#19-Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

After reviewing the two lists I was feeling overwhelmed. There are so many interesting, fun, and helpful applications out there that I never knew about. How could I choose just one? I decided to look at Backpack (as previously mentioned, I am a very practical person). This is an application that is meant for a business and it brings organizational information together in one place. Like many of the things we have been looking at, it is collaborative. I'm starting to see the power in that! Two useful tools are the calendar and reminders. You can have individual calendars or group calendars and the calendar can be color coded. You can easily see if someone is working, at a meeting, or gone. Reminders can be e-mailed or texted to your phone. There is a newsroom page where group communication can happen in one place. No more sticky notes or to do lists floating around! Again I want to say that all of this is collaborative, so if someone posts a message in the newsroom about a problem they had in the morning, and it is fixed on the evening shift, that can be updated by those users. There are lots of other useful features as well. I see great potential for this to be used withing a branch or department of the library. I think it could really streamline things and open up channels of communication. It seems to be easy to use-though I did not sign up for a free account at this time. This application took first place in the Web 2.0 awards under organization. Check it out!