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.

Thing #14

Delicious (formerly del.icio.us)

I don't know why I never joined Delicious until today. I have the worst habit of bookmarking anything and everything I find even remotely useful that I *think* I *might* want to view again. Of course I add so many things I never go back and look at those old bookmarks because it seems like too much to wade through. For 5 years it has been around according to the Delicious blog. Wow! I used to think the old spelling was kind of funky. I like that it was unique, but I admit I could never remember what the site actually was and that probably kept me away from it. I can be lazy like that sometimes! I really like Delicious because it allows you to tag and add a greater level of detail. I think that is what is fundamentally missing from saving bookmarks in your browser. Also you can keep all your bookmarks online so you don't have to worry about what happens when you use multiple computers, browsers, etc.

The potential for this helping me organize links I find through various listservs is huge!

You can also see how many others have saved the link. I think that's a good tool for gauging how much people might be aware that a certain site exists. It's fun to see the first person who ever saved a certain site to Delicious. For example, I'm the first one to save a site about ADHD and marriage from about.com
I understand part of the purpose is to make the terminology social and more open to anyone. But it's hard for me to use a consistent tagging scheme. I know I can view what tags I've used but when I'm in the middle of adding something really quickly, I'd rather not have to go looking for tags I've used before so I can keep everything standardized and easy to find later. If only when you start typing in a tag, it could start to auto-fill the tags in based on what you have used before? Also, I wish all the sites you can tag on could work together. I'd love to be able to click on the tag "library" and see content from Delicious, Flickr, Blogger, etc.