change and web2 discussion again

I've just read a posting that reminded me a lot about one of my older postings. I'm just being given more arguments. We should think and evaluate very well before choosing online free applications to support our serios work.

google again

here is a blog entry that goes in the same direction with my ideas about Google. Enjoy :-)

http://www.top10-lists.com/2009/01/top-10-reasons-to-fear-google.html

transparency

What do you think about transparency? Well, everybody likes transparency, from politics to private life it gives us the feeling of freedom, honesty, confidence. But what is the other side of the coin when this transparency crosses the boundarys of being our own choice and it gets nicely "imposed" to us; all for good causes of course: saving the whales, making the world a better place, being transparent enough to "help" others.
Google gives us again the possibility to be "a good person".
maybe having a Tofflerian "third job" doesn't bother us but shouldn't it be as long as it doesn't "harm" us?

Change

Reading the news today I found out that Google was closing Lively, its virtual world browser application. It didn't strike me more than that because I was not the biggest fun of this application to which I had found several bugs, difficulties to connect and no special or original features. But, since it wasn't a bad application either, in my lab we were thinking of using this tool to support collaboration and community building among our distance master students. For different reasons, it finally never happened.

We have been using for more than a year Pageflakes with our students. But for the last month it wasn't working anymore in Geneva. So one of the main tools used in one of the courses, with all the information and work that we had done with it was inaccessible for unknown reasons. Now it miraculously works again so everything got back on tracks.

As far as I am concerned, that raises some issues about criteria for choosing and using web2.0 tools for teaching or even for personal use. But as Toffler said once "change is not necessary to life, it's life" and the laws of consumption seem to rule these changes.

KallOut

Here is a great tool to facilitate internet research. I've installed it and currently use it. It is very simple and ergonomic. You just have to select the text you want to do the internet research on and KallOut proposes you diffrent research tools like google, google maps, wikipedia etc.
I think it worths to give it a try! Not another usless gadget ;-)
http://kallout.com/index.html

shareware

http://main.wixi.com/

Chrome one again

The last big fuss among technologists is about Chrome. The new Google browser stirs the internauts community and raises some main discussions about: (1) its functionalities, characteristics, performances, (2) its impact in the political-economical world mainly confronting it to Microsoft Explorer and Mozilla.
Considering the latest evolution of Google, it's normal that if they decide to create and launch a browser it's a nice good one. I don't want to discuss the characteristics or performances of this browser. Most of the reviews i read rate it pretty well. Even though in the comparisons with IE and Mozilla it doesn't go “jaw dropping”...

What draws my attention is that in parallel with all the evaluation, discussions and fuss around this new browser probably many people, mostly the ones who believe in the beautiful "anti Microsoft monopole" current will end up by adopting it. But what does it really mean? Weakening a giant? Maybe... but doesn't it mean, like always in the history, replacing this giant with another one at least as powerful as the previous?

My main question: We say that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Aren't these intentions the engine that maybe the new giant Google bases it's raising on?