Assignment 7

Using the criteria in Adam Bennington article, the podcast done by Oertelt was well done. First off the podcast was associated with a school and the speaker had first hand accounts of the events being described. Thus making him very reputable on the subject. Also the podcast clearly accompanied a credible web site and the host was clearly identified on the site and podcast. The podcast also used citation from the book An Unbroken Chain with straight readings from it. In addition the host can be contacted and the show was released on a regular basis. The podcast was also easy to access and the audio quality was excellent. Finally the podcast was easy to acquire from the website as well as a few podcast searching engines.

Of the three podcast directories provided I found that podcastalley.com was the easiest to use and had the podcasts I actually listen too. All had basic same search tools but this website had the search results I was looking for.

Currently none of my professors at SCSU use podcasts in their classes but I do have friends that do and they find that they are average.

Podcast link: http://www.collegeuniv.com/html/Downloads-req-getit-lid-260.html

Assignment #6

I can think of several ways one could use these tools for school or home. By using website, such as Digg, you can filter news to only subjects that you need to research or find interesting. Also the ability to see how others voted on an story can aid in seeing if a news article is worth your time. Mainly due to the fact it is unlikely an article poor in information or style will be voted for positively. In addition the ability to leave and read comments opens the doors to new research ideas or opinions by seeing the other side of the issue stated by another user.
Since there is a limited use of news articles, in my opinion, in college level work and reading is mostly being a leisure activity. I would consider theses tools for the most part a productivity detractor and more of an entertainment tool. Especially at work, since most work places discourage you from doing leisure activities during them. I should add though that my uses of these sites are limited. In fact I have never read a story as a result of seeing it on one of these sites.
When compared to other social sharing sites like Del.icio.us , I think they are both equal and should actually take pointers from each other. On the side of Del.icio.us they should implement the ability of users to rate the tags on their accuracy, and have those results influence the tags themselves. On the side of sites like Digg, they should implement a tagging system for easy searching of specific subjects and expand uses to more then news sharing.

My recommended site.
http://digg.com/football/Mistakes_cost_Vikings_in_high_scoring_loss_to_Bears

Assignment # 5

The tags that were assigned originally to the photo were: SCSU, library, millercenter, holocaust, genocideeducation, and darfur. The tags I recommended were most of the original ones plus: Miller Center, Genocide Education, savedarfur.org, and 2nd Floor West. The reason I recommended the first two tags was due to the originals being one long word. So breaking them into two words was both grammatically correct and made searches for them easier because most people searching for Miller Center will type 'Miller Center' not 'Millercenter'. I added the savedarfur.org tag because the site is easily read in the photograph and deserved recognition. As for the 2nd West Floor tag, adding that helped made the location of the photograph more known. So anyone willing to visit the place now knows more precisely were it is.

I used the photo hosting service photobucket once four years ago. From what I remember photobucket was not very user friendly and downloading photographs then placing them in a blog was very frustrating. If I remember right it did not even work so I quit using it after the first time. So compared to Flickr, which was easy to upload onto a blog, photobucket is a much more inferior photo hosting service.

I have uploaded images onto my Facebook account. When compared to Flickr both are easy to operate and user friendly. The only advantages I can give to Flickr are: the ability to tag photographs more than by who was in them and better sharing features. Also Facebook seems to have an all private or public design, Flickr is more custom.

Considering that you have complete control over who can and can not see your photos. I have no concerns for public photo sharing on Flickr. So I believe this service of making photographs public is a generally good experience.

Assignment # 4

I can see social bookmarking as both a tool for my research and an easy way to create bookmarks. It can be tool for research with one key feature. The ability to share and explore others tags. So now instead of just having to run a search on Yahoo or Google on my own. I just need to go to a social bookmarking site and click on tags that pertain to my research without filtering through the results on a search engine. Also I can see what other people are using as alternative topics for research which might aid me in finding new web sites for information. Finally, I see it as an easy way to create bookmarks. Now instead of searching all my bookmarks on a list, all I have to do is click on a tag. The best thing is that I can be on a friend's computer and show them a cool websites I found.

I plan on using this technology during school life as an early and late phase of research tool. During an early phase, where I browse many websites for information, this tool can tag and bookmark sites. Then when I'm ready to write the paper, usually two to three weeks later, I can click on the tag and visit the exact website I need for the particular section of the paper. Which is a time saver because after two to three weeks it gets hard to remember which sites contained what information. In my personal life I only could see it as a good and quick way to show a friends a cool or funny video without having to remember a URL.

Along with sharing sites with others that I find entertaining or educational and being a time saver. Other benefits as stated in The 7 Things You Need to Know About Social Bookmarking article about social bookmarking are: its ability to express different perspectives on information contained on websites, it ability to create online communities, the ability to gain knowledge from others perspective, and being able see how others link several smaller topics together into one major topic.