LIBR 246-12: Web 2.0 and Social Networking Tools (Fall 2008)

In the post Flaking on Pageflakes: 4 Reasons I Don't Use Personalized Start Pages (And 3 Reasons Others Do) in the weblog MediaShift, I found it interesting that one of the reasons Maderazo stated why she does not use personalized start pages is because there's "too much me in on

Last year, LAUSD switched student email accounts from ePALs to Google. The switch to Google was, of course, motivated by cost: It's free. Moreover, with Google (LAUSD MyMail - Gmail tailored for LAUSD), also comes its applications such as Docs, Calendar, & iGoogle (their own start page), which are really great tools to help students with their organization skills. I was drafted to introduce this new tool to the students.

HousingMaps

This is a cool feature that lets you Google and Craiglists to find apartments listings. I just think that this a great mashups that is simple to use and serve and a great service. It is simple easy to use and nice layout. I think this is really the model of what mashups could and should be.

The legal field is slow to adept to thing as a whole. I mean some lawyers are quick to change with the times, but if you ever read a law school syllabus (you know because its fun to do), you will see 100 year even 200 year old cases. Lawyers do not like to recreate the wheel.
However with mashups a lawyer who is interested in one field, like say special education law. No wait why no something more unique: how about lawsuits that involve chainsaws. Now it might take hours a week looking for cases that involve chainsaws, and forget the hours it would take to read the legal newspaper.

Dan's post about RulerPhone reminded me of a recent app that my fiancé downloaded to his iPhone. It's called Shazam and it can "listen" to or scan any music and identify the song, artist and album it belongs to. Isn't that crazy?! I was so impressed the first time we tried it. Have you ever gone somewhere, heard a song, know you've heard it before, but just can't remember what the name of the song is or who the artist is?