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Web 2.0 tools review
Battle.net is the online gaming and digital distribution platform made by Blizzard Entertainment. It allows you to purchase, download, and play games made by Blizzard Entertainment. It allows you to add friends in the launcher to see, what they are playing and when they are online. It also allows you to make chat parties with friends, so you communicate with them while playing. It also recently added the capability to livestream your game without any 3rd party software.
I give Battle.net a 5/5, as it is easy to use, visually appealing and very innovative. The Battle.net launcher can be downloaded here
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Disqus is a worldwide blog comment hosting service for websites and online communities. What that means is it allows website owners to implement a commenting system on their pages. It also comes with moderation tools that allow you to monitor and control the comments and community. It also allows website owners to implement native advertising to easily make money. Disqus is based off the freemium model, being free for the basic functionalities, but requiring monthly payments for more premium functions.
Having used Disqus to comment a number of times on various sites, I give it a 4/5, as it is a overall visually appealing and easy to use system, but lacks any extraordinary features over other comment hosts. Disqus can be found here Steam is an online game marketplace created by Valve. It was originally released in September 2003, 13 years ago. It is today known as one of the best digital distribution platforms for its ease of use, incredible variety of games, and great sales. It also allows you to add other gamers to your friends list, allowing you to see when they are online and what they are playing. This allows for people who have never met in real life to meet through different multiplayer games. The only real downside to Steam is its reliance on an internet connection, as all of the games must be downloaded from the store.
I give Steam a 5/5, as it has such a wide variety of games for all gamers, and constant sales on. Steam can be found here Twitch TV is a live-streaming service owned by Amazon that is home to hundreds and thousands of channels made up mostly of gaming, but in the last year the Creative and Music categories have become very popular. On the launch day of Creative, Twitch hosted a nine-day marathon of Bob Ross' The Joy of Painting and due to its popularity Twitch now streams a season of The Joy of Painting every Monday. There are fewer limits on what can be streamed on Twitch compared to YouTube, but still has some limits. The community on Twitch is also much friendlier compared to YouTube. Twitch also allows more direct support to the streamer by letting viewers subsrcibe for $4.99 a month. Subsrcibing gets different privledges based on the channel.
I rate Twitch 5/5 because it's a well made site home to many great channels and streamers, with a much better community than YouTube. Twitch can be found here YouTube is site where anyone can post videos of anything (as long as it doesn't break any laws.) The type of videos you can find are unlimited. If you want to find the trailer for the new movie coming out, you can find it. If you're looking for a guide on a DIY halloween costume, you can find it. That being said, you can often stumble on something you don't to see. The comment sections of videos are often cesspools of 10 year olds and arguments that have nothing to do with the video. However, if you look past those flaws, there are some amazing, hilarious and interesting things you can find on YouTube.
If you stay to only channels you know you like and avoid the comment section, YouTube can easily be a 5/5, but if you take the site for everything it is, it's more of a 4/5, with strict, often unnecessary copyright claims on videos, and some questionable choices by the owners, along with the already mentioned problems. YouTube can be found here . Discord is a voice communication application that is aimed more towards gamers than Skype is. It features clear communication, useful functions like push-to-talk, being able to raise and lower the volume of specific users in the channel, and the ability to have multiple servers to speak on, instead of the one that Skype limits you to. It also allows an in-game overlay for some games, allowing you to be able to interact with Discord without exiting the game. It is also useful for game live steamers, as you can invite specific people to be in just the chat, to get more specific feedback.
Discord can be found here Discord is a very useful app that easily meets the standard set by Skype for most people, and far surpasses it for those who are more gaming focused. I give Discord a 4.5/5 Spotify is a web radio app and can be downloaded as for mobile, PC, or Mac. It allows you to pick specific songs and artists, and put them in playlists to listen to. If you don't want to have to go through the trouble of picking all your own songs, you can search for artist radios to listen to their music and artists similar to them. Spotify is free to use, but has limited skips ONLY on mobile. The skips are unlimited anywhere else. There are ads every few songs, however. But for only $10 a month you can get Spotify Premium, which allows you to stream music in even higher quality, listen ad-free, have unlimited skips on mobile, and download music to listen to offline. They also offer discounts to college students for Spotify Premium.
Spotify Free I rate 4.5/5, because of the limited skips on mobile and semi-frequent ads. Spotify Premium I rate 5/5 for it's excellent features and relatively low price, especially for college students. Spotify can be downloaded here This blog will be used for my Web 2.0 class. I will be posting reviews of different Web 2.0 tools here.
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AuthorThese are reviews of Web 2.0 tools for a High School class Archives |