del.icio.us.

www.delicious.com is a strange website to me.  I had never even heard of it before and I am not really sure that even after completing this assignment that I truly get the purpose behind it. I don't think that I am the only one that had not heard of this site before either.  i connected through del.icio.us. to my Facebook account in an attempt to network with some people that I already knew.  I have over 600 friends on Facebook and not one of them had an account on del.icio.us. 

I watched the video that was included with the assignment and it made a little more sense to me why this site even exists.  I like the aspect of sharing links through this site and I guess I would consider this to be an advantage of using the site.  However, you can always email or even text some one a link. Additionally, as far as saving links for your own personal use, most browsers offer similar bookmarking tools that are just as easy to use and store the same information with the exception of tags. 

I would say that a clear disadvantage to this site is that you could crate so many tags that it becomes a challenge just to organize them. The site does offer tools to do this however is it really productive to spend time organizing your tags?  Also it seems like you can only share your links with other people that have an delicious account. 

My del.icio.us account: https://delicious.com/endecker

Flickr

So I have of course heard of Flickr before and there is an Flickr app on many smart devices with the Android OS, including my cell phone. I am not however, a huge picture taker and there for not a huge picture sharer, so I never had a reason before this assignment to explore Flickr.

It was easy enough to create an account, though since I already have a yahoo ID I got a little tripped up getting that part nailed down.  I had to log into Yahoo first and then sign into Flickr.  I was also asked if I wanted to link my Flickr account to my Facebook account which I declined.

Uploading photos was very easy - all you have to do is click the "upload" button and then select the file you want to upload.  I also thought it was very easy to rename, add a description and tags to each photo.  This all took about 5 minutes total.  It actually took me longer to select the photos I wanted to use for this assignment than it did to upload and tag them.

As for the tags, I discovered that he tag I used for my images (Web 2.0, Collective intelligence, collaboration, humanity, social media) were of course very common and more images than I could count shared these tags. That being said, I still feel that these were  the appropriate tags and did not feel the need to change them.

My Flickr:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/127371017@N08/

Photos:

Conversations in Social Media - Version 2.0, Renamed: Web 2.0; listening, learning, sharing (2010). ethority Retrieved from: https://pathubert.wikispaces.com/Web+2.0+Tools

The Web 2.0, Renamed: Web 2.0 with a human face, (1999). Actineurope.eu. Retrieved from: http://www.actineurope.eu/?page_id=534

Web 2.0 Collective Intelligence  - Wick, D. (2011). This Boss is Always Right - Value Collective Intelligence. Positioning Systems. Retrieved from: http://strategicdiscipline.positioningsystems.com/blog-0/bid/72195/This-Boss-Is-Always-Right-Value-Collective-Intelligence

GimpShop

The last Open Source program that I downloaded was GimpShop, which is a program very similar to Photoshop. I have actually just recently acquired and learned how to use Photoshop for a class I took and I have to say that the program was quite expensive. I again was unaware that there was a free alternative, not that I could have used it for the class as it was specifically on Photoshop, however I certainly plan to use it now!

The look of Gimpshop is very different from the Photoshop, at least the version that I am familiar with. In GimpShop, the tool panels are independent from the main viewing area, which is not the way Photoshop is arranged.  Also, the specific tools are in different places however the layers and channels modules are in the same place and are laid out comparably  I actually like that you can move the tools panels around the screen and put them in different places.  It just gives a little more freedom to the work space. Also thee were a lot more short cuts to the tools rather than finding them through a menu as in Photoshop.

As far as content, I was able to identify several duplicated Photoshop tools in Gimpshop and when I tried out a couple of them they appeared to operate in the same way as the software they were inspired by. Also, I found a couple of tools that I was not familiar with from Photoshop, though I am still a new user and it is possible that I just didn't know that they were available in Photoshop.

Open Office

One of the programs I chose to download was Open Office.  I have never heard before that there was a free program that allowed you to read and manipulate Microsoft Office files so I was sort of interested in this, particularly whether or not there was a mobile application as I do not have any software on my mobile devices that will allow for this usage and I did not want to pay for the Microsoft version. I did find a mobile app for the software and downloaded it on my cell phone though I have not had a chance to fully investigate it yet.

One thing that I didn't like about Open Office is that the download included a bunch of other programs that I did not intent to install and I did not see an option in the install wizard to opt out of them.  I don't like having a bunch of junk on my computer, so this was an unpleasant discovery for me.

As far as the operation of the software itself, I found that all of the offered programs were extremely similar to the Microsoft versions, as they should be given the purpose of the program. The layout is very similar as well, though I noticed that there is a tool bar on the right side the screen as well as the top of the screen.  Many of the tools there are duplicated from the top toolbar, at least in the Properties group but there were others that were different in other groups.  I actually like this feature, especially that there was a Gallery group that allowed you to add photos to your document easily. You can do the same thing in Microsoft Word, this just seemed a little easier to me.

As a whole I like this software and I think that it is very cool and progressive of the programmers to create this type of software.  It helps eliminate the monopoly that Microsoft has created and charges a great deal for.

Avant Browser

The Open Source browser I downloaded was the Avant browser. Upon first instigation, it appears to have all of the shortcut features that most browsers have including bookmarks, auto fills and history.

I could not figure out how to set the homepage to a specific page however the homepage that is provided allows for links to several pages to be added to it and therefore easily accessible.  I am a regular Chrome users and one thing that I did notice that was sort of different from Chrome at least was that clicking on the homepage opens another tab rather than redirecting the page that you are already on.

The bookmarks options allow for importing bookmarks from Internet explorer and my Chrome bookmarks uploaded upon install.

Overall Avant appears to have extremely similar functionality as the popular browsers (IE. Chrome, Firefox) with only a slightly different look and layout. I did not try to download the browser on a mobile device so I am not sure of the compatibility in that aspect.

/Message

The second blog I checked out for this assignment was /Message by Stowe Boyd (see image below). This blog has the feel that definitely comes from it's intention to "‘the operating manual for the social revolution" (Boyd, 2010). The content of the blog covers all sorts of things from products, music, technology even down to simple quotes that one might find profound. It is very much focused on the future of all of these areas as well as social responsibility.  

This is a very active and interesting blog and I actually set up an RSS feed to it as well even though I had already completed the requirement for this assignment with the first blog I visited. There seems to be at least one post every day and there is a lot to absorb just in the archives. 

Boyd, S. (2010). /Message. Retrieved from: http://stoweboyd.com/message/

Mashable

The first blog I reviewed was Mashable.  I chose this one from the list because I have heard of it before but had never visited the site. This Blog contains tons of pop culture items, social media, current news stories and reviews of Web 2.0 companies and products. The information is delivered in both text and video format.  The video below was found on Youtube but was created by Mashable and posted to the blog shortly after Robin Williams death.  Mashable is quite relevant and user friendly.  I set up an RSS feed for this blog and I thought that I would enjoy getting the content delivered to me even after the class was over. I will visit again!