Chrome Bookmarker: Now Available for SymbalooEDU

February 1st, 2012 • updates • No comments

Good news! Bookmarking to your SymbalooEDU webmixes will now be easier. The Symbaloo bookmarker is a browser plugin that is installed to your browser toolbar that enables users to bookmark their favorite online sites to their Symbaloo webmixes. We’ve had it available for regular Symbaloo users and have been asked by our EDU users when it will be compatible with SymbalooEDU.

The SymbalooEDU Bookmarker Extension is now available for Chrome and will be available shortly for Firefox. Just go to chrome.google.com/webstore and search for “SymbalooEDU” to add the plugin to your Chrome browser. Or you can click here.

Once installed a Symbaloo icon will be added  to your toolbar. When you want to bookmark a site your webmix just click on the little Symbaloo icon and it will add the site to your webmix. Please make sure that you are logged in to your SymbalooEDU account and that you have it set to the webmix that you wish to bookmark to.

We hope this makes it easier for you to save your favorite educational resources to your SymbalooEDU webmixes! Install it today and let us know what you think. We’d love to hear your feedback!

Mobiel

December 21st, 2011 • Uncategorized • 65 comments

De eerste beelden van de Symbaloo app (iphone) zijn vrijgegeven door het Symbaloo development team. We zijn erg benieuwd wat je ervan vindt. Dus laat vooral je feedback achter!

(het laden kan even duren)

We zijn razend benieuwd naar jouw feedback

Word je enthousiast van deze video?
Missen er belangrijke functionaliteiten volgens jou?
Is het duidelijk hoe het werkt?
Vind je de app er mooi uitzien?
Reageer hieronder!!

Get Social With Symbaloo

January 19th, 2011 • updates • 2 comments

We have some very exciting new features to tell you about that might get you socializing more through Symbaloo. Last week some new social widgets were added to the tile database: Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. With these new widgets you will be able to browse, update and post to these social sites but also see what your friends are up to directly from Symbaloo.

Facebook Widget

With the new Facebook widget connecting with your friends has never been easier. As you can see you will have access to all of your basic Facebook functions through the center box once you have added the Facebook widget to your webmix.

To update your status just click on the little “thought bubble” icon in the top right corner next to the home button and a text box will appear for you to type in your update and post to Facebook. You can even view your photos or those of your friends without having to leave your Symbaloo. Click on “photos” and it will take you to the albums and images you wish to view. Once you click on the image it should enlarge the image right in your screen, it will open directly in the center like this image here:

Twitter Widget

What you can do with Facebook you can also do with Twitter. Post updates and browse the latest. By adding the Twitter widget to your webmix you will be able to view your twitterfeed, profile, messages, mentions and tweet without ever having to leave Symbaloo.

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YouTube Widget

Last but not least is our YouTube widget. If you are as addicted to YouTube as we are then this tool is for you. You don’t have to leave Symbaloo anymore to browse videos, view your playlist or see what’s popular on YouTube at the moment.
Install these widgets today and start socializing through Symbaloo! We’d love to hear what you think about these widgets. If there are any other tools that you would like to see added to our database please submit a comment below.

What’s Next for Your Delicious Bookmarks?

December 18th, 2010 • press, updates • 3 comments

As news of Yahoo’s Delicious bookmarking site coming to an end hits bookmarking enthusiasts worldwide we question whether some are ready for a change. What is the Future of Bookmarking?

Delicious users, we feel your pain and offer a solution that is quite contrary to the status quo. Imagine seeing all your bookmarks visually, being able to search for collections of bookmarks around one topic and being able to share them to Twitter and Facebook with the click of a button. That is in fact possible now on Symbaloo and we are currently developing a solution to import your bookmarks from Delicious that will be available soon.

Why Symbaloo? Symbaloo is a visual way to save and organize your online bookmarks. We are free of charge and free of advertising. Colors, icons, images and text can all be used simultaneously to identify your bookmarks. Videos, slideshows and photo albums can easily be embedded for quick access without having to leave Symbaloo. Your bookmarks go with you where ever you go. They can be accessed from any computer or device such as the ipad, whiteboards or tablets.

Many services are embeddable on Symbaloo such as Youtube, GoogleDocs, Flickr and more with many more on the way. See all embeddable services on Symbaloo.

Tired of Tagging? Our pre-populated and user generated database contains thousands of pre-tagged tiles. Simply search within our tile search box for your favorite sites. For those who still have the itch for tagging, the option is still there but by tagging groups of links into what we call a webmix, you are now making it easier for everyone to find collections of valuable resources all centered around one topic.

Social sharing is easy on Symbaloo. Users have the option to share their webmixes publicly by publishing to our Symbaloo Gallery, which indexes to Google, or they can share privately through email, Twitter and Facebook.

Quick saving is a must. To make bookmarking your favorite sites even easier we have a Symbaloo Bookmarker add-on available for Firefox and Chrome. If you are browsing websites and would like to bookmark it to your Symbaloo you simply click on the Symbaloo Bookmarker that you have installed to your browser toolbar and it will add the bookmark to Symbaloo without leaving the site that you are on.

Firefox Link
Chrome Link

Have the news come to you! Another added feature is the ability to bookmark RSS feeds. Save your favorite news sources, blogs and Twitter updates all simultaneously on one visual interface.

Finally, we would like to mention again that Symbaloo is free of charge and free of advertising.

We welcome your feedback on what features you would like to have when importing from Delicious and encourage you to share in the comments below.

Create, share, and discover the new bookmarking possibilities with Symbaloo.

Symbaloo launches API (beta)

November 10th, 2010 • Uncategorized • No comments

Beta Release of the Symbaloo API

The last couple of months the development team worked hard on realizing the Symbaloo API. The API is the next step in the evolution of Symbaloo and its a big step. Lots of you guys/girls probably have a lot of questions after reading this.

What.. you can’t wait?

Go to this page and try it yourself: http://developer.symbaloo.com

Otherwise, let me explain some things.

What exactly is an API?

API is the short name for Application Programming Interface. “What?” you might think… To explain it in normal words: an API gives the possibilty for computer programs or websites to communicate and exchange data in a standardized way. A lot of big online Services have API’s to expose their data and features to their visitors via different ways then just the website. Good examples are Twitter, Google or Facebook.

So to summarize, it allows users to use their data that is stored within Symbaloo in other applications.

For the detailed explanation I will refer to the Wikipedia page. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface)

What can you do with the API?

A couple of services of the API are available for everyone, the rest is only accessible for accountholders. Think about our database of bookmarks that is available to search, or our webmix gallery that you can search in. Other services are private for Symbaloo users, like their private webmixes.

To make it easier for developers to create applications for you, but also be sure that no third party will get your password, we implemented the industry-standard of OAuth authentication. This is a system when you grant an external party explicit right to read and/or alter your Symbaloo account. If you dont want that, you just dont give an application the right. With that we store your settings for you.

So what are some examples someone can do with the API? Well first of all, you probably need some programming skills to create tools ar applications that use the API. If you do have those skills applications like these can be made:

• Create an Importing and exporting tool.
• Widgets for on your blog with your favorite links of Symbaloo can be created
• A mobile version of Symbaloo could be made with your favorite links
• Custom search engines can be made with the search results of our database
• Create new bookmarktools for different browsers with extended features

But maybe you’ve got even better ideas.

Are you a developer?

Well, if you are a developer and share our love for Symbaloo, register for an API key here: http://developer.symbaloo.com/registeforapi.html. We have set up some tools for you to help you in the process. Like an online testing tool to see the data the API will return. All services are explained in the documentation, including good links to connecting via OAuth. And we have set up a special forum on our Service system for developers her: http://service.symbaloo.com/index.php?p=community&/forum/84-symbaloo-api. If there are questions, feel free to ask on the forum or throught the contact form on http://developer.symbaloo.com/contact.html

I hope this blog post clarifies what the Symbaloo API is and what it can do. Because it is still in Beta, we really want to hear the developers feedback, so we can soon release it officially.

Good luck developing and hooray for the developers here!

Koen Dantuma

CTO Symbaloo

Links:

Where can I register: http://developer.symbaloo.com

What is an API: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface

Where can I get help: http://service.symbaloo.com/index.php?p=community&/forum/84-symbaloo-api

Volunteer developers wanted

October 25th, 2010 • Uncategorized • No comments

Our development team is finalizing the last steps in building an API for Symbaloo. This means external developers can interact with Symbaloo, and/or use Symbaloo data.

If you’re a developer and share our love for Symbaloo, it would be great to get to know you. We like to run some test projects before we launch the API, so we are curious to hear your ideas and see if you like to build something.

Interested? Please send an email to our CTO Koen Dantuma, [koen at symbaloo.com].

Official Launch of SymbalooEDU

September 21st, 2010 • EDU, updates • No comments

Symbaloo is proud to announce the official launch of SymbalooEDU, a dedicated version for teachers and students. SymbalooEDU was created with the input of educators. SymbalooEDU comes with the ability to embed various web 2.0 tools from across the internet. Tools like Google Docs, Flickr, Slideshare, TeacherTube and more are now fully functional from within SymbalooEDU, making it a safe environment for students to gather resources and store the media onto an eportfolio.

Wendy Drexler, educational researcher and former K12 teacher who recently worked with over one hundred 7th grade science students shared that “SymbalooEDU is truly a tool that can empower students and if applied with teacher support, can facilitate digital literacy skills and support life long learning.” Randy Hollinger, middle school science instructor says, “Our students use SymbalooEDU to organize their networked tools and websites, save their work online as an eportfolio and then share their portfolios with one another for peer review…a great tool to teach your kids how to be a networked learner.”

SymbalooEDU comes with new possibilities of school branding, default content customization and webinars, for teachers who would like to know more about integrating other web 2.0 tools with SymbalooEDU. We encourage all teachers to participate in helping contribute and improve SymbalooEDU’s content and usability.

Please visit SymbalooEDU to get started today!

Embed your faves

September 15th, 2010 • updates • 6 comments

Today we are extremely excited to introduce our latest feature, the ability to embed other online applications such as YouTube videos, Flickr photos, Google Docs and more on Symbaloo. We have been discussing how we can make Symbaloo more fun and easy to use. Our team all came up with the same conclusion: why should Symbaloo users have to navigate to so many different sites just to enjoy their favorites? Here are the list of current applications that you will be able to embed on Symbaloo:

• google docs
• flickr
• liveleak
• picasa
• schooltube
• slideshare
• teachertube
• twitpic
• google video
• vimeo
• youtube
• twitvid
• animoto
• yahoo video

On this page you learn how to embed on Symbaloo.

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Here are a few examples of webmixes that have been created using these new embed features. The first one is about online fun stuff and the other is on the dolphin. We’d love to see how you use the new embed features on your Symbaloo, share them here in our comments or our  Twitter and  Facebook. Is your favorite site not a part of the list? Reply with a comment listing the application and we will look into whether or not it is possible to embed.

This is just the start of the embed possibilities. We will continue adding more applications to our list of embed options, making your Symbaloo function even better.

Symbaloo on your iPhone or iPad

September 8th, 2010 • updates • 3 comments

We love using Symbaloo on our iPhones or iPads, but opening the browser and typing the url over and over again can be too time consuming. So here’s a little guide that explains how to bookmark Symbaloo on your iPhone or iPad screen. It’s just 3 simple steps, explained in the images below.

Different ways to use Symbaloo (Part 3)

August 28th, 2010 • updates • No comments

Symbaloo is most commonly used as a personal startpage.  By setting it as your homepage on your browser, you can start with your online favorites everyday. Over time we have seen it progress and used in many other ways.  Each week we will be posting a different way that Symbaloo can be used. This is week 3: Symbaloo as a Community Platform. Come back weekly to get more details.

Community Platform

If you have a passion such as art, you may know all of the best links surrounding that particular subject.  With our Symbaloo Service platform you can request to have a community around your passion, a place where other Symbaloo users with the same interests can communicate with each other. For example, the Art Community, Lena is crazy about art and leads the art community on Symbaloo. She has created multiple webmixes with very useful links around art and networks them on different social networks. She also uses the service platform as a tool to communicate and update other users about her webmixes. Here is a cool example of one of her webmixes, Zombie Art.

You can join the art conversation by clicking here. For more information on starting your own Symbaloo community email Kimmie.