Web 2.0 Tools

I thought for this exercise that I would look at several categories and mention or discuss those which I use, or which caught my eye.

• Bookmarking: I already use de.licio.us, though mostly as a quick storage for URLs of sites I stumble onto and might want to get back to later
• Books: The one that really caught my attention is Lulu. I'm a life-long writer who wants to have an audience but is less concerned about making a living from writing. I write stuff which may not have a large enough readership to attract conventional publishers. Lulu might be the way to go...whenever I'm ready to publish more than blog posts. I like their slogan: "Our hope has been to have 1 million users that sell 10 books instead of 10 authors that sell 1 million books."
• Content Aggregation & Management: I've written elsewhere that I already use EditGrid. Wufoo looks like another tool I will be using.
• Education: Because Carol Bailey recommended it, I looked into Mángo, trying out the first few slides of the German lessons (since I knew German way back in ancient history). I like what I saw and heard for starters. I will explore this one further.
• Hosted Wikis: Already use PBWiki.
• Online Desktop / OS: Gonna have to come back to this. The ideas is appealing, but I'll need more time to explore.
• Organization: Since I liked Zoho Writer, I'm bookmarking Zoho.
• Web Dev: I'm curious about Pipes, but I don't have time to explore right now.

The Web Evangelist article is interesting. I'm not so concerned about whether or not online apps replace Microsoft. I'm just glad so many, many people are sharing their apps.

This might be going overboard, but I think this opening out of the Internet, of open source software and of online apps might turn out to be as revolutionary a technological development as the printing press was. Though the corporations are always trying to retain enough control to bring in the revenue they need for the work they do, the free online revolution allows millions of people to "jump the gun" on them.

My reason for the printing press analogy has to do with what happened when people could print relatively inexpensive copies of translations of the Bible from Latin into the various languages of the day (beginning with Luther's German translation). Once that happened, there could no longer be a hierarchy of control over people's exploration of scripture, religious language, belief, etc.

I'm not gaga about all the vast and silly flood of toys. I'm definitely skeptical about the fragmentization and "niche-ization" of society and the marketplace.

Nonetheless, when anyone who is computer and software savvy can invent and share information or apps, what a marvelous leveling of the world that is!

Mike

Zoho Writer: Using online apps

For some reason, my first few attempts at using Zoho Writer were bombs. I couldn't figure out how to get a new document started. Even though I was clicking the New button, it didn't work right.

However, anything I'm trying to do online while at the REF desk is likely to blow up. All those pesky customers interrupting. (See "Customer Service for Curmudgeons.")

Having now gotten a document started, I think I'm going to like this. I'm a bit wary of saving my stuff online...but, of course, all my blog posts are online...including the blogs you folks don't know about...so....

Anywho....

Let's see what it does with images.

Hmm....

A lot of trial and error here, trying to figure out how to get the image where I want it on the page...in a way that makes the text wrap to the left of the image.

However, being a trial-and-error sort of person, I've gotten at least some of it figured out.

That, by the way, is perhaps the key criterion for success using computer applications—especially online apps. You have to be willing to figure a lot of it out for yourself. In other words, you have to spend a LOT of time...a lot a lot a lot...playing around, goofing around, trying this and that and the other.

It's not for the timid...or the impatient.

But, as I used to tell the senior citizens to whom I was teaching Beginning Computers ages ago, "You can't break the hardware or the software unless you really know what you're doing. The worst that usually happens is you lose your work and have to start over."

I'm going to try one other toy for the moment. I put an anchor up at the start of this post. If you click the word "anchor," it should take you back there.

Now let's see if I can publish this to my blog.

Hold onto your hats.....

Mike

PS: WOW! I'm impressed! It did pretty well...although, once I saw the blog post, I had to come back to Zoho and edit the size of the image. The big plus was, I could click Publish again and get the option of updating the post I had already published.

I like it!

One complaint so far: If I use Zoho in 800x600 pixel resolution...which I need to use in order to read text on a screen...the popup editing windows overlap the edge of the screen, and I CAN'T USE THEM!!! This is a major pain, because I have to toggle back and forth between 800x600, which I can see, and 1024x786, which I need in order to use the popups. Grrr....

PPS: Another couple of problems:

• When Zoho Writer publishes to a blog (i.e., translates into HTML code), it reads each keyboard Return as a paragraph break. That means if I do Return + Return, as I normally would to put a blank linke between paragraphs in a MS Word document, I get two blank lines in the HTML. So...one has to remember the formatting differences between word processing and HTML coding.
• Even though I've saved this document in Arial font in the Zoho Writer, when it publishes to my blog, the font isn't saved. I get Times New Roman instead.
• As you will have noticed if you clicked on "anchor," the link didn't take you to anchor but, instead, to the login for my blog.

All this means that one may still have to clean up coding in a Zoho document after it's published to a blog.

Still, the app is probably worth it, since one doesn't have to carry around a flashdrive or get be at one's own PC to work.

PPPS: There's another excellent app I've mentioned elsewhere: EditGrid.com. Great for publishing Excel spreadsheets.