BlinkList

What´s that ?
BlinkList is one of the web applications which could help you to save your favourite webpages directly on web. You can than access from everywhere to your own blinklist webpage which will content all your bookmarks and favourite webpages. This service is similar to del.icio.us. Nowadays has this application more than 30,000 users. And it´s completely free.

How does it work?
As a guest you can search the public saved links according the tags whose are presented in the tag cloud at the homepage of this application. You can see who and how taged this or that webpage. And look directly on it.
If you want to use this application, you have to make your own profile, which is really easy and contents just necessarily information as name and email. But you have possibility to use a field for description if you want to.
The "blinking" is based on principle of tagging. Everyone could add his own tag for his favourite webpage. All public tags are than given in one tag cloud which is used for searching. Your own tags are desplayed on your profile and you could use it and classify as you wish. BlinkList offer you also possibility to display your tag cloud on your webpages or blog. This cloud is directly connected to your profile at BlinkList. It could help you, if you want to show somehow your interests on your blog.
In the list of links you could see how many people blinked the webpage and what kind of tags they used. This list could be also private and in that case it serves just to you.

Conclusion
Nice way how to make your bookmarks well-arranged. You can have them always when you are connected to web. They offer just simple search tool but I don´t think that in this kind of application is necessary to have advance tools for searching. It should serve primary for you to make a bookmark. And your tag cloud will be well-arranged because you will do it, as you want.

Resources: www.blinklist.com

Ning

What´s that?
Ning was founded in 2004. As its creators say...
they wanted to see what happen if everyone would have
possibility to create his own social network on the Internet.
The result is over 230,000 social networks nowadays. Topics which connect people in different social networks are really miscellaneous. It starts somewhere around cooking, exchange tips for everything, then continues with networks for fans of celebrities or what ever and ends with career or job networks. The scale of topics is really huge.

How does it work?
You can browse through different networks and look in these public ones without any registration. But if you would like somehow participate in some concrete group or create your own network, you have to sign up and create your own profile. The look of the profile or network depends on you. You could use quite a lot different looks and if you are not satisfied with the offer, you always can use your own CSS code. (That i find really progressive.)
The structure of profile is similar to profiles at Facebook. You could add information about your private life as broad as you wish.

The network has possibilty to add different aplications as for example pictures, discussions, videos and others. The webpage of the network is on the Ning platform and the creating, changing or repairing is really easy. I could compare it to a little bit more sophisticated blog. It offers possibility to export data from other aplications like Flickr. There is also possibility to present your network as a group on Facebook, what could help you to wider your community.

I know that I am obsesed with the subject searching, but the search tool in Ning is worse than in SlideShare (viz SlideShare). You could browse in most popular networks or use really simple search tool and use the keywords. There is no sign of any classification and you even can´t choos the category that your network belongs to. There is just something like keywords of your network, but they works more like tags than anything else.

Conclusion
Interesting, how from an experiment could grow up an gigant network like Ning. This aplication is interesting idea and I think that it´s mainly dedicated to people they are looking for entertainment. I can´t imagine how should I find some serious network in the torrent of recipes and Harry Potters fans.

Resource: www.ning.com

SlideShare

What´s that?
SlideShare is world largest community for sharing presentations in the www environment. It contains powerpoint or pdf presentation about different topics. The company is based in USA in California and her biggest investor is Venrock .

How does it work?
It´s possible to go throught webpage, browse, searche, watch slideshows or send them per email. That all you can do from the post of guest, which does not call for registration.
If you really would like to use this "service" with all its odds, you have to sign you up. It´s for free and it enables you to download or upload slideshows from/on the webside, leave comments for whole presentation or for each separate slide (what I find interesting and helpful) and much more...

SlideShare offers traditional simple tool for searching which is based on keywords, you can sort it by relevance or other different classifications. Then you can use the metod of tagging or search according to groups or events.

Groups and events connect slideshows with the same or similar topic, place, time or what ever... and create that kind of subcultur. These subculturs are not just about the slideshows, but in particular about people. Each user could be member of group what ever he wants and share by this way his/her experiences with that topic.

One of the interesting offers is Widget. When you use this package, you could publish presentation from the SlideShare on your own webpages or blog as an inner part of your webpages. Not as appendix or as a link on special webpages. The presentation is simply implemented in your webpages and you can browse through it without the loss of context from your own webpages.

Conclusion
SlideShare looks like really serious webpage, whose goal is not primary to entertain people, but really help and connect them with the relevant information. If I would have possibility to influence the development of this webpage, I would focus on search tools. I miss search tool with focus on subject content.
But I am sure that I could find there a lot of helpful information even with the basic search tool.

Resources: www.slideshare.net