Twitter

Over a year ago, I created a Twitter account; but, after a few days, it seemed too difficult to find something to post with enough frequency to make it worthwhile to be "followed". When we began to use Twitter as a part of this course, I found that it was an interesting experience, and thought that Twitter could be used as one tool in an arsenol of tools.

However, since then, I believe that I have become a Twitter convert!  The account, http://twitter.com/mtzicher makes it easy to broadcast information and web links to one's followers (students, colleagues, etc.).  Its 140 character limit forces brevity; and makes posting information quick and easy.  Most articles and blogs have a built-in widget that allows them to be shared using Twitter.  All one needs to do is login, add a little description, and press the "Tweet" button!

By following others, one can add to their own tweets.  While the followed tweets are only immediately available to the person who "owns" the twitter account, they can be retweeted to all of their followers.  Applying this techniques makes it incredibly easy to have enough content to satisfy most followers.

Diigo

Diigo is a site that allows the user to add annotated links to web pages, articles, journals, .pdfs, etc. This is an excellent product for anyone who is conducting research for a paper or project.  It is also a great site to bookmark those urls that one sees and then wants to explore at a later time.  The great advantage with Diigo, is that the links to these resources are available anywhere there is internet access.  The url for my personal Diigo library is: http://www.diigo.com/user/mzicher.

Some of its key features include the tags and the diiglet toolbar. The diiglet tool bar can be bookmarked and allows the user to annotate text within a web page article, add sticky notes, etc. The annotations then appear on the Diigo page as text boxes following the name and url for the document.  In addition, Diigo has it's own tool bar; however, there seems to be issues with the feature.  Several individuals who tried to install this toolbar began to have problems with their computers and needed to uninstall the product.

One can also create a group page within Diigo where multiple users can share and annotate links. This would be an excellent resource for students involved in a group project during the research phase of the project.

Like many Web 2.0 products, one can select other Diigo sites to follow, have friends, and chat with other Diigo users online.