Have you ever used a search engine to look up fun facts about this world? I did. My favorite search engine for this specific search is Google. Below are a couple of facts that I found. If you click on the title it will take you to the article I am referencing. 

Fun Facts That Will Blow Your Mind!!

There are only 14 verified people still alive that were born in the 1800’s.

Bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers were all invented by women.

If you had 1 billion dollars and spent $1,000 a day, it would take you 2,749 years to spend it all.

In 1916, 55% of the cars in the world were Model T Fords.

Starbucks is named after Starbuck , a character in the novel Moby Dick.

Sea Otters hold hands while they sleep so that they don’t float away from each other.

Of course this led me to watch a fun video on Youtube. Check it out. 

Web 2.0 Toolbox

 

After learning about Web 2.0 there are a lot of tools that I want to keep for the future that I found to be very helpful. One thing that I have found to be very helpful is my portal page.

"A portal page displays customized online content from different sources on the same page."

Examples of this are web sites like MSN, iGoogle, and myYahoo. Portal pages are personalized and includes content that the user enjoys. Data on a portal page can include all types of content including text, audio, and video.

My portal page includes:

• The Weather
• Youtube
•  My Calendar
•  The How to of the Day
•  Wired News

And many more practical things. Another tool that I use is a web site called Technortai. This web site is a dedicated blog search engine, which monitors the Web frequently for up-to-date information posted to blogs. Overall, I enjoyed learning how to use social media including: Twitter, Flickr, Blogs, Delicious, and Subscribing to RSS Feeds. I had heard about all these tools but never understood how to use them. Click here to go the the Technorati website and see what you think. As a blogger myself, I find it very helpful. 

 

 

 

SlideShare

This is great presentation that shows you the benefits of SlideShare. Learning how to use SlideShare and becoming proficient at it can impress prospective employers and colleges. You do not have to know PowePoint to create a SlideShare. You can also share your work on LinkedIn. SlideShare has many uses that could be great skills to learn and have in the future. This is taken from their "About Us" tab.  

SlideShare 101 from Amit Ranjan

SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing presentations. SlideShare features a vibrant professional and educational community that regularly comments, favorites and downloads content. SlideShare content spreads virally through blogs and social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Individuals & organizations upload documents to SlideShare to share ideas, conduct research, connect with others, and generate leads for their businesses. Anyone can view presentations & documents on topics that interest them, download them and reuse or remix for their own work.

Delicious vs. Google

I am comparing the social bookmarking site Delicious to Google. My goal is to see how many results are the same on the first page, which set of results do I find more reliable, which ones are more useful, and which ones are more current. 

I am doing a research paper on American artists, the particular artists I chose was Norman Rockwell. Below are screenshots of what Delicious and Google come up with when typing in his name. 

Google Search Engine

Delicious Search

When I searched, Norman Rockwell, I received many different articles and websites from both these sites. I did not get the same result on the first page of each. Google gave me 5,260,00 results whereas Delicious gave me a couple thousand results. Delicious lead me to the Smithsonian website and gave me a lot of information on each piece of Norman Rockwell's. Google gave a lot of information from pictures, to biography's, to the website to the Saturday Evening Post (which who the main company Rockwell illustrated for). I found Google to be more helpful with this search. I am sure if it was a more popular topic Delicious might be more helpful with updated articles. Google had more up-to-date information. The sites I found on Google were more reliable as well.