Tuesday 29 March 2011

Web 2.0 Tools aka My Happy Sticks

Today marks the beginning of an (almost) week off work. I need to go in on Thursday to provide some cover but I can live with that. Obviously a week off is golden time. Something to be savoured. Did I go out for a long walk in the sunshine? Did I indulge in some writing? Did I hell. Instead I faffed around on Twitter and answered the following question posed by Kate Theimer : Which Web 2.0 tools do we rely on socially and in the workplace?

The two worlds of "social" and "workplace" are starting to merge together. On Facebook I have a long list of ex-colleagues that I would never have kept in touch with pre-Web 2.0. Last week one of those ex-colleagues emailed me regarding a job I might be interested in. The same ex-colleague is someone I regularly have banter about music and other such non-work topics. It got the old brain ticking. I got my first mobile phone when I was thirteen. Since then I have been able to keep in touch with friends around the clock. You could text your friends after the forbidden time of ten pm and not have parents barking at you to hang up the phone. Perhaps that laid the foundations for the Web 2.0 generation. The latest label I have heard is the "Google generation" which is used to define anyone born after 1992. Just pause for a second. 1992?! There's something scary yet gently awesome about that. Then again I dislike tagging generations with wide sweeping labels; it makes for lazy sociology.

Anyway, back to the point at hand. Here follows a list of Web 2.0 tools I would be lost without:

Dropbox

This is a fantastic file sharing and storage service. You can install an app onto your computer and simply "drop" files into the assigned Dropbox folder. This is then mirrored by your Dropbox account which is stored on the cloud. From there you can download and upload files to computers that do not have your Dropbox app installed. This is very handy if you have numerous Dropbox accounts in one household or office area. A key feature is that you can revert back to previous versions of a file. Very handy if you have an "Oh whoops!" moment.

One drawback to Dropbox, but a very minor issue, you cannot edit files stored on the cloud. Currently I'm using it as a back up service for my netbook and as a method of transporting files across numerous computers. It's more reliable than using USB sticks and you're less likely to have issues with corrupted files or leaving the bloody thing on a train.

Diigo

I came across this website when the demise of Delicious was being banded around the web. The issue of sharing two computers was getting on my nerves. Having a cloud based bookmarking service would suit my purposes more than going between computers. I can't remember exactly how I came across Diigo but the brightly coloured website (yeah, I know...) attracted my attention.

The best feature of Diigo is the interaction the user can have with information stored on the web. You can highlight sections of a website, add your own sticky notes to specific web pages and the usual stuff like adding tags and descriptions to bookmarks. Diigo is iPad friendly and you can install an app in Google Chrome. I can log into my bookmarks from any computer with internet access. This has come in rather handy especially as I moved from work to volunteer placement to home.

I notice that they have more advanced settings for the premium account such as annotation specific areas of text. I'd consider paying for such a feature if I was still in full time education or carried out a lot of research on the web.

Adobe Workspaces

Ah, now this fills the gap left by Dropbox. Sometimes you might be working on something you don't want to download to a computer. In those quiet moments in work you may want to dabble away at that secret best selling novel you're writing. This is where Adobe Workspaces comes in.

The basic account is the only option available to those outside North America. Still, you get a pretty good deal for your money. You can upload read only documents such as PDFs and Word docs if you wish. Or you can import documents into Buzzword which allows you to edit the content. As with Dropbox, Adobe records the history of your document and you can revert back to previous editions of the document. The best bit is that you can import Word docs or Open Office docs and Buzzword retains a lot of the formatting during the conversion process. I've heard reports that Google Docs tends to jumble up the formatting and can get very clunky with documents over 20, 000 words. The largest word processing file I have stored in Adobe comes to around 12, 000 words. However I have heard of people using Adobe for NaNoWriMo without any problems.

An honourable mention should go to bit.ly for providing handy URL shortcuts. It looks a lot better than pasting lots of code into an email and potentially freaking out the recipient. Bit.ly appears to have a lot more advanced features than mere URL shortening but I have been too lazy to find out.

No doubt this list will change as time goes on. New, stronger, faster, fitter, better tools are being release all the time to facilitate the growth of born digital information. This time last year I was singing the praises of Zotero. Now I have left further education and have no need for an academic-centric tool. As the needs of people change so will the tools they use. Fortunately we are social creatures which fuels the ethos of bookmarking webpages. This very blog post is an example of this. I want to share my great experience of the above tools with others and spread the word. Evangelists of Web 2.0. That sounds a lot better than the "Google Generation."

 Please note I've left the more obvious tools out like Gmail and Google Calendar. As for social networking; I wrote so much about using Facebook and Twitter for my dissertation that I'm a little burned out on it. But they are still nifty tools for the Web 2.0 traveller. 

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