Web 2.0 Pick of the Day: 30 Boxes

Thanks, once again to the facilitators of the Web 2.0 course I am taking for today's Web 2.0 Pick of the Day. Today, I feature 30 boxes, an online interactive calendar that can be shared among a number of participants.

The 30 boxes online calendar tool is simple, yet has enough features to make it worthwhile. Participants can collaborate on adding to the events on the calendar. Events can even be generated automatically from RSS feeds. You can use the drag and drop functionality to move events around the calendar. I could see great value in this tool as a simple online family calendar, a teacher's calendar of due dates, or a calendar for after school groups. I know for our school musical, there are dates for different groups to rehearse, days for the crew to meet, and of course all of the full cast rehearsals and shows.

While playing around, I found at least two added features that I really liked. One is the built in task list. You never can have enough 'Things to do' lists floating around. And finally, and maybe the best feature...When you register, you enter your zipcode. 30Boxes automatically includes and updates the 5 day forecast.

I am not sure if it includes all of the functionality of something like the Google Calendar, which my family uses. We especially like the Google Calendar as it allows you to color code and superimpose a number of calendars on the master calendar. We can see our whole family's ridiculously busy schedule all in one place :)

Try them both out. I am interested in hearing your comments.

Web 2.0 pick of the day: Gliffy

Currently, I am taking a Web 2.0 Professional Development course through the Virtual High School Consortium (http://www.govhs.org/). The course has been great and over the next 20 days we will be introduced to 20 new web 2.0 applications. I figured I should pass them along to you so that you can enjoy playing with some of the MANY interactive and collaborative resources available online.

Above: Screenshot from Gliffy

The 'pick of the day' for today is Gliffy, a tool intended for creating diagrams online. There are a variety of types of diagrams that you can design using gliffy including:

• Floorplans


• Flow Charts


• User Interfaces

One of the best features of Gliffy is that it allows for collaboration among users. I can see great value in using this for teams planning for group projects or students for pre-writing, etc. Many possibilities!

Please visit http://www.gliffy.com/ now to try it out! I'd love to hear your comments.

Google Wave

WOW! I'd like to thank my wife for sharing this video with me earlier today. Check out the video demonstrating Google Wave. This may be the next HUGE step in online collaboration, email, and Social Networking. Did I say WOW?