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.

On top of viewing original documents online, Footnote encourages users to share their knowledge by uploading images, annotating documents and maintaining member pages. Users can also download any image on the site and add it to their account gallery. There is a catch, however. Not all images on the site can be viewed and downloaded for free. Respectably, Footnote is a resource for those who are serious about original documents and that are willing to pay either by member subscription ($9.99/month and $99.99/year) or a per download basis ($1.99/image). But if you’re like me and just want to take a look around, you can register for a basic membership (free) and view select documents from the National Archives as well as contribute to the site by uploading images, annotating documents and creating member pages.

To start things off, let’s take a look at the Original Documents section. This is where you can find featured titles and the latest titles of documents on Footnote. It is also where you will spend most of your time searching, viewing, annotating, downloading and sharing. Now let’s say you are looking for a specific set of documents. You can either select to browse all available titles or perform a basic search. Browsing titles, as seen in the screenshot above, works much like the file panel on a Mac. You select a title from the list and then drill down into each subtitle until you find your document. It’s a nice view if you’re wanting to simply view the database of images. But if you’re looking for something specific, such as a name, you can use the document search and find matches from basic descriptions and annotations.

Selecting an image from a title will bring you to the Footnote image viewer. Powered by Adobe Flash Player, the viewer allows you to zoom in, rotate, and drag around an image so you can easily explore every last detail of a document. It also uses a similar technology to Google Maps where the image is re-buffered each time you zoom in and out to maintaining a high quality output. You will also find a bar on the right side of the viewer where you can view information about the image as well as comment and browse document annotations. Additionally, users can save an image to their account gallery, download it, and print it out all within the viewer. (Note: The document in the screenshot above is of the Declaration of Independence. Cool, huh?)

Now let’s say you were viewing an image in the viewer and found something specific that you would want to point out, like a name. Rather than simply commenting about the occurrence, Footnote allows you to annotate it so others can easily spot the name and search upon it. Just click on “Add Annotation”, drag the box to where you want, and size it to what you are annotating. Then specify whether the annotation is of a person, date, place, or text and fill in the appropriate information. That’s all to it and now other viewers can find your annotation and better understand what they are looking at.

Footnote also provides members with what they call, Member Pages. Essentially, Member Pages are small websites on a specific topic which can be created by any member for free. Members can write freely about anything they find notable and can write in sections, which holds a similar form to a blog. Member pages can also receive comments from other Footnote members and include images as reference. Footnote suggest members use pages to: publish histories of people and events; create a notebook for ongoing research; and showcase original documents that they’ve found and want to share. For example, one member has created the page “HMS Titanic Timeline” which covers the events of the “unsinkable” ocean liner.

Overall, I found Footnote to be a great resource and development. I don’t have a high interest in history, but it was entertaining to look through documents that one can’t normally view without going to a historical museum. The ability to browse through millions of documents and zoom in to every last detail of an image is quite impressive. I also felt that the social features of adding comments, annotations, and member pages to Footnote is a great addition as it allows members to get involved with our history and share their knowledge. I suspect Footnote will be big with genealogists, educational systems, libraries and anyone with high interest in history.

Update: More on the launch of Footnote can be found at the developers blog, Hypergene MediaBlog. You can also view a detailed screencast of Footnote in action on Youtube.

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!

There are a few office applications I have left out in this series. First, many would argue email applications are part of an office suite, and I agree to that, but I have not included a category for them in this post because most colleges and schools provide email to students as is. If I were to recommend one, I’d say Gmail for its features and offered space. I have also left out database applications as I don’t feel they are essential to a student unless they are majoring in computer science or related, in which case they would likely use Microsoft Access or a school DBMS (Database Management System) – not to mention that the Web 2.0 database applications are more geared towards a completely different ball park. Additionally, I have decided to leave out imaging and project management applications.

This article has three sections to it: “Office Applications,” “Web-based Word Processors Compared,” and “Are Web-based Office Applications Ready for Education?” Also, be sure to check out the comparison grid, or feature matrix, in the “Web-based Word Processors Compared” section.

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1
Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 3

Red Arrows indicate personal favorites with education in mind.
Products may appear more than once if related to multiple categories.

Part 2: Office Applications

Word Processing

• Writely: Online Word Processor allowing users to create and edit documents collaboratively online, import Word documents, publicly or privately share documents, publish to a blog, and more.
• Zoho Writer: Similar to Writely, Zoho Writer is an Online Word Processor where you can create, share, and collaborate on documents. Users can also publish to a blog, import and export documents, and make documents public.
• Writeboard: Writeboard is a collaborative writing tool where users can write, share, revise, and compare their documents online with others. It is not an advanced system featuring a WYSIWYG editor, Ajax, and flashy effects, but that’s what I like about it. Writeboard is a personal favorite of mine and as a matter of fact I am using it right now for this very post. It includes version control with text comparing and is great for essays and writeups of any kind. More on Writeboard.
• ThinkFree Write: ThinkFree Write is a free word processor that, at this time, is probably the closest you can get to an online version of Microsoft Office with features and appearance in mind. You can perform formatting options, create tables, add a header/footer, and spell check as you type just like your average desktop word processor. Pretty impressive. You can also open and save Microsoft Word and OpenOffice documents as well as share documents online with others. Note: There are two versions of ThinkFree Write: Quick Edit (Ajax-based) and Power Edit (Java-based).
• AjaxWrite: Lightweight word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word and other standard document formats, display multiple documents at once in tabs, and feature basic formatting. However, feature wise, it just does not cut it for me. What I do like about it is that it’s very quick and there are no signups – get in and get out.

Presentations

• Zoho Show: Web-based presentation tool to create, edit, publish, and show presentations. Zoho Show is very feature packed allowing users to create presentations full of text, images, shapes, lists, and pre-formated content templates. Users can also import their existing PowerPoint and OpenOffice presentations, view presentations online, and export as HTML.
• Thumbstacks: With Thumbstacks, create and share web-based presentations over the web. Thumbstacks provides a clean and easy to use presentation builder, although not as feature rich as Zoho Show, and allows users to export presentations in HTML format.
• SlideShare: Great new service, currently available by invitation only, that consists of an YouTube-like site for Powerpoint and OpenOffice presentations displaying presentations through Flash players. Users can even place the Flash presentation players on their own websites. I’ve been waiting for a site similar to this for some time now; perfect for students and educators wanting to store presentations online for sharing and receiving feedback.
• Empressr: Empressr is an Ajax and Flash-based service that lets you create and share presentations online. One advantage on the feature side is that it uses Flash and Ajax rather than HTML and Ajax allowing you to add more media then other tools including audio and video, although I personally prefer HTML presentations.
• ThinkFree Show: Excellent Java-based presentation application that feels much like Microsoft Powerpoint. Create rich presentations and play them through the online editor or by graphic. You can also save your presentations for viewing in Microsoft Powerpoint and share them with others online.

Diagrams and Mind Mapping

• Mayomi: Mayomi is a free flash-based mind mapping tool that lets you map out ideas, projects, research topics, or anything else that can be dug into. Great for students when it comes to writing essays. More on Mayomi.
• Gliffy: Draw and share diagrams online using Gliffy. You get all of your basic functionality that you would in an offline diagram application but with a few extra bonuses like working online collaboratively and dynamic publishing of diagrams. Create flow charts, floor plans, technical diagrams, and more.
• mxGraph: mxGraph is a very impressive JavaScript based diagramming library where users can create advanced diagrams within their browser. The only catch is that it is not a hosted solution where users can create and save diagrams. It is a library in which companies, and probably schools, can use under the mxGraph license. I’d love for it to be a hosted solution, like Gliffy.

Spreadsheets

• Google Spreadsheets: Create, store and share spreadsheets on the web. Includes real time editing and chatting with others as well as import and export options. Google Spreadsheets is my web-based spreadsheet application of choice, although on the negative side, it does not provide chart functionality.
• EditGrid: “An online spreadsheet featuring real-time-update and extensive collaboration features.” EditGrid has support for more then 500 functions, includes remote data update, access control, and more.
• iRows: Create and share spreadsheets online, create charts, include dynamic information, and upload and save Excel, CSV and OpenDocument files. More on iRows.
• Zoho Sheet: “Zoho Sheet is a web based alternative to traditional spreadsheet applications, like MS Excel or Openoffice Calc. It provides basic spreadsheet functionalities coupled with web based features like sharing, tagging, publishing and more.”
• Num Sum: Possibly the first web-based spreadsheet service launched that introduced social spreadsheets where users can tag their spreadsheets and share with others.
• ThinkFree Calc: Java-based spreadsheet application that has the look and feel of Microsoft Excel. Users can share their spreadsheets and work on them collaboratively online.
• Numbler: Simple online spreadsheet solution with great real-time editing and chatting with multiple users. Nice and clean interface although not as feature packed as some of the other options.

Calendars

• 30 Boxes: 30 Boxes is an online calendar that I feel works great for students due to its simplicity and sharing options. It also features RSS subscription to automatically populate the calendar with feed items on the day they were published – great for tracking teacher blogs and academic feeds. Furthermore, users can access their calendars on the go with 30 Boxes Mobile.
• Google Calendar: A bit on the advanced side, but once you get used to it, you’ll find it’s quite powerful. Users can create multiple calendars; view by day, week, or month; share their calendars with the web or a select few; subscribe to other shared calendars; and more. More on Google Calendar.
• Spongecell: “A free and easy to use calendar for you and your friends.” Features a simple drag and drop interface where events can be created and viewed on calendars in multiple formats. Users can also share their calendars with others.
• CalendarHub: CalendarHub offers a great service for personal and group use offering a simple drag and drop interface, calendar subscribing, reminder notification, and more. More on CalendarHub.

Miscellaneous

• Scanr: Scanr is an interesting product great for those without access to a scanner. Scan, copy and fax whiteboards, documents, and business cards with just a camera phone or digital camera! Great for research at the library and creating a backup of printed class handouts on the computer.
• eFax: Although this may not be that useful for students, I felt it’s worth mentioning. eFax lets users receive faxes through email for free simply by providing them with a temporary phone number that senders can use to send their documents. eFax is free for receiving faxes but will cost you to send them out (eFax Plans).
• Gmail: Generally, most colleges and schools provide email, but if you’re an High School student, chances are you weren’t given one. I’d personally recommend Gmail for its features and space, however you may have trouble using it in schools due to its chat functionality.
• Google Page Creator: Users can create quality sites without learning HTML or any other technical knowledge, although they can use them if they wish. You get 100MB of space for yoursite.googlepages.com and can upload files and attach gadgets to your pages. Here’s an example site I created in just a minute with Part 1 of this series. Dead simple, but presentable.
• Zoho Creator: Can’t find a product that does what you want? Try creating your own. Zoho Creator allows its users to structure a database, insert and connect data, and publically share it with others.

Web-based Word Processors Compared

Throughout my educational career as a student, I know that the program I spent most of my time in was Microsoft Word. In college, every teacher requested that we type our assignments up and send them to their email address so they can “easily” download, review, and email back with changes. It’s a process, and it works, but with today’s technology and offerings, things can be much simpler. Imagine one location where students compose and publish papers accessible online and a place where teachers can collaborate with their students without the need to download or email a single document.

After compiling a list of online word processors for this series, I decided to seperately research each one to find if they are ready for educational use. I realize that services like Writely are excellent for users like me, using it to compose and collaborate on documents for Parallel (my company), but what about students when it comes to assignments that are required to follow certain formatting? Can these web-based word processors handle it?

Time to put web-based word processors to the test! First, I created an account over at Competitious to easily list common word processor features and view a comparison grid displaying features from each product. I then went through features of Writely, Zoho Writer, AjaxWrite, and ThinkFree Write (Online). After viewing the results, it was clear which were capable of following common writing and paper guidelines.

Page & Text Formatting

Student papers don’t require too much formatting, but there are guidelines and structures to be followed – for example, MLA Formatting on research papers. Will we be using web-based products to work on these kind of papers? I can’t say, but I would imagine that we would need to if there are hopes for entire web office suites in the future. During my High School and College career, I’ve had to change document margins, add headers and footers, double space sentences (or often 1.5 space), and enable page numbering. Are web-based word processors capable of such formatting? To find out, I have tested each one looking for text formatting options and page formatting options. Can users bold text, add paragraph styles (Heading 1, Paragraph, Blockquote), double space lines, make page breaks, and add page numbers to the header of each page?

Writely and Zoho Writer are similar in that they offer all of your basic text formatting options, including: bold, italic, paragraph styles (Normal, Heading, Paragraph), and line spacing, but lacked when it came to page formatting only allowing for page breaks. AjaxWrite fell behind when it came to paragraph styling, line spacing, and document formating. Lastly, ThinkFree passed with flying colors featuring text formatting options and page formatting options. It had margins, page breaks, page numbering, and even custom headers and footers. It’s practically Microsoft Word online in appearance and functionality.

Functionality

I want in a word processor, in terms of functionality, spell checking, copy & paste, undo & redo, find & replace, auto-save/backup, and at times, word count. These are functions that I use regularly when working on papers and I assume others as well. Fortunately, all the processors had these functions, except for Zoho Writer not having word count and AjaxLaunch without spell checking, backup options, or word count – didn’t even prompt me when “accidently” closing an unsaved document.

Collaborative Value and Sharing

One advantage is that these products are web based. You can access your documents anywhere at any time and work on them as you normally would. Being web-based also allows you to share documents with others and work on them collaboratively. Users can even work on documents together in real-time from different locations or even post to their blog.

Writely has five stars in this department making it very simple for anyone to publicly or privately share documents, tag documents, compare versions, add comments, subscribe to RSS, and best of all, collaborate in real-time. Zoho Writer had similar results, except I found it a little more confusing to use and had a rough time finding an RSS feed. AjaxWrite had no collaborative functionality or sharing options at all, though its purpose is to simply act as a word processor. Lastly, ThinkFree featured public sharing, tagging, version control, and commenting, but no real-time collaboration like Writely and Zoho.

Feature Matrix

Thanks to Competitious for their great service (expect a review soon), I was able to easily create and manage a Feature Matrix. Competitious does not offer exporting of the Feature Matrix at this time, but they have kindly allowed me to use it for this post.

The matrix covers formatting, document structure, functionality, document objects, collaboration, exporting, and importing. If you have any suggestions about this feature matrix, please feel free to pass it by me and I will change it. I tried to only include common features in word processors, so if you think something is missing that should be there, please let me know.

Summary

These applications are impressive, but not quite there yet. ThinkFree is the only one that was capable of producing an MLA formatted document with double spaced lines, 1-inch margins and headers with my last name and page number. The only problem I had with it though was the fact the interface was so similar to Microsoft Word (confusing and intimidating) and that is was Java-based. Writely on the other hand had an excellent interface that was very inviting with great collaborative features. Zoho Writer had similar results as Writely, but I found the interface to be a little confusing and I deeply missed the top menus you see in applications these days (File, Edit, View, Help, etc.) which made it harder to look for specific functionality. Finally, AjaxWrite did fair in my opinion, acting as a basic word processor but just didn’t cut it for me due to the lack of features.

Are Web-based Office Applications Ready for Education?

As you can tell by the compilation above, Web Office is nearing. But are these applications ready for any main-stream attention? Should we just drop the desktop counterparts and start using Web 2.0 (or Office 2.0) products? In my opinion, not yet, but we’re certainly getting closer to the possibility.

Who knows when it will happen? Maybe in a couple years, or maybe five. What I do know is that right now, web-based office products are on a roll with new enhancements week after week because of technology improving day after day. Not to mention, they’ve got some pretty convincing features to switch for already including collaborative editing, document sharing, online storage, and so on. Did I mention they’re free? At the same time, they lack some important functionality, such as: document formatting (margins, headers, footers, page numbering); adding sounds and video to presentations; and advanced spreadsheeting with charts and forms. Also keep in mind dependence on Internet connection and possible security issues.

All in all, I do not feel school systems or businesses should immediately jump on the Web 2.0 train, but I think it’s time they start considering it as an option and try some of the solutions it has to offer. Try some of the applications for a week or two and find if they work for you. If your a teacher, see if your class prefers writing in the friendly and social Writely, or the intimidating and feature packed Microsoft Word. Some teachers are already doing it (you will see real cases of this in Part 3 of the series). Why not you?

There are going to be three parts to the “Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0″ series: part one covering tools; part two covering office applications; and in part three, real cases of Web 2.0 used in classrooms around the world. I hope that this series becomes a valuable resource for students, teachers, and school administrators alike. On a last note, part two is almost complete and I expect to publish it within a day or two followed by part three shortly after.

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 2
Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 3

Red Arrows indicate personal favorites with education in mind.
Products may appear more than once if related to multiple categories.

Part 1: Tools

Organizers

• Stu.dicio.us: Student organizer and social notetaking tool where students can create a schedule, track their grades, manage a to do list, store files for classes, and write public notes in an outline-like format. Stu.dicio.us also allows students to connect with friends and soon will include Facebook integration. More on Stu.dicio.us.
• Gradefix: Best described by Gradefix, “Gradefix intelligently organizes and prioritizes all of your homework so you are always on top of it.” Students that use Gradefix create a study schedule used to best spreadout and prioritize homework throughout the week in hopes to decrease stress and improve grades.
• Chalksite (Teachers): Chalksite is a system built for teachers, students, and parents providing teachers with an easy to use central point where they can communicate with students and parents, post assignments and grades, send messages, and manage a website for their courses. More on Chalksite.
• Engrade (Teachers): Similar to Chalksite, Engrade allows teachers to create an account and have direct communication with students and their parents. Teachers can manage student grades, track attendance, schedule upcoming homework, and provide students and parents progress reports.
• mynoteIT: (New release came out the other day) An online note taking tool for students including a WYSIWYG note editor, assignment reminders, grade management, to do lists, and more. Students can also share notes with friends and receive feedback through commenting on notes.
• Haiku LMS (Teachers): Haiku has yet to launch, but its feature set sounds promising making it worth mentioning. Haiku provides a system for teachers where they can create a public website for their classes, manage content, list assignments and announcements, track grades, and more. Sounds like a similar application to Chalksite.
• CollegeRuled: Academic organizer, class scheduler, and message board area for students. Students can either create a schedule or connect to their Facebook schedule with CollegeRuled and take notes and manage a to do list for each class. Note: I have not been able to test CollegeRuled as it requires an .edu email address.
• Backpack: Backpack is an all around great organizer including note taking, file storage, to do lists, a calendar, and more. An example use could be that students can create pages in their organizer for each class and manage notes on class discussions as well as upload related files and class documents.
• PocketMod: This isn’t really a “Web 2.0″ product, but I felt it’s worth mentioning. Pocketmod is a small tool for creating disposable paper organizers using print out templates covering just about anything from note paper to reference sheets. It’s perfect for students that prefer keeping organized on paper. Also, it’s just helpful to carry around with you for whenever you may need to jot some things down.
• JotSpot: JotSpot is a free wiki allowing users to create and share documents, spreadsheets, calendars, and more. It is my top pick for a wiki and provides a great set of features. Users can even install other applications from an application gallery to extend their wiki with project managers, to do lists, photo galleries, and other applications. It may be a little on the advanced side for students and teachers, but if your tech savvy, have at it.

Gradebooks

• Teacher! (Teachers): Teacher, formerly known as Teacherly, is an online grading tool for teachers where they can create classes, add students, and track grades for all assignments and test scores. I would imagine it would work out fine for students as well wanting to track their own grades in classes. Unfortunately, Teacher is not accepting new users at this time but you can signup to be notified when they do and check out a demo in the meantime.
• Stu.dicio.us: Built into the Stu.dicio.us organizer comes a very simple grade manager allowing students to assign grade categories (homework, quiz, tests, etc.) and grades to each of their classes.
• mynoteIT: Students with an mynoteIT account can login and access their classes where they can add grade sections and grades. What’s nice too is that unlike Stu.dicio.us, mynoteIT gives the student a clear look with letter grades rather then just percentages and averages.
• Chalksite (Teachers): Designed for teacher, student, and parent communication, Chalksite provides teachers with online gradebooks where they select their class and simply fill in grades for each assignment that they have sent to their students. Students and parents can then login to their account to view their grades.
• Engrade (Teachers): The Engrade online gradebook is built to be flexible to a teachers needs where they can add assignments, create weighted grading categories, customize grading scales (A, B, C, Pass, Fail, etc.), and more. Students and parents can also login and view their grade report.

For Teachers, Clubs, and Management

• Groupvine: A service designed to help bring group members together to keep track of events, tasks, and news. Great for students in clubs, professors teaching specific topics, and campus management. For a screencast, view Screeniac.
• Nuvvo: Teachers wanting to teach online can use Nuvvo providing them with their own online learning portal. Teachers can can add courses that anyone can find and enroll in as well as charge for the online courses. They can manage students, class curriculum, quizzes, and more importantly, learn pages (allowing for headings, text, files, images, and video) that their students will be reading throughout the course.
• Schoopy: Built to strengthen community communication, Schoopy provides a system in which teachers can manage participating teachers, students, and parents and send messages, ask questions, keep up with assignments and even take quizes. Communities/Schools also can create a public website making it easy for students and parents to keep up with recent updates.
• Tuggle: Tuggle, launching Fall 2006, is a web-based organization tool for student leaders to manage groups, online payments, bulk email and texting, and more.
• Chalksite: A web package developed for teachers to help create a class website and a central point of communication with students and parents. Manage class assignments, student grades, and even a public blog.
• Engrade: “Engrade is a free online gradebook that allows teachers to manage their classes online as well as post grades, assignments, attendance, and upcoming homework online for students and parents to see.”
• Haiku LMS: Haiku has yet to launch, but its feature set sounds promising making it worth mentioning. Haiku provides a system for teachers where they can create a public website for their classes, manage content, list assignments and announcements, track grades, and more. Sounds like a similar application to Chalksite.
• Zoho Challenge: Online test tool where you can easily create tests, send tests to candidates (students, in this case), and view results with visual reports and straight forward grading (pass or fail).

Mathematics

• Calcoolate: Calcoolate provides users with a simple calculator with advanced expression support, mathematic functions, and history for viewing past calculations.
• Calcr: Similar to Calcoolate, Calcr is a web-based calculator with mathematic expression and function support as well as history logging in a very minimalist design.
• Create a Graph: Create a Graph is a free tool by Students’ Classroom that aims to make it easy for students to create bar graphs, line graphs, area graphs, pie charts, and point graphs. Navigate through its easy to understand visual interface to add data and customize graphs.
• e-Tutor Graphing Calculator: Advanced web-based graphing calculator allowing students to enter one or more equations and view them with position/intersection indicators and zooming functionality.

Resume Building

• Emurse: Great service built for job hunters that want to create, send, and share a professional resume. Users can view their resume’s statistics, send out their resume via fax and ground mail, and receive a public or private web address. One of my favorite applications of the year. More on Emurse.
• hResume Creator: Helpful tool for the tech savvy crowd that want to create a Microformat compatible resume for their website. Simply fill out the hResume form covering basic resume information and retrieve an HTML file which you can use to copy-n-paste into your website. You can then style the resume as you wish with basic CSS if your not thrilled with the default appearance.
• Amiko: Amiko does not appear to work or be officially launched yet, but I have been keeping an eye on it for the last month or so and hope to try it out soon. It appears to be a service that allows users to create and manage an online resume although it’s feature set does not look all that promising compared to Emurse. Note: The signup form doesn’t seem to work for me and I’ve tried reporting it as a bug, but the bug form did not work either. I’ll keep my eye on it.

To Do’s and Note Taking

Note: I did not list all of the note taking solutions I am aware of as I’ve already made a roundup of 50 notetaking tools here at Solution Watch, but I will add a few new student specific ones that I have recently come across.

• 25 To Do Lists to Stay Productive: Solution Watch roundup of 25 web-based task managers that can be helpful for students wanting to keep track of homework and upcoming quizzes. Be sure to check visitor comments for more.
• Fifty Ways to Take Notes: Another Solution Watch roundup including over 50 ways to take notes using various web-based tools in seven categories.
• NoteMesh: Best described by NoteMesh, “There are plenty of notes services out there; NoteMesh is a different way of thinking about your notes. Collaborate with your classmates to create a unified set of notes for your class. It’s like Wikipedia for your notes.” Note: School email address required when registering.
• Notecentric: Notecentric is a new notetaking site designed to help university students have their notes wherever they are and easily share them with fellow classmates. You can add multiple classes to your account and save notes to them using a WYSIWYG editor. Note: School email address required when registering.
• NoteTango: Free and collaborative note sharing site, launched just days ago, that allows students to create and share notes online and search notes created by other students.

Learning and Research

• EasyBib: An “automatic bibliography composer” that lets users enter sources and fill out a simple forms to be given MLA style bibliographies. I’ve used this multiple times in the past for research papers.
• Ottobib: Similar to EasyBib, Ottobib is a simple bibliography tool that allows users to enter multiple ISBN numbers for books at a time and retrieve the bibliographies in MLA, APA, AMA, or Chicago/Turabian format.
• Nuvvo: Nuvvo offers a service where students can search for courses to enroll in online on any just about any topic. It’s a fun and easy way for students to learn and they can select from free or paid courses.
• Diigo: Social annotation and bookmarking service where users can bookmark sites and add highlights and notes to them. Great for research. In fact, I used Diigo to help organize bookmarks and notes for this post.
• Wizlite: “Wizlite allows you to highlight text (like on real paper) on any page on the Internet and share it with everybody (or just your friends).”
• Mindpicnic: Similar to Nuvvo, Mindpicnic offers a service where users can create courses and find and study interesting courses full of media, links, flash cards, and more.
• Answers.com: Excellent site for researching anything at all. Make a search and receive results from dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other information sources.
• Wikipedia: Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia under a Wiki platform that is written and maintained by volunteers. It has possibly grown to be todays largest reference site and encyclopedia on the Internet.
• Del.icio.us: Social bookmarking site where users can save bookmarks and organize them with tags. Users can also take advantage of their del.icio.us network allowing them to add friends to their account and keep track of bookmarks left by each friend.
• Zotero: Next-generation research tool for Firefox that is currently in private beta. With Zotero, users can capture citation information, store media and websites, take notes, and more all within their browser. Note: Zotero is in private beta and I have not had the chance to try it out and will keep my eye on it.
• Newsvine: I could have picked any ol’ news site for this post, but Newsvine is, in my opinion, the best news source for students. It’s a clean and friendly social news site containing articles from the Associated Press, ESPN, and New Scientist as well as user contributions. Students can browse the site comfortably, rate news articles, participate in article discussion, and even start their own news column where they can write and publish articles. More on Newsvine.

Media Sharing

• Youtube: YouTube has quickly grown to be one of the most popular websites on the Internet. I personally use it for entertainment, although you can find a great deal of educational videos as well as create an account to upload your own videos for free. Students can research the site (may come across inappropriate content here and there) and even create projects with video and share them on the web.
• Google Video: Similar to YouTube, Google Video allows users to search, upload, and share videos online for free. I’m a fan of YouTube, but Google comes on top when it comes to quality educational videos. Google Video even has an educational category providing hour long videos and caption/subtitled videos (new).
• Flickr: Explore, upload, and share photos online. Includes commenting and neat note functionality where users can add blocks of notes on the photos themselves for others to see.
• Eyespot: Neat site where users can actually create video mixes online and share them with others. You can add up to 100 clips or photos to a movie as well as add transition effects and video effects. Reminds me of videos I had to create back in High School for Graphic Communications class. More on Eyespot.

That about does it for part one of the series. If there are any services that you feel should be on this list, please comment and let us know about them! If you are interested in more services in any of the above categories, feel free to contact me as I have only mentioned ones that I personally felt were best for educational use. Also, I just want to make a last note that red arrows throughout the article indicate personal favorites of mine but do not mean they are the best options for you. I recommend looking at a category that you need improvement on and find what product will best fit your needs, then go from there. Hang tight for part two of the series and enjoy!

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!

At start, the collection of products and websites that you are saving in your organizer will be saved locally on your hardrive, but if you create an adaptiveblue account, your collection will be stored online so you may easily access it from anywhere. Adaptiveblue takes advantage of Amazon’s S3 storage service allowing you to save your data online giving you possibilities with Blueoganizer including RSS feeds for your collection and website badges. That’s not all though. Blueorganizer is also a tool that allows you to easily buy, compare, and search about any product that you save in your organizer.

To get started, head over to Adaptiveblue and download the extension. Once installing and restarting your browser, you will see two new buttons in your Firefox navigation toolbar that look like what you see to the right. The left button allows you to bookmark, or “bluemark” as Blueorganizer calls it, and the right button lets you open up your collection. Let’s begin with opening your collection.

When you open your collection for the first time, you will notice that Blueorganizer has gone ahead and added some preset bluemarks for you to look through. This is to give you an idea of what you can bookmark and how searching and sorting is handled. You will see that bluemarked books, movies, electronics, music, and even toys will contain images along with extra options to claim if you own the item, buy, search, and compare.

On the top right of every bluemark is a wrench. This wrench is what Blueorganizer calls a context action tool which enables you to instantly find, shop, compare things on the web. This is a very handy feature. Picture this: There is a book that you have been wanting to buy, but you aren’t sure about purchasing it yet. So you bluemark it and use the search and tag options to search about the book and the author with Google, Technorati, or even Odeo for podcasts. You then look for related books that you may like as well and use the tags search tool. After reading more on the book and related, you decide to buy it. You go back to the wrench and click on the compare option to find the best deal on the web for the book and order it.

Let’s now take a look at the search and sorting functionality of Blueorganizer which you see on the top of the organizer. The searching is very basic where you can select the type of bluemark or collection (bookmarks, books, electronics, movies, music, toys, and video games – soon to be more), filter by tags, or search by text with results appearing as you type. The search is pretty standard but what I found to be more interesting was the sorting options, or what I like to call, “Smart Sort.” Depending on the collection type you select from the list, the sort button (on the right of the collection drop down box) will have different options to sort by. For example, selecting the book collection allows you to sort your bluemarks by author, history, popularity, rating, title, and even the year of the book. Or another example, selecting the Video Games collection will allow you to sort by manufacturer, platform type, popularity, and more. The sorting options are flexible to the collection and that really helps you narrow down on items. Although one sorting option that I did not see was sort by date added to the collection, which I would love to see because like normal website bookmarks, I like to view what I most recently bookmarked.

I think we’ve got the basics of using the organizer covered. Now lets look at actually saving bluemarks to your organizer. To bluemark websites and products, simply click the browser bluemark button for Blueorganizer which will then bring up a popup to enter details for the bluemark. But before I continue onto actually saving the bluemark, I want to point out one small but helpful feature with the bluemark button and the Blueorganizer engine. The neat thing with the bluemark button is that when you come across a page that Blueorganizer detects and can successfully grab specific information from (using Microformats – Supported Sites), like a book title and image or music album, it will add a dark blue dot in the middle of the button to notify you. Otherwise, bluemarking a site when the button doesn’t have the dark blue dot will just act as a normal website bookmark.

When the popup appears when adding a bluemark, you will see that if Blueorganizer was able to parse the website and it detected it being a collection type (books, movies, electronics, etc.), the title, image, and tags will automatically be filled in for you. Blueorganizer makes it to the point where the only thing you have to do is… nothing but click “Ok.” The only thing that won’t be filled in for you is the rating and buttons stating that you own the product or not. Any data, including images, that Blueorganizer can recognize out of its supported sites will automatically be added to your bluemark so you don’t have to worry about it.

Last feature I want to talk about is registering an account for your Blueorganizer (completely optional). There are three benefits that I see when you signup. First, creating an account will automatically store all of your bluemarks online securely (using Amazon S3 Storage) in turn letting you automatically synchronize your collections between multiple computers by simply logging in to your account. Secondly, you can publish RSS feeds for your collections so friends and family can easily track what products you are thinking of getting or what products you recommend. Lastly, when publishing your collections, Blueorganizer allows you to add widgets, or Bluebadges, to your website so anyone can see the latest bluemarks you have saved – great for product specific websites. All these features with screenshots can be found in the features overview at Blueorganizer.

Overall, Blueorganizer, is probably one of the best Firefox extensions I have used because of how feature rich it is, although it’s not for everyone. It’s target is more toward users who like to organize books, music, and other things rather then the average web surfer, even though it does support normal bookmarks. My opinion would be to simply give it a try and see how you like it. As for problems, I only ran into one while using the extension and that was when bluemarking a normal website that has a very long address (ie: MapQuest or some blog posts), Blueorganizer would go ahead and add “%20″ (which means a space) in the address at certain points of the URL, in turn making the link broken. Other than that, no problems really. Another issue to Blueorganizer is that it is a Firefox only extension which leads me to agree with Mashable’s idea of having a public website that users can showcase and share their collections, like Kaboodle. But overall, Blueorganizer is a great extension that certainly helps with organizing products and websites online that anyone into keeping collecting should try.

For more, read Sid Yadav’s review of Blueorganizer.