Visiting the Family Sick

This week has been a busy one and has included visiting the sick and injured members of my family. The annexed photo shows my mother, who is in a remarkable condition, considering a week prior to the photo shown she was involved in a serious car accident that clould easily have killed her. She managed to get out with just some bruising and minor abrasions. From what I understand three cars were written off in the accident, so quite amazing. The photo also shows my grandfather who now lives at a nursing home in Wallsend.

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Mylifelisted.com

Mylifelisted.com is a social network where members can list, count and share their life experiences. It seems a little odd perhaps to make lists of your experiences – what you’ve done, when you’ve done it, where you’ve been and what you’ve achieved – but it may be a useful way to remember your life to some degree. When you add locations on a map, add photos and comments, add the names of people who shared your experiences, the lists you form begin to take on even more meaning. So perhaps mylifelisted.com could be a helpful and useful way to remember your life.

Mylifelisted.com has only just begun and I have only just signed up, so time will tell as to how useful a site it is. I’ll give it a try anyhow.

http://www.mylifelisted.com

Save the Words

Save the Words is an interesting little site set up by the Oxford Dictionary. It is all about saving words that are no longer used much these days by encouraging members of the site to use them each day. Worth a look – and join as I have to save the English language. The site has a lot more potential and it will be interesting to see if it is developed any further.

http://www.savethewords.org/

Digg

Digg has been in the news a bit over recent months, with stories of its demise and failure to stay relevant. Personally I think such talk is premature, though certainly it did fail to listen to its members and its membership dropped as a consequence. This has all changed now and the site has again been overhauled, more in keeping with the wishes of its users.

Digg is a social network where members ‘Digg’ news stories that appeal to them as they surf the web. This can be done by posting the link of the story on the Digg site, in browser extensions/plug ins, etc. Digg is a very user interactive site, where the users likes/dislikes help to promote stories or bury them. If you are a website owner, you can integrate Digg into your site with various widgets and buttons. In short, Digg allows the users to share web content with friends and others within the Digg community.

You can also use Digg to explore news articles and content, simply by visiting the site and looking at the current listings.

Visit Digg at:
http://digg.com/

Grou.ps – Free, but Not Really

I haven’t posted for a few days on this Blog. Reason? I have been busy deactivating social networks and deleting information I have stored on the Grou.ps platform. I have also been advising members in these communities to do the same.

I was once an advocate for Grou.ps, despite the many problems that existed there, sure that the service was improving and there was great potential in the platform. Now I feel that I have been betrayed by a platform I defended and pushed. Why do I feel this? The service has decided to go premium – though there is a free option also. However, the free option removes the privacy and moderation that owners of Grou.ps communities were assured of. You can just imagine what will happen with spam and privacy under these circumstances. Added to that, the platform is plagued with performance issues and seemingly full of bugs (at least that has been my experience and that of many others in the support forums).

I will not be supporting Grou.ps and longer and withdraw all of my endorsements of their product. As someone in the support forum said, they don’t mind paying for a service that works. Neither do I, but there is also the issue of the bad taste left in my mouth as a result of the way Grou.ps has ‘betrayed’ their loyal members and users.

http://grou.ps/

Plinky

For today’s ‘daily’ I’m going to post about a new service from ‘Automattic,’ the guys behind WordPress.com. They have a new service called ‘Plinky.’

Basically, what this new service is all about is giving its members prompts for Blog posts. The service will ask you a question, which you then answer. This then becomes your Blog post, which can be added to your usual Blogging platform, such as WordPress (which is what I do). It can be shared direct from the site or embedded via a code that Plinky provides. I have been copying and pasting this code into my web editor in order to format the text as I would like it to appear in my Blog.

I think this is a great little service to help those just starting out in Blogs, as it will provide you with the basis for a daily post. It will also help those who struggle to come up with content for their Blogs.

Me? I just use it to supplement what I already post – to give my Blog a little more personal appeal.

Visit Plinky at:

http://www.plinky.com/

Penzu: Create a Private or Public Diary

Some people like to have a diary in which they pen their private thoughts – just for themselves. Penzu is the online equivalent of that idea. It will also allow you to share your diary or journal should you to choose to do so. However, one the best things about Penzu is that it is unlikely to be found by nosey people looking about your house – even your partner or other family members.

http://penzu.com/