Week 8 - Things 18 - 19

Thing 18: Zoho Writer

I am completely new to Zoho Writer & I love it! I have used Google Docs - mainly to save things & be able to access it from home & school without the hassle of emailing it back & forth or using a flash drive. I am amazed at how much Zoho Writer has to offer! I do know that I ran into the same old problem when trying to access it from school (it was blocked) - but I will be sending the URL to our technology director & hopefully it will get unblocked. However, the fact that it offers chat could be a problem.

Applications such as Zoho Writer & Google Docs could be very helpful to our students & staff. What great tools for collaboration! Both applications allow you to share documents, but I loved the way you could add comments in Zoho. I was trying to find out how much "free space" you get with a Zoho account, and perhaps I just missed it so I will continue looking.

I am writing this blog entry in Zoho, & now I am going to try to post it to my blog from here.

------ 2 minutes later--------

Wow! I did it & it was easy! I am now adding this on in blogger...The only thing that went "wrong" is that my post did not have a title- but I think that may have been because I had not named the file before sending it here?

Thing 19: LibraryThing

I discovered "GoodReads" at the beginning of this course when a friend sent an email asking me to be her "friend". That was my first experience using a "social" site & I have been having a lot of fun with it. I love being able to see what others I know are reading & read their reviews as well. I was excited about using GoodReads, & I have been happy with it so far - so honestly if it wasn't a requirement for this class, I would not have started another account on LibraryThing at this time. I am finding that there are so many great sites out there - but it gets overwhelming to have accounts and be users of too many! I had created widgets of a couple of my book shelves on GoodReads & here is the link to the books that I cataloged on LibraryThing: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lweeks. I did find that the books I cataloged are popular & there are discussions on them - that didn't surprise me since I have been choosing to read mostly bestsellers & some of the "most requested" books at my public library.

LibraryThing seems to be the site to choose if you want to catalog your own books, use the message boards, or join or create a group. I think for now I will be sticking with GoodReads since I have been using that site & already have "connections" on it. I like the way I can organize my books into "bookshelves" on GoodReads & it seems a little more interactive to me. Also, LibraryThing charges a fee after a certain # of books, and I believe GoodReads will always be free.