Topic 8.3, 8.4

For people that use social networks religiously or have a vested interest, it is a good thing that their data can be shared or rolled around their various sites.

For others - it is not a good thing. They may want to stay anonymous on one site, and have only shared some infrmation with close people on another one. The fact they all link in could be very bad for users who are trying to keep things apart.

FOAF forms a part of the semantic web and web services via social networks as it plays a service to users by being able to link all their information together. It plays as a service to hold all the info together for a users own web presence.

8.4 -

a) RSS (most commonly translated as "Really Simple Syndication" but sometimes "Rich Site Summary") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.
Web syndication is a form of syndication in which website material is made available to multiple other sites. Most commonly, web syndication refers to making web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary of the website's recently added content (for example, the latest news or forum posts).
Data aggregation is any process in which information is gathered and expressed in a summary form

What RSS + syndication + aggregation has made concise highly update information avail to users who wish to subscribe to it, making information all the more easy to find.

b) Del.i.cious doesn't "tag" data, it bookmarks it for other users. Bookmarking would be easier to relate to as books were popularised centuries before the internet appeared, and pages were marked so that one could find their place.

c) Go 2 Web 2.0 - provides so many links to tools i've never heard of! I can see much research being done on these to find out how they all work, and which ones can benefit furture workgroups for collaboration whether it be for uni or another reason. I never knew so many existed!

d) Elgg operates on web sites it is installed on benefitting the user in creating their own online networks. It looks to be exactly the same as any other social networking tool. I wouldn't however want it installed on my machine. I find that the colour scheme and design layout is terrible, plus wanting to get other users on it would be a hassle.