Friday, March 17, 2006

You know that I love the web. LOVE IT.

But sometimes I get a little bogged down and don't get to really enjoy it. I get busy and I use for some tasks, boring stuff.

Today, though, I had a conversation with a coworker that inspired me. It was about blogs, actually, and about creating a feed of industry-related blogs for our site. He was talking about one of his favourites which discusses the innovations that Yahoo is researching - all the "Web 2.0" stuff. (It's not important if you don't know what that is, the point is that I'm a Web person and I'm supposed to. You? Maybe not so important.)

I started looking up the blog. In my search for that particular blog, as well as the research I was doing for the blog I'm working on for MaRS, I embarked on an exciting journey.

First, I went to A List Apart which I hope all the web-type workers out there know as a sort of blog or column for people who make websites. I was going there to see how they handled a particular type of click or action (ie: not for pleasure but for research).

In using their site, I stumbled onto and started reading a very interesting article about ~ coincidence ~ Web 2.0. It was well written (like most of their articles) and helped me understand more history on the term and explained some other terms I didn't know.

And then they mentioned a couple of really interesting sites which I had to check out:

  • Ma.gnolia - a site that helps you bookmark. Well, it keeps your bookmarks saved on the Web so you have access to them everywhere. AND it helps you find sites by looking at other people's bookmarks.

  • Basecamp - a project management site, basically. It's like having your project management software on the Web and your entire team can access everything there (tasks, schedules, documents, etc).



I also found Technorati, a blog search. Very cool, but I didn't find the blog I wanted.

And my search for the Yahoo blog got me to del.icio.us which is apparently another social space to keep bookmarks and... stuff. And Yahoo 360° which looks to be a personal website tool for aggregating all of the other tools that Yahoo offers.

And I suddenly thought, oh my god, why don't I already KNOW about these things?

Why haven't I USED these things yet?

Thank god I already use and love Flikr or I would have to forfeit my domain name entirely.

I just find so many interesting things on the Web whenever I go on a browsing-spree. And I want to USE all of these things.

And yet I can't find time to redesign my OWN website, never mind trying out these cool tools.

Anyway, I was inspired by the wonderful, useful bits of software offered on the web these days. And the fact that I'm a part of this whole thing - I will be USING these tools to integrate with my site and the MaRS site, I suspect - made me feel a little cool by association.

I just need more time for R&D! (Some call it "play time".)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

UPDATE:

Turns out the easiest way to find the blog was to ask my coworker again.

Mark Pincus: http://markpincus.typepad.com/markpincus/

But I'll tell ya, it wasn't the BEST way to find it.