Adding to my PLN

Adding to my PLN

Some new things I've done recently to add to my PLN.

Using Twitter, I started following Microsoft at Work, Office 365, and VMWare Knowledgebase to help me learn about topics I need to keep up on at work; and Lifehacker, TechCrunch, and CNET News to keep up with what’s trending in technology outside the workplace.

I started looking at and signed up on two social bookmarking sites, Delicious and Diigo, and am currently reading up on and learning about both of these.

Using Delicious, I bookmarked a couple of sites including the one below:

http://mindmappingsoftwareblog.com/personal-learning-network/

I read about Diigo on TechCrunch (and I originally heard about TechCrunch on Twitter). It’s amazing how one thing in this personal learning quest leads to a few others.

http://techcrunch.com/2006/08/02/diigo-is-a-research-tool-that-rocks/

LinkedIn - Good or Bad?

 

 

In my opinion, I think LinkedIn is a good tool to use for networking.  I’ve been using it for a few years mainly to stay in touch with coworkers from previous jobs I’ve had.  Through the experience I’ve had with LinkedIn, it seems as if more people age 40 and older use the site, while people 40 and younger gravitate to Facebook.  LinkedIn seems as if it’s more for professionals and job seekers, while Facebook is used for friends and family.  I feel like LinkedIn makes me more available or accessible to other people or potential employers.  Today, there are many companies who search LinkedIn and Facebook for prospective employees.

For the most part, I think LinkedIn is beneficial, and I really don’t have any concerns about it.  The only thing I find annoying is when it asks about connecting to people in your address book.  I once made the mistake of sending invitations to everyone in my address book and I ticked off a few people.  Now I’m a little more particular about who I connect with and send invitations to while using LinkedIn. It’s always good to be selective when using this type of site.  In fact, below is a link to a recent event that happened on LinkedIn.  It’s a cautionary tale that everyone should read, and is all the more reason why people should always be careful what they post online.   There’s a quote that goes something like “Never put anything in writing that you don’t wish to see printed in public”.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/27/tech/web/linked-in-cleveland-job-bank/

Mobile Devices in Business

 

 

There are advantages to the BYOD (bring your own device) movement, otherwise known as mobile devices in the workplace.  For myself, I feel that one advantage of using mobile devices in business is having access to all 3 of my email accounts on my smartphone. With that same device, I can also be in touch with my family through texting during the day.  Letting people bring their devices to work can make them more productive, especially for people who travel for a living.  Smartphones and tablets are a lot easier and lighter to take with you on a business trip.

Some disadvantages or challenges of the BYOD movement are security-related.  For example, most people don’t keep their virus software up to date.  Even if mobile devices such as tablets, are tightly managed, hackers always seem to find ways around the best security software. In addition, mobile devices can be breached and sensitive data can be accessed, stolen, and sold to the highest bidder.

There is also the risk that an employee can knowingly or unknowingly take out company data from the workplace on their mobile device.  If the device goes home, other family members can read company information.  Even more scary, is if the mobile phone or tablet uses an app like Dropbox or iCloud, that data can be compromised.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-02/the-risks-and-rewards-of-personal-electronics-in-the-workplace

Although we haven’t put it in place yet in my workplace, we bought mobile device management (MDM) software called Airwatch to manage all mobile devices.  According to their web site, they state that “With AirWatch, you can manage a diverse fleet of Android, Apple iOS, BlackBerry, Mac OS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Windows PC/RT and Windows Phone devices from a single management console”.  
http://www.air-watch.com/solutions/mobile-device-management

In conclusion, there has to be a happy medium when it comes to managing mobile devices.  If the workplace is too restrictive, it defeats the purpose of having them, which is to be more productive.

 

LinkedIn - Good or Bad?

In my opinion, I think Linked In is a good tool to use for networking.  I’ve been using it for a few years mainly to stay in touch with coworkers from previous jobs I’ve had.  From the experience I’ve had with LinkedIn, it seems as if more people age 40 and older use the site, while people 40 and younger gravitate to Facebook.  LinkedIn is more for professionals and job seekers, and Facebook is used for friends and family.  LinkedIn can make you as a person more available or accessible to other people in your own professional network, as well as potential employers.  Today, there are many companies who search LinkedIn and Facebook for prospective employees.

For the most part, I think LinkedIn is beneficial, and I really don’t have any concerns about it.  The only thing I find annoying is when it asks about connecting to people in your address book.  I once made the mistake of sending invitations to everyone in my address book and ticked off a few people.  Now I’m a little more particular about who I send connect with using LinkedIn – it’s always good to be selective when using this type of site.  In fact, below is a link to a recent event that happened on LinkedIn.  It’s a cautionary tale that everyone should read, and is all the more reason why people should always be careful what they post online.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/27/tech/web/linked-in-cleveland-job-bank/

Chapter 3 - Discovering the Internet - More Interesting Info

 

Another  item I found very interesting in Chapter 3 was the information about advanced searches.  Being able to use Boolean operators such as AND, OR, and NOT, or having the ability to do these types of advanced searches and filter them so you can obtain results that come from a specific country is very helpful.  Many times when I was searching for information to do a paper during my some classes at ESC, I wish I would have known about this feature.  For example, I always wanted to know how to exclude UK results from some of my searches.  I really don’t know if I’ll need to use a Boolean search very often, but I wanted to find out more information about them.  I did find one web site that went more in depth about it, and explained what to do and what not to when doing these types of searches.  The link is as follows:  http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Boolean.pdf

There was also the option mentioned for the Google advanced search which showed how to get only .PDF results.  Since I use Google for just about everything, I felt a little embarrassed that I never knew about this feature.

After reading about the Quickpick feature, one of the first things I did was to add Google and Yahoo to my Manage Add-ons area in Internet Explorer, and to demote the Bing search engine as my last choice – just a matter of personal preference.

 

Chapter 3 - Searching the Web

Since my job sort of forces me to stay more on the hardware side of computers, I often don’t get to read or use much on the software side.  Chapter 3 was another eye-opener for me as far as learning some new things.  For example, using the web directory DMOZ instead of a search engine was very helpful, because web directories don’t rank the hits you get like Google does (sometimes unfairly).  Also, using a search engine like Google or Yahoo to find something, getting tons of different hits, and not being sure how to sort them was always difficult for me.  However, utilizing the web directory DMOZ seemed like a good alternative to refine the hits you get when searching for specific topics, or to do a more advanced search altogether.

Although I knew about other search engines like Bing, Altavista, and Yahoo, I had not heard of Gigablast.  Like DMOZ, it is an open source product.  Since I had never heard of Gigablast, I decided to do more research on it and found the following site, called searchenginejournal.com. It went a little bit more in-depth about Gigablast than what was in our book. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/gigablast-better-than-google-or-askcom-according-to-study/655.  What I found even more helpful on this site was this article titled Top 10 Tools For Managing Your Social Media Accounts.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-10-tools-managing-social-media-accounts/87843/

Child-friendly search engines are a great idea.  It’s too late for me to suggest them to my kids, but I will certainly make friends and relatives with young children aware of the types of sites mentioned in Chapter 3. I had also not dealt much with Metasearch engines, which compile search results from different search engines into single search results.  Again, here is another extremely useful tool which I plan to use more often in the future.

Over the past few years, I’ve heard many people talk about LexisNexis, but never knew what it was used for.  This seems like it would be a great help to people employed in the legal, medical, and government sectors. I wanted to know more about how to go about using this site, and that led me to the link I found below.  It walks you through step by step on how to sign in to LexisNexis, retrieve the documents you need, and obtain the best search results. http://www.lexisnexis.com/lexisenhancements/literature/lp20827-0-quick-ref.pdf