Week #8 -- Online Applications & Tools

While I didn't spend a lot of time on this lesson, I found and learned several things that would be useful. Of the online applications I like Google Docs the best. As I mentioned before I belong to a group of Western Mass.crafters who wanted to see the spreadsheet I had created for upcoming craft shows and applications due dates. I managed to get it into Google Docs fairly easily but emailing it took a couple of tries. I had to allow it to be shared and how wasn't obvious to me at first.

I already use the Yahoo calendar with the same group and we've found it helpful to post events, craft shows, gem shows, etc.

I then took a look at the short list of Web 2.0 Awards sites. I really liked a lot of the websites I found there, so it's hard to speak to one in particular. I've already used several of these, such as Zillow where you can look up house prices by address and the cost of houses in the neighborhood. I have my pictures up on Flickr and when I'm desperate to find something I have checked Craigslist. But there are several really cool sites out there with great and entertaining information.

If you're into genealogy, and that may be something you tend to do when you get old, My Heritage is a free site. While I haven't really explored it much as you have to download it, it appears that it might be helpful in locating lost relatives. I'll download it into my home computer and see how it goes. I plan to do a lot of traveling after retirement. Farecast on Bing is another site like Travelzoo and Best Fares that has flight information. But Boo has reviews of destinations, hotels, and restaurants. Very useful.

Definitely useful with its local restaurant reviews is Urbanspoon. And then there's Im Cooked. Loaded with cooking videos that instruct as well as entertain. I really enjoyed the "coffee art" video. Just fun.

And lastly, and not part of this lesson, I learned how to put urls under words so you can click on them and get to the site. It was incredibly easy and I don't know why I never tried before.