View Docs Online certainly is a quick and simple alternative to GoogleDocs.
Simply browse your computer for the document you want to upload, click ‘View Docs Online’ and voila, your document is ready to be embedded into blogs, shared via email, Twitter, Delicious, Diigo, LinkedIn, Tumblr (and many more) or even exported as a PDF. Here is a video to show you more about View Docs Online:
AudioBoo is an audio blogging site that uses mobile phones as a recording device. At present only iPhones and iPod touch can access AudioBoo as an app. Recorded Boos can be accessed via the AudioBoo website or links from sites like Twitter .
AudioBoo homepage
Although in the initial stages on development, and as such the website is a bit messy, interested people can subscribe to Boos through RSS. Boos can also be embedded into blogs and wikis via an embed code similar to YouTube embed codes.
Here is a Boo by Stephen Fry:
AudioBoo could have as many different learning applications as podcasts, but with the ease of uploading quickly and easily via mobile phone. It seems that the Boos on the website are all fairly short at present and so seem to be a Twitter style ‘microaudioblog’ or is that ‘audiomicroblog’?
And isn’t is so nice to hear a lovely voice like Stephen Fry’s?
AudioBoo people are currently in the development stage of users being able to record via any mobile or landline phone. Here’s hoping for the ability to record directly from a computer!
Tumblr is an example of a tumblelog. What’s a tumblelog? It is a type of microblogging platform that some people say is better than Twitter.
Wikipedia describes tumblelogs as
Tumblr specifically lets you share your links, photos and thoughts via your browser, phone or email.
Tumblelogs are being used for creative and artistic reasons such as displaying artwork and photos. It could be used in school libraries for quick book reviews, photos of displays or links for particular assignments. Students would not be able to sign up for a Tumblr account as it restricts users to those over 18 years of age. However, the Tumblr site is visually attractive and could be of some to use to school libraries.
Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ tool that lets you send and receive short messages. Tweets, or messages, contain no more than 140 characters including punctuation and spaces, so messages have to be short and sweet. The information you send in your message is meant to answer the question, ‘What are you doing?’
You can invite contacts to join Twitter and you can decide who can read your updates. Your updates can be displayed on your Twitter homepage, sent via email, instant messaging, RSS, (SMS but this is currently only available in USA, Canada, UK and India) and to Facebook pages. You can also set Twitter to ‘quiet time’ when you don’t want to be interrupted, or you’re just sick of being able to be contacted all of the time.
Twitter could be a useful tool for colleagues working together in different locations, or for students collaborating on projects. Other applications such as authoring tools, mashups, search engines and voice to Twitter (Twitterfone) have been developed to complement Twitter. However, not all of the applications have been devised by the people behind Twitter. The Twitter Blog is a useful tool that lists a range of Twitter applications. The blog keeps up to date with what’s hot and it also provides a dictionary of ‘Twitter lingo’.