Online Productivity Tools

Online productivity tools let groups of people interact with each other online by sharing files, calendars, memos, to-do lists, etc. This technology could be applied in the library to share a common calendar for all the staff in which we could include important dates such as birthdays, library events and holidays.
Notemesh caught my attention because it could be very helpful to use this program in classrooms. By using this helpful productivity tool, missing class would no longeer be a problem because the student can always go online and check other student's notes.

Wikis

I just visited the pages recommended by 23 things and I find it amazing that the internet now offers the possibility of grouping incredible amounts of information created by the common user.
The good thing about this is that information is becoming more easily available to the general public. However, since the the general public can edit the content of any wiki, it is up tot he user to decide if the information found in this wikis can be trusted. For example, consider the most popular wiki in the internet Wikipedia, in which many of its articles show a clear bias and prejudices towards certain topics.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a useful way to stay informed on any topic that catches your attention. Podcasts can be compared to RSS feeds because they automatically update to show you the latest content. The only difference is that RSS provide only text content and podcasts can provide audio and video. I visited the sites recommended by 23 things, I found out that there is a lot out there for any imaginable interest. However I personally prefer using iTunes as a source of podcasts since I can then download these podcasts to my iPod.

Video Sharing Websites

Video Sharing Websites such as YouTube and MySpace Video give users the opportunity to upload, share and comment on videos. I really liked the Warp tool in YouTube that allows people to navigate through videos in a more practical way. Another feature that I found on YouTube is called Streams, people can join Streams to chat with other people who are watching the same video as you are. Internet video broadcast is a phenomenon that will become more popular as shown in the graph below:

And don't forget to visit the library YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/user/fullcolllibrary

Images

Flickr is a good example of how we are entering a new era of photo albums. This image hosting site and its competition PhotoBucket are gainig more and more popularity among young users for its easy interface and practical use. So, time to put away those old photo albums and start uploading your photos to any of this image hosting sites.
Mashups are really fun, look what I created using spell with flickr...