tools – Australian Science

Ten tools for social media practioners

Danica Radovanovic — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 00:15:54 +0000

Whether you are a web creator, blogger, engineer, educator, journalist, marketing specialist or a scientist, with ever-emerging opportunities to share information on digital platforms, the importance to keep digital skills up-to-date is vital.

Here’s our list of top ten online useful tools for helping and fostering digital literacy skills on web, in everyday work.

Buffer Business Tools

If you are a content creator, writer or analyst on the web, the best features Buffer has to offer that can help with your increasingly complex social publishing needs are: the analytics and reporting for business customers. Buffer also added graphs so you can visualize your stats and you can compare post types, like posts per day and clicks or retweets.

Beside the fact that Buffer have an option to add multiple team members and more social accounts in your team, there is a Business analytics now offering integration with Google Analytics as well. This option enables much easier to track and report on your specific marketing campaigns, or those of your clients. More at: https://bufferapp.com/

Image source: http://blog.bufferapp.com/introducing-buffer-for-business-the-most-simple-powerful-social-media-tool-for-your-business

Datawrapper

Datawrapper is a great open source tool helping anyone to create simple, correct and embeddable charts in minutes, for visualising large datasets. This tool reduces the time needed to create a correct chart and embed it into any website from hours to seconds. You can clean up your data, upload it and choose from numerous interactive formats to help you create the content and tell your story. The hosted service is free, or you can install it on your own server for maximum control. You can even make the data downloadable for interested readers and clients. More at: http://datawrapper.de

Google Media Tools

Google’s Media Tools present a toolbox of exciting digital tools that can enhance newsgathering and exposure across television, radio, print and online, suitable for journalists, reporters, web content creators, and those involved in social media analytics. These tools feature range from Develop & Publish, learning how to visualize data using Google Maps, improving your audience engagement through Google+, Google Earth Pro to Advanced Search, that provide an advanced super powered search capabilities, and allows you to filter your results by region, keyword and time. More at: http://www.google.com/get/mediatools/

LinkedIn Instream Ads

LinkedIN Sponsored Updates enables you to put custom in-stream content in front of the specific LinkedIn professionals your business wants to work with.

Assuming you already have a Company Page and that you are publishing regular updates to your followers, the next step is to turn on the LinkedIn Sponsored Updates option that provides a native solution for rapidly increasing awareness and shaping the perception of your brand, products, and services.

More at: http://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/content-marketing/sponsored-updates.html

Hashtagify.me – The Most Advanced Twitter Hashtags Search Engine

Hashtafigy is a free tool that promotes the best use of hashtags by finding and understanding them in a quick, intuitive, visual way. Hashtags are one of the best ways to find and reach the right audience for your message on social media, and this tool helps innovators with the visualisation of Twitter hashtags related to a particular tag.

Hashtagify.me allows you to search among 26,995,169 Twitter hashtags and quickly find the best ones for your need based on their popularity, relationships, languages, influencers and other metrics.

School of Data

School of Data brings free online tutorials, courses and tools for those who are working with data and open data. School of Data works to empower civil society organisations, journalists, analysts, scientists, researchers, and citizens with the skills they need to use data effectively. Many of the groups who are closest to the problems currently “lack the skills to use data effectively — and even an awareness of the potential of data for their work. School of Data’s mission is to teach people how to gain powerful insights and create compelling stories using data.

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Tools of the Future

Maya Edberg — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 00:08:27 +0000

Like they say, a carpenter is only as good as his tools – and this sentiment stands true in almost every profession we work in. Whether it’s something as simple as a pen and paper or more complex scientific equipment, we rely heavily on tools in both our personal and business lives. So what lies in the not-so-distant future? We take a look.

Technology tools

One type of technology that has been verging on the edge of mainstream usage for the past couple of years is holograms. Web-conferencing tools such as Skype have become a home and office staple – but could we soon be seeing people in three dimensions? The technology is there – it has been used to great effect particularly in music concerts as well as at some airports – so it’s not a question of if they will , but when will holograms become the norm.

Credit: Image courtesy of: Science Daily

The biggest changes in technology tools are predicted to come in the form of communication. It’s hard to imagine life without the internet – and it’s only been properly available for less than 20 years. As communication channels become faster and more powerful, the need for on-site offices will diminish and people will increasingly work from home.

Tools for future disasters

There’s nothing we can do to prevent natural disasters, but we can minimise the damage caused. In recent years, geographical information systems (GIS) have been crucial to pre- and post- disaster management, and this area is certainly one that will continue to advance, grow, and save millions of lives.

Credit: Image courtesy of: NYTimes

Aside from complex GIS software, innovative scientists and inventors are hard-at-work creating real-life tools that can save lives on the ground when disaster strikes. One of the most positive creations has been developed by a Japanese engineering company. After surviving the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, they have designed survival pods, called ‘Noah’, which work like buoys; up to four people can get inside them and float atop a tsunami for up to two hours, potentially saving their lives.

Hand tools

There will always be a place for the good ol’ hammer and nail (although you never know), but with everything else seemingly going digital or robotically-driven, what is the future for hand tools?

Credit: Image courtesy of: Tool Bloke

Already, robots are taking over a lot of manual labour, particularly in large factories such as car manufacturing plants. They are more efficient and after the initial costs, are cheaper to run.

But there is still room for something else lying somewhere between robots and humans. This is most evident in the fast developing technology in the world of medical science. To overcome the problem of health practitioner shortages, particularly in remote areas, robotic surgery is becoming the next big thing. A surgeon doesn’t even need to be in the room to perform complex surgeries. The technology is already being used, but there is still huge room for growth, with millions being invested into it.

Credit: Image courtesy of: Wired

As Guang-Zhong Yang from the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery said, ‘You have a human, which is pretty good in terms of decision-making, and learning. You have a robot, which is good at doing precise movements. Why not use a combination of both?’. Precisely. There’s plenty of space for the two of us – both in medicine and elsewhere.

Cite this article:
Edberg M (2013-11-18 00:08:27). Tools of the Future. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 04, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/technology/tools-of-the-future/

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