Session on cool new stuff with Katrin and Ami.
Ami says that technology moves forward in spurts. I remember thinking in the 90’s how fast things were changing. My mind boggled at where we might go. But it stopped around 2000. Ami is saying there’s a new spurt of creativity.
People in Beirut SMSing their friends to come out to the anti-Syria demonstrations.
- flickr
I just took a picture of Ami talking about Flickr and posted it. See http://flickr.com/tags/nten05 - del.icio.us
The nptech tag allows us to collectively share nonprofit resources: http://del.icio.us/tag/nptech . Ami compares this simple text-oriented layout to Gophers, which predated web browsers. I remember Gophers! - Feed readers. Katrin is using FeedDemon. I recommend Bloglines personally. Katrin points out that because these programs use RSS we can share information in lots more ways.
- Katrin pulled up 43 Things and searched for the goal “change the world” and I popped up. Next thing you know, the entire room was looking at MY 43 things! This is a very personal list, for example I have an entry about loving my partner unconditionally. I don’t know why I was so embarrassed, I certainly asked for it by putting my life online.
- Ami says Technorati needs a makeover, and I agree. You can use this to keep track of who’s talking about you… and then respond to them! The software is still dumb about distinguishing real references from blogrolls and lists of links.
- Search engines. Amazon’s A9 is bringing more content into your searches, pulling content from Google, Flickr, Wikipedia, etc. Kurt says there’s an API where you can add a custom search ( A9 column)
- Lots of ooohs and aaahs in the room for Google maps. Also sms.google.com, and hacks like wireless & coffee in Vancouver. The hacks are well-documented so you can use it.
- Podcasting, Andy Carvin‘s Digital Divide Network. Katrin is playing a bit of his podcast from the World Forum on Information Something or other.
- Places with insane storage: ourmedia.org, The Internet Archive (I heart their Wayback Machine).
- Alexa tracks web traffic. You can look up a site and see it’s popularity and what other sites its visitors also frequent. Very Amazon.com-like. Look at how the tsunami affected Oxfam’s traffic.