Technology changes – but access improves
Filed under: Community, New Web Creations, Web services
Creative Commons images are always a good source of pictures for illustrating our presentations or for enlivening school projects.
The U.K. National Archives have recently posted a substantial amount of images onto Flickr.
Many have no known copyright issues, or are submitted under Crown Copyright, where they are legitimately available for non-commercial, illustrative or education use.
History and insight in the same keystroke.
See the Flickr National Archive entry page here. You can read more about Commons licensing here, if you are unfamiliar with the concept.
You can visit the home page of Third Sector Web here.
This image: Catalogue Reference: MUN 5/383/1650/1
Lessons in iPad
Filed under: Apple, Conversation, New Web Creations, New technology, Web services
Apple have just released a set of illustrative tutorials that are designed to show you how slick and intuitive it is to use your forthcoming iPad.
We don’t care what the nay-sayers are up to – we think the iPad is an innovative and user friendly way to get web information. We did feature a test run for the iPad in a recent blog entry.
It isn’t designed to be a mass data engine, a gigantic generator of codes and complex graphics. It isn’t meant replace, at the moment, all the kit that is sitting on your desk at present.
Writing this piece we are facing three screens, two printers and assorted speakers, cables and external storage devices.
But if you want a fast, portable web reader with communication facilities then the iPad will, if you are like us, be a key purchase for us this year.
There are alternatives available already – like the Archos 9 netbook – a small, slick mobile solution. But does it have the wow factor that Apple offer?
You will probably need the Safari browser to get the best from your iPad tutorial experience. You can get it here.
You can visit the home page of Third Sector Web here.
The Internet of Things
Filed under: Community, Conversation, Microsoft, New Web Creations, New technology, Web services
We looked recently on this blog at where Microsoft thought the direction the technological world was going.
Below, this short film The Internet of Things is a vision of the same future from IBM.
Sensors will be linked to hardware and information generated will be filtered, analysed and used to make wise choices about our lives and activities.
IBM see the internet as the nerve backbone of the globe, which will generate a new concept of the Earth. A giant information generation system.
Welcome to the e-world. Whichever vision you cleave to, we are in for an interesting ride in the next twenty years.
Crocodoc – share and save
Filed under: Community, Conversation, Microsoft, New Web Creations, New technology, Web services
Simple collaboration – with Crocodoc you can upload documents in Word, PowerPoint or pdf, as well as open web page snapshots, in order to mark them up, annotate and draw on them and save them again as a pdf download.
Each item you open in Crocodoc is allocated a unique web address, which you can share with colleagues, clients or friends – so that you can work together on the material.
The ability to store you document on the Crocodoc server means that you can return to your archived work in progress if you wish.
The killer element for us though, is the ability to download a pdf version of the completed revised document.
This is simple, elegant collaboration – for free.
You do need to sign up for a free account to save your document. An enterprise version of Crocodoc is available.
You can find the home page of Third Sector Web here.
What’s your agenda?
Filed under: Conversation, New Web Creations, Web services
We thought this new service from MeetingMix was a useful way to automate the subjects to be discussed at meetings.
Letting everyone know what you will be talking about and give them an opportunity to contribute to the proposed debate or business of the day will undoubtedly increase understanding and ownership of projects.
Shorter, faster more tuned in meetings must be right? Even for techies who can talk for weeks on one line of code…surely we don’t have anyone like that here?
MeetingMix lets you track time spent on agenda items, write the notes of the meeting and record the allocated action points.
If the debate wanders, you can even use the online system to ‘park’ items for future meetings.
A paid for service but at ten dollars a month, if like us you generate a lot of meetings, then MeetingMix is a good value, easy to use service. There is a free fourteen day trial offer on the website currently.
You can find the Third Sector Web home page here.
The future according to Microsoft
Filed under: Conversation, Microsoft, New Web Creations, New technology, Web services
Craig Mundie is the Chief Research and Strategy Officer for Microsoft. His job is to envision and explain how changes in software and hardware will have an effect on the computer user in the coming decades.
Use the Microsoft News link below to access the film archive and see a short film by Mundie which explains some of the key concepts in Microsoft future thinking. Not only will ‘cloud computing’ become more powerful and accessible, but the development of what Microsoft call natural user interfaces’ will dramatically affect present day users.
Our laptops and devices will also go on getting more powerful and, Mundie argues, enable the creation of ‘personal assistants’. Where our devices can render support and services in the way that a human support worker can offer at present.
Games and flat screen touch technology will also offer a paradigm shift in how we look at, interrogate and sort information.
Mundie’s film is good on featuring practical application change that will be recognisable to the computer user of today.
You can find the Third Sector Web home page here.
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Tech news from CNN
- Kanye and how Twitter changed communication
If you needed any more proof that Twitter has transformed how we absorb information and communicate, look no further than Kanye West. - New site shows the best of YouTube's worst
We watch more than 2 billion YouTube videos every day, but let's admit it -- we're usually viewing a top 25 clip, a video forwarded by a friend or an old standby like David After Dentist (some of those 66 million views must be repeats). - Adult services blocked on Craigslist
Online classified service Craigslist's decision to censor its adult services section could be a model for other websites, a leader in the fight against prostitution ads said Saturday. - Users amused, annoyed by Facebook Places
It's been two weeks since Facebook users took to blogs and message boards to voice their concerns about Places, a location-based service that allows people to check in to gathering spots via the social network.
- Kanye and how Twitter changed communication
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