Week 9 - Thing 23 - The End! (and Beyond)

Well, I've made it the end of the program! I have found many new and interesting "Things" along the way. Some I'll continue to use, like RSS feeds (though maybe not through Bloglines), Del.icio.us bookmarking, and Podcasts (as well as Facebook and YouTube which I use regularly anyway.) Other Things, I'm not sure whether I'll use them or not, like wikis and online production tools like Zoho Writer. Now that I know how easy it is to edit wikis I may help out with a few that I have used in the past. With others, its good to know that they are out there and what can be done with them even though I have no use for them personally.

Looking at the eBooks on Netlibrary was a good reminder of what is available and I will remember to recommend it to our patrons.

I have enjoyed looking at new things and discovering useful and interesting stuff. It is interesting to see where the internet is heading, with more interactivity of users, that it is becoming a much more active, collaborative medium than a passive surfing and reading and viewing static pages. While I'll been using some interactive sites for years (like forums and more recently facebook), it is interesting to see the extent and variety that is being developed, and the growing popularity of such sites.
I have been trying to stay ahead on this program so that I would be able to help my work mates on any problems they may have (since I know they will be asking me anyway). I enjoy helping them with learning these things and in doing so I am discovering some things that I didn't find while I was doing the tasks myself.

I think because of this program, I will try to keep more up to date about new development in the interest and web 2.0 applications being developed. I'll find myself some good blogs or sites about this sort of stuff and add them to my RSS feeds.

Week 9 - Thing 22 - Netlibrary eBooks

I remember making a Netlibrary account when ACL first added to our list of databases, but I haven't looked at it since. I have made myself another account and have had a look around. It appears to have changed its look and I think that there are more books available to ACL members than there were originally. It is good that there are lots (152) Cliffs Notes eBooks available. These are good resources for students, and most aren't available as real books at ACL. There also seems to be a lot of business books and computer books, which I think would be amount the more popular items to be used in ebook format.
I think that ebooks are a good way to supplement our physical collections at the library. I think the student resources on here should be promoted more and having another look at it has reminded me about what is available.

Week 9 - Thing 21 - Podcasts

I'd heard of podcasts and there are a few things that I'm interested in that have been published as podcasts, but I haven't bothered to look at them because I thought it involved more than it does. Reading this task I realised that this is a lot easier to do use than I thought is was going to be. So now all I have to do is find the time to listen to them. Maybe I'll load them on my MP3 player and listen to them on my way to work.
The yahoo audio search finds musicas well as podcasts, but adding podcast to the search seemed to help.
There are some I found there that I'll download when I get home. I didn't like the layout and feel of Podcast Alley, but as with Podcast.net, all the sites seem to have different podcasts listed so it is probably worth searching on all of them.
I'll do a big search at some point and add some podcast feeds to my bloglines account at some point. I'm glad to have learned just how easy it is to use them.

Week 9 - Thing 20 - YouTube

YouTube is a great site with tons and tons of cool videos that have been added and are continually being added to. I have watched lots of YouTube videos and am always finding more things to watch. I liked the Conan the Librarian clip. Me and my partner haven't watched any American Idol on TV,but have recently been entertained by looking at the worst auditions for the show on YouTube.

This is a clip that I found funny, called "Americans are NOT Stupid".

Week 8 - Thing 19 - Web 2.0 Tools

I looked at the short list(though still quite big) of Web 2.0 Awards winners and looked through the list. I recognised a number of the names, some from this Learning 2.0 program and some from my personal internet use.
There were 2 that caught my eye. Cocktail Builder which has cocktail recipes on the site which users can add more. You can search for those weird sounding cocktails you have heard of but don't know what's in them. There is also a cool feature that you can put in a bottle or 2 of alcohol that you have and it will give you the drinks that you can make with it. It has user ratings for the cocktails and you can add drinks to a list so you can print out the ones you want to make. It would be great when planning a cocktail party. I would have found this a lot more useful about 10 years ago, but I'll probably use it at some point.

Another one I liked was Guess-the-Google game. The maker of Montage-a-google has made a game out of it. With Montage-a-Google, you put in a word and it searches for images on Google Images and creates a montage out of them. Guess-the-Google turns this around to make a game from it by giving you a montage of images and you have to guess the keyword used in the search. It is a cool little game that is a fun way to waste a bit of time.

Thing 18

I've signed up for a Zoho Writer account and had a look around.  I created a test spreadsheet to see how it worked.  I have a spreadsheet program at home but not excel and it can't do multiply sheets which zoho can. My partner doesn't have a spreadsheet program on her computer so maybe this would be good for her to use. 

Then I had a look at the writer program and read the welcome document to see what it can do. I can see that it would be useful for sharing and editing documents away form your own computer.

I have written this post using Zoho Writer and will try exporting it to my blog.  If it is in my blog then it works.

Week 7 - Thing 17 - Editing Wikis

I was keen to give this a go and once the password was added I tried adding my blog to the favourites page of the libraries PBwiki site.
I tried several times to get the link to my blog to work properly, following the instructions but it didn't work. After several attempts I was going to leave it looking like other peoples before me with just the url link, but then I notice that there was a link in the top right hand corner that said "Switch to Classic Mode". When I clicked on this it changed to a different editing mode and the links were in the format used in the instructions. So I added mine using the format suggested and saved it and it worked.
The newer Point-and-Click Mode seems to be the default editing mode and it may be easier because there is no need to learn the syntax required for the classic mode. However, I couldn't get my link to look right with my blogger name displayed rather than the link url until I when to classic mode. I guess with the 2 options people can choose the one that works best for them.