Internet Activity #4

This final internet activity is about Tagging and Mashup.

Explore Flicker

I like Flicker so much, I know this website just a year ago, but it is so impressive that make me cannot ignore it. The Flicker group is huge, this huge photo fans group has built up amazing Flicker website and expanded the website all around the world. A tag cloud is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites. A tag cloud is just a set of related tags with corresponding weights. In flicker we can easily use tag cloud to find the relative photos. Of course, the people who update the photo has to tag the photo in term of words first.

Interesting Pictures I found: (click those links below)

- Trent U

-A bridge in Trent U

- Earth in the water drop

- The Eye at Night

-When Waves Collide

Flickr Mashups

I like the Flicker Color Fields so much. When you click on a color, it shows every picture around it which make up by the same color. It's so impressive and give a visual attack when I saw it. Actually it is just links to the main Flicker website, which is very simple to do. The FlickerVision is another cool one. It's actually a mushup contains both Flicker and Google Map. It's very cool that you can see the world map and the photo in that place at the same time, and it's updated very quickly. The Retrievr is amazing. I still cannot figure out how it works. It's just so smart that can notice both color and shape that I draw and list all related photos. I got so much fun from it. In my eyes, those Flicker Mashups are a kind of expansion of Flicker, they can be many simple links to the main Flicker website, but they bring me more fun.

Google Map Mash-ups

Some google map mash-ups I found is listed as following:

- Qlock : Check the time in a world location

- Google Planimeter : Measure Area

- WeatherBonk : Check the weather anywhere

- Panoramio : Map your photos

There are so many mush-ups from google maps, I only listed these four pieces which I am interested in.

Online Generators

3 of my own masterpieces:

1)Custom Eye Chart Maker

2)Christmas Ornament

3) Jigsaw

The online generators bring so much fun to me. I have tried both the Generator Blog and Big Huge Labs, and they are both very easy to use. What you need to do is typing text or adding a photo and select the style. But, the result you can get from, which is amazing, and very cool. I think the difference between The Generator Blog and Big Huge Labs is that they have different style. Generator Blog more focus on words or text insert in the existing picture. On the other hand, Big Huge Labs more focus on adding a picture in a existing format. I think I prefer the big huge labs because it helps to create cool and beautiful pictures. The online generator can encourage our creative ability and beautify our blogs.

My podcasting experience

The two audio podcasts I listened to are
Jody Glenham-coffee soaked(CBC radio)
Stuff you should know-how junk mail works
Honestly, I haven't listened to an audio podcast for many years. It was fun to remember these stuffs. Apple is a great company which provides the audio podcasts with a lot of fun stuffs in iTunes. I choose the topics which I am interested in, and I have really enjoyed listening to them. I like listening to these audio podcasts with background musics and interest talking which contain available information and knowledge I can learn from. Audiobook is a recording that is primarily of the spoken word as opposed to music. Audiobooks are usually distributed on CDs, cassette tapes, downloadable digital formats and, most recently, some preloaded digital formats. Audiobooks are useful for people who have trouble reading or dislike to read. They are also useful for traveling and for the blind. It can also uses for distance education.

Pro's of audiobooks
-make life more easier
-more fun compare with paper books
-instant access to the audio book upon download
-ability to move to formats that will fit your plans
-formats like WMA and MP3 allow you to minimize the space requirements for your collection
-help people who have trouble reading or dislike to read, and blind people to learn
-helpful for relaxation

Con's of audiobooks
-learning curve for new users
-locked information
-less people will spend money to buy hardcopy of books, then publishing company would worry
-make people lazy to read a book, people may prefer listening rather than reading
-may cause overuse the listeners' ears

The 2 video podcasts I watched are:
Make: TV episode 10-wareable technology & Cigar Box Guitar
ShamWow song

I like video podcasts more than audio podcasts becasuse the videos have visual impacts to us rather than only listening. I have almost spend about 2 hours on watching those interesting video podcasts, and still have not felt bored. You can almost find everything here. They are more visualized and provide more fun. Those video podcasts combine news, papers and magazines together in a visual version. I think one day the podcasts will replace those paper stuffs.

My Experience with RSS (Internet Activity #2)

From this activity, I have learned how to use the google reader with RSS.Google reader is an amazing tool for sharing readings. Although this is my first time to try it, it really makes me impressive. Google has a detailed introduction and online helper explains how to use this reader.

RSS, which I have seen really often in many websites, but never known how to use it. The web feed is so useful and fun. It makes our lives much more easier. I feel very comfortable of reading all these news and websites through the google reader instead of opening several small web windows. There are so many advantages for you when you use this reader. Firstly, you can subscribe those news, blogs and other websites you are interested in. The reader tells the average posts per week so that you would know how often they post new items; it also counts that how many items that you have not read from the subscriptions list on the left-side of your web browser. Moreover, you can share those websites by simply click on "Share", "Share with note" or "Email"on the bottom line of each item. In addition, you even can add these shared items into your personal blog, and they can be all incorporated into one page in a new window. You can just send that web address to your friends, and they will see all the items you shared.

There are many ways to add a site in the google reader. I just list three easist ways by following:

1. Log into your Google reader, click on "Add a subscription",and then enter the site address you want to add, click "Add" when you finished.
2. If you do not know the exact address of the site you want to add, then go to Google reader and click on "Add a subscription". Type in keywords to search for feeds. Or you can also go "Browse for stuff" and click "Browse", there are 3 choics for you adding sites.
3. Many websites display an icon "rss" or "site feed" in the address bar, if the site has a feed, just click that icon and choose your reader.

Google reader, RSS, web feeds, those are alll very useful and helpful to us. Our lives with them have become much simpler and easier, and they save our time. It is really smart of using them. Google reader have done searching and arranging those personal intersting infronmation for us. Why don't we use it and relieve our works?

Blogs

I have used many kinds of blogs s, but haven't updated some of them for awhile. You can see blogs all around us, such as google, msn, yahoo, facebook and so on. There are just so many choices, the intersting thing is that almost everyone of them, I mean those famous webs, has billions of members who own their blogs. I treat blogs as replacement of hand writing journal. In the modern world, more people are getting used to write things with the keyboard more often than with pens. Blog is like a multi-dimensional space which has created a new

world for our human beings.Bloggers, for those who are fans of blogs, they can do everything in that world.
In blogs, the user is the decider, who controls everything in his/her own blog. Compare with twitter, blog is more widely and open to everyone. Twitter belongs to a type of micro-blogging which is a form of blogging. I prefer blogs, but not mean that hate twitter. Just because i do not oftern use twitter. I have learned that twitter is a share with your friends or "followers",but blogs create a new world to anyone who know your blog address.

From surfing I notice that there are more blogs have been becoming related to our social community. The point is that those blog-designers started making the virtual world more real. It sounds maybe a little bit confused, but what I feel is that maybe tens of years later, humans' life can entirely connected with the Internet. I really enjoy of doing this internet activity. What I have learned from this activity are knowing those really cool websites and blogs.

In my opinion, there are many useful blogs, such as facebook, I use facebook pretty often, for keeping in touch with my friends, discussing on lectures, and selling used books. There are some website which I am trying to use from the surfing of this activity, such as linkedin, rakawa, plurk, and etc. Honestly, those are websites which I haven't heard before, and I am sure that there will be more and more useful websites come up later.