Module 1 - Web 2.0 and Personalising Your Webspace

Web 2.0 Overview

The concept of a digital footprint beginning before birth and continuing after death is explored in the folllowing video

Encountered an interesting read on "O'Reilly" which attempts to distinguish between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. The following diagram was just a beginning according to Tim O'Reilly.

.........But there's still a huge amount of disagreement about just what Web 2.0 means, with some people decrying it as a meaningless marketing buzzword, and others accepting it as the new conventional wisdom.........©2010, O'Reilly Media, Inc.

I enjoyed O'Reilly's concept of hyperlinking as the foundation of the web with users adding new content, and new sites, other users discovering the content and linking to it, then the connections developing into a collective output of many web users. The "dumbed down" version of the differences between the two webs mooted by O'Reilly appears to me to be an 'insular' versus a 'collaborative' experience

Web 2.0 and its tools

My favourite site for explaining the myriad of web 2.0 tools is Go2Web20

Being a visual learner I love the interface. Select a tool category from the tags e.g PHOTO

a visual inventory appears

Follow a link eg to "Image Chef" and a popup appears with a short decription and the option to continue to the site only a click away !

The only disadvantage I can see is that the tools are not in alphabetical order, however it's easy to forgive the author as it would be a ponderous, time wasting task and just how much should one have to spoonfeed people.  It's enough that the site has a search facility !!

Then again, it's not the tool but its functionality within an educational environment which is paramount to the educator .  So many tools - so much more time to squander with the hope of unearthing a true gem.

IGoogle

I’ve tried I Google before and while I don’t negate the practical applications of some of the gadgets, I’ve found that navigation speed and connectivity may be compromised and shut downs may become more than an occasional source of frustration. Browser quirks seem to affect iGoogle’s functionality and can cause frozen screens. However, this may have something to do with the amount of gadgets one needs to fuel one’s addiction so I’ve cut back on many of the mindless time wasting but cutesy gadgets I initially installed and have settled for some basics. Why have a bookmark gadget when one has a ‘delicious tab’ ? And why have the ‘YouTube gadget’ when the Google advertising takes up more space than the ‘YouTube search bar’.

Something new for me this time around was the option to view gadgets in a full-screen, or canvas, view. This would make a great improvement for the gmail gadget. Serendipitously I discovered that problem with this gadget loading is caused by the fact that gmail by default transmits using https, a secure connection (a good thing), and therefore will not open in gadget form which is insecure (a bad thing), however there’s a workaround – by clicking on the gmail link in the top left hand corner of the malfunctioning gadget, the gmail opens in a full screen, so functionality is preserved.

All things considered, for me iGoogle is still too 'bugsy' to keep it as my homepage.

IGoogle Gadget

I’m hoping this option was to create a theme rather than a gadget which seems to rely on a lot of coding. Creating the theme was easy. Only thing I balked at was using my real name. Call me a conspiracy freak, but I'm not convinced publishing my real name is necessary for something as innocuous as this......... It was somewhat counter productive of Google to provide no default image size which resulted in a ‘hit and miss’ process, however I’m pleased I took the trouble, for someone as addicted to graphic manipulation as I am it is frustating to have to accept generic themes.

Good news !
I noticed today that the google home page background image can be changed from the super stark, minimalist, conservative default.  For how long have I not noticed that little tweak ? Will give that a go and see if its free of glitches.