(Week#9) Podcasts, Video & ebooks

My final entry for this blog... hmmm... Talked about videos in the last section...moving onto Podcasts. Grabbed an EaglesFanCast - Views on the Philadelphia Eagles podcast and added it to my Bloglines account.. Reasonably easy when I clicked on the advanced tab on Podcasts.com - it seemed like the logical choice. I listened to a few podcasts, but couldn't get the Vodcasts working.... Project Gutenburg.. interesting...whenever I find E-books online, especially the free sources, I see whether they have any Maori content. This one had two... one of which was, Austral English : A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia. Didn't attempt to download though. Didn't have file extensions I was familiar with. Have used Netlibrary often in the past as this was one of the first e-book sources subscribed to by academic libraries - well the two that I've worked for - and they certainly present a solution for multiple access to core texts by multiple users, simultaneously where license agreements allow. The only drawback is becoming accustomed to working in a digital environment versus the print environment. Signing off.. I have been pleasantly surprised by some of the fab new technologies that exist in the digital realm that has been called Web 2.0. While at first, discovery of it started out as mystery... this training experience has somewhat clarified the term at least, even though I might not fully comprehend the concept. Have realised that I'm not so far removed from that realm after all.. I didn't realise I used so much of what is now termed Web 2.0 technologies.. I have heard comments - none specific enough to be able to link to them, that Web 2.0 is evolving into something else which is now being chatted about... My final comment on blogs? Seems like a very simple online web content management system with editing tools..made publicly available to all to publish and help continue to create and shape the Web 2.0 digital environment.. so, this is me...signing out...'til I have to blog again.

(Week#8) Online Applications & Tools

From the winners list of SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards, I chose Google Earth and Google Maps. Google Earth gives a fab look from space - a satellite image of the earth, with streets, towns and country directories incorporated so you can see the image of your home, your neighbours home or anyone else's home for that matter... except in places that the satellite image doesn't magnify further. Google Maps have a fabulous street view in most parts of New Zealand except for the very rural parts where the street camera person didn't capture because, well I guess it was a lot of driving around to do. In these circumstances street views of houses or properties aren't available and one has to resort to the traditional map. Didn't know Google Videos existed.. did a few brief searches that I've used before on YouTube, but was disappointed as most content seemed duplicated...Will give it a further look when I have more time to match content. Web 2.0 - hmmm seems that my understanding of it has grown somewhat after working through this exercise.. and glad that I found some surprises...