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Summary
Web 2.0 overview
Web 2.0 can make your life easier and more enjoyable.
If you are finding it difficult to keep up with the amount of information you take in, let alone wanting to understand how to create information and share it with others, the new generation of Web 2.0 applications have arrived and have the ability to give you more control.
Web 2.0 applications to consider
Below is a list of applications in no particular order that you might like to consider using and why:
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Plazes
Plazes is a location based service which is curiously appealing. It sits inactively on your system. When you login to the Internet, it correlates your current IP address with a physical location. You can then mark up where you are with descriptions or photos. You can even show your travel progress on a map widget. If your friends use the service, you can also see which of them is nearby. The service would work much better if GPS functionality became embedded in all kinds of devices. Until then use it to show on your blog where you are and what timezone you’re in. It might help you avoid some of those late night phone calls from home when you are traveling.
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Linkedin
Linkedin has been one of those slow burning applications. While it has been around for some time, in some ways it is only just becoming really useful. Use it to keep track of your contacts as well for doing background checks on the people you meet at conferences. If you meet someone interesting, try searching for them on Linkedin and send them an invitation to join your network. Even if they move jobs you’ll be able to track them down and they will remember the context by which you met. Recently Linkedin has developed some useful new features. You can create a personal background page which is indexable by Google. This effectively provides you with a professional broadcast platform. Linkedin Answers is another service which is becoming a good way to tap the collective intelligence of your network.
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MySpace
MySpace is an application most people know about. You might be interested in how to use it if you aren't a teenager. As a platform to create your own community, MySpace is a great way to virally circulate content, unleash a new product that targets youth, or even do some market research. A word of caution; its not idiot-proof and blatant commerciality can backfire, but in the right hands, it is a powerful tool.
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YouTube
YouTube is useful in a number of ways. Great for finding video clips that you’ve heard or read about, searching for video content that you can use to explain concepts in presentations and finally for distributing material to a wide audience. YouTube provides both storage and community distribution. Video clips hosted on YouTube can be pasted onto your blog. On the subject of hosting video, there is also - Blip.TV which provides greater flexibility. YouTube has huge volumes of video search queries which makes it a quick way to get content noticed.
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Flickr
Flickr was one of the original Web2.0 companies and still remains one of its poster boys. Use Flickr to host and share your photos with other people. An easy upload tool allows you to drop photos you’re your Photoshop file system and batch upload them with tags to the platform. You can also subscribe to a feed of other people's comments on your photos which you can view in an RSS reader (See Google Reader). This means you don’t have to visit the site. Flickr can also be used to write your blog. Flickr integrates with blog platform Typepad so that when you want to write a post, you first find a photo that describes your topic, and then click 'Blog This' on the photo. It automatically posts your commentary and an online photo to your personal website.
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Typepad
Typepad, and Wordpress are the two most popular blogging applications. Typepad allows someone with no programming ability to create a variety of different websites by simply moving visual elements around on a screen. Its like Microsoft Frontpage without the flaky HTML. Typepad's other great advantage is that you can create multiple blogs and share content modules between them, as well as easily map domain names to individual sites.
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Skype
Skype is a key communications tool, but interestingly you can use it with people that don't have an account. In an ideal world all of your contacts would have Skype and a video camera installed which would allow you all to video conference. You can set up Skype numbers in various parts of the world which allows people to call you on a local number. You will pay a few cents when they call you. The call is patched through to your Skype 2 account, and if you’re not there, it can be automatically routed to your mobile phone. It’s cheap and surprisingly good quality.
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Paypal
Paypal has been around a long time. It continues to be incredibly practical. Its a great way to transfer or receive funds from people in other countries and allows you to create shopping cart services for virtual items like eBooks. Paypal is increasingly being integrated with services like Skype so that you can exchange money easily with other people.
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iSync & Contacts
Contact management is still a bit of an application void. You will find that Blackberry works well with the Apple address book using iSync and Pocketmac software. Its not perfect, but at least you won’t lose your contacts anymore if you lose your phone.
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Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us lets you do the equivalent of clipping interesting newspaper articles and magazine and storing them virtually. It neatly integrates with the Firefox browser so that when you highlight a piece of text and click 'tag' it brings up a small window which bookmarks the page, adds your highlighted excerpt and then allows you to tag the bookmark with relevant keywords. You can then go back later and find any of your clipped content by searching.
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Google Reader
Google Reader allows you to track hundreds of news sources every day without visiting websites. Instead through Google Reader you can subscribe to their RSS feeds, and quickly scan the latest articles in short form without formatting as soon as they appear. You can also easily sort your feed subscriptions into folders, both by subject and also any folders you nominate which you might find useful. As an example, you can file the great blogs and websites that you think are worth reading on a more regular basis. If you come across a site which you find interesting, you can add that feed to your Reader subscriptions list.
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Lacie External Storage
The problem with taking lots of photos, editing videos, downloading media content and everything else - is that it takes a significant amount of storage. Definitely, far more than you can keep on a laptop. Additional external Lacie storage can sitting on your desk. The Lacie Mini BigDisk is also a fantastic piece of technology. Its small, very fast, has 320gigs of storage and doesn't require external power. Use it to store your music collection when you travel and you will free up your laptop for documents, as well as any photos or videos you might take on your travels. Longer term, you might prefer to be able to upload all of this stuff to a secure central server (see below).
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Apple iPod Video
You might be interested in how you can use it for more than just music. After setting up a US iTunes account by buying credit vouchers when you’re in the US or on Ebay, your favorite TV shows can get automatically downloaded to your computer each week. This lets you watch them when you have a spare moment on your iPod (e.g waiting in a queue, riding in a taxi, on a plane or waiting for a meeting). With a simple cable, you can also rig up your iPod to a big screen plasma in a hotel room, which lets you continue watching a show on a larger screen.
Below are also some Web 2.0 applications that may evolve:
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Amazon S3
Amazon have recently moved out of selling books and other stuff into providing enterprise level services like storage and outsourced computation. You can now fairly cheaply get access to terabytes of offsite storage. Interfacing with S3 requires more technical skill than you may possess and you may not always have access to fast enough broadband to not make the upload process painful. But its certainly the way of the future.
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Blip.TV
Blip has a great platform for effectively hosting your own TV show on the web. What makes it really interesting is that it acknowledges the fact that people won't watch your video content in just one place, and instead provides you with the ability to track usage and insert advertising no matter where consumption takes place.
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GPS Enabled Mobiles
More and more mobile phones over coming years will have built in GPS functionality. The Nokia N95 is one of the first. The jury is still out on how well integrated phone GPS will work as in car navigation devices, where the ability to fix and hold satellite signals at speed is critical. But they will allow people to start geo tagging photos they take with their phones, as well as pave the way for a whole new generation of location based services which previously relied on Telco's to provide cell based information (which they never wanted to do). The N95 is still expensive.
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Joost
Joost is TV made by the founders of Skype, and has a very slick interface. So far, however, content is limited and you may prefer downloading and watching content later (via iPod and iTunes) than relying on having a fast streaming connection. There is potential in the service, especially if they can get the social aspects of entertainment consumption worked out.
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Twitter
Twitter is a service that lets you broadcast what you are doing to all of your friends as well as people that you don't know but are interested in subscribing to your activities. There is no doubt that when kids get a hold of it it will be huge. There may be a useful adult application here as well.
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Ning
Ning lets you create your own private version of Myspace. Its still a bit shaky but the platform is impressive. You can create your own invitation only social network reasonably quickly. There are however, still a few bugs.
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Google Notebook
Google Notebook lets you store useful bits of information clipped from articles, or perhaps something like a travel itinerary that I might need access to when you don’t have your laptop. You can cut and paste content into it easily, organise notes by subject and then search for stuff later.
Blog on [insert company name here]
A blog (short for weblog) is a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs are defined by their format: a series of entries posted to a single page in reverse-chronological order. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or reflect the purpose of the web site that hosts the blog. The author of a blog is often referred to as a blogger. Many blogs syndicate their content to subscribers using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) , a popular content distribution tool. A blog is created by an author about a topic. Any person can post a comment. All comments are moderated.
This site has set up a number of blogs that will focus on particular areas. The blogs we write are all meant to be informative and beneficial to you. We have created the following blogs to start with:
- [insert company name here]
- Candidate – focus on job hunting, networking etc
- Advertiser – content advertisers are interested in etc
As we progress, we will establish industry and professional blogs.
Check out our blogs and add your comments by clicking on the link. [insert company name here] blog
Wiki on [insert company name here]
A wiki is a collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it. This site has its own wiki filled with useful content on jobs and careers.
Check out the [insert company name here] wiki or contribute to global knowledge about your profession by clicking on the link.
[insert company name here]WIKI - Profession
Podcasting on This site
A podcast is a digital media file or a series of such files that is distributed over the Internet for playback on portable media players and personal computers.
This site has a stack of podcasts on career and other topics that may be interesting to our members.
Take a look at what’s on offer by clicking on the link. Podcasts
Surveys on this site
This site uses surveys to gather qualitative data from our users. It helps us stay on our game and ensures we are providing content that is relevant. To take a survey now, click on the link.
Surveys
Polls on this site
Polls are an important part of what we stand for. We want your input in how we do things. Polls allow us to further develop our offering. Some polls might relate to non this site issues, but will again influence what we offer to you. Check out our polls now by clicking on the link.
Polls
Competitions on this site
We regularly run competitions with great prizes. Only registered members can play and win. See what you could win by clicking on the link.
Competitions
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