Bookmarks for December 15th through December 31st

These are my links for December 15th through December 31st:

  • Community Spark – Developing online communities
  • The Shorty Awards – The best producers of short content on Twitter in 2008 – The Shorty Awards honor the world's top Twitterers. You can nominate as many people for as many categories as you'd like until midnight December 31st. The final voting round will be held in January.
  • Welcome to TweetMinster – the place where real life and politics tweet. :. – Forget the corridors of power… you can take an active role in UK politics right here, right now. How? Follow and Tweet MPs and Ministers to get involved and use the power of Twitter to make your voice heard and conversations more open. You can take a back seat… or you can tweet.
  • Twitter Buttons – Get Free Twitter Buttons for your Blog, Websites, Profiles in few clicks! Get Twitter Button you like – How this thing works?
    Its very simple… Enter your Twitter ID below and Press GO, then you can copy the code (click "Copy Code") of any button you like and past it on your Blog, Web Page or any where and let others follow you.
  • Tweetree – Birds in a tree. – Tweetree puts your Twitter stream in a tree so you can see the posts people are replying to in context. It also pulls in lots of external content like twitpic photos, youtube videos and more, so that you can see them right in your stream without having to click through every link your friends post
  • Semantic Web Patterns: A Guide to Semantic Technologies – ReadWriteWeb – Analysis of the trends and technologies that power the Semantic Web. The article identifies patterns that are beginning to emerge, classifies the different trends, and looks into what the future holds.

    In a recent interview Tim Berners-Lee pointed out that the infrastructure to power the Semantic Web is already here. Not only are the bits of infrastructure now in place, but we are also seeing startups and larger corporations working hard to deliver end user value on top of this sophisticated set of technologies.

  • MyTweetSpace.com – Free Twitter Backgrounds – Brand your Twitter Profile for Free! – Customizing and branding your Twiiter space on the web.
  • Top 40 social news/media sites – TECH.BLORGE.com – The idea behind social news or social media websites is that users submit news items so that they can be shared with other users. Pioneered by the likes of Slashdot and Fark, but it was with the advent of Digg, that social news sites found a wider audience. This is a pick of the top 40 social news sites, listed in alphabetical order. The list also includes social booking marking sites, which allow users to store, organise, search, manage and share interesting web pages or websites.
  • Why Wiki – Wiki – Why should I use a wiki?
    A wiki is a website that may be easily and quickly developed by a community using only the Web browser on their computer. Wikis are easy to use by groups with common interests or communities of practice. This link provides several reasons why you may want to use a wiki.
  • Twitter Grader – Measures the reach and authority of a Twitter user.
  • The State Of The Twittersphere (HubSpot Edition) – How many followers do most people really have on Twitter? The average number of both followers and other members people on Twitter are following is about 70, according to the State of the Twittersphere, a new report by Web marketing startup HubSpot. (Full report embedded below). But that average is skewed by elite Twitterers who have hundreds or thousands of followers. The vast majority of people on Twitter use it to keep in touch with a much smaller circle of friends and peers. For those with 50 or fewer followers (three quarters of all users), the average number of followers is 15.6 and the average number of people they are following is 18.4.
  • .:: NOTEPAD++ ::. – Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL Licence.
  • Wikipedia Official Mobile Site – ReadWriteWeb – While the Wikipedia is one of the most popular destinations on the Internet, it surprisingly lacked an official mobile version until today. Over the years, a number of companies released their own mobile versions of the service, but an official version the Wikipedia itself was never available through a dedicated mobile interface. Now, you can surf to mobile.wikipedia.com to see a stripped down but highly functional version of the Wikipedia on your favorite mobile device
  • Top 10 Alternative Search Engines of 2008 – ReadWriteWeb – The gap between the major search engines and their alternatives continues to widen — a lot. Google has been compared to a luxury liner that turns around very, very slowly, whereas the startups are speedboats that can turn (or innovate) on a dime. I guarantee that if you try any of these top 10 alternative search engines of 2008, you won't come away saying, "Hey, that was just like Google."
  • Official Google Blog: Google Friend Connect: now available – Google Friend Connect is now available in beta to any webmaster looking to add a "dash of social" to his or her site. This service lets webmasters add social features to their sites by simply copying and pasting a few snippets of code — no advanced coding or technical background required.
  • Main Page – Health 2.0 – This wiki has been set up as a service to the community of visionaries, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, policy makers, and professionals who are working on fundamentally redefining the healthcare industry along the lines of "Web 2.0". This movement was initiated at the first Health Camp, which took place in December 2006 in San Francisco, CA. A new series of HealthCamp events kicked off in June 2008. More events are planned in 2009. Check out http://barcamp.org/HealthCamp for the latest details, or at the HealthCamp Wiki. In addition since Fall 2007 the Health 2.0 Conference has been held on a semi-annual basis (Spring & Fall) with the next one planned for Boston, MA on April 22-23, 2008.
  • Levels of engagement with social media – Whilst working on the Mini Tutorials for the 25 Tools resource earlier this year, it became clear to me that I needed to address the requirements of three very different users. For example, with YouTube there were those that would want to share their videos online, there were those that would just want to view videos, but a third (middle) group of users who want to interact with the videos by commenting on them (and thereby help others to identify the best videos around). I named these three different levels of users as follows, (albeit after struggling for some time to find the most appropriate labels).

    1. Reader or passive Consumer
    2. Participant or (re-)active Contributor
    3. Creator or proactive Producer

2 Comments

  1. Martin Reed said:

    Thanks for the link, Steve – I am flattered to be mentioned and honoured to be right up at the top, too!

    – Martin

    January 5, 2009
    Reply
  2. Steve Dale said:

    Martin – and well worth top spot. It’s a great website resource you’ve created – thanks!

    Steve

    January 5, 2009
    Reply

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