Group items tagged

Ben W unpacks the world of APIs. He touches on their purpose and what they mean for the personal user. "The biggest reason to use APIs is to avoid re-inventing the wheel as a software developer. You're probably not going to build your own fully-featured mapping application, so if you need a map in your software, it makes sense to integrate Google Maps or OpenStreetMap. You don't want to build your own credit card processor (trust me), so it makes sense to use Stripe. You're going to have a hard time building a market of millions of enterprise software users, so you're going to piggyback on Slack. And so on. APIs present a pragmatic solution that allows us to build on other software while saving on short-term costs. They're not a magic wand, but used wisely, they allow us to build entirely new products and services. And maybe - just maybe - they will allow us to take control of our digital lives and build a new kind of internet."

"Here's what she found: hiding from big data is so inconvenient and expensive that even Vertesi doesn't recommend it as a lifestyle choice. (She presented her findings at the Theorizing the Web conference in New York last week.) So what does that mean for companies who say users can just "opt out" if they aren't happy with (so-called) privacy policies? Can you be a person on the internet without sacrificing all your data to the Google Powers That Be? I talked to Vertesi about her experiment, its implications, and why hiding from big data can make you look like a criminal"

"Earlier this month, Facebook dropped a bombshell by not only acknowledging that Facebook pages' organic reach was declining but also by telling us we shouldn't expect them to recover. Facebook's VP of Product for Facebook Ads, Brian Boland, went on to explain that this is the new world we live in now, that the same thing happened with search engines before and that we'd better get used to it. It's true that many platforms go through a similar cycle: first, they present a great free opportunity, then more and more people grab it - decreasing the return for everyone until finally, the platform focuses on those ready to pay for play. It happened with Google Search; it happened with Apps (yes, Apple doesn't sell ads but others do - such as coincidentally… Facebook). And now that all social media are publicly-traded company with ambitious revenue targets to reach, it will happen to social media as well. So what does the decline of organic reach on Facebook and social platforms exactly mean on a practical basis?"

"The Internet Archive is not Google. The Internet Archive is a chaotic, beautiful mess. It's not well-organized, and its tools for browsing and searching the wealth of material on there are still rudimentary, but getting better." Wonder why Ed Tech Crew is on there?

SearchTeam is a collaborative search engine. You start your research by creating a SearchSpace on a topic of interest. From within a SearchSpace, you can search the Web, videos, images, books and more. You can find and save only what you want while you are searching and throw away what you don't want or find irrelevant. You can automatically organize what you save, into folders of your choosing. Everything is automatically saved into your personal account, and you can return to your searches any time and continue from where you left before. What makes SearchTeam unique and valuable is that you can do your searches collaboratively with others you trust, such as friends, colleagues and family members. You can invite any set of people you trust to search with you from within a SearchSpace. An invitation is sent via email to those people you invite to join your search. When they enter your SearchSpace, they see exactly what you've found and saved so far. They can comment on or like your findings. They can chat with you from within the SearchSpace, and do further searches relevant to that topic and save more results into the SearchSpace. All changes made by any collaborator are relayed to all other collaborators in real-time, so everyone is instantly in synch with what others are doing. In addition to finding and saving search results, SearchTeam goes further to enable you to enrich your SearchSpace with knowledge that may come from other sources. You can upload documents to a SearchSpace to share your relevant reports / presentations etc. You can also add links to Web resources that you may have received from others via email or social networks. You can even create new posts to share your knowledge on the topic directly inside the SearchSpace. Together, as a team, you can leverage the collective effort to find good quality information, and benefit from the collective knowledge on any topic efficiently. In effect, SearchTeam is traditional Web searching + Wiki-like editi

"CREATE MEANINGFUL CONTENT, AND USE THESE FREE TEMPLATE DESIGNS TO GIVE YOUR PUBLIC A BEAUTIFUL AND MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE"

Great list of apps that have uses in education and learning situations

"favourite"

Twenty-Five Interesting Ways* to Use Audio in your Classroom

"Expect the IT landscape to change ... Here's a look at five predictions on hot skills, evolving roles, and how social media will change recruiting"

From a single eCommerce store to the leading marketplaces of the world, online merchants distribute their products over the web. Our shipping company will do the tiresome part of shipping your products after a customer places an order. The online merchants save time and money on product shipping.