#19 Discovering Web 2.0 tools

2007 WEB 2.0 AWARDS

Over 200 Web 2.0 Sites in 41 Categories

Rated, Ranked and Awarded
Our team reviewed hundreds of sites in the Web 2.0 sphere to uncover the best in each of 41 categories. From there, we assembled a team of 25 of the most knowledgeable, well-respected experts in the field to vote on the winners.

15 Interviews
with Founders of Winning Sites
The creators of the winning sites share their insight and approach, including technology, funding and methods for attracting traffic.

Contributors
The Web 2.0 Awards were first created by SEOmoz in 2006. This year's edition was assembled by Jane Copland, our resident social media expert and Kiwi extraordinaire. Check out the judges and contributors section to see a full list of participants.

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BOOKS

1st Prize winner - Lulu

A self publishing website. Create works, publish creations and connect with other authors. A useful tool to introduce through writing workshops or just to patrons looking for a forum to unleash their masterpieces.

2nd prize winner - Biblio

A book search and marketplace for second hand, out of print and rare books. Easy to search and to sort.

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Looking at some of the other prize winners in the categories of games, lists and polls and health a lot of the information is only relevant to North America but the concepts are very useful.

#18 Web-based Apps: They're not just for desktops

This list is not comprehensive, but rather is just a short listing of some of the FREE web-based options that are available as alternatives for traditional desktop office suite applications: Word Processing:
Zoho Writer
Writely
Think Free
gOffice

Spreadsheets:
Google Spreadsheets
Zoho Sheet
Think Free
gOffice
NumSum

Presentations:
Zoho Show My Zoho Show

Goffice
Think Free

Calendars & Planners:
Zoho Planner
30 Boxes

#17 Playing around with PBWiki

Added content to the Learning 2.0 Wiki Sandbox. Played a little in the sandbox, checked a few favourite posts, took a few tours, got a few hints and tips, saw a few galleries, added my blog to Blog favourites my work here is done.

#16 So what's in a wiki?

Wiki comes from the Hawaiian phrase "wiki wiki" used to descibe something fast. A dictionary definition : wi·ki (wĭk'ē) n. pl. wi·kis A collaborative website whose content can be edited by anyone who has access to it.

Described to me as a free and open publishing system. So a fast, collabrative site that can be accessed by all. On investigation of some wikis from varying sources it seems that the best thing about wikis is the worst thing about wikis, the ablility for anyone to add, edit and delete. Some wikis are now asking for an email confirmation because of problems with vandalism.

Library applications could include:
- Comments and reviews on items in the Collection
- Reviews on events.
- Customer feedback.
- FAQs on Library Services.
- Library Group Conference wiki.
- User group wiki. (e.g. Library Management System user group)
- Reference user group, facilitating discussion between users.
- Meetings , pre and post discussion.
- Topical discussions on local events and news within the whole of council.
- Collabrative project work.

#15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0 ...

They say there is nothing more constant than change. As time passes it becomes more and more apparent that Libraries are and must change. Reading the perspectives from the eOCLC Next Space Newsletter articulated some of what is being discussed in all Libraries from the smallest regional Library to the State Library.

Rick Anderson's (Director of Resource Acquisition,University of Nevada, Reno Libraries) perspective Away from the "icebergs" is an interesting read. He discusses a 55% drop in circulation in twelve years and he questions the place for a print collection. Self serve services is coming up more and more as technology progressses, Rick also comments on the lack of time and resources for teaching in Libraries and states " if a service cannot be used without training, then it is the service that needs to be fixed - not our patrons". Having recently introduced a computer booking system that is designed for self service this was an interesting point. K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) has never been more pertinent.

#14 Getting not-so-technical with Technorati

Over a year ago Technorati tracked it's 50 millionth Blog. I searched twenty different topics from Learning 2.0 to music to recipes to a very strange Blog on Teddy Bear craft. My point being a good search tool such as Technorati is a must.

I did a keyword search on Learning 2.0 and got 6547 results. The same search in tags returned 655 results with the first few pages much the same as with a keyword search. A search in Blog Directory search gave 793 results and were completely different to the first two searches as I would have expected. The results from this search were varied and not topic specific. A little bit of playing and you get the hang of which search for what.