Facebook or MySpace?

There’s a very interesting article in The Age about Facebook and MySpace. The so called high priestess of the internet, danah boyd (yes she prefers her name to be in lower case) is doing a Ph.D on online culture.
She maintains that MySpace is losing people to Facebook, both of which are social networking sites because there is a class divide opening up. Facebook is for “college” aspirants, while MySpace is for the working class.

danah’s site is danah.org

Though I don’t know the stats, it isn’t surprising. As the rest of society is also divided in this way, why not the supposed egalitarian internet?

Wikipedia search engine

wikipediatrans.gifDespite knowing that many contributions to wikipedia are dubious, depending on the politics of the contributer, and also knowing that the FBI and CIA monitor it fairly closely, here is a new wikipedia search engine.

Wikipedia, if accurate, would surely be the most searchable database, but it still does not have that reputation. On topics that I know about, it is not so much what is said as what is not said. I’d be telling my students, that as it is a database that anyone can contribute to and edit, that they need to check its authority as a reference.

Nevertheless, it is an excellent start for many students.

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Widgets

Adding Desktop Gadgets
Image via Wikipedia

http://www.widgipedia.com/

Here’s an interesting site if you want to make widgets for your web page or desktop.

You can also use the widgets that are there. There is a URL to each one and the embed instructions as well.

There’s a forum on this site as well.

Here’s another site which just offers you gadgets to add to your site.

http://www.smartwebgadgets.com/

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