Academia's Social World

It was only a matter of time before the popularity of social networking entered into the hallowed halls of academia and became known as Academic Social Networking (ASN). After all, Facebook did start on a college campus. So what is an ASN and is it beneficial?

Del.icio.us, Mashups, Cloud Computing and other good stuff

Del.icio.us and Zotero are two examples of bookmarking applications that allow us to personalize our web experience and gather online content in a way that is personally meaningful to us. Tagging with tools like delicious (http://www.delicious.com) is more common, but tagging tools that extend the use of the browser are personalizing the web for us. Zotero (http://www.zotero.org) is a reference to add bibliographic notes to a web browser.
Mashups is a reference to a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. For example, Flickr is an application that manages photos and allows these photos to be searched through geotagging. You can use geotagging in the classroom to map out events in literature such as this map completed for The Travels of Marco Polo.

Cloud Computing refers to the use of data farms or networked computers to process information; for example, Google, YouTube, and Flickr all use this technology for their offerings. Applications do not reside on your local computer. In this scenario, applications like email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations are accessed through a browser window, but the software is installed elsewhere. YouTube, Flickr, Splashup, Sliderocket, Google Docs, and Disaster Alert Maps are all examples of applications using cloud computing technology.