Get an RSS feed from any web page

Ever felt you wanted to keep an eye on developments on a web page but had no way of tracking it? Well know you have.

Page 2RSS

This service allows you monitor web sites that do not publish feeds. It will check any web page for updates and deliver them to your favorite RSS aggregator.

You can add a button to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar that will create Page2RSS feed for the page you are currently viewing. This is an easy and convenient way for you to create feeds for pages you are surfing.

Why not try it on your favourite pages.

Stewart

More Web 2.0 tools

FotoFlexer is another in an ever expanding list of web 2.0 photo editing tools. This service has a nice interface and quite a detailed range of capabilities. It wouldn’t replace Photoshop, Paintshop Pro or Paint.NET but for quick photo editing it’s ideal.

Writewith is a new text editor available on the web. It offers many of the features that other editor also offers. In addition its claims that “you can upload documents, share with other people, chat, assign tasks, and track everybody’s actions with a comprehensive history”.

If you need to extract text from a pdf file, PDFTextOnline might be the tool for you. It is totally web based and converts PDF text quickly and accurately. It also handles all fonts and languages (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and more)

Use Google Documents for Surveys

Google is always creating new products and new features for existing products. It has just released a new feature for Google Documents that allows you to create a form, using Google spreadsheet, and send it by email to your chosen target group. They won’t need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page.

All responses are then added to to your spreadsheet and you can manipulate the responses as you would any spreadsheet.

Google has even created a Google Docs forms gadget, which you can add to your iGoogle homepage, that allows you to create forms quickly and also helps you keep a close eye on your responses.

This might save you some time if you are surveying a large group of people by email and it is free as well.

Diarmuid

Overview of Web 2.0 services

I came across this post recently and thought people might be interested. Its from The Office 2.0 Database blog by Ismael Ghalimi. In this post he lists the web 2.0 services that he uses on a day to day basis as alternatives to locally installed software and also a host of alternative services that people can use.

Most, but not all, are free services. So it’s well worth a look if you are looking to start working/studying/researching/living virtually.

Diarmuid

Pimp your browser

These days you don’t have to content with the browser that Microsoft (Internet explorer) or Mozilla (Firefox) makes available to you. You can make your browser an extension of your life by adding extensions or add-ons. These are small add-ons that add new functionality to your browser and can  range from a simple toolbar button to a completely new feature. Many of the newly developed web 2.0 services, such as blogging services and social bookmarking sites have extensions that allow you to use their services quite easily.

Firefox and Internet Explorer each has its own collections of extensions. To start you off here are also a list of some popular extensions and add-ons. But there are plenty more out there.

N.B. Firefox has extensions and Internet explorer has add-ons.

Diarmuid

Image management tools and resources

I came across this post on another blog and thought it might be interesting to people. Its called 90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources. It covers Online Photo Editors, Photo Sharing sites, Free Photo Hosting, Photography Blogs, Mashups, Photo Mixing and Slideshows, Photo Printing/Book Creation, Photo Search tools and Stock Photo sites.

This really gives something for anybody using images.

Diarmuid

Personalise your home page

One of the range of web 2.0 services now being offered is the personalised start or home page. Here you can combine all your RSS feeds into one place, gather all your email accounts together and through the use of widgets you can add extra functionality to you pages.

Netvibes is one of the most popular services in this category. It has a very friendly and easy to use interface and has a very active group of users who add to the netvibes ecosystem. This is my own choice for personalised startpage.

Pageflakes is a similar service to netvibes and also has an active user group creating its own flake or widgets. It also offers the ability to do take notes, keep an address book and maintain a calendar.

Webwag is another personalised start page that offers what are now the standardised features of this kind of service, which we’ve mentioned above. It also offers a very easy way of creating widgets for your startup page.

The great thing about these services that that you can mould your page into your own image and create an experience that is truly personal and specfic to you and your interests.

Diarmuid

Alternative to Endnote?

Power Firefox users may be familiar with some of the vast range of extensions that are available for this program. These extensions allow third parties to add new functionality which the Firefox developers may not have thought of or considered important. You can find out about the range of extensions here.
An extension that definitely has use in is the Zotero extension. This Extension allows you to collect manage and cite your research sources. It doesn’t offer the full functionality of Endnote, but its list of features include:

• Automatic capture of citation information from web pages
• Storage of PDFs, files, images, links, and whole web pages
• Formatted citation export (style list to grow rapidly)
• Integration with Microsoft Word
• Runs right in your web browser

It currently only supports a small number of the major citation styles, such as MLA and Chicago, but this should improve with time. Also as it’s an Open Source product it’s free.

Diarmuid

 

Do you wiki?

Wikis are becoming increasingly popular on the web, with Wikipedia being the most famous example. People are using them for a variety of different purposes, such as creating a user updated document that defines procedures and policies or a space for collaborating on a document in real-time or near real-time. The key feature of maintaining a full archive of all content change means that you have a full record of all content created and the contribution of participants.

More and more web based wiki hosting services are being made available. In common with many other web 2.0 services they are being made available for free.

pbwiki offers a very friendly and intuitive interface that allows you to quickly and easily create a wiki. There’s no need to have any code as it has a WYSIWYG interface.

 

Atwiki also offers WYSIWYG interface, but also allows you access to the code if you want it. It also allows you to create RSS Feeds.

On-wiki, in addition to features mentioned before also allows you to create a calendar, write math using LaTex and create graphs.

These are only a tiny sample of the range of wiki services available. If you use one that we haven’t mentioned why not let us know and we’ll feature it.

Diarmuid

 

Free ‘office’ from your computer

Tired of being tied to one computer in order to write your documents or create your spreadsheets? Keep losing your USB key with all your files on them as you move from computer to computer? These days you can do quite a lot of the basic word processing and spreadsheet work using web based services.

Zoho is a comprehensive online service that offers web based alternatives to Word, Excel, Powerpoint, with a variety of other services offered as well. Most of these servcies are offered free, but some of the more advanced services may have a cost associated with them.

Google Documents is another alternative which offers you access to a spreadsheet and word processing service. This has the resources of Google behind it and the development of Google Gears means that it is only a matter of time before this will be a service that you will be able to use when you are not connected to the web as well.

Thinkfree also offers a range of web based office alternative services. Word, Excel and PowerPoint clones are all available free for use.

While none of these products offer the same functionality as Microsoft Office, they are are more than capable of doing the basic jobs that most people do everyday. They all allow you to keep your documents in one place online, so it doesn’t really matter what computer you use, as long as it is connected to the web, and with Google Gears just after being introduced, even that will not be a prerequisite in the future. Their documents are usually Microsoft Office compatible. Considering that these are very new services, they can only get more powerful and sophisticated.

Diarmuid