The first, and probably most in depth section is the Friend’s Manager. This area allows you to talk with friends in the form of “Gabs”. You can assign Gabs to your friends and enable whether or not you wish to allow them to invite others to the Gab. It’s more or less of a simple flash messaging system. There’s also a “Email Alerts” option which will automatically inform you by email if: you get a new friend request, someone accepts your friend invitation, you’re included in a Gab, or if someone replies to an existing Gab. You get your usual User Profile to edit; name, birthday, picture, hobbies, location, etc. Additionally, they have added a section called “Exchange” which categorizes all types of hobbies and interests: Auto, Finance, Books, Games, Jobs and many others. In these categories, you can create mini threads so that you can share all your favorites interests with your friends. A five star rating system has been implemented so that you and your friends can vote on what things are cool, and what things are not. You can sort them by name, date, friend or rating, as well as add “Opinions”, which are just comments on your Exchange items. If you want to, they’ve also added a print feature for the User Opinions. It reminded me of Delicious Library, a simple application for Mac users to categorize their interests in their own libraries.

SnapPages also includes a Photo Manager application allowing you to organize your screen shots and miscellaneous pictures. To start, you can create an “Album” to import your photos and other pictures. Each album can be set to public, private, secure, or friend-only. Secure requires for you to input a password to access it, the others have permission according to their name. You can add tags to the photos to help organize them for later use. While in your albums area, you can enlarge your photos by using the slider found in the upper right corner. They have included a mild photo editing section in the Photo Manager where you can rotate, crop, and/or adjust brightness. They have a few others setting to revise the lighting and other effects, but there isn’t many option currently right now. If you’re looking for some more in-depth online flash photo editing, head over to Picnik. You able to share your photo galleries with friends by selecting the particular album that you want to share and adding recipients along with an optional message. Lastly, there’s the download feature that simply let’s you download any of the photos you have in any of your albums.

The last section of SnapPages is the Calendar Manager. Each calendar that you create acts identical to the Photo Manager’s Albums in regards to their property settings: private, public, secure, and friends-only. You can color coordinate new calendars when you create them as well as changing their format from the normal month calendar, to a weekly or daily calendar format. You can add events to your calendars which will require you to specify a time, a place, and any further details you need for the events. They also give you the option to input a URL to an online map if you find it necessary for the event. You also can define whether your event is a repeating affair. If so, you can input the time span it repeats: day, week, month, or year. You can also add notifications to each event, which sends you a reminder prior to the actual event. They also give you the ability to add tasks to your calendars and set exact due dates for each project. Like I mentioned, they have the Share option just like the Photo Manager if you desire to collaborate or share certain calendars with friends. They’ve included a nice RSS feature which allows you to subscribe to your friend’s calendars and see their past and upcoming events. Overall, the Calendar Manager is a nice simple way of helping to keep yourself on track for things you need to get done. It’s not nearly as in-depth as something like Google’s Calendar, however for the average person, it’ll suffice just fine.

To be honest, I liked SnapPages. Though it didn’t bring anything incredibly new to the table, it laid out all the old stuff neatly and thoroughly. Since it was created in Flash, the animation helped give it a nice touch of fluency. Give it a try, it was fun to play around in it. They plan on continuously adding new features to SnapPages, so we can only hope for the best.

Right off the bat, you’ll have to go through a small installation of the 3D Life Player plug-in. This will allow you to view the models that other members have uploaded and give you the freedom to zoom, pan, and twist and turn the models at your leisure. Each user is able to upload their 3D work from Blender, 3D Studio Max, Maya, Poser, and Lightwave, just to name a few. Also, on the upload page there are many choices of customization for your model(s) including: privacy preference, tagging, license selection, and whether or not you wish for your model to be available for download.

On the main page there is a little summary of your activity and other various information coupled together with a gallery of thumbnails of any models that you personally uploaded. You’ll find small statistics such as a percentage of account usage, profile views, and number of times your profile has been saved by others on the sidebar. Links to your Contact List and profile editing are also openly available from your homepage. In the Edit Profile section you can change your password if needed, select your preferred 3D player (3dxml player, or virtools player), upload a picture of yourself, and decide whether you want your email address visible on your profile page for the public eyes to see. Note: using the 3dxml player requires ActiveX support. Below the main information are places to fill out more in-depth details: company name, address, website, current skills, and a brief description of yourself.

In the actual 3D interface you can pan (moving left, right, up and down), rotate the camera, zoom in and out, and re-frame the model back to its original position. You are also given the option to see the actual wireframe of each model along with the ability to smoothen the hard edges of any objects by anti-aliasing them. They also have a full screen option if you desire. You’re also able to comment on any of the models.

When viewing a model, the side bar will indicate file name, file size, object count, polygon count, surface count, vertices count, texture count, and which authoring software it was created in. If the creator has allowed it, the model and textures can freely be downloaded and experimented with by users. A counter of the amount of times a model has been download is also present. You are also enabled to add tags to models in addition to what the author had originally put for tags. Furthermore, in each model’s page there is a HTML widget giving you the code to implement it into a blog, a MySpace, or simply a normal forum. Additionally, there’s a directory listing all the currently signed up members to Teapotters. There is, of course, a listing of all the uploaded 3D models with thumbnails as well. You can sort models by favorites, and users by contributors. Models are organized by tags and the program in which they were created in is also indicated. Another nice feature is that you are able to add any member’s RSS feed to your personal feed reader to continually be up to date with any new models from that specific author.

Members have a Contact List in which they can add and sort people into a Friends List or Business List. You can manage your contacts, invite new contacts, and view your contact history in the “Manage Connections” portion of the site. They have a small “How It Works” section, describing briefly how to use Teapotters and you’ll find a demo video in this section as well, if you’re slightly confused on procedures. They also have a small blog to keep you informed on any updates done to the website. Also, some of the models that have been uploaded to Teapotters are actual models from popular games on the market currently. Who wouldn’t be at least curious to examine in detail how exactly these figures were constructed? I wish they gave members more than a single invite to give away to anyone interested in the community. However, this small downfall is easily trumped by how functional and organized the network is.

Teapotters was a nice fork in the road on the endless avenue of mundane social networks that are blanketing the internet like the plague. There aren’t many 3D networks are out there that can adequately present your work as well as Teapotters does. I’m anxious to see how well they do once they’re out of private beta.

Uploading to Viddler is a snap. You can upload videos in bulk through a simple Flash-based uploader with real-time progress indicators and upload videos in 14 different formats (.avi .dv .mov .qt .mpg .mpg2 .mpeg2 .mpeg4 .mp4 .3gp .3g2 .asf .wmv .flv). Viddler’s also very generous in allowing up to 500MB each video while Youtube and Google Video only allow up to 100MB. This should definitely win some users over as it allows for longer and higher quality videos. To add videos to your account, just head to the upload section of Viddler, add all your videos to the list, and click upload. Then wait for all of your videos to finish uploading and click on the “Encode” tab which will covert your videos for viewing on Viddler. Once your videos have been encoded, they will appear in your account at which point you can view to edit your title, description, tags, and privacy settings. It’s a fairly straightforward process, although I feel the encoding should be handled automatically rather than the user having to select it themselves.

Another nice feature is the ability to record a video directly on the website using a webcam. You simply browse to the “Record” section of Viddler and start recording at the click of a button. Users can also set their computer’s audio card and video card if needed. The ability to record video is a great addition and is sure to please video bloggers, especially if they are new to video or lack video editing software. Of course you can’t edit a recording as you would in say iMovie, but sometimes a simple recording is all you need to get things going. Not surprisingly, Youtube launched similar webcam recording functionality last month.

So what is all this timed tagging and commenting stuff about? Viddler has created a system in which you can add time specific information to your videos in the form of tags and comments, similar to basic video captioning. You can simply play a video and stop it at any point to add a tag or comment at that particular moment. If a video already has tags and comments assigned to it, you will clearly see them at the bottom of the video as black and white dots. Black dots represent tags and white dots represent comments. It’s very easy to use. Just click the plus (+) icon on a videos progress bar at any time and select whether you are adding a tag or a comment, then fill in the field and submit.

Tim has recently put Viddler to the test for a writeup about our office on a service which he will be reviewing here shortly. He setup the camera and recorded the office from top to bottom and later uploaded the video to Viddler. He then tagged certain objects around the office in the video and added comments as a form of annotation to explain certain areas. It worked out very well and served as a good example of how to use Viddler’s timed metadata, not to mention the video received more than a half thousand views. You can find his video here.

What’s also neat about the video player having timed metadata is that when you embed (share) a video on your site, your viewers can see the timed tags and comments without leaving your site. Also, Viddler allows you to embed a video on your site that starts at a particular moment rather than starting at the beginning. This way, if you are referring to something specific in the video, you can have the video start playing at that moment making it easier for your viewers. What’s also neat about the video player is that it plays videos with true video streaming, unlike Youtube where it can only play what has been loaded. This means that you can skip to any point of a video and immediately start watching. This also explains how you can immediately skip to a particular moment in a video when clicking a timed tag.

Perhaps Viddler’s most difficult task is making search results relevant, a problem in which many companies have been aiming to solve for years with online video. The relevancy of results in Viddler’s case depends on user assigned tags for a video globally and throughout the video itself. Video descriptions and users are also put into account when performing a search.

To use Tim’s video as example again: Tim added the global tags, “office” and “design” as well as a description for his video. He also added various timed tags for objects around the room as they appeared throughout the video: mac, mini, speaker, and ikea, to name a few. The beauty of all this is that when I am to search on Viddler for the term “mac”, Tim’s video comes up twice in the timed tags area showing the two times that the Mac Mini appears in the video. Likewise, searching “speaker” brings up Tim’s video again, this time showing a picture of our office speakers. Clicking a result would then bring me to the video and automatically skip me to the moment the tag appears in the video. Pretty impressive, although after some testing, I feel that the search still can use some work but is potentially powerful. For starters, it would be nice if you had the option of making a search with multiple tags that would return videos containing all tags (ie: “mac AND mini” for returning videos matching both tags).

Viddler also does a great job at presenting search results. Making a search will return results in four different areas: global tags, timed tags, related videos, and related people. Global tags shows results for tags matching a video itself; timed tags shows videos with matching timed tags; related videos returns videos that match information in the description; and related people returns Viddler users that match tags the users assign to themselves. You can then filter out the results by search type. I found one thing missing though: sorting options. When making a search in Youtube, I often sort results by view count or by date added. It just helps narrow things down and gets me to what I am looking for faster.

The site itself is well designed and passes all the visual guides of a Web 2.0 design with bright colors, large fonts, gradients, and rounded corners. You will also find Ajax used strategically throughout the site for editing information and viewing additional pages of a section. Take the Explore section of Viddler for example. The Explore section is the center of all activity around Viddler and contains areas utilizing Ajax so you can seamlessly browse through pages of results.

In all, Viddler offers a great service with some top notch features. Users can assign time specific tags, add comments at particular moments in a video, record video directly on the website using a webcam, and even upload videos with sizes up to 500MB (five times Youtube’s limit). But of course, there’s always room for improvement. For one, I feel the video pages should show user comments below the video player instead of only being shown in the video itself. This would make it easier to get an overall look of comments and maybe even help Viddler with content for search engines. I also noticed that if you were to embed a Viddler video on your site, the comments window can sometimes gets cut off if the player is too small. Lastly, I felt that the search result page was missing some basic sorting options, such as ordering by date and view count. Other than that, Viddler is off to a great start and I’m excited to see where things go from here.

Disclosure: I know a member of the Viddler team through the 9rules Network.

Still in its alpha stage until post holidays, Kongregate brings forth a solid gaming community for Flash game developers and players. For the casual online gamer, this one will easily meander its way into the bookmarks folder. The network is fully user-submitted and relies heavily on feedback and participation to establish the online community. Featured and popular games are found on the front page, naturally. A brief description and gameplay count is specified under each game to help comb out the popular games from the rest. Along with that, there are viewer ratings associated with each game title. Online chat and real-time updates which displays the Kongregate members who are currently logged in the same game as you, is an added plus. A tag cloud can also be found on the Home page to help judge the favored categories.

From a developer’s standpoint, Kongregate offers the ability to upload and advertise your games through their website. Currently, games are only permitted to be uploaded in the standard flash .swf format, however they are in the process of getting the Shockwave format to work as well. Also, developers are able to earn revenue from the games they upload to Kongregate. You can earn profit between 25% and 50% of the total revenue. From the get-go, 25% of the revenue from the advertisments is yours, but additional percentages of revenue can be tacked onto that default 25% if you meet certain criteria. A 10% increase in revenue can be earned if you make use of Kongregate’s integrated APIs. (These APIs are still a work in progress, so everyone holds this additional 10% currently.) An additional 15% is added if your game is exclusive on Kongregate’s site. This simply meaning that besides hosting your game on your own personal website, the only other place your game is hosted is on Kongregate’s website. Payments from the ads is fairly straight-forward. Using the address that you provide in your user profile, payments are mailed out monthly. $25.00 US dollars is the bare minimum each check is made out for, so if you’re revenue from the ads does not meet this amount, your balance will roll-over into next month, and so on, until the required $25.00 mark is attained.

Kongregate wishes to keep their main website’s design advertisement free. They plan on keeping the ads in the window that each game appears in. In this window the advertisements display on a predetermined cycle of around 15 minutes. Exclusive Kongregate members have the ability to enable the ads to appear only during level change, (through the use of Kongregates APIs) so gameplay is kept undisturbed.

Let’s move along to the point system on Kongregate. You earn points by uploading games, rating games, inviting others, and finding/reporting bugs. What are the points for you ask? Well what do you know. It’s like a game! In Kongregate, you accumulate points to increase your “level”. Your level primarily just shows your status within the community as of now, but in the future the points will be exchangable for prizes. You’re also able to view a history of points you’ve obtained from the ratings that you’ve given to games. Kongregate’s staff also noted about the implementation of a mini virtual stock market in the near future. With this, you’ll be able to invest in games which could result in an immense increase to your points, or a painful loss of points, so you must choose wisely.

Let’s continue. Each game has its own Contribute section allowing members to send reports of any inappropriate games or .swf files that aren’t actual games. Kongregate’s staff ensures us that they will do their best to remove unnecessary material from the community in a timely manner. Any bugs that are discovered can also be reported in the Contribute section. In the rare case of heated online disputes via the online chat, they have also provided an email address to contact them with, so a moderator can resolve any chat problems as promptly as possible.

Rating games is as simple as choosing one to five star for each title you wish to assess. I believe they could’ve made the rating system clearer and easier to find since you have to hover over the actual stars to rate them. Rating is the main way of acquiring points to increase your level, so Kongregate is heavily dependent on participation. The customary main categories such as Action, Puzzle, Racing, etc. are there. Furthermore, tags are coupled with each game and you’re able to add additional tags for each game to help organize the games as clearly as possible.

In the Upload area you’re able to obviously upload your flash games along with that nice picture of yourself (or fantasy self) that you wish to use as your icon. Title, Game Description, Game Instructions, Category Selection, and Tags are all specified in this section. You also select whether your game is to be exclusive on Kongregate and if your game make use of their APIs in the Upload section. A “Game Uploading Agreement” is waiting for you at the bottom of the page and there’s a brief list of guidelines found to the right of the website, verifying that you fully understand Kongregate’s uploading policy.

They also give you the ability to add friends, and view your fans. Fans are people who have added you as their friend without you adding them as a friend in return. A Favorites list is also implemented so you can sift all the games that interest you into one solitary place. Games in your Favorites area display Game Title, Developer, and Rating for orginization sake.

Granted, Kongregate is partially a social networking website, (which is hardly a new idea) but they have adequately expanded on the accepted ideas of this online age. There are thousands of websites geared towards gaming, however finding one like Kongregate that truly pulls together everything that everyone likes, is a tough target to hit. Yeah, they are still in alpha, but nevertheless they have constructed a notable social networking community for avid flash gamers and developers thus far. If you’re a game developer looking to recieve some recognition for your work while at the same time trying to maybe make a little extra spending money, Kongregate should be a prime candidate for you. And even if you’re just someone trying to pass some time, you’ll be pleased to know that Kongregate can easily help you with that. I know I’m anxiously looking forward to see what the public release of Kongregate delivers us come early 2007.

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1
Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 2

Educational Blogging

Blogging has quickly become one of the most effective learning tools in education today. It introduces students with new methods of communicating, improving their writing, and helps motivate them to find their voice. Dare I say it even makes learning… fun? Educators generally blog about school news, philosophies, and class activities. On the other hand, students tend to write about current events, personal beliefs, and topics related to their education.

In blogging, there are no set standards, no boundaries, no restrictions confining you to conform your thoughts to any given set of rules and regulations. You don’t have to worry about getting points taken off for not using the default: 12 point font size, Times New Roman, with 1” margins. You can write freely, and at your own pace. Also, bloggers can gain an audience from their writing. Unlike a school paper, blog posts can recieve feedback from students, teachers, parents, and ultimately, anyone in the world. (gasp)

Things I’ve noticed with student blogs

I often found, and many teachers have noted this as well, that the students would publish to their school blogs even when not instructed to. Students really enjoy reaching out to the world and they are so motivated by it that they want to write even more. They would describe how their day was, what they learned in class, or even things they learned or read on the news that day. It’s amazing.

I also found that many students became so attached to their blogs that they made it a responsibility to keep consistent. When they found they have been lacking in posts or that they haven’t been instructed to post for class in in a while, they would often apologize and feel as though they deserted their readers. It’s pretty interesting, although expected, to see that kind of connection with students and their blogs.

Also, I see that many students refer to other posts by other students in their writing, but do not appear to take advantage of trackback or pingback functionality. I personally feel it is essential that all bloggers understand the use of trackback technology, especially in this scenario, as it makes for communication outside of normal commenting. Not only that, it feels very rewarding receiving a trackback. So, I want to explain briefly how it works and what it means. In simplistic terms, you make a pingback by linking to the post that you are referring to in your post. This will notify the writer of the blog, adding a pingback “comment” to their post automatically, in turn continuing conversation. This is a great way for students to communicate back and forth rather than only commenting. If they have something to say and feel it’s worth a post rather then a comment, pingback or trackback it.

Student Testimonials and Reflections

“Blogs are revolutionizing this country, and many people are completely oblivious to even what a blog is much less what it can. So thank you Mrs. Vicki for convincing me what a viable resource a blog can be. Thank you for not letting me be ignorant to something so revolutionary.” – kyli

“At the beginning of the year when we started blogs, I didn’t really feel like doing these, and I thought that they were just a waste of time, but I was WRONG! I have loved having these blogs and I learned a lot about writing, people, things happening with my friends, I met new people, I have learned ALOT about things going on in the world, and I learned that I can be free to write what I want, and I like how people would disagree with me, becasue it just encouraged me to write more.” – Xoxo-Hillaryy-xoxo

“I love my blog so much! I like writing in it, even if there isn’t anything to write about! Haha. When i get bored, my blog says ‘Ashley, come write in me.’ I’m just joking, but it gives me something to do. I am so happy that we are doing blogs this year!” – Ashley

“I love my blog so much I can write what I want when I want except when my mom or sister is on the computer. My favorite part about having a blog is that it can be due on a Sunday and you cannot forget it at home or at school. I also like how you can write on it even if it is not for homework. The thing I worry about with blogs is that its world wide and if I say something to offend them then they will get mad at me and I wont no why. Other wise I think blogs are a great idea.” – Joey Girl

“When I wasn’t in the weblog group I would still be writing one paragraph essay. Now I’m writing a page essay.” … “Weblogs are helping me a lot.” – Jhonathan

General Testimonials

“Never in 25 years of teaching have I seen a more powerful motivator for writing than blogs.” … “And that’s because of the audience. Writing is not just taped on the refrigerator and then put in the recycle bin. It’s out there for the world to see. Kids realize other people are reading what they write” – Mark Ahlness

“Even when they’re out sick, students work on their blogs.” – Carol Barsotti

“I’ve got 6th graders coming in during their lunch and after school to add articles to their blog and to respond to their classmates’ articles.” – Al Gonzalez

“The response has been tremendous. Students seem so much more willing to blog in their own space and time. They seem less inhibited and more enthusiastic.” – Beth Lynne Ritter-Guth

Where to Start

So, where do you start? As a first stop, I highly recommend reading SupportBlogging. It will explain what educational blogging is all about, what it means for students and educators, and how you can setup a blog. I also recommend Blogs for Learning which is a new site containing in-depth articles on educational blogging and fantastic screencast tutorials showing the ins and outs of various blogging platforms (including WordPress and Blogger). Be sure to look over the article, “Student Blogging – What You Should Know,” and the case study, “Rocking the Cyber Canoe: Blogging in English.”

For teachers and students, I suggest using edublogs.org for blogging as they provide you with a free, hosted WordPress blog, a Wiki powered by Wikispaces, and Yacapaca assessment tool from the Chalkface Project. Or if you prefer, you can install a copy of WordPress manually on your own server or register for a free and hosted WordPress account at WordPress.com.

Photo Sharing with Flickr

Flickr is a free photo sharing site which has made its way into education providing teachers and students with an easy way to upload and share photos on the web. Students can search for photos to help with research and projects and educators can upload photos for classes, school events, and so on. I can also see Flickr being used in photography classes allowing students to keep an organized collection of their work, share their photos with the world, and receive commentary from viewers and classmates. And who knows? Maybe all it takes is a comment or a couple views of a students work to inspire and motivate them in continuing with photography.

One feature to take advantage of is Flickr’s photo annotation, or note functionality. In short, it allows you to add boxes around specific parts of a photo which you can add notes to. For example, if something was hard to make out in the background of a photo, one could place a note around it to explain what it is. What’s more is that other users can annotate your own photos. Say you are a teacher and you uploaded an art piece that you want your students to critique. Have them browse to the art piece and add notes around parts they want to comment on. Some great examples of this are as followed:

Beth Harris of the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, has used Flickr with her art history course so students can label and discuss paintings online (example above). Similarly, Ewan McIntosh has uploaded the painting, “Ivory, Apes and Peacocks,” where users then labeled and discussed the art.

Alan Levine has also shown that you can use the notes tool to create what he calls, “hot-spot learning objects.” As an example, he created a volcano diagram with each type being a learning object on the photo. The example is a simple chart showing the explosiveness of an volcano. If you are to hover over one of the volcano’s, a Flickr note will appear containing more information about it. Alan has also annotated a photo showing some of the many uses of Flickr. Nice work!

Educational Podcasting

Podcasting is a powerful medium that many educators and students are beginning to pick up that not only delivers rich educational content, but enhances student/teacher communication. As I student, I could download educational content and take it around with me where ever I go. I could also download daily lessons and school news created by educators. Likewise, I can produce my own podcast and publish it for the teacher, classmates, and the world to hear.

Take Stanford University for example where they have created Stanford on iTunes U for their students. Students can navigate to this site to subscribe to the Stanford U podcast on iTunes and receive faculty lectures, interviews, music and sports automatically on their computer and iPod. This allows the university to easily communicate and update students on school related events and content. What’s also great is that anyone can open the page up on iTunes and listen, whether they are a student or not. Try it out and listen to some of the podcasts. There’s great content, especially in the “Technology Ventures” area of “Heard on Campus”, including speeches by Guy Kawasaki on entrepreneurship, Evan Williams of Odeo on podcasting, and more. (Note: Berkeley University also has Berkeley on iTunes U).

Apple also supports educational podcasting in multiple ways. For starters, anyone can access the Podcasts section in the iTunes Store and navigate to the educational category for free lessons and educational content. Secondly, schools interested in creating a podcast site similar to Staford University can apply for iTunes U where iTunes will work with you in making your own iTunes U (Note: I have no information regarding costs). Apple also provides a section called, Podcasting in Education, where you can learn more about podcasting, what it means for educators and students, and how you can create and manage them with Apple products.

For educators in K-12 education, I recommend looking over a great site called, “Podcasting in the Classroom”, created by Nathan Shelley. The website gives a brief introduction of podcasting and provides an overview of benefits to the students in creating podcasts. The site also provides educators with an example lesson plan where it instructs the students to get into groups to brainstorm, plan, and produce a student podcast on a specific subject.

DreamExtreme Podcast is an excellent podcast produced by, believe it or not, 6th graders! The student-produced podcast is by David Cosand’s Kennedy Elementary class of Medford, Oregon, and I must admit, it’s pretty impressive. Students plan and produce full podcasts covering class news, movie reviews, fashion, sports, and more. Another podcast that I’ve recently come across is Edupodder, produced by Steve Sloan. Edupodder has a nice mix of educational content, interviews, and student podcasts – the latest covering upcoming student podcast projects. Some of you may also be interested in an Edupodder Podcast with Robert Scoble speaking to a journalism class about the impact of blogging.

Wikipedia & Wikis

While researching about wikis in education, I came across a Wikipedia article for educators called, “Schools’ FAQ,” covering the ins and outs of Wikipedia and how schools can benefit using Wikipedia. The article led me to Wikipedia’s School and University Projects, which I found to be very interesting. In short, Wikipedia encourages teachers and professors to use Wikipedia in their classes providing students with hands on exercises involving editing and publishing content on Wikipedia. Wikipedia suggests that students participate in exercises such as working on existing or requested articles; linking orphaned articles to appropriate places; fixing spelling, factual, grammatical, and other errors in articles; and even translating articles from other languages. It’s a great idea and is beneficial to both the student and Wikipedia. Students can learn about the topic as well as improve on their writing while Wikipedia gains more content. Wikipedia even provides teachers with a syllabus boilerplate to hand out to their students. If you are a teacher, think about giving it a try with your class, maybe as a project. I feel it would be a very perceptible and comprehendible variation of learning. I will also add that these projects may be more suitable for college and university students rather than K-12 students.

Perhaps one of the most impressive cases of wiki use in education is the Westwood School Wiki. Vicki Davis and her students manage the wiki and use it for just about everything. Listening to an interview with Vicki and Adam Frey, I was able to grasp exactly how she and her students use wiki technology. One scenario presented was after teaching a lesson, her students would go to the class wiki and summarize the lesson, in turn making it easier to take in the information. Vicki also explained how her students work on notes collaboratively in the wiki before an exam to study. During this process they all add their notes, correcting what’s wrong, and review the wiki. Another example she gave was with introducing concepts and exploring class projects. She has the students research, add notes, organize information, and even add videos to their wikis so they end up with a mass of information about the topic (example project: Security and Privacy). Vicki stated during the interview, “Students really become content producers and not just receivers.” She makes a great point and it shows that allowing students to work hands on with a wiki really strengthens their learning experience. Being part and contributing to what you are learning is much more effective then simply taking it in.

I also came across this great question from a Vicki’s blog about Pluto no longer being a planet: “How long will it take for the Pluto decision to filter to the average classroom?” She then continues, “With information changing at an accelerated pace, I think the case for wiki-supplementation and wiki-publication can be made. This could ensure that more accurate information is included but could also make student’s heads spin as a chapter changes while they are studying it.” It’s a very interesting question and thinking back to my High School education, textbooks were dated as much as 6-10 years. Some even having my parents signatures in them! How long will it take for school systems to replace old books with new ones containing accurate information? It’s funny. I’ve come across multiple claims online where teachers tell students not to use Wikipedia because information may not be accurate when anyone can edit the information, but at the same time, the school may not even own up to date prints.

Video Sharing

To many school systems, video sharing sites are evil. They are blocked from students in an attempt to hide non-educational material and explicit content. Well I say, big mistake! I will admit, I have seen many hilarious, pointless, painful, and explicit videos on video sharing sites, but I can also say that I have learned a whole lot from them. Google Video offers some of the best educational videos you can find on the Internet. You can pull up their educational category and search for specific topics ; watch hour long NOVA videos (highly recommend – I’ve watched many of these during my free time); and even view captioned videos. Additionaly, YouTube offers a new service called YouTube College where students can join their college and share videos only with students from their college. On the down side, YouTube does not offer an educational category making it harder to find educational content. I also recommend giving VideoJug a try as a source of how-to videos. It has a great kids category containing fun science experiments and arts and crafts.

Video also appears to be the new PowerPoint for some educators. Jeff Utecht has taught his 7th grade students of Shanghai American School to produce and publish video presentations on YouTube for a class project. You can find the presentations in Jeff Utecht’s profile. I watched a couple of them and I’m very impressed. It sounds like the students were pretty excited, especially once they learned about YouTube’s audience. You can find more about the project and student reactions on Jeff’s blog.

James Madison University has also taken advantage of video sharing by using YouTube to deliver an orientation video for faculty teaching in technology classrooms. They created a video that shows educators how to operate the technology used in the classrooms including laptop connectors, projector screens, and the control system used to operate the projectors. You can watch the video and read the article about it on their technology website.

Web 2.0… Courses?

I never really thought about the possibility of there being a Web 2.0 course in college, but apparently it’s happening. IBM and The University of Arizona are teaming up to teach about Web 2.0 and Social Networking to give students skills in creating and managing online communities. What’s interesting is that it’s not just a presentation or learning event – it’s an actual full course! From what I understand, students from The University of Arizona will learn about Web 2.0 products and social networking from a business standpoint to give leadership, communication, and community-building skills.

One UA student in a Digg comment thread provided readers with the official course description from the university website:

“Online social networking and communities have become a big role in how organizations interact within themselves as well as with external partners. Developing a healthy community can lead to new business opportunities, improved customer relations, as well as improved communications to the world. Online social network sites already claim over 300 million members worldwide in public sites that are starting to turn into a new generation of b2b and b2c business collaboration and brokerage sites. This course investigates the technologies, methods and practices towards developing online communities, and how this knowledge and these skills are applied to businesses. The course will involve lectures facilitated by the instructor and corporate representatives. Also incorporated will be experiential exercises and skill development assignments”

The press release also states, “The class will culminate in a final project where each student from the class will work with their own separate group of students from Howenstine High School in Tucson, Arizona, to organize into many micro-communities.”

Sounds like a fun and informative class. And according to Torrentfreak, The Univeristy of Arizona will be the first to offer “Web 2.0 courses”. It will certainly open up a new world of technology to students. Great going, IBM! Sign me up!

School 2.0

School 2.0 is an interesting brainstorming tool designed for schools and communities to help envision the future of education. The tool is a diagram showing various possible scenarios or visions of the future with example student, teacher, and parent conversations, class room activities and technologies, and more. The School 2.0 site states, “While School 2.0 depicts a variety of educational and management scenarios that utilize technology, the examples, information and ideas included are designed to serve as prompts for discussion and should not be construed as a recommendation of any particular technology or scenario.”

“Can you IM that to the virtual whiteboard?”, says a teacher. A parent talks to his child, “I looked at your grades online today. You really aced that test!” “There’s a virtual frog dissection going on now,” one student said to another holding a mobile device.

It’s an amazing vision. Can “School 2.0” actually happen? Maybe not all of it, but perhaps some elements. For example: viewing student progress reports online, submitting permission slips online, and receiving class documents and files from anywhere. I can’t imagine “School 2.0” happening in the next couple years, but the possibility is there and it’s nice to see a brainstorm tool such as the School 2.0 project.

More Cases of Web 2.0 in Education:

Google Docs, formerly Writely, has quickly jumped into the educational field actings as a free and collaborative alternative to Microsoft Word. Mostly used by K-12 Education (from what my research shows me), I assume it’s just not ready for college or university scenarios where page structure has stricter guidelines. However, feedback from students show that although they like Writely (now Google Docs), they find more use in Microsoft Word because they know how to use it better. They then continue by saying that in time, they will likely prefer Writely because it can be accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection and can be worked on collaboratively.

Feed Readers and RSS are slowly making its way into education teaching students the methods of subscription and publication. I found that most schools that take advantage of educational blogging briefly teach about RSS so students and teachers can more easily keep track of school updates and postings. It also appears that Bloglines is the feed reader of choice (PDF by Will Richardson) for many educators, mainly due to it being accessible anywhere. However, some educators are beginning to notice other options that are simpler and more useful for students, such as the personalized homepage, Netvibes. “I used to teach bloglines, however this summer, I began to use NetVibes. It is just easier for beginners to understand,” said Vicki Davis of Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

It may sound odd, but some students are now learning in their SecondLife. Harvard Law School has recently started a new course called, CyberOne, where students actually log into their SecondLife account and learn in the massively popular virtual world. The CyberOne course website states, “Enrollment to the Harvard Extension School is open to the public. Extension students will experience portions of the class through a virtual world, known as Second Life. Videos, discussions, lectures, and office hours will all take place on Berkman Island. Students from anywhere in the world will be able to interact with one another, in real time.” Sounds a little extreme to me! I will admit though, I am curious as to how it all works. For those of you interested, head over to the CyberOne website and watch this video trailer (YouTube) that can give you an idea of what to expect.

Like this article? Digg it!

To start things off, Squirl provides you with a free account and a public address. The free account allows up to 200 items and three collections, and if you need more, you may upgrade to a plus plan providing 5,000 items with unlimited collections at $10 per year (price recently changed and used to be $24.95/yr). Once you’ve got an account setup, login to access your Squirl Home where you can view recent messages and comments from collectors, keep up with friends, and look at featured collections from other collectors in the Squirl community. You can also browse your collections on the right side of the site where you will find recent collections, additions, and tags that you have added.

Before I go on to creating collections and adding to a collection, let’s take a look at a collections so you have an idea of what can be accomplished. You will find basic information about the collection and collector on the left and see a list of items in the collection on the right. Collection items are nicely presented and can be viewed either as a list or matrix of images. You will also find that when in the list view, hovering over an item will popup a box, using Ajax, allowing you to learn more about the item. One thing I did not see when viewing a collection though is a list or cloud of tags. I feel this is an important feature to add as it makes it easier to find what you are looking for. We organize our collection items with tags, so why not use them? It would also be beneficial to list tags in the item popups helping viewers find related items.

One of Squirl’s strong points is with creating and managing collections. The way it works is simple and makes for a very flexible system. You start by creating your collection filling in a name and description as well as basic view and privacy options. Then select “Add Item” and pick one of Squirl’s 30 item categories from the list. Here is where the flexibility of the system kicks in. Depending on the category selected for your item, Squirl will bring up a page customized to fit your items needs. For example, selecting the category, “Movie,” will show that you can either search Amazon and instantly add the movie or manually enter the details in a form relating to movies requesting title, director, cast, and so on. Or say you selected the category, “Stamps.” Squirl will show a page allowing you to manually enter the stamp details asking for its name, catalog number, date issued, and more. I feel this is a great concept and it really makes adding items to your collections quick and painless.

On the social end, Squirl allows collectors to find and interact with other collectors and invite friends and family to view their profiles. I don’t feel Squirl’s aim was to become the next best social networking site, but it provides some basic functionality including adding of friends, sending messages to collectors, and commenting on collections. I can also browse through all collections, find a collector with similar interests, and add them as a friend so we can connect and discuss our hobby.

Overall, I had fun using Squirl and found it to be a great service for bringing collections to the web. Its system is quite flexible allowing collectors to add items of any kind to their account and being able to network with other collectors is a great way for friends and family to share. I felt the interface was a little confusing at times and lacked some features, such as tag clouds in collections, but nothing major. Also, Squirl is just a fun site to browse. I had a great time searching through all of the collections looking at rare stamps, autographs from famous people, and things of that nature.

If you’re interested, check out my Squirl profile where you can find my DVD collection that I’m working on (I know… boring, but that’s all I’ve got). I’d love to see your collections too if you have any.

More on Squirl at CNET and Postbubble.

It’s clear people like these kind of sites and Popurls has seemed to start a chain or a class of these sites carrying on the concept. I’m not exactly sure what to call these sites as they are basically one page feed aggregators, but I suppose it’s safe to say they present the links, media, and search in a portal like fashion. So, I am going to call these sites “portals” throughout the post rather then saying, “Single Page Aggregator.” Please, if you know of a better name to call these sites, feel free to add your input.

There are two portals that I check up on numerous times a day: Popurls and Digg View. Popurls for the latest buzz and Digg View for an easy to read overview of activity at Digg. Just recently a new portal popped up called Original Signal and Steve Rubel had mentioned in a post on the new portal, “There seems to be a new emerging class of sites like these that aggregate feeds for you.” I started thinking about it and agree that there are quite a bit of these sites now, some covering buzz and others specific topics, and so I decided to take a look around and see what I can find.

After compiling a list of portals, I grouped them into categories and decided to share them with you. Hopefully there will be at least one that will be of interest to you. You can find in my list of portals: Tracking Buzz and News (Digg, Del.icio.us, etc.), Tracking Web 2.0, Specialty Topics (Gaming, Tech Deals, Apple, etc.), Design Related News and Showcase, Media Aggregators, Build Your Own, and lastly, Tag Search Engines.

My Two Top Picks

Popurls: Most of you are probably familiar with this one. Popurls has the goal of bringing you the latest buzz around the web aggregating popular social services and websites and display them all on one page. Viewers can view popular headlines from sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Newsvine, and TailRank as well as keep up on media from Flickr, Youtube, Odeo, iFilm, and more. If your trying to find what’s new and buzzing on the web, Popurls is the place to be and most definitely takes place on my Firefox toolbar.

Digg View: I’m a big fan of Digg and try to keep up with the latest popular headlines as much as possible. I come across many helpful articles because of Digg relating to Web 2.0, web programming, database optimization, and other tech related topics, but I also use Digg to keep up with videos and gaming. However, rather then using Digg’s website to track popular headlines, I use Digg View. Digg View offers a one page overview of the seven Digg categories showing popular headlines during different time-frames of the day. The site makes it very easy to keep up with what’s popular on Digg and also marks stories that you haven’t seen in orange. I love it. I sit here all day refreshing the page over and over waiting for new orange headlines to appear so I can view the latest popular story on Digg.

Tracking Buzz (What’s Hot) and News

The following portals include the latest popular links and news from various social bookmarking sites, blogs, and news sources. You can expect to see these portals aggregating sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit. Personally, I’ll be sticking with Popurls, but maybe you prefer different.

• TheWebList: “A digest of the latest links other web users are visiting right now!” It’s basically the same thing as Popurls, but without the media. It provides bookmarking and search options and summaries when hovering headlines.
• popfeeds: popfeeds is a very clean and simple overview of popular feeds. If it weren’t for Popurls, this would probably be the one I would use because it’s very fast loading and gets straight to the point.
• ViralBabble: Although it isn’t all that pretty, one feature that I like about ViralBabble is archiving. Navigating to the bottom of the page will be a link to an archive section where you can actually view snapshots of previous days. So if you were out of the house yesterday and wanted to see what was buzzing, you can easily do so with ViralBabble.
• PopFeedo: By the makers of Feedo Style and powered by Feedo Style, PopFeedo aggregates and displays six popular feeds including Digg, Del.icio.us, Wired Technology, Reddit, Slashdot, and Yahoo’s Top News.
• 01b (Source): I probably shouldn’t be mentioning this one as it will probably be shutting down any day now, but 01b is Thomas Marben’s first creation that aggregates sites similar to his now popular, Popurls. Except this one aggregates a whole lot more sources, some in German.

Specialty Topics

You may be thinking, “Alright, why are you writing a post about these portals? Don’t they all show the same thing?” No! There are actually portals built for specific topics, such as gaming and photography. If you have an interest in a certain topic, maybe one of these can help you stay on top of relating news. If not, head down to the “Build Your Own,” area of this post.

• WiiNintendo: Nintendo fans, this one is for you. Excited about the new Nintendo Wii? If so, bookmark WiiNintendo to keep up with the latest news from Nintendo, The Wiire, Joystiq, and 1UP as well as videos on Wii from YouTube.
• Mashfot: Mashfot is all about photography. With Mashfot, users can find the latest news and popular links relating to photography and view the latest photographs from various photo sharing websites. View photos from Flickr and 23, news from Digg and Blogs, and links from Del.icious and Blinklist.
• PopDeal: Here is one for all of you tech-savvy individuals that want to save a buck or two on tech hardware. PopDeals brings you the latest tech deals from around the web by aggregating numerous websites specifically meant for deals on products, including DealNews, TechBargains, DealCatcher, and more.
• Don’t Meet Your Heroes: “Compilation of CSS and Web Standards related resources and news feeds from sources around the net.” The site claims to aggregate CSS and Web Standard sites only, although you will see a mix of other sources relating to Web 2.0, programming, Ajax, and more. Nice and simple page.
• xmlhttprequest: If you are a web developer, you can probably guess what this portal is about. Yes, Ajax. Find links to websites and news relating to developing with Ajax, keep up with sites like Ajaxian and ThinkVitamin, and keep up with Google’s JavaScript Newsgroup.
• MacScour: By the makers of Don’t Meet Your Heroes, MacScour scours the web for Apple news and Mac software updates. Keep up with latest news, software updates, rumors, reviews, and more.
• BozPages: Alex Bosworth of SourceLabs has created a neat site that basically allows you to make your own Popurls like page, or as he calls them, “simple one-off pages of RSS feeds.” He also provides some that he has created that aggregates feeds relating to Gaming, Web 2.0, Movies, Ajax, Google, and more. Only problem is that the pages seem to run a bit slow at times.
• Update: Original Signal Gadgets: Just as I published this post, Original Signal has created another site built to aggregate gadget related sites. The site includes Gizmondo, Engadget, CNET’s Gadget Blog, CrunchGear, and more.

Tracking Web 2.0

You’ve probably guessed this category was coming. The following portals aggregate blogs covering Web 2.0. If you like keeping up with all the new startups and products but don’t like subscribing to so many feeds, you may want to keep track of one of these sites. My personal favorite is Original Signal.

• Original Signal: Launched this month, Original Signal aggregates 15 Web 2.0 blogs showing recent posts and summaries. What’s also neat is that if you have visited the site before, new posts will stand out in bold the next time you visit. Original Signal is also by the makers of Digg View.
• Web 2.0 Workgroup: The Web 2.0 Workgroup is a small network of sites covering Web 2.0, which thankfully Solution Watch is a part of, and has a main page that displays each site aggregating three latest posts.
• Web 2.0 Reference: Web 2.0 Reference aggregates feeds relating to Web 2.0 and organizes them neatly on one page where you can sort them by Source or Category.

Design Related News and Showcase

Even though I am a web programmer, I’m definitely a sucker for anything design. I’ve known about a couple of these portals, but I grabbed my brother, Tim Benzinger, who is a graphic designer (also designed this blog), and had him help me gather some more for you.

• Most Inspired: Need inspiration? Check out Most Inspired, a portal that aggregates design galleries and showcases designs by hovering over each headline. I can spend my whole day on this site looking through all of the excellent design work.
• Enure Feeds: Enure includes feeds from popular design sites including k10k, lounge72, australian INfront, News Today, and more. Enure does not necessarily aggregate its sources but includes them using iframes. Nevertheless, it’s a nice portal that has some high profile design sources.
• Design Feeds: Design Feeds is a new one to me and I love it. It has many sources displayed in iframes, some that are galleries with visuals, others that are news relating to design and web development. The owner did a nice job at aggregating each source in individual frames styled to the sources appearance. I’m sure any designer can appreciate this site.
• Linkgrab: Linkgrab is a simple site that allows you to pick three design related websites and retrieve links from each. You can change the feeds at anytime and keep checking back. It would be nice if it allowed you to display more then three on a page.

Media Aggregators

For those of you that are interested in keeping up with popular videos, these portals may be for you. They are one page sites that display popular videos, with thumbnails, from video sharing sites. Warning, it is easy to waste hours of your free time watching videos ;-).

• The Internet TV Charts: “The Internet TV charts tracks the most popular online video clips each week from four leading Internet TV sites. All the best video clips, on one page.” Simple site showing popular Google and YouTube videos as well as links to Digg (video topic) and Videosift.
• vdiddy: Neat site that allows you to view videos from 12 different video sources. You can select a site and then watch the videos directly in vdiddy.
• Magg: Created with recently launched Dapper, Magg aggregates the latest and greatest movies from various video sharing sites. You can also search through the aggregated sites for videos.

Build Your Own!

Haven’t found any portals that caught your interest? Then build your own! I have three methods for you. You can use services offering one page aggregators, use your favorite start page site (ie: Netvibes), or use a simple Tag Search site and bookmark it for later reference.

• One Page Aggregators: I know of two services that can help you make your own portal in a matter of minutes. The first is SpeedyFeed (Example: Popular) and it basically allows you to import your favorite feeds and have them all displayed on one page in a similar format to Popurls. The second option is BozPages, which I had mentioned earlier. Simply head over to the website and add your favorite feeds to get a one page aggregator.
• Start Pages: You can also make your own by using a start page. I personally like to use Netvibes, but any start page will do. 3spots has an extensive list of start pages worth checking out. Also, if you are a Netvibes user, don’t forget about the Netvibes Ecosystem. You can add tabs on various topics to your account in a single click.
• Tag Search: The last method I am aware of is by using tag search sites. Now, it can’t be just any tag search site (well, it can if you want), but one that allows you to bookmark and retrieve results from multiple sources, preferably blog searches and social services. My favorite one is Newzpile. You can also use TagJag and the recently released, TagFetch. Just make a search, bookmark the page, and check back later for more recent headlines.

That concludes my findings! Hope you have found a portal that interests you. If you know of any other similar sites, feel free to comment below. And again, my two top picks are: Popurls and Digg View. Popurls provides me with more then enough of the latest buzz around the web and Digg View compliments Digg so well making it easy to keep up with popular headlines. If I had to choose a third, I would have to go with Most Inspired because it provides tons of inspirational work to browse through.

Like this article? Digg it!

Searching an artist returns the artists full biography and discography, powered by All Music Guide, as well as a list of similar artists. Furthermore, users can narrow down into artists albums and listen to sample music, learn about the album, and even learn about individual songs from an artist. Users can also bookmark artists to their profile, create a radio station for recommendations, and purchase their music with the iTunes and Amazon buttons on the left of artist biographies.

This is a great move for Pandora. I’m a big fan of music recommendation services, such as Pandora and Last.fm, and until the recent launch of Backstage, Pandora didn’t have any real information to provide its listeners about the artists. Last.fm however has done this for quite some time, but in a more social manor where listeners can improve biographies, tag artists, and even view overall statistics of the artists activity on the service. I don’t know if Pandora is headed in this direction or not, but whatever the case, it is great to finally have a built-in resource to learn about the artists that are being recommended.

(Via Mashable)

The main page of ZapZap displays all recently popular episodes, or in other words, episodes that have been added to user Zaplists the most in a specific timeframe. ZapZap also has seperate sections for audio episodes and video episodes where users can filter by category and language as well as an option to view only popular listings. Users can listen to any podcast and watch any video listed on ZapZap without leaving the webite making it easy for anyone to enjoy the episodes whether they have their own podcast player or not. If you listen to a podcast and like it, zap it to your Zaplist so you can listen to it later in the “My Page” section or by syncing it to iTunes or your favorite podcast player.

ZapZap also has a neat feature called AutoZap which can help you keep up to date with your favorite podcast channels. It is basically like subscribing to your favorite channels except it also automatically zaps them to increase the episodes chance of getting on the main page. Simply browse to a channel by going to the Channels section or by selecting the channel name in an individual episode. On the right of the channel page with be a button that says “AutoZap.” Clicking it will add the channels most recent episode to your Zaplist and will zap any new episode that comes in so you wont have to worry about checking back for them. Now I can either use iTunes or a different podcast player to automatically download latest episodes or just browse to the “My Page” section so I can view and listen to the latest episode.

Overall, I like what ZapZap has accomplished and hope it does well. It has turned your average podcast directory into an interactive Digg style site that also provides users a method to manage a playlist of episodes (Zaplist) and sync them to iTunes or other podcast players.

Lasty, If you are a podcaster and want to add your podcasts channel to ZapZap’s directory, you can do so by going to the bottom of any page and selecting, “Add a Channel.”

View ZapZap: Digg Style Podcast and Video Aggregator (via nblog).

The way it works is simple. You signup and add your favorite bands to your profile, either by uploading an iTunes data file, allowing Tourb.us to connect to your Last.fm account, or by simply typing in your favorite bands. Tourb.us will then notify you of any upcoming shows for your favorite bands in your area. Furthermore, Tourb.us allows you to search for shows, bands, and venues that are located in your area. I find this very neat and I was surprised when I searched for my little ol’ town in Connecticut and found many results for venues and bands that I am familiar of. If Tourb.us can’t match all of the artists you added to your profile, it will place them in a Wishlist area and notify you when they get information on the artist. The system has already found and collected information on about 10 bands in my Wishlist and it’s great to see the familiar names appear over time.

Tourb.us is more then just a gateway to local, live music. It is also a social system where you can make friends with others that have a similar taste in music. Tourb.us also makes it simple to find friends in your area because of its attendance functionality where users can find shows in their area and specify if they are going to it or not, or if they are possibly going to go to it. For example, when an upcoming show appears in my profile, I can see a number of people attending it. I’ve already found one venue around 45 minutes away from where I live that says two users are going to go to it. The only thing though is that you can friend them and I couldn’t find a way of getting in contact with friends. Still, it’s great to see shows in your area that other users are attending.

All bands and venues that are listed in Tourb.us also have their own profiles. Users can find their favorite bands, view photos, learn about the band, and even comment in their profile. If a user feels some information is missing or wants to contribute to a band that doesn’t have any information listed, Tourb.us uses a little wiki-like system allowing users to easily modify the bands profile themselves. And yes, you can tag your favorite bands as well. When viewing a venue profile, it will show all upcoming shows for that area, as well as provide a map and directions to the venue.

Although Tourb.us just launched, it appears to already be packed with bands and venues. I never knew there were so many venues in my area until signing up and there are some new places that I’m going to have to check out. It’s fun to receive these notifications of shows in my area, and in fact, there is one in 10 days that I am thinking of going to. All in all, if your a music lover, Tourb.us is for you. It will help you keep up with shows in your area and maybe even help you find a few new friends while your at it.