Zembly - Facebook App Creator

[still a draft]

As time goes by, things always become easier to create and use, especially in social media things happen fast.

No coding, WYSISWYG is the future of things, making it easier for user-generated content to be, yes, generated.

We see a vast array of WYSIWYG applications out there and many of them are migrating to the Webtop side of things. 

We can now easily build applications for Facebook with Zembly, for example. What impact does this have in learning? This means we are able to deliver learning just-in-time, where the learners are: social media websites. Zembly is a great example of that.

Free Online Website Builders (WYSIWYG)

New technologies have made it easy for anyone to be a content author. The webmaster no longer has to be a highly specialized HTML coder. So, if you don’t have much experience in creating websites and need a What You See Is What You Get website creator, here is a list that might help:

 

Jimdo - great designs - no, this is not a martial art related website, it is a website builder that offers you  500MB of storage. Pretty reasonable space.    

Synthasite - you can even save your website to a folder on your computer to then upload to your student server for example.

Weebly - amazing looks!

Sampa - very easy to use.

New: Wix

and, of course, Google Pages.

Create Your Own Interactive WhiteBoard for Less Than $100

So, schools and companies always have a problem called “budget”, right?
An interactive whiteboard (fo which the most famous representatives are perhaps Smartboard and the Promethean Board) can cost thousands of dollars.
Well, Johnny Lee has been doing some research on using the fairly innexpensive Wiimote (the remote for the game console Nintendo Wii) and an interactive pen as input devices to turn any projected screen into a an interactive whiteboard-like experience.

Open Source Social Network Engines

No-one is impressed with the words “social networking” anymore. We used to have to explain to new comers what “Myspace” or Facebook implied. Now everyone can have their own social networks online with relatively no cost using open source solutions that I think deserve some attention:

1- www.elgg.org -> free and open source initiative. Very customizable, still need som work done, doesn’t have many of the standard features you would expect from a social network. Large developer base might bring important improvements over time.

2- www.drupal.org -> not exactly built for social networking per se, but has an enormous plugin database that can bring extra functionality, including the possibility of creating Digg-like video/news/websites/etc. aggregator that requires votes by community members so content is published.

3- http://update.peopleaggregator.org -> Myspace-like social network engine. Integration with OpenID. Still pretty “rough”, but has potential. Demo: http://www.peepagg.net/

4- www.boonex.com/products/dolphin -> more focused on “dating” but allows for customization. Many plugins have to be “purchased”, though.

5- http://www.barnraiser.org -> I can’t tell you much about it (not many communities powered by “aroundme” right now). It is open source.

6- http://civicspacelabs.org -> Drupal as a social network. Has free options for non profit organizations.

7- http://appleseed.sourceforge.net -> not much information on the website and no demos available. Open source.

8- http://lovdbyless.com -> new open source social network engine that has a lot of potential. Ruby on Rails. Some nice features and integration with Youtube and Flikr out of the box.

9- isocial - http://sourceforge.net/projects/socialnetwork -> not much info.

10- clonesumating -> should be a clone of “consumating.com”, which has been down for quite a while now. Quite a few features.

11- ozcode - http://sourceforge.net/projects/ozcode -> an ozmozr.com clone. Lets you build networks around feeds and friends.

12- http://insoshi.org -> brand new, lots of work to be done. Good for simple networks.

Also, http://www.mahara.org -> not exactly “social networking”. Good ePortfolio with some social networking around it. I don’t understand why people pay for some ePortfolio providers out there (you know what I am talking about). Just an example of how open source and free (as in no money or credit card necessary) can offer great features that are comparable to commercial products.