Week 8 Thing 19

Explored Ma.gnolia from the Web 2.0 Awards List. Ma.gnolia was first in the bookmarking category. Ma.gnolia is a social bookmarking site similar to Del.icio.us. I found the site to be relatively easy to use and navigate. The tutorial and the frequently asked questions are very clear and easy to understand. I had some difficulty adding a bookmarklet to my browser. I wanted to add a Pop-up book marklet but my browser blocked pop-ups. Even though I told it to always accept pop-ups fromMa.gnolia, it did not work. So I used another type of bookmarklet (Mark and Edit in Ma.gnolia) and added it to my favorites. Mark In Ma.gnolia installed without any problems. But I would prefer not to have to go to my Favorites folder and then to the Links folder to use the bookmarklet. Pages on the site have an "Add Bookmark "widget, making it easy to add bookmarks while in their site. You can also add any bookmark found on the site by clicking on an icon under the Details of that bookmark. Ma.gnolia uses a 5 star rating system to let you know what others think about the bookmarks. It also saves copies of the web pages you bookmark. This is an advantage because you will still be able to find the web page later even if it moves. As with other bookmarking sites you can add tags to the pages and search by tags. Ma.gnolia also gives you a way to share your bookmarks one on one or in special interest groups. You can subscribe to RSS and Atom RSS feeds from the site. Although Ma.gnolia 's instructions were clearer and the site easier to navigate, Del.icio.us is easier because I have the icon for it on the tool bar of my browser. So adding book marks should be quicker with Del.icio.us. I want to spend more time comparing the two sites before I decide which one I will use.

Week 6 Thing 14

Explored Technorati. At first I was confused when exploring Technorati because the site looked nothing like the site on the videocast. So it took me a while to figure out where to go to do a keyword search in blog posts, in tags and the Blog Directory. Finally figured out that you could do the keyword search in blog posts from the search box on the home page. But to search in tags or the Blog Directory you had to do an advanced search.
I thought it was neat that you can also search in videos and photos. Learning 2.0 did come up in some videos but not in photos (as one might expect). I found the Top favorited blogs, Top searches, Top tags, Top videos, movies, and news interesting. I thought it was clever for them to rename "What's the buzz" As WTF (Where's the Fire? What's Hot and Why.) Once I understood how to navigate the site, it was interesting.