No.5 YouTube - Sharing Videos

Mark Pesce describes YouTube as a “sort of repository for all sorts of information, some of it delightful, some of it infuriating and some of it very very informative”.

Ariana Huffington claims that YouTube has dominated the recent US election and yet in 2004, YouTube had not even been invented.

No.3 Wikipedia

Wikipedia, my No. 3 site, is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I described in an earlier post how I had signed into the site in order to edit some of the posted articles, including one on Chichester Cross. Wikipedia is a social site where people can share information. There was some concern about the reliability of this information but is almost as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica. I seach it many times each day, adding"wiki" to my Google search request. Sections on living people are improving rapidly and are a most useful source for questions about the media. Today I wanted to know more about Itshak Perlmann, the virtuoso violinist, who contracted polio when he was four. I often have a Wikipedia page open as I listen to the radio or the television.

Accelerators

I have recently installed the Beta version of Internet Explorer 8. There are some wonderful new features and there are videos to help you how to understand them. The new browser is said to be faster, safer and more reliable. I particularly like the new "accelerators" which are little arrows that appear when you select things. When you select a place name you can get very quickly to a map using Livemaps. I love the Aerial View.

Social Web Sites

As I am giving a talk on Social Web sites, I have been reflecting on sites that I have used during the last five years. Social web sites are those where you can communicate with other people and share information with them. The growth of web sites like Facebook and UTube has been truly astonishing. Utube allows anyone anywhere to share videos with anyone else. Facebook used to be for college students but now has nearly 75000000 members and allows you to personalize your own profile, upload photos, and write messages to friends. My next posts will each be about the social web sites that I have visited and I will label them all as "social".

Please add your comments on your own experience of Social Web Sites so that I can include them in my talk.