Web 2.0 Technologies

 

Here is a list of many of the Web 2.0 Technologies. There is a description of each one as well as some of the pro's and con's. Please feel free to edit (add new sites) as you see fit.

 

What is Web 2.0? by Tim O'Reilly

 

SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards

174 Webs 2.0 Sites in 41 categories - rated, ranked and awarded.

Many of the sites listed below are from the SEOmoz Web 2.0 Awards.

 

Blogs

 

     Blogit

• The online writing marketplace
• Blog from Facebook to all the other services
• To LiveJournal, Twitter, Word Press Blogs
• Find out what people are thinking in News & Politics
• Get personal with Journal
• Learn about others' beliefs in Religion and Spirituality

 

     Tumblr

• Blogging and microblogging
• Pictures
• Video
• Quotes from on-line conversation
• Character limit, designed for a specific purpose
• Allows active, reflective posting

 

     WordPress

• Open source blogging software
• Also used as a content management system
• You can get a blog started in less time than it takes you to read this sentence; all you need is an email address
• You’ll get your own WordPress.com address (like you.wordpress.com), a selection 3GB of great free and customizable designs for your blog (we call them themes), 3 gigabytes of file storage (that’s about 2,500 pictures!) and all the other great features listed here
• You can blog as much as you want for free, your blog can be public to the world or private for just your friends
• Premium features are completely optional

 

Chat Tools

 

     Meebo

• Ajax-based in-browser instant-messaging program which supports multiple IM services
• IM services like AIM, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, Jabber

 

     GoogleTalk

• Built into Chat
• Uses VOIP
• Can talk to others for free
• Does take some bandwidth

 

     TokBox

• Video chat through your browser (Flash required)
• Incorporate Facebook Chat buddies (through facebook application)
• Group Chat
• No software required other than a browser
• Add Video chat to your Meebo buddy lists

 

     Skype

• VOIP, Chat and file sharing
• Video Chat
• Group Chat
• Now offers Screensharing - http://digg.com/d1sGK0

 

     Mikogo

• Provides screen sharing while using Skype
• Ability to change presents
• Remote control feature
• Access an article from Techucation about Mikogo

 

Communication

 

     Twitter

• Allows friends, family, co-worker to stay connected through quick, frequent answers to the question, "What are you doing?"
• Up to 140 character answers
• Referred to as micro-blogging
• Updates displayed on user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them
• Cute little video about Twitter

 

     TweetDeck

• A simple and fast way to experience Twitter

• TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more.

• TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organised and up to date.

 

     Brightkite

• Location based social-networking
• Discover who visits your favorite places
• Join the community in real time
• See where our friends are and what they're up to in real time
• Meat real world friends
• Reveal your location, befriend and chat with people around you

 

Content Managment Systems (CMS)

 

      Drupal

• Alows users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website
• Good for hosting of content in a general form if you teach the same course semester after semester
• Numerous add-on modules available all add features
• Open-source software

 

     Joomla

• Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications
• Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla very popular for Web site development
• Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.

 

      WordPress

• Open source blogging software
• Also used as a content management system
• You can get a blog started in less time than it takes you to read this sentence; all you need is an email address
• You’ll get your own WordPress.com address (like you.wordpress.com), a selection 3GB of great free and customizable designs for your blog (we call them themes), 3 gigabytes of file storage (that’s about 2,500 pictures!) and all the other great features listed here
• You can blog as much as you want for free, your blog can be public to the world or private for just your friends
• Premium features are completely optional

 

CMS Comparison

 

• WordPress, Drupal or Joomla (Good Web Practices)
• Drupal and Joomla Comparison (CMS Report)
• Drupal vs Joomla and Other CMS (My Drupal)
• Alledia - Joomla and Drupal: Which One is Right for You? (Alledia)
• Drupal vs Joomla: Which CMS is Best? (CMS Wire)

 

Cool Apps or Just Plain Fun Sites

    

     Wordle

• Creates clouds from a series of text
• The more frequently you enter the text the larger it appears in the cloud
• Can use tags saved on Delicious to create your cloud
• Take a screen snapshot of the cloud you create to use for other purposes
• Can randomize the cloud until you get the cloud you like

 

     Get Cloudlet

• Firefox extension
• Inserts context-aware tag clouds into a traditional Google and Yahoo search interfaces
• Helps you navigate more efficiently through search results

 

     Google Wave

• New tool (available later this year) for communication and collaboration on the Web
• A wave is equal parts commununication and collaboration, shared, live
• Check out the link for more information, live updates and more

 

     Pandora

• Create your own radio station from your favorite artists
• Listen to your favorite musicians on-line
• Search for your favorite artists or other artists like your favorites

 

     RubiStar

• Rubric design for free
• Save and edit rubrics on-line

 

General Web 2.0 Resources

 

     Classroom 2.0

• Social networking site for people interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies
• Good site for beginners, wanting an introduction to Web 2.0 technologies
• Lots of resources for using Web 2.0 technologies in education

 

     EduSpaces

• Social networking site dedicated to education and educational technology
• Blogs
• Discussion Forums
• Feed from other sites
• Network with other educators

 

     Weblogg-ed

• Will Richardson's site
• Designed for K-12 Educators
• Discussions and reflections on the use of Weblogs, wikis, RSS, audiocasts and other Read/Write Web related technologies in the K-12 realm

 

     Internet4Classrooms

• Links to numerous Web 2.0 sites
• Designed to help teachers use the Internet in the classroom

 

     Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators: Teaching Tools

• Education tools
• Web 2.0 tools
• Terminology

 

     Web 2.0 for the Classroom Teacher

• Internet Hotlist on Web 2.0
• Generally geared for the K-12 teacher

 

Maps

 

     Google Maps

• The web's leading mapping application, Google maps is more than just lines on the screen.
• With Street View, Aerial View, advanced directions and integration with Local Search, Google Maps leads the mapping field.

 

      Live Maps 

• Live Maps, by Microsoft, include directions and other regular mapping functions, but its really neat feature is "bird's eye view," where you can see a cityscape or terrain as though you were on an airplane, flying above.

 

     Google Earth

• Fly around the world with Google's amazing maps and information mash up.

• View pictures, attractions and local venues, and keep up to date with the ever-improving technology of Google Earth.  

 

Mapping Applications

 

     Frappr! (may have been discontinued)

• Create maps for people of certain interests, or browse and join the maps of other users, adding yourself and your location.

 

     Wayfaring

• Create and share maps with friends or the Wayfaring community.

 

     CommunityWalk

• CommunityWalk provides simple interfaces for users to create useful maps.
• Upload photographs, comments and more to create truly useful maps for your family, team or community.

 

Mashups

 

     GoogleLitTrip

• Has an RSS subscription for updating of recent GoogleLitTrips
• Using Google Earth, students discover where in the world the greatest road trip stories of all time took place
• While reading literature, it interfaces with Google Earth to see where the actual events took place

 

     Jott (free services now limited)

• Converts voice into e-mails, text messages, reminders, lists and appointments
• Call from cell phone and transcribes message into an e-mail message
• Call into service, voice can be transcribed to a Google Calendar post, a LiveJournal post, a Remember the Milk transaction, Word Press, Twitter, etc.
• Voice recognition not the best
• Free service that incorporates with everything else
• New service rolled out last Tuesday, subscribe to an RSS feed and it will read back a blog post as a voice mail to your phone

 

Mobile Technologies

 

     Twitter

• A social networking, micro-blogging and communication phenomenon, the revolutionary service connects people from all over the world via the question, "What are you doing?"

 

     MyxerTones

• A genuinely useful ringtone, wallpaper, games and mobile videos application, Myxer aims to make the mobile experience fun and free.

 

     JuiceCaster

• Social networking and new media taken mobile, Juicecaster gives users easy ways to post to their blogs, update their statuses on Facebook and Twitter and make new friends.

    

Mobile Video Streaming

 

     Qik

• Stream video live from your phone (iPhone, Blackberry, & more supported) - http://qik.com/info/supported_phones
• Sends links to other Social Networks (facebook, myspace, etc)
• Send video directly to YouTube, Twitter, and other micrblogs in one step
• Add friends, and create groups

 

     ustream.tv

• Stream directly from your computer with a webcam, screencast, or attached Video Camera through firewire.
• Create scheduled shows that notify your social networks (myspace, facebook, twitter, etc...) automatically before you start streaming.
• iPhone and Nokia supported for mobile use

 

Music

 

     LastFm

• Billing itself as the social music revolution, Last.fm lets you connect with friends, discover music they like, discover music you'll probably like and keep up with music events and news.
• Download tracks from Amazon or listen to free online radio.

 

      Pandora

• Let Pandora's player know what music you like and it will find new music you'll want to hear.
• Discover new artists or less-common tracks from the artists you already know and like.

 

     Mog

• Another site that promotes the sharing and discovery of music, Mog also features videos, concert reviews and music news.

 

News and Blog Guides

 

     Google Blog Search

• Search the blogosphere in real-time.
• Get almost instantaneous alerts when someone is said about your interests online and sort results by relevance or date.

 

     Bloglines

• Search and share news feeds, blog content and create a personalized news page for your most valuable content.

 

     Technorati

• Monitor your links and reputation through the world's leading provider of blog information.
• Find new blogs to read and attempt to get into Technorati's list of top blogs.

 

Office Applications

All have features similar to Microsoft Office but are web-based and FREE.

 

     Zoho

• Productivity and Collaborative Applications and Business Applications   
• Can create files similar to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, many of the menus look the same
• Can't imprt a Word document but can save a document as a Word document
• Also has on-line note taking, a Wiki, an on-line planner and Chat
• Allows for paragraph formatting like that found in Word
• Provides for tagging

 

     Google Docs

• Collaborative tool using files similar to Word and Excel
• Can't imprt a Word document but can save a document as a Word document
• Does not honor paragraph formatting (like Zoho)
• Works best if collaborators have a GMail account

• Please note:  The presenter stated that Google doc is the only one that provides realtime editing-chat-formatting is not so great for collaboration

 

     OfficeLive

• Save 1000+ Microsoft Office documents in one place
• Share files—you control who can view and edit
• Works with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook

 

     WriteBoard

• Writeboard lets users edit documents while still being able to access earlier versions of the same text.

• Subscribe to RSS feeds of documents' changes and share documents with as many people as you like.

 

     ThinkFree

• From content creation to storage and collaboration, Thinkfree brings the functionality and features of a desktop office application to the Internet.

 

Organization

 

     BackPack

• Backpack comes from the team at 37signals and is loaded with useful organizational tools.
• Keep your pages private or share them, schedule text message and email alerts and enjoy regular online-office services such as a calendar and to-do lists.

 

     Zoho

• Includes Writer, Spreadsheet, Show, Wiki, Virtual Office, Project management, planner and chat feature.
• A complete office experience in one, users can take advantage of all or some of Zoho's features.

 

     WuFoo

• Create forms for every survey you'd care to perform.
• From the daily "what to have for lunch" question to more in-depth questionnaires, Wufoo has a solution for most queries.

 

Photos and Digital Images

 

     Flickr

• With a fantastic collection of images, Flickr is both a great place to store your photographs and to search for high-quality images.

 

     Picnik

• An online photo editor with tons of cool features, you can use Picnik to edit and enhance images on your computer.

 

     Picasa

• Google's photo sharing service comes with excellent software for editing your pictures.
• Easy, fast uploads make Picasa fun and simple to use.

 

     Splashup

• Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager.
• With the features professionals use and novices want, it's easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once.
• Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photo-sharing sites, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress.

 

     VoiceThread

• A powerful way to talk about and share your documents, images and videos.
• Create your VoiceThread from documents, images and videos.
• Add comments via voice, text, audio file or webcam.
• Share - transform your media into collaborative spaces.

 

Presentation Applications

Allows for sharing of presentations. Zoho, Google Docs and OfficeLive also allow sharing of presentations as well.

 

     Animoto

• Automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely uniques video pieces from your photos, video clips, and music.
• Fast, free and shockingly easy.

 

     Scribd

• From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribd
• Document sharing website which allows users to post documents of various formats, and embed them into a web page using its iPaper format.
• All major document types can be formatted into iPaper including Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, OpenOffice documents and PostScript files.
• iPaper is a rich document format similar to PDF built for the web, which allows users to embed documents into a web page.
• All iPaper documents are hosted on Scribd.
• Scribd allows published documents to either be private or open to the larger Scribd community.

 

     SlideShare

• Free service for sharing presentations and slideshows over the Web
• Import presentations from PowerPoint, OpenOffice and PDF files
• Users can add tags, rate, comment, and embed content
• Once a file is uploaded, it is visible to the public
• Terms from slides can be searched via search engines
• The user who uploads a presentation can choose to make the slide show available to be downloaded
• SlideShare is linked with CreativeCommons

 

     TeacherTube

• Similar to YouTube
• Web-site specific to eduactor lesson plans or student projects
• Maintained by educators and education technologists

 

     Prezi

• Create Presentations based on a giant image map that zooms in and out along a path
• Share presentations across social networks
• Add images, video, and links
• Zoom in and out to create cool visual effects
• In free open beta right now

 

     SlideRocket

• Create presentations online
• Upload PPT to enhance, and make them better
• Collaborate with other users
• Have access to online library of plugins and media
• Export to PPT or use the online player

 

Questions and Advice

 

     YahooAnswers

• Help Yahoo! users answer questions on every topic imaginable.
• Ask questions and have the community help you out with answers.

 

     Minti

• Connect with parents worldwide.
• Ask and answer questions about all things child-care related.

 

     FixYa

• Fixya aims to bring together as much trouble-shooting information as possible.

• Ask and answer technical support questions, receive advice and browse old problems and solutions.    

 

Search

 

     TweetScan

• Tweetscan searches Twitter for your keywords and phrases.
• Search for anything: if people have Twittered about it, Tweetscan will find it.

 

     Rollyo

• Tell Rollyo which sites you'd like to draw searches from for a particular topic in order to get search results that you can really trust.

 

     50Matches

• 50 Matches crawls and indexes sites and content that has become popular on social news sites like Digg and Reddit.
• Dubbing itself "social powered search", it is akin to a linkbait search engine.

 

 

Social Bookmarking

 

     Del.icio.us

• Links to all your websites organized into one site
• Allows tagging of your bookmarks
• Can group similar tags into "bundles"
• Share your bookmarks with friends and colleagues

 

     Furl

• Save, share and explore favorite web pages
• Bookmark, annotate and share web pages
• Uses "topics" instead of "tags"
• User may write comments and assign ratings to bookmarks
• User sets private vs. public settings for bookmarks
• User can create groups

 

     Diigo

• Bookmark and save websites through tagging
• Use a "bookmarklet" or toolbar to add your bookmarks on the fly
• Share your bookmarks with friends, colleagues, or students using tags, links, email, and RSS
• Form and join groups with other educators or colleagues who have similar interests
• Create "sticky notes" on pages for other users to see your comments on a bookmarked site
• Highlight text for review later, or for other users on bookmarked pages
• It is heralded as a powerful education and research tool http://www.diigo.com/learn_more

 

     StumbleUpon

• Helps you share and discover great websites

• High-quality pages matched to the user's preference
• Pages are recommended by friends and others with interests similar to yours
• Sites can be rated for sharing with others

 

     CiteULike

• Free service for managing and discovering scholarly references
• Store references you find online
• Discover new articles and resources
• Share references with peers
• Find out who's reading what you're reading
• Store and Search PDFs

 

Social Networking

 

     FaceBook

• Connect with friends and wanna-be friends
• Share photos
• User controls privacy - who has access to what information

 

     MySpace

• Connect with past, current and future friends
• Music, videos, people
• User-defined profiles

 

     LinkedIn

• Professional social network
• Share knowledge
• Make connections through others

 

     NING

• Create a social network for just about anything
• Professional and special interest networks

 

Social News

 

     Del.icio.us

 

• Save your favorite web content to your del.icio.us account.
• View others' favorite things and add people to your network in order to keep track of the cool things they've found online.

 

     Digg

• Submit your stories to Digg's massive, tech-savvy community.
• Vote on the stories of others and hope to make it to Digg's much-coveted front page.

 

     Reddit

• Find political stories, amusing pictures, current news and discussions on Reddit's social news site.
• Discuss news stories with others and enjoy one of the web's more engaging communities.

 

Sport

 

     iStats

• Track your health and fitness regime.
• Enter your workouts into iStats' system and monitor your progress with others.

 

     TeamSnap

• Manage your sports team with TeamSnap's web-based organizational software.
• Designed to work with a number of sports, TeamSnap's system makes sharing information, pictures, schedules and results easy.

 

     OobGolf

• Oobgolf provides both a social network for golfers and comprehensive data on the world's golf courses and player statistics.

• Also, its name has a funky and innovative meaning.

 

StartPages

These tools enable you to consolidate your resources into one convenient location. Consolidate RSS feeds.

 

     Netvibes

• A personalized start page
• Organized into tabs
• Tabs have user-defined modules
• Use built-in modules or add your own modules
• Customized tabs, feeds and modules can be shared with others

 

    iGoogle

• From Google
• A personalized start page
• Can add web feeds and Google gadgets
• Can select your own themes

 

     BlogLines

• A web-based news aggregator for reading RSS feeds
• Offers an API that can be used to write software that can read feeds, search its database of feed entries and ping the service when the blog has been updated
• Can drag and drop feeds
• Start page is customizable

 

     PageFlakes

• Site is customizable
• Organized into tabs
• Tabs contain user-selected modules called Flakes
• Flakes vary in content: RSS feeds, calendar, notes, del.icio.us, Flickr, social networking tools

 

     MyYahoo

• Personalized start-up page

 

Task Management

 

     Remember the Milk

• Task and time management web application
• Manage tasks from any computer as well as offline
• Users can create multiple task lists
• Tasks can include (or not) various fields
• Integrates with Google Maps to save commonly used locations
• Tasks can be organized by tags
• Tasks can be postponed
• Users will be reminded of the number of times the task has been postponed

 

Travel

 

     Farecast

• Farecast predicts U.S. domestic price changes, lets users book airline tickets online and provides refunds if they get their predictions wrong.

 

     Kayak

• Search for flights, hotels, cars, cruises and travel deals, and check in on the latest news in travel.

 

     Boo

• Boo brings together a multitude of tools necessary for planning travel, such as reviews, links to the websites of hotels and attractions, currency converters, maps and more.

 

Video

 

     YouTube

• The world's largest collections of online videos, YouTube has footage of virtually everything.

• Upload your own videos or choose from the enormous collection and embed videos on your website or blog.

 

     BBC iPlayer

• Browse through online footage of BBC television programmes.
• Get your fix of British TV if you don't live in Britain, or catch up with what you've missed if you do!

 

     MetaCafe

• Watch, upload and rate online videos.
• Browse the site's content, which is ranked and policed by a passionate user-base, and be rewarded for outstanding content.

 

Virtual Worlds

 

     Second Life Education Wiki

• Linden Lab's Official Resource for Second Life in Education
• Frequently Asked Questions and Guidelines
• Second Life Mailing Lists, Blogs and Forums
• In-World Groups
• Education Pricing on Private Islands
• Academic Research
• Classroom Management, Lesson Plans
• Teaching Resources
• Education Locations in Second Life

 

     SLED (Second Life in Education) Blog

• Blog for the K-20 world using Second Life

 

     Second Life Grid

• The Second Life Grid provides a powerful platform for interactive experiences that bring a new dimension to learning.
• A large, active education community is engaged in the Grid. Institutions such as Harvard University, Texas State University and Stanford University have all set up virtual campuses where students can meet, attend classes and create content together.
• Today, there are over 200 educators from nearly as many universities and colleges using the Second Life Grid for classes, research, learning and projects with their students.

 

     SimTeach

• Information and Community for Educators using M.U.V.E.'s (multi-user virtual environment)
• Blogs, Wikis, Second Life in Education Forum, Machinima, Second Life

 

Visual Arts

 

     ColorBlender

• Match colors and create cool palettes easily.

  Get the Photoshop Color Table for your palette and view palettes made by others.

 

     Swivel

• Swivel makes data entry entertaining and artistic!
• Show your data on graphs and take a look at others' data maps, charts and graphs.

 

     Visual Complexity

• VisualComplexity specializes in "the visualization of complex networks."
• Explore the site's amazing collection of data-turned-art and contribute your own.

 

Widgets

 

     YourMinis

• Find widgets for your blog or website that include your favorite services like Twitter and Digg.

 

      Flock

• A browser especially developed for social networking addicts, you can easily stay up-to-date with your online networks absolutely hassle-free.

 

      Clearspring

• Clearspring helps companies optimize their presence within social networks and blogging communities by providing widget creation and distribution services.

 

Wikis

 

     PBWorks

• Simple and free to use, PBWorks allows users to upload HTML in order to customize their pages.

• Create a wiki for fun or for use within your business.    

 

     WetPaint

• Wetpaint provides wikis to some of the web's most visible media entities.

• Fully equipped with smart navigation elements and neat customization features, Wetpaint wikis are often fully-functioning, well presented websites    

 

     Wikimono

• Create a wiki between users
• Can actively select what users you want it sent to
• Don’t have to be friends to share information
• Don’t have to let them see your profile
• Also a Facebook application

 

     WikiSpaces

• Simplifying the process of making and using a wiki, Wikispaces allows anyone to create a public or private place for their content.

 

     WikiDot

• Now it's easier than ever to build a website.
• Publish content, share your documents,collaborate with friends or coworkers, create a place for your community!

 

Others

 

     NoteCentric

• In beta
• The place to store and share your class notes
• Quick note taking abilities w/in Facebook
• Send notes as e-mail attachment 

 

 

Terminology

 

     Ajax

• Group of inter-related web-development techniques used for creating interactive web applications
• Exchangies small amounts of data with the server "behind the scenes"
• Entire web pages do not have to be reloaded each time there is a need to fetch data from the server
• Intended to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, functionality and usability
• Asynchronous
• Cross-platform

 

     Blog

• Short for web-log
• Maintained by an individual
• Description of chronological events, in reverse chronological order
• Somewhat of a diary or list of events
• Can contain pictures and videos

 

     Tumblelog

• Tlog or tumblog
• Variation of a blog that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging.
• Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video.
• Unlike blogs, tumblelogs are frequently used to share the author's creations, discoveries, or experiences while providing little or no commentary.

 

     Wiki

• Collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content
• Reportedly coined from the term "wiki", which, in Hawaii refers to "fast"
• Great for collaboration