Homework Collaboration Via Shvoong Homework

If your a student still in school, your going to like this service. Shvoong Homework provides students with the ability to organize and share homework resources.

Shvoong Homework allows students to type-up their schoolwork, keep it organized, and then share it with individuals, classmates, the entire class or no one at all, all within the confines of their online service. Shvoong claims that they have no intention on replacing the real thing whether it be text books, essays, magazines ect, but rather serve as a tool, to help students wade through the vast amount of information that is widely available at their finger tips.

ShvoongHomework In Action

Some of the noticeable features of Shvoong Homework include:

My TimeTable: Let’s students create a Timetable for their personal class schedules using an intuitive wizard. Students can indicate specific lessons, add exam schedules and attach a teacher’s name. Each Timetable is linked to Notebooks and allows Students to easily navigate between their Timetable and any particular Notebook they created. Students can even receive email alerts for upcoming assignments and exams.

My Notebook: Let’s students write-up their class notes, homework, summaries, and exam preparations. Of course the number of Notebooks students can create and the amount of content in each Notebook is unlimited.

Languages: Shvoong Homework supports an amazing 30 languages. These even include such languages as Hebrew, Hindi, Portuguese, Polish, Arabic, and Farsi.

When asked why Shvoong was created, CEO Eyal Rivlin responded with,

“We spoke to teachers who were frustrated with their students’ lack of dedication to homework. We then spoke to the kids and asked them what would make doing homework more fun. We then took all their feedbacks and created Shvoong Homework.”

“With so many distractions it’s no wonder kids don’t do as much homework as they should. We decided to revolutionize homework and make it fun. The result is Shvoong Homework.”

Shvoong Homework is Privately owned and fully funded by Avi Shaked, founder and main shareholder of 888.com.

I’ve sent in an email to Shvoong Homework wanting to know how they plan on preventing students from copying each others work over the net. Whenever I see the words Homework and Sharing in the same sentence, I think COPY. This post will be updated later today once I find out the answer.

Web 2.0 Photography Contest Winner

Jeffro2pt0 Web 2.0 Photography Contest Today is the last day of the month and so it’s time I announce the winner of the Real World Web 2.0 Photography Contest. The winning submission was sent in by vipworld The winning entry features an artistic shot of someone holding an Ipod. The Ipod features a pastel red color as well as rounded corners, two facets which make up most web 2.0 websites.

There were only two entries over a two month period leading me to believe one of two things. Either web 2.0 doesn’t PHYSICALLY exist outside of the internet or, I didn’t promote this contest well enough. Considering how many views this post has as well as the amount of folks finding this page via Google searches, I think it’s safe to say that the majority of concepts and things attributed to Web 2.0 are within the confines of the internet.

Thanks to all who joined the group and spreading the word. Congratulations to Vipworld. Your 1 Year Flickr Pro Membership has already been purchased. Enjoy!

Jeffro2pt0.com Undergoes More Updates

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but I have had an inkling to change some things around here. Some of those things include the commenting system. Not only did it look like an eyesore, but it lacked a few features that I have been wanting to implement for some time now. I have implemented SezWho, a plugin and service which highlights user reputation. Users can rate your comment up or down which after a period of time, can be known as your reputation. Readers of this site can now minimize or maximize individual comments, sort comments based on ratings and rate each other, including me. I’ve also completed some design work which is not entirely finished. I still have a couple more design tweaks I would like to do before I can consider this area of the blog done.

Over the weekend, I decided to try out the idea of having a shoutbox. I realize the word SHOUTBOX is so 1990′s but it’s still one of the easiest ways of leaving feedback without having to go through a series of steps. Check out the chat area on the sidebar on the right hand side of this site and leave a message. This is just one more way of allowing me to have two way communication with the readers of this site.

I finally added a little bit of information to the CONTACT ME page. I’ve added some text before the contact form and I’ve also put up a list of other services/networks that I have an account on in which you can get in contact with me. So far, there are over 20 ways of getting in touch with me. Please don’t use them all at the same time :)

That’s the realm of updates for now. I’ll be finishing up the rest of the changes tomorrow with a follow up post letting you know what’s up.

Live Video Feed From New Media Expo

For those that are interested, TalkShoe has begun their live coverage of the Podcast and New Media Expo being held in Ontario California. The stream will be ongoing all day long. iJustine is sort of co-hosting the event and is streaming live video from the expo. The video and audio stream is intermittently going out but they appear to be doing the best they can with their setup.

To tune in to the show, click here. After the page loads, look for the LISTEN symbol and click on it. This will open a new window with the live stream.

Watch ijustine live video and chat on Justin.tv

Microsoft Updates Live Search Engine

Microsoft has updated is LIVE search engine today. The updates were focused around the core search technology as well as the vertical search areas of entertainment, shopping, local and health. Collectively, these improvements mark a quality milestone based on the company’s focus on delivering a better search experience for consumers and advertisers.

Here are some of the updates which were covered.

Over fourfold increase in index size.

Substantial improvements in understanding queryintent.

Significant enhancements to core algorithms.

Increased focus on query refinement.

New Web data extraction model.

Expansion of Rich Answers.

Additional improvements to the service include a new, cleaner user interface that makes the results pages easier to read and use; a more robust Answers platform that provides instant access to information from trusted sources while increasing relevancy; and organization of results pages based on the high-interest search verticals of entertainment, shopping, local and health on one page.

Live Coverage Of New Media Expo

TalkShoe will be exhibiting and attending the Podcast & New Media Expo, Sept 28-30 in Ontario, CA (near Los Angeles). They will be holding a continuous live podcast (Click here for information) from the show floor with special guest iJustine Live. If you happen to attend the event, make sure to visit Booth #415 as that is where TalkShoe will be located.

The 3rd Annual New Media Expo is an annual convention that educates individuals and companies about how to produce high-quality audio and video digital content, grow a loyal audience, and market or monetize that content in creative ways.

The Expo is a “prosumer” and corporate event that brings together influential digital media creators, podcasters and content developers to cover the complete range of creation techniques, business objectives and future trends.

The Expo is also a major networking event where content creators can share ideas and build partnerships.

If you are attending the event or if you will somehow be covering the expo via Twitter or some other means, please let us know by leaving us a comment.

LocateTV Opens To The Public

LocateTV.com Logo

LocateTV, the TV Guide like service that I reviewed here, LocateTV – TV Guide On Steroids has announced that they will be opening to the public on Monday, October 1st. The closed beta will be disabled and users from all over the world will now be able to give this service a try. Considering LocateTV Redesigned Their Embeddable Widgets, it will be interesting to see how many of them appear on various blogs within the blogosphere once LocateTV goes public.

Kontactr Adds Pop Up Feature

Kontactr, the service that gives users an very easy way to provide a contact form on your site for readers to contact you and in which I covered here, Easy To Use Contact Forms Via Kontactr has added a new feature called Kontactr Pop Up or KPU. KPU trys to make it easier for your readers to contact you by opening up a contact form without having to load another page.

KPU comes in three flavors, text link, small button or a larger contact button. Whenever a user clicks on one of these new links, the background of the webpage turns dark and a contact form appears on your screen. This means that, users won’t be required to load a separate web page to view your contact form. This should decrease the load on your server as that is one less page that has to be processed.

The popup contains everything that the original form has with the exception of the an additional command to close the popup window which can be initiated by pressing ESC on your keyboard.

What’s nice about this new option is that, bloggers that use Kontactr now have an option to provide a contact link directly within a post. This means that readers will be able to click on a link within an article to contact you without having to perform any extra steps, such as browsing to the static location of your form which in my case, is found at the top of this site.

As with the majority of things on the web these days, this popup will not work if you have Javascript disabled in your browser. So keep that in mind if it does not work.

NetScape Nav Contest Winner Announced

Netscape has officialy announced the winner of their NetScape Navigator 9 Splash Screen Logo Constest. The winner is Mario Herbert who designed the following graphic.

Mario Herbet Designs Winning Entry

This winning entry will end up being the default splash screen for Netscape Navigator 9. I can’t believe people still use Navigator as their browser. Someone explain that one to me.

If you ask me, the text on this splash green design is just a bit too blurry. I would of preferred to see a sharper looking design although the ships wheel and the logo do have a nice touch to them.

MyBlogLog Buzz Tracker Explained

MyBlogLog Logo The What’s Hot In My Communities section of your MyBlogLog Profile is an easy way to track buzz worthy info but, how does MBL decide what’s hot and what’s not?

Simply put, the links you see within this area of your user profile represent the most popular links within YOUR MYBLOGLOG COMMUNITIES. If you are seeing links to porn sites or sites you deem unacceptable, the only way to remove them, is to find out which community your apart of that is posting that link, or information related to that link and leave that community.

If your thinking that tracking down the culprits within your large number of communities would be nothing more than a hassle, your in for some great news. MyBlogLog has added an interesting feature to their buzz tracker in the form of a question mark. This question mark will finally give MyBlogLog users the ability to figure out where those buzzworthy links are coming from.

Figure Out Where Those Links Are Coming From

For instance, let’s say you don’t want links such as Fox.com to show up in your list. You would simply click on the (?) and figure out which sites are posting this link and leave their community.

Search And Destroy

According to the question mark, the site Casual Keystrokes, is the culprit behind this link. As an MBL user, you would look for that community within your list of favorites and click on the LEAVE COMMUNITY button.

It’s really neat to see how this all works and it’s nice that Robyn Tippins has finally published an article that easily explains the process. I have to agree that, clicking on these questions marks is half the fun in trying to figure out why they are creating so much buzz. Give it a shot and let me know what you’ve discovered.

Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff

The Musings Of Jeff Chandler

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