Thing 17

Truth be told, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by the number of online communities there are. Why exactly is my calendar supposed to be a social network? (A PS after writing the entry: I can see using the calendar on my school website for upcoming band events.) Some of these tools, such as Remember the Milk and 30 Days, looked interesting yet more complicated than what I currently do. My husband's PDA syncs with our computer so we both have access to our calendar. If I need to remind myself to do something, I send myself an email. Of course, the time-honored post-it note method shouldn't be forgotten either! LibraryThing looked interesting, but not enough for me to invest time into using it instead of reading. Trailfire seemed a lot like Delicious; maybe I didn't fully understand it properly. Of the tools, Bubbl, Zoho and Knowtes seemed to have the most applications for the classroom, yet I kept wondering why I should have a Zoho account if Google Docs will do essentially the same thing? I was too young for the VHS/Betamax format war and didn't pay attention to the blue ray/whatever the other one was (!) high def DVD competition, but the sheer number of collaborative tools seem to have some similarities. I doubt that all of them will survive long-term; I'd expect one or two to become dominant. It also reminds me how important brand name and early brand loyalty is. I'd be less likely to switch from Google docs because I'm familiar with the Google name. Many people I know have Google accounts. Using the docs feature just seems like the next step, one that already has name-recongition and doesn't require yet another account to track.