Thing 19: Web 2.0 Awards

Web 2.0 Awards reminds me that we could have a 23Things-Part II just based on the award winners. Glad to see that some are the ones we've already been working with.

I investigated first place Lulu in the book category because it was listed with LibraryThing (honorable mention). If I'm going to learn a cataloging program, I might as well learn the first place winner. However, it isn't a cataloging / book club kind of site and I'm surprised they were competing. It is a self-publishing site. The viewer chooses from a variety of options concerning cover, binding, pages, price, etc. Then I'm sure money changes hands and voila--you're published! There are more than 14,000 books on the site, which is meant to be the sales site as well. Judging from the uneven quality of the blurbs besides each author's cover, I would definitely be very choosy about what I purchased from this site.

In the Education category, I investigated first place winner DocStoc. This is a place to upload one's documents for the world to see, but a twist is that you can earn money by doing so. Hopefully many folks will look at your documents, and buy from the advertisers that have space on the right side of your document. DocStoc splits the earnings 50/50 with the person who uploaded the document. The front page of the site featured documents listing the earnings of staffers at the White House and the 911 transcript of the call about Steve McNair.

Clicking on the Education link at DocStoc brought up all kinds of documents from a multiplication baseball folder game to "low pass filter controller design simulation in Pspice". I searched for Smart Board documents and found only 4. This site seems unwieldy to me. Because people might be motivated to put up quantity over quality to increase their odds of advertising revenue, I see its promise diluted. I'd prefer to use Rollyo to search multiple quality lesson plan sites, for example. Doing so brings up more Smart Board lessons than I can use in a year!

I also investigated LinkedIn from the Professional Networking category because I've been asked to join by 3 people and didn't know what it was. The actual site isn't much help, but the videos on YouTube explained everything I need to know. Done right, this site takes a couple of hours per week to answer professional questions to help others and build professional relationships. I can see some of the advantages for a professional, and for school use, it might help you locate experts to help students. However, Ask an Expert seems like a much less complicated way to do this.

All in all, I'm glad to know there's a site like this to show me the best of what's out there. Google must be very proud to see so many of its products in the top places.