Web 2.0 Awards

I looked at the winners for the Visual Arts. I though the first place winner: http://colorblender.com/ was pretty awesome. It's a really simple concept, basically you scroll through colors using an RGB slider and the site picks out complimentary color swatches for you. Or you can choose to edit each swatch individually. These swatches can then be downloaded into photoshop or as .eps files to use from your computer. This is a great tool for designers or anyone struggling with color ideas or just for fun.

The second place winner was http://www.swivel.com/. It looks like a site where you can upload your charts and graphs and make them look more visually appealing. I guess I can see where this would be a good source to liven up projects or presentations. Nothing on there really stood out to me as anything really exciting, though.

The third place site was http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/ which "specializes in 'the visualization of complex networks.'" This site had beautiful designs based on things like subway maps, time lines, music notes, graphs, etc. It is all abstract and based on a specific data material and turned into a piece of artwork. Anyone can make a design and upload. I found this one on the site for a piece of artwork based on the dewey decimal system:

Zoho Writer

Zoho writer appears to be very similar to googledocs (which I thought was a great way to share and collaborate on an assignment).

I'm testing this out and will try to send this directly to my blog. I'm hoping it works! I'm going to test this the text editing to see the similarities to this and something like Microsoft. The text selection is limited but that makes sense. As an online application, it needs to consider only universal fonts available on all computers (besides, I don't think people are using something like this to design anything extravagant).
I like the color selector better than in Microsoft already!

I like how user-friendly this and googledocs are. The tools and interface is similar enough to microsoft that it is easy to figure out. Something like this is a perfect way to collaborate online because of it's ease of use and open access to everyone with an internet connection. It's hard to say whether something like this will ever take over for Microsoft anytime soon, but online applications are definitely taking a chunk out of the Microsoft market. I think some people are wary of keeping important docs on the web, especially anything with personal information, for security risks. But technology is changing and I think people and companies will start to turn to op line applications for day to day document use because they are free, easy to use and more versatile than microsoft in the way of sharing, exporting to the web, etc. This is also great for creating backups of work already started in Microsoft.

I personally would stick to googledocs because most everything else I have is google (blog, email, rss feed, etc) though Zoho writer is just about the same and I have no real preference to either.

*note: I had to cut and paste this entry in from Zoho because it would not let me publish to the blog. The settings were off. Aside from that, I have no complaints about Zoho.

Wikis

I like the idea of wiki's even though I have no real experience with them other than wikipedia. I can see where they would be useful in setting up a community forum of information site. I think that leaving the wiki open for anyone to edit, like wikipedia, has its advantages and disadvantages. Leaving it open allows anyone to share their information and ideas, which presents a much broader range of perspectives and opinions. Unfortunately, this can also lead to presentation of misinformation and can get out of hand if not monitored. Limiting the wiki's editors can help to manage the quality and control in the site.

Wikis are great tools for businesses. We were thinking of setting up a training wiki for the employees of the winemaking shop to learn the processes of wine making. We could also set up a wiki for our customers so they can share their tips and experiences. In the case of libraries, wikis can be used as an interactive website among staff. I think keeping a wiki open to the library patrons as a community center is a great idea. However, leaving anything open to the public runs the risk of getting out of hand. Even the community forum in my town can become opinionated and malicious.

I started a wiki on PBWiki. I didn't spend too much time on it but still found that setting up the account and starting was very easy. The tools and interface seemed user friendly to me. I could easily edit the text and links were easy to create.

Learning 2.0

I found the articles about Libraries 2.0 interesting. They demonstrate who technology and Web 2.0 have really changed the dynamic of the library. Rick Anderson illustrates some of these changes in his article "Away from the 'icebergs'." He emphasizes the importance of making changes in the library from traditional to progressive attitudes towards information and technology. He discusses the dwindling need for huge print collections, how librarians should focus on technology instruction for their patrons and how libraries need to learn to compete with the influx of new information accessible through the web. Another change in perception is mentioned by Michael Stephens as he mentions that "the library is human." What I have gathered is that libraries have shifted away from the traditional role of a place to get books and find articles to a completely interactive environment. Technologies have made it so easy to integrate the users and library that it more of a community than ever before. Chip Nilges talks about "collective intelligence" which encourages people outside of the library such as professionals, faculty and patrons to "contribute their expertise to the collective." This sharing of information can be done through blogging, tagging, creating online reviews, etc. In these ways, the library creates a sense of community and creates an environment of learning that everyone can participate in.

Technorati

Technorati is a website that indexes blogs similar to google, however getting technorati to index your site looks a bit more complicated with adding code whereas google will index anything. I can see where people who are really interested in blogging would love a site like this. It shows the most popular blogs, tags, pics and video as well as the latest blogging trends and subjects. I haven't really caught on to the whole blogging thing yet, with the exception of being familiar with how blogs are used to improve website search optimization. This 2.0 blog is the first personal blog I have ever written; I guess I am a little behind in this whole area. I would probably prefer to search for interesting blogs through delicious, the interface for technorati seems a little crowded and difficult to navigate. I don't see myself becoming a real serious blogger anytime soon, so technorati probably wouldn't be something I would use on a day to day basis.

Delicious

At first, I didn't quite understand the idea of delicious. I guess I just saw it as a way to upload your bookmarks on the web so you would be able to access them from any computer. I can see the convenience of this, but I wasn't convinced enough to go through the effort of creating and account, uploading my bookmarks, etc. However, once I started to browse though the site, I started to see how many uses it had. You can use tags to identify and sort your bookmarks into different categories and search the site similarly tagged websites. I like this way of searching by tag and browsed through a lot of articles this way. I was able to bookmark some popular design websites for free images and fonts, which always comes in handy. Another aspect of delicious I liked was the ability to look at other user bookmarks. This way, you can link up to friends, classmates, coworkers etc and see what sites they have been reading. This would be great for online groups, for example, creating a delicious account for my coworkers and I to share different posts about winemaking. In a library setting, I think a site like this would be great for conducting preliminary searches on a particular topic to see what is out there.