The Last Thing!

Whew, finally done.

Well, I'm supposed to share my thoughts on this whole project, so here goes. All in all, it was a rather enjoyable trip, though not without some potholes and blowouts along the way. On the plus side, I got to look at and try out a bunch of things that I never would have, left to my own devices. Heck, a bunch of 'em I'd never even heard of before! The online productivity tools (word processor, etc.) were great and really useful.

My gut feeling, though, is that many of the sites are more "flavor of the month" rather than useful: examples would be delicious (gack), flickr, and that avatar generator. The last two were somewhat entertaining, but not something I'll ever have need of again. Yes, I know some of this is supposed to be play, but still.

I'm also a bit peeved that no mention was made of discussion forums, which can actually be useful. I belong to a couple of them myself, having joined long before Internet 2.0 was invented. The purpose of this exercise was to--and I quote--"learn about the new and emerging technologies that are reshaping the context of information on the Internet today" yet where were My Space and Facebook? Seems to me that everyone in the whole world (except me, natch) belongs to one or both of those. I've still never visited either site and probably won't unless some compelling reason to arises. I can't for the life of me think of what that compelling reason might be...

Also, shouldn't we have at least touched on online gaming? Considering that's what 90% of the people using our public computers are doing, it'd be nice to know what the heck they're up to.

I'd have covered online chat, as well.

But that's all water under the bridge. I'm done, and am looking forward to my 1.8 CEUs. On the off chance that I should win a Wii or a Zune out of this, I have one word:

Ebay.