Archive for May 2008

The News in Print compiles a listing of 40 word processing applications for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Online use, with reviews for each. And while you’re there, you might check out 30 Alternatives To Adobe Acrobat.

The Association of Virtual Worlds has published The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds. This free, downloadable book provides a guide, with links, to over 250 virtual worlds along with a glossary. Included are virtual environments for every age group ranging from Disney Fairies Pixie Hollow, Creebies, and Frenzoo, to one of my faves - Neopets, Planet Cazmo, and Scions of Fate. Coming soon: The Green Book: A Business Guide to Virtual Worlds.

Todd Zeigler at the Bivings Report comes up with 9 Ways to Improve the Quality of Comments on your Website. If you have a blog or website on which you allow public commenting, you may want to check out some of these useful suggestions:

1. Have moderators (or other staff) maintain an active presence in the comments
2. Force users to have one pre-approved comment before they can post freely
3. Filter out the profanity
4. Report Comment feature
5. Bury/Promote Comments
6. Require users to register before posting comments
7. Enable threaded comments
8. Give users ability to ignore other commenters
9. Implement a comment policy

Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal has come up with a guide to analyzing your website using the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us. By following her suggestions, web authors will benefit in the following ways:

• get an idea what people liked most of all in your post (to brainstorm for future posts);
• analyze why one post was successful while another one was buried;
• see how people describe your post (i.e. how they ’see’ it) - that will enable you to look at your site “from outside“;
• explore your competitor’s social media success and learn a lot from that;
• perform advanced keyword research (how people tend to tag shows how they are most likely to search).

An interesting tool mentioned in this article is called similicio.us which is a quick search interface that locates similar web sites based on people’s tags/bookmarks on del.icio.us, using a home-brewed association engine.

Imagine making a change to your profile on MySpace and having it automagically update on the other social website communities to which you belong. According to an announcement made by MySpace yesterday, this functionality will be available in a matter of weeks. The initiative called Data Availability will enable social networkers to share not only profile data between websites, but content such as photos and videos as well. So far Twitter, eBay, PhotoBucket, and Yahoo! have all signed up to participate and partner in the project.

Not to be outdone, Facebook announced today that it will be releasing a similar functionality called Facebook Connect which will also enable members to share their data, friends lists, and content with other websites. Although no partnering websites have been announced, it is rumored that the social news site Digg may be an inaugural partner.

MySpace, Facebook, and Yahoo! all joined the Data Portability Workgroup (DPW) earlier this year whose mission it is to facilitate just this type interoperability between social networks enabling members to access friends and media between all of the social communities to which they belong. For a quick (2 minute) tutorial on what data portability is, check out this video.

Illustration by Max Scratchmann

Anastasia Goodstein offers some pretty sound advice for attracting today’s tech-savvy, multi-tasking teens to the library in her article What Would Madison Avenue Do? Marketing to Teens: To attract today’s teens, think like a marketing pro in the May 1st issue of School Library Journal. From her experience studying young people’s online habits Goodstein shares the following lessons for dealing with the Millenial generation:

• Teens are multitaskers.
• Teens prefer byte-sized entertainment.
• Teens expect content on demand.
• Teens want to participate.
• Enlist teens to manage your social media.
• Don’t try too hard to be cool.
• Know your audience.
• Don’t sweat the design.
• Support causes that kids care about.
• Use text messaging and IM appropriately.
• Teens love making mixtapes… online.
• Tweens like to break virtual worlds’ rules.
• It’s not just about MySpace and Facebook.
• Beware of anonymous gossip sites and applications.
• Dance videos are all the rage.
• Miley’s YouTube channel.

Marketing Vox has come up with a how-to guide for podcasters including 10 Tips for Launching a Solid Podcast. They note that podcasts are projected to reach an audience of 65 million users by the year 2012 and offer these suggestions for launching an engaging podcast:

1. Plan your podcast schedule.
2. Make it RSS-accessible.
3. Keep it short.
4. Don’t waste time hard-selling.
5. Segment your podcasts.
6. Simplify podcast management.
7. Submit your podcast to popular directories.
8. Build a compelling podcast website.
9. Let website visitors commune with one another.
10. Measure and analyze.

via Micro Persuasion

Looking to go beyond Google for Web search? If so, you’ll want to check out these eight search engines listed by Web Worker Daily as viable alternatives to the search heavyweight including interfaces which allow you to search web forums, video, images, and people. Here are their suggestions:

• Addict-o-matic
• Redzee
• Omgili
• Dogpile
• Truveo
• Blinkx
• QnA search
• ZabaSearch

Shaheen E. Lakhan and Kavita Jhunjhunwala write about open source software in online learning for the April-June 2008 issue of Educause Quarterly. They discuss the history of open source, its implementations in the educational sector including virtual universities and education portals, and its impact on learning. The authors offer a comparison matrix featuring some of the most widely used open source learning management tools including Moodle, .LRN, and Dokeos.

“Open source and digital education and learning, separately and together, aim to reach everyone. Although both movements have gained considerable maturity, a need for greater coordination exists. A cohesive plan must bring together open source principles and technologies, educational institutions, and economic factors so that each component’s role is clearly defined. Both open source and digital education projects are taking their first tentative steps into the consumer world. They have a long way to go before they enter the mainstream, but together they have great potential to change forever the face of education.”

Aliza Sherman at Web Worker Daily discusses the rules for Building Online Community Brick by Virtual Brick and then provides some suggestions for social networks and other online destinations which offer community building opportunities. According to Sherman, the rules of online communities include:

1. You can’t own a community.
2. Communities aren’t free.
3. Every community needs leadership.
4. A community dies if it is all about you.
5. At some point, organic communities need roots.
6. Community building is not all about the tools.

The speaker presentation files for the recent Web 2.0 Expo which was held April 22-25, 2008 in San Francisco, CA are now available. If you weren’t able to attend the popular O’Reilly conference, you can still access the 50+ sessions including:

• Games 2.0: Why the Future of Games Looks More Like Zombies and Scrabulous and Less Like Halo 3
• How to Create Successful Unconferences, BarCamps, & Meetups for Almost No $$
• Social Data: Collecting, Mining, and Using it in Your Applications
• Taking Web 2.0 Offline and On the Desktop
• The Next Generation of Tagging: Searching and Discovering a Better User Experience

A Scandinavian event called the Living Library which lets patrons borrow human “books” is making its way around the UK according to the Times Online. During these special events, library readers are able to check out a person for up to 30 minutes for a one-on-one chat which will offer them the opportunity to learn about a different lifestyle, culture, ethnicity, etc. The books cataloged for the events include a wide variety of stereotypes including Gay Man, Police Officer, Person with Mental Health Difficulties, Muslim, Vegan, and Ex Gang Member.

Bloggers and librarians alike will be interested in checking out this list of 50 Awesome Open Source Resources for Online Writers which links to loads of free/low-cost applications to help you write, edit, and get organized. I noticed a few that I’ve already used such as GIMP, OpenOffice, and FileZilla FTP, and a few more which I’ll be checking out including PDF Creator, Tellico, and Mozilla SeaMonkey. The software resources are divided into the following categories:

• Word Processors
• Reference
• Organization
• Helpful Tools
• Web Tools