Twitter

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging website that enables users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on each author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers - who are known as followers.

Twitter Assignment

Bitly

Bit.ly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). For example,

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10378353-36.html

can be shorted to:

http://bit.ly/2iYXSZ

Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier, especially when using micro-blogging software such as Twitter. Bit.ly tracks who accesses each shortened link, allowing users to view complete, real-time traffic and referrer data, as well as location and metadata. Tracking stats are available after users shorten their long links with bit.ly by clicking on the "Info+" link on bit.ly.

Bit.ly Assignment

Diigo

Diigo (pronounced "DEE-go") is a social bookmarking website that allows users to bookmark and tag webpages. It also allows users to highlight any part of a webpage and attach sticky notes. These annotations can be private or shared with a group. The name "Diigo" is an abbreviation for "Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff". Diigo's graphical user interface includes a customizable toolbar.

Diigo Assignment

Jing and Jing Pro

Jing is free screencasting software from the TechSmith Corporation. The software takes a picture or video of the user's computer screen and saves it locally; it also can upload the picture or video to the Screencast.com website. A URL is automatically created and can be shared with others to view or access the uploaded file. Jing is compatible with Macintosh and Windows. Its simple format and the ability to upload screencasts in Flash (swf) format makes it especially user-friendly. Jing Pro ($15/year) enables capture from a webcam or the computer screen in mpeg4 format.

Example of Jing screencast

Jing Assignment

Ning

Ning is a Web 2.0 application (an online platform) for people to create their own social networks. One of the founders of Ning was Marc Andreessen (who previously founded Netscape). The word "Ning" is Chinese for "peace" (simplified Chinese: 宁; traditional Chinese: 寧)

Ning competes with social networking sites like Facebook - but a "Ning" can be built around specific interests with a unique visual design, choice of features and member data. Anyone can create their own social network for a particular topic or need, catering to specific membership bases.

Ning Assignment

YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. In November 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google.

YouTube uses Adobe Flash technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content. Unregistered users can watch the videos, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos.

YouTube Assignment

TinyChat

TinyChat is an online videoconferencing website, making video conferencing an accessible, uncomplicated experience. It works on Windows, Mac and Linux; with Firefox, IE, Safari, and Chrome; and there is a version available for iPhones. You can have up to twelve people in a room with HQ video, protected by passwords and moderators, share your desktop with them, and your conferences can be recorded and embedded on your website. Tinychat is the ultimate meeting solution for those who want to meet without stress and hassle.

TinyChat Assignment

Slideshare and Slidecasting

SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing presentations on the web. Members can upload their presentations (largely in PowerPoint format), and then tag them with useful terms. You then can search the site for presentations - and you can view the presentations online in Flash format, or you even can download the original to your local computer.

One great feature of Slideshare is called "slidecasting", which basically combines a presentation and an audio track (in mp3 format) to create a self-running narrated presentation - much like one can do with Impatica or Breeze. Except that it is completely free!

Slideshare & Slidecasting Assignment

Blogger

A blog (a contraction of the term “weblog”) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual, that has regular postings of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material. Entries are displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Blogger is FREE software from Google that lets anyone create and publish a blog.

Blogger Assignment

Google Wave

Google Wave is a personal communication and collaboration tool that is just being deployed by Google. It is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus. The name came from the Firefly television series in which a Wave is an electronic communication (often consisting of a video call or video message).

Google Wave Assignment

VoiceThread

A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). With VoiceThread, group conversations are collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world. All with no software to install.

VoiceThread Assignment

Audacity

Audacity is a digital audio editor and recording application. Audacity is cross-platform and is available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers.

Audacity was created by Dominic Mazzoni while a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. Mazzoni now works at Google, but is still the main developer and maintainer of Audacity, with help from many others around the world.

Audacity is GREAT software for editing digital audio that is used for podcasting.

Audacity Assignment

iTunes

iTunes is a proprietary digital media player application, used for playing and organizing digital audio and video files. A great feature of iTunes is that it can be used to subscribe to RSS feeds from podcasts - which makes it "podcatching" software. iTunes is available as a free download for Windows and Macintosh PC's from the Apple.com website.

iTunes Assignment

Podcasting

[from Wikipedia] A podcast is a series of digital audio files that are released episodically and downloaded through web syndication. The mode of delivery is what differentiates podcasts from other ways of accessing media files over the Internet, such as simple download or streamed webcasts: special client software applications known as podcatchers (e.g., iTunes, Zune, Juice, and Winamp) are used to automatically identify and download new files in the series when they are released by accessing a centrally-maintained web feed that lists all files associated with the series. New files can thus be downloaded automatically by the podcatcher and stored locally on the user's computer or other device for offline use, giving simpler access to episodic content.

Researchers at the Center for Journalism and Communication Research at the University of Texas at Austin in the USA are proposing a four-part definition of a podcast: A podcast is a digital audio or video file that is episodic; downloadable; program-driven, mainly with a host and/or theme; and convenient, usually via an automated feed with computer software.[citation needed]

Podcasting Assignment

Wikispaces

A wiki is a website that uses built-in software that enables the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages, using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor, within the browser. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, and in knowledge management systems.

Wikispaces Assignment

RSS

RSS (most commonly translated as "Really Simple Syndication") describes a web feed format used to publish frequently updated works — such as blog entries, news headlines, and audio — in a standardized format. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from various websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.

RSS feeds can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader", or "aggregator". A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed's URL. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new items, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

RSS Assignment

Doodle

Doodle is a great online scheduling tool - it is incredibly useful for finding the right date and time for a group of people to meet and makes scheduling virtually effortless. Doodle is a free online coordination tool that anyone can use without installing any software or even registering on the site.

Doodle Assignment

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site, mainly used for professional networking. As of October 2007, it had more than 15 million registered users, spanning 150 industries and more than 400 economic regions (as classified by the service). The main purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. The people in the list are called Connections. Users can invite anyone (whether a LinkedIn user or not) to become a connection. This social networking site is great for professional networking - building and maintaining a set of relationships with colleagues and students.

LinkedIn Assignment

Google

Google is so much more than just a browser. Google provides a large number of Web 2.0 applications that are free to use:

• Google Docs - shared editing of documents - wordprocessing, spreadsheets, presentation software
• Google Forms - really part of Google Docs, and worth looking at - YouTube tutorial about Google Forms; Blog posting with instructions on how to create forms
• Google Page Creator - edit and publish Web pages
• Blogger - create and publish a blog
• Gmail - web-based e-mail - with great spam filtering
• Google Calendar - great use of AJAX in a shared calendar environment
• iGoogle - a customizable AJAX-based startpage or personal web portal - features include the capability to add web feeds and Google Gadgets
• Google News - create your own customized news profiles
• Google SideWiki - leave helpful comments on ANY webpage

Google Assignment

Facebook

Facebook is a free social networking website. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of books given at the start of the academic year by university administrations with the intention of helping students get to know each other better.

The Facebook website currently has more than 300 million active users worldwide. A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users.

Facebook Assignment

Website with all 20 Applications

As a final posting to this presentation blog, here is a link to a single webpage that has links to all 2o of the Web 2.0 applications (and the corresponding "assignments"):

https://edocs.uis.edu/boakl1/latech/

-- Burks