22. Web 2.0 Office

Those of us who worked on the library's Library 2.0 program are aware of the very cool features offered by Google's Docs and Spreadsheets applications. They take the basics of office documents (word processor, spreadsheet and a new presentation slides application) and allow us to use those functions without downloading (or paying for) standalone software. Google, as cool as it is, isn't the only player in town, however. There are many options for those who want to use standard office software without paying big bucks for a standard office suite - or for those who work on multiple computers with multiple people and have office document format issues. I work on 4 different computers with varying access to Office 2003, Office 2007 and Open Office. This makes keeping my documents in some sort of common format necessary - and difficult to sync up!
If you have the same sort of issues, you can use online office suites to keep all of your documents synced up, no matter what computer you are on, or in the same format, no matter what software is available on the computer upon which you are working. One site, the Office 2.0 Database, offers a comprehensive list of the sites available for use in an online office suite, including a page which lists the applications the author uses with a bunch of alternatives to the one he likes.
Since the use of any of these applications is free (though some have "premium" accounts that give you more storage in return for a monthly fee), sign up, try them out and find out which one(s) suits the way you work!

18. Claim your online ID

With so many different services out there, how do you definitively claim certain social networking sites, blogs or other content as "yours"? This can be especially difficult if you have a common name! There are a couple of different services out there to help you with just this problem. The one that I use is called Claim ID and it is both useful and social! With this site, you can enter in all of the MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and blog accounts you have and "claim" them as your own.
Why would you want to do this? It gives you a way to exclude blogs/social sites that may have been made by someone with a name similar to (or the same as) yours - which in some cases may be necessary! Part of protecting your online privacy is protecting your online reputation. It also gives you a starting point to let folks know what it is you have done on the web. With so many of us creating so much content, it is easy to have something you have done or created fall through the cracks. This site will allow you to point people to a single page with all of the cool things you have done so that nothing gets lost.
Claim ID is pretty easy to use. Once you have set up your account, you can add links to it. When you add a link, you are given several options. You can enter the title you want to give to that link, the description that will show up, tags for it as well as classifying it either about you, not about you or some other classification that works for you, then classifying it as by you, not by you (with the option to add the author) or in some other way that works for you. You can create groups - work stuff, personal stuff, any other kind of stuff - that help you to arrange your information the way you want it.
And that is the point of this new sort of service, after all - to give you the opportunity to manage your online identity, reputation and what exactly you want to "claim" for yourself!

One final note - you will see a lot of information on OpenID at the Claim ID website. Even if you don't feel you create all that much content (which you will be surprised once you start trying to add it all in, I bet!), you can use the Claim ID service as an OpenID provider. A nice, only slightly technical, explanation of Open ID is found at openid.net. Take a look and see if it might help you with your expanding username/password combinations!

14. Edit your photos - without PhotoShop

In library learning 2.0, we covered Flickr, the photo sharing application that has become so popular in the last few years. Today, we are going to revisit Flickr and one of it's newest features! Flickr has recently teamed up with Picnik, the online photo editing site, to offer basic online editing to it's users. With Picnik, you can crop, resize, add annotations (as I did here:



) and generally do basic editing to your images - without an expensive application like Photoshop installed on your computer. When you first get into Picnik (by clicking on the photo in your account that you want to edit, then clicking on the "Edit this photo" link above that picture) you are faced with a row of options, including sharpening and a red-eye fix. Click the button to get to the interface to make your changes, save the picture as a new photo or over the old photo and you are done!
If , however, you want to do more than just simple fixes to your photos, there is a "create" tab as well. This tab gives you the option to add annotations of text and arrows (as I did above) as well as creating image effects, adding frames or touching up photos that aren't quite right. Some of the options, however, do have the word "premium" running along the side of the option button. This means that you have to pay (even if you are a Flickr Pro user) to use that particular effect. There are a LOT of options that are free, though!
If that feature of Flickr's doesn't work for you, or you aren't a dedicated Flickr user, there are other options out there as well:

• Pixenate: This site lets you make edits, save the new image to disk, upload to Flickr or MySpace or store it on their site.
  
• Resizr: For basic resizing of images (for use in profile pics and the like), this site will resize them, then help you upload them or share them.
• Phixr: More advanced tools, and it requires a login to save your images, but it is a great replacement for basic "photoshopping" needs.
• Adobe Photoshop Express - just released last week, this is the "little brother" of Adobe's very expensive Photoshop program - no downloads needed!
  

12. Google Maps

Google Maps deserves it's own lesson - it's a Google application, true, but it has spawned more mashups (2 sources of data "mashed up" into one useful application) than any other application out there. Google recently released a personalized version of the Maps application that lets you very easily create a new map with your own data in it as well. I created this one:


View Larger Map

in about 10 minutes on the last night of my recent vacation. Other people have created maps that take a source of data (gas prices, for example) and combined that with Google's Maps to create Gas Buddy, as one example of a mashup application. There is a directory at Google with all the popular maps available for the US (or whatever geographical area you have in the screen).
There are at least two blogs that track what new mashups are being created with Google Maps as well.
Creating your own mashup, as I did above, is very easy. Go to maps.google.com and click on the My Maps tab. If you are already logged in, you will see a "create new maps" link. Click on it, title the map and add a description in the sidebar on the left side of the screen. Once that is done, find a place of interest on the map on the right, either by clicking and dragging to the location or doing a location search, and click on the 2nd icon at the top of the right frame (the blue "placemark" icon) and click on your location. You can then add a name and description to your place. Do that for all of your locations, and your map is done! I added the images into my map descriptions by copying the image address from the Flickr photo page, using the "rich text" editing in the description of the placemark and clicking on the image icon to paste the image address in and make it show up on the description of the map.

8. Jott this down!

What Is Jott?

Jott is a service that takes your voice message and transcribes it into text. After you sign up for a free account, you can call a toll-free number and indicate who you want to "jott". Say your message, and the service records, transcribes and sends the message on. You can jott yourself (to your email account, for example), you can jott your friends (send a text message to your best friend with no typing necessary!) or you can jott many Web 2.0 services and applications for a variety of reasons.

Signing up is easy! Just enter your basic information - as shown on the left - and validate your email address by checking your email and clicking the link in the email that you get from Jott. Enter your phone number (cell or land line numbers work) and then validate it (Jott really doesn't want someone getting signed up without their permission!) by calling the service (another toll-free number) from the phone number you just entered. After that, you are asked to enter in your contacts that you will be "jotting" and you are ready to use the service!

Why use it?

For people who tend to call themselves to leave voice mail messages on their own phones, this is a nice way to get those messages in other places (email, text messaging application, online to-do list application, etc.) as well. You can also put your group of friends into Jott's contact list and send out a single reminder to all of them (Jott lets you put multiple contacts into a group for broadcasting out messages).

Extend it with other Web Applications!
Jott also partners with many different web applications to allow you to "Jott" them. If you have a Remember The Milk account (an online to-do list), you can call Jott, ask it to jott your Remember The Milk task list and add a task - without touching a computer. You can also post to Twitter, Wordpress.com, Typepad and many other blogging or microblogging applications from Jott. I've tested out the Jott to Twitter service and it's pretty nice for when I want to post to my Twitter account from a phone, rather than from text messaging.

Do you think Jott could be useful to remind co-workers about upcoming events, tasks or meetings? Would you use that way? How else could you use Jott?