Plaxo & LinkedIn

I dont have much experience using both Plaxo and LinkedIn. I did find both networks easy to use, and I can certainly see how both would be useful in my professional field.

Plaxo is a great way to store contacts and addresses automatically. I often find that with email addresses I dont save them or find it difficult to access the contact's details. With Plaxo, I have found it interesting that when an update is made to a person's contacts, it immediately updates that information to the entire contact group. Pretty cool stuff!

LinkedIn seems to be a very useful and practical too to use in the professional environment. I found it interesting how easy it can be to include contact info, previous work experience, certifications, etc. I also found it interesting to research and look up various companies and find out more information about them. This could be very useful when applying for jobs, or trying to do some background research to learn more about a company in general. Very neat!

LibraryThing

I found LibraryThing a very useful resource. Ive always found it amazing how quickly one can access a book online, and now to have a catalog and my own page for it very helpful. For coaching, I often times refer to various books for new training ideas, thoughts from other coaches, and just some tips on how to work on specific tactics. Ive already added a couple books to my catalog that will be great tools to use along the way! Very cool site.

Here is my catalog link:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/chimientifutbol

Image Generators

This was a very cool tool. I enjoyed using it and editing various images. I can see this be very useful in my career, especially amongst the younger populations. This tool can allow young players to enhance and be creative with action shots of themselves, or of their favorite professional player to create their desired image. Ive always wondered how on certain packets and even club brochures how the same image was colored and changed in so many different ways. Ive always found that an interesting way of presenting the same picture, but adding so much to it. Very cool!

Podcasts

I really enjoyed exploring the podcast.com page. I found a couple very usesul podcasts that I can certainly use, very informative.

The first podcast I explored was called Eric T's Lake Tahoe snow report. This report gave in depth information on the current snowboarding and ski conditions at various resorts around Lake Tahoe. That is very difficult information to find sometimes, and this was all in one report. Very helpful! This podcast also talked about how many feet fresh feet of snow occurred, as well as road conditions. Cool stuff.

The other podcast I explored was called "EPL Update" which is a soccer related podcast. This was up to date information from the English Premier League, and interview managers, players, and gave the weekly fixtures of games, and where they were to be played. It really made it simple to follow the soccer games, and current news that is going on, rather than going to 2-3 different links. I enjoyed this one!

I can see this being very useful for staying up to date with new training ideas and keeping up with the news around the soccer globe!

Another Youtube Video

This particular video has a little more meaning to me...Its me playing in the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, 2007 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Check it out!

Youtube

I am a big fan of youtube. I find it very convenient and easy to use. I was very impressed at the simplicity and effectiveness of the youtube videos that have been used for this course. Very cool! I use youtube all the time, mainly for soccer. My old sacramento knights team would put up training videos on youtube for us to do when we were not at training. So, with this, we still had a visual of what the coach wanted us to accomplish. I refer alot of my players that I coach to check out youtube, and watch some cool soccer videos. I feel this helps develop their passion for the game, as it did for me. The video I am showing here are some of the best soccer players in the world, demonstrating their abilities! Pretty amazing stuff!

Technorati

This was very cool! I just spent quite a bit of time exploring Technorati and alot of the features it does. I tagged a few things: John Terry, english soccer player, and tons of relevant and up-to-date links came up all covering the most current events with him. I also thought the top 100 was interesting. I also thought it was cool how you can browse the directory and check out all the sub categories. Even explored technorati authority, which was interesting as well!

Delicious

Delicious is a cool resource. I am constantly bookmarking sites that I visit frequently and really like the idea of categorizing the bookmarks to simplify the search. One feature I like with bookmarks in general is when you start typing in the address, the bookmark appears and you can click it to take you to that page. It truly makes surfing the web easier and certainly saves time. Bookmarks add up, and can be a bit congested, so this feature certainly helps.

I can already see this being useful with my coaching. I bookmark alot of sites that are for new skills and training plans, and now to be able to categorize them really helps with my organization!