Final Project

FYI, my final is posted here. It is also, as required, linked to from my student page.

Second Life

Yeah, not so much.

My experience in Second Life was both fun and frustrating. Fun when I was with people, frustrating when I was alone. As soon as I logged in for the first time, Renee and Gabrielle were there to greet me, and took me to Svarga (?) Island, where we formed a band, Mad SCILz, and rocked it out on some percussion instruments. That was fun, because they weren't absolute novices like myself, and were able to help me. We voice-chatted for a while, and then went our separate ways, but not after taking a screenshot of our band (I'm the loser in the middle who hasn't figured out how to change her clothes):


Then, I went back in a couple days later, to try SL by myself. I found Info Island, poked around there, then teleported myself to Eduisland, where a man in a wheelchair rolled up next to me and knocked me over. Not cool. So, I teleported to the art museum on Info Island, and made several attempts at getting into a building. I wasn't able to get in - had I had friends around (or anyone at all, for that matter), I probably could have asked for help and figured it out. But instead, I figured out how to change my appearance, and called it a day:


Overall, SL really isn't a service for me. One, I'm not interested in immersive gaming, and two, my machine had a tough time with it - graphics took a long time to render, even logging on and off was tough. I can see the advantages for, say, hermits, but I'd rather go out and socialize with my real-life friends, not my Second Life friends.

MySpace and Facebook stickiness

So when I first looked at this question, I interpreted "sticky" to mean difficult or awkward. I had to dig a little deeper to understand that "sticky" means what keeps people coming back. The obvious draw is the social aspect of it - if all your friends are doing it, you should be too. It's easy to keep tabs on your friends this way. Aside from being a personal, customizable web space, Facebook and MySpace have a kind of built-in Twitter aspect, your "status." Your status is basically like a tweet on Twitter - it's your mood, what you're doing, how you're feeling. Aside from that, there's the popularity contest side - the more "friends" you have, the more popular you are.

I never used Facebook or MySpace before this class (before this Monday, actually). Friends of mine who use Facebook and MySpace on a regular basis say they're a good way to keep in touch with people and to coordinate group activities. I always shunned them, because I wasn't interested in being "found;" I would rather see my friends in real life than virtually. But I can see the advantages - keeping in touch quickly and easily, sharing photos and videos.

If all else fails, both of these sites would make a great interface for stalkers.

Wikispaces vs. PBWiki

I have experience using Wetpaint wikis (a former prof used it), and Wikidot didn't look too appealing, so I went with Wikispaces for this comparison. Wikispaces seems to be a pretty basic wiki service. Setting one up was easy, but there was a lot of push towards paying for one, as it would be ad-free and have greater content control. Editing the page was easy, too. However, the layout tools, the "pretty" factor, is where Wikispaces failed. There were only 4 available themes, none of which were fantastic. There was also an option to change the background, text, and link colors, but no options to change the font or basic layout. Again, there was a lot of push to pay for a wiki, to have a wider variety of themes. I only used Wikispaces for about 15 minutes, and I'm sure that if I played with it longer I'd feel more comfortable with it. However, because we've been using PBWiki for the duration of class, I feel more comfortable using it, and if I ever had to set up my own wiki, I'd probably opt for PBWiki.

Google docs, for better or for worse

Google Docs and services like it have their place in both a physical and virtual college campus, particularly with students who are working on group projects. For use as a collaborative document service, Google Docs is great. It's easy to set up and share, and has basic editing tools. Personally, I don't see myself using it as a Microsoft Word replacement, but it serves its purpose as a quick and easy document editor.

However, I can see why some people, both faculty and students, would be opposed to it. If it's a class-wide effort like ours, everyone would need a Google account. Most people already have one and wouldn't be bothered by it, but for the technophobes that somehow still exist, it would be another online account to keep track of. I can see how a prof wouldn't want to have to keep track of various accounts, and how students would not want their prof to be able to "check in" on unfinished work.

Luckily, some of my previous professors have welcomed the idea of document sharing. I had a professor last year who used a wetpaint wiki in lieu of eCompanion. Another professor required the class to keep blogs. She used hers as a general announcement tool, we used ours to turn in assignments. For a "progressive" or "nontraditional" professor, social software such as this can be successfully harnessed to enhance the class. It's a move I'd like to see more people make.

Delicious vs. Magnolia

First of all, what's with the periods in del.icio.us and ma.gnolia? What purpose do those periods serve? They bother me. (It wouldn't bother me as much in ma.gnolia if it was placed at the syllable - mag.nolia - but it would still bother me.)

Now that that's out of the way, each service has its pros and cons. So... list time!

Delicious...
- has a simple, clean interface.
- intuitive bookmarking - comes up with suggested title, tags
- integrates with Firefox (and probably other browsers too)
- separates tags with a space, so you have to tag with oneword or one_word (which annoys me, but not as much as the periods in the middle of words thing)

Magnolia...
- has an aesthetically pleasing website
- adding a bookmark through the site is cumbersome - it doesn't suggest title or tags
- separates tags with commas, not spaces, so no oneword or one_word tags
- puts the "social" in "social bookmarking" with its many public groups

That said, I'm a Delicious user. It's become a web standard, and I don't think I'd switch. Maybe it was just me, but I had a lot of problems logging into Magnolia and bookmarking sites (had to click the "go" link several times before it would let me bookmark something, had to copy and paste the link directly from the browser).

Digg

As with many other social softwares (is that the right plural?), I had a passing knowledge of Digg. I had seen Digg chicklets and read about Digg, but never really explored it. I chose to review Digg because I'm a (very passive) user of Goodreads, and a quick look at Librarything and Shelfari told me they were very similar services. After another quick look at the other three options, Digg had the most asthetic appeal, so it won my review for this week.

Digg is essentially a user-edited "news" aggregator. I use the term "news" very loosely, as recent headlines include blog posts about last (Tuesday) night's debate, an article about a video game for wannabe DJs, and a picture of a cow with a child's toy car stuck on it's head. Digg is very easy to set up and has a pleasing interface. There are various categories at the top, and a small arrow next to each heading lists several subcategories, which is helpful if you're looking for something specific. However, the point of the site isn't to search for a specific article, it's to discover news that really is new to you. Submitting a link is fairly easy as well, though the several links I tried to submit were already on the site. However, you can make something more popular by "digging it," clicking the "digg it" link next to a headline. If you click on the number of diggs, it goes to a statistics screen about the link - when it was "dugg," who has "dugg" it, who has blogged about it, etc. On the negative side, because the site is user-edited, there are a huge variety of sources, and you never know what you're going to get. For some, this may be exciting and interesting. For others, it may be overwhelming.

Although there were a lot of interesting and positive points about Digg, I don't know that I would continue to use it in my personal life. The immense variety of sources, both authoritative and not, was a little off-putting. Additionally, though the categorization is great, I would get annoyed by having to click back and forth between categories. Overall, Digg is a very well-designed site with lots of interesting features, but it's just not for me.

Social Software that's new to me part 2...

I hate to admit it, but Facebook is a "new to me" social software site. So new in fact, that I'm not a part of it yet. I'm one of the only people - if not the only person I know -who is not a registered user. I was even chided by a member of this class for not being on it, for the simple reason that everyone else is, so I should be too. I never got into Friendster or MySpace, so this whole online social networking thing is pretty new to me. I'm torn about whether or not I want to join, so may I present a list of points-counterpoints (as I see them) of Facebook:

point: I can keep in touch with college friends who are now spread out all over the country.
counterpoint: That's what the phone and email are for.

point: I can join interest groups.
counterpoint: I've never really been interested in making online friends. I find it all a little Dateline: To Catch a Predator. You never know who's out there. (Maybe I'm grasping at straws here.)

point: Most of my friends are on it.
counterpoint: So are many of the 40something-year-old teachers I work with, as well as the teenagers I worked with in summer camp a few years ago.

point: I can put reconnect with my old high school friends.
counterpoint: Let's face it, I wasn't all that popular in high school, and I've stayed in touch with the people (ok, person) I really care about.

point: But all the cool kids are doing it.
counterpoint: .... (whatever I say here will make me sound like an overbearing mother - which I am not - so I'm just going to stop)

I feel pretty safe in saying that unless it's absolutely necessary for whatever reason, I'm probably not going to join. I'm not one to really worry about identity theft or privacy issues, but I'm happy in my anonymity.

Social software that's new to me...

I was intrigued by the idea of social bookmarking, and was happy to see it included in this class. In playing around with the websites on the sidebar of the wiki, I came upon Delicious. It looked like a cool way to aggregate my bookmarks from my home computer, my work computer, and my boyfriend's computer. I played around with it and fell in love. All of my bookmarks are now in one place, and they're totally organized.

I especially like how tags work in Delicious. In my personal Firefox bookmarks, every bookmark has a folder, or in many cases, a subfolder. I can't just call a blog a blog, it's a fashion blog, a tv blog, etc., and each has it's own subfolder. In Delicious, instead of creating folder upon folder, the tags function so they both separate and coallate bookmarks. It's easy to sort through the tags to find what I want. I also like that there's a Firefox-supported plugin. Instead of copying and pasting links, I just hit the add button. It took a little time to get it set up and organized, but maintenance is very simple.

Overall, a great little piece of social software, especially helpful if you have bookmarks on several computers.