also doesn`t have a drop-down bar regular internet has. Instead, when you type in something it is like you were searching on Google. I also dislike that it needs the internet to function. No, not one already opened, but without the internet, how can they get the web address and show us the websties?

I would definitely recommend this new browser to my colleagues and friends. Like I wrote before, it is simple, fast, and easy to use. Not many will regret using this browser compared to Internet Explorer 8, or any other type. It`s the safest, easiest, and fastest browser I have ever used.