How many things must one man do...before..

Del.icio.us- Not convinced.

I am not convinced. Once again I learned a few things while surfing and playing around with Del.icio.us, but I am not sure it is as indispensable as others think it is. As far as a keeper of bookmarks, Igoogle will keep track of bookmarks. I do think the value of Del.icio.us is the shared reading lists and tagging. If I used it more often or was part of a large group project, for instance a NYLA panel, I can see where posting a large list of reading materials or websites to visit on Del.icio.us. would be extremely helpful. While surfing and checking the tag cloud for QL.Learing 2.0, I found there was really too much information to absorb. To be fair I did just glance over it and skim the list. At home I did download the del.icio.us button and played around. It was easy to Tag bookmarks and to add websites. Again I think I would find it more useful if I had a "real world" application I was working on. Like many of the "things" I am glad to know about them and will certainly go back to them to see if I can make better use of the resources available. I also saved the link from one of the readings on Del.icio.us tools to wade thru them to see if I can find something that I can use.

One last note, I did take another look at Technorati and the discussion of the "magic middle" and "authority" when it come to blogs. I agree that with all the millions of blogs out there the most useful tool is a website that provides some way to evaluate or place some authority on what is being written. I also read the article "Information Access in a Networked World" and I very much agree that parents and teachers need to accept that youth get information in all forms from the Internet. Instead of demeaning it, damning it and rejecting it, we need to integrate the Internet (esp Social Networking) into the classroom and teach students how to evaluate and question what they read and view.

Pop Culture Junkie-Custom Search engine.

I have been playing around with Rollyo to create my own customized search engine. I decided on Pop Culture Junkie. Using some sites that I use everyday, like Wikipedia, Internet Movie Database, and New York Times and some that I don't use that often, like Internet Broadway Database, Metacritic, and others, I created a search engine that I could use to search for information and trivia on Pop Culture. Through out my day I think of a movie, television show, book or something that I think, "mmmm when was the first episode of Bewitched" or "How did Tennessee Williams die?". I often find myself bouncing back and forth between Wikipedia or Internet Movie Database. So I did find Rollyo helpful in creating a search engine that would search all my favorites at the same time. I was not however overly impressed with the results. For one thing.. the advertisements and the sponsored sites, I know, I know they have to pay their bills, nothing is for free, but the format and the layout left something to be desired. The other thing is the hits themselves. Depending on the search, sometimes the first two pages were all from one site, say Wikipedia. I would rather have a page with hits from all the sites. I did discover some interesting things while working with Rollyo. While deciding what sites to use, I found that New York Times has a Topics Index that is very useful. I also found Internet Public Library site to be very helpful in identiying sites with pop culture information.

So near the end of this assignment I thought, I wonder if there are other Custom Search engine generators, so I search Google and found that Google themselves has a Custom Search Engine service. And since I have a Google account for Igoogle, I designed a Pop Culture Search Engine at Google using the same sites and compared. Google has no ads, well at least one version for non-profit orgs and schools. You can post your custom search to your Google home page, YES, now I can search only pop culture everyday from my home page!! And you can put a widget on your blog! I could not find the same at Rollyo, it may be there, but could not find it. So all and all I liked my Rollyo and Google Custom search engine experience. I will use my Google Pop Culture everyday, since it is handy on my home page. And I will keep playing with Rollyo and Google.

First Bewitched: September 17, 1964 Tennessee Williams died at the age of 71 after he choked on a eye drop bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York City. (Found both bits of info pretty quick with Pop Culture Junkie)

Generations & 2.0, Who participates and what they do.

A Busineesweek data chart entitled, "What people are doing. Who participates (U.S. Online users) had some interesting, but not really surprising statistics. The chart divides online users of Web 2.0 into types of participators: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, and Inactives. Then into generational age groups from Young teens(12 to 17) to Seniors (62+). Not surprisingly the largest group of Inactives are Seniors and the largest groups among the rest of the participators are the Youth 18 t0 21. The exception to the rule is Collectors, which the article defines as RSS and Tag users, and no one participates in large numbers, with the largest group being Generation X 22 to 26. Thought the chart would be of interest to the Learning 2.0 group.