SLQ's Licence 2 Test Drive #2 - Mashups

I just love the term Mashups - so no surprise to learn that it hails from the music industry where all of those clever DJs are mixing the music and vocals of different songs - but in the IT industry it refers to a web application that uses more than 1 source of content to create a new service which improves usability and makes it more engaging.

In this tute we looked at various examples of Mashups including the use of Flickr and Google (maps, street view and earth), Youtube using multiple video sources to create an entertaining speech from a string of different movies, news headlines (my least favourite - I'd rather get in there and be able to view the news links in text, read and get out) and a fantastic site for those interested in real estate - Suburb View, which allows you to search for listings in your suburb, see the location map and even the house itself - great way to save on time and fuel!

From the Mashups awards site I would have to say that I was quite surprised to see how many of the winners relate back to Twitter. Now I'm still a little slow on the uptake with Twitter and admit that it holds no interest to me in the slightest - but in the interest of the exploration part of this tuturial I have chosen Twitrans which allows you to translate your tweets to any language using human translators - for a cost of 5c a word and all within the hour! Would people actually pay to let their friends/family know the mundane and silly things that they are up to?? Apparently they do....

But Twitrans is not just for the Twitterers - it can be used by Businesses or Academics wanting to translate whole files - which includes an independant review of the translation. Of course this review pushes the cost up to 10c a word, and for an 'expert' translator as opposed to the professional translator, you'll be looking at 15c a word. All in all, probably not a bad service as it is available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day from the ease and comfort of your office/study!

SLQ's Licence 2 Test Drive #1 - Online Applications and Tools

Today we looked at a range of many different and often free online productivity software such as word processing, web conferencing and presentations. It is really quite amazing just how many different ones there are available and in all honestly I have only heard of Google Docs and Slideshare before.

I can certainly see the benefits of using such applications - they are flexible enough to allow those you want to have access to them as well as portable so that they can be accessed on any computer with Internet access. Brilliant really!

Out of everything we looked at in this tute - I have only ever used zamzar before so I have found it all to be very interesting indeed!