Web 2.0

The web is increasingly a central part of normal life in America, Europe, and probably other parts of the world. We are becoming more and more accustomed to having incredible oceans of information available at our finertips at all times of day or night. It is hard to imagine anyone in my family not having access to the web at all times. Websites are becoming more and more user-friendly. The interactive nature of sites such at Facebook and MySpace have changed the way we all keep in touch and share photos, songs, and information with family and friends.

Technorati

I found the Huffington Post and Boingboing blogs the most intriguing. Interesting that you can sort a results list of blogs by either their authority or by their popularity. Searching the Entertainment category gave up-to-the minute info about Kirsten Dunst getting out of rehab and other important events.

del.icio.us

I listened to the del.icio.us tutorials and added del.icio.us to my home laptop with some of the sites I use a lot. I'm trying to figure out if I really have to log in everytime I want to see all my del.icio.us sites.

Rollyo

I had a lot of fun coming up with travel websites that focus on Oregon and British Columbia for my Rollyo search engine "Travel the great NW". (I guess I should add some sites for Washington!) I did a test search for "Victoria AND bike" . . . after scrolling through the first sponsored links to Victoria's Secret (ha), etc, the following custom web results look very good! I like this tool.

library thing

I like the idea of having a list of my favorite books, but after spending just half an hour on the Library Thing website, I think the search engine is very clunky. For example, when I searched for "emma," from the search interface, the book by Jane Austen was the first result. When I searched for "emma" so I could add it so my books, there were 8,318 results and the book by Jane is way, way, way down the list . . . lots of scrolling and clicking "next" to actually get there.

stress free grandparenting

I used FD Toys Magazine Cover, an online image generator to create this mock periodical cover.

I found the tool very easy to use!

searching for rss feeds

Today I am exploring the different search engines for finding rss feeds. It seems like people really like feedster, but the website was down the few times I tried it . . . maybe another day will present better results.

Although the tag cloud on Technorati entices me to infinite searching, I like Topix better for browsing for interesting political opinions and world news.