I’m adding another photo from Flickr because the one I posted below is now a broken link. I deleted the photo from my Flickr account in preparation for a class I was teaching, so it messed up the blog post. I know I could edit the post and all, but this seems like an easier last-minute fix! Also a nicer photo memory than the one from before–a lovely summer walk through lakeside villages and vineyards in Switzerland!
Flicker Part II November 9, 2007
Quest 12: Media 2.0 November 7, 2007
YouTube: I don’t use YouTube nearly as much as some of the other things we’ve looked at during Tech Trek, but I think it may be one of the most important/influential of all these sites in terms of culture/media saturation. It doesn’t require registration, or any sort of posting–all you have to do is watch, and most of us are very good at that. I don’t watch television, so I occasionally watch YouTube videos that relate to something I’ve heard about in the news. This morning I heard on the radio that someone who had killed a number of people in a school in Finland posted a video on YouTube about 6 hours earlier. I don’t plan to watch that one, but I was struck by how pervasive this particular medium has become.
Podcasts: I have previously avoided podcasts–I listen to talk radio on NPR pretty constantly at home so I don’t really need more audio commentary in my life. Also, I spend enough time online (or I did before my computer died) that I didn’t want one more thing pulling me in. I still may not listen to many, but I enjoyed browsing through some of the podcast directories–it wasn’t as overwhelming as I had feared. I even added one to my Google Reader account, and look forward to finding the time to listen.
Quest 10: Online Apps November 6, 2007
These applications are really neat–I love that they work cross-platform so you don’t even need to have Microsoft Office. Another advantage to online applications that mimic desktop software is the opportunity for instant upgrading–you don’t have to buy the latest version because when you go to the site you are always using the most current version.
I just looked at the Zoho site for the first time, and while I had some questions (I didn’t want to create an account and I couldn’t figure out how much some of the programs cost), I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of programs available. Someday maybe I’ll take a look at the database program. Something like that would have made my life much easier in grad school, when I was doing database work in MS Access, which isn’t available for Macintosh.
The online productivity product I have used is Google Docs, and only minimally. I set up a spreadsheet so that my siblings and I can keep track of some items from our family house. It was super easy to set up and invite collaborators, only no one else has used it yet. 
Are there any online motivational tools?
