web 2.0 tools

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What tools do you use out there on the web that you find useful? Are you a devotee of any of the "Web 2" tools?

One can think of the Web as a place where multiple overlapping global conversations are taking place simultaneously. To keep up with these conversations I have established my online home at Netvibes, which allows me to integrate almost all of the tools I use and organize them into different “tabs” in a way that fits with my online life. I have a tab for blogs and comments which allows me to track multiple online conversations, along with a blog search module that updates whenever somebody posts something related to the topics I am currently interested in.

To keep up with parts of the global conversation that might not have a simple RSS feed, I use feeds from social bookmarking services like Diigo and Del.icio.us. As a visual anthropologist I also need to monitor parts of the conversation taking place in photos and videos. Sites like Flickr that allow photo tagging make it easy to monitor the photos, and with new video services like Viddler, Mojiti, and Bubbleply that allow users to tag, comment, and create their own content within and on top of existing videos, it will soon be possible to be alerted the moment somebody uses a tag to describe any particular piece of an online video. On the other end of the media spectrum, it is now easier than ever to keep track of traditional paper-based journals as well, as many are now providing RSS feeds and putting the articles online. This has created tremendous potential for Cite-U-Like, a social bookmarking service for academic journals, which I use to alert me whenever somebody uses a certain tag, or when somebody with similar interests as me tags anything.

The best tools are those that are flexible enough to be used beyond that for which they were intended. The more a web service can build this kind of flexibility in, the better, as it can tap into the collective intelligence of those using the service to extend its possibilities. Netvibes has this built right in by allowing users to create their own modules. With the help of an “API maker” like Dapper, we can create almost anything we need and integrate it into Netvibes, further extending our ability to keep track of those parts of the global conversation that interests us the most.

As a university professor I have also found Facebook to be useful. I was inspired to use Facebook for teaching by something I saw while visiting George Mason University. Like many universities, they were concerned that the library stacks were rarely being accessed by students. Instead of trying to bring students to the stacks, they brought the stacks to the students, placing a small library right in the middle of the food court where students hang out. We can do the same with popular social networking tools like Facebook. Facebook is not only great for expressing your identity, sharing with friends, and planning parties, it also has all the tools necessary to create an online learning community. Students are already frequently visiting Facebook, so we can bring our class discussions to them in a place where they have already invested significant effort in building up their identity, rather than asking them to login to Blackboard or some other course management system where they feel “faceless” and out of place.