Connections made and monitored

So the last module of CCLlearn and I've chosen making and monitoring connections. This has actually been a nice way to round up on everything so it hasn't been too bad at all. Though throughout this I've been looking to make the big discovery of something new that I'm going to find that will be integral in my online life. I haven't found it yet, but perhaps it will come when I'm least expecting it.

Doing this has reinforced that I really do love some of the things that I'm already using; and that they really are some of the greatest tools out there. Of course I'm talking about RSS, iGoogle and Stumbleupon. These are all tools that I use pretty much daily at home and couldn't imagine being without them. Conveniently two of them (RSS & iGoogle) are mentioned in making and monitoring connections so I figure I can give myself a tick for this bit. One particular thing that I use to monitor my connections is a little add-on to FireFox that's called Morning Coffee. Its a really nice wee add-on that just sits in the tool bar and looks like a coffee cup. You can click on it and it will automatically launch however many tabs of sites you have set up. You can also configure it so it will launch certain sites on certain days (really useful if you know what days a site updates). I'm sure there are other tools out there like this, but this is one that I really like and get a lot out of. I also had a wee play with using my blog as an anchor. It was all OK, but not really for me. I like what I've got at the moment and I'll stick with that. I think that's what its all about really - finding the options that work for you, and lets face it, there are so many that I reckon there is something out there for everyone.

Addressing the last thing about whether iGoogle or Netvibes would be useful for a team I think it would be. I experimented with this a while ago when I was at Linwood using iGoogle. However it made Google launch a lot slower which wasn't very good and also it was a little before Web 2.0 was really main-stream so people were a little hesitant at doing much to it. If it is to work all members of a team need to be reviewing, adding and weeding feeds. That way it is meaningful for all.

So that is me done with the modules. Overall I've really enjoyed it and its been so great to be paid to play with these tools. I do wish there were a few more things to push the boundaries a little, but I think that's just me!

Week 3 Done!

So here ends week 3 for me. I've got the next two days off as annual leave (yay!) so I've had to motor through it a bit.

I've found this week to be interesting, but I felt as if I haven't learnt as much this week. Neither of the topics were particularly new to me and I didn't really discover anything ground breaking. Well I guess that's wrong - I discovered that I need to be ultra aware of what information is out there about me because of Ning. Oh well you live and learn as they say.

The Discovery module didn't give me as many new things as I had hoped for, although it reaffirmed my love for Stumbleupon and I did like playing around with Searchbots.

Onto week 4...its all going by so fast.

Week 3 - InfoConnect Discovery

Onto the 2nd part of week 3 which entails discovery. I love discovering things so I choose this thinking it would be just the thing for me. And I was right. As soon as I saw that Stumbleupon was one of the tasks I knew I was onto a winner.

If you haven't tried Stumbleupon you simply must give it a go. It is a great way to discover new and interesting sites. When you join you can download a toolbar (can't do this on a work machine though) where you can add sites you like or you can just 'stumble'. When you click the stumble button you will be taken to a random website that is picked from categories that you choose when you join. So you've got a pretty good chance that you're going to like where you go. If you really like it you can click the thumbs up in the toolbar which means it gets stored to your favourites within stumbleupon. Even though we can't donwload the toolbar the Stumbleupon website is really functional and will give you an excellent idea of how it all works.

I've been using Stumbleupon for a few years now and just yesterday I added my 65th discovery - this means I'm the first person to add this to Stumbleupon. Its so widely used that its really hard to find things that haven't already been added so its kind of nice being the first to add things. One of my discoveries has had over 200,000 different people view it on my suggestion - pretty cool huh! Below is one of my discoveries - beautiful horse sculpture made out of driftwood.