Kylie Dixon, PHC RIS
WEB 2.0 Services
There is a growing number of web services offering on-line collaboration and sharing among users. These sites are commonly known as Web 2.0 (second generation of Web-based services). Here are some of the FREE services that we know you'll find helpful.
Create and share your work on-line
Google's FREE web based program ‘Google Docs & Spreadsheet' allows you to create and share your work on-line. All you need is to set up a Google account using a valid email account. After either importing an existing document or creating a new one from scratch you can edit securely online from any computer with a web browser and easily invite others to view/collaborate on your work and keep track of changes made with a detailed revision record. Once finalised you have the ability to easily publish the document or spreadsheet on-line for the world to view.
Web: http://docs.google.com/
Store and share your digital photos on-line
The on-line photo management tool ‘Flickr' helps you organise your photos on-line and offers a way to share your photos with friends and family securely and privately. Once you set up your FREE account for this sharing application you can upload 100MB worth of photos each calendar month with no limit to the number of photos that can be stored.
Web: www.flickr.com
Share, store, and organise academic papers
CiteULike is a FREE service that helps academics share, store, and organise the papers they read on the web. Working from within your web browser, it will automatically extract citation details and allow you to add your own notes and indicate whether you have read the article or prioritise when you would like to read it. Once you have added a citation it can be accessed from any computer, and easily shared with others. When it comes to writing up your results in a paper, you can export your library to either BibTeX or Endnote to build it in to your bibliography.
Web: www.citeulike.org
Store and organise your bookmarks
Create a FREE account with ‘del.icio.us' to store and organise your favourite bookmarks (websites). Once you have created your account you will be able to access your favourite bookmarks from any computer on the web as well as share them with friends and colleagues. This social bookmarking website will also allow you to browse or search the interesting links that your friends and colleagues have bookmarked as well the del.icio.us community.
Web: http://del.icio.us/
Create your own personal biography
You may not be famous enough to have a biography written about your life, but that doesn't mean you can't write one yourself. Use ‘Dandelife' to easily create your own personal biography which you can then share with nominated people or publish for the whole world to see. Once you've created your FREE account you can combine photos (via Flickr) and Videos (via YouTube) to tell stories about the places you've been, events you've attended and the people you've met.
Web: http://dandelife.com
Definitions
We all know website terminology can be daunting at times so here are brief definitions for some popular web terms to enable you to gain a better understand of what they signify.
Web 2.0, refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.
A wiki is a website that allows visitors to easily add, remove, and change available content, typically without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring. The term Wiki also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website.
A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in reverse chronological order. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. The term ‘blog' is derived from ‘Web log.'
A podcast is a media file that is distributed by subscription (paid or unpaid) over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. Like ‘radio', it can mean both the content and the method of syndication. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster. The term ‘podcast' is derived from Apple's portable music player, the iPod.
A folksonomy is a user generated classification used to categorise and retrieve Web pages, photographs, Web links and other web content using open ended labels called tags. The process of folksonomic tagging is intended to make a body of information increasingly easier to search, discover, and navigate over time. Two widely cited examples of websites using folksonomic tagging are Flickr and del.icio.us.
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts. Users of RSS content use programs called feed ‘readers' or ‘aggregators': the user ‘subscribes' to a feed by supplying to their reader a link to the feed; the reader can then check the user's subscribed feeds to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it checked, and if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user. The initials ‘RSS' are variously used to refer to the following standards: Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary and RDF Site Summary.
Definitions have been sourced from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia at http://wikipedia.org/
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