Blogger

An advantage to uploading an image directly to Blogger is the convenience and ease of use to display the image. The Web site automatically uploads the pictures for you when you want to upload them from your computer. An advantage for embedding the code from Flickr is the ease of use from installing the image from a Web page. Embedding the code to Blogger from a Web page is easier than saving the image to your computer and uploading it to the Web site.

Financial Companies Use RSS Feeds

Financial companies are using RSS feeds to communicate with clients about what is happening with financial institutions and updates on different subjects. Three subjects that are able to be monitored on a RSS feed through a financial company are bank rate changes, mortgage rates, and stock monitoring. Bank rate changes are updated regularly to reflect changes to adjustable rate mortgages and the interest rate for CDs. Mortgage rates are monitored by customers seeking houses through various lenders using RSS feeds. Stock monitoring is done by stock analysts to track stock market changes, and the readers can customize the RSS feeds to select the stocks or mutual funds that they wish to monitor. With financial companies using RSS feeds, they will be able to manage their time to better accommodate their clients.

Article: http://www.feedforall.com/finance-companies-use-rss.htm

Google Reader Experience

Google Reader has been a great tool this week to keep me up-to-date on all the feeds I am subscribed too.

Two benefits for using a feed reader is the communication for delivering content in innovative ways and the ease of subscribing to content of interest for the readers. The content is delivered quickly with enough coverage of the topic to get a reader interested to read the full article. Each time a new article is available to read the feed reader updates itself with the newest articles. Readers can search for subscriptions to feed readers with their favorite interests as the subjects. With the readers being able to find articles with their favorite interests, the flow of articles to the readers' pages will be read more often.

Two drawbacks for feed readers is that not all websites support RSS feeds and that the feeds need photos to make them more appealing. When a website that interests a reader does not support RSS feeds, it makes it annoying to not be able to get the updates from the articles on their favorite website. While viewing the feeds in Google Reader, most of them did not have photos to catch my attention to the articles being viewed. Photos would help the articles to be more appealing to gain the attention of readers.

Wiki Collaboration

http://www.elevatorview.com/2008/01/08/7-effective-wiki-uses-and-the-companies-that-benefit-from-them/

Wikis are used for developing networks, managing software development, technical documentation, knowledge bases, and intranets and extranets. Different companies use wikis for these reasons, espically Pixar. The producer of animated films uses a wiki within the production of films to manage the animation. The article mentions that the Wall Street Journal stated the company is using a wiki "to help coordinate new computerized animation tools for the studio's planned 2008 release of a film called WALL-E."

About Myself

My name is Rebecca, and I am a student at UAB. Three of my favorite websites are Facebook.com, Mail.Yahoo.com, Weather.com. I always visit Facebook at least once a day to keep in contact with my mother since she created an account on there with in the last year. I have used Yahoo Mail for about eight years and like to read the articles that are posted on Yahoo.com. The last website I always use is the Weather Channel to check the weather within three different cities since I travel back and forth from them.

Embedding a Video

This video by Michael Wesch presents a good introduction to Web 2.0.

Formatting Blog Posts

Today I am trying out some of the fancy formatting options in Blogger.

I can add hyperlinks, images, and videos to display on my blog. I can also edit posts in my blog.

Welcome to my blog!

I'm excited to be creating this blog for my Web 2.0 class. I am on the Web all the time and I am excited to learn more about how it works.