Monday, October 5, 2009

Exercise 17 - Explore 1000 sites!!

Well I came - I saw 1000 entries. I was overwhelmed so didn't conquer - couldn't find anything of interest. Will come back to this.

2 Nights later - have decided to explore Skype and Waxmail.

Skype: I have heard this term for a couple of years and understood it was a cheap way of connecting people via the computers. The site tells me "Free skype to skype calls and low cost calls to phones or mobiles" Just a download away. Skype also offers community forums and I found out that many people are using skype to learn other languages. What a wonderful idea. The best way to learn another language is always to converse so this offers oportunitues to converse for free. I had a read thru the forum guidelines or etiquette. I wonder if most of the participants follow the rules.. Another feature is the Heartbeat. Just a click tells you the status of the Skype connections.
A Library story to tell - A proud Library patron introduced me to his grand-daughter - aged 2years. He hadn't seen her since she was 6 days old as she lives in England. However this little treasure walked out of the immigration at the airport - spottted her grandad and ran and gave him a big kiss. All this because she knew him so well as he spoke with her once a week on Skype. Products like these have made the world so small and the price of communicaton so affordable for everybody if they have access. Is this something we should be offering in our libraries - a community Skype access room. I wonder esp as we have so many people from all over the world in our community.

Waxmail: There were 3 sites that advertise the ability to add voice to your emails. Only Waxmail is still operating. I was drawn to this product as I have elderly parents with arthritis in their hands. The typing of emails takes so long and can be quite frustrating for them. From the site " Waxmail lets you talk instead of type. Your voice messages are attached to Outlook emails as MP3s ready to send to any email address. Recipients do not need Waxmail in order to hear the message. " It is free of charge but an advert tag line is displayed. If wanted you can purchase and this removes the tag line. I will remember this site for future investiagation

ALSO Found Jumpclaimer:
"This website enables a traveller to stick digital pins on a world map. Friends and family can then follow the progress. We do this by accepting a simple SMS containing the nearest town to you. We do some analysis to find the latitude/longitude coordinate of the nearest town with that name using your previous location. This is then plotted on a Google map.Short Message Service (SMS) is the ability to send and receive short alphanumeric messages (maximum 160 characters) to and from mobile telephones. There are lots of features coming, as you can see below. We are working hard to fix a few 'misfeatures' and add some extra groovy stuff. Check back soon when we will hopefully have the subscriptions working! "
However they were experiencing problems with overload. May monitor this one - could be a good tool to track the sons overseas. I had tried Map maker from previous exercises http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/map.php - but just didn't cut the mustard as they say.

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