Today I am posting two photos of the same building, taken many years apart. The building in the photos is the old A.A. Company’s (Australian Agricultural Company) Church Building at Carrington (Port Stephens) in New South Wales, Australia. The building currently serves as a private residence.
I have been having some problems with Internet connectivity over the last few days, so my attempts to return to daily posts are suffering a few setbacks at the moment. Hopefully this will all be sorted soon.
Today’s post is a link to a new social network called ‘Capsule.’ It is a place for setting up a private place for event planning and groups. I have started to use the site and will see how it goes over the longer term, but at the outset it seems to be a very useful private social network type site for small groups and the like. It is in beta development and you need to request an invite to be able to join.
Have a look for yourself at:
http://trycapsule.com/
Pip.io is an online way of having conversations with family and friends in chat format. Discussions can be either private or public. It is a very useful site which I use with some of my websites. You can join discussions or start your own channels – for free.
It has now been a month since New Year’s Day and perhaps a bit under a month since the New Year’s Resolutions that many sought to undertake fell by the way-side. Now is perhaps the time to have another look at those resolutions (and perhaps others we have thought about and done little with) and plan to do something about them. This is where 101in365 comes in. 101in365 is a web application/social network that provides a tool to assist tn meeting goals – 101 of them in fact, in 365 days.
The first thing you need to do (after registering of course) is come up with a list of 101 things you would like to achieve in a year (365 days). You enter these into your listing of 101 aims/goals. Once this is done you can lock your list in and begin the work required to bring them to past. You are able to update your list by marking each item as in progress and then to mark off each item as it is achieved.
With 101in365, you are able to keep your list of goals private or you can share them with the wider 101in365 community and/or your friends and family. It’s up to you. You are also able to interact with others via both Twitter and Facebbok if you like.
The tool itself is rather simple to you and before you know it you can have it all up and running. It is somewhat more difficult to actually achieve the goals you set yourself. At least this tool is a welcome way to assist in reaching your goals and is certainly able to be used as a means of encouragement and stimulus.
Visit 101in365 at:
http://www.101in365.com/
Some people like to keep a personal and private diary or journal. It may be for just jotting down thoughts that you want to remember for some reason, perhaps private reflections on daily happenings or whatever reason it may be. I have tried to keep a diary on a number of occasions – with varying degrees of success. I was never able to keep it up for great periods of time however.
I am trying to keep a journal again now. I use two online resources for doing so now. The first is penzu – which I really wanted to test out and see if it was any good and if it met my needs. Penzu is an application that is allows users to have their own personal and private diary or journal stored online (or in the ‘cloud,’ as they say these days). You are also able to share your entries with the world should you so wish – but they are private by default.
Penzu is free to sign up for and there is a permanent free version of the application. There is of course also a premium or paid for version which offers more options.
The free version also allows you to insert photos (including those stored at flickr). There is a very useful auto-save feature, which means you won’t loose your entries by forgetting to save them. Should you choose to share an entry with others, there is a comments feature for others to share their thoughts on your entry.
The ‘pro’ or ‘premium’ version has a lot more to offer. I don’t have the premium account, just the free one at this stage. Should you choose to upgrade you are of course able to do so. Should you wish to secure your entries to a greater degree than the free version, the premium version allows for that. The premium version also allows for larger photos, more than one diary or journal, the ability to export data in a number of formats, mobile diary ability, email posts to your diary, set reminders, tagging of posts, etc.
Check out the site at:
https://penzu.com/home
As I try to get back into Blogging on a regular basis again (yeah, I seem to be struggling with that at the moment), I thought I might use my daily posts on this Blog to offer up some links to some more web applications and social networking sites. I generally think that most of these are applications of some type or another, even though some of them will have a social aspect to them.
The first is skinnyo. Skinnyo, as the name probably suggests, is about getting ‘skinnier.’ It is an application to assist the user in loosing weight. Skinnyo gives you a personal weight loss diary that includes embeddable graphs and a photo history for tracking weight loss – which also includes a target goal that you can set and aim at.
If however you are unable to find the motivation to stay on track by being a private user of the application, you can also pull in friends and other users to assist in your weight loss efforts. This is done by setting challenges and/or joining other challenges set by others. This is where the social side of the application and community comes in. Of course there is also a status and news feed of others within your circle of skinnyo friends, so you can keep track of your friends weight loss efforts and share your own with them – setting up something of a support network.
As for showing others your weight – that doesn’t happen. Skinnyo will only show your differences in weight (that which has been lost – or perhaps gained). So no need to be too embarrassed by it all.
There is interaction available with both Facebook and Twitter accounts as well – should you wish to do so.
There is also a widget that is available allowing you to embed your weight loss efforts in a website or Blog (only showing the weight loss – not your weight).
Did I mention it is free to use?
Me? Well, I’m on my way loosing weight and to reaching my goal.
Check out the site at:
http://www.skinnyo.com/
DeepMemo is another social networking site for quotes. There are a number of uses for DeepMemo, whether it be collating quotes for private use or sharing quotes with others.
There is a toolbar that can be installed in your browser, which will allow you to highlight text and then press a button for the quotation to be saved and shared.
If you’re interested in setting up a group/community/social network, perhaps you might like to check out ‘The Fridge.’ The Fridge is a place where you can set up a free group/community/social network. There are plenty of places these days for setting up a group and/or a social network. You could of course try Google Groups, Grou.ps and/or Yahoo Groups. If you are happy to pay there are other possibilities including Ning. The Fridge is not a site I had even heard of until a few days ago, but it could be worth a look or worth experimenting with for a while.
A member of a Fridge group gets a personal profile, which has a wall similar to Facebook. You can also post a photo for your profile. It really is a very simple social network providing a very basic service. It really seems to be a way of having very basic communication with other members of the group. You can post a picture with a post. So basically it provides a secure and private place for communicating. I guess email really accomplishes the same thing to some degree.
Have a look at:
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.
There are quite a number of strange sights at Lightning Ridge in New South Wales, Australia. The photo at left is one of them. The building is known as ‘Amigo’s Castle,’ which is a private home with construction begun back in 1981.
The building was inspired by Roman ruins located near Amigo’s birthplace in his homeland – Italy. It has all the trappings including, dungeons and tunnels – that form part of the owner’s opal mine.
Amigo’s Castle can be seen while taking the self-drive ‘Red Car Door Tour’ in Lightning Ridge (visit the Visitor’s Centre in Lightning Ridge for a brochure).
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