Thing #20

Web tools

The 2008 Web 2.0 Awards had a lot of tools I already know about and some that were more obscure.

For libraries, VuFind is a open source catalog tool.

One of the more curious ones I found was under "Classifieds and Directories". It's called Parking Search and is a tool to seek out parking spaces to buy or rent. The audience is obviously quite limited and really it's only helpful for those in the largest of cities. There were no results for Omaha or St. Louis. Cincinnati had 1 result. But I liked that it serves a niche market compared to general classified sites.

I also like the idea of niche social networking. TuDiabetes is for those who have diabetes. It seems a lot more social than a traditional message board site.

I looked at 2 sites in the Health category since that meshes well with my job. One, imedix
seemed very user driven with a high possibility for non-credible information. Users post questions and others respond with advice and maybe relevant links. Some may link to Wikipedia but others like in this case, link to more reputable information sources. I will give them credit though for having a disclaimer with every question that says the answers are written by non-professionals. They are very upfront about that so buyer beware.

Another Health site seemed much more reputable, but perhaps not as social as others. Revolution Health features content from both average users and experts. Some articles are reviewed by doctors while others come from sources like the Cleveland Clinic. Users can create health pages and also post to discussion forums.

The biggest caveat to these sites is the question of credibility or authority that they raise. It's good to break down the barriers and promote more open content production but that mindset clashes with what students are taught so it's really about teaching them how to utilize different types of tools and sites on the web. There's a time and place for a Diabetes social networking site but there is also a time and place for professional medical journals about diabetes.

Urban Spoon is another tool for restaurant reviews. It was under the food category. Users can become "fans" of restaurants. It also aggregates in reviews from City Search.

BackPack was one I've never heard of that sounds really cool and helpful but alas it's one that costs $. I think it would really help me organize all my post it notes of random information, notebooks, etc.

FixYa is a social tech support community where you can submit problems with products and hopefully others can help you out or you can discover fixes to your particular issues. I think a site like this is a great idea but only helpful if it has a large following. There's probably lots of questions on there that have not received solutions and as impatient as people get with technology, that may be frustrating.