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Exploring new tools or keeping up with old ones: That is the question!

susanmarandi — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:17:41 +0000

Hi! Just thought I’d pop in and say ‘hi’ after so long, and ask:

How do you keep up with all these new Web 2.0 tools? I’m always telling myself that I’ll add a new post here, but somehow it seems that most of my time is taken up with exploring new Web 2.0 tools instead of really *using* all the old ones I’ve learned about. Do you have the same problem?

A comparison between WordPress and Blogger

susanmarandi — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 17:38:44 +0000

So far WordPress seems wayyyyyyy easier to me than Blogger, but maybe it’s just because I am already familiar with blogging, so I sort of “know the ropes.” But WordPress is definitely faster than Blogger, since I had to wait a long time each time I wanted to publish on Blogger. I don’t know; for some reason I like WordPress more (for now, at least). Maybe it’s because I had some problems seeing my photos in Blogger; I have yet to try out photos here …

Last year when my students used Blogger for their Essay Writing Class, we had a serious problem with the photos. For some reason, half of the photos just wouldn’t show up, or would show up some times, but not other times. As you know, a blog minus its pictures is not the same thing at all!

We never found out what the problem was, whether the photos were somehow being blocked over here in Iran, or was it just a Blogger thing? I still don’t know. Flickr is being blocked here, so I can’t use that anymore, either.

It might help to at least know if people living in other countries can see the photos or not? Here’s the link: http://susanmarandi.blogspot.com/

Let me add a photo here and see how it goes:

(Keeping my fingers crossed!)

. . .

Oh dear, it looks like I have to upload a photo somewhere on the Net first, and then insert it in my blog! On Blogger you had the option of uploading it directly from your computer, which was nice, I thought. (Too bad they wouldn’t always show up, though!)

Looking forward to hearing which you prefer, WordPress or Blogger …

Using Flock (first impressions)

susanmarandi — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 17:02:16 +0000

My very first impression after downloading Flock: Awesome! This is truly Web 2.0. So much of the Internet seems to take on a different meaning when you ‘socialize’ tools like this. Or maybe I should say so much of the Internet starts to finally become meaningful!

I had experimented with so many Internet tools, just because they were ‘there’ and I wanted to know how to use them, but often they seemed of no real use to me personally. But now, they’re all becoming part of a social network where all the tools and all the people using them are becoming connected. Wow!

Second impression: I find the favorites (bookmarking) feature a bit confusing as of yet, especially since the bookmarks I imported from my Internet Explorer have become mixed up. (The subfolders are no longer subfolders, but folders, so I now have a confusingly long list of unrelated favorites. Actually, ‘long’ is not the word; perhaps I should say loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong!)

A related question: The main thing keeping me from really experimenting with other interesting and useful browsers, like Flock or Opera, etc., is that I want to keep my Internet Explorer bookmark list up-to-date. I don’t want to have to constantly have to search for a bookmark (Did I save it here or on IE?), and the ‘import’ feature doesn’t seem to allow me to update and refresh a particular ‘favorite’ folder, and to choose exactly what I want to update and import. Is there any way to use both IE and Flock, and update both ‘favorite lists’ at the same time?

P.S. I know about del.icio.us and furl, but on my slow dial-up connection, saving favorites on the Internet isn’t really an option, since I have to wait forever each time I want to bookmark something.

Hello world! It’s me, again! :)

susanmarandi — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 14:23:24 +0000

Well, well! Here I am again, back with a new blog … I think back to my first entry in my first blog, in Blogger, just two years ago! (That was your doing, too, Bee! With Graham Stanley and Aaron Campbell, that is.) I’d signed up for the EVO sessions, just like this year, as part of my effort to learn how to bring Computer-Assisted Language Learning to my country, Iran.

Since then I haven’t been blogging as much as I would have liked to (way too busy), but my students blogged for their Essay Writing class last year, and we all loved it! Which is why I’m here again, “still confused, but on a higher plane”!! ;)

More later …