electronic portfolios

As a del.icio.us user, I’m always looking for interesting applications for social bookmarking tools. Helen Barrett uses del.icio.us to maintain an electronic portfolio.

Barrett recommends using an electronic portfolio for:

• documenting your life/work/learning — “digital” artifacts (PAST)
• showcasing your knowledge, skills and abilities (PRESENT)
• summarizing direction and learning goals (FUTURE)

Del.icio.us is just one of the many online services and tools Barrett has been using since 2004 to recreate her online portfolio. Her “Online Portfolio Adventure” documents her goal to develop her online portfolio using different systems and publishing tools.

Take a look at her online portfolio using a variety of web tools.

essential tools

I blogged about the top ten tools I can’t live without recently.

My list included tools that I use to blog, chat, bookmark, and generally work more effeciently on the web.

Charlene at Essential Keystrokes included my list in her weekly Essential Tools series. (Thanks Charlene!)

Some of the tools featured on her blog include:

• antivirus
• blog editors
• Firefox extensions
• graphics design
• HTML/CSS
• PDF software
• search engine optimization
• social plug-ins
• website statistics

Check out her list of over “160 essential tools” for more.

What are some of your essential tools?

Top 10 Tools I Can’t Live Without

I have a myriad of web-based tools that I can’t live without. After reading Chris Garrett’s top 10 tools I can’t live without, I thought I’d take a stab at narrowing down my list to ten “gems” that help make my web life easier.

Twitbin – I love Twitter, and this Firefox extension lets me post to Twitter and read my friend’s tweets, without leaving the site I’m currently surfing.

meebo – A web-based instant messaging site that allows you to login to multiple IM accounts including AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber.

del.icio.us bookmarks – Another Firefox add-on which integrates my del.icio.us links into Firefox. Not only can you search your bookmarks, you can view them alphabetically. (Something you currently cannot do with del.icio.us.)

TinyURL – Make those long URLs tiny so that they don’t break in email postings. Great for sharing links on microblogging sites like Twitter, that limit the number of characters you can use.

ZoomClouds – Create a tag-based cloud using the RSS feed from your blog or website.

Tumblr – A “no frills” blogging tool that lets you post links, photos, quotes, and video.

Feedburner – provides feed and site stats for bloggers. Stats include visitors, page views, referrers, searches, and outgoing links.

BlogBackupOnline – provides an effortless way to backup, restore, and export your blog.

Zoho – Online software including word processing, spreadsheets, and a presentation tool.

RSS newsreaders - Okay, I’m cheating here. I’m an RSS junkie and I’m now down to three newsreaders: Newsgator, Bloglines, and Google Reader.

So what are your “must have” tools?