Online Application Tools

Well I’ve tried out a few of the suggested tools from our Week 8 exercise (though I confess to skipping some of them just because of the sheer amount of time it was taking)

I quite liked a few of them (Google Docs and Snipshot), but most of the ones I tried didn’t look all that useful to me.  I guess if I was the type of person who wanted to maintain a visually impressive blog or web page then I would have found sites like fd’s Flickr Toys and RedKid.Net more interesting.  For my purposes I don’t think they would be useful.  Last.fm was a little interesting, but I found the site too confusing – it did not give a good explanation of how it worked.  I think I’ll stick with the radio stations I already have bookmarked.

I like the concept of Google Docs.  I think it could be quite useful to our patrons who use older public machines that don’t have Word installed on them.  I see it being useful too in the public school system where they discourage the kids from bringing in files from home on disks or CD’s in case of virus contamination.  I worry a little about data mining on the part of Google, but I guess you just avoid anything sensitive.

Snipshot was another site I liked.  As a mom I saw the potential right away for how useful it would be to my kids when preparing reports for school, but the same logic applies to reports prepared at work.  I would certainly use it again.

Add a comment June 25, 2008

Play Time!

Week 7 is here and there’s not a lot to do;  I did watch the zombie movie – cute!

I upgraded my browser this week to Firefox 3 and lost the Del.icio.us toolbar I had installed a few weeks ago.  Apparently Del.icio.us isn’t compatible yet with Firefox 3, but they’re ‘working on it’ at Mozilla.

By the way – I did make those zucchini yogurt multigrain muffins from 2 weeks ago.  I modified the recipe to add more whole grains to it and reduced the fat and sugar content.  It was a huge hit with everyone in my family… I’m getting hungry for one just thinking about them.

1 comment June 19, 2008

Flickr!

It’s week 6 and time to do some flickring.

I’ve set up my Flickr account and uploaded some photos from my childhood.  There’s a small set (5) of pictures spanning my life from birth to just a few years back.  I haven’t had a chance to do much exploring this time, but I have stumbled across Flickr pictures before in various web searches.  The site is pretty cool.

Add a comment June 10, 2008

Tag! You’re it.

Week 5 (although I’m a late starter) and I’ve been playing with social bookmarking. I have my Del.icio.us and LibraryThing accounts set up.

I’m not sure how much use I would get out of Del.icio.us, but it was interesting to explore. The tags I tried (multigrain, muffin, muffins – can you tell I was hungry?) brought up quite relevant sites and I even found a yummy looking recipe for zucchini yogurt multigrain muffins that I’ll try out this week. I can see that it would be useful in some cases, but I tend to think I’d still stick with Google for most of my searches.

LibraryThing looks a little more interesting to me personally. I like the idea of following the tags to see find other books I might be interested in reading. I practically haunt the Public Library downtown so any source that will give me suggestions for new authors to try is welcome.

Add a comment June 9, 2008