WebBand Blog

Photo sharing is probably one of the most popular uses of Web 2.0 technology. It has developed because sharing digital photos isn’t easy and tools were needed to help make it simplier. Early on, photo sites like Shutterfly were attempting to find uses for the Internet and digital photos. Now, there are all kinds of sites and ways to share your photos.

Picasa
Picasa isn’t a pure Web 2.0 program because you download it and run it from your computer. But it provides some of the best tools for digital photography organizing and sharing. Part of the sharing features is a web album, which is Web 2.0 technology. If you are interested in learning more, we are offering a class on February 24^th on how to use this program.

Flickr
Flickr is a way to get your photos to the people who matter to you. With Flickr you can show off your favorite photos to the world, blog the photos you take with a camera phone or securely and privately show photos to your friends and family around the world. Basically, Flickr is what butters the borders between your photos to the people you want to see them. And basic accounts are free!

JPEGr
JPEGr makes it easy for you to share photos with your friends, colleagues, and family. With a variety of options, you can upload photos for your blog, MySpace, your website, or just to share with someone over instant messenger! You can even create your own slideshows to showcase your photos.

Scrapblog
If you love sharing photos like we do, you’ll love Scrapblog. With Scrapblog, you can easily create stunning multimedia scrapbooks featuring your photos, videos, audio and a bunch of creative elements. We made Scrapblog drag-and-drop-easy so that everyone can tell their stories and share them online or turn them into high-quality photo books and DVDs. Best of all, it’s free and there’s nothing to download.

Blurb
Blurb is a company and a community that believes passionately in the joy of books – reading them, making them, sharing them, and selling them.

Holding a finished book with your name on the cover is a truly amazing feeling; it’s one of those experiences everyone should have. As software people, designers, and publishing professionals at the top of our game, we realized something both incredible and obvious: there’s no good reason why it should take tons of time, technical skills, big bucks, or friends in high places to publish a book. Or a zillion books, for that matter.

So we put our minds together, and developed a creative publishing service simple and smart enough to make anyone an author – every blogger, cook, photographer, parent, traveler, poet, pet owner, marketer, everyone. (This means you.)

Next week: E-Mail (February 07)

When I was a kid, I kept a journal for a few months. In it I wrote about my day, people I met and things that I did. I enjoy looking back on it every now and then. Today, I keep a similar type journal, but I do it online. A couple times a month, I document what’s going on in my life and to some extent, what’s going on in my brain (that can be hard to put into words!). Other times, I don’t use words at all, I use photos or sounds – I couldn’t do that with my old hand written journals.

Blogs, or online journals, are very popular right now. There’s freedom in putting words online, knowing that anyone and everyone could read them. It’s also a bit dangerous. MySpace is a community driven web site with a blog feature. They are being sued for allowing under aged kids to post personal information, giving sexual predators an avenue to attack. Like just about all activities (online or not), there are good sides and bad sides.

Security Reminder: It’s a good rule to NEVER give out personal data online, especially to people you don’t know. NEVER reveal passwords and you should probably not reveal your location. This is something kids should be educated about and know – I’ve talked to my kids about it and continue to help them understand the risks when they get online.

Another form of personal journalism is called Wiki. The most popular is called “Wikipedia.” It is an online encyclopedia that is written by the public. If you have news on a specific topic, you can post it there and then others can use your knowledge to research that topic. Articles are checked for authenticity and those that pass are posted. It’s a great source of information.

Here are a few personal journalism sites that you might want to check out:
www.vox.com
www.myspace.com
www.blogsome.com
www.wordpress.com
www.blogger.com
en.wikipedia.org
www.wikihow.com
www.wikia.com

This blog is a form of personal journalism. We are creating content that is valuable to a group of people (our subscribers) and share it using an online journal. You can go to www.wordpress.com for more information on starting your own blog.

Next week: Photo Sharing (January 31st)

The other night, my wife and I were discussing dinner. I decided that I would make some chicken fried rice, but didn’t have a recipe. So I jumped on the computer and began to search and I found a ton of sites with food and beverage recipe. The hard part was deciding which chicken fried rice recipe to try that evening.

The Internet has become a store house of knowledge about food and drink. And Web 2.0 applications are popping up in this category too. Here are just a couple that I found while preparing this article.

www.myrecipt.org
Do you have a great recipe that you’d like to share? MyRecipe.org is a cooking community website. Post your delicious ideas and leave comments for cooks who inspire your latest creation. It’s easy to use and FREE.

food.yahoo.com
Yahoo! has been reinventing itself. They are moving more and more to a user based content site, rather than a media based content site. The new Food “channel” is a perfect example. This area of Yahoo! has a wonderful design and easy navigation. It is also packed full of recipes, ideas, reviews and discussions. If you’re not really sure what to make for dinner, this is a great place to start!

www.winelog.net
Do you enjoy wine? Then here’s a site you may want to visit. Winelog.net has cataloged over 10,000 wines from 4,000 wineries in over 1,100 regions throughout the world, is your favorite listed? As you try them, leave comments and ratings for the different wines. Based on your postings, WineLog.net will present other wines that you may like. It’s also a great place to learn more about wine. Another wine related site is www.bottletalk.com.

By the way, the chicken fried rice turned out great even though I’m not the best cook!

Next week (January 24th): Blogging & Wiki

Did you make a New Year’s resolution to loss some weight? Maybe to eat better? I did, and I did last year too. If you’re like me, you do pretty good for a couple weeks (I’m still going strong this year), but by February you start to fizzle.

Web 2.0 technology might be able to help. Below are two sites that use technology to help you meet your new year’s resolution.

www.vivalafitness.com
Viva La Fitness is a fitness driven social content website. What does that mean? Basically, everything on VivaLaFitness.com is submitted by the community. Members help other members achieve their own fitness goals.

It was created by Louis Dorman in 2005 to form a community of people that have made fitness a priority in there life. Louis has lost over 150lbs and transformed his body, his mind and continues to motivate others in their own daily battles with weight.

www.traineo.com
Motivation, support and accountability are the keys to achieving a weight loss and fitness goal. Our mission is to create the most effective weight loss and fitness community on the web by combining the latest software technology with sound information and services from the world’s leading health and fitness experts.

traineo is the culmination of over three years of development, testing and focus group studies in partnership with leading experts in weight loss, health, sports and fitness.

Next week (January 17th): Food & Beverage

2007 will be the year for Web 2.0! What is Web 2.0? Let’s start with Web 1.0.

Really there was no “Web 1.0.” But you see it every time you go online. The Internet was designed at first to be another media outlet. Traditional media, such as TV, provides good content, but it’s scheduled – you watch, when the stations decide to put it on. To some extent, newspapers, magazines and radio are the same way. But the Internet allowed you to view the content you want when you want it. But, again, you are still reading what others have written and then posted.

Web 2.0 takes content out of the “professionals” hands and into yours. The Internet is becoming more interactive. You can now get the news from a variety of sources, not just major news outlets. Much of that content is being created by users. Companies are now centering their business models around the tools to allow every day users, like you, to create, edit and post content on the Internet.

My Space is a perfect example. My Space as a company doesn’t provide content, just the platform for others to post. Yahoo has recently announced that they are moving away from a traditional media focus (i.e. professional creating content) to a more user created content.

How do I use Web 2.0? Over the next few months, we’ll review some of the sites that are using Web 2.0 technology and how you might find them useful. Below is a schedule of when we’ll post updates and on what topics.

January 10th: Fitness
January 17th: Food & Beverage
January 24th: Blogging / Wiki
January 31st: Photo Sharing
February 7th: E-Mail
February 14th: Productivity Suites
February 21st: Video/Music
February 28th: Hobbies

BTW (which stands for “by the way”), this Blog is a Web 2.0 product. We are producing content, but it’s dynamic; you can leave us comments and then other users can comment on your comments (and so on). Some Blogs (which are really just online journals) allow a group of people to post entries and some open it to everyone.

Our hope is that you’ll see some value in these postings and find ways to use the Internet in ways you’d not thought of before!