Web 2.0 Awards - Zango

This was probably my favorite. No surprise there, I suppose. Here is Zango.com, feel free to go there and do what I did: waste a complete hour of your time.

A little background, I game a lot but not as much as I used to. Sure, I own a Nintendo DS with a decent library of games, but I don't obsess over them like a lot of my friends do. Oftentimes, I will go on gaming website just to see what they have to offer. So, I decided to give Zango a shot.

It doesn't just offer games, mind you, it does have an interesting selection of wallpapers and videos. Though the videos seem like stuff that was specifically designed to make people on web forums LOL themselves silly, and the wallpapers seem no different than what talented 16 year-olds put up on Deviantart.

The games are pretty good though. However, most of them require the user to download them onto their computer. This wasn't a problem for me, but I couldn't see why someone can't just play them RIGHT OFF THE BROWSER. Newgrounds has been doing that for more years than I can remember, surely Zango (which hasn't been around nearly as long) could work something out.

I think some of the games do not require downloads, but I wasn't able to find any. Still, if you're craving that quick fix of flash game fun for free, then this is a pretty good site.

~KO

Zack and Wiki

Wikis and I have a mutual understanding: I will only use them if I need to be completely entertained in between phone conversations that situate me in front of even the most basic of computers. I often doubt the power of wikis because...well, anyone can add information to them. Including me. And I don't trust me.

They're not "bad", per se, and I don't mean to make it look like I'm an anti-wik-ite. But, like with most information places on the internet, I never really find what I'm looking for. Maybe that's just my own faults though. Either way, with that in mind, I jumped right into the following places:

I found the St. Joseph County Public Library's subject guides to be pretty basic, but friendly and easy to access. It pretty much links you to an easy-to-access page where you can find equally easy-to-access pages. I clicked on Arts and Entertainment and got this. Not a lot of information, but not terrible.

The BookLoversWiki only infuriated me again as to how I could not sign in the first time. I tried looking at some fantasy book reviews. But to my surprise, there were only 3 books, and the last update was 2 years ago. Now, if I was logged in...sorry, I tend to carry grudges. ^_^;

While we're on PBWiki, I thought the Bull Run Library page was decent. But why not create a real homepage? Why rely on a wiki? I guess there's a sort of charm to that. Also, seeing as how more people go on wikies nowadays, this might be necessary to grab attention.

Now, the Library Success wiki was arguably my favorite. Granted, it did have a lot of that "linking to everything under the sun" aspect that I kind of detest about wikis -- you know, when you go onto a Wikipedia entry on Martin Luther King Jr., and after a half an hour of going through the various links that are embedded in the actual entry, you somehow wind up on a page about arabian leopards? The good thing here, though, is that at least the information is relevant and concise. I particularly took a good deal out of the marketing section.

I don't have much to say about the New Orleans Wiki, other than now, after a half an hour of clicking, I really want to go to the Audubon Zoo.

~KO

PBWiki = got stuck to the roof of my mouth

Well that was beyond frustrating. Don't get me wrong, the site show's a lot of neat things; and I could not wait to get in there and create a wiki of my favorite movie of all time, all while erupting into full movie-nerd mode and...well, it just wouldn't let me!

I'll explain. I jumped in and created an account. I then received an email that asked me to click on a link to activate the account -- I did that. Next, I'm on a blank page. All right, all right, I tell myself, no big deal. This kinda stuff happens with internet logins. It's coo.

Now, I go onto the wiki page with the hopes of editing an entry...but there's no where to edit. Funny thing was, when I was not logged in I would see the EDIT button at the top of the page, next to VIEW. But the moment I logged in, the EDIT tab disappeared.

To squeeze a twang of lemon into the cut, I clicked on my profile on the right, exact words read: "You don't have access to any wikis yet."

Well played, PBWiki, well played. -_-

~KO

"That's Good, but How Does it Taste?" = Delicious

I've heard about Delicious for a long time. But, like a lot of things on the internet, I figured it was best left in the pit. I definitely see some merits here, however I'm not sure the functions still hold true. Most of my bookmarks are existing sites with easy to remember urls, and half the time I never bother around with my bookmarks anyway as all the sites appear in the address bar the moment I type in the first letter of their urls.

Unique pages I typically have saved on Gmail; and like Delicious I can access Gmail anywhere, so I don't really see much of a point.

On the other hand, I did notice a few users who shared some of the same sites on their bookmarks as I did in mine -- about 80 other users had my site, Anime Academy.com, as their bookmark. Sure that may not be astronomical but it's something. I guess this does make it a bit easier to share bookmarks with other like-minded users, so that's a good thing, I suppose.

I'll tool around with it a bit more. It's easy for me to get lost in a websites functions (as was probably evident in my other posts), but I didn't "fall" for delicious just yet.

~KO