When Does a Blog Become a Web Site?...

When does a blog become a Web site? I've been asking myself that question the last little while as I take a look at my blog and at the blogs of friends and those that I read on a regular basis. When I started writing my blog it was just that - a place to write down some thoughts - sort of a blank journal. It had a couple of extras - my profile, a picture of me and the Blog archive - neat, clean, no fuss, no muss.

Now look at my blog - at last count there were 19 different things, widgets, components, add-ons, whatever you want to call them - from links to blogs I read, my wiki, my Flickr site, my Facebook profile, blog aggregator sites like Technorati, Feedburner, Netvibes, PageFlakes, and EduSpaces. I can chat through Meebo and stay in touch with Twitter. I can tell how many people are reading my blog through ClustrMaps (come on people where are you?), and I even have pictures of my favourite bloggers on my blog through Feevy.

When did my blog get so crowded anyway? It all just sort of snuck up on me. The other thing is now whenever I set up a profile in Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn or any other social media site, I always put my blog as my web site. I own a domain but haven't done anything with it (I really should) because I'm not a really big fan of "vanity" Web sites. But if you take a look at my blog - vanity thy name is...Me! Hmmm...

Some Web 2.0/Social Networking Flotsam and Jetsam

One of the effects of becoming immersed in the use of Web 2.0 and Social Networking tools and technologies is the sheer volume of information that I now receive daily. Between the hundreds of feed a day that I get from Netvibes and other sources, I have an ever increasing circle of friends and colleagues with whom I am sharing information and they are doing the same in kind right back at me. I would not be surprised if I was receiving more than 1,000 pieces of information a day.

Obviously that is way too much information to easily manage and utilize and I am sure that I am missing some great stuff that is just floating around out there. But on the other hand I also see a lot of stuff that I would love to spend more time with but just can't. This post collects some of that flotsam and jetsam and gives me a chance to at least briefly try to make some sense of it.

• Politicians and YouTube - several politicians are actively using YouTube, Facebook, and Second Life among other tools, to access their constituencies at the same time that governments are banning their use by civil servants. What's that all about?
• 2007 Web 2.0 Awards - To really see what is going on with Web 2.0, check out this site - over 200 Web sites in 41 different categories - a great way to check out the great stuff being done with Web 2.0
• Shaping Learning Through Comments - a great post on how students are learning from comments posted to their blogs - a very effective learning tool from my perspective. The teacher here uses student blogs to have learning happen and then measures it against standards like "the student understands and acquires new vocabulary and uses it correctly in reading and writing". Very cool.
• Can Social help in finding resources? From the Flosse Posse, this post talks about leveraging our learning communities through the use of Social Information Retrieval (SIR). SIR is described as "a family of techniques that assist users in obtaining information to meet their needs by harnessing the knowledge or experience of other users. Examples of SIR techniques include sharing of queries, collaborative filtering, social network analysis, social navigation, social bookmarking and the use of subjective relevance judgements such as tags, annotations, ratings and evaluations." This is how I am getting and sharing most of my daily information - neat to have someone put a name to it. There is a SIR workshop planned called SIRTEL 2007. Check it out!
• Encyclopedia of Life - the Encyclopedia of Life is an an "ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world.". It's aim is to catlogue all species on Earth and have the information accessible online. This just might be the "killer" Web 2.0 app.
• Tagging Tips and Non-Bloggy Remorse - this post is from Nancy White, who is absolutely amazing. Some tips and hints on how to keep up and manage tags while still living and working your busy life - a must read. Check out her blog and company.
  
• McLuhan's Laws of Media and PLEs - from Terry Anderson (more brilliance), this post applies Marshall McLuhan's Laws of Media (Enhance, Obsolete, Retrieve, Reverse) to PLEs (Personal Learning Environments). If you are at all interested in PLEs, you have to read this post.
• Read/Write Web Weekly Wrapup - a weekly wrap up of all things Web 2.0. You can subscribe and get the weekly feed. A great way to get a manageable digest of what's happening with Web 2.0 tools and technologies

I know there are literally thousands of other bits and pieces out there. Hope that some of these will be of use. Now, it's time to fire up Netvibes and get the next flood of information...

(Photo "Flotsam and Jetsam" by RobW)

Managing Information - Turn Off The Fire Hose!!

I suspect that we are all suffering from information overload, or as I like to call it - drinking from the fire hose - you get to swallow a little bit of information - the rest just gets you wet.

This was brought home to me this morning when I asked friends if they got my e-mail. The answer was "which one?" followed quickly by "turn off the fire hose!!". I was overloading them with information and not doing a very good job of even telling them what information I was even talking about.

So how do we manage information in this age of always on Internet, TV news, radio, and print media? I know that my information gathering patterns have changed significantly over the years from print to audio, to video (TV), to print again (the early Internet) and now to constantly streaming pushed multimedia content (Web 2.0) that I get to customize myself, creating an information nirvana for a data junkie like myself. I must receive on average over 200 e-mails from different sources (and with multiple e-mail addresses of course), although I will admit to merely reading the Subject lines of the messages and filtering out the ones of no or little interest (or the duplicates) to my Delete folders.

And then there is my latest information goldmine - the RSS aggregator - with Netvibes I am now receiving hundreds of feeds a day. Again I am mostly looking at titles and synopses and reading only the ones I think are relevant to my interests. On top of all this e-mail and RSS information, I read the newspaper every day, watch TV news, and get information sent to me by my friends - no wonder I always feel a little damp around the edges...

I tend to share what I find with friends and colleagues. The problem is I get carried away with my own enthusiasm and turn the fire hose on full, and everyone is just too busy to go around wet all day. How do I share what I think is neat, cool, essential, or just plain hmmm... information? My filtering system seems to work for me (or am I just kidding myself and missing more than I find?). So is it blogs, RSS aggregators, Google Groups, or some yet to be seen Web 2.0 "killer app" that will let me share the information I find and not get my friends (or myself) drenched by the information fire hose? Any thoughts, any ideas?

Hmmm...

Tag! You're It...

As I continue to look at all of the new tools and technologies that are cropping up all over the Web, I 'm trying to figure out what exactly makes a Web 2.0 application a Web 2.0 application. Is it user customization, social networking, sharing and modifying information, or something else?

The one common thing that I have seen in most of the Web 2.0 applications that I have looked as is tags - the ability to categorize or group what you are doing so as to make the information produced easier to share and find.

So, is it valid then to say that in order to be a Web 2.0 application, tags must be used? While not all inclusive, I think it's a valid "litmus test", and a way to identify something as being Web 2.0. Here are just a few Web applications that use tags. You can decide if they are Web 2.0 or not:

• GMail (OK - Google calls them labels, but they are tags)
• Del.icio.us
• NetVibes
• Blog software (Blogger, Word Press, etc.)
• Wikis (Wikispaces, pbWiki, etc.) Check out Wikimatrix to compare different wikis
  
• Flickr
• Facebook
• My Space
• Technorati

And I know that there are many, many more... Which ones are your favourites?

A Pilgrim's Web 2.0 Progress

It's been some time now since I began exploring the use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies. Here are the tools I've used so far and what I think of them

• NetVibes - a RSS aggregator and so much more, NetVibes literally has thousands of feeds, module, podcasts, events, and tabs that you can add to your own to create an amazing "learning Portfolio" of customized information. You can also share your feeds etc. with others through NetVibes ecosystems. My favourite Web 2.0 tool by far, I will be using NetVibes in my learning environments in the future.
• Blogger - If Blogger isn't your favourite blogging tool, try Wordpress, several of my friends use it. Blogging has to be the most powerful Web 2.0 tool, and is probably the most used one. I will be using blogs with my learners in the future.
• Wikispaces - one of many sites that allow you to create your own wikis, I am using wikispaces now with learners to create custom learning spaces online. Wikis are a great educational tool and they add to the collaborative nature of any learning environment, particularly if you have the learners maintain the wiki.
  
• Flickr - I'm into digital photography, and Flickr is a great way to organize and share my pictures. It also has potential as a learning tool through the creation and display of slide shows and picture collections (and I am sure all sorts of other ways that I haven't thought of yet). My Flickr collection is here.
• Second Life - not strictly a Web 2.0 tool, Second Life has incredible educational value through experiential learning, service learning, and simulation (among others). I think that the use of Second Life is limited only by the imagination of the users.
• Yahoo Pipes - I've just started looking at Yahoo Pipes, but I love what I've seen so far. As Yahoo says you can use Pipes to "rewire the Web" creating custom mashups, allowing you to create your own custom view of the Internet. I think that this tool has great educational potential and I will be exploring it further.
• Remember The Milk - allows you create and see online tasks and to-do list that you can keep private or share. Would be a useful online tool for keeping track of course deliverables due dates.
• Eventful - tracking and creation of events in your neighbourhood and around the world, eventful has some educational use for tracking and reminding learners of events, conferences and important academic dates
  
• Boxxet - another tool that allows you to create customized "box sets" of feed and information. It has loads of pre-built boxxets or you can create your own.
  

These are the main tools that I've been exploring, but I have also taken a look at several others that could prove useful to you. These tools are:

• Suprglu - an aggregator like NetVibes, it allows you to create your own custom view of the Internet
  
• Your Minis - like NetVibes you can create custom tabs of feeds and widgets
  
• Vyew - collaborative conferencing similar to Elluminate. We currently use Elluminate, and Vyew has much the same look, feel, and capabilities
  
• Photobucket - a photo storing, organizing, and displaying service like Flickr
  
• Vidavee Graffiti - a tool that allows you to markup and customize the appearance of videos

I've looked at many tools as my meandering Web 2.0 journey continues, but these are the ones that have left an impression with me. One thing that I have concluded so far is that with Web 2.0 tools you need to select the ones that work for you and use those, not try to use them all just because they are there. The journey continues...