Delicious and Skype – Getting Social Online!

I sent this email out to my technoLOTE email discussion group, but thought I should probably post it here as well.
Here we go:

Del.icio.us

Delicious is a social bookmarking service. Rather than saving your favourites in your browser and only being able to access them on the one computer, you save them to an online account. The social part comes in when you add other people’s accounts to your network. The great thing about Delicious is that you can see who is bookmarking the same sites as you, and so then you can check out their links and find even more great resources.You can see my delicious account by going to: http://deli.cio.us.technolote. Another delicious account to note is this one: http://del.icio.us/other_than_english Have a look at these sites to get a feel for what deli.icio.us is and what it does.

Check out this post on technoLOTE called ‘Social Bookmarking – Simply Delicious’ where I have written about exactly what Delicious is and why you would use it. There is also a short video there called ‘Social Bookmarking in Plain English’ which gives a fantastic explanation. At the bottom of the post there are links to video tutorials about how to set up a Delicious account.

Skype

http://www.skype.com/

Skype official website – free download and free calls and internet calls via kwout

Skype is a program you download to your computer (it’s free!), create an account, find other people who have skype, add them as contacts and then you can make free phone calls to them. You can also send chat messages. It’s much like MSN, only better. My fabulous colleague, Anne Mirtschin, has written a blog post about why she loves skype. Click here to read what she has to say. Here is a list of things you need to know about Skype that Anne wrote:

Here are 10 facts you may need to know:-

  1. Skype is VOIP (voice over internet protocol) and its use is free if it is calls are made computer to computer.
  2. Equipment: skype software (download from www.skype.com) , headset with microphone, or desktop mic, a webcamera (for videoconferencing if you want to, but not essential), IWB or datashow for projecting the video (if for classroom use not needed for personal computer use of course!), user names (equivalent of phone numbers) of contact people
  3. User friendly, quick loading (sometimes falls over but getting more reliable all the time)
  4. Neat search facility to add other users to contact list
  5. Chat or audio can take place. It is polite to send a request message via chat first, to ensure that person you are contacting is not in class or otherwise engaged. (My laptop has embarrassed me on several occasions by ringing, in class)
  6. Conference calls: both audio and chat. Currently, videoconferencing can only be used between two users. The video aspect cuts out after a third person enters the conversation.
  7. Chats can be saved with appropriate title, by bookmarking. Goto chats>bookmarked chats and enter a title whilst in skype conversation) or goto recent chats and it tends to save automatically, but with a non categorised title.
  8. Can buy credit to ring landlines locally, domestically, overseas (extremely cheap overseas calls)
  9. Constantly requesting feedback as to quality of calls, and working on improving the service. (Sometimes line quality is not high, delays but these are getting less over time.)
  10. Number of users is restricted to, I think, 10 and then a bridge phone number must be given.

Hint: If using it for the first time, experiment with a friend or colleague after work hours, to ensure you know how it works before trying it in a 3way (or more) chat or videoconference setting.

My Skype username is jess.meyer – add me to your list and I’m happy to have a chat with you to test out your new toy! Skype is a great way of collaborating and staying in touch really quickly and easily. Skype me soon!

Networking and Sleeping

I’m behind in blog posts, I haven’t tweeted much lately, I can’t remember the last time I logged into that site! Oh, god, here’s another one. Hey looks cool. I’ll join. Woops, now I have to update it?! But, I’ve already got something similar. But everyone else is on it…Will I miss out? I said I’d start that wiki, but haven’t put anything on it yet. I started that group, but haven’t posted anything! Oh, and blog posts. Need more blog posts…

I’ve been out of the loop for the past three weeks or so and consequently feel fairly disconnected. Ah, this happens every now and again through those stages of insane life busy-ness that we all undoubtedly have at some point. While trying to reconnect myself though I started thinking about what makes someone a valuable member for their social networks (even if they drop off the face of cyberspace for a while!). It’s challenging to keep up with all the things that are going on – joining this that or the other new application/tool only to then discover that, as valuable as it is, it’s another account to keep up to date.

I am a member of quite a few different things, but I know I don’t use them all to my full potential or the network’s full potential. I do contribute, but I’m sure I could do more. Although, that’s a dangerous way to think sometimes, as there is always more that can be done, or something that can be improved.

I can’t possibly contribute to every network that I’m part of everyday or else I would never have time to plan for school, cook a meal (even though I try to avoid doing that anyway) or simply sit and chat with my husband.

What does it mean to be a valuable network member? Some of my ideas follow. Please leave your own in a comment!

How to be an effective network member and still have time to sleep:

There really is no secret. For me, it’s about focus. It’s the same when facing a reader full of feeds and feeling overwhelmed. It’s about deciding what I want to get out of a particular network for a given session and focusing on that. I think of it this way:

Problem: Haven’t written on my blogs for a while. Need to write better quality posts

Solution: Decide that for this afternoon or whenever that my aim is to write however many blog posts. Do that. Don’t have Twitter on. Email is No Go Zone.

Problem: Haven’t had an good conversations on Twitter lately. Feeling out of the loop. Watching too many good conversations with interesting people who aren’t following me!

Solution: Ignore my blogs. Don’t visit anyone elses. Don’t worry about commenting for a while. Just focus on putting up some good thoughts in Twitter, posting some good links and maybe follow a couple of new people.

Problem: Delicious links a mess and don’t even know how to use Diigo yet.

Solution: Ignore blogging. Forget my podcast. Maybe leave Twitter on though cause undoubtedly there will be someone there who can help me out.

Problem: Have not even logged into many ning networks!

Solution: Question whether I really need to be part of them all? If I don’t have time to contribute, should I even be there? Probably not. Then, get cup of tea. Take laptop into bedroom. Climb back into bed. Stay there until important ones have been chosen and contributed to. Maybe add something to them once a week or fortnight. Can only do what I can do.
I think the key thing for me to remember is that in this age of mass amounts of (digital and very easy to access) information I cannot possibly know, be part of or absorb everything. I don’t really want to be a ‘jack of all trades and a master of none.’ I want my main blog, technoLOTE (language teaching and technology) to grow, so that will be my main focus.

Oh to be a Master… :-)