Strange Brew

Instant Messaging is actually pretty cool and I prefer it to regular text messaging. That is because it is mostly free and it has features that texting does not have. These features are read notification bubble, the ability to link it to social media accounts, avatars and cost. I prefer Facebook's Instant Messenger because it is the simplest, user friendly and cost effective. I think that there will be an Instant Messenger app that will come along that will replace all of the features that Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat all have and bundle it into a new all in one app that kids will go crazy for. Dang, maybe I should get started on making that haha. Cheers!!

Skype is a pretty cool app and I have used it many times communicating with my family remotely. I think that is the main reason this software is beneficial and I think that both families and business professionals can benefit from using it. I think the advantages to Skype is that it is free, I think the disadvantages is that it is now competing with Facetime and other social media sites that use video streaming.

LinkedIn. I explored this site and I would have to say that I am not impressed and I do not think this site actually works. I think the only good quality this site would have would lie in the way an employer may be searching for a particular set of skills and it matches to a person in location that has them. What I don't like is the fact that, that person has not already applied for that position and that it is being done through a social media site. I think this site just needs to go away or it needs to turn into a site that actually has job postings and people can apply that way and not the other way around.

I have explored all three social media sites Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. I picked these three because they were similar but also different in there own ways, there are things some can do and not the others and vis-versa. I would have to say that they are all similar because they can stream video and also allow commenting and page views. They are different in video length, photo posting and instant messaging.

I checked out both sites, podcasts.com and podcastalley and I was not really impressed. I ended up sticking with what I know and that was I Tunes Podcasts and I picked three different podcast that I thoroughly enjoy. I felt like both sites where similar and I felt that they were outdated and irrelevant. It seemed like podcasts.com was just ads, and that stunk ha ha.

The nine club podcast is a skateboard interview podcast ran by skaters that takes a dive into their lives and provides a glimpse into something that you would not normally hear. I really like this podcast and I listen to it daily, like every morning.

This podcast is cool because it digs deep into peoples lives who were brought up in the Punk music scene. The producer is in a band that is good so he has the inside scoop and the ability to get good quests. The podcast always starts the same way which takes listeners back in time to when the person first heard punk music or the genre all the way til present day. It is good and you will want more.

This podcast is full of goodies when it comes to tales of the past. I really like this one because it is actual folklore, hence the name, and it talks about some weird events of the past. Some of my favorite episodes are the one about the richmond vampire, coal mine collapse, and the mysterious ship in anartica that was frozen for 100+ years and crew was found still intact dead.

Here is the link to my wiki page where I discussed how wikis fit in to Web 2.0. This was a fun assignment and after building accounts on all of the wikis that were in our assignment page, this was the only one I felt I could actually create something.

Weebly: At first view of weebly I thought it was an educational site only. It wasn't until I clicked around that I noticed it had a publishing feature that was similar to a blog. I have picked this site to be the one I will make a post for this weeks assignment. I actually like the layout of the design page it is similar to a blog site or even a picture editing software. I found the features pretty interesting and the options surprised me by how many there actually were. I still am pretty confused how this site is related to education but I am sure that is a function I did not check out because I felt it was unnecessary for this weeks assignment. Overall I dug this site and I will continue to tool around and check out its features. Cheers, Michael Bridges UPDATE: Weebly wanted money to make a post, so I discovered how to do it on Wikidot and its pretty cool, I now take back everything I said on its review :).

Wikidot: At first glance Wikidot seems like a legit website and something that I thought I would be able to use as my foundation for this weeks assignment. It was not until I clicked around for a little that I discovered that I had no idea what this site was and how to use it. There were tabs for Features, Opinions, Pricing, and Advertising, but I did not see a tutorial so I left the site more confused than I was before I went there. I did create an account and I feel like it did not make a difference. Cheers, Michael Bridges

MediaWiki: MediaWiki is an open source wiki space that was originally designed for use on Wikipedia. Now, for the real review, when I first clicked on MediaWiki I thought it was similar in layout to Wikipedia an it looked simple. That was the case until I looked some more and realized that it was actually quite confusing and I did not understand what the page was about and what to do. I checked out the "how to navigate" section and all it did was talk about the sidebars and how to get around on the site, all of which I already knew how to do since I have been on the internet before. Overall I did not find the website useful and I am not sure if I would return on my own. Cheers, Michael Bridges