My journey through Web 2.0 Adventure!!!

Six weeks!!! That was super fast. I am still feeling I didn't have enough of this adventure. There were easy time and difficult time. It was like riding a roller coaster through the journey.

This is my first time using Google Blogger. I used to blog on MSN Live Spaces. That was quite easy to use with some pre-set application. I didn't explore too much of my Live Space because my PC takes ages to apply/embed new application into the life space.

Google Blogger impressed me a lot. The page uploading is faster than my Live Space. Plus, it has more gadget options provided, even with another supplimentary site, the Blogger Buster. Blogger Buster allows me to find new templates and other gadget applications that I want to embed into my blog. It was contributed by most Blogger users.

Back to my rollercoaster story. The fun part that I like most was exploring You Tube and SlideShare. I was surprised to find out that YouTube and SlideShares are good resources for teaching information literacy. They can be used in creating informative library blogs, or library websites, or even information literacy tutorial class, but have to use under Creative Common License. Oh Yes!! Talking about Creative Common License, it is another big discovery for me. I went to explore its web site and try to understand different categories of license listed in there. It helps me to better understand the copyright issue in the open net environment.

The social bookmarking, mashup and wikipedia editing gave me a huge headache. It is easy to contribute and make changes in the Australian Newspapers collaboration site, but not so in the actual wikipedia site. I guess the actual wikipedia site is governed by strict rules and its too complicatate for me to do editing at this stage. But, from my other course, I have the opportunity to use PbWikis just 2 weeks after the wikipedia adventure, and I have done some editing in that PbWiki for our group assignment.

I was overwhelmed with the information I encountered in social bookmarking and mashup. Most of the time, I was thinking "The site seems interesting, do I really need this?" "Am I taking too much time to learn a new application and manage it?" For example: I have installed the Diigo tool bar in my PC, I never have the time to learn, dig into it, explore all its applications and use them.

Mashup is terribly difficult, and seriously I haven't fully understood the principal behind it. I think if I know API, I can understand that better. But point is, I don't know API.

In conclusion, after 6 weeks, I should say my adventure through web 2.0 was a success. I have learned many new applications, and pushed my embedding skills to higher level. I wish to learn how to embed podcasting application, and embedding movies, but I think that probably be too difficult to manage within one week. I heard of this Adobe Captivate, it can capture the screen shots and used as a tool to design and develop web-based tutorial classes for students. But it is very expensive. I wonder, is there any similar version of this exists in the web and hosted by some web developers? I guess to upload podcast and vimeo will be my next target of learning in web 2.0.

Is this an end? No!! This is just the beginning of my journey into this big Machine (internet). And I really appreciate Doc Man in creating this starting point for me.

Stay tuned!! I won't stop blogging on my discovery on web 2.0 and perhaps web 3.0 or even semantic web.

Adventure into Faviki

Hmm... Here is my tour through Faviki site. It is another free social bookmarking tool developed by Vuk Milicic from Belgrade, Serbia. Differ from Diigo that it does not need to install toolbar, which make it more simple to use like Delicious. One amazing thing about Faviki is, it introduces semantic tags concept to users. According to Faviki, "free-word tags do not have defined meanings". What Faviki does is, it not only allows user to bookmark web pages, insert tags, automatically categorise tags, it also connects those tags to wikipedia's terms. It gives meaning to tags used in it. It also provides bookmarklet which links to the user's browser toolbar.

I am going to show you all what does it mean by giving a meaning to tag. Here, I have decided to bookmark the Louise Hansen Dyer Music Library.

1. Click the add bookmark "+" on the top right corner in Faviki.

2. Type in the URL address of the website you want to add as bookmark.

3. A tag adding box will appear with different suggested tags.

4. Place your cursor over Louise Hanson Dyer, a drop-down box will appear with a brief explanation about who is Louise Hanson Dyer from Wikipedia. See the below diagram.


5. You can add as many tags you want.

6. Save it.

7. Back to your Faviki main page, a list of bookmarks that you have added will appear, include all the tags you have selected.

8. Place your cursor over each of those tags, you will have a brief explanation box appear under the related tag. As shown in the diagram below.


Another good thing about Faviki is, those tags are available in 14 different languages.

Fun tool to use!! Try it out!!

Adventure into Furl It and Diigo

My adventure starts here....!!!!

The first fact is: FURL WAS SHUT DOWN ON APRIL 17, 2009, and absorbed by DIIGO!!!!!!!! Why is it still there on course blackboard??? No wonder when I clicked that link, it brought me to Diigo site. AAARRGH!!!!! Alright then, Diigo now.

Diigo is another free social bookmarking site similar to Delicious but with more optional functions. Diigo claims to enable users to annotate, archive and organise bookmarks. Users can archive or store their favourite web pages (bookmarks) forever and make them searchable. Users can search collections by tags, full text (oo, I like this), highlights, sticky notes, titles of web pages and etc. These bookmarks can be achive into multiple version, either as html (webpage) or picture (screenshot) formats.

I like its organising feature the most. It allows user to highlight and add sticky notes to specific parts of web pages archived... WooHoo!!! And the sticky notes can be freely positioned, resizable and floating... And more, users can organise items by tags or list (GoogleNote import is supported!!!). Users can build web slides too, an interactive slideshow to introduce their bookmarks.

It also provides collaboration in group, which group bookmarks can become a repository of a collective research. Several applications for group usages: group widgets, group sticky notes, group forums, group tag dictionary and etc.

It can be used in several common browsers. But a Diigo toolbar is recommended to install into the browser. (ooo... after I installed the toolbar, my PC toolbar looks horrible, too many things... because I already have Google Toolbar on it plus the IE Toolbar... now, the Diigo wants to squeeze in for a place.. I should evalute this after one month - how often I use the Diigo toolbar.. ) Apart from toolbar, Diigo offers several other tools as shown in the diagram below.

This is how its help page looks like, videoclip is embedded in most help pages to help users better understanding how to use Diigo.

And here is the Diigo Community that users can search and find interesting bookmarks to achive through some popular bookmarks or tags.


It also includes social features such as users can sign into Diigo through Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and Open ID.

I found it very interesting and it is now sitting on my PC toolbar. Need sometime to dig into it, test it and evaluate it.

Great Tool!!!