Open Source Social Networking & a little bit of history

An article on Techcrunch recently, describes “9 Ways to Build Your own Social Network“. One of the open source products described in the article is Ning, a project of Marc Andreessen (of the original Netscape fame). Later I found an article in my aggregator that led me to an interesting story about Ning, and Marc Andreessen’s response to the funding article, and some recent successes they had enjoyed. Another well known innovator, Marc Canter, the founder of a little company named Macromedia, also read of Ning’s new funding and decided write a letter to Mr. Andreessen to suggest what he could do with all that money! You may not remember these famous personages that helped shape our interactive world, but read on to learn about what they are doing with their time these days, and some interesting news along the way. I think you’ll find it interesting!

The original feed that started all this was:
http://openacademic.org/news/feed feed for OpenAcademic and DrupalEd .

A test of the Netvibes plug-in for WordPress

A new plug-in from the Netvibes ecology allows you to check the statistics of your blog, create a post, bookmark, and log out of your blog. Simply copy the following code into an external widget -> HTML type:

Intermediate Scripting Langs: website moved

The website for Intermediate Scripting Languages has been moved to the aid.aiistudentwork server located at the school. The full address for the site is now: http://aid.aiistudentwork.com/wb/isl/web . The old site will still be active for a few weeks, but please note this new location.

Top 40 Web 2.0 Applications

.Net the magazine (in our library) has created a list of applications that would qualify for the anticipated WebTools section of this site. The article appears in the August 2007 issue (p. 46-50) which arrived recently. I won’t bother to list all of them, so I encourage you to pick up the magazine and read the list. I will point out some of my favorites from each of the sections, to entice you to discover these products that await anyone interested in making their life more efficient and organized.

Google Calendar is a recent application from Google and is far more than just a calendar as it allows you to import information from desktop applications as well as Google Mail. Another is Google Docs and Spreadsheets, though not in my user box, I know they are powerful web-based applications based on Writely, a product I have used in classes, and now owned by Google. My favorite office type productivity tools come from Zoho with a stable of many different applications similar to “office” type products, but they are far more creative and perform many more duties than just writing and spreadsheets. Zoho Notebook (Podtech: Zoho Notebook Demoed video below) is fast becoming my favorite of this group of applications as it allows the aggregation of many different kinds of online content.

Gmail is my favorite email application by far (except when I am at our Colorado cabin and am forced to use dial up internet services). It is capable of organizing your email in ways most never thought possible and it brings connectivity to Google increasing set of desktop applications. VodPod is a new product that I am still investigating, but video lovers will find it is a nifty aggregator of video’s – youtube style or your own. It makes putting your videos into blogs, websites, etc. easy.

Delicious and Furl have been a part of my “social networking” toolbox for several years now, and I highly recommend everyone get involved with their social bookmarking specialties. Netvibes is a personalized portal or home page for individuals who wish to collect their favorite tools, and services into one space often used as a startup to the browser. I recommend this one for beginning a concept of a personalized learning environment, and use it in some of my classes. Other great products await your discovery, so check out the article in the Aug 07 issue of .Net.