http://www.getnetsavvy.info Tips for making the internet more useful Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:52:33 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The whole point of a document in Portable Document Format (PDF) is that you’re not supposed to be able to edit it. PDFs were invented by Adobe to solve a common problem in the early days of computerised typesetting: documents would print differently depending on what computer system you were using, what fonts you’d installed, [...]]]> http://www.getnetsavvy.info/tricks-for-editing-pdfs Ever emailed a document as an attachment back and forth between people, gradually adding edits and suggestions? This can be a very cumbersome way of collaborating, especially if three or four people are involved. You may even end up with several different semi-edited versions, which have to be painstakingly stitched together and reconciled. Email is [...]]]> http://www.getnetsavvy.info/google-docs-better-than-office In 2008, only 5% of the U.S. population was aware of Twitter; today, it’s 87%, about as many as know about Facebook. But far fewer people use Twitter than Facebook, which is a shame, as Twitter has lots of uses, and is not as evil. If you’re interested in getting started with it this Profhacker [...]]]> http://www.getnetsavvy.info/twitter-actually-useful As part of your web identity, it’s good to have your own domain name, like davehuffington.com or frogresearch.org: one that you control, that you can keep as you go from job to job, and that can be the basis of a permanent personal email address. If you start a new project or set up a [...]]]> http://www.getnetsavvy.info/registering-a-domain-name Most students use Wikipedia, but there has been quite a backlash against it from academics. Here’s what a student needs to know. Everybody uses Wikipedia all the time, including lecturers. It’s a great place to get an overview of a field, and it’s usually accurate, detailed, and up-to-date. It’s not a peer-reviewed academic publication, so [...]]]> http://www.getnetsavvy.info/wikipedia-for-students The Google Books project involved spending $300 million to scan 10 million books and make them available on the Web. This immediately caused legal strife with authors and publishers, but a settlement has been reached (at least in the USA). Robert Darnton in a NY Review article gives one perspective on the settlement, Lawrence Lessig [...]]]> http://www.getnetsavvy.info/google-books You may be sceptical about the value of being on Facebook. Yes, it is a largely-pointless and addictive procrastination tool. But there are strong arguments for signing up. And if you get sick of it you can always quit, although deleting an account is not as simple as it looks. But it has been nicely [...]]]> http://www.getnetsavvy.info/what-if-anything-is-facebook-for When you’re learning to use the Net better, it can be helpful to know where you stand in relation to everyone else. There have been numerous attempts to divide internet users into marketing group or tribes: one recent attempt has been the Digital Anthropology Report, which ranks people from Digital Extroverts to Timid Technophobes. The [...]]]> http://www.getnetsavvy.info/%e2%80%9ctribes%e2%80%9d-of-internet-users Wikipedia claims to be a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. And that’s exactly what it is. Its name comes from the Hawai‘ian wiki, or quick: a wiki is any collaborative, easily-edited web page. You hear people using Wiki as a nickname for Wikipedia, but that’s not really correct: the foundation that runs it also [...]]]> http://www.getnetsavvy.info/all-about-wikipedia I’m teaching a Continuing Education course on Web 2.0, what it is, and why it matters. The best summary I’ve seen of all the Web 2.0 buzzwords, and a reasonable mission statement for the course, is this pic from Wired. I’ll redraw it for the page when I get a moment. Here’s the lecture schedule: [...]]]> http://www.getnetsavvy.info/what-is-web-2-0