Periodic Fable

Tuesday, 5 August 2008

Why I succumbed to Twitter....

I avoided it for a long time – who needs another obsession? – but after the NLab Social Networks Conference, I decided I had to have a part of this, and yes it’s become a regular practice. I follow and am followed by various other people interested in social networks and online communities and I’m already seeing some interesting insights, being pointed to useful resources elsewhere on the Web and being caught up in new discussions both on Twitter and elsewhere (e.g., on blogs and mailing lists.

After comments by Andy Roberts and others on emint, here are some suggested rules for effective use of Twitter:

Only follow people you find interesting.
Use the Twitter search to find people (not the “invite people” – I find that’s a red herring and not the way to find people!)
Ask questions or throw out any problems you’re grappling with. Use it like a “garden fence” for the eliterati.
Use additional services like following a news or sports feed - you can then get that feed to your mobile via Twitter.
Beware of getting a large feed sent to your mobile – the thing will keep you awake!
I can see a lot of positive uses for Twitter over and above the simple “What are you doing now application”.
Distributed problem solving
Finding out a bit more about your contacts and facilitating closer relationships
Keeping attendees at a conference informed before and after
A quick way to keep members of a community or network in touch
Alerts to web content (using short URLs)
Learning prompts and alerts for learners on a course.
Labels: blogging, internet policy, moblogging, twitter, Web 2.0, web applications

posted by Helen Whitehead 10:44 AM

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Monday, 22 October 2007

Links for week commencing 22nd October

Some interesting social software for learning:

Ecto
http://www.ectolearning.com/
Their blurb: "Ecto is a hosted, open networked Personal Learning Environment. Use Ecto to transform learning into an interactive, collaborative, and student centered activity. Ecto is the only learning management system built from the ground up on the principles and architecture of social software."

It's an online service and at the moment you can join for free although it's a commercial offering. At the moment it looks pretty vanilla - it seems to be social networking aimed at learning and teaching, nothing really new about it.

ELGG
http://elgg.org/
Elgg is an open source social platform based around choice, flexibility and openness: a system that firmly places individuals at the centre of their activities. ELGG is being used by a LOT of universities and educational organisations, but you do need a server to run it on so it's not a solution for individuals.
Labels: e-learning, education sector, elearning, FE, HE, online learning, social networking, universities, VLE, web applications

posted by Helen Whitehead 9:20 AM

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Tuesday, 15 May 2007

Web Applications and Web 2.0 links

Personalised homepages

PageFlakes
http://www.pageflakes.com/

Netvibes
http://www.netvibes.com/

iGoogle
http://www.igoogle.com

Office/Organisation

30 boxes web calendar
http://30boxes.com/welcome.php

Amazon S3 (NOTE - not free)
Simple Storage Service
can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web

Yahoo pipes
feed aggregator
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

Thinkfree
ThinkFree Office is a Microsoft® Office compatible application suite comprised of word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation graphics software-all usable online and off.
http://www.thinkfree.com/

Google Apps
Free for domains (premier service for charge)
Groups can check email, schedule meetings, check email, chat in real time, collaborate on documents, and more, via the web.
http://www.google.com/a/

Dabble DB
Web database
http://www.dabbledb.com/

Virus Scanners

AVG
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

Trend micro housecall
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

More from

The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need

Web 2.0 links

RSS Info
tools for rss feeds
http://www.rss-info.com/

ELGG
Open source social networking platform developed for LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) which encompasses weblogging, file storage, RSS aggregation, personal profiles, FOAF functionality and more
http://elgg.org/

There.com
A virtual world that's not Second Life
http://www.there.com/

UK Web Focus - Web 2.0 blog
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/

Office 2.0
http://itredux.com/blog/office-20/
Labels: calendar, organisation, Web 2.0, web applications, website development

posted by Helen Whitehead 2:27 PM

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