informationknot.com

This is a novel concept. Politweets is an extrapolation of the political comments on Twitter packaged into a self contained unit. This site is a good way to read the latest buzz as well as let off some steam about the latest political outrage. Perhaps even more useful because of its subject specific focus. You may not feel a need to twitter about what you are doing in general most of the time but twittering about your political opinion
seems like a natural fit especially in ‘08.

Web2.0 grown and developed into a huge subject area. There are all sorts of terms and jargon associated with it. What about all the categories that fall into Web2.0. How can you keep it straight? Let’s break it down.

Social Software: Normally applied to a range of web-enabled software programs. The programs usually allow users to interact and share data with other users.

Social Networking: Primarily web based. It is a collection of ways for users to interact by way of text chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, and discussion groups. Social networking sites enable people to create public profiles within Web sites and form relationships with other users of the same site. Social networking sites can be used to describe community-based Web sites, online discussions forums, chat rooms and other social spaces online. Examples are MySpace and LinkedIn.

Instant Messaging: This type of application or client allows people to communicate over a network in real time. Popular examples include Gtalk, Skype, Meebo, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger and Pidgin. Users can add friends to a contact list, by entering their email address. If they are online, their name will be listed as available for chat. Clicking on their name
will activate a chat window with space to write to the other person.

Blogs: Blogs, short for web logs, are like online journals for a particular person and are powerful tools. The owner posts a message periodically, allowing others to comment. Some blogs allow comments on the
entries, thereby creating a discussion forum. Blogs may even have blogrolls which are links to other blogs. Pingback and trackback allow one blog to notify another blog, creating an inter-blog conversation. Blogs engage readers and can build a virtual
community around a particular person or interest. Examples include Slashdot, LiveJournal, BlogSpot, and Wordpress. An offshoot of blogs are Vlogs which are video blogs. The most popular example of this is YouTube.

Text Chat: Internet Relay Chat (IRC) allow users to join chat rooms and communicate with many people at once. Designed for many to many communication. Examples are EFnet, IRCnet, QuakeNet, Undernet.

Internet forums: Allow users to post a topics
for others to review. Other users can view topics and post comments. Most forums are public, allowing
anybody to sign whenever. Popular examples are Yahoo! Groups, GroupSwim and Google Groups.

Wikis: a webpage that can be edited by its
visitors. Examples include Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Portland Pattern
Repository, MeatballWiki, CommunityWiki, and Wikisource and the niche Congresspedia, dedicated to information regarding Congress.

Collaborative real-time editor: Simultaneous editing of a text or media file by different people on a network can be traced back to the 1970s but is now a practical application. Examples are SubEthaEdit, SynchroEdit, Moonedit are examples of this type of
social software. Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Zoho allow for joint editing, but other users will only see changes after saving.

Social Bookmarking: Very useful for researchers. This technology empowers people to share and organize through use of keyword descriptions to identify images or text as a category or topic. Web pages and blogs with identical tags can then be linked together allowing users to search for similar or related content. If the tags are made public, online pages that act as a Web-based bookmark service are able to index them. Tags can be created
using words, acronyms or numbers. Examples include digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, reddit, Netvouz, and furl.Social Guides: This type of social software recommende places to visit or contains information about places in the real world such as coffee shops, restaurants, and wifi hotspots. A popular example of this is WikiTravel.

Social Citations: Similar to social bookmarking, this software is useful for academics, because it allows the users to post a citations for articles from online database like Academic Search Premier or LexisNexis Academic or even library catalogs. Citations can be organized into predefined categories allowing researchers interested in similar areas to connect and share resources. Popular examples include CiteULike, Connotea, BibSonomy, Zotero and Wikindx.

Social Libraries: This software allows visitors to keep track of their collectibles, books, records, and DVDs and allows people to share their collections through tagging. Recommendations can be
generated based on user ratings. Examples include discogs.com and LibraryThing .Social Web Browser: an internet browser with the ability to interact with popular social networking web services. Examples include Flock

Virtual worlds: These are services where it is possible to meet and interact with other people in a virtual environment. Users move through the world by manipulating their custom-made avatar. A very popular example is Second Life.