Mashups & Generators

Flickr
A very successful and popular photo sharing community. It contains many ways to find photos interesting to the user either by the user who made the photo or by the tag related to the picture. First off, lets have a look at some interesting Photos from Flickr's own list generated by their algorithm:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yukonblizzard/3400220072/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boiworx/3405212730/

Flickr Mashups
http://www.krazydad.com/colrpickr/ - A Flickr mashup which chooses pictures including a main color based on the color chosen by the user.
http://mapito.eu/ - A Helix of photos from Flickr of locations in Europe.
Mashups vary very different from one to another and as such the functions vary depending on how the user wants to use the mashup. They can simply be a form of entertainment or a user may be deciding on where to take a vacation and use photos of locations which interest them to make their decisions.

Generators


Neon Sign Picture Generator (http://www.imagechef.com/ic/make.jsp?tid=Studio+Neon+Animated)



Puzzle Generator(http://www.flash-gear.com/puzzle/) - Puzzle generated of the picture above.

provided by flash-gear.com

Sudoku Puzzle Generator(http://www.opensky.ca/~jdhildeb/software/sudokugen/) - Creates printable pdf files containing user specified number of puzzles and user specified difficulty

Google Mashup
http://geospot.eu/ - Allows users to bring up maps of Europe with locations of interest by type (government, theme parks, etc.)

Podcasts & Vidcasts

Today, I'll take a look at 2 fairly popular types of entertainment/information. Purely audio-wise, there's podcasts and video-wise, there's vidcasts(or vodcasts).

When it comes to podcasts, for some reason I could never understand why people like to use them so much and personally I would rather read some magazine/newspaper to get my information rather than use podcasts but this is purely out of personal preference. When I'm relaxing, I'd rather listen to music and when I'm doing work, it either destroys my concentration or sounds like white noise and I don't pick up anything useful(or entertaining) from it anyways.

The two podcasts that I looked at were:

• Film Junk (http://feeds.feedburner.com/filmjunk) provides some reviews and such on movies from a group of Canadians with a sense of humour.
• Game Center: RPG PC and Console (http://gamecenter.mypodcast.com/rss.xml) provides lots of information on any interesting games.

Like with all things on Earth, everyone has their own preferences. People who prefer to read might probably prefer blogs and others who prefer to listen to talkshows will probably prefer podcasts but blogging and podcasts are somewhat different blogs don't have to center around any one topic but most podcasts have a single topic as their main focus. In a sense, podcasts are much more similar to RSS feeds.

While we're on the subject of audio entertainment, we will also take a brief look at audiobooks. An audiobook is basically a book which is narrated to you instead requiring you to read it. The problem with audiobooks is the speed at which it is read. The speed will be much slower than reading the book yourself since it needs to be able to be understood by anyone listenering to this narration. On the otherhand, unlike an ebook, which is very tiring for the eyeswhen reading for extended period of time, and a physical book you no longer have to use your eyes and hands to read the book leaving you free to do something else.

Unlike podcasts, vidcasts are something I use on a daily basis. It is extremely easy to videos to satisfy any interests. To me, the visual aspect of vidcasts are much more satisfying than the pure audio aspect of podcasts. Youtube is probably the most popular out of all vidcasts. I believe the success comes from the simplicity of their layout and the ease at which you can access their functions.

Here are several vidcasts that I watched:
Top Gear BBC (Nissan GTR Review) from youtube
Fifth Gear (T-Rex)



Resident Evil 5 from G4 (http://g4tv.com/)


As for how vidcasts "stack up" against blogging and other formal methods of providing information, I would probably put vidcasts on almost the same level of television but you can watch what you want when you want.

RSS & Google Reader

The RSS reader offered as part of a Google account is quite simple to use. There are several ways to add feeds to the account. Two of which are directly accessible through the Google reader by using the add a subscription function located near the top left. By using this function you can add feeds using the exact feed URL or have Google search for specified feeds. Also, included with most pages that offer RSS feeds is a direct function on that page to add the feed to a specific program or type of account. The introductory tour and video are very simple and so is the interface for the reader which is makes it very intuitive and easy to use.

Since RSS feeds have been around for some time now, I have used them before but due several factors I have developed a lack of interest in its continued use.
1) Articles of personal interest are sometimes quickly flooded down the list and become harder to find on popular feeds.
2) Just too much information. The search function doesn't really help filter the articles you want to read from those you don't want to read.
3) Sometimes by visiting the actual website you can find certain unexpected yet interesting articles that aren't included in the RSS feed.

Blogging and Blogger versus Twitter

As this is not the first time that I'll be asked to write a blog, the experience is nothing new. It is a way to express your opinions and knowledge about certain matters of your own interest to others. In certain ways, you can reach out to people who share similar interests as well as read their thoughts about your opinions.

Now, for a slightly more in-depth look at Blogger.

Blogger is exceptionally easy to use. Using the templates that are provided, I found it intuitively easy to customize and add different elements to the page. It has a clear and precise graphical user interface and no real knowledge of HTML or any programming is needed at all to create a simple yet unique blog. It also allows for any HTML experts to create their own files and upload them or even host their own page on a different server/site. I'm a little rusty myself so I opted for the easiest option and used one of the templates. All in all, a fairly simple and user-friendly interface.

A great collection of blogs is available from digg.com. It features many different blogs from developments in the different scientific and computing fields as well as areas of personal such as automobile development. Recently, I've read several blogs analyzing the performance and functions of the BETA version of Microsoft Windows 7 and some discussing possible security exploits and their prevention.

One the main topics of discussion today is Twitter and Blogger, how they compare and differ. At first glance both seem to be quite similar and in some aspects they can certainly be almost identical but the main driving force behind Twitter is the question "What are you doing?". This is the main focus for Twitter; to inform others about your current activities at that exact moment. You can do this on blogger as well but with blogs you usually want to share your thoughts and opinions rather than your actions. Twitter is probably better for social networking with people in and around your physical location while Blogger will be a better source for discussing/debating ideas and comments as well as networking with others around the world.

Would I personally continue writing a blog after this course? Probably not, since I'm not the type of person that likes random people reading my thoughts and opinions but I will probably still read other people's blogs.