Create your own heritage-themed social network in minutes with Ning
Sometimes the needs of a heritage group extend beyond the simple need to convey information. Blogs and Facebook fan pages allow limited interactivity. But for groups whose members are intensely passionate about a topic, a free social networking site like Ning could be the way to go.
Livestream to bring awareness of heritage resources to the world
by Dylan Staley
Qik and USTREAM, both live video blogging sites, allow users to connect their internet-enabled devices (be it computers or camera-enabled cellphones) to their servers and upload a live video feed, directly to the website. No longer do you need to wait until the event is over, on until your upload finishes, or until the website host finishes encoding your video. Viewers can watch what is happening right now, right now.
Twitter and microblogging: Instant communication with your community
“What are you up to?”
It’s how we greet friends and strangers alike everyday. It’s also the question behind one of the web’s most popular social networking sites: Twitter. Voices of the Past posts links to its news, along with other community announcements, at www.twitter.com/ptnews. So what is microblogging, and what can you gain from it?
Heritage DIY: Create and Preserve your Family Tree the Web 2.0 Way
By Dylan Staley
Geni is a web based family tree maker that is using the idea of Web 2.0 and collaboration to make finding your long lost relatives easier. Geni, built by some of the people that brought you PayPal, eGroups, eBay, and Tribe, allows you to work with your family members on building your family tree. So, you may not know your second great grandmother’s husband’s name, but your grandmother’s sister may know, and Geni provides the platform to allow this knowledge to travel the great distances that often separate families.
Friendfeed and Lifestreaming: Your total web experience all on one page
Voices of the Past has added a feature that makes communicating on the internet fun again. The tool is called Friendfeed, and it is just one of a growing number of “lifestreaming” tools that allow you to instantly pull all your web activities onto one page, and have conversations about them with your friends.
Armchair tour of museums and Web 2.0
By Nina Simon
Confused about social media? Don’t know where to start? For the last two years, I’ve been hunting down great projects in and outside of museums that exemplify the themes of visitor participation, user-generated content, and flexible relationships between institutions and visitors. Here are some of my favorite museum projects that represent interesting, thoughtful experiments with Web 2.0:
What is social media?
For the last couple of years, the terms “web 2.0″ and “social media” have been used for nearly anything new and interactive on the internet. Since Voices of the Past and sites like it integrate many basic social media tools, let’s take the time to consider the concept of social media and its potential to advance heritage preservation.
RSS & Aggregation: The web you want, where you want it
We’re all hearing stories about how newspapers are obsolete and print is dead. But what’s taking their place? After, all the big attraction of newspapers is their scannability. We humans have become accustomed to absorbing a world of timely knowledge, at a glance. The answer lies in RSS, or really simple syndication.
Social Bookmarking: organize your online experience
Yahoo claims to have indexed some 20 billion web pages. With that much real estate on the web, how can you be assured you will ever find—and get back to—the information most relevant to you?
The answer is social bookmarking. And it’s not quite the same as the favorite birthday card you used to hold your spot in the novels you read over the summer. One of the most widely used of these tools is one called “Delicious.” Delicious is a free service that allows the user a web-based way to bookmark sites.