Plugging del.icio.us tags and IT conversations

In today's earlier post I mentioned blogs, podcasts and photo-blogs. All these tools enable us to enroll in something that is often referred to as 'social networking'. With its book reviews, Amazon was one of the first companies to offer internet users a way to share their opinion about a particular book with others, so that the latter could take this into consideration when deciding whether or not to buy and/or read a certain book. In the somewhat the same way, del.icio.us tags help people to find interesting web content, without having to use search engines to do so. Basically a sort of online bookmarks, tags are used to mark interesting content. All these links are collected on a personal page, referred to as 'my del.icio.us' and serving as online bookmarks that are always available to me, independent of the computer I am using. But that's not all. Not only can I now easily navigate back to these sites, I can also find out about other sites that have been tagged with the same keyword by other users. Although the relevance and effectiveness of these references depends primarily on how different people describe similar and/or comparable phenomena, it is an interesting way to indexing and navigate the world wide web indeed.

When it comes to podcasts, I want to call your attention to IT conversations. This site offers podcasts featuring speeches and presentations delivered by speakers at major IT conferences worldwide. Instead of having to attend these conferences yourself, taking time off from work and paying a hefty fee, you can now listen to some of the most interesting speakers for free and at a time that's convenient for you! BTW, one of the IT Conversations' series, Larry's World, is also available as a podcast through Apple's iTunes.