Thing 13: Reflection

Did this turn out to be what you expected when you started? 
This turned out to be better than what I'd expected it to be. Although I've had prior experience using web 2.0 and online tools. This blog made me revisit some things that I had forgotten about. It is always good to go back and refresh on the tools that are useful.

Were you already familiar with any of these "things"? For example, did you already have a Twitter account? Or were they mostly new?

I already answered part of this in the previous question, however, there were certain things that I hadn't used before. For me the mashup, word cloud and visual thesaurus were completely new tools. I greatly enjoyed using both and  I believe I have new tools that I will be able to incorporate at some point in the future work.

Did your Wordle of your blog give you any insights?

The Wordle of my blog did bring in some words that summoned what my blog was about: "professional, internet, people, creative, hobby" were few that stood out besides the words that we use everyday. Apart of these visual summary of my blog, the wordle didn't provide too much. I guess this is the limitation of this tool, however, it did help me provide a great summary of this blog: For people who are looking for things related to professional and/or personal use of the internet.

Which was your favorite post?

My two favorite posts have been the mashup and the delicious ones. I really enjoyed putting together all the facts about Bob Dylan and the mashup was pretty interesting. For delicious, I had to go out in the web and search for things that I would like to refer back to. In that process I came across some really interesting web pages.

Did you discover anything new that could be helpful in your day-to-day activities?

The best discovery through this blog has been Twitter and Delicious. I think these two will always stick with me and be helpful in my day-to-day activities. I knew about Twitter but had never used it before this blog. Now, am getting used to it and find it useful and fun. I haven't used Delicious as much as I'd like to but am sure when required (when working on a paper, etc), I will not forget about this tool. I was very impressed by both of these web tools.

Did you discover anything new that you think you might use in your Life After Coe?

Like I mentioned about am sure I will use both Twitter and Delicious after graduation too. And in overall, maybe I will continue working in the other blog or I may start a new blog that will either be a professional one or something related to my interests.

How did you feel about "self-discovering" as opposed to having specific due dates created by the professor?

I had mixed feelings, in one side I think this is great in that self-discovering allows for us to be completely involved with the projects. Unlike when there are set deadlines the self-discovery process lets us to get into details, which sometimes is not possible because of the deadline. However, on the other hand, when things are left without set deadlines, we tend to forget about it and unless we have set a personal deadline or formed a habit, it's very easy to trail away from the required word.

Overall, I thought this was a really good project. I rediscovered a lot of new tools and this assignment made me realize that running a daily blog or a blog in general requires commitment and is not as easy as it may seem. However, the best of all is that I will always credit this blog for making me use Twitter and Delicious.

Thing 12: Word Cloud

The first word that stands out is "great". The visual representation of my blog was interesting, it gave me some idea about what this blog was about. I seem to use the word "great" a lot meaning I thought the things we had to do for this blogs were very interesting. This seems like a great way to visualize things like speech, books, blogs etc but I can't think of any way in which this may be used professionally. It represents some interesting things about the blog but isn't scientific enough to really be used in a serious manner.

Thing 11: Visual Theasurus

This was pretty cool, I really liked how the results were very elastic in nature. To define the nature of the result better I chose the word "elastic". Some good alternatives were: stretchable, stretchy, springy, bouncy.
I generally use thesaurus when writing professional documents or papers. I never really had a big problem using thesaurus because when applying the new found words, I make sure that I read its usage and I read the sentence with the new word, if it sounds awkward or if am not 100% sure I never use the new word and stick with the simple ones. 

Thing 10: Creative Commons

I think Creative Commons is a great idea. One of the most significant advances in current technology has been through things like collaborative projects over the internet among the people all over the world. A great example of this is Wikipedia. Such things are called crowd-sourcing. The Creative Commons allows internet to be the great resource that it has always been and makes it available for everyone without the legal confusion or hassle. There are many people who wouldn't want all their works to be copyright and wouldn't mind people using their works.
I have done some photography as a hobby and have uploaded them in Flickr. All of the pictures I have used are under CC and recently one of the photos was used in an online article. I didn't mind that at all, in fact I was proud that they chose my picture. Most of my work has been done as a hobby and aren't professional in any sort. The only work that I would like to keep under copyrights would be the ones that I would do professionally.