http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/10/28/microsoft.windows.ap/index.html
A recent article on CNN.com describes the next release of the Windows operating system (Windows 7.0), which will look to address many of the problems of VISTA, and will include "Office Web" software, such as Excel, Powerpoint and Word that runs "in the cloud". My home computer still runs on Windows XP, and I have been hesitant to make the jump to VISTA. If this new release does what it promises to do, I will just go right to Windows 7.0. I am particularly interested in Windows decision to offer its most popular (and lucrative) office software in a web version. As an avid office user (as well as student continually immersed in group projects) I love this idea! For a recent group project we tried to use Google Docs to collaboratively author a paper. This only lasted until we started using some of the more advanced features of Word (linked tables of contents, etc) and then we were forced to go back to saving different versions and emailing it around. I love the flexibility that Google docs offers, which saves me from having to email documents from my work computer to my home computer and vice versa, but I like the functionality offerred by Word. Although I may have been tempted to make the switch to Google Docs, the promise of Office Web will keep me loyal to Microsoft for just a little bit longer...
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Social Networking gets political
Tech Joy
Joy commented on Obama's use of Web 2.0 tools to bolster his campaign efforts, and I feel the need to reiterate how impressed I was at his campaign's abililty to integrate Facebook and other social networking sites into his campaign. On election eve, I was fascainted by the wave of facebook status updates pertaining to the election. Early Monday afternoon I started seeing status updates along the lines of "John Smith is the 1,173,585th person to donate their status to get out the vote for Barack Obama today. Donate yours: http://causes.com/election".
When I first started noticing these updates, people were in the 500,000's in terms of numbers who donated their status. Within a few hours or so the numbers were above 1.5 million. The speed at which that status spread was just incredible - and ingenious on the part of the Obama social networking team. The Obama facebook application, which allows you to see which of your friends are Obama supporters, view short campaign videos, and spread the campaign messages, is just one online tool votes can take advantage of. Others include an iPhone app and the Barak Obama social networking website that Joy mentions. By the time McCain launched a facebook app, Obama already had signed up a million "friends".
There are many articles and blog posts on the way in which the Obama campaign has utilized Web 2.0 tools to advance its goals, but for me, nothing was as powerful a demonstration as the "donate your status" campaign that swept through my facebook friends!
Joy commented on Obama's use of Web 2.0 tools to bolster his campaign efforts, and I feel the need to reiterate how impressed I was at his campaign's abililty to integrate Facebook and other social networking sites into his campaign. On election eve, I was fascainted by the wave of facebook status updates pertaining to the election. Early Monday afternoon I started seeing status updates along the lines of "John Smith is the 1,173,585th person to donate their status to get out the vote for Barack Obama today. Donate yours: http://causes.com/election".
When I first started noticing these updates, people were in the 500,000's in terms of numbers who donated their status. Within a few hours or so the numbers were above 1.5 million. The speed at which that status spread was just incredible - and ingenious on the part of the Obama social networking team. The Obama facebook application, which allows you to see which of your friends are Obama supporters, view short campaign videos, and spread the campaign messages, is just one online tool votes can take advantage of. Others include an iPhone app and the Barak Obama social networking website that Joy mentions. By the time McCain launched a facebook app, Obama already had signed up a million "friends".
There are many articles and blog posts on the way in which the Obama campaign has utilized Web 2.0 tools to advance its goals, but for me, nothing was as powerful a demonstration as the "donate your status" campaign that swept through my facebook friends!
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