Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is great for keeping up with bookmarks. A feature that I find very helpful is the description portion. A user can type in any information that will describe the site or paste in another link to a certain section of the site. Advantages of the site are that bookmarks are put in one location and can be saved with a widget on the toolbar. Disadvantages the same features that are available on the site are those on most browsers. I can tell the site isn't that popular because the site I saved were some very popular sites but saves were only in the hundreds and thousands of numbers. Its really probably useless because as I said above its really redundant. Like with google chrome when you want to bookmark a site you just hit a star and that's pretty much it. Now Del.icio.us  is a good way to share blogs and different sites a person may find with friends but you could do the same thing with twitter and facebook.  It is a good way to find new sites and get links to them from other people.

Flickr

Flickr was very simple to use. I do like seeing that you could register by logging into Facebook and Google  I wish they had twitter capabilities because Its widely used as well. The upload system was very easy to use and the fact that you could share photos with friends is very beneficial. Like if a newly wed couple wanted to show their family photos while on vacation they could direct them all to their wedding photos post. 

The site is great for people who want to generate any kind of business. For a stylist wanting to show off the work they have done to potential clients they could just seem them to their album of photos. 

Tags are a useful tool because it makes finding related photos for a certain subject easy to find. Flickr gives sharing a whole new look and makes creating photo albums and sets a daily thing that a user would want to do. A person could spend hours searching through other people's photo albums to see how other people live and their adventures. It makes a person's life open for the world to see. This concept isn't new because with Facebook and twitter people tend to tell every aspect of their lives so why not actually show the things that occur as they happen. Personally I wouldn't use these tools for anything but business because I think there is something special about having anonymity when having friends. Kind of like what will you have to talk about in person when you see everything about each other online. The bookmark tag had over 10,000 uploads, search over 90,000, and restaurant over 1,000,000 uploads.

Opera

                                                   http://www.opera.com/

Opera browser is probably the most featured packed and consistently enhanced browser out. I love the fact that you can turn off certain features on a site. For example, I have a data plan with caps so I can turn off the video playback on all sites. It allows for any user to pick and choose what they want to play instead letting videos play automatically as they often do. It's a very fast browser as well unlike internet explorer which I don't use unless I have to for validating code. I have never had a bug or any kind of virus on Opera. Internet Explorer is rid with viruses and anytime I open my own it causes my computer to lag a whole lot. The speed of opera browser is amazing as well it has a switch that lets a user turn on the turbo. The official site tells that the turbo feature is created do to compression. It includes the ability to use mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts. For instance, if I wanted to refresh my page I could move in a straight up and down motion my with mouse by gesturing and it would pop up immediately. (Opera 2012 p.4) It has heightening security in its recent release Opera 12.02 and tells a user if a site could have malicious content.  (Opera 2012)

"Guide to security and privacy in Opera: Fraud and Malware Protection." Opera browser | Faster & safer internet | Free download. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. <http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/security/fraud/

"Opera Tutorials." Opera browser | Faster & safer internet | Free download. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. <http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/gestures/

"Opera web browser | Faster & safer | Download the new Internet browser free." Opera browser | Faster & safer internet | Free download. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. <http://www.opera.com/browser/turbo/>.

Foobar2000

http://www.foobar2000.org/

Even before starting this lesson I changed a lot of my programs to free ones that are less bloated. I can attest to the fact that bloated software slows down your computer and most pay software comes with a ton of add-on. I really love Foobar2000, a simple and light music player. Foobar2000 is very different from Microsoft's Windows Media Player. When it comes to appearance it shows albums with no pics which removes the need for thumbnails. You do have to create play-list of an album though to listen to one in its entirety. It contains visualizations, equalizers, and a bar that shows all the available info on a song. It doesn't contain a video-player, burner features, and an online store like Microsoft does in its audio-player. I like for a music player to just be a music player though I do wish foobar2000 had a burner but I guess its relevant to the times because most people stream or listen to their music on some type of computer system whether it be tablet, smart-phone, or laptop. Its probably the most basic audio-player I have ever scene it features an album list that just displays the singer and title of the album in alphabetical order. Then in the playing box it displays the same information as above but with the actual song names. Windows media player is becoming unnecessary because its still the same as it was years ago and even its appearance its hard to distinguish between which version is which. I'd recommend download an open-source burner and foobar2000 to save more space and have a simplistic way to do things we commonly do. After doing a little more research I did find that one of the features of the newer versions is that you can display the album photo if you want.

"Download Multimedia Player, Foobar2000 1.0.3 Download." Free software download. More than 80 000 unique freeware and shareware software.. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. <http://www.opossumsoft.com/foobar2000_1_0_3_144296-253412.html>. 

OpenOffice

http://www.openoffice.org/

OpenOffice has been apart of my life since I started college. It has almost all the same features as Microsoft Office. The open source office suite is bloated but a lot less than Microsoft's Office-suite. One feature that OpenOffice doesn't do well is grammar checking though you can add it on later it isn't as thorough as Microsoft's Office built-in grammar checker. Some of open office's features are spreadsheet, word processing, and you can view or make presentations like PowerPoint. (Scott Gilbertson 2010 p.7) Microsoft does come with more evolved features like its dictionary which includes a thesaurus. OpenOffice is more basic and allows for more add-on that may not work as well as Microsoft's. I do like Open-office because its free mainly and does what I need it to. I do think that maybe with more research I could find add-ons that would work just as well as Microsoft's already built in tools. Another thing about OpenOffice is that is doesn't update that often from my experience with it but I will say when it does there are improvements like less crashing and the ability to recover a document.

Another thing I found interesting in the article given is the predication that document tools will be mainly based online. An example given was Google docs. My thoughts is that maybe years from now that might be true but as of right I don't see it happening. (Scott Gilbertson 2010 p.13)Cloud storage would have to become more mainstream than it is now and extremely secure. Its frightening to think that your personal documents could be online on the other hand more and more people pay bills online so work documents on a cloud storage site maybe not be as far away.


Gilbertson, Scott. "OpenOffice 3.2 - now with less Microsoft envy • The Channel."The Channel: Computer Trade News for the World. N.p., 13 Feb. 2010. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. <http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/02/13/openoffice_review/

Ehub

Ehub is a great way to discover new webpages and/or apps. The site which was created by Emily Chang even features the designer's information on how she uses certain apps or websites in her daily life. Its great for people wanting to know about innovation and how limitless creativity can be even when it comes to using the web. In addition to publicizing up-incoming designers and coders she even interviews some of them. Ehub is like an all access granted pass to the daily lives of tech-heads because Chang has even taken tours of how and where some of the creative minds work. The included video tours and email interviews on the website can be inspiration to aspiring designers and even may help them connect to people that they can work for. The information she gives is very useful and current to where the world is going when it comes to finding and creating careers.

She reviews different websites and tells how beneficial they can be to users. One program called StaffNote, lets managers keep up with every aspect of handling a staff. The program lets staff easily talk among themselves online, keep up with deadlines, meetings, and even makes paying employees easier. (Emily Chang 2012) I have nothing but positive things to say about this website and its purpose because its like a gateway to online entrepreneurship. The news that Change provides is relevant, informative, and easy to follow. Another thing is that she doesn't just focus on businesses or ideas created in the United States but also those across the globe.


Chang, E. (n.d.). Emily Chang – eHub.Emily Chang – Designer . Retrieved October 15, 2012, from http://emilychang.com/ehub/

READWRITEWEB

ReadWriteWeb

This blog is similar to popular sites CNET.com and Gizmodo.com. Like those sites it has an array of information on the tech world. Information is given from a point of view of how current technology effects people's daily lives. One example of this is an article about how positive information online rather than negative has a huge affect on the presidential candidates. Brian Proffitt talked about how despite candidates belief that their negative messages might help them it actually causes harm when people are searching online for information on who to vote for. A reason for this is because people are simply looking for the right choice not necessarily the most controversial. (Brian Proffitt, 2012 p.10)

The site includes articles and videos on the business behind the tech industry. It is divided into sections ranging from Web, Biz, Mobile, and the slowly becoming popular Cloud. One article may talk about how workers are trying to improve a video source so that it can be used more efficiently and universally. Another may talk about why a major tech company is seeing declines in the stock market. It sparsely includes easy to follow tips on how to use new gadgets and services created for web use.  The information seems to be geared more so to professional people. The site does throw in a few articles that could be interesting to the average tech user like information about popular ios and android apps. I'd recommend this website for any professional or soon to be professional in the tech world because most of the information can be useless to anyone who isn't apart of that industry. Like an average user might not care that several browser makers are trying to create one browser that could be universal.

Proffitt, B. (2012, October 15). How Online Searches Influence Voting: Going Negative Doesn't Work. ReadWriteWeb - Web Apps, Web Technology Trends, Social Networking and Social Media. Retrieved October 15, 2012, from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how-online-searches-influence-voting-going-negative-doesnt-work.php

ReadWriteWeb - Web Apps, Web Technology Trends, Social Networking and Social Media. (n.d.). ReadWriteWeb - Web Apps, Web Technology Trends, Social Networking and Social Media. Retrieved October 15, 2012, from http://www.readwriteweb.com/